Bones of Hilo

by Eric Redman

  Well, Kawika thought, Jimmy Jack got it right: Fortunato was a dumb fuck. Although maybe, after multiple bottles of Preston wine, he’d just been a little too talkative.

  71

  South Kohala

  In Honolulu, Kawika switched his connecting flight to Kailua-Kona instead of Hilo. There was no extra charge. A Post-it Note from Tanaka on Rocco’s confession told Kawika to get to the Hilo station before Tanaka’s afternoon press conference the next day. Cushing’s arrest and the Duct Tape Mummy’s confession were hot news, and an official explanation couldn’t wait. The police chief would be there in person.

  Kawika figured he could fly to Kailua-Kona, do what he had to do, and still reach Hilo in time. From Honolulu, he called Carolyn to say he’d spend the night at his dad’s. He had to see Ku‘ulei, he explained. He promised he’d see Carolyn for dinner in Hilo the next night, after Tanaka’s press conference. She accepted his plans passively, and his heart sank a bit with sadness. But it didn’t shake his resolution. He decided to wait a day before returning voice messages from Patience on the mainland; he still had to meet with Tanaka first, decide what to do about the killer.

  Next he called and reserved a car at the Kailua-Kona airport. In the end, he’d flown coach to Honolulu, so the Department hadn’t had to spring for first class. It could pay for a rental car instead. Kawika drove straight to the King Kam Kourt in Kailua. “We’ve got a lot of K’s in Hawaiian, don’t we, Ku‘ulei?” He made the manager lead the way to Rocco’s room.

  “The police sealed it,” the manager said. “I’m not sure I should let you in.”

  “I’m Detective Kawika Wong,” Kawika repeated, showing his badge. The manager studied the badge, then stood aside.

  For the second time in this investigation, Kawika ducked under a yellow crime scene tape. The Waimea and Kona cops had checked every surface for prints, then tossed the room.

  “There’s nothing they didn’t get,” the manager said.

  Kawika wasn’t sure about that. Where was Rocco’s handgun? Kawika had a hunch. He entered the bathroom, lifted the lid of the toilet tank, and showed the manager a pistol taped underneath in a Ziploc bag. A smaller bag held some bullets.

  “How about this?” Kawika asked. Disappointing, he thought. Our guys missed this, missed those shell casings in Hilo. What else?

  “A handgun.” The manager shrugged. He didn’t seem impressed, maybe after seeing a big rifle with a telescopic sight in the same room. “What kind?”

  “A nine millimeter, probably,” Kawika said, replacing the lid. He imagined Melanie Munu confronting the same gun unsheathed. “Don’t touch it,” he warned, then dialed the police station in Kailua to call it in.

  Kawika got back in the car and drove north on Highway 19, the Queen K, all the way to the Mauna Kea. He took the turnoff and parked at the gate house.

  “Hey, Johnny,” he said. “Can I use your phone?”

  “Ain’t got your cell, brah?”

  “Battery’s dead,” Kawika said. Johnny seemed surprised but motioned Kawika inside.

  Kawika called Tommy on the gate house landline. “Thanks for remembering that rifle, Tommy,” he said. “I appreciate it.”

  “You haven’t heard the latest,” Tommy said. “You were on the plane. Bruno Moku‘ele’s talking. Came in this morning. His lawyer convinced him.”

  “How’d that happen?”

  “Tanaka showed him Rocco’s confession,” Tommy replied. “Since Rocco said he shot you and Tanaka had the rifle from Rocco’s motel room, Bruno was off the hook on that. But the thing is, Cushing knew where to get that rifle for Rocco. So Tanaka told Bruno he must’ve been Cushing’s accomplice. It was a trick, but it worked. Bruno’s lawyer told him he’d better tell the truth.”

  “And Bruno spilled?” Kawika asked.

  “Yup. Turns out Fortunato was paying him. Bruno organized the hunters’ group, whipped ’em up to start suing. After Fortunato died, Bruno went to Cushing. He wanted to know what to do next. Showed Cushing the rifle, told him he’d gotten it from Fortunato and had it sitting in his garage except to show folks; sort of proof, I guess, that he and Fortunato really had a deal.”

  “Wow. Doesn’t sound too bright.”

  “Yeah, well. So what happens to Bruno now, you think? Tanaka wants him thrown off the force.”

  “Beats getting charged as an accomplice. Or worse.”

  “No doubt.”

