Fire and Vengeance

by Robert McCaw

  “Hualālai Hui sold the land for the school?” Koa asked.

  “Yeah,” Zeke responded. “The development plan called for public facilities, and in 2006, Hualālai Hui sold the KonaWili school parcel to the state at a premium price as the site for the future elementary school.”

  “Who owes Hualālai Hui?” Piki asked.

  “Damn good question,” Zeke responded. “State records identify two Big Island personalities—Howard Gommes and Cheryl Makela—as the owners, but most of these land deals have sub-huis with silent partners.”

  “What do the records show about the share of ownership?” Koa asked.

  “Gommes 60 percent and Makela 40 percent, but like I said, they’ve probably got silent partners.”

  “I’ve seen Gommes on TV. He’s all over the tube.” Piki’s eyes glowed.

  “Yeah,” Zeke responded, not sharing Piki’s enthusiasm. “He’s a big swinging dick with a local Hawai‘i-based Apprentice-type reality TV show. Made his money in shady real estate deals on the Big Island and Maui where he developed several large residential subdivisions and a half-dozen major hotel projects.”

  “And the other owner, this Cheryl person?” Basa asked.

  “Ahh,” Zeke sighed, “Cheryl Makela, the Teflon lady. She’s buddy-buddy with Mayor George Tanaka, who appointed her director of the county planning department before her retirement.”

  “Teflon lady?” Piki asked.

  “Yeah,” Zeke responded. “She’s rumored to have more conflicts than Hawai‘i has beaches, but nobody’s ever made anything stick.”

  “She approved the KonaWili development while serving as director of planning even though she owned a share of the development?” Basa asked with raised eyebrows.

  “Yes, indeed,” Zeke acknowledged.

  “More than a little conflict of interest there,” Piki added.

  “Government in Hawai‘i is rife with conflicts,” Zeke said with a disapproving shake of his head.

  Koa turned to Basa. “What did you find in the county files?”

  “Francine Na‘auao, the director of the Department of Education, approved the selection of the school site.”

  “I got a whole lot of stuff off the internet about her,” Piki interjected. “She’s been the DOE director for ages and ages. I mean like more than a decade. And she’s close to Governor Bobbie Māhoe.”

  “Then,” Basa resumed, “the DOE hired Arthur T. Witherspoon to be the architect and Boyle Construction to be the builder. The school cost nine point nine million dollars and took eleven months to complete.”

  Koa knew the Witherspoon name. One of the most sought-after architects in Hilo, he’d designed Hilo’s new government center and numerous other local public buildings. “So,” Koa summarized, “we’ve got the four key players in the KonaWili disaster: Gommes, Makela, Na‘auao, and Boyle—developer, planning director, DOE head, and general contractor.”

  Piki again spoke up. “Boyle may not be the only key player on the construction side. According to one press story, Boyle hired a guy named Tony Pwalú to do the excavation and grading for the project. I figured as excavator, he’d know about the volcanic vent.”

  “Nice catch,” Koa said. “He might be a good place to start. We could get some background before we move up to the central actors.” Koa always liked to start with lower-level people before working his way up to the big kahunas. “Piki, you got an address for this Pwalú guy?”

  “Sure do.”

  Zeke nodded his agreement. “I like starting with Pwalú. Then what?”

  “Witherspoon,” Koa responded. “As the architect, he must have visited the site both before and during construction. Then Makela and Gommes.”

  “What about Na‘auao?” Zeke asked.

  “She’s in Honolulu and outside my jurisdiction, so I’m going to need your help to get to her and other DOE people.”

  “I’ll start working on it,” Zeke responded. “We have a plan?”

  They all nodded in agreement, and the meeting broke up.

  With Tony Pwalú’s address in hand, Koa and Basa drove across the island and up the slope of Mauna Loa.

  “This KonaWili thing gives me stomach acid,” Basa said. “I mean the accident last year with those teenagers gettin’ scalded in a steam vent over in the national park was bad enough, but this. This was deliberate. Boyle put those poor kids in danger. Makes me worry if Samantha’s safe in school.” The KonaWili disaster enraged the police sergeant, and he’d come to Koa’s office begging for a major role in the investigation.

