Bones of Hilo

by Eric Redman

  “He started making passes at me,” she went on. “Like he was teasing. Usually after a big meeting, when he was all pumped up. At first I treated it like a joke, tried to laugh about it. Then one day I didn’t.”

  Fortunato had keys to empty houses. First he took her to Kohala Ranch, just past Kawaihae, but it made her nervous. “There’s a gatehouse,” she said. “The guard could see Ralph had someone with him.”

  So Ralph took her to Waiki‘i Ranch, off the Saddle Road, the winding two-lane back route to Hilo. Waiki‘i Ranch offered seclusion and romance. At the Ranch’s high altitude, a tablecloth cloud creeps down the slope each day. By evening, mist shrouds the grassy meadows. Mist and rain—which South Kohala’s lower elevations lack almost entirely—make Waiki‘i Ranch lush and green. The parcels were large too, often forty acres. At Waiki‘i Ranch, Joan Malo felt safe.

  “I didn’t think of myself as a fallen woman,” she said. “I’m faithful—by nature, and because I was raised that way.” But sleeping with Ralph, relishing the exhilaration and the novelty, she began to love him. She felt she was cheating if she slept with her husband. She also began to see her husband’s shortcomings—one after another.

  Ralph warned he’d never leave his wife; she accepted that. He said he’d end the affair if she told anyone; she believed him. Still, he was always attentive, never critical, always grateful. “He made me feel good about myself,” she said. She was happy when she could be with him, moody when she couldn’t. Ralph gave her a company car—a little white BMW convertible. She began to travel to Honolulu or Hilo with him on business. Often Michael Cushing accompanied them, so by day they’d be discreet. But she’d come to Ralph’s room by night.

  “Then,” she said, “two months ago Ralph had to go to Tokyo for his annual meeting with the investors’ group. He asked me to go too. Just me, not Michael Cushing. My husband was upset. He didn’t suspect anything—he just hates Japanese people, doesn’t want me near them.”

  Kawika thought, Maybe Kai Malo did kill Fortunato. Maybe he wasn’t on Moloka‘i. Maybe he killed Fortunato because of something to do with Japan, maybe without knowing of Joan’s—

  “Ralph made me sleep with Mr. Shimazu,” Joan Malo declared flatly.

  “Wait—what?” Kawika was caught off guard.

  “Mr. Shimazu,” she repeated. “The head of the Japanese investors. Ralph made me sleep with him after we got to Tokyo. He let Mr. Shimazu take me away for the weekend. He gave me to Mr. Shimazu, basically.”

  “But why?” Kawika asked. “Why would you agree to that?”

  “Ralph said we were going to lose the company. Mr. Shimazu was going to cut off the money. Ralph would have to leave the Big Island. He said he couldn’t bear to lose me. He hated asking me to do it, he said—he was actually in tears, crying. I was comforting him. I was sick to my stomach. But I told him I’d do it. I’d get through it, I said. I’d do it for him.”

  She paused for another tissue.

  “And so I did it,” she concluded, so softly Kawika could hardly hear.

  For a long moment Kawika could think of nothing to say. Involuntarily, he saw her as Fortunato or Shimazu might have seen her: a highly desirable woman.

  “That weekend was horrible,” she resumed, as if compelled to fill the silence. “Ralph said I should pretend to like Mr. Shimazu, call him Makoto, be nice to him. But that wasn’t what Mr. Shimazu had in mind.”

  She took a deep breath. “Afterward, we couldn’t come back right away. I had bruises and other marks. So Ralph took me to Tahiti, to Moorea. I called Kai, told him that we had to go to Tahiti with the investors to look at another of Mr. Shimazu’s resorts. Ralph got us a hut over the water. He took care of me, tried to comfort me. I tried too. I wanted to forget what happened, just go on.”

  “Did you tell your husband?” Kawika asked. “About what happened in Tokyo, I mean?”

  “No. I’ll never tell him. I’ve hurt him enough, telling him about Ralph.”

  “Well, I understand, but—”

  “I already told you,” she snapped. “My husband did not kill Ralph. He was on Moloka‘i.”

  “What about Mr. Shimazu? He might have killed Ralph—he was here, right? And then he left.”

  She shot him a withering look. “No,” she said. “Mr. Shimazu wouldn’t have any reason to kill Ralph. He was happy after that weekend. Very happy. He told Ralph everything could go on like before. He hugged Ralph, patted him on the back. Said Ralph had to bring me back in three months. He winked at me when he said it.”

