“Oh, no,” she said, cheekily. “Wouldn’t miss it.”
CHAPTER 30
Allen Stewart looked at the photo Han held out to him. “Yeah. I remember her. She was one of that group that I told you I took to Ta’u.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. Told you there’s one I’d hit on if there’d been time. She had the look, man, come on give me a try.”
“How come you didn’t say anything about her when I was out here Friday?”
“You didn’t ask me about flying a blond tart to Ofu. I thought all those birds were together. And you were going pear-shaped about people growing weed in Nu’ufou.” The pilot was scrubbing his hands at the sink in the hanger. He glanced from Han to McGee, as if looking for allies. McGee’s eyebrows went up and down, but he stayed out of it.
“What about the Birdman? The guy you flew to Ofu this morning with the doc.”
“What about him? Like I told you Friday, lives in a little shack on Ofu when he’s not here. Been back and forth a couple of times. Him and his boxes of dead birds.”
“Birds?”
“Not those kinda birds. Birds. You know, like “ He bent his elbows out and flapped them like wings. “Like, tweet tweet. Collects ‘em or something. Something to do with his research. No skin off my teeth. They don’t weigh much.”
“Ever see this girl with the Birdman? They ever travel together?”
Allen shrugged again. “She was only the one time with me. Birdman wasn’t on that flight. Tell you, though, now that you ask. She was a pain in the butt. Told the through passengers not to de-plane on Ofu, that we were taking off right away again, but she did anyway. Damn near left her behind. She was chatting up one of the helpful citizens that hangs around there.”
“I need to get to Ofu.”
Allen nodded. “Tomorrow morning. Seven-thirty.”
“Now.”
“Fuck, man. It’s Sunday, in case you haven’t noticed. I’ve already made one unscheduled trip today. Health department’ll pay big for that. You paying?”
“Sure. Send the bill to Sasa.”
Allan’s face twisted disgustedly. “I need an hour to turn my craft round.”
“Forty-five minutes.” That would be just about enough time to find Ioane and at least one other competent officer.
“Fuck.” Allen said again. He looked at McGee. “You going?”
McGee grinned. “Sure.”
The pilot turned back to Han. “Anybody else?”
“I’m working on it.”
“Well, if it’s you and Big Bird here, you get three mediums or two larges.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
CHAPTER 31
The only path Ann knew on Olosega was the broad track from the land-bridge straight to the Olosega village green. Grayson started along this but then angled up and to the left onto the lower slopes that had been cleared of forest and were maintained as taro fields and coconut plantations. These were the boys’ paths, along the edges of the plantations, deserted at seven o’clock on a Sunday morning, as one would expect. The plantations were the province of young men, beyond the immediate eye of the community. The wild spaces inland and on the cliff-like upper slopes were the province of ghosts. In Samoan eyes, boys and ghosts both had a strong bent to evil and were often indistinguishable. Though Ann doubted you could get much work out of a ghost, and Samoan society extracted a hell of a lot of work out of its young men.
Below, through the spindly curtain of palm trunks, like vertical hanging blinds, Ann could see some movement around among the village houses, mostly children and chickens and the young men who would do the bulk of today’s cooking. She thought about cutting down away from Grayson through the taro fields but, when it came to actually doing it, wondered if she wasn’t just imagining things.
Her gaze wandered out across the taro plantations, heart-shaped leaves as big as platters rocking in the breeze, or up into the frizzy tops of the coconut trees. Grayson marched ahead of her, shoulders angled forward, silent except for the thud of his thick-soled hiking boots on the dirt. She set her mind to trying to figure him out, since she had committed this time to him and wasn’t doing a particularly efficient job of getting out of it. What was the deal with Sakiko? Hard to avoid the notion that it was mutual. He had asked her, that night, about being trapped. But she certainly hadn’t thought he meant trapped by Sakiko. Far from it. There had been yearning there. For something. She wished she could find a way to ask him about it. She hurried a little to catch up with him.
