Robert Walker - Primal Instinct

Now Dave Scanlon stopped his lionlike pacing, gave a glance to Dr. Marshal, who'd come in with him, leaned over Parry's desk and got in Parry's face, saying, “We're not going to allow any history between us, Jim, to color what we do here now, are we?”

“ History? History's history,” Parry replied sharply. “All I care about is what we're going to do about this damnable business now.”

Parry stared down at the Ala Ohana newspaper. He could make out enough Hawaiian to know that everything Scanlon had said about Kaniola and his paper was true-and then some. It was a story so hot it fairly burned the hands to hold it.

“ Just read the crap there about the HPD's not doing a damned thing while two of our own cops are murdered in cold blood.” Scanlon pounded his fist over the newsprint as if to do so could change things.

“ Get hold of your self, Dave,” Parry said, trying to counter the bull's rage. “It's just a pile of innuendo and half-truths gathered up by a grieving father who-”

“ The appearance of impropriety, the mere appearance of wrongdoing, Jim, and we're in the stocks down at HPD. You damned well know that, and so does Marshal here.”

Dr. Walter Marshal tried to console his old friend. As the U.S. M.E. from Pearl, he had a lot invested in the case as well, but he wasn't having any luck in calming the HPD Commissioner of Police, so he turned to Parry instead and added kerosene to the fire by saying, “You can bet your ass the mainland'll get this.”

“ Christ,” continued Scanlon, pacing for emphasis. “We've got every uniform, pulled every detective, every sergeant and lieutenant in on this, but old Joe Kaniola makes it sound like we're all sitting around masturbating ourselves! And he's got the inside dope, that top sources with the FBI claim the only man ever to get near the killer was his son who didn't have proper backup! Christ, what a lot of horse shit! And how'd he get information about the blood, Parry, news you didn't even share with me! And what's all this about the supposed killer being most likely a white male? And possibly having some connection with the U.S. military? Christ- a-minny!”

Parry tried to defuse Scanlon as much as possible by repeating himself. “Kaniola's got nothing. A handful of assumptions and innuendos any number of people've been slinging around, Dave.”

“ You just tell that Dr. Coran of yours to keep her mouth shut, or we'll have a full-blown race riot on our hands in the south central quadrant,” Scanlon hotly replied. “I thought she was a pro! I thought she knew what she was doing. I thought you knew what you were doing when you called her in on the case, Jim.”

“ Scanlon, Dr. Coran's remarks to Kaniola were off the rec-”

“ Not any fucking more!” Scanlon paced anew. Parry went instantly to Jessica's defense. “Dr. Coran did not disclose anything to Kaniola intentionally, and so far's I know not a word about the arm, the racial makeup of the killer, or that he could be military. We don't any of us know that.”

“ Bullshit! Then who did?”

“ I don't know.” He privately wondered about Tony, but instantly ruled him out. “Kaniola's just canny, that's all.”

“ Christ, she ought've known you don't expose yourself to an experienced-”

“ She took him to be the bereaving father.”

“ Son of a bitch is bereaving all right-bereaving right down our throats, Parry. He's got nothing kind to say about your bureau either. Read on!”

Parry shook his head, remaining calm. “He's blowing smoke and he knows it. There's no evidence the killer's a white man or that he's from the naval base, none whatever.”

“ But every Hawaiian thinks so now,” challenged Dr. Marshal. “There doesn't have to be any real evidence, not with these types who're just looking for an excuse to torch this city like L.A. in '92.”

“ It isn't going to happen here.”

“ You want to make bank on that?” shouted Scanlon. Jessica Coran pushed noisily through the door, her cane thumping out a requiem, Parry's secretary chasing gooselike after her, quite unable to stop her. The secretary was making excuses over Jessica's words:

“ I'm so sorry, Chief Parry, but this woman — ”

“ Chief Parry, gentlemen,” Jessica began, “I believe I should be in on this roundtable since I am the guilty party here and-”

“- I tried to stop her, but she's so rude and-” Parry motioned his secretary off and the woman stepped back, without turning, obediently closing the door in front of her, leaving Jessica Coran in the center of the big office full of men.

“ All right, Dr. Coran, please join us,” Parry said, trying not to show his displeasure and the dark circles around his bloodshot eyes. “Have a seat.”

She remained standing. “I'm sorry for my ill-timed words of yesterday to Kaniola. I won't be surprised to hear from Quantico, perhaps find myself replaced.”

Parry realized now that she thought she was doing the valorous thing, that she'd come to his rescue, somehow learning of the meeting.

Dr. Marshal cleared his throat and said, “Gentlemen, Dr. Coran, of one thing you can be assured, all leaves to servicemen will be temporarily canceled and every man confined to base at least until the news simmers down.”

“ Good thinking,” muttered Scanlon. “Now whata we do with all of the other white males living in the city? I'm telling you, Jim, your car the other night was just the beginning.”

“ If the newspaper leaks came from within my organization”- Parry fell short of admitting it-”I'll deal with the problems at this end.”

“ And from here on out, I want full cooperation, Jim. No more behind-the-back shit, like alia this crap about how the killer maybe is using the Blow Hole as a dumping site and maybe he's using a U.S. regulation-sized bayonet or machete on his victims.”

“ I said nothing of the kind to Mr. Kaniola,” insisted Jessica.

“ Joe's just feeding his people a pile of kukai, as they say, huh?” asked Scanlon. “For what reason then?”

“ Who knows,” Parry fired back. “To make his son look less like the asshole your department painted him for getting himself killed in the line of duty, maybe?”

“ Or maybe it's become a political thing with Kaniola. Everything's political with him,” suggested Dr. Marshal when the two lawmen had locked gazes. “Now everyone in this room has got to be supportive of each other, gentlemen. We have got to cooperate and stick together on this.”

“ I'll keep my hands on the table if you will,” Parry relented.

Scanlon at first said nothing, then frowned and said, “It becomes clearer the longer this thing goes on, Jim, that we need each other. To pool our resources.”

“ I realize that, Dave.”

“ Good… good…” Marshal, acting as referee, seemed delighted-missing something here, Jessica thought. There was bad blood between Jim Parry and Scanlon. She'd sensed it from the first moment she walked in, and now it was ripe and odorous.

“ Kaniola's facts are wrong and his story's full of shit, like you say, Scanlon, and I think most thinking people, white and Hawaiian alike, will see it for what it is.” Parry held tightly to a heavy paperweight in the likeness of a pair of handcuffs, squeezing hard as he spoke. Despite his words to the contrary, even the new girl on the block, Jessica Coran, knew that the newspaper story was partially accurate: that thanks to men like Scanlon at the top, the HPD nourished a certain amount of inbred prejudice against its own Hawaiian and minority cops, cops who'd been hired to fill quotas fifteen years before, cops who'd never see promotion in the ranks. Nor was Joe Kaniola far from the mark when he suggested that Scanlon's department wasn't pulling its weight in the investigation, that at best they'd fallen into familiar patterns of organizational behavior by arresting derelicts, the homeless, previously known sex offenders, all without the slightest clue as to who the Trade Winds Killer might be. She could almost hear Jim's seething thoughts below his painted smile: Hell, the HPD brass hadn't seen the strange pattern of disappearances of young women of Hawaiian and Oriental extraction over the past two years here in Oahu… nor the link with the missing Maui women before this.