  “Ralph agreed?”

  “To Mr. Shimazu’s face, yes. But he would never have done it. Never. Ralph said we’d bought ourselves time, we’d think of something.”

  Kawika wondered if that was right, but with Fortunato dead it didn’t matter now. “Did you see Mr. Shimazu when he was here this time?” he asked.

  “I always see him when he’s here. I’m the receptionist. But he kept it strictly professional. He didn’t even wink at me. Anyway, he was preoccupied with KKL stuff. He and Ralph left the office together every time he came by.”

  “Still, Mr. Shimazu—”

  “Let’s not kid each other,” she interrupted, her voice rising. “You’ve got a murder to solve. I’ve got a different problem: I ruined my life. I ruined my husband’s life, my children’s lives. My problem is private. It’s personal. It has nothing to do with the murder, and neither does Mr. Shimazu. We all know who murdered Ralph: Peter Pukui or someone else in HHH. Now let me go home.”

  “Wait,” Kawika said. “I still need to hear about your husband. What does he do, your husband?”

  “Works for PCR—Polynesian Cultural Resources. He does Hawaiian cultural things at resorts, like build the oven to cook a pig or show tourists the petroglyphs. He does luaus too—plays slack-key guitar. He’s gone in the evenings. That’s what made it possible, the affair.”

  “You said you have children?”

  “Two keikis. Girl and a boy. My mom looks after them. In Waikoloa Village, right near us.”

  “Forgive me,” Kawika said, “but—”

  “I already explained,” she cut in. “I worked with Ralph. I saw him as powerful—smart, successful. In Hawai‘i, we’re taught to admire warrior kings. Well, he was a warrior king. I got to see him in combat. Being with him made me feel—what? Valuable, I guess. Fit for a warrior king. My husband isn’t a warrior. He’s not a king. He’s a nice Hawaiian man—happy, a good husband, a good father. He’s just not going anywhere. After we had the kids, it seemed like a dead end, like I’d die without having lived. I wanted to live. Now I just hope he’ll still have me.”

  She paused, then asked quietly, “Do you have to interview him?”

  “Don’t know yet,” Kawika replied. “Maybe.” It wasn’t true; he knew they had to interview her husband. He was just trying to be gentle.

  She stood up, looking a bit ill now, and put on her sunglasses before walking a little unsteadily from the room and the building. Kawika followed. She tried to wave him off, walking toward her parked car, but he stayed with her. Her BMW convertible had a KKL logo on the door, a blue oval with three mountains, two of them snow-capped.

  Kawika held her door. “You might want someone to help you through this,” he said. “Your doctor, your pastor—” But she got in her car, slammed the door, and drove off. Kawika stood and watched her go.

  Then, from the edge of his vision, Kawika saw a shape: something black, accelerating. A pickup truck squealed along the pavement, rushing toward Joan Malo in her BMW. With a horrific bang and crush of metal the pickup rammed the BMW hard from behind. The convertible lunged down the street as if launched. It careened wildly, nearly overturning.

  Then both vehicles stood still, not moving, silent except for hissing steam. The airbags had inflated, then collapsed. Kawika ran toward the car. Over his shoulder he saw Waimea police streaming from the station, shouting, running in the same direction.

  A man with a bloodied face and arms go
t out of the pickup and staggered forward, leaning, falling back, but then walking forward again, moving toward the BMW, always toward the BMW.

  “No!” Kawika yelled. He guessed this must be Kai Malo, Joan’s husband, betrayed and enraged. Kawika started running down the street toward the BMW. Running and yelling, running and yelling and seeing, Kawika felt nightmares begin searing themselves into his brain.

  “Kai, no!” Behind him, Kawika heard Tommy and a chorus of Waimea cops running from the station and yelling, running and yelling. “Kai, no! Kai, no!”

  Kai Malo had a gun. He pointed it through Joan’s window. Kawika couldn’t get there in time to stop him, and didn’t carry a gun himself, couldn’t shoot him. He saw Joan’s husband fire twice, pause, then fire again. Kawika was still running and yelling. Kai Malo turned to him—Kawika looked right into his eyes—and slowly lifted the gun to his own temple. Then he blew his brains out all over the BMW’s white fabric top.

