Robert Walker - Primal Instinct

This made both agents sit up after the long and tedious rendition of the previous tapes.

“ Oh, really? A cowboy.” Terri's leering laughter followed, and then: “Ever ride a cowgirl? Want to break this mare? Huh, cowwwww-booooyT'

“ You don't believe me?” he asked her.

“ Sure… sure, cowboy. I believe you.”

“ It was a big ranch on Maui. I was in charge of strays and fence-mending. I did an excellent job.”

“ Then why did you leave your pony on Maui, cowboy, for this? Bright lights, big city and pretty things like me?”

“ You are pretty.”

“ You want me? You got the money, cowboy?”

“ I… I tol' ya, I don't cheapen a lady like that. If you just come with me, I… I can take care of you, make you eternally happy. It's not about money.”

“ Honey, everything's about money.”

“ No, not everything. I tell ya, I can set you up with everything. Maybe, in time, you get to know me better, you might wanna marry me or something…”

Terri laughed uproariously and contemptuously, which effectively served to end the conversation, but still he came back for more the following night.

“ Now we've got two cowboys who know each other, both from Maui. This guy and Ewelo,” Parry said. “Let's go see how Terri and Kalvin are doing with the sketch artist.”

The sketch artist, Don Myers, with Terri Reno's help had accomplished a great deal. Myers was better than the usual police sketch artist and was in fact an accomplished painter on the island, doing Hawaiian scenes that sold in the boutiques around Honolulu. The rendition here was a true creation with pigmentation and shading, detailed and sharp. Obviously, Terri Reno had remembered far more of her strange night visitor than even she'd realized. With Haley's additions, the portrait of the killer was remarkably clean and distinctive, the eyes like emotionless blue stones.

“ If we're going to see him tonight or tomorrow night, why bother with a sketch?” Terri, the junior member of the team, wanted to know. “Why not just pick him up?”

Haley raised a hand asking that he be allowed to field this one while the others looked on. Haley told his partner, “You see, dearie, it's like this. If we have the sketch of the suspect ahead-a-time, before we nab 'im, it's just one more nail in his bloody coffin.”

“ One more item to stack onto the evidence side when a judge and jury get at him,” added Parry.

“ But it's just our suspicions, now isn't it?” she replied in a mock Cockney accent. “How's it going to hold up in a court of law these days?”

“ Police suspicions are still worth a little something in a court of law, and FBI suspicions even more. Add the fact we were concurrently working on this sketch along with what we got from the connection with Hal Ewelo, and every bit helps,” Jim Parry explained. “I just hope Tony can get something out of Ewelo before we have to use the sketch and taped voice on him. It'd sit better if the bastard would implicate our man before we flash a picture or run a tape in the interrogation room, believe me.”

Jessica only half heard the legal discussion among the others, becoming lost in the sad, doe eyes of their possible mass murderer, marveling at the features, so mild on the surface, not the least resembling a Halole Ewelo; rather this was the face of anonymity here in the islands, the face of a half-breed, a hapa haole, of which there were literally hundreds of thousands, many with the telltale wide cheekbones of the native, the somewhat slanting eyes, the thick neck and nappy, native red-brown hair and the softened nose and bone structure of the white race. The only feature that marked him as remarkable were those cerulean eyes in the native face. There was no telltale distinguishing scar or birthmark, nothing but the vacant blue coals for eyes and a slight haole tinge to his skin. The natives had called the first whites they'd encountered haoles because of their pale skin, assuming they were the dead ancestors come back to roam the earth in ashen and anemic form, risen as it were from the grave. There was certainly something dead about this man, Jessica thought, and much to mark him as partially white. His Hawaiian features dominated, but there was a muted understatement that spoke of his mixed-blood ancestry, possibly part American, certainly Caucasian.

“ At least now we've got something real to rattle the snake with, heh. Chief?” asked Haley, whose infectious smile and bright Aussie eyes had lightened the intense work.

Everyone in the room knew the value of actually having hard information before walking into an interrogation room, and knew that at the moment Tony was only working a bluff with Paniolo. “Get a copy down to Tony right away, Don,” Parry instructed the artist. “And spread 'em around. Call Dave Scanlon and share it with him. Tell him he can take it to the nightly news guys tonight if he wants.”

The decision to allow Scanlon to give it to the press represented a gamble. Parry was damned if he did, damned if he didn't. They could sit on the suspect's description or put it out as an APB. If they withheld the information from the public, it could end up costing another life; by the same token, if they published it along with the sketch, the killer was also likely to know, and his first reaction most likely would be fleeing and going into extended hiding, possibly escaping the island. Because Parry wanted him off the streets of Oahu at any cost, he chose to put out an APB and to involve the TV and radio stations as well as the press. At the same time, he had all the airlines, passenger ships and Port Authority points notified.

Myers picked up his art materials and promised to get copies around as ordered, took a bow to a standing ovation and quickly left.

“ Now, let's get back out on the street, and this time, Haley, I'm going to be there with you when Junior here shows up. As for you, Terri, just play the creep the exact same as always. Bat it right back at him. He says he's a cowboy, stomp on his horse.”

She smiled at this. “Got it, but what if he wants me to go bye-bye with him? Not so sure I want to be alone with the Devil, if you know what I mean.”

“ We'll escort you to the door, and as soon as he's home and closing the door on you, we'll kick it in and search the place on probable cause.”

“ The tape and the sketch?” she asked, wondering if that was enough to make probable cause.

“ That and the connection with Ewelo, yeah. But we need to know where his den is, and unless Ewelo comes clean with it, well, it's up to us.”

“ Been a hell of a night for discovery,” commented Jessica.

“ Quantum leap!” Parry replied, smiling for the first time all day. Jessica agreed with Jim's moves. Something had to end. Either the killings or the killer's life had to stop. Something had to shake loose. Something had to give.

No more women could be abducted, mutilated and cast into the sea by the Cane Cutter.

The description alone would cause a great ripple effect across the islands: Hawaiian male of mixed ancestry, light-skinned, thickly built, five-nine, 165 pounds, age twenty-seven to thirty, dark blue eyes, driving a Buick sedan, possibly black to maroon in color.

It wasn't much, but it was, along with the sketch, far more than they'd had before now.

Midnight, July 17. near Fort DeRussy, Honolulu

Beneath multicolored signs and lights, Lopaka prowls the streets of Oahu's Waikiki area, blending in easily with the ebb and flow of tourists. At one with his surroundings, wearing a billowy Hawaiian shirt, he lets his tattooed arms hang free and unencumbered. The only thing that marks him as different from everyone else on the street is that he isn't in a group, that he strolls alone, yet he might easily be regarded as a bellhop for one of the dozens of hotels along the strip, or even a clerk from one of the countless shops here.