by Robert McCaw
Basa from the east side and two patrolmen from the west emerged from opposite doors and trained their guns on Gommes. “Police. Drop your weapon,” Basa shouted.
“One step forward and the bitch dies,” Gommes shouted back.
“It’s over, Gommes,” Koa said calmly using the building’s public address system. “We have it all on tape, the murders, the bribes, and KonaWili.”
Unruffled, Gommes scanned the room. “I’m not going down.”
“There’s nowhere to go, Gommes.”
“My plane’s at the airport, fueled, and ready to go far beyond your reach.”
Bobbie Māhoe stepped toward Gommes. “I’m going with you.”
“Fuck you,” Gommes snarled. “I’ve been carrying your sorry ass for forty years.” Still holding the Beretta to Sally’s head, he released her neck to reach for his cell. He had the number preprogrammed and spoke sharply into the phone. “Ten minutes. End of the runway ready to go.”
“You bastard!” Māhoe screamed and lunged for Gommes.
Dropping his phone and grabbing Sally’s arm, Gommes brought the gun around and pumped two slugs into the governor, dropping him to the floor. Na‘auao screamed and ran to the governor’s side. “Bastard!” she wailed.
Koa had underestimated Gommes. The man was an animal, and Koa had no way to take him down in such confined space without risking Sally’s life. Speaking quietly into his headset for Basa to hear, he said, “Don’t try anything. We won’t risk harm to Sally.”
Gommes had double-crossed all his co-conspirators and planned an escape leaving them behind. And, Koa thought, it might even work. With his own private jet, he could make it to South America, refuel, and disappear to any number of countries lacking extradition treaties with the U.S.
Koa tried to picture Gommes’s next moves—forcing Sally out the front door into a car, racing across town, crashing a barrier into the airport, driving to the end of the runway, mounting the stairs to his private jet, and disappearing.
He turned to Zeke. “Take charge here. Delay them as long as possible. And call the airport. Have them block the runway.” Then Koa stepped to the window, slid it up, and climbed onto the fire escape. At the bottom of the ladder, he grabbed two patrolmen—Kealoha and Horita—from the unmarked van. Together, they ran for the unmarked SUV. Moments later, they were speeding toward the airport, trying to stay one step ahead of Gommes.
When Koa reached the airport, Gommes’s plane sat on the taxiway just off the end of the active runway, its engines running. The onboard stairs extended to the ground awaiting Gommes’s arrival. Koa scanned the runway but saw no emergency vehicles in position to stop an aircraft from taking off. For some reason, Zeke’s efforts to get the runway blocked had failed, and Koa wondered if Gommes had an accomplice in the airport administration. If so, his plan wasn’t going to work.
Koa flashed his badge at the gate and sped toward Gommes’s plane, approaching from its rear, where the pilot couldn’t see the car. Stopping a dozen feet behind the aircraft, he and Kealoha jumped out and took off running under the jet headed for the stairs. Officer Horita backed the car away before turning and retreating out of sight. Koa and Kealoha scrambled up, boarding the aircraft. Inside, the cockpit door stood open, and the two officers had their weapons pointed at the pilot and copilot before they could react. Koa closed the cockpit door. Kealoha guarded the pilots while Koa watched through the cockpit peephole.
Less than five minutes later, Gommes’s Mercedes raced to a stop at the foot of the airstairs. Gommes got out and directed Sally up the steps at gunpoint. Through the peephole, Koa saw them enter. Gommes pushed Sally into one of the seats before moving to retract the stairs and close the cabin door. Pressing a button on a communications panel, he ordered the pilot to “get us the hell out of here.” He then took the seat across the aisle from Sally. Koa had hoped Gommes would put his Beretta away, but instead, he left it nestled in his lap. The plane began to taxi. Unbeknownst to Gommes, Kealoha directed the pilot to taxi toward the terminal and not toward the runway.
Gommes grinned. “Home free.”
At that moment, Koa stepped through the cockpit door, his Glock aimed at Gommes’s chest. “You’re under arrest for the murders of Boyle, Witherspoon, and Governor Māhoe.”
Shock registered across Gommes’s face, but not for long. “Put the gun down, Detective. I’ll make you a rich man.”
