Robert Walker - Primal Instinct

“ Quiet, woman! You don't know Lina is killed!” As he chastised her, he ran to her and put his arms about her. Tears shone in reflected light from the street lamp, now the only thing they could see of the bull-shouldered, short man's features. “You go in; do what you gotta do,” he told Parry and Gagliano.

Inside the sparse space of the bungalow, Parry jammed a shin against a coffee table before Gagliano found a light to guide them. The light shone on a comfortable, clean house with throw rugs over a parquet floor, countless pillows which soaked up so many cooking odors as to be comfortable with them these days. A large couch, a smaller settee, an easy chair for the old man, along with the TV/VCR/stereo center filled the place-the American Dream.

Pictures adorned the walls, cabinets, any open space, photos of the family on picnics, outings, at parties with friends, but most of the photos were of Linda, a lovely, smiling creature whose innocent brown eyes were huge, so trusting and curious.

Satellite rooms went around the living room: kitchen/dining area, a master bedroom and a smaller bedroom. Linda's was easy to find. The light here revealed a teenager's cave, filled with posters of rock stars. Sting, Guns amp; Roses, Ice-T fought for space with a silly replica of a Hawaiian warrior, the mascot of the University of Hawaii, alongside beautiful seascape posters, Save the Whales posters, pictures of dolphins and the like. A large bookshelf was littered with paperbacks of every stripe, size and shape, as many science fiction titles as romance, and it appeared she loved horror tales as well, her obvious favorites being Dean Koontz, Geoffrey Caine and Stephen Robertson.

Parry always felt like an intruder at such moments, like some morbid vulture interested in digesting the “remains” of a life. On the girl's nightstand was a book of poetry, a page marked and a few lines of a poem highlighted in red marker, possibly something she was studying at the university. The book was Shakespeare's Sonnets, the lines were from Sonnet 94 and as Parry read them, they spoke deeply to him: through the book flipped The summer's flower is to the summer sweet,

Though to itself it only live and die,

Lilies But if that flower with base infection meet,

The basest weed outbraves his dignity;

For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds; that fester smell far worse than weeds.

Parry and saw that other lines were marked. “No time for a poetry reading, Chief,” said Gagliano. “These people're going to kick us out on our asses any second now.”

Parry slipped the book into his pocket and went on with the search of the girl's room. It turned up nothing unusual or telling or helpful. Gagliano was going through the underwear drawer when the father appeared at the door.

Parry stepped between asking, “Was your girl seeing a boy? Anyone in particular, I mean?”

“ She too serious for most boys; she had mind made up to finish college. No boys, no, 'cept sometimes she went with George, but broke it up.”

Both FBI men immediately wondered about George, and if this wouldn't simply turn out to be a lovers' spat and Linda would show up on her doorstep tomorrow.

“ George got a last name, sir?” asked Gagliano.

The father looked perplexed and shouted to his wife for the name.

“ Oniiwah, George Oniiwah,” she moaned through the window from the porch, where she'd remained.

The father cautioned, “But dey didn't see each other for long time.”

Parry instantly thought Hawaiian on hearing George's last name, as it was a familiar island name. In fact, many in the Oniiwah family were well-to-do by any standard. “Do you know where this George Oniiwah lives?”

The father called to his wife, who muttered to him in Portuguese before he came up with a street name and number. It was in a much nicer section of the city. The two of them had met during her freshman year at the university, he said. “But Lina broke it off when he got too serious for her.”

'Too serious?”

“ You know, get married, have home and children.”

The mother came in and stood in her missing child's room, her hands filled with papers and a little book, the medical records. Parry accepted them with his heartfelt thanks, and Gagliano took the moment to say they might return again at another time. The father began to protest, but then he let it go. Parry and Gagliano said good night to the distressed parents, whose neighbors were now swarmed about the bungalow and the unmarked FBI cars in a show of support for the bereaved family. Parry wondered where George was, and he asked Linda's father if the boy had gotten in touch since the disappearance. The answer was no.

Gagliano's glint met Parry's knowing look. “We'll have to pull Georgie boy in for questioning.”

'Tomorrow, Tony,” Jim Parry replied, weary-eyed and searching the dial on his watch, trying to focus, only to find it was already one in the morning. It had been a full day. He patted the book of poems in his pocket and said, “I'm going home, catch up on some reading and some sleep. See you tomorrow.”

Suddenly one of the concerned neighbors, a large, healthy Hawaiian woman who came at Parry like arhino, said in a voice that shook even Gagliano, “You bastards bettah fine-dat little honey Lina, sin her home to her momma, you got-dat, Mr. United States FBI Mans? If you don't, there goin' to be big trouble in Oahu for you.”

“ You threatening Chief Parry, lady?” Gagliano began. But Parry held up a restraining hand and shouted to the crowd, “We're going to do everything within our power to locate the girl, but we're not superhuman. We can't work miracles.”

He'd as much as told them the girl was dead. Parry and Gagliano got into their separate cars and wasted little time in moving off, but they did so at a snail's pace, all but daring the crowd to throw a rock or fire a shot. Both men were glad when nothing further developed. Parry looked back via his rearview mirror the whole way down the block, feeling frustrated, angry, and weary all in equal measure.

Jessica had sat up with Jay Leno and the rest of the Tonight Show gang via satellite, but she'd lost all but the back-scatter noise of the show in her concentration over the series of files left her by James Parry. Each photo and bio spoke of a young woman with a full life ahead of her, each of the victims coming from a large extended family, a few with children of their own. They weren't the typical big-city prostitutes one might expect. They weren't hardened or beaten or haggard, anorexic or overweight; they didn't have broken noses, scars or pimples, and from their photos most of them looked clean of drugs, their eyes clear and vibrant, speaking of souls filled with life and interests. Several-as Parry had intimated-were part-timers, supplementing their income in order to finish out a term at the university, while still others had no record of prostitution and had last been seen at a regular place of work.

Linda Kahala, also known as Lina, of mixed Portuguese and Hawaiian blood, had been a dark-skinned beauty with radiant round eyes that seemed, from her photo at least, to be filled with an island innocence that likely got her killed.

She wondered if this most recently vanished girl, had actually become the killer's ninth victim by Parry's count, or if she'd turn up at a boyfriend's house or telephoned from the mainland, having run away. Parry had made some big leaps, trying to connect a series of earlier disappearances on the island of Maui, a far less developed and more rural isle, with the disappearances in Honolulu on Oahu.