Robert Walker - Primal Instinct

“ Ku cannot find the ones whose bones are below the waves, so he cannot take them into his kingdom, the water blinds even Ku. So it purifies his kingdom, keeps it free of the vile,” continued Kaniola.

“ I once knew that. Uncle,” pleaded Awai, “but I forgot.”

“ You have done well this day, Ben Awai. You are one of us,” Kaniola assured the bigger man. “Then you will allow us to return the body?” asked Parry.

“ On one condition.”

“ Yes?”

“ That his remains be returned to the sea after you've finished all your tests.”

“ Consider it done,” said Parry. “A burial at sea can be arranged.” One way or another, he was thinking.

Jessica nodded, her eyes meeting those of the stern chief and Kaniola's grim countenance beside him. From the well of anguish she found there, she knew that both fathers had suffered and anguished over their decisions of the past few days, and that the old chief no doubt had suffered over the years in untold ways at the hand of his child.

Still, she wondered just how screwed up in the head Lopaka was that he could confuse in his mind's eye a boyhood companion with a brother, a childhood disease with the taking of a life. She remained unconvinced of the authenticity of Kaniola's version of events.

Perhaps, with the end of Lopaka's fevered brain, the ghosts of the past should also be buried with him. Either way, the old chief wasn't long for this world. She could see it in his dark, sunken eyes and the ashen and flaxen skin about the cheekbones, and in his spiritless gait.

“ We will prepare for your departure with the body now,” Kaniola assured them.

“ I suppose you want our thanks, Joe.”

“ Hey, not necessary… only your word that you'll hold to our bargain. But I tell you this, people, if I hadn't been here, there's no telling what would've become of you two. Awai's brain isn't screwed on right, and neither is the chief's these days.”

“ So, in essence,” she summed up, “we witnessed a monster- maker kill his own creation last night, and we just let this Dr. Frankenstein walk off to his hut and go to bed?”

“ Either that or never leave the island. Remember, you aren't exactly in Kansas anymore here. You understand me?”

“ Let it drop, Jess,” Parry pleaded, and when Kaniola stepped off, he whispered, “Maybe at some future time, we can pursue a course of action against the old man.”

“ If he doesn't kick it in the meantime.” She relented, feeling the return of Ben Awai's eyes on them.

She smiled sweetly at Awai. But the big man's grim look was set in stone for the time being. Kaniola organized a party to take the body from the rack and to collect Lopaka's hacked and dirtied head.

Dawn, July 21, the Island of Kahoolawe

The body of Lopaka Kowona, reeking of blood and perspiration, was cleansed and packed in a large canvas and deposited in an enormous weaved basket along with the man's head. Such cargo could easily be misconstrued if it fell into the wrong hands, and they could be faced with many hours' delay before all was sorted out. She and Parry planned on contacting the Navy for military transport back to Pearl the moment they set foot again on Maui. The working relationship between Jim's office and the military was a close one, and they'd respond to his requests without question when he, over a pay phone, would require them to fly into Kahului Airport with an empty coffin in order to return the body of a fugitive from justice brought down at the Spout, just outside Hana.

Jessica and Parry were escorted back to the waiting boat and raft. Lopaka's body was boarded and soon they were heading back to Maui with their grim cargo.

Neither Joseph Kaniola nor Ben Awai had anything further to convey to the FBI people, and so they spoke no more, Awai accepting his final payment and his inflatable raft in stony silence. At the harbor in Maui, Parry used his badge and influence to commandeer a nearby storage locker in a meat-distribution warehouse, and there Lopaka Kowona's body was safely stored until an ambulance could be arranged for. Parry hovered about the storage facility, half afraid news would leak out, in which case their clandestine operation involving Kahoolawe would be ended. Parry also hovered over the paramedics when they arrived, bent on their handling the incident with the utmost discretion as they removed Lopaka from the ancient carrying vessel and placed him in a body bag. The medics were curious and questioning, but Parry sternly controlled them with threats nonetheless.

The medics were aghast at what they saw. They'd seen badly mutilated bodies before, heads severed in automobile accidents, but this kind of butchery was not an everyday occurrence. Still, they were Hawaiian men and with Joe Kaniola's help, they remained stoic in the face of what they witnessed. Parry instructed them to transport the body to the airport at Kahului and not to unload it until Parry met them there and directed the exchange from the ambulance to the military transport.

Jessica had little time to freshen up and change before Jim stormed into their room at the resort and told her they had to go. Everything was hinging on Parry and her now, and in a matter of hours, the case of the Trade Winds Killer would be officially closed.

All the way to Kahului, Jessica could sense Jim's primary concern was to bring an end to Oahu's longest-running serial killer case ever, and an end to the great suffering caused here by the fevered mind of Lopaka Kowona. Only a public announcement, stating they unequivocally had the body of the serial killer in their hands, and that there was clinical evidence to link him to all the murders, would quell all the fears of the Hawaiian Islands. It was ever more important that Dr. Katherine Smits back on Oahu identify the bones forwarded to her via Dr. Lau as those of victims on Maui. Such forensic truth, along with her own findings regarding Lina Kahala's arm, would corroborate the unequivo- cable wall of facts which she and Jim had worked so hard to uncover.

She had watched Jim at work from the moment she had met him; watched him care for his island and its people. Now, racing back across the island on the highway that had brought them here, back toward Kahului Airport, Jessica felt a great sense of well-being flood in, a feeling of closure, that it was finally over. It flooded in with her fatigue. Weak from lack of sleep and the long night on Kahoolawe, she easily dozed in the car during the one-and-a-half-hour-long drive to the only airstrip on Maui capable of handling military jets.

“ You can sleep on the transport back,” Jim had promised her, but she didn't even make it that far.

Even as she slept, in the back of her mind there was a nagging voice telling her that she couldn't truly rest until she proved to herself, beyond a shadow of a doubt lurking there, that she and Jim actually did have Lopaka Kowona's body in that basket.

From the disfigurement of the facial features, there still remained some doubt in Jim's mind as well as Jessica's. Could the wily old chief have been playing out a charade, his final performance? And Kaniola? Had he, too, been duped, or was he part of the masquerade? Could they've been playing out a sting operation, a magician's switch, on Kahoolawe, substituting another for the true son's life, to spare that royal blood no matter its transgressions? A hundred what-ifs remained swirling amid Jessica's dreamscape…

The thought that Lopaka, for whatever inscrutable reason, might be harbored and someone butchered in his place to appease the white race both infuriated and defeated her, but a part of her mind screamed that there was no way the two of them would then have been allowed safe passage back with a ringer's body. Kaniola, Awai and the others knew that such a hoax would be impossible, that it would be discovered quickly in the lab. On the other hand, such a falsehood played out against the FBI would not only prove embarrassing, but also show that she and Jim had violated international agreements between the Hawaiian natives and the State Department. Could Kaniola be that shrewd? And could they've found such a close double for Kowona?