“I was very sorry “ she said, projecting her voice, giving him a moment to hear her, shift from what ever he was thinking about to listen to her. “.That pretty vase got broken. While you were still so sick. The one Sakiko “ Ann couldn’t say Sakiko Han. Indeed, she didn’t think Sakiko used Han’s name. “Lieutenant Han’s wife. Brought the flowers in. I knew she was an artist, a potter, but I’d never seen any of her stuff before.”
Grayson stopped abruptly, turning partway around to glance at her. “She’s a friend,” he said, his voice tight. “And he’s an asshole.”
Ann’s mouth opened, maybe hoping a smart remark would drop out. But nothing came. Finally, she said, “He certainly can be.” Grayson turned and marched on down the trail.
“She ought dump that bastard,” he said over his shoulder. “But she’s afraid of him. Afraid he’ll stalk her. Because of the kid. Cops do that.”
Too stunned to say anything immediately, she trotted after him. She discovered herself talking before she was quite thinking. A little breathless, not from the physical effort which was minimal, but still from surprise, she said, “I do know she was gone for about a year. Never knew exactly why she came back.” The feeling in her stomach was like cresting a hill on horseback and having the far side slope away unexpectedly, a long, hard down-grade, taken at the gallop. What if Grayson was right? What did she really know about Han? He had never said one word about Sakiko’s coming back until that God-awful Sunday morning when he had rolled off of the futon and said he had to get out to the airport because his wife and kid were coming back today. Asshole is one thing; bloody creep is something else.
Bits of her logical mind grasped at anything as her thoughts tumbled in a free-fall: strong, fair, insightful, funny, cop.ouch! Drop that one; falling again: married, Asian, attitudes toward women…bump: he loves his daughter. His daughter means the world to him.
She woke with the village long behind them, gone among the tree-trunks and the foliage. They were still in the plantations, but the slope above and to their left was much lower. Full morning light blasted across the crest and moved steadily down through the thinning forest like an army. As it advanced, the tops of the highest coconut trees on the lower slopes exploded with light like fire-balls. With the light came the heat.
Over his shoulder, Grayson said, “Once we’re around the point, we’ll be in the sun more, but we’ll get the breeze off the ocean.”
“Okay.” She wanted to ask him more about Han but was having trouble pulling her head together enough even to frame a question. Somehow, Jees, have you ever heard him threaten her? didn’t seem quite the ticket. The coconut plantations—and the shade—ended abruptly. Perhaps fifty yards of bouldery scrub led on to a narrow beach and the sound of the ocean beyond the reef. Grayson gestured around to the left. “Trail goes up here.”
A hat would have been nice. Sun block. Ice water. Ann took a swig of body-temperature water and followed Grayson up the trail. The way was much narrower than the paths through the plantations but still reasonably well defined. For some minutes, they worked across the broad back of Olosega, ascending slowly through the low forest. Abruptly, the trail angled to the left and sharply upward. Without turning to see if she were following, Grayson started to climb. After a short distance, the forest faded to brush and then
the brush to rocky outcrops tangled with flowering vines and creepers and tufts of unlikely grasses. Grayson swarmed up the rocky slope, long pale arms and legs splayed out, making Ann think of a praying mantis. She started after him. Because of the climb, they weren’t that far apart.
“You know,” she called to him, “If you’re really worried about her safety, you should confide in Sa’ili.” One of Grayson’s boots scraped on a rock. They were getting up high enough that you could look out into open chunks of air, eye to eye with the white manusina birds that sailed out from the cliffs, patrolling the lower slopes. Grayson said nothing, and she wondered if he had heard her. But she went on. “Because of Sa’ili’s traditional position and his government position, he’s really one of the most powerful people in American Samoa.” She was beginning to have to work at the climbing. This one-sided conversation didn’t really have much farther to go. “If Han really has threatened Sakiko, Sa’ili and Sasa between them could have him on an airplane back to San Francisco and in front of a Federal judge within twenty-four hours.” She didn’t know that for sure. At least the Federal judge bit. And, of course, it would have to be a day with a flight to Honolulu. But the Samoan end of it was right; the SFPD end, too, if what little Han had told her of his old bosses was true. Grayson still didn’t respond. They puffed and sweated up the formation in silence for another few minutes. A pair of tava’e birds, their fantastic long tail-feathers floating behind them, coasted the updrafts just above them.