  “So, Tommy,” Kawika said, changing subjects, “remind me—what’s Frank Kimaio’s address, up there on Kohala Mountain Road?”

  “You won’t need an address,” Tommy said. “You can’t miss the house. Little white one that’s perched way out there, great big cactus by the gate. You won’t believe the view he’s got. I didn’t want to leave when I interviewed him that time.”

  “Mahalo, Tommy.”

  “No problem. Glad you’re back. See you at the press conference?”

  “Count on it.”

  Kawika headed north again, then followed Highway 19 as it wound up the slope from Pu‘ukoholā Heiau, the sacred spot where Peter Pukui and Melanie and HHH had once met to plan campaigns. Halfway up Kohala Mountain he passed the turnoff he’d taken the night he broke Cushing’s nose. Further along, the road split. One fork led to Waimea, where Joan Malo had lived an innocent childhood, and where he’d since seen Fortunato laid open on a table and Joan’s blood splattered inside a BMW. He took the other fork: the Kohala Mountain Road, the road to Hāwī, the road to his birthplace, and Joan’s, and Kamehameha’s. Nothing bad had ever happened to Kawika on the road to Hāwī.

  Nothing bad happened this time either. He could tell Kimaio’s house was probably empty; no car or truck in the driveway. It was an old Parker Ranch line shack, a place for paniolos—cowboys—to hole up for a hot meal or in bad weather and still be able to watch the cattle on the vast grazing area that stretched for miles north and south and down the mountainside below. Some owner before Kimaio had remodeled the place. It looked comfortable, even stylish, and enjoyed one of the most sweeping views of any house in the world.

  Kawika knocked at the door, expecting no response and receiving none. A wide deck surrounded the little house on three sides. He walked to the southwest corner, the spot that interested him most. He peered in windows as he passed, feeling entitled—even obligated—to do so. Kimaio had covered them with blinds, but through one small gap Kawika could see a wall almost entirely covered with electronics and blinking lights. Before it stood a table with computer, headphones, an office chair.

  Kawika leaned on the corner railing. It was just as he’d imagined. Here one seemed to stand in God’s shoes. The volcanoes were all in view: Mauna Kea, Mauna Loa, Hualālai, and over on Maui, Haleakalā. The long coastline was also in view, thirty miles of it, from Kona all the way to Kawaihae. The ocean, corrugated by swells and serrated by winds, lay dappled and shadowed by scattered white clouds so far below him that Kawika looked down on their tops.

  Taking his time, using landmarks for reference, Kawika eventually pinpointed in the distance every important location: Waikoloa Village, the land for KKL’s planned resort, Fortunato’s home outside Waimea, Cushing’s home far down the slope, the grassy expanse of Waiki‘i Ranch where Rocco had buried Melanie. Kawika could even vaguely see the Mauna Lani’s golf courses.

  Kimaio had built himself a sturdy observation post like a tiny set of bleachers, something the winds wouldn’t move around. It wasn’t entirely rudimentary. Kimaio had added padded back supports and arm rests. Kawika climbed up to Kimaio’s throne and sat. He wasn’t waiting for Kimaio—he figured Kimaio wasn’t coming—but for the sunset. He wanted to see more of what Kimaio had seen, feel more of what Kimaio had felt when he was feeling like God.

  After sunset, incomparable in its grandeur and celestial scale, Kawika felt he’d gotten what he came for. He walked to his car and drove down to Puakō. He embraced his father and Ku‘ulei, compared healed wounds with his cousin, and spent the evening quietly with two p
eople he loved.

  In the morning he knew there’d be no point in returning to Kimaio’s house. Instead, he drove down the highway to the turnoff for Waikoloa Village. A short distance up the slope he found the roadside graffiti meant just for him. He’d guessed it might be there.

  The bleached coral letters stood out against the black lava rock. “KW: KFR.” Kawika could guess what “KFR” meant: Ka‘ū Forest Reserve. He sighed and dialed the station. Tanaka’s assistant took the call.

  “Hi,” Kawika said. “Do me a favor, would you? Go into my office and pick up this call there.” He wasn’t sure this was necessary but figured it couldn’t hurt. He’d finally understood how to communicate with the graffiti artist who specialized in bleached coral on black lava. Almost nothing about the case, it seemed, could possibly be explained if Kimaio hadn’t been listening in on him and others; almost everything could be explained if Kimaio had been. Kimaio’s buddy Joe Crane had evidently done a lot more than just get Jimmy Jack a nice phone number and run some wiretaps for the U.S. Attorney back on the mainland.