  “I don’t get it. What kind of sicko puts kids on top of a volcano?” Basa asked.

  “Not just one sicko,” Koa replied. “It wasn’t the work of a single person or even two. The KonaWili disaster was a group effort, a conspiracy.”

  “You mean some group of wackos sitting around a table, like Wall Street executives, planned this fiasco?”

  “Not necessarily. Doesn’t have to happen in one big meeting. Could have been a series of one-on-ones.”

  “Jesus,” Basa swore.

  “And why?” Koa added. “That’s the most important question. Why would a group of professionals put kids at risk?”

  Koa looked over at Basa, noticing a camera fastened to his uniform. “You wearing a body cam?”

  “Yeah. The department’s running a pilot program. It’s really just a souped-up GoPro. You know, those little action cams the sports guys wear.”

  “Sure, Nālani got me one for Christmas. I’ve been fooling around with it. Shot some on our walks through the national park. Took some neat videos of the steam vents around Halema‘uma‘u crater before Pele closed the park in May.”

  “Cool. I got one for my kids. They shot some funny stuff at the playground an’ around the house. Jason hams it up like a professional clown.”

  “How’s the body cam different from a GoPro?” Koa asked.

  “A bunch of ways, but the biggest are battery life and access. These VieVu things have a twelve-hour battery life, a hell of a lot more than a GoPro, and the wearer can’t access the pictures.”

  “So, no selfies?”

  Basa laughed. “Ugly cops don’t make great selfies.”

  “Speak for yourself.”

  They rounded a curve and approached a ramshackle farm at the end of a long, rutted lane. An old farmhouse with a dozen additions tacked on hadn’t seen a coat of paint in thirty years. A rusted bulldozer along with other construction equipment in various states of disrepair littered the property. “Looks like a graveyard for dozers.” Basa shook his head.

  When the two policemen climbed out of their vehicle, twenty children, most in dusty shorts and some still in diapers, came running to greet them. Koa spotted more faces peering from the doors and windows of the farmhouse, sheds, and other makeshift structures.

  Squatting on his haunches, Basa ruffled the hair of a couple of the young boys and let them touch the decorations on his uniform. Basa enjoyed a natural way with kids. His empathy underlined Basa’s outrage at the KonaWili disaster and his determination to help Koa track those responsible. After a minute, a young Micronesian girl, probably no more than four years old, perched on Basa’s knee with her arm around his neck. The scene reminded Koa of the way his Army buddies in Afghanistan treated village kids to chocolates, except in the war zone you worried about kids carrying explosives.

  The handsome, dark-skinned kids, many with curly black hair, belonged to a miniature Micronesian community. Under the Compact of Free Association between the United States and Micronesia, the U.S. secured continued military access to the Micronesian islands—where it once tested nuclear weapons. The peoples of those islands won unrestricted access to the U.S. and the full array of its educational, medical, and social services. As a result, thousands of Micronesians flocked to Hawai‘i. Unfortunately, the federal government picked up only a small portion of the cost of complying with the pact, straining Hawai‘i’s social service budget. Resentment and discrimination oppressed t
his new underclass. Like many immigrant groups, they hung together, a pattern reinforced by the powerful family ties traditionally binding not just blood relatives but all Micronesian islanders.

  The kids scattered when an old man, plainly an elder of the group, approached. Basa stood, and Koa extended his hand, identified himself, and asked for Tony Pwalú.

  “He much sick,” the old man responded, motioning them toward the farmhouse. Once inside the man led them down a hallway past several small bedrooms with multiple bunk beds and sleeping mats blanketing the floors. Koa didn’t have to resort to higher math to know more than a hundred people lived in this mountainside community.

  At the end of the hall, they emerged onto a decaying lānai overlooking a small farm pond where naked children swam. “Tony Pwalú,” their guide said, pointing to an emaciated man sitting in a rocking chair at the end of the veranda. Although Piki’s research put Pwalú in his fifties, this gaunt, withered skeleton looked more like a frail eighty. Some terrible disease, probably cancer, had ravaged his body.

