Robert Walker - Primal Instinct

“ Sounds like a great trip. Have you hunted on the island?”

“ Yeah, once. I have to warn you: It's a wilderness section.”

“ No problem. I love the wilderness.”

“ I mean, it might be difficult getting around.”

By her silence, he knew that she understood his concern was with her bad leg and the cane. Finally, she said, “Don't worry. If you can arrange it, nothing'll stop my accompanying you to Molokai. Well, I'd best say good night now. Let us both get some rest.”

“ Expect to read about our case in the papers tomorrow,” he warned her.

“ I hope I haven't completely ruined things.”

“ I hope we don't have a race war on our hands.”Silence for a moment. “Do you really think it could get so… out of control as to-”

“ Like L.A., we have our minority held pretty much in economic bondage; these people are very close, very strong in their family ties; it's really all they have. I've already seen evidence of their frustration and anger played out on my car tonight.”

“ Oh, no,” she gasped into the phone. “You weren't hurt, were you?”

“ My car was totally dismantled and destroyed while I wasn't looking, but otherwise, I'm unhurt.”

“ You think that some of Kaniola's well-meaning friends may've been behind it?”

“ No, not likely, although who knows for sure…”

“ Christ, I wish I'd kept my mouth shut around the man. I hope I haven't screwed things up to the point-”

“ I don't fault you, Jessica,” he said. “You couldn't know the depth of feeling between the whites and non-whites here in paradise.”

“ Shoulda known better.”

Her deep, breathy voice alone made it all worthwhile, he thought, listening to her every word.

“ Forget it. We go on from here.”

“ Dammit, Parry, you're being too goddamned nice. I just fried you and all you can say is-”

“ Night, Jess.”

He hung up, not allowing her another word, glad to have the last word, pleased to have heard the sound of her voice again, and totally frustrated on learning that the leak Scanlon referred to had indeed come home to roust at his doorstep. As upset as Scanlon was, he knew there'd be a great deal more hell to pay come sunup.

Suddenly, he could no longer sleep. He got up, fixed himself a cup of steaming-hot tea and switched on a tape player that'd remained on his table all week. Once more he listened to the voices of Thom Hilani and Alan Kaniola from the moment Kaniola picked up the “suspicious”-looking, dark or maroon Buick sedan barreling up toward Koko Head at a fairly high rate of speed at 1:43 A.M.

“ HPD 12, this is Hilani, Unit 2E, Sector Bravo. I have you and the sedan in sight. Can I be of assistance, since you're such a fucklick?”

“ This is Dispatch Officer A312. No can make dat kine talk on dis frequency, Officer Hilani.”

“ Friendlies're hard to fine out heah,” replies Thom Hilani.

“ Fall in behind me, 2E.” Kaniola's invitation gives no sign of agitation until his next words. “Shit, Dispatch I've lost sight of him off the hairpin just before the Blow Hole.”

Hilani's reply is clipped and angry, a blaring motorcycle horn providing a backdrop to his curses. “Damnit, brah! Whataya doing backin' into me fo'? Almost run my ass over!”

“ Call in our position, Hilani.”

“ No readin' this mother by no book. HQ, this is HPD 12 and 2E, leaving unit to investigate abandoned suspect vehicle. Our location is the Blow Hole, over.”

“ Roger that,” replies Dispatch.

Neither man mentions why he fails to call in a DMV check on the plates. The transmissions simply end. After an uncomfortable amount of time Dispatch tries to hail the two dead cops. There was already much criticism circulating about how Hilani and Kaniola didn't properly execute procedures, that they should have secured the area around the car, got that license plate, called it in, and called for reinforcements up there. But Parry, who'd now listened to the tape sixteen times, was convinced that these two men had not been given an opportunity to respond and had had good reason for their every action, because the plate was intentionally obscured. “No readin' this mother by no book,” Hilani had said.

Hilani, Kaniola and Lina Kahala's deaths were all linked as closely with their Hawaiian blood as with anything else. Hawaiians, by nature, were open and honest to a fault, like the Eskimos, inviting terror into their lives without even recognizing it for what it was, he thought. For now he allowed the tape to replay, but his attention floated away to the book lying next to him on the table, Lina Kahala's book of sonnets.

He lifted it, felt its heft in his hands, squeezed it in a fantastic hope that in doing so some clue would ooze from the damned thing, but the book remained as silent as ever.

In the still of the Hawaiian night, he feels time slow to a crawling, halting stop. He opens the pages and reads as he has each night from the dark passages the young woman, now beyond this life, had once marked for him to find.

Shakespeare's words… her words flow off the tongue easily, like a timeless riddle, and he wonders anew if he hasn't been placed on this earth to unite Lina with her prophet, Shakespeare, whom Jim Parry has never before thought of as a poet of darkness and despair. He wonders, too, what he has missed, what has escaped his eye and his consciousness.

He keenly feels that he is being haunted by Lina, that she pleads with him from every crevice and dark corner of his universe, that she is asking him specifically to untie the twisted ribbon of darkness that somehow links Lina with an embittered, saddened poet and her killer. What is the link that binds a white man who lived hundreds of years before in a place alien to all that Lina knew-England-and an adolescent teenaged girl trying to find herself in modern Hawaii, who instead finds a killer?

Does the book belong to the killer? Whose name, spoiled by water damage, has been all but erased? The killer's? Or someone close to the killer?

Why has he been so reluctant to turn the book over to the lab. to let the analysts conduct tests, to restore the badly damaged ink, to re-invent the name in the dark smudges? Why hasn't he let go of the book? Is it his only connection with the killer, or with Lina? If he loses this connection, does he lose all connection with her?

His tea is gone. He stares into the dregs wishing he could read something into them like some psychic, some fictional sleuth who, in the absence of reason, acts on instinct alone and wins. But heroes often fail, like the song says.

The night offers little more than an empty feeling inside him now-nothing more. He is left to pace, to think of his heavy responsibility, his burden to put an end to this madman. He paces until exhausted, until he again finds himself staring into the mirror and wondering if the killer, too, is awake at this ungodly hour, if he is pacing and staring at himself through a looking glass, questioning himself, his next step, wondering if he can go on, doubting his resolve to reach seven murders this season. Parry stares longer into the looking glass, and knowing the killer to be out there, he wonders if the killer is staring back at himself, pulling at facial stubble, washing white skin, or rinsing brown skin?

Unable to account for or remember his night's slumber, Parry, stupefied, awakens to the sound of military aircraft beating a thunderous approach and retreat overhead, as if he and his modest home are under siege. It is as if he has not slept at all.