  “Sure, I’ll switch this to your office, but why?”

  “I’ll explain later.”

  In a few moments, Tanaka’s assistant picked up again. “I’m in your office now,” she said.

  “Thanks. I just wanted to say, I’ve got to go to Ka‘ū.” He pronounced it the Hawaiian way, kah-oo.

  “Now? You’re not coming here?”

  “I’ll get there. But I’ll go to Ka‘ū first. That’s K-A-U.”

  “I know the spelling, mystery man. See you later.”

  Kawika checked his watch. It was a long way to Ka‘ū, and he’d have to drive fast. Tanaka expected him in Hilo for the press conference, and he could not afford to arrive late. Everything depended on getting to Tanaka first.

  72

  The Ka‘ū Forest Reserve

  The Ka‘ū Forest Reserve is huge. To say, “Meet me in the Ka‘ū Forest Reserve” is like saying “Meet me on the Big Island” unless a specific location is understood. Kawika understood. The location had to be the skinny young koa tree where, not long ago, he’d found unconscious and handcuffed that druggie killer he’d been pursuing, the one Tanaka had used to illustrate that in police work, the fact that something’s true is more important than why it’s true. “KW: KFR” could have no other meaning for Kawika—a thought that chilled him. In Father Brown’s lexicon, Kimaio had been the Invisible Man, Kawika an observed man. For how long?

  He drove fast, hiked fast, and reached the tree quickly. Soon, Kimaio stepped out of the shadows, moving silently over ground thick with twigs and fragrant leaves. Kawika realized Jimmy Jack must have taught him that trick, although Kimaio looked so reed thin he might have been weightless. He pointed a handgun at Kawika and dangled a pair of handcuffs.

  “Let’s put the cuffs in front,” Kimaio said. “More comfortable.”

  “Don’t need cuffs. I’m not armed.”

  “No. But you’re young and healthy.” Kimaio coughed. “And very dutiful.” He threw the cuffs at the base of the tree. Kawika hesitated. “I will shoot,” Kimaio warned. Kawika walked to the tree, sat with his arms and legs around the narrow trunk, and cuffed his own wrists.

  “Okay,” Kimaio said. “Who should start?”

  “Who has the most to say?” replied Kawika.

  “Fair point,” said Kimaio, nodding. “Then I’ll go first. I wonder what you must think of me.”

  “That matters to you?”

  “Oh yes. And to you, I might add.”

  Kawika took a deep breath. “I think you’re a good man,” he said. “A good man who made a bad mistake.”

  “Not as good a man as you, then?”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Kawika replied. “That’s how I think of myself too.”

  “Yeah, you’re cheating on two women. But you never killed anyone?”

  “My mistakes did.”

  “Nothing premeditated, though?”

  “No.”

  “You know why I did it, right?”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “But you wonder how I justified it?”

  “I have to warn you: I’m going to be a tough sell.”

  Kimaio rubbed his eyes, as if very tired. “Sorry about Rocco shooting you,” he said, changing direction. “I couldn’t control everything. Despite what you think, we didn’t tap every phone on the island.”

  “Or bug every room?”

  “Or bug every room.” Kimaio reached into a knapsack. “Water?” he asked. This time Kawika refused, though he was thirsty and even cuffed he could have drunk from the bottle Kimaio offered, the tree was so slender. “We didn’t have Rocco’s phone,” Kimaio continued. “We had Cushing’s by then, but he must’ve used another line the first time he called Rocco about you. Rocco was headed to Hilo when we picked up Cushing calling him again. We had to scramble to get there in time.”

  You didn’t get there in time for the first three shots, Kawika thought.

  “That why you didn’t save Melanie Munu?” Kawika asked. “Because you couldn’t get there in time?”

  “Yeah. Like I said, we didn’t have every phone on the island. We didn’t have Rocco, and we didn’t have Melanie. Rocco killed her before we could find him.”

  Kawika didn’t respond.

  “Okay,” said Kimaio. “You are a tough sell. But just to recap: we couldn’t control everything, all right?”

  If you can’t control everything, Kawika thought, maybe you shouldn’t play God.

  “Point number two: I didn’t set out to kill Ralph Fortunato. I set out to catch him. I devoted years to that. But I ran out of time. I didn’t have long to live. And Ralph didn’t either.”

