Death of a Messenger

by Robert McCaw

  “Maybe Keneke had computer files about Gunter’s activities,” Basa suggested.

  “Maybe, Sergeant Basa, but the logic of his doing that escapes me.”

  “What else doesn’t fit?” the chief asked.

  “The package Keneke mailed to Soo Lin on January 19. She says it contained astronomy files. Why would Keneke hide astronomy files from Gunter?”

  Chief Lannua sighed heavily, nettled that his suspect wasn’t holding up. “You got good instincts, Koa. You’ve spent time with Gunter Nelson. You interviewed him and toured the summit with him. What’s your gut tell you?”

  Koa hesitated. Rational analysis led inexorably to Gunter Nelson as the probable killer, but the chief had asked a different question, a question of gut instinct. “No, on a gut level I can’t see Gunter Nelson killing Keneke Nakano and stuffing his body in that lava tube.”

  The phone rang, and Chief Lannua answered before handing the receiver to Basa. “It’s one of your patrolmen. Says he’s sorry to interrupt, but he’s got something on the Nakano case.”

  Basa took the receiver. “This better be good, Maru. You interrupted me in the chief’s office.” As Basa listened, a surprised look spread across his face. “You’re sure?” Another pause. “You show him the pictures?” More silence. “None of them? Is this Kessler guy sure?” Another pause. “Okay, ask him to come down to headquarters. What? He’s got a rush job and can’t come until this afternoon? I don’t care. Get him in here now, and tell him to bring his work records, so we can pin the date down.”

  Basa put down the phone and turned back to the group. “Maru turned up a mechanic out at the airport. Guy named Kessler worked late one night about two weeks ago and nearly collided with Nakano’s Trooper at five, maybe five thirty, as Kessler was leaving the airport. Maru’s bringing him in for an interview.”

  “That’s interesting,” Koa responded. Why, he thought, would Nakano call for an airline reservation if he was already at the airport?

  “What about Skeeter or Kling?” They all turned toward a grinning Detective Piki.

  “It couldn’t be Koa’s buddy Kling.” Sergeant Basa dismissed the idea with a wave.

  “Why not?” Piki retorted.

  “That little dick is too weak, too short, too creepy, and too much of a fuck-up to have killed Nakano and carried his body out to the PTA.”

  “What about this Slade fellow?” the chief asked. “I don’t know him at all.”

  “He’s an alcoholic helicopter pilot, and runs a tourist air sightseeing business,” Koa said. “Someone, probably an anti-helicopter crazy, vandalized his equipment. He hired Kling to find the culprits. Kling paid him to fly Gunter’s seismic pod over the Pōhakuloa Training Area.”

  “So he’s a possible, Koa?”

  “Possible, but unlikely,” Koa responded. “We’d need a lot more than what we’ve got on him.”

  “What about the prince? He would have killed anyone who discovered the Pōhakuloa workshop,” Piki suggested.

  “That’s true,” Koa responded, “except Nakano’s grandfather asked him to look after the kid.” He’d already thought this thread through. “If it is the prince—and as a Hawaiian, I’d hate to believe one of our icons had fallen so far—I don’t think the workshop provides the motive.”

  “Explain,” the chief demanded with a quizzical expression on his face.

  “The prince and ‘Ōpua are like kaikua‘ana and kaikaina, brothers, and the prince must be involved in ‘Ōpua’s Kaho‘olawe activities. I mean, the prince tried to intervene with the Maui authorities to get ‘Ōpua a pass. It’s probably all sovereignty driven, but ‘Ōpua hung with Garvie, and Garvie acted as a fence. It’s got a bad smell.”

  He still hadn’t decided whether this Garvie angle had all been ‘Ōpua’s doing and the prince knew nothing about it. He just couldn’t see the prince condoning the sale of antiquities from his heritage. Then again, he found it surprising that ‘Ōpua would do it either. “If ‘Ōpua and the prince were really into something rotten on Kaho‘olawe and Nakano discovered it, then we’d have a motive.” Koa adjusted his back against the wall and stretched his neck, then added, “I wish I knew whether he lied to me about the spear of pueo.”

  “What lie?” the chief asked sharply.

