Robert Walker - Primal Instinct

He then remembers to check for the newspaper on his doorstep, the Ala Ohana. The paper had been recently filled with news of how the cops had arrested the owner of Paniolo's bar and grill, claiming that he was a likely suspect in the Trade Winds killings, both pleasing Lopaka and frightening him, because while he despised Paniolo, the obvious conclusion was that the authorities were drawing ever closer to the truth. He'd known Ewelo back on Maui where they'd both been working cowboys on a ranch there. The man was a Samoan asshole, a creep and a bully, reminding Lopaka of his father in several salient habits and nasty practices.

Still, on coming to Oahu, he'd looked Paniolo up, asking for a job. Paniolo had put him to selling in the limited drug trade he was just putting together, but they'd had a falling out over the money exchange, Paniolo proving to be sharper than he'd let on, allowing Lopaka to dig himself into a deeper and deeper hole.

He'd finally paid Paniolo back, but for a time Lopaka had had to watch his back, fearful that the other man would come out of the next dark comer to put a knife in his ribs. That was Paniolo's style. So Lopaka had taken to wearing one of his more easily concealed knives in an ankle sheath at all times. So far as Lopaka was concerned, the arrest of this man was the best possible solution to the island's ongoing problem with the Trade Winds Killer. Still, it made him nervous to think that the cops had struck so close to home. He hadn't been in Paniolo's employ for over a year, but records could reveal his former association; hell, Paniolo might even think to implicate him, knowing of his liking for swords and knives, and if this happened, the authorities could be at his door within minutes.

He paces, telling himself nervously that there is so damned much hinging on so many things he can't control, and Kelia-her vacant eyes staring like the embers of a dying sun in the west-is now a shadow being, also uncontrollable, unless he can finish what he has started. He lifts his camera and begins taking shots of the dead store clerk's final repose. He takes up the remaining roll, his enthusiasm for the picture-taking escalating as he goes. But his mind is still preyed upon by the mounting fears of his own exposure.

He's too close to his ultimate goal to be caught now, he tells himself. Seven years he has stalked and killed for Ku, and admittedly for his own self-gratification and lust. Seven years of seven victims minus four. He is four away from final victory, the moment when Ku will unconditionally embrace him and enfold him into His bountiful, cosmic arms to accept Lopaka Kowona as an equal.

Things just need to go on a little longer, to be brought to a final resolution, when seven victims this year would end his quest, when the power he would obtain would arrest the red flame of Kelia's life forever, He breathes deeply, inhaling death's presence deeply, thinking of the peaceful kingdom which lies ahead in which he would hold that crimson shadow in his fist in firm, godly fashion.

He goes to the door and looks outside at the bright sunlit, narrow strip of beaten tarmac, the winding, hilly ribbon-like folds where it has buckled. He absently takes in the temperature, the wind conditions, the dryness, and scans the surrounding mountainside, finding nothing out of the ordinary. It's already hot out, a promise of another scorcher. As expected, his paper has been lying there since dawn. Lopaka lifts it and pops the rubber band and hurriedly scans it where he stands in his underwear, the red hue to his skin and the smell of blood about him causing him no alarm. His front door and most of his small house are protected from view by a thick, wild border of pandanus trees.

A certain bravado pervades his mind, telling him that if there is a sharpshooter hidden up there in the mountains, then let him fire. His lazy stance outside the door is a dare he can take. Ku will protect his own.

The front page of the little newspaper strikes him as hard as any bullet. His face, or a very close facsimile, is on the front page, along with his first name, Lopaka. He's stunned, his knees wobbling. It must've come from Paniolo, is all that he can conceive. The lousy bastard has given him up as the Trade Winds Killer, obviously unable to recall his last name but not his features.

“ MotherfuckingbastardPaniolo!” he screeches and darts back into the lair. He scans the paper for what the outside world knows of him. It appears at first very little, in fact, and he catches his breath. He then sees what the paper assumed to be a separate story, that of his near capture of the night before. He scans the story to learn what they know, and it comes clear that the car outside his door is a major liability now. They know the make and model. They know that the fuel line or gas pan was spewing gas as the car sped away. The story relates the tale of a “heroic” attempt on the part of a beefy-faced Irish cop named Ivers to stop a hit-and-run driver, a subsequent fire and the cop's bout with his injuries. A photograph of Ivers shows a tired-looking man with thinning gray hair and a surly glare at the camera.

A scan of missing-persons reports has turned up the fact that Hiilani has not come home the night before, so the paper-not waiting the official twenty-four-hour grace period the HPD usually allows Lopaka-has put out a cry for information regarding her, an accompanying shot showing her sitting before a birthday cake in a crowded little room. Her employer has given a description of Lopaka which is startlingly close, but which the fools haven't yet put together with the description in the Trade Winds Killer story, at least so far as he can tell.

Lopaka feels his knees wobbling. They could stop him. They could put an end to his quest today, within the hour, within a minute, if someone puts two and two together; if Paniolo's memory improves, if that bastard Claxton should for once think past his nose-hell, even if his newsboy that morning smelled the gasoline odor that still lingered to the Buick… or if some particularly observant tourist on the bus yesterday stared too long at his mug shot on the visor.

Panic drips into his brain, filling him with an acidic fear, a consternation and dread like nothing he's ever experienced before.

He feels strongly now he must run, escape to finish his work elsewhere, in a safer environment. But where and how to get there?

Relatives… get to your relatives, he tells himself. The island is teeming with them. One of them will help you off the island; blood is thicker than anything, they say. Besides, what relative would ever imagine the enormity of his crimes, or link him seriously with the string of murders. All he need do is speak of a bad drug transaction that has gotten him into serious shit with a creep like Paniolo, who would implicate his own mother to save his own neck. That will suffice, he tells himself.

“ But what about Kelia?” ask the voices in his head.

“ Her remains must be cleansed and sent over. “

“ You can't just leave her here like this. “

“ I'll be back for her. I'll find a way,” he replies, going for the closet-like bathroom, where he rinses blood from his hands and chest and abdomen. Using a hand rag he wipes it from between his toes and off his shins, leaving it to linger on his private parts. He quickly dresses, gulps down a glass of water and taking all of his savings, rushes out, locking the door behind him. He walks down the narrow, winding road for the main road where he can catch a bus, aware that neighbors who have seldom if ever seen him are staring from behind windows and drapes.

“ I'll be back for you, Kelia,” he vows halfway down the hot road when he hears the rack inside his den and inside his head sag once more with her weight, as if in reply.

Navy divers called in by the FBI had given every effort to recover any unusual objects and bones found in, around and about the area of the Blow Hole, but very little was forthcoming. Some of the bones found were not bones at all but fossilized coral, others were animal bones, but there was a human femur, an ankle bracelet, an earring, several watches and one human pelvic bone. The Blow Hole and its subterranean runway was giving up very little; it appeared that this particular purgatory was a timeless one for the victims of the Cane Cutter.