  Kimaio must have noticed Kawika’s questioning look.

  “We tapped Ralph’s phones,” Kimaio explained. “We didn’t have Cushing’s at first, but he used Ralph’s office phone to call Rocco in California. That’s when Cushing hired him to kill Ralph.”

  “You could have reported it,” Kawika said. “You heard Cushing hire a hit man.”

  “Yes, could have saved Ralph from Rocco. But what an unhappy ending—me dead, Ralph alive and free.”

  “You could have charged Fortunato himself. You had evidence from the tap. Cushing told Rocco that Fortunato bragged about having hired him to kill Steve Kellogg, right?”

  “Yeah, but Cushing didn’t mention Steve Kellogg when he called Rocco,” Kimaio said. “Probably never knew his name. And Rocco didn’t kill Kellogg. He was in jail. Finally—”

  “Wait—go back. You could’ve had the FBI bust Rocco back in California, worked your way up from there.”

  “Let me finish. Finally, as I was about to say, the tap was illegal. We couldn’t use anything from it, directly or indirectly. Fruit of the poison tree and all that.”

  “Because your court order had expired?”

  “Only good for one year,” Kimaio said. “We tried for an extension. Couldn’t get it. This was nearly year four.”

  “And for the other taps and bugs and cell phone monitoring, you had no court order at all, did you?”

  Kimaio smiled. “Let’s put it this way,” he said. “We were like little boys who went up to the blackboard to spell the word ‘banana’ and didn’t know when to stop.”

  “You tapped and bugged everyone—spied on all of us—with no authority at all?”

  Kimaio shrugged. Kawika couldn’t stop himself from shaking his head. He wondered, If you weren’t going to save Fortunato, why didn’t you just let Rocco kill him? But he knew the answer, thanks to Edgar Allan Poe.

  “You told Fortunato who you were, before you killed him?”

  “He knew me from Fawn Ridge,” Kimaio said. “I didn’t tell him I was dying. I told him Cushing had hired Rocco to kill him. I said it was more fitting for me to do it.”

  “You didn’t act alone.”

  “I killed him myself. No one else. I wouldn’t have let anyone else.”

  “But you had help
.”

  “Not in killing him.”

  “Who’s ‘we’ then? The little boys who went up to the blackboard?”

  “You know who ‘we’ is.”

  “You, your phone company buddy Joe Crane, and I’m guessing Jason Hare? At least you three.”

  Kimaio waited, as if to see if Kawika would add more names. But Kawika switched to a different thought.

  “Joe Crane ran your wiretaps? Installed your bugs?”

  “We flew together in Nam. I joined the FBI. Joe went CIA.”

  “So later he worked for the phone company? First in Washington, then here?”

  “That’s how you do wiretaps. A guy works for the phone company.”

  “But not bugs?”

  “No, not bugs or other surveillance. That’s dark work.”

  “Dark work Joe learned in the CIA?”

  “Had to learn somewhere,” said Kimaio.

  “And Jason Hare? Another Vietnam buddy?”

  “Nope. Didn’t know him there. Recruited him here.”

  “Based on Agent Orange?”

  “Hardly. He was a grunt on the ground, a guy who got sprayed. Joe and I did the spraying, got exposed that way. Joe’s okay though.”

  “You flew together?”

  “Yeah, choppers. Most Agent Orange got dropped from planes. Not all.”

  “Choppers,” repeated Kawika. “You boosted the chopper and the van from the heliport, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah. We had Jason scope out their security. Folks see him walking up and down the road all the time. They don’t pay attention to him. He was doing recon.”

  “He wasn’t doing graffiti?”

  “Naw,” Kimaio gave a small laugh. “Did that myself. It was a long shot. Kinda fun, really. Might not have worked, of course. But we guessed where Ms. Quinn shopped, and so it did.”

  “What was Hare doing at the Mauna Lani the night I met him? Spying on me?”

  “No. He was looking for Fortunato’s other Teva. I grabbed Fortunato at the Beach Club after he left the Murphys. Took his sandals to keep him from running. Put ’em in my cargo pants, so we could leave ’em at Murphys’ later. I lost one somehow. Sent Jason to look for it the next few nights. In daylight he can’t walk around a South Kohala resort—you’ve seen what the guy looks like. Had him take a cat trap and a cat, in case he got spotted. He never found the other Teva. Just one more thing that went wrong.”