  “Tony Pwalú?” Koa asked as he sat down on a stool facing Tony. The man nodded and turned to look at Koa. Tony’s bony arms stuck out of an ill-fitting tee shirt and a small crucifix on a steel chain hung around his turkey-like neck. He’d lost his hair, and his face bore a shrunken, hollowed-out look, but his black eyes shined sharp, under nonexistent eyebrows. Perhaps his illness hadn’t dulled his brain.

  Koa introduced himself and Basa before turning to the point of their visit. “You worked on the KonaWili school project?”

  The man nodded. “This terrible thing. Those poor children. It didn’t have to be that way,” Tony said in a hoarse, halting whisper.

  Koa’s mind raced at the words—“it didn’t have to be that way.” Tony knew something. Koa didn’t like tape-recording interviews. People frequently refused to talk with the machine running, and even if they did speak, they became guarded. But Tony didn’t have long to live, and Koa wanted to capture his words before he passed. He started to pull out his cell phone but then thought of Basa’s body cam. He looked inquiringly at Basa, who nodded. “Tell me about KonaWili.”

  “I never tell anyone,” Tony responded with an effort in a raspy voice.

  “You can tell me,” Koa replied.

  Tony stared at Koa for a long time, his coal-black eyes searching Koa’s face, before finally saying, “I keep secret for Hank.”

  “You mean Hank Boyle?”

  The man coughed and took a moment to recover. “Yes. Hank good to me. Much work Hank give me.”

  “Tell me about the secret.”

  “Pele’s secret.”

  Koa leaned forward to reinforce his connection with the frail man. “Tell me about Pele’s secret.”

  “Hank give me work on school. I dig hole, move rocks. Find much yellow powder. Bad smells.”

  Yellow powder meant sulfur, and in Hawai‘i, sulfur deposits meant volcanic activity, but Koa needed to be sure. He and Nālani had often visited the sulfur banks at Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park, so Koa knew exactly what to ask. “Bad smells?”

  “Yeah, like rotten eggs and matches … burned matches.”

  Rotten eggs smells meant hydrogen sulfide and a burned match smell meant sulfur dioxide. “And the ground—rocks or clay?”

  “Some rocks, but much red and brown clay.”

  Koa had the clincher. Pele’s hydrogen sulfide fumes ultimately became sulfuric acid breaking down lava rocks into clay of distinctive red and brown iron oxides. Sulfur, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, sulfuric acid, and iron oxides—all Pele’s trademarks. Tony Pwalú had found a volcanic vent while preparing the KonaWili site. Now Koa needed to know why the discovery hadn’t stopped the project. It was one thing to build an elementary school atop a fault on a volcano dormant for two hundred years. It was quite another to build the same school over a known volcanic vent—one actively producing sulfur gases.

  “What did you do?”

  “I tell Hank.”

  Koa leaned even closer to Tony, and their eyes locked. “And what did Hank Boyle do?”

  Tony hesitated, and Koa thought he might clam up, but Tony wanted to tell his story before he died. “Hank showed the lady.”

  What woman had visited the construction site? Someone from the DOE? “What lady?” Koa demanded.

  Tony shook his head and spoke so softly Koa could barely hear. “Some … lady from Honolulu.”

  Koa wondered if this dying man knew more. “Then what happened?”

  Tony raised a bony hand to his neck to finger his crucifix. “Hank tell me. I keep secret, I get big bonus.”

  “And you got a bonus?”

  Tony spread his emaciated arms. “Bonus buy this farm.”

  “And what did Hank Boyle do?”

  “He build school.”

  Stark as a super moon in a cloudless night sky, Tony had discovered the vent, and Boyle had charged ahead oblivious to the risk. Tony Pwalú must have seen the condemnation in Koa’s eyes. He reacted by looking down at his emaciated hands now folded in his lap and said almost inaudibly, “I sinned. I sorry.”

  “Not as sorry as the parents of those children,” Koa said.

  When Tony looked up, the man fought back tears. “It was Pele’s revenge.”

  “Pele’s revenge?” Koa asked.

  “My … my grandson, he died at KonaWili.” The old man choked and barely got the words out.

