Robert Walker - Primal Instinct

“ We did it in New York, you know, on my last case,” she offered, falling into a cushioned chair before him.

“ Did it? Did what?”

“ Arrested a known sex offender, you know, to appease the public mind,” she admitted.

He frowned at this. “If it were that easy, I might consider it, but Marshal's only half the problem. While he's trying to save the boys in white and blue from Pearl, any number of whom could be our killer, the governor of Hawaii, the mayor of Honolulu and your boss, Paul Zanek, are all screaming for somebody's head.”

“ Zanek's on your case? That's some nerve! I'll have something to say to him. Hell, he's not even your direct super-”

“ Jess, everybody in the military wants to believe our killer's one of them-Hawaiian or of mixed island blood, that is-while everyone in government wants us to catch the Caucasian killer. You see, such an end to this would show good faith, so to speak, take a hell of a lotta heat off every level of government, and-”

“ That's one asinine way to conduct an investigation!”

“- and our so-called 'good faith' move'll clear law-enforcement agencies throughout the islands of the stain of prejudicial proceedings. Get it?”

“ In one fell swoop. It's coming clearer, yeah.” She shook her head, disbelieving even as she understood.

“ Ironic as hell, isn't it?”

“ Reverse discrimination, so to speak?”

“ At its worst, yeah… something like that.”

“ So what're you going to do?”

“ Nothing.”

“ Nothing?”

“ For now, nada. See which way the wind blows.”

“ As will our killer I'm sure, Jim.”

“ I didn't say we're going to sit on the investigation.” He lost control, shouting, “Just on the goddamned politics surrounding the bloody case!” She dropped her gaze, nodding. “I'm sorry. I know that, Jim. I didn't for a moment mean to imply anything other-”

“ Look, forget it. I'm wound like a top today. Look.” He tried desperately to tread lightly now. “How're things going in the lab?”

“ Torturously slow, but we're moving onward. As soon as I know anything new, you'll be the first.”

“ Well, thanks for coming down on the white charger.”

“ Only hope it helped.”

“ Helped clear the room sooner, that's for sure.”

Together they laughed at this.

But their laughter was short-lived when she lifted a copy of Kaniola's paper, written in Hawaiian, yet crystal-clear from the photos of each of the missing young women bordering the story, and a crude sketch of a human forearm with upper muscle and shoulder, ruptured at the wrist, gracing the bottom of the page.

“ I told him nothing about Kahala's arm.” She didn't want to point a finger, but she didn't want Jim Parry to think any worse of her than he already did either.

“ Kaniola's shrewd. He's weaseled out a hell of a lot of details about the crimes. See this?” He pointed to the word 'a'apl.

“ What's it mean?”

“ He says the blade used on the Kahala girl was warped or curved. Here he speaks of tragic misfortune, 'awa, and of persons dying before their time, 'a'aiole. And that it happens with the ae.”

“ The a-eee?”

'The northeast trade wind.”

“ Geeze… so what else does the story say?” she asked.

“ Depicts Thom Hilani and Kaniola's son as a couple of heroes-the only two cops in the whole of Oahu who'd ever gotten near the Cane Cutter. Describes the rest of the HPD as something far less admirable; depicts the bureau as a confederacy of bungling idiots.”

“ It says all that?”

“ See this word, here, hawawal Its literal translation is unskilled, awkward, blundering and incompetent.”

“ Sounds like the papers back home.”

“ So how'd he get the drawing of the dead girl's limb? If not from you, that leaves someone in Lau's lab, perhaps, or one of my agents, all of whom I'd thought I could trust.”

She told him of Kaniola's connection to Lau. “Look, when the limb rose from the Blow Hole, people witnessed it. Cops were called on scene and got there before your guys, right? Everyone in Oahu knew about the limb.”

“ Guess so… Damn tired of having to fight my back, though.”

“ I hope you don't think that includes me.”

He shook his head. “No, no. You, I think, are genuine. Look at this,” he said, changing the subject, pointing once more to the Ala Ohana's Hawaiian words. “Our pal Kaniola talks about you, too, here.”

“ What?”

“ Calls you an anchor stone for the investigation.”

“ Anchor stone?”

“ Heleuma,” he replied, using the Hawaiian term, and then he read on. “'Dr. Jessica Coran has been called onto the case by top-ranking FBI officials'-that'd be me-'to oversee the forensic investigation in the absence of Dr. Harold Shore. Coran has solved a number of puzzling and bizarre serial-murder cases on the mainland, the most famous of which culminated in the capture of the mad vampire slayer, Matt Matisak, in Chicago, and also the case of the Claw in New York City last year.'“

“ I see,” she said, staring to where he pointed.

“ The placement of your name at this juncture is direct innuendo that the information following this came from you.”

She looked quizzically at the Hawaiian words before her. “What information?”

“ That the suspect is believed to be a white male between the ages of twenty-seven and forty.”

“ I told him that was just probability, that it is statistically likely that-”

“ The Hawaiians are looking for the least provocation to shut down Pearl as a base of U.S. operations; word of this spreads, we're going to catch hell from both sides, and we know Marshal's going to spread it-not to mention the racial tensions which are running quite high right now.”

“ Kaniola's playing on these emotions?”

“ Like a virtuoso, yes. That's how native political power works.”

She shook her head. “I can't entirely agree.”

“ Sure, sure, he genuinely wants his son avenged first and foremost; for all their inherent good nature, the fact that Hawaiians are lovely people does not lessen their sense of justice and faith in vengeance.”

“ Like most of humanity?”

He gave her a knowing look and a smirk. “Okay, but Joe Kaniola's also fanning embers that've been smoldering for a long time, over a hundred years to be exact. He's got a whole population of disenfranchised people to blow off to, to vent his spleen with, over this issue, which leads him and his people straight back to the fundamental issue of who governs here and who carries the big stick of enforcement.”

“ Oh, God… I hope I didn't really mess things up for you, Jim.”

“ Well, the worst of it has nothing to do with what you told Kaniola.”

“ What's that?”

“ Like I said, this mention of George Oniiwah. Putting his name into this story made him a target for anyone remotely interested in avenging Linda Kahala, Thom Hilani, Alan Kaniola or any of the other women. Shit, if someone reading this decides that Oniiwah is the Cane Cutter, some bad pilikia's going to follow.”

“ Is Oniiwah white?”

“ Half Japanese.”

“ Surely that's inconsistent with Kaniola's innuendo that the killer is suspected to be a white male.”

“ Kaniola characterizes the kid as half 'white' by virture of his and his family's so emulating the white man-dressing white, dancing white, eating white, all that.”

“ Surely that's not enough to condemn him. Nobody could possibly decide that the FBI profile states the killer's whiteness is just mock white behavior, could they?”

“ We got some pretty big, pretty nasty and pretty dumb Samoans and Hawaiians on this island who put pilau like that together all the time, and proud of it.”