Then suddenly they were scrambling through a last tangle of vines and coarse grass and weeds clinging to the thin soil along the ridge among the rocks. The breeze was stronger here, with just a knife’s edge of cold ocean. That hardly made up for the power of the sun beating down on their heads and shoulders, but it was something. Sweat poured down Ann’s front under her shirt. Breathing hard, she put a hand up to shade her eyes.
“There’s no trail from here on,” Grayson said, sliding his bush knife out of its sheath. He looked at her critically. “You don’t have boots.”
Ann shrugged. “I hike in these all the time. I’ll be fine.” Grayson turned, whacked the top off of something like a milkweed and stomped off across the boulder field, his ankles rolling on the loose pebbles. Ann stepped along lightly behind him. The lava here was old lapahoehoe, fast flowing in its brief time of freedom and movement, fast cooling, weathered and oxidized now through a couple of millennia to petrified red sponge, not bad going if you watched where you put your feet.
The ridge contracted abruptly, in places, less than a yard wide, just bare rock and no vegetation at all. They crept along, one foot after the other, bending to steady themselves with one hand on whatever offered: boulders, a bush shorn flat by the steady wind from the open ocean. Maybe a quarter of a mile ahead, Ann could see, the ridge dropped again and widened into a patch of scrub forest. From what little she knew of the shape of Olosega, that bit of scrub forest was probably the cliff edge high above the fringing shore and the National Park. But for now, she was glad to have something to keep her eyes on rather than the sheer drop on either side of their path.
Following exactly what Grayson had done, she stepped cautiously to the right over the next boulder. This was a narrow ledge of scree and dirt. Ahead of her, Grayson’s hard-soled boots rolled on the loose surface, spitting out pebbles that bounded down the rock face and tiny clouds of dust that hung, glowing, in the morning sun. Eight hundred feet below, the ocean breaking on the reef was tiny shifting lines of white; the roofs of Olosega village, a random tessellation of red and green, brown and silver. Ann heard only the scuff of Grayson’s boots and the click of the pebbles in their first few yards of fall. She didn’t know if the other sounds were the ocean or her own pulse in her ears.
For a time, she couldn’t go on. She couldn’t go back and she couldn’t go forward. Grayson was still moving slowly but steadily across the ridge. She closed her eyes for a moment, but the earth seemed to sway under her when she did that, and she opened them again. She thought about Peregrine Took, crawling through Moria, and moved a foot forward, toes gripping her sandals as if gripping the earth itself. Then she moved a hand, then another foot.
Yards ahead now, Grayson scrambled down the last stretch to the wide spot. He straightened up and turned to watch Ann, moving steadily again now, come after him. His face glowed with sweat and maybe satisfaction. With a little grunt, Ann made the last traverse to where she could no longer see the plunging rock-faces out of the corner of either eye. A couple of goat-hops more and she straightened up beside Grayson.
“The petrels nest on the other side of that thicket, overlooking the cliff,” he said softly. “They won’t mind us.” He grinned wolfishly. “As long as we don’t bash around too much.”
Ann was aware of everything: twinges in her feet, the hiss of the wind in the tops of the low trees, the plop of Grayson’s boots against the dirt, sweat drying in a salt rime on her face, rolling down between her shoulder blades under her shirt. They moved, just another pair of long shadows down into the dappled shade of the low trees.
