Robert Walker - Primal Instinct

He hesitated answering. “It is a small island still in many ways. We have modern skyscrapers. Western high-tech businesses, the computer revolution confronting us, all this speeding change in a handful of years, change which your country and people have had a hundred years to assimilate to. We still struggle and stumble. And I must live here after you and Parry and others are gone.”

“ I need your help to catch a killer, Lau; that's all that matters inside this lab.”

His steely eyes bore into hers, and she allowed her own to send forth a vivid fire of determined anger. “Are you willing to give your full support to this investigation? And to keep what is confidential in-house? I must have your word, your guarantee; otherwise there will be more George Oniiwahs.”

“ No one wished Oniiwah dead, least of all me.”

She saw the pain he'd concealed. “Mr. Lau, if anyone's to blame for Oniiwah's death, it's the man they've jailed for it.”

“ No, the fault belongs to us all,” said Lau, “to the climate we've all contributed to here, one of fear and desperation and political unrest.”

“ Yes, I believe so,” Jessica agreed, extending a hand. “I want to trust you again, Mr. Lau.”

“ Now it is Doctor Lau,” he replied, taking her hand and vigorously shaking it, “as of today. I received news of my final review and dissertation acceptance.”

“ Congratulations.” Her smile was genuine. “It was being held up… for political reasons.”

She shook her head over this, realizing that it was due the ineptitude, mistrust and jockeying of Lau's so-called superiors- white men-that he had become the enemy beneath their noses.

“ Then we are all guilty after all,” she conceded. “Will you trust me, Mr… ah, Dr. Lau? And can we work as scientists, together, amid this turmoil, keeping no secrets from one another?”

“ I would like that very much, yes.”

She demonstrated her trust by giving him the details of the death of George Oniiwah and asking him to finish the lab analysis of Oniiwah's blood type, so she could be in attendance at a meeting of all the FBI agents involved in the ongoing search for the Cane Cutter.

Lau took the samples and promised to have results back to her as soon as humanly possible. She knew now that they could start over, on firm ground.

As she was about to leave, he said, “Oniiwah was not supposed to be killed. How it happened? Only this man, Paniolo, can say.”

“ He was not under orders to kill the boy, we know.”

“ No, no such orders, ever.”

“ But he was ordered to interrogate the boy?”

“ For information, that is all.”

“ Dr. Lau, you tell these people for me that, under U.S. law, it is they who are legally responsible for contributing to the boy's abduction, violations of his civil rights, and ultimately his death.”

“ These people, Dr. Coran, do not recognize U.S. law, unless to do so helps in their cause.”

“ These people, Dr. Lau, will recognize it when they see it from behind bars.”

“ You will never find them to lock them up. They are umalu and 'uhane, shadows… spirits.”

“ You just tell your brother-in-law that I want to meet with him, that I want to talk.”

“ He will contact you,” Lau assured her.

“ Good… good. Then can I expect results on the blood in the next twenty-four hours?”

“ You can.”

“ And you expect it will match the stains taken from Paniolo's place?”

“ I am certain it will.”

“ Prove it then, and what happens to you, Dr. Lau?” 'The same as Kaniola. I am in the middle. We are all of us Hawaiians in the middle.”

She nodded, stripped off her lab coat, grabbed her cane and walked from the lab, somehow confident that Lau could be trusted for the truth.

FBI Headquarters, Honolulu

At 8 P.M., a late evening meeting was called by Parry, who'd rounded up the principal agents working the case. With Jessica looking on. Parry warned that they were a far cry from a conviction against Hal Ewelo as either Oniiwah's murderer or the serial killer who'd been terrorizing the city.

“ Having any of you rousted Ewelo before? Have any of you given consideration to the possibility that Ewelo could be the Trade Winds Killer before his arrest on the Oniiawh charges?”

Amazingly enough, several had pursued leads along this line after tips and informants had suggested the notion, including Tony, but he, like the others, had come up empty-handed. “Except for his petty crimes, drugs and prostitution,” said Tony, “Hal Ewelo's clean. No murder charges. Always has an alibi that checks, and he doesn't own a history of violence reserved for women only, since he spreads it around.”

Jessica had to agree that Ewelo did not fit as neatly as they'd all like to make him fit. “The nature of his type of violence is considered to be within normal parameters by any law-enforcement standard, and certainly well below the 'norm' of mutilation set by the Cane Cutter.”

“ Whoa up there, Doctor,” said Parry. 'This man had George Oniiwah's sex organs sliced off while the boy was bound to a chair.”

Jessica had found traces of blood and feces in the hastily wiped chair when gathering evidence at Paniolo's.

Parry's statement silenced the room, but still no one who'd responded to Jim's call tonight believed Ewelo was the Cane Cutter. Parry went on like a desperate prosecuting attorney, trying to convince the others of Ewelo's guilt as a serial killer with a lust for mutilation murder. 'The man's record places him in Maui during a period when seven women there disappeared, their bodies never recovered.”

This got a few rethinking Paniolo Ewelo.

“ The man also worked for a time in a cane field.”

“ Beggin' your pardon, Chief,” said Haley, a big Australian-born American agent, “but what kanaka hasn't worked a cane field at some time in his bleedin' life?”

This brought laughter to the group, all except Jim. “Something's got to break,” shouted Parry to his people in the debriefing room. The wall was lined with the photos of young victims. “We've got to share our snitches, pool our knowledge. Is there anyone here who has any leads whatever they have not shared with command?”

“ What about this business in the press, Chief?” asked Terri Reno, the well-formed blond agent who'd been walking the Waikiki strip in a brave effort to bait the Trade Winds Killer. “Any truth to it?”

All eyes went to Terri, who was in full dress as a hooker. Parry replied cryptically at first, saying, “Some, yes.” He then quickly separated fact from fiction in the Ala Ohana article.

As Parry spoke, Terri combed out her long, black wig. Then she paused and said, “You know, Chief, I've been getting nibbles, but no bites; we got quite a few lockups for solicitation, but nothing of the caliber we're looking for, not that I'm complaining. On the other hand…”

“ What?” pressed Parry.

“ There's this one guy… kinda strange.”

“ Strange how?”

“ We got tapes on him, if you want to listen. Just that he never does anything. Flirts, says he would rather not have to pay for sex. Wants it given to him freely. Imagine that, telling a working girl that. So I brushed him off the first time, but he keeps sniffing around like a dog in heat.”

“ But he never does anything except talk,” interjected her partner, Haley.

Parry was interested. “Did he ever give out with a name, Terri?”

She blinked and shook her head, saying, “Robert, I think, yeah, Robert… that's all, Boss.”