Robert Walker - Primal Instinct

It then appeared that Parry wasn't going to get away, so Jessica made a move for the hotel entrance, to go to her room, but this spurred Parry back to her; he stopped her with a hand on her shoulder, the older man beside him, frowning, a natural scowl distorting his features.

“ This is Special Agent Anthony Gagliano, Dr. Coran.” Gagliano was so darkly tanned that his Italian features had turned to that of a dark Latino. Swarthy, she thought.

“ Gagliano,” she said, “I might've guessed,” trying to muster a smile, feeling wrung out.

“ We've got a line on the missing girl,” Parry said. “Honolulu Missing Persons notified Tony right after their two Hawaiian cops fell, but its only been a few hours ago that Tony's been able to get her family to agree to see me. It's been twenty-four hours, and the girl's description fits our victim profile.”

“ Then you have worked up a victim profile?”

“ In the files I gave you, remember?”

“ A victim profile without bodies. That may be a first, Inspector. I'm impressed.”

“ Don't be. It wasn't too tough. They all might've been sisters, they look-looked-that much alike.”

She sighed heavily, nodding, realizing that this was one more point of evidence that made Parry believe that a demented mind stood behind the disappearances.

“ I've got to go. Tony and I'll question the relatives, find out what we can.”

“ Be sure to get any and all medical information you can,” she urgently told him. “Sure, sure,” said Gagliano, sounding a bit offended.

“ Don't stop at dental. Anything medical,” she persisted to Gagliano's best we-know-how-to-do-our-job glare. “All we've got is that awful arm in Lau's freezer, and that's not much to work with. We'll need every shred of information from the girl's doctor, from measles shots on. Be nice if we had medical records and long-bone X-rays on all of them.”

Gagliano, a hefty man, had the eyes of an impish boy. He stared at Jessica for a moment before replying. “Not much to attach to that ham hock we found, huh, Doc? Sure, we'll grill her family for any medical records.”

“ Get a good night's sleep. You'll need it for the morning,” Parry said to her as Gagliano faded toward his car. “I enjoyed dinner and the walk,” he confided.

“ So did I. See you sometime tomorrow then, Chief Parry.”

“ Might just as well call me Jim. We're going to be working very closely together.”

“ I'm not sure we're going to be working that close, Jim, and I don't know how long Zanek'll let me remain. Maybe Chief is best for now.”

He frowned, but it quickly disappeared and was replaced by an elegant smile. “All right, Doctor. Have it your way.”

“ I usually do.”

“ I can believe that.”

He allowed himself to linger over her disappearing form, not caring what Gagliano made of his behavior. Even with the cane, or perhaps because of it, she was a unique and intriguing combination of beauty and brains, femininity and strength. He decided he very much liked her and that he wanted to get to know her better.

Gagliano rejoined him, saying, “Helluva looker for an M.E., Jim. Couldn't figure it when they told me you were at the Rainbow having dinner with a coroner, but Christ, nobody told me she was such a doll. I figured her more the 'Iron Matron' in the lockup type, if you know what I mean? Still, I never figured you to go for a chest cutter.”

'Tony, tonight was strictly business.”

“ Hey, if you got to do business, it's a hell of a lot easier if the dame across from you looks like something between Marilyn Monroe and Lauren Lo-and-Bacall!”

Parry laughed. “Shut up and get in your squad. I'm under the bus terminal and I'll follow you out. Let's get whatever the doctor wants.”

“ Strictly business, huh?”

“ Go!”

Parry had worked on and off with Tony Gagliano for most of the eight years he had been in Hawaii. Tony was a good man, a tough cop and a straight friend who had several times tried to fix Jim up with one of his many relatives who visited from the mainland from time to time. Most of Tony's family remained in the San Francisco Bay area. Tony, the black sheep of the family for most of his life, had stumbled into police work only after running off to Hawaii to be a beach bum. That had been almost twenty years before. He had come up through the ranks of street cop in Honolulu, had done every conceivable job through detective-shield status and had finally applied for the FBI at the ripe old age of twenty-five. Now thirty-eight, prematurely aged and balding, he had covered a lot of ground with Parry, and they instinctively trusted one another as they could no one else either in the HPD or the FBI. Aside from the work, they had spent many a backyard barbecue and ball game together. Tony had also watched James Parry fail at every relationship he had ever had with a woman over the years. Sometimes, Jim Parry thought as he slid in behind the wheel of his unmarked car, Tony knew too damned much about him.

Parry's car cut sharply from beneath the bus terminal at the Rainbow Tower and out into the traffic of Ala Moana Boulevard. He tried now to concentrate on the work at hand. He'd seen a photograph of the last supposed victim of the Trade Winds phantom, a lovely petite young woman with shining black hair that cascaded down to near waist-length, and while the others hadn't hair quite so long, they all wore tapering hair in similar fashion. Linda, or Lina as her closest family called her, this nineteen-year- old, hadn't much of a file yet, just a photo and the particulars of her home situation and place of work. Her employer had been questioned without result, having been the last to see Linda before she was believed to have gotten into a car with a dark figure on Ala Wai Boulevard, where she'd walked from the job to home, just opposite the canal. She'd been working nights in order to pay her tuition at the university. “Bloody shame,” he muttered to himself, turning now into a cramped little driveway as Tony pulled ahead and parked on a steep incline. The two cops were met by Linda's father, a short, crusty full-blood Hawaiian with the characteristic large features and thick folds of skin that marked his age and race. His small Portuguese wife was on the porch, sitting in a stupefied daze on a swing, humming a tune which harkened back to another time and place. The house both outside and in seemed draped in an impenetrable darkness.

Parry introduced himself, shaking the man's hand, but his eyes roamed the porch and the black interior of the house.

“ It's da way she no want it for now, no lights, nobody inside. She no want you goin' in and goin' through our daughter's stuff, you unnerstand?” He sounded almost apologetic, trained to accept authority.

Parry nodded, and immediately asked the father if there were any medical records on Linda. “It could help,” he assured Mr. Kahala.

“ When you guys ask for medical and dental records dat mean bad t'ings,” replied the sad-eyed father. “I know dat. But my wife, Miya, she knows mo 'bout where da kine paper bettah, so let me talk to her 'bout dat.” He fell silent a moment and stared at Gagliano and Parry. “You got any mo questions?”

“ Yes, quite a few.”

“ And it would really help, sir, if we could get into your daughter's bedroom,” added Gagliano. “You never know what little item might prove useful in an investigation.”

“ We told the cops everything we know.”

“ But you didn't let the cops inside either. Now we have a warrant, but we'd prefer your cooperation instead.”

Parry apologized for his partner, taking on the role of the good guy in all this while Gagliano got right into the man's face and continued. “We need to hear it straight from you, sir, for ourselves. We get it second-hand from HPD, who knows… we might miss something.” The old man nodded and began a soliloquy tinged with monotony, until he mentioned that his girl was going to the university. A light turned on inside him for a moment and his voice rose. But the wife shouted from her shadow on the porch, “That's what got her killed! Trying to be Miss High-Mighty and pay for that school! If my Lina had stayed home-”