Unmoved, Koa held the gun on Gommes. “Raise your hands, Gommes.”
“Ten million. You can retire.”
Gommes’s hands remained in his lap, close to his Beretta. Koa guessed Gommes would try to fight his way out. So be it. Koa would shoot him the moment his fingers touched the gun.
“Why, Gommes? Why build the school on top of the fumarole? Why endanger schoolkids?” Koa asked, his Glock still leveled at the developer.
“Had to plug the fuckin’ vent,” Gommes answered. “It kept those Paradise assholes from developing the property, and I wasn’t gonna let it ruin one sweet project. Covering the vent needed a big structure, and a school fit the bill. That’s why I sited the school over the vent. Besides, that way, I got the DOE to pay for covering the fumarole. Saved me a few million bucks. Never thought the fuckin’ thing would actually erupt.”
Gommes’s hand inched toward his gun. “Don’t do it, Gommes,” Koa said, his voice hard as steel.
Gommes pulled his hand away from the Beretta, and Koa thought he might have a chance to take him alive. Without warning, Gommes let out a shrill whistle. Just as the sound reached Koa’s ears, he caught sight of a giant black blur racing up the aisle toward him. Virgil, Gommes’s remaining Rottweiler, launched into the air. The dog’s bright yellow eyes, open mouth, and razor-sharp teeth hurtled toward Koa. In that instant, Gommes dropped out of sight.
Koa fired twice in rapid succession at the airborne dog and dove for cover on the opposite side of the plane, but he wasn’t fast enough. Virgil’s teeth caught his shoulder, ripping through his shirt and tearing into his flesh. The impact spun him backward, knocking the Glock from his hand. His head slammed into something hard. His vision blurred.
Half-dazed, Koa heard Gommes coming in for the kill following the Rottweiler’s attack. Koa searched frantically for his gun, but it wasn’t within reach. Looking up, he saw Gommes standing over him … then the business end of Gommes’s Beretta. Gommes had a triumphant expression on his face.
“You killed my goddamn dog, you son of a bitch, and now it’s your turn.”
Koa thought of his brother. He’d rescued Ikaika from prison and given him a new lease on life, but now they would never be together again. He tried to think of something to deter Gommes, but he could formulate no words.
The sounds of the gunshots—one, two, three—amplified in the confined space of the aircraft blasted Koa’s ears, but the terrible pain he expected never came. Instead, confusion clouded Gommes’s face. His grip loosened, and the Beretta hit the floor. Moments later, Gommes crumpled and fell backward.
Koa used a seat to pull himself up off the floor. Sally stood in the aisle with a small automatic in her outstretched hand. “I’ve been waiting a long time to kill that bastard.”
Locking eyes with the woman who’d executed Gommes and saved his life, Koa said, “Arthur would be proud.”
EPILOGUE
THEY WAITED AT Hilo airport while the jet from Honolulu taxied to the gate. Koa and Nālani, Māpuana and Alana. Even Koa’s middle brother, Mauloa, came. A spirit of excitement electrified the air like Koa had rarely ever felt. Ikaika was coming home a free man.
It seemed to take forever for the attendants to get the jet bridge in place and for the passengers to exit the plane. Māpuana, as nervous and as excited as a young girl on her wedding day, waited for her youngest son. Finally, Ikaika emerged from the jetway into the terminal. Bandages covered his head, and he looked tired, but he wore a childish grin. He embraced Māpuana, shook hands with brother Mauloa, and even bestowed a kiss on Nālani’s cheek.
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Then he turned to Koa, grabbing him in a big bear hug. “Mahalo, big brother. You know when you told me about your crazy-ass plan back in the hospital, I figured you were smoking dope, but you pulled it off. I should’ve known you would come through for me.” His words brought tears to Koa’s eyes.
The following day, Koa took his youngest brother to lunch at the Hilo Burger Joint. Robyn served them double orders of burgers, fries, and shakes, which Ikaika devoured like a starving man. Afterward, they walked beneath the banyan trees through Lili‘uokalani Gardens. “You know,” Ikaika began, “I can never repay you for the money and time you’ve wasted on me over the years.”
“You’re alive and free … and Māmā’s happier than she’s been in a decade … that’s all I need, little brother.” Koa paused. “But you need a job and a place to live.”
