Robert Walker - Primal Instinct

Tony remained skeptical. “Yeah, but Reno, a mainlander?”

'Tony, you're going to have to work with her, all right?”

“ Whatever you say, Jim.”

“ She's got to get experience somewhere, and who knows more than you, Tone?”

“ Whatever you say, Jimbo.”

“ I say don't call me Jimbo, okay?”

“ Whatever you say,” he repeated.

“ I say get me back to my unit so I can take myself home. Tomorrow noon, I want to feed the computer the breakdowns on these names-sex, age, height, color of eyes, nationality of each person on the list. Run 'em all through the Honolulu Police I.D. files, our own files… see if we get lucky.”

“ Whatever you say, Jim.”

Tony sensed the foul mood Jim Parry had fallen under, and so he wisely fell silent. The drive back to the street where the Kahala house stood didn't improve either of their moods as they looked past the lifeless, darkened house to where Jim's car stood stripped and smashed. It looked as if there'd been a block party, everyone issued a sledgehammer and given a license to attack Parry's car. But first the more prudent had ripped out the radio, popped the trunk and made off with a pair of expensive Kevlar bullet-proof vests along with several boxes of ammunition for his. 38 and an expensive Remington 12-gauge shotgun; his tires had been punctured, the moon hubcaps gone, every window smashed, the street littered with the raining pellets. The hood and top of the vehicle were destroyed beyond recognition, and beneath the hood expensive necessary parts had been stripped away. A siphon hose extended from out of the gas tank, likely the only reason the car hadn't gone up in flames, as several bullet holes had cut paths through the metal.

Parry was stunned. “That call we heard,” he said, the words tumbling out as hard round marbles, Parry not feeling his throat muscles, tongue or lips moving.

“ You sons of bitches,” Tony bellowed to the night.

Parry cursed the street as well and gained as much response as Tony had. The two FBI men felt eyes on them, imagined the glee in the hearts of those watching, and in a moment began to feel vulnerable. “Where were the city cops when my wagon was being annihilated? It must've taken twenty or thirty minutes at least to do this kind of damage, damn!”

“ We can't do squat about it now, Jim,” said Tony.

“ The hell we can't!”

“ Come on. We'll send a wrecker for it tomorrow.”

“ Gutless bastards!” shouted Parry, shaking his fist.

“ Jim, standing here and shouting at the pavement's not going to get us anywhere.”

“ Where are you now?” Parry continued to shout, venting his anger.

The dark little street responded with a few lights going on here and there, but no one came outdoors to claim any victory. Parry scanned the windows, Tony tugging at him.

“ Forget it, Jim. Come on.”

“ Don't take it so personal, huh, Tony? Well, fuck that!”

“ Jim, these people're frustrated. They struck out at what we stand for, not who we are.”

Parry paced around the hulk of his destroyed vehicle, gritting his teeth over the sight of its stripped interior and slashed seats, mutilated with machetes and knives. He realized it was just over a century ago that native sovereignty had been wrested from Queen Liliuokalani in a bloodless takeover backed by 162 sailors and Marines from the U.S. Boston, then docked in Honolulu Harbor. It was on January 17, 1893 that a group of powerful white businessmen and plantation owners took up arms, calling themselves the Hawaiian Rifle Militia. They forced the queen to abdicate, and soon after Hawaii became a U.S. Territory, and in 1959 the fiftieth state in the Union. To a sizeable number of Hawaiians this was not ancient history, and although the white mind could not conceive of ever rending the intricate tapestry of economic, industrial, technological and cultural fabric woven out of this tortured paradise by returning Hawaii to its sovereign status, as Hong Kong was slated to be returned to China, there were many prominent Hawaiians actively seeking just that, along with ten billion dollars in reparations, an apology and a return of their lands used as U.S. government holdings, including Pearl Harbor.

Now the grand and long-standing debate between the U.S. and Hawaiian nationals, coupled with the recent spate of disappearances and probable murders of Hawaiian women, seemed to have all congealed here on this street tonight and the frustrations of several generations had come down heavily on Parry's unfortunate vehicle.

“ The unit's ruined.”

“ It can be repaired.”

“ I've had that car since I became bureau chief.”

“ I know… I know…”

Tony managed to dance him back to his own car and Parry got inside. “Where the hell you suppose the police were?”

“ Probably no one called it in, Jim.”

“ We heard a disturbance call, remember? Christ, should have responded ourselves.”

“ The disturbance call was a 10-6, remember? No big deal, but this-this had to've happened after the cops came and went, is all I can figure, unless-”

“ Isn't this sector routinely patrolled by Hawaiian cops? Right, and all they saw was a block party, right?”

Tony, who had pulled from the curb only to hit the opposite curb with his wide U-tum, drove away now. He was trying on a smile when he said, “Hey, Chief, it could've been worse.”

“ Oh, how so?”

“ You could've been in the frigging car when it happened… or worse…”

“ Or worse?”

“ It could've been my unit.”

Parry shook his head and held back a laugh. “It's just a machine, I know, but you do get attached to what's yours. Even if it does actually belong to the bureau, you know.”

“ We aren't talking horses here, Sheriff. At least the machine didn't feel any pain.”

“ So what, Tony? Does that mean I shouldn't? It pisses me off, all right?”

“ Let's just get out of this area before someone takes a shot at us. Feel like a sitting duck here.”

He put his foot to the floor, the engine roaring. Tony nervously glanced in the rearview where he saw a crowd of dark-skinned youths gathering like corporeal shadows behind them, thankful that Chief Jim Parry didn't look back or hear them.

“ Lot of anger building up out here, Jim.”

“ The damned police aren't cooperating, Tony. They had George Oniiwah two days before us, and yet they chose to say nothing about him.”

“ Wrote him off as a suspect, I'd say, so why bother you with him, Jim. You're overreacting.”

“ God dammit, Tony, do you know how long I've tried to get an island-wide task force put together on the Trade Winds Killer?”

“ I know… I know…”

“ I was told by the commissioner of police of Honolulu- guaranteed, mind you-that whatever they know, we know.”

Tony sat up at this. “And we'd extend the same courtesy?”

“ Which I've been damned careful to do.”

“ Oh, like you've told Scanlon every single result of the two autopsies on his cops?”

“ Fully informed Scanlon, yes.”

Tony nodded approvingly. “And the girl's arm?”

“ They've got it, as does the military, thanks to Marshal, and the county, and the state.” Parry's voice began to drag along with the list of need-to-knows. 'This case is turning into a political soccer game.”

“ So you've held nothing back?”

Parry thought of the bloodstains found on Kaniola's hands, the blood belonging to Linda Kahala. It was the one item of information he had withheld. “Nothing,” he lied.

“ Then I guess those bastards are shafting us, Chief.”

“ Wouldn't be surprised if they didn't have a hand with the sledgehammers.”

“ Only an off-duty cop on a drunk would be that reckless to risk his job, Chief.”