Under the stunned and recriminatory stares of his relatives and friends, a drooping, unresisting Axel Torkelsson was cuffed, read his rights, and led away by Fukida and a uniformed officer. Malani, dry-eyed but too dazed to speak, was enfolded in Hedwig’s warm, fragrant arms. People looked at one another but mostly said nothing.
After a few seconds, Felix took charge with his usual elan.
“I guess that’s it for the reception, folks,” he announced. “Thank you all for coming.”
“All right, I understand why he killed Dagmar,” Julie said. “Sergeant Fukida explained that. He was afraid she was going to break down and tell the police the truth; that is, that Torkel was not a murderer, which would have meant there was a real chance-especially once the seamen’s home found out about it-that Magnus’s will might be thrown out and Torkel’s implemented instead. Whew, do I have that right?”
“That’s the way I understand it,” John said. “Of course I’m just a simple federal cop.”
“All right. Fine. What I don’t understand is why he wanted Torkel’s plane to go down. Why would he want to kill him? ”
“Well-” Gideon began, then paused as the cocktail waitress put down their drink orders: iced tea for Julie, a Mai Tai for John, and a glass of Chardonnay for Gideon. They were in Hawaii Calls, the Outrigger’s wall-less restaurant, at a tree-shaded outdoor table in the rear, toward the beach. They clinked glasses and took their first welcome sips.
“Well,” he continued, “that’s something we don’t know for sure yet, but at a guess, it was probably pretty much the same reason. Axel must have realized that if Torkel ever did come back and explain that he wasn’t Magnus-which he was supposed to do, eventually-it would turn out the same way: goodbye, Magnus’s will, hello Torkel’s.”
“Goodbye, Little Hoaloha,” John said, “hello, nothing.”
Julie slowly shook her head. “And so he murdered two people-took away their lives because they got in the way of getting something that wasn’t really his anyway… that pleasant, harmless-looking little man.”
“Three people,” Gideon said. “Don’t forget Claudia.”
“You two ready to order dinner?” John asked restlessly. He was more than ready to change the subject.
“Sure, I guess so,” Julie said, then suddenly shuddered, the shiver running visibly down her body.
“Cold?” Gideon asked. “Do you want to move in under the roof?”
“No, it’s beautiful out here with the ocean, and the sun going down. I think I could use a pullover, though. The tan one in the closet to the right-would you mind?”
Gideon, with the pullover over one shoulder, was closing the door to their room behind him, when he heard the phone ring. On the line was Fukida.
“Hey, chief, I’m glad I caught you. Listen, have you people had dinner yet?”
“No, we were just thinking about it.”
“Great. How about if I join you?”
“Well, sure,” Gideon said, puzzled. He and John were scheduled to be deposed by Fukida the next morning at CIS. What couldn’t wait until then? And dinner? Why the sudden sociability?
“Um, fine, Ted. We’ll wait for you. We’re at Hawaii Calls, in the resort.”
Fukida heard the ambiguity in his voice and laughed, rather merrily for him. “Ah, don’t sound so worried. My wife’s in Honolulu this week. I just thought it’d be nice to have some company, and eat some decent food, too. See you in a few minutes.”
“Fine.”
“Oh, also… there’s somebody I’d like you to meet.” And with an improbable final happy chuckle he hung up.
TWENTY-TWO
“HE’S got something up his sleeve, that’s all I know,” Gideon said. “He was chuckling.”
“Chuckling?” John said. “There’s something wrong there. Snicker, I could see. Sneer, for sure. But chuckle? Whoa, this looks bad. I’m telling you, Teddy can be… Teddy can be…” The words trailed off. He was staring into space, apparently at nothing. “… He can be …”
“John, what is it?” Julie asked.
But John was at a loss for words in the most literal sense of the phrase. He had jumped up, knocking over his chair, and all he could do was point.
Gideon turned to see Fukida coming toward them through the restaurant with an old man wearing a captain’s hat with faded gold braid, a yellow T-shirt with some kind of logo on it, and rumpled khakis. Not much taller than Fukida, he had the look of an old rake, bearded and pony-tailed, with a black patch over one eye and a rolling limp. When they got closer, Gideon was able to read the T-shirt logo: Old Fishermen Never Die, They Just Smell That Way.
“Hello, everybody,” Fukida said, grinning.
John, still staring at the old man, found his voice again. “Mr. T! How did you… we thought you were… we were sure you were.. .”
“Well, as you can see, I’m not,” the old man said. “I’m hale and hearty and crabbier than ever. It’s nice to see you, boy.”
“And this is Gideon Oliver,” Fukida said, “the one I’ve been telling you about.”
The old man laughed delightedly. “Oh, yeah. You’ve been working on my case, I hear.”
As he got to his feet, Gideon’s mind was whirling at top speed, teeming with what seemed to be impossibilities. Who was this guy supposed to be? Could he actually be Magnus Torkelsson, whose body, after all, was never positively identified? But if so, whose burned body had been left in the hay barn? Or could it be… what was his name, Andreas, the oldest brother, who had supposedly died decades ago? But if so, what did “you’ve been working on my case” mean?
“You’re-you’re Magnus Torkelsson?” he asked, choosing the less improbable impossibility.
The old man threw a glance at Fukida and laughed, both of them looking pleased with themselves. “Magnus? No, I’m not Magnus.” He sat down at the table. “Me, I’m Torkel.”
Gideon was flabbergasted. “You can’t be Torkel. I examined your remains myself,” he said stupidly. “I identified you from your right foot. It’s in a… it’s in a box at the Kona police station.”
“Oh, so that’s where it is.” Smiling, he pulled his right cuff up above his white sock and rapped with his knuckles on the almost-flesh-colored plastic shell that substituted for his right lower leg.
He had seen the lights when the Grumman was fifty feet above the surface of the lagoon, he told them, but he hadn’t known what they were-a pair of whale-oil lanterns hung on posts at the front ends of two dugout canoes that had been night-fishing for rockfish and rays along the reef. Four men altogether, they had come from Tiku, the nearest inhabited island, and they had been flabbergasted when the plane fell without warning out of the sky and plowed itself into the water within a few hundred feet of them.
The last thing he remembered from that night was the wrenching screech of the wing shearing off as it hit the water. The next thing was waking up in a pandanus-roofed hut two, or possibly four, days later-he had never figured out their language well enough to know for sure. But what he did know for sure was that they had paddled to the downed plane before it sank. They had found the pilot dead and Torkel unconscious, with his foot caught inextricably in the twisted metal under the console. Using the tools they had brought for gutting and quartering the rays, they had taken his leg off at the knee, staunched the blood with a tourniquet made from his shirt, and taken him to Tiku.
There, with the stump bound up in pandanus leaves that had been soaked in an evil-smelling poultice, he slowly recovered, although one eye was damaged beyond repair. He remained on Tiku for five weeks, leaving with the first people to call there during his stay-a Japanese scientific team studying the effects of ocean currents on intertidal marine life. They had taken him to Tarawa, from where he’d gone first to Australia, then to Fiji, and then, a year after the plane crash, to the island of Moorea, part of French Polynesia. And there he’d stayed, living a lonely and isolated life, carving furniture and drums from the local milo and kamani woods, until he met and married a beautiful French widow, his “trophy wife” (she was seventy-one).