  “The prince let it slip that Nakano died by the spear of pueo, a fact we never released publicly. He claimed the mayor told him. I suppose it’s possible, but if not, he moves to the top of my suspect list.”

  Koa had already brainstormed through all the suspects they had discussed without reaching a resolution. He had an uneasy feeling that he had missed something, but as hard as he tried, he couldn’t pinpoint the source of his anxiety.

  “I can find out for you,” the chief responded. After making the offer, he looked hard at Koa. “Something’s bothering you, Koa. What is it?”

  “Chief, I’m worried about Soo Lin. Everything that night points to the observatory. She’s been up there for four days. We gave her an emergency beeper and she calls twice every day, but I don’t like it. I’ll feel better when she’s off that mountain.”

  “Why don’t you bring her down?”

  “We don’t have any basis.”

  “She won’t listen to you?”

  “No. I’ve tried, but she’s determined to find out why Nakano sent her the astronomy data. She thinks it’s the key to his murder, and there’s a good chance she’s right. But that just makes me more anxious to get her off that damn mountain.”

  “So what’s the next step?” the chief asked.

  “I’m going to talk to the Kessler guy from the airport,” Koa responded.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  AS KOA WELL knew, there came a moment in most cases when the pieces snapped together. That afternoon produced such a moment. The process began with a book. When Koa first removed it from the interoffice envelope, it mystified him. Why would anyone send him a book entitled Scientific Fraud: Past and Present? Then he saw the note and remembered Keneke’s answering machine messages from Basically Books. One of Basa’s patrolmen had collected the book from the store.

  Although Koa enjoyed—was that the right word?—a familiarity with common fraud and thievery, he knew little about scientific hoaxes. Yet, on the book’s dust jacket, scientific crimes paraded before him: The Loch Ness monster, the Piltdown Man, cold fusion, medical fraud. The list of scientific crimes and misdemeanors seemed endless.

  Koa reflected on the book. What an odd choice of reading material. Why would Keneke Nakano have ordered a book on scientific frauds? For general information or curiosity, perhaps? Surely, Keneke wasn’t planning a scientific fraud. Could he have discovered a scientific fraud? Could there be a connection between the book and the data he’d sent Soo Lin? Now, there was an intriguing idea.

  Koa took the book into Chief Lannua’s office. “Keneke ordered this book just before he died. Turns out to be a book on scientific fraud.” He handed the book to the chief, who thumbed disinterestedly through the volume.

  “What do you make of it, Koa?”

  “It’s probably nothing, but it got me thinking whether Keneke might have uncovered some kind of scientific fraud.”

  Chief Lannua appeared startled by the suggestion. “Isn’t that quite a leap from the fact that he ordered this book?”

  “You think I’m grasping at straws?”

  “I think you’d better put your thinking cap back on.” Koa dropped the book back on his desk and went down the hall to interview Herb Kessler, the witness from the airport. Dressed in grease-smeared coveralls, Kessler wore his hair in a crew cut, strangely at odds with his short goatee. He looked to be in his forties. “Thank you for coming in, Mr. Kessler. I understand you nearly collided with a black Isuzu Trooper a couple of weeks back?”

  “I don’t know why you blokes hauled me down here. I ain’t done nothing wrong. I stopped in time. There weren’t no accident.”

  “I understand. We aren’t investigating an accident. Tell me what h
appened.”

  “Like I told the officer who came by the hangar, I worked late on a tourist helo. The control linkage was all fucked up. I wrapped up about five a.m. an’ was drivin’ out of the employee lot. Suddenly, this here black Trooper wheels around the corner. Drivin’ fast, real fast. I slam on the brakes and skid some. But there weren’t no collision.”

  “The Trooper was going into the airport?”

  The mechanic’s face took on a look he might have used with a stupid child. “Of course, he was comin’ in. You think I’d near collide with a car leaving the airport?”

  Koa ignored the sarcasm. “Can you describe the driver?”

  “It happened real quick an’ we didn’t git out, so I was lookin’ through the windshield. The dude had black hair. I’m sure about that. Age is tough, maybe fifty, but I could be ten years out.”