  Maybe, Koa thought, there were worse things than dying of cancer.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  AN URGENT CALL blasted over the police radio as Koa and Basa drove along the rain-slick Māmalahoa Highway past the KonaWili property toward Hilo. An unruly crowd of angry parents demonstrating near the KonaWili school had busted through the police cordon. Patrolmen, desperate for reinforcements, fought to regain control.

  Crowd control wasn’t Koa’s job, but the school remained a crime scene. The building had killed, and Koa didn’t want it to claim any more lives. He spun the car around, flipped on the emergency lights, and headed for the crippled structure.

  Basa grabbed the radio to marshal more police units, only to find most units in Kona, more than seven miles away in heavy traffic. “It’s up to us,” Basa warned Koa. “We’re seven to ten minutes ahead of most other units.” Koa pushed the accelerator to the floor.

  At the school, Koa’s heart rate spiked. Conditions had worsened since the first night. Although the rain had slackened, the steel roof at the south end of the building had curled upward like the lid of an open sardine can, and chunks of the front wall lay scattered. An eerie rumbling like a runaway freight train filled the air. Thick yellowish gas billowed into the sky. Hundreds of angry demonstrators already through the thin police cordon moved up the hill toward the crippled building. Half a dozen policemen, hopelessly outnumbered, struggled to restrain the demonstrators, while desperate parents, crazed by the loss of their children, goaded the crowd forward. TV cameras recorded the chaos.

  Pele’s unearthly rumblings failed to drown out the chanting of the crowd—“We want answers … we want answers.” The demonstrators fell silent for several beats before continuing: “The DOE killed our keiki … The DOE killed our keiki.” Then the chants repeated.

  Koa and Basa raced up behind the crowd. Signaling to another police car to follow, Koa cut off the road, bumped over the curb, and swung across rough ground around the crowd before heading straight into the gap between the demonstrators and the smoking hulk of the broken school. He stopped—emergency lights flashing—and the second cop car did likewise, creating a barricade between the crowd and the school.

  Koa, bullhorn in hand, and Basa faced the crowd, their backs to their vehicles and the school beyond. The patrolmen from the other car joined them. Waiting for the next pause in the chanting, Koa triggered the bullhorn—“You’ll get answers. You’ll get answers, but everyone needs to move back. Move back. It’s dangerous.” The crowd quieted and stopped moving. Koa repeated his message, and the demonstra
tors retreated a couple of steps. Then someone yelled, “We want answers now!” and the crowd surged forward as it took up the new chant, “We want answers now! We want answers now!”

  “Shotguns?” a cop from the other car asked.

  “No!” Basa yelled. “Just stand tall.” Koa continued to face the crowd with the bullhorn. “This is no way to mourn your children,” his amplified voice barreled over the crowd. “There’s a volcanic vent under this building. It’s dangerous! Move back! Move back! We don’t want anyone else to get hurt.”

  A woman in the front row of the crowd stared at him with tears streaming down her face. Koa recognized Mica Osbourne’s face from TV as the mother of the missing child. “Please, Mrs. Osbourne,” he boomed over the hailer, returning her stare and hoping his use of her name would reinforce his message. “Please move back. Don’t let anyone else get hurt.”

  He locked eyes with the grieving mother for a long moment before repeating his plea. “This is no way to honor your children.” The stalemate lasted several more seconds before Mica Osbourne turned, pushing back through the crowd. Slowly, others began to follow. Koa breathed a sigh of relief.

  At that moment, an explosion ripped through the shell of the school. A wave of debris hit the vehicles behind him and showered those in the closest row of demonstrators. One man fell to the ground. Screams shot through the crowd as the group turned en masse and ran. The vehicles shielded the cops from serious injury. They had saved the demonstrators.

  Koa’s cell phone rang while he and Basa drove back to Hilo. He looked at the screen and recognized the number, county prosecutor Zeke Brown. He answered, and Zeke spoke slowly and softly, a rarity for the prosecutor. “Koa, your brother, Ikaika, collapsed in the Hilo lockup.”

  “Is he okay?”

  “He’s alive but unconscious. The medics put him on an air ambulance to Queen’s Medical in Honolulu.”