“Who’s going to give an ex-con like me a job?”
Koa put his hand on his brother’s shoulder and stared hard until Ikaika met his gaze. “That’s your old way of thinking. Mai no‘ono‘o pēlā. Leave it behind. In the past, you were sick. Today you’re healthy and you’ve got to act like it.”
“So, what do I do?” Ikaika asked.
“My fisherman buddy, Hook Hao, is willing to rehire you as a deckhand, and you can live on his boat.”
“Really?”
Koa saw a spark of hope in Ikaika’s eyes. “Really. And the folks up at Hale ‘Ōhi‘a, near Volcano, are looking for a gardener. It’s a start.”
“‘Ae. It’s a good start,” Ikaika responded.
When they parted, Ikaika stood a bit taller with his shoulders squared.
A week later the whole family gathered again, this time in Koa’s Volcano cottage around a flat-screen television. Walker McKenzie introduced the evening’s “From All Angles” segment: “Tonight we’re going to bring you the life story of a most remarkable police detective, a story culminating with the inside scoop on an extraordinary forty-year-old murder—a crime ultimately responsible for the deaths of fourteen grade-school children and four teachers in the infamous KonaWili school disaster.”
Koa and Ikaika had given Walker McKenzie the whole story from beginning to end, and McKenzie had turned it into a blockbuster. Koa Kāne was about to become a police legend in his own time. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that, but he and Ikaika had paid their debt to Walker McKenzie.
After the news cycle ran its course, and the press moved on to the next story, Koa returned to the tiny cemetery behind the little white church on the hill in Hāwī. He stood over Hazzard’s grave paying his respects to the man he’d killed. He would never escape the guilt he felt for what he had done, but in the tangled world of human behavior, his guilt had once again driven him to find justice, not just for the keiki and kumu at KonaWili, but for his brother, mother, family, and kūpuna, his ancestors.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
There is no KonaWili school on Hualālai Mountain. There was no eruption of a volcanic vent under an elementary school, and thus no children died in such an eruption. The disaster portrayed in this book is a product of the author’s imagination.
Of course, that is not to say that it couldn’t happen. Although Hualālai Mountain has not erupted in 200 years, it remains a serious threat, and its geological history is accurately portrayed in this book. The USGS says Hualālai is “a potentially dangerous volcano that is likely to erupt again.” Other volcanologists are convinced it will again erupt and, because of its location perched above Kailua-Kona, such an eruption could cause significant loss of life and serious damage.
It may seem strange that anyone would build a home or a school or a fire station within the danger zone surrounding Hualālai, but just as the Japanese built the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant in a known tsunami zone, and Italians have built whole towns on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius, so too have Hawaiians built the coastal city of Kailua-Kona in the shadow of an active volcano.
And they seem mostly oblivious to the risk. Surveys in 2003 concluded that only a minority of those living in Kailua-Kona believe that Hualālai might erupt again, and only about one-third realized that lava from Hualālai might reach their seashore in three hours’ time. Strangely, this despite the fact that residents and tourists fly in and out of town from an airport built on the last major lava flow from Hualālai. This seemingly odd characteristic of human behavior sparked my interest in fashioning a novel highlighting people’s peculiar perception of the risks associated with the likely repetition of catastrophic historical events.
I have also been fascinated by the long-term effects of secret criminal behavior on the human mind. Koa Kāne, my protagonist, represents one end of the spectrum—a man driven to make recompense for his unintended, but reckless, killing of another human being. Having devoted his life to finding justice for murder victims, he visits the gravesite of his own victim after every major case.
Other characters you meet in this book represent other points on this behavioral spectrum. There are characters who drown their criminal memories in psychotropic medications. Personalities who go to great lengths to excise years’-long experiences from their resumes, while others seem inured to their crimes, all too willing to continue to profit from them. Finally, there are people who would use their common criminal history to control others. And fear of exposure grips them all. This mix of characters tainted by human warts and their reactions in the highly stressful aftermath of a natural, but human-enhanced, disaster makes for a fascinating crucible in which to explore these Big Island players.
I hope you enjoy reading Fire and Vengeance as much as I enjoyed writing it.