Robert Walker - Primal Instinct

“ Have you heard anything concrete about that?” asked Jessica, going to the man, her eyes pleading.

“ Jus' talk is all.”

“ But if he was banished from that place,” she began.

“ Banished, yeah, but dem people who banished him ain't no now on Molokai. Dey move on.”

“ Moved on?” she asked. “Where?”

“ Nobody can say, but dey all no stay deah now.”

'Then it is possible that he's gone back to Molokai?” she said, turning and staring at Jim.

“ It's possible,” replied the stony Samoan, shutting down now.

The cowboy at the bar added in his broken English, “I wen talk wit' him wen he was heah. Him, he nevah sat long for a beeah or a gab. Nobody evah knew where he was or what he was up to.”

“ Yeah,” agreed the other man at the bar. “He hated Molokai, where he was bom, and he no much care for here either. Always talking about going off to Oahu, Honolulu, he said.”

“ If any of you see or hear of anything regarding this wanted man with a fifty-thousand-dollar reward on his head, please call this number. I'll leave it with the bar man,” said Parry, tossing down his card.

“ You got a place where we can call fo' you, missy?” asked one of the cowpokes.

“ Jake, a classy lady like dis not going to sit your horse.”

The others laughed while Parry, frowning, escorted a smiling Jessica from the bar.

“ One watering hole down, three to go,” she said.

“ You get the feeling we're wasting our time here?”

She laughed.

“ What?” he asked.

“ The feeling I get here?” She looked again around the town of Makawao, seeing the white Stetsons and vests going by. “The feeling is Twilight Zone, partner.”

“ That doesn't answer my question.”

She considered it anew. “Maybe we are wasting our time, maybe not. Either way, it's sooooommme town.”

They found a small cafe, ordered a lunch of burgers, fries and Cokes, rested from the heat and afterward continued their survey of the townspeople.

It was soon all over the little hamlet that the FBI was in town.

Their stay remained uneventful, people shying away from them for the most part, and Jim leaving word where he could be reached in each location he thought useful. Then they reached the last bar at the end of the street. Inside, they were immediately confronted by the huge proprietor, who, if cleaned up a bit, might resemble a grizzled Clint Eastwood with weight on. In his grip was a well-used and dented Louisville Slugger. He marched up to Jim and told them to get out.

“ I heard how you creeps been treating my pal Ewelo over there in Oahu,” said the owner of the bar, crowding Parry before he might get a word out. “And here's what I think of that.”

Before Jessica knew what was happening, the man drew back the ball bat and it came at Jim with a powerful whoosh. Jessica drew her gun and went on one knee, but she needn't have. Jim expertly avoided the bat like a prizefighter. Bobbing and weaving, Parry sent several successive punches into the big man's cheek and jaw each time he swung the bat and missed, until finally Jim rained a series of small explosions into the man's eyes, forcing him back and back until he came to a wall, where Parry's fencing style of fighting took on a new nature; a serious uppercut sent the man's jaw skyward and his form slid down the wall, unconscious. It all happened in a matter of seconds.

“ Christ-a-mighty!” shouted someone from a table.

“ Look what he done to Big Stan!”

The others gave Parry wide berth, listened politely to what he had to say between his panting, and nodded as they left, all but Big Stan.

“ Maybe this was a stupid idea,” said Parry, blowing on his bruised knuckles to cool them down.

“ Hey, you're just going to infect those cuts,” she cautioned. “Come on, here's a water trough.”

“ Oh, really sanitary,” he said, shaking his head, but following her orders nonetheless.

After cleaning up a bit, they went back for the car. Along the way, an elderly Hawaiian woman with squinting eyes held up a hand to them and in hurried, hushed tones she said, “You come wrong place for Lopaka. Family hiding him from you. Dey know where he is. “Whataya mean by that?” pressed Parry, but the woman turned into a wooden creature, not daring another word, continuing on her way as if she could neither see nor hear them.

“ Does that mean Molokai?” asked Jessica, but again the woman's frozen features revealed nothing.

“ I think, Jess, what everyone wants us to believe is that Lopaka's returned to Molokai.”

“ It might seem so,” she agreed, shading her eyes against the brilliant sun. The rancher town of Makawao was not at a high elevation, but rather on the fertile slopes of the lee side of the island, in the shadow of Mt. Haleakala.

“ If they wanted to steer us away from Maui to Molokai, then they've got to do better than they're doing. And if they are trying to steer us back northward to Molokai, then which way is Lopaka heading? It would follow that he's going southward from here.”

“ What's southward from Maui?”

“ The big island of Hawaii, but just southwest is…” Jim hesitated.

“ What? What's southwest?”

“ The island of death-Kahoolawe.”

“ Kahoolawe, but isn't that-”

“ It's the closest point from Maui by boat.”

She saw a light in his eyes which burned intensely. He believed he had hit on the secret where Lopaka was. “If Lopaka's not on Maui, then he's there,” said Jim, leaning against the rental car, a certain finality in his voice. “Look, if that's the case, he'd have left from somewhere around Cape Hanamanioa on the windward side of the island. The channel between the other island and Maui is known as the Alalakeiki, the distance a mere ten miles.”

“ It's that close?”

“ Just down the coast from there at Hekili Point is the only place in all of Hawaii where you can stand and see four other islands. Lopaka knows that if he makes it to Kahoolawe, he can be free. He's got to know that, and if he's being helped…”

She tried to decipher all this new information, recalling what Jim had told her of the no-whites policy of the Kahoolawe preserve, that even the FBI was off-limits there. “So, if Lopaka has in fact made it to Kahoolawe island, we may've seen the last of him?”

Upset now, Jim said, “Get in the car. We've got to move.” He hurried around to the driver's side and got in. She slid into the passenger seat, and in a moment they were pulling from the curb, doing a U-turn on the main street of Makawao.

“ What about a warrant, extradition papers?”

Parry shook his head.

“ But there's got to be a way we can extradite the-”

“ No go under these circumstances. U.S. authorities can't set foot on the island under any circumstances without express and unequivocal invitation. And to further complicate the situation, he could be given immunity by virtue of his lineage.”

“ Lineage? Whose invitation?” She was so angry she could hardly see the island road ahead.

“ The head of the tribal government on Kahoolawe.”

“ Who is?”

“ Kowona… the elder Kowona, don't you get it?”

“ Lopaka's father?”

“ Yes, he'd be one of the first to seek out Kahoolawe as a refuge from encroaching Western civilization on Molokai. He'd be one of the first to take up residence on Kahoolawe, braving whatever hardships he and his people there might face.”

“ You're sure you're not clutching at straws? I mean, on the word of those cowboys back there that Lopaka's people are no longer on Molokai? Is that enough?”

“ When we get to the hotel on the other side of the island, I'll confirm it with our guy on Molokai.”