A Walk Through the Fire

by Marcia Muller

  Celia wasn’t about to give it up, however. “No matter what your reasons,” she said, “what remains is that you’ve never been here for us. Like your father.”

  Matthew glanced nervously at Jillian, who had moved out from behind him and was looking distraught. “That’s enough, Mother,” he said.

  “Where were you when your father ran off, Peter? When your younger brother turned to drugs? When Iniki hit?”

  “Mother!”

  Jillian staggered forward now, pointing a shaky finger at Peter, and I realized she was very drunk. “Yes, where were you during Iniki, when we needed your help? Where were you when this family was almost destroyed?”

  Stephanie shook her head, rolled her eyes at Benjamin.

  “Jill…” Matthew reached for his wife.

  She slapped his hand away. “You don’t know how it was, Peter. What we had to contend with. You can’t imagine—”

  “No, Jill, I can’t imagine,” Peter said evenly. “But what was I supposed to do? I was on the mainland, had no idea there would be a hurricane.”

  “There were warnings. You could’ve come back.”

  “By the time I heard the warnings, I couldn’t’ve gotten a flight.”

  “You could’ve! You should’ve! Maybe if you’d been here, our lives wouldn’t’ve been torn apart. You’ve always been the one who could control—”

  Jillian’s drunken tirade seemed to sober Celia up. She turned to Matthew and commanded him, “Do something about her! Now!”

  He reached for Jillian, but she stumbled away, bumping into a credenza by the door. There she leaned her elbows on the polished surface, stared at her own face in the mirror behind it, and began to cry.

  “Oh, shit,” Stephanie said. “Not this again!”

  “When it was over, the moon was full.” Jillian spoke in a child’s high-pitched voice. “And the forest was quiet all around us. And then everything was black and the wind peeled the bark off the trees and the forest turned to Pickup Sticks and the boulders flew through the air—”

  “Stop it!” Celia shouted. She gave Matthew a shove. “See to your wife!”

  He went to Jillian, tried to pull her upright. She resisted, sobbing. “Oh, Matt, why? Why us? Everything ended! And I’m so sorry…”

  “Sssh.” He put his arms around her, got her more or less erect, and led her from the room. She stumbled along, still sobbing.

  Stephanie and Benjamin looked helplessly at each other. Celia brought her hands to her face and rubbed it, as if trying to erase the unpleasant scene.

  I glanced at Peter and Glenna. Each seemed deep in thought, as if Jillian’s out burst had told them something they were trying to fit into its proper place. When I looked at Hy, he shrugged, troubled.

  Peter stood and took Glenna’s hand. Said to Hy and me, “Time we leave.”

  Slowly Celia raised her head, her mouth going slack when she noticed us. The Moris looked embarrassed and began mumbling apologies.

  The four of us left without a word. Nothing we could say would improve the situation.

  “What d’you mean—the house is under surveillance?” Even in the waning moonlight Glenna’s face looked panicked. I put my hand on her arm. She’d seemed fine on the way home from the party, but as soon as Peter told us good night and took the footpath through the shrubbery to his own cottage, she began to unravel from pent-up tension.

  We were sitting on a long beach on the bluff overlooking the sea, a good distance from the house and its clicking sensors. Hy explained about them and their probable function, while Glenna pushed agitated fingers through her long curls. When he finished, she said, “My God, you mean somebody could’ve been watching everything I’ve done in that house? Or listening to my every word?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “No, that can’t be!”

  My fingers tightened involuntarily on her arm. Her voice held the same combination of outrage and helplessness that I’d felt the previous month when an unknown woman had attempted to take over my life. I took a deep breath before I let go of her.

  “What’s important now,” I said, “is to figure out who could rig such a system. No matter how much it upsets you, I have to say this: Peter’s credentials indicate considerable technical expertise—”

  “He has no reason to do a thing like that. We’re very… close.”

  I studied her for a moment. In San Francisco I’d attended a few parties where she’d been present, and I’d run across her in restaurants a couple of times. She’d always been with a different man, and she hadn’t gone in for public displays of affection with any of them. “You’re in love, aren’t you?” I said.