A murmuring like flowing water surrounded them. Then she was seeing the birds, like over-heavy ornaments, roosting at eye level all around them, seeming unconcerned by the humans. Grayson stopped and looked at Ann and then up into the branches. Rapt as a lover, he reached up and plucked one the birds off of its perch. His long fingers wrapped around its breast.
“You see “ His voice hardly rose above the muttering of the birds and the shift of the wind through the leaves of the trees. “.You hold them like this and they can’t breathe “ The bird’s beak opened in protest but no sound emerged, for it could not take the breath needed for sound. It wriggled briefly in the man’s hand and then grew still. “.And then they die.”
CHAPTER 32
There were moments, riding in somebody’s pickup from the Ofu airstrip to the Ofu-Olosega land bridge, when Han thought he could have run the distance faster. The helpful citizen tromped on his breaks just short of the ford and pointed up the hillside. “You see, like I told the palagi girl from the airplane. He makes a little house there, near the birds. He was not there that day, and she was very angry, very sad. Today he comes with the lady doctor. But I think they do not stay at his house.”
Han swung out of the pickup. Ioane and the officer who had tracked Ioane down in Fagatogo and brought him out to the airport vaulted out of the back of the pickup. McGee got up to follow them. “Stay here, please,” Han said. Surprisingly, McGee did what he was told.
Han led his two officers up the little track to Grayson’s hut. The back and sides were curtained in thick plastic sheeting. If Grayson hadn’t been staying there for a while, it would be one way to keep stuff more or less dry, since he wouldn’t care about letting the breeze through. Plastic boxes of files were stacked in one back corner. More plastic boxes held odds and ends of small instruments, an old student microscope that worked with a mirror, a couple of bottles of chemicals that smelled like solvents, maybe formalin. In the other back corner, one plastic trunk held bedding; the other, clothes. The top t-shirt in the pile was stenciled with the outline of a tree and the words fa’aolo o le vao. Not for the first time in his police career, Han thought: how can people be that stupid? And was grateful that they were. You couldn’t hang a man for owning a T-shirt just like one a murdered girl was wearing. But Simi, the young officer who had found Ioane, had brought with him a laboriously literally transcribed telephone message from Derrick Lee: Contact = parents of BOA account holder. Only joy: at USC same time as Grayson, Donald. Yes, G-o-d-space-d-a-m-n-space-i-t, write it down.
Two day-packs were slung on the floor between the trunks. One was Ann’s. The other was sun-bleached orange and looked like the one Han had seen the Birdman carrying. Han picked through it. Toiletries, dirty clothes, a notebook, a moldy-smelling paperback of The Tales of Genjii by Lady Murasaki. He flipped through the pages; something caught his eye. He opened
the endpapers. First the front and then, seeing what was there, the back.
The plain inside of the cover and first page were covered in tiny pen-and-ink drawings of birds, all kinds of birds. Fleeting, tiny sketches, they made him think of origami cranes, like a partial blessing, not quite a thousand-fold. He knew the drawings were Sakiko’s. She had done things like this years ago, back in the brief time, he remembered, when they had been happy together. A crackling of sticks under foot sounded behind the shack. Han looked up, his eyes pulling away from the thing in his hands as if breaking the pull of a magnet. Ioane was working around the edges of the shack. He shrugged and shook his head. Simi, the other officer, pushed through a screen of bushes. “Nothing,” he said. “Just an outhouse.” He grinned. “With mosquito netting.”
Han set the book and the pack on the floor. Both officers were looking at him. He jerked his head in the direction of the truck.
Back at the ford, the tide was near full, and the land bridge was submerged under two feet of water. Without missing a stride, Han, Ioane, and the other constable plunged into the water in the same high-stepping half-gallop, the water whooshing and splashing around them, McGee and the helpful citizen right behind them.
There was already a pickup waiting for them on the other side. Han was ushered into the passenger’s seat.
“You’re who I talked to on the ‘phone?”
“No, sir. The pastor has the telephone. He said you are looking for a palagi criminal.”
A Bird in the Hand Page 25