Robert Walker - Primal Instinct

“ No, listen. I've got a return flight booked to Honolulu anyway and may's well use it. I won't be much longer and it'll save the taxpayers some jet fuel.”

“ If you like. Any rate, there'll be someone to meet you in Honolulu, and thanks, Dr. Coran.”

“ Meantime, no one's to touch the bodies. Understood?”

“ They're at the morgue, under guard.”

“ See you when I arrive, then.”

“ I'm sorry for having to intrude on your vacation, Dr. Coran, but we've no one else to turn to.”

“ In all of Oahu and Honolulu? What about the Navy?”

“ No one with your specialized expertise, Doctor, no.”

“ What about the state cops? They must have a good forensics man.”

“ We're trying to keep this in-house, as much as humanly possible.”

“ I see.”

She thought him a bit cryptic until he said, “And cop-killers piss me off big time.”

“ Ditto to that much. See you then, likely at dawn sometime.”

She was about to hang up when he added, “We've another problem plaguing the city and the island here you may've heard about?”

“ No, I haven't heard anything. I've shut down: no TV, no radio, no newspapers… mostly just diving and shopping and tuning out.”

“ Well, Doctor, we've had a couple of unusual disappearances.”

“ Disappearances? What kind of disappearances? You mean children?”

“ You might say… some were no older than children.”

“ Girls?”

“ Local press is calling him the Trade Winds Abductor. Although nobody believes he's collecting them, so some have concluded that he's actually the Trade Winds Killer.”

“ Impossible to keep such news secretive, even for the purposes of an investigation, I know.”

“ It happened like this before, same way. Strange thing is, we've not recovered a single body.”

“ Then you don't know for certain that they are in fact dead, and even if you caught the guy, you'd need some damned strong circumstantial evidence to indict without a body.” He fell silent long enough for her to realize that she'd just told him all that he already knew.

“ I think it's safe to assume that the missing in this case are also dead, Doctor. Any rate, this man is extremely thorough. Leaves no trace of himself or his victims, for that matter, whatever… until recently.”

“ Then you've got something to work with, good.”

“ We think that Hilani and Kaniola's deaths may be related.”

“ Your two cops? What makes you think so?”

“ I'd rather not say on an open line.”

“ All right, understood. So, what's this until recently he's left not a clue? You've got something on him?”

“ As I said before, I'd rather not discuss sensitive information over an unsecured line, Dr. Coran.”

A little paranoid, are we, she thought. “Soon then, Inspector Parry.”

Island-hopping was tedious, and lugging baggage and the hours spent traveling instead of enjoying the precious hours of vacation weren't her idea of fun, but then she was no longer on vacation. It was only fortunate that she loved to fly and the old birds of Aloha Airlines, like the 737 Jessica was now aboard, rattled and bounced in the updrafts so much that you knew-at all times-that you were flying. Parry's jet was likely a Lear, and while she enjoyed them for what they were, she much preferred something closer to a barn-burner ride than the feeling of being a well-sealed canned ham inside a Greyhound bus in the sky.

The plane came in low over Oahu from the east, the same pattern she imagined Japanese bombers used to strafe Schofield Barracks and Pearl Harbor. Long before finding the patchwork that was Pearl Harbor with its rows of naval ships so far below, she had seen the enormous, sprawling city of Honolulu, lush with the most opulent of high-rise hotels fronting the beaches. She saw miniature surfboards, yachts and sailboats off the Waikiki shoreline. Diamond Head looked from this straight-over angle no more special than any of the other mountain craters; there were huge mountain ranges on two sides of the island, its center a lush, tropical valley, the coastline, like that on Maui, the prime land upon which all Western investment had been heaped.

Two million years before Oahu had become the pearl of the Pacific, playground to the world's millionaires, it had been two separate islands focused on the Koolau volcano in the east and the Waianae volcano in the west. Now these two turbulent volcanos were serene mountain ranges, known only to U.S. forestry officials, a handful of hikers, a few soldiers and air personnel engaged in military maneuvers, and maybe the Trade Winds Killer.

Like all of the Hawaiian islands, Oahu had been settled over a thousand years before by the Marquesans, who sailed the Pacific in huge outrigger canoes fitted with thatch rooftops. Tahitian immigrants followed, and as they mingled with the Marquesans, a distinct Hawaiian culture with its own language, traditions and ritual emerged.

As in all cultures there evolved gods of darkness who controlled much of village life and death. There was a complicated system of kapus or taboos, with intricately fashioned kahillis-made of bamboo poles with circular featherwork at the top, carried by bearers on special occasions-and elaborate leis whose design symbolized strict divisions in society, just as the elegant, feathered headdresses of the Ali'i, or royalty, symbolized the monarchy of each island. There was continual warfare between and among the islanders, skirmishes and human sacrifices, as the various chiefs sought to extend their power.

Since arriving in the islands, Jessica had learned much of the rich history, which was forever touted as colorful and splendid, spoken of by the bus driver, the porter and the waiter as well as the tour guides. She'd learned that in the 18th century, King Kame- hameha, a chief from the big island of Hawaii, began an ambitious campaign to conquer all of the islands. He took Oahu in 1795 in one of the last and bloodiest of battles. All along, the king had been conducting a healthy business in firearms with Western ships arriving in Hawaii. Gunpowder and flintlocks were the King's new black magic.

When the islands were consolidated, the traders discovered a wealthy bounty in Honolulu Bay, the largest deepwater harbor in the islands. Ships began to arrive from all over the world, particularly Europe and America, and by 1820 New England missionaries were disembarking, eager to civilize and convert the native population to Christianity. Soon after came the great whaling ships, filled with randy, roughish seamen. By 1840 King Kamehameha III decreed that Honolulu on Oahu-the gathering place-would be the permanent residence of the up-till-then- nomadic royal court.

It was not long before Hawaiian women of nobility were wearing bustles, and the men were sporting epaulets. Palaces and summer retreats, the size of Georgia mansions, were built in the humid island capital. On the greens these same Hawaiians played cricket and held musical soirees.

As with all such pasts, time had erased everything but a few passing evidences of that life, so that Honolulu today was virtuous in a much different fashion. It looked for all the world to be Miami, Florida, if you could ignore the sweeping grandeur of the volcanic mountain ranges rimming it while the plane swept around the island and found the pattern, facing due east now, having come a full 180 degrees about. They were on final approach.

Jessica's ankles throbbed with the sudden drop of the plane, the sensation reminding her of the scars to her ankles, each Achilles heel having been severed by a maniacal killer she'd come here to forget. For a year now she'd had to use a cane, but thanks to remarkable reconstructive surgery, she leaned less and less on the damned inhibiting thing. In fact, secretly she believed it time to lose the cane.