  Koa handed him a sheaf of photos. Kessler went through them one by one, rejecting all except one—a picture of Charlie Harper. “This one looks sorta like the driver. Might even be the guy, ’cept I kinda think the driver was older an’ his face weren’t so … so fat, and his jaw was kinda square.” He handed Koa the photograph.

  Koa shuffled through the photos, putting Nakano’s picture in front of Kessler. “It wasn’t this man?”

  “No, the driver weren’t no Hawaiian. No way.”

  The mysterious airport link was getting even murkier. “Can you fix the date of this near collision?”

  “Yeah, I got my work records here. Haven’t looked at ’em.” Koa noticed the grime under Kessler’s nails as he shuffled through a package of time sheets. “Yeah, here it is. January 20, I was working on the control linkage—”

  The date surprised Koa. Keneke’s calls to Alice and the airline reservation desk had occurred between seven thirty and seven forty-five on January 21. Those calls had been made from Keneke’s cell phone, and his credit card had been used for the airline fare. On that basis, Koa had assumed that he was alive on the morning of January 21, and had died that night. But if someone else had parked his truck at the airport at around five o’clock in the morning on January 21, that changed the picture. “Did you say January 20—Tuesday, January 20?”

  “Yeah, the time sheet’s for that day, but the near collision happened early the following morning on January 21.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Hell, yes. These work records are gospel. Even gave ’em to the FAA once. They’ve gotta be right.”

  Koa couldn’t have explained the exact source of his inspiration. He’d been ruminating on Keneke’s astronomy data, and the book had introduced the idea of scientific fraud. Then Kessler’s certainty about the timing of his near collision had cast doubt on the timing of Keneke’s death. In any event, it suddenly occurred to Koa that Masters might be a viable suspect after all.

  “Stay right here, Mr. Kessler. There’s a picture I want to show you. I’ll have to get it from my office.” Thurston Masters had been in L.A. the night of January 21, so his picture wasn’t included in the original group.

  “Yes, sir. I’ll be sitting right here.”

  Koa hurried down the hall only to find Sergeant Basa in his office.

  “Koa, I got something on Nakano. You better hear—”

  Koa cut him off. “The near accident between Nakano’s Trooper and the airport mechanic occurred early on the morning of January 21, and someone with black hair, but not Hawaiian, was driving Nakano’s truck. Nakano might have been abducted or dead before five on January 21.”

  “That fits … that fits like an outrigger on a canoe,” Basa exclaimed. “You remember, Koa, you told me to get on to Graham Gravel, the cook up at the observatory cafeteria—the guy Gunter calls Lucrezia? Well, he got back from vacation this morning, and guess what? The cafeteria served lamb—big chunks of lamb—for dinner on January 20. If that Army doctor is right about lamb in his stomach, then Keneke died that night shortly after he left the Alice I Observatory around 1:00 a.m.”

  “Christ, that nails it,” Koa said emphatically. “Nakano died in the early hours of Wednesday morning—before the Wednesday morning calls to the Alice headquarters and United Airlines. Those calls were faked to make us think Keneke was still alive on Wednesday morning.”

  Koa stopped and held up both hands, demanding silence. The case had changed fundamentally. He felt like the rug had just been pulled from beneath his feet. He had seen it happen in other tough cases, like his investigation of a murder by a councilman’s son, and knew what was required. He had to step back, reexamine every piece, rethink every step.

  Keneke had died between 1:12 a.m., when he left the observatory, and 5:00 a.m. on January 21, when the killer had driven Keneke’s SUV into the Hilo airport parking lot—a span of three hours and forty-eight minutes. He mentally replayed the key sequence as outlined by Dr. Cater: choke hold … spear of pueo … movement of body … mutilation. He then focused on the timing: perhaps fifteen minutes to kill and load the body, an hour from Mauna Kea to the remote Pōhakuloa jeep trail; perhaps another hour to carry the body to the lava tube and perform the mutilation; perhaps fifteen minutes to dispose of the clothing; and another hour from Pōhakuloa to the airport parking lot—a total of three and a half hours. Close enough.

  Koa was now certain that Keneke had died on the mountain. He hadn’t run from the observatory. He’d stepped out on a break as he had in the wee hours of every night he’d spent there. He hadn’t taken his computer because he expected to go back inside. But the killer had been waiting for him. The pieces fit like the workings of a well-oiled clock.