  She nodded.

  “And Peter?”

  “He hasn’t said so in so many words. But it’s going to work. It’s got to. I’ve never felt this way before.”

  “Then I hope it does. And I think we can eliminate him as the person who tampered with those sensors. Who else has access to Malihini House?”

  “Most anybody. The caretaker, the housecleaner, the gardeners. All the members of the family. Anybody who strays onto the property. I seldom put the alarm on. Crime isn’t much of a problem on Kauai.”

  Some kinds of crime, anyway. “Okay, the family members: anyone suspect there?”

  She considered. “Well, Ben Mori has the know-how.”

  “He runs a branch of a software firm owned by relatives in Japan?”

  “Yes. The Moris have lived on Kauai for generations, but they’ve kept close ties to the Osaka branch of the family.”

  “Peter mentioned a professional impasse between Ben and Matthew. D’you know what that was about?”

  “Cane fields that the family owns on the southeastern coast of the island. They’ve been lying fallow since the sugar market collapsed. Ben wanted to develop them one way, Matthew another. So they agreed to disagree, but they’re still cordial. To get back to those sensors—what can we do about them?”

  Hy said, “I’m going to call our Honolulu office in the morning and find out how to disable them, or have one of our technicians come over and do it. The latter’s probably the better idea. Somebody who knows that particular system may be able to locate where they’re hooked into.”

  Glenna nodded, relieved. “We’ll have to be careful what we say and do till then. I don’t know about you two, but I’m not planning anything more interesting for tonight than sacking out. We’ve got a nine o’clock shoot tomorrow.”

  I said, “Before you go inside, I have a few more questions. That argument at Pali House—what started it?”

  “I don’t know. I was in the loo, and when I came back, the battle lines were drawn. Celia called Peter ungrateful. He said he was sick of her playing the queen bee. She told him she deserved some respect. He said it was easier for him to respect her when he was living on the mainland. And that’s when she lit into him with the comment about his father.”

  “Peter mentioned other reasons for coming home besides your film. Has he told you what they are?”

  Her expression clouded. “Not yet. He can be so reserved.…”

  “What’s this about a brother who turned to drugs? Was that Matthew?”

  “Mr. Stiff-and-Starchy? Lord, no! That was a younger brother, Andrew. I don’t know what happened to him. There’re only a few mentions of him in his father’s journal.”

  “What journal?”

  “Oh, I didn’t tell you. It was the most surprising thing. Peter had a copy of the book manuscript that his father had sent him, but he had no idea there was a journal in which Elson described his life and the writing of the book. One night right after we arrived, I was helping Peter go through some boxes of Elson’s personal effects that had been stored, and I found it. Fascinating stuff, and it gave me a lot of insight that my scriptwriter was able to incorporate into the narrative for the film.”

  “I’d like to take a look at both the journal and the manuscript, if I may.”

  “Certainly.”

&nbs
p; “Now one more question: what’s the matter with Jillian?”

  “Jill’s been… not quite right in the head since Hurricane Iniki in 1992. When she drinks—and even sometimes when she doesn’t—she flips back and relives it. Seems she was wandering around that day, didn’t heed the warnings, and got caught out in it.”

  “Was she hurt?”

  “Well, she took shelter someplace, came out pretty much okay, but she was pregnant and the next day she miscarried. Now she’s unable to have children.”

  “That’s a shame. I seem to remember hearing about that storm, but my recollection’s hazy.”

  “There’s a pictorial book about it in the house, if you’re interested. It lasted six hours, and the winds hit 227 miles an hour before they blew the measuring device to pieces. The book says the hurricane released as much energy per second as an atomic-bomb blast, and the photos do look like ground zero. That deadfall up the beach is one example of the devastation—it used to be a forest. Peter says Kauai’s kind of a magnet for nature’s wrath. It’s been hit by disastrous storms and tidal waves four times in as many decades.”

  “Well, it certainly sounded as if Jillian was reliving Iniki tonight. Wonder what she meant by ‘Everything ended’?”

