Robert Walker - Primal Instinct

Such questions hounded her, and Jim as well, she suspected, all the way back to Oahu. She kept trying to reassure herself, and when she came awake only a few miles from the airport, the ambulance in the far distance ahead of them, she realized that Jim Parry had fixated on similar doubts, having had only the interior of the car to commiserate with. Was it really Lopaka in the body bag?

Soon they reached Kahului Airport, not the most modem facility by anyone's standard, and the waiting ambulance drivers looked on with such inexplicable eyes and nonchalance that Parry and Jessica began to wonder just what Kaniola had said to them back in Makena at the warehouse. Parry cautioned the two men once more to remember nothing of their trip from Makena to the airport. They assured him with nods and grunts that they had no problem with silence.

“ Where was this body transported from?” he asked one of the men.

“ Hana Town.”

“ At the Spout,” added the second man firmly.

“ Good… good…”

But Jessica sensed that Parry wanted to tear into the two youths, throw a scare into them, see what spilled out.

“ If I have to come back because you men've lied to me in any way,” he warned, his large finger rising to their eyes when a jetliner crashed over, drowning out the rest of his words.

“ No lie, Boss.”

“ No lie…”

In a matter of fifteen minutes and two cups of coffee, the military transport came to a smooth landing on the strip and taxied over to the hangar where the ambulance waited, getting directions from the tower as to the exact number on the tarmac over which they must come to rest.

The body, loaded from the ambulance, was left in the body bag, and deposited into a Navy-issue coffin. Parry and Jessica boarded, and the plane was given immediate clearance, holding up an incoming Aloha Airlines jet filled with tourists, forcing the commercial flight to make a second pass over the island as a result.

News throughout the island-that “Parry had his quarry”- spread like wildfire ahead of them.

Once in the air, the team of Parry and Coran felt a sense of great relief wash over them. The plane wasn't much on comfort, the seats like those of a '57 Chevy, the plane an old bucket itself. But they were airborne and as they stared down on the islands, all seemed beauty and tranquility. Jessica rested her eyes. She wanted all the turmoil, all the guessing, all the doubts over, and she wanted to believe that the natives on Kahoolawe had dealt with them fairly, that their cargo was indeed what it was purported to be.

Beside her. Parry seemed on a cocaine high. He couldn't sit. He paced the small interior of the lumbering aircraft. He sat, stood up, sat again until finally she said, “What the hell's the matter, Jim? I'm trying to catch a few winks here. Do you mind?”

“ Sorry, I'm just so wired by all this.”

“ I understand, but you'll blow a gasket if you don't slow down.”

“ You know this'll kill Scanlon.”

She blinked curiously at him. “Scanlon?”

“ It's going to blow Scanlon right out of his office, don't you see?”

“ Scanlon? Commissioner Scanlon?”

“ No way he can stay on as police commissioner in Honolulu now. He'll have to go Stateside just to find someone who'll hand him an application.”

“ Jim, just how much pleasure are you deriving from this fact?” She fully opened her eyes to study his response.

He shrugged, but a smug look remained on his handsome face. “Some… some,” he confided.

Her frown displeased him, and suddenly his frustration and perhaps his fatigue got the better of him, and he simply lit into her. “What, you don't think the bastard's got it coming? He's an incompetent ass, Jess, and it's bigots and assholes like him who get other people killed.”

“ Whataya mean? He's responsible for all of Lopaka's victims? For Lopaka's psychosis? If you want to blame someone, blame the bastard's father.”

“ Scanlon's got no business in such a position of power… it's just not right,” Jim said, continuing his tirade. “Ahh, forget it.”

“ Abuse of power? You want to talk about abuse of power, think about that Chief Kowona guy, who-” Suddenly, a light came full on deep inside her brain, illuminating all the dark, fuzzy contours around Jim's relationship with Dave Scanlon. “Wait a minute, Jim, what's this really about?”

“ Whataya mean? It's about a bad cop.”

“ A bad cop?”

“ An incompetent cop. You heard what Lopaka Kowona's wife Stateside had to say about Scanlon.”

“ Yeah, and you knew all that long before I got her on the phone. It was all old information to you. And you didn't pay her any more attention than Scanlon had.”

He looked stricken. 'That's not exactiy fair or correct, Jess. I had access to the records of the victims, and access to police calls relevant or otherwise to the cases in the missing-persons files. I didn't have access to anything Scanlon didn't want me to have. I didn't learn about Kowona or his wife until it was too late. You've gotta know that.”

“ Then tell me this, Jim. Why'd you ever begin delving into Scanlon's old caseload to begin with? What set you on his course in the first place?”

“ That's obvious, isn't it?”

“ No, not entirely.”

He gritted his teeth. “I admit, it began as a search through Scanlon's past record.”

“ Why? What makes you hate the man so?”

“ He intentionally screwed with an undercover operation when he was a lieutenant with the HPD, and he got a partner of mine killed as a result. He was somewhere he had no business being, Jess, and a friend was killed. Reason enough for you?”

“ So you started on this case to revenge the death of a friend? All along, that's been your motive.” Her tone alone condemned him.

She couldn't look at him. She turned away, staring out the porthole to see Pearl Harbor below.

“ Jess, Jess,” he pleaded, “it may've started out that way… well, yes, it did start out that way. But that was all back-shelved once I saw the enormity of the crimes. I cared about the victims, and I forgot my original reasons and Scanlon in the process, all before I met you.”

“ Really?” she countered. “And I'm supposed to believe that with you dancing the aisles here, unable to hold yourself in check because you're so jubilant over Dave Scanlon's tumble from grace?”

'Think of the number of his own cops who've died or been hurt by this, Jessica!”

“ And think just how tarnished you've become over it, Jim.”

She turned away, unable to speak another word, anxious for the plane to land and for their departure, anxious to get away from him long enough to sort out her feelings.

9.-45 A.M., Pearl Harbor, Honolulu

When they landed at Pearl, they were encircled by brass and press there on the tarmac, including Joe Kaniola, who'd caught a chopper in Wailea near Makena and had openly spread the word ahead, labeling both Parry and Jessica as heroes worthy of the welcome afforded knights returning from a crusade. It'd become overcast and dark on Oahu. Blinding flashes of light came from both cameras and an approaching storm. There were microphones everywhere with the NBC, ABC and CBS logos and others attached to a podium. Everyone in the crowd expected a news conference on their disembarking. Jim looked from the cameras outside to the body at the rear of the transport. “Keep this body under armed guard until I-and no one but me-tells you otherwise, Lieutenant,” he told the young copilot standing beside him.