  Koa explained his thinking to Basa, ending with his conclusion. “The killer is an Alice insider—someone intimately familiar with Keneke’s routines.”

  By the time Koa finished, Basa was nodding in agreement. “And the call to Benson kept the Alice staff from asking questions about Nakano’s disappearance,” Basa added. “This killer’s a devilishly clever bastard.”

  Basa’s mention of the Benson call reminded Koa of the telephone call analysis that Piki had performed. That work, too, would have to be updated in light of the revised time of death. He sent Basa to get Detective Piki, along with the telephone records they’d assembled.

  While he waited for Basa and Piki to return, Koa’s mind raced. He was sure the killer had been waiting outside Alice for Keneke. In that case, the evidence pointed to either Gunter Nelson or Charlie Harper. Neither had been working at the observatory that night, and neither had a good alibi. He now added Masters to the list, too, although his review of the observatory tapes showed that Masters hadn’t left the Alice II facility. And of the three, only Harper and Masters had black hair. But one discordant fact still nagged at Koa—Keneke had left his computer inside the observatory and it had disappeared. Did the killer have an accomplice?

  Koa’s eyes fell on the book that Keneke had specially ordered. The back of the dust jacket listed more than twenty scientific frauds, and near the bottom of the list, the words “Star Wars Program” jumped out. He picked up the book and found the relevant section. The first paragraph of the Star Wars chapter summarized the fraud:

  A private defense contractor named Thurston Masters, sometimes called Mr. Star Wars, helped the defense department fool the Russians into believing the United States could track and destroy incoming missile warheads. He did so by developing computer software to fake the interceptor test results. Congress investigated and uncovered the fraud, but the Justice Department never pursued the case. It couldn’t. Masters and his friends had destroyed all the test records. It’s been an open secret in Washington for years, but it fooled the Russians.

  Basa returned with Piki in tow. Basa had barely cleared the door before he announced, “It’s got to be either Gunter Nelson or Charlie Harper. They weren’t working that night and their alibis aren’t worth shit.”

  Piki was more emphatic. “It’s Charlie Harper. It’s got to be. He made two cell phone calls between midnight and five a.m. He sure wasn’t sleeping.”


  Koa surprised them with his question. “What about Masters?”

  Piki looked confused. “I haven’t even looked at his cell records. He has a rock-solid alibi. The security cameras show he spent Tuesday night, January 20, at Alice II, entering at dusk and leaving at dawn. It can’t be Masters.”

  Basa caught on more quickly. “Koa, are you suggesting that Masters tampered with the security video?”

  Koa held up Keneke’s book. “Masters was ‘Mr. Star Wars.’ He helped fake the air force interceptor missile tests. He fooled the Russians. Maybe he also fooled us.”

  “What motive would he have?” The question came from Sergeant Basa.

  “Just suppose”—Koa leaned forward, elbows on his desk—“just suppose that there’s some fraud involved in his big discovery. Some fraud that Keneke uncovered or maybe was close to uncovering. That would explain Keneke’s need to protect his astronomy data by sending it to Soo Lin. Maybe he didn’t send an explanation to Soo Lin because he hadn’t completed the work or maybe he didn’t have time. It would also explain the removal of Keneke’s computer—”

  “But,” Sergeant Basa objected, “those famous scientists all verified his discovery … six of the top guns in their fields … even a master at deception would have trouble fooling a bunch of pros.”

  Koa smiled grimly. “And who picked the verification team?”

  While Koa outlined his theory, Piki had been frantically sorting through telephone records. “Masters only made one telephone call that night—at 5:05 a.m. from his cell phone.”

  Precisely, Koa thought, the time when the killer was at the Hilo airport. “Give me the number,” Koa demanded as he picked up his cell phone and dialed as Piki read off the number.

  The phone rang four times before a woman answered in a honeyed voice, “Aloha, this is Leilani Lupe.”

  Although he had heard it only once before, Koa instantly recognized the name and pictured the beautiful young Hawaiian woman who had spooked Christina Masters at the astronomy party. Gunter had made some crack about her in German and identified her as Masters’ mistress. He hesitated, then disconnected.