  Glenna yawned, shook her head. “Jill says a lot of things that just plain don’t make sense. Maybe that’s the reason Matthew always looks like his shorts’re too tight.” She stood, yawning some more. “Got to get some sleep. Sorry.”

  Hy and I said good night and watched her go. Then I stretched my arms along the top of the bench, one hand resting against his shoulder, so I could incline my head and look up at the sky. The Milky Way spread across it, a brilliant swath of starshine.

  When I was a kid my father used to round up as many of the five of us as he could find on warm summer nights and take us to the backyard. There we’d lie on the grass and he, a sailor and spinner of yarns, would tell us about the heavens. Periodically he’d gift us with ownership of certain constellations, and while my brothers’ and sisters’ celestial real estate often changed, mine always remained the same: Orion, the hunter.

  Pa had seen through to my soul even then.

  One piece of Pa’s lore still had the capacity to give me gooseflesh. He told us that many of the stars we were looking at had died long before the dinosaurs walked the earth. That the light shining above could be the last gasp of a fiery mass. That it had left a dead place to travel for millions of years till it reached our eyes. Even now it chilled me to look up and think that those beams of light might be coming from a place that no longer existed, just as it chilled me to think that someday the light from the sun I took for granted would be making its way from a burned-out husk to a distant galaxy.

  Now I wondered if the light from the fiery volcanic explosions that had formed this island thousands of years ago was still traveling across the universe. If so, it had left no burned-out husk behind.

  Kauai was rife with the potential for further fiery explosions—of the human kind.

  APRIL 3

  Kauai

  9:20 A.M.

  The cave cut hundreds of yards into the base of a sheer cliff, its wide mouth opening into darkness. I faced it, reminded of an even darker tunnel in an old mine and what had happened to me there years before. Quickly I tucked the memory away in the mental compartment that I reserve for real-life nightmares.

  Behind me, Glenna, Peter, and two officers of the Kauai County Police Department were roping off the area between the cave and the road. People were already wandering across from the state beach to see what the commotion was about. A pair of set electricians were running cable from a portable generator mounted in the bed of a truck, and the camerawoman, Kim Shields, was setting up. Jan Lyndon, shooting script in hand, was waiting to talk with Glenna. Other people, whose functions I could only guess at, milled around drinking coffee from Styrofoam cups.

  On the shoot I’d attended with Glenna in San Francisco, the crew had been much smaller. But in the car on the way here she’d explained that Peter had enlisted the aid of some locals and had arranged for her to have three interns from the University of Hawaii. Even so, by Kauai standards—parts of such films as Jurassic Park had been shot here—this was a minor event.

  I wandered around for a bit, watching the crew set up lights inside the cave and checking for suspicious behavior on the part of any individual. None of the bystanders displayed unusual interest in either the equipment or the crew. Finally, satisfied that all was well, I sat down on a nearby trash-bin enclosure and scribbled a list of things to ask Mick to do when I called the office.

  Hy hadn’t come to the shoot. He wasn’t really a security specialist—his work for RKI was along the lines of hostage negotiation and recovery—and besides, he had one of their technicians coming from Oahu to inspect the system at Malihini House. At Glenna’s suggestion he asked Russ Tanner to fly him to Lihue Airport to meet the man, and Tanner readily agreed. He made a flashy landing in his red chopper—Hughes 500 series, Hy said—on the big lawn in front of the house and, before Hy ran toward it, I caught a gleam in his eyes that told me he’d soon hold a current rating in helicopters. Much as I hated such aircraft, I knew I’d unbend and fly with Tanner and him, and next thing you knew they’d have me at the controls.

  Oh, well, life would be unsatisfying if one couldn’t conquer old biases.

  Glenna was conferring with Jan Lyndon now, so Peter came over and perched next to me. “What’s happening in this scene?” I asked him.