  13

  Waimea

  Kawika spent much of his day giving a statement to the Waimea police. The crime had taken place before their eyes; they could handle that part. They just needed to know what Joan Malo had told Kawika, what it meant, how it might explain these shootings. The Waimea police handled the situation professionally. If they resented Kawika, the cop from Hilo, or felt any satisfaction at his distress, they didn’t show it.

  Afterward Kawika went to the men’s room and threw up. Kneeling, he retched for a long time. Finally he got up, washed his hands, splashed water on his face. He tried not to look in the mirror.

  By that time, Tommy had apparently left the station; when Kawika asked, no one had seen him. The Waimea police loaned Kawika a car so he could get around. He drove out of sight, pulled over, and flipped open his cell phone. First he called Patience to excuse himself from seeing her that night. He explained the circumstances briefly, to her horror, and suggested meeting the next night. Then he called Carolyn in Hilo to explain why he couldn’t get home as early as planned. The Malo killings horrified Carolyn too. He promised to see her soon—probably in two days, he said.

  Kawika had arrived simultaneously at two of life’s worst places. He felt responsible for the death of another person, and he found himself wanting two women enough to mislead one, by omission, and deceive the other. It wasn’t like him to deceive anyone, much less Carolyn. This added to his queasy self-disgust. But he couldn’t deal with his love life just now.

  He knew he’d blundered. Two people were dead and two children orphaned. The dead woman—her desirability, but particularly her immediacy, his sense that she was still sitting there, still talking, her emotions still showing in her fine-featured face—wouldn’t let him go. Nor would the image of that same face, dead, above a torso torn to bloody fragments by three bullets in the white BMW.

  His third call was to Terry Tanaka. Kawika described his mistakes unsparingly: he shouldn’t have made Cushing name Joan Malo in the presence of Tommy, and he should’ve called her himself to set up the interview, not left that to Tommy. “I was stupid,” Kawika said. “I didn’t even mention her to Dad last night, knowing what a small place Kohala is. I should’ve had more sense with Tommy. I should’ve told him not to mention her affair.”

  “Yes,” Tanaka said sternly, not sparing him. “But Tommy made a bigger mistake. Her boss had been murdered. That was reason enough to interview her. That’s all he needed to tell her. He didn’t need to mention her affair.”

  “He probably just wanted to warn her,” Kawika said. “Let her know her secret was out, that Cushing knew.”

  Kawika could tell Tanaka was trying to reassure him—a bit. “You didn’t kill her,” Tanaka said. “Now go to your dad’s, get some sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.” All the same, Kawika knew Tanaka was shaken.

  Kawika arrived at his dad’s after sunset. Jarvis sat in one of the lawn chairs, without a light, waiting. “Rough day,” Kawika said. “You heard?”

  “Yeah,” Jarvis said. “I told you: Fortunato pretended to be nice. But he wasn’t.”

  “He didn’t kill anyone.”

  “You know that for a fact?”

  “No,” Kawika admitted. “But he didn’t kill Joan Malo or Kai Malo.”

  Jarvis rose and drew his son into his engulfing embrace. “Try to forgive yourself, Kawika,” he said. “If you don’t, you’ll never be able to forgive others.”

  “No one needs my forgiveness.”

  “Yes, they do,” Jarvis said. “Or they will. Starting with Tommy.”

  In the morning Kawika felt, if not better, at least resolute. He drove Ku‘ulei to school in Waimea, treating her to a ride in the borrowed police car. She wanted him to turn on the siren, but he smiled and declined.

  Ku‘ulei told him about Lono and about Makahiki, the great god’s annual four-month festival. “During Makahiki,” she informed him, “fighting and war were kapu. Everyone danced, played games, ate tons of food. It was, like, a holiday. A really long vacation.”

  “Did kids have homework?”

  “No, silly!” she laughed. “No one had homework during Makahiki! Everyone just had a really good time.”

  Kawika gave his cousin the shaka sign—thumb and pinky extended—as she got out of the car at school. She slammed the car door behind her. He thought of Joan Malo slamming another car door. Ku‘ulei beamed at him, then turned to run off, waving happily to friends.

  At the Waimea Police Station, work went swiftly. Kawika called Tanaka to agree on what needed to be done, and included the Waimea detectives in the call. They seemed to appreciate that. While a police spokeswoman handled the news media—Waimea was suddenly packed with TV cameras—Kawika and the Waimea detectives devised a plan to find out if Kai Malo had really been on Moloka‘i the night Fortunato died.

  Then they discussed how to trace the Fortunato murder weapon, the old wooden spear. A museum piece, Dr. Smith had called it, probably missing from some collection. They agreed Waimea would contact museums and dealers and describe the spear, including its three barbs behind the tip.

  “But don’t release that detail to the press,” Kawika emphasized. “Don’t mention anything about the barbs. Or the olonā fiber cord or the mountain naupaka.”

  Next they considered how to catch Peter Pukui and his girlfriend, Melanie Munu. The local police agreed on Pololū as the place they’d probably hide. The Pololū Valley was relatively near and uninhabited—roadless, overgrown, impenetrable, slicing through sheer rock cliffs. A steep path provided the only access. In Pololū no one could sneak up on Pukui and Munu. The Waimea detectives pointed out another fact: the valley contains Hawai‘i’s most dense concentration of ancient heiau. “And ghosts,” a detective added.

  But how to catch Pukui and Munu in Pololū? One detective suggested using dogs.

  “None on the island,” a second pointed out.

  “Get ’em from Honolulu in a day,” a third noted.

  “Let’s not use dogs on Peter or Melanie,” Kawika said. “At this point they’re not even official suspects. He’s a Native leader. So’s she, apparently. He’s got his dignity. She probably does too.”

  “And those TV crews got cameras,” one of the Waimea detectives added.

  In the end they decided to block access to Pololū and stop Pukui’s allies from supplying him and Munu with food. With a barricade, and with Waimea police officers manning it, HHH would understand the situation. If Pukui and Munu were hiding in Pololū, sooner or later they’d walk out, surrender.

  Kawika then called Michael Cushing. Cushing seemed far less agitated about Joan’s death than he had about Fortunato’s. Joan’s killer was known and dead—not a threat to Cushing, unlike Fortunato’s. “Domestic violence,” Cushing told Kawika. “I’m really sorry for Joan. It’s awful. Sickening.” But not scary; Cushing again declined protection at work. “I’ll be gone anyway,” he said. “Have to fly to Tokyo tomorrow, try to save this thing.”

  “You going to see Shimazu?” Kawika asked.

&
nbsp; “Yes, of course. That’s the point of my trip.”

  “Tell him we want to interview him right away—here, if he’ll come. And give me his contact information, will you?”

  Cushing found Shimazu’s phone and fax numbers, and Kawika called Tanaka to pass them on. “I’m guessing our Makoto may not be all that cooperative,” Kawika said. “He’ll probably try speaking to us in Japanese, if he can get away with it. So you’ll handle him better than I can.”

  “Iiko, iiko,” Tanaka responded sarcastically.

  Kawika wondered why Tommy hadn’t showed up at the station. That was the greatest surprise of the day. So Kawika and another detective, one of Tommy’s friends, drove to his house. Tommy sat on his lanai, facing the sun, his bronze face reddened by some other force. He’s been crying, Kawika realized. A woman stood behind Tommy, one hand on his shoulder, the other arm cradling a small girl dressed in a police costume plus a Supergirl cape. The little girl looked distressed.

  Kawika wanted to comfort Tommy—Dad was right; someone does need my forgiveness—but he couldn’t tactfully say, “I blame myself, not you; I was the one who had you make the call.” Kawika knelt, with a hand on Tommy’s arm. “Tommy,” he said, “it’s not our fault. You were right: Kai would have found out anyway. She would have told him no matter what. She knew we’d interview him, and we’d have to ask if he’d killed Fortunato as a jealous husband, check his alibi. You were right, Tommy. I was wrong, you were right.”

  Tommy began to cry again. He put both hands on Kawika’s shoulder and clung to him, sobbing in anguish. The little girl began to sob in sympathy with her father. “Come on, Grace,” her mother said, comforting her and turning away. “Let’s leave Daddy with his friends, the nice policemen. Let’s go back inside.” Kawika felt himself tearing up along with Grace.

  No one spoke for a long time.

  “Let’s do something good,” Kawika finally said, “Let’s pull ourselves together, go see Joan’s mom, Joan’s keikis. C’mon, Tommy. I need to go, and I want you with me. I really do. You’re my Waimea guy, Tommy. You’re my partner.”