  “It’s part of the opening segment where, in voice-over, the actor who’s playing my father talks about how the gods were said to frequently walk the earth in mortal form. In this case, the fire goddess, Pele, who was often associated with caves.” He motioned at a tall young woman whose body was draped in a filmy red, gold, and orange material that created the impression of flames when the breeze moved it. “That’s Sue Kamuela. Pure Hawaiian, has a dress-designing studio in Waipuna. Glen spotted her on the street the day she arrived, and persuaded her to act in the film.”

  With her waist-length black hair and graceful movements, Kamuela seemed a natural for the role of a goddess. “And your father—who plays him?”

  “The man standing next to Sue—Eli Hathaway. He’s a distant relative, bears an uncanny resemblance to my father.”

  “You seem to have a number of distant relatives,” I said, thinking of Russ Tanner.

  “These islands are practically one big family. Haoles, Chinese, Japanese, Hawaiians—you name it, many of us are related.”

  “Haole—that means white person?”

  “In common usage. Technically it refers to any foreigner.”

  Peter turned his attention to where Glenna was standing, her back to us. She held both hands before her eyes, thumbs and forefingers forming a frame through which she viewed the cave. After a moment she motioned to the camerawoman, had her do the same. They conferred some more, and then Glenna called to a young man, “Are those marks in place?”

  He looked blank for a moment, then hurried toward the cave and began affixing red paper tape to a rock.

  “One of the interns,” Peter said. “They’re journalism students, know nothing about filmmaking, but Glen never gets impatient with them.”

  “So how will this scene play out?”

  “First they’ll film Eli wandering into the cave, looking contemplative. Then Sue will follow the same path, more or less mimicking his movements.”

  “And that’s it?”

  “Well, there’ll be more than one take, but not that many. Glen seems to get good performances out of those two right off the bat. What I’ve seen of the edited footage is quite impressive. Emily Quentin’s using the third bedroom at Malihini House as an editing room, and Glen rented her an Avid digital setup, so—Look at that, will you!”

  The cave was suddenly illuminated in garish light that revealed cracks, fissures, and shadowy recesses. I said, “Isn’t that going to look unnaturally bright?”
/>   Peter shook his head. “The film’s not as sensitive as your eye.”

  Glenna called, “Time to get on your mark, Eli.”

  Eli Hathaway moved forward to the red tape on the rock. A woman hurried after him, straightening his collar.

  “Okay, Eli,” Glenna said, “you can start any time after we’ve slated and I say ‘action.’” She consulted with the camerawoman, waited, then repeated the word.

  Hathaway went through his paces, telegraphing a solemn and contemplative mood with his body language.

  I asked Peter, “Is he a professional actor?”

  “No. He runs boat tours out of Hanalei. Glen and I ran into him at the fish market there. I hadn’t seen him since he was a kid, and the resemblance to my father blew me away. When I mentioned it, Glen decided she had to use him in the film.”

  “So she came over here not knowing who her actors would be.”

  “And without knowing exactly what she’d film. The way she works on location is a fluid process, depending on what and who she finds there.”

  Hathaway had gone through his segment twice and came out of the cave, lighting a cigarette. “Very good, Eli,” Glenna called. “Take a break now.”

  He waved at her and walked off toward the rope that surrounded the area.

  Now Glenna, Jan Lyndon, and Sue Kamuela huddled over the script. The crew stood around, idle.

  “Another thing I’ve learned about filmmaking,” Peter said, “is that it’s largely a matter of hurry-up-and-wait. There’s a lot of setup, a lot of last-minute changes. This crew’s drunk more coffee in the time they’ve been here than the entire island did last month.”

  The minutes dragged by. Sue, Glenna, and Jan continued to talk. Then Glenna went over to the marks on the rock, gesturing for Sue to follow. With exaggerated motions, she began walking toward the mouth of the cave. Sue mimicked her. Once there they stopped, as if reluctant to venture inside—

  A whining sound.

  Kamuela whirled around. As shards from the rocks at the cave’s mouth peppered her, I heard the gunshot.

  I grabbed Peter, pulled him off the enclosure so it shielded our bodies, all the while shouting for people to get down. Instead they stood frozen or ran in panic. Kamuela now crouched, hand to her face, blood streaming through her fingers. Beside her, Glenna stood still as a statue.