Neil Plakcy - Mahu Fire

I looked at Sampson, and I could see he felt the same way. “Let’s wrap this up,” I said. We finished the formalities for the tape, and then Frank Sit took Jeff White downtown for booking. I know I’d promised him I’d go with him-but that was one promise I didn’t mind breaking.

The fire raged on for another hour to so, until the wind shifted and a band of rain showers blessedly swept down from the tops of the mountains and put out most of the flames.

Lieutenant Sampson, Kitty, Jimmy, my family and I regrouped at Uncle Chin’s house. The gamblers were still there, as if a forest fire hadn’t been raging next to them, as if nothing had gone on all day other than the game.

The paramedics had wanted to take my dad in again for smoke inhalation, especially after his experience at the Marriage Project bombing, but he’d refused, and he did seem to be breathing better, sitting with my mother, Aunt Mei-Mei and Genevieve Pang on picnic benches in the back yard.

An ocean breeze had come up, blowing the smoke from the park fire back up into the Ko’olaus, and the sun had come out. A rainbow stretched high above us.

I kept worrying about Mike, even as we walked through a quick post-mortem on what had happened, making sure no one else was trapped on the mountain.

“So what are we going to do with you, now, son?” Sampson said to Jimmy when we were finished.

“Can he stay here with Mrs. Suk?” I asked, motioning toward where Aunt Mei-Mei sat, Genevieve Pang holding her hand like a dutiful daughter-in-law, even though her own husband was dead, her son in jail.

“She does have custody of him,” Kitty said. “Temporarily, at least.”

Sampson shook his head. “That was invalidated when he ran away.”

“Who says he ran away?” Kitty asked. “He went out for a walk, and Jeff White kidnapped him. That’s not running away.”

“Kitty,” Sampson said, but she stood her ground. He looked from her to Jimmy, who was standing silent. “Why did you run away from the Suks’ house in the first place?” he asked.

Jimmy looked down at the ground and scuffed his feet. “I had to go to the bathroom,” he said finally.

We all looked at him. That didn’t sound like a reason to run away from a good home.

He looked up. “When I got back to the lanai, Mr. Suk was lying there in his chair. He was dead. And I was so scared that it was my fault. I could see he’d been reaching for his pills, and if I’d been there…”

“You couldn’t have done anything,” I said. “I heard it from the medical examiner. Uncle Chin’s heart attack was too much for him, even if he’d gotten a pill.”

The relief was evident on Jimmy’s face. “You’re not going to run away any more, are you?” Sampson asked him.

“No, sir. Kitty and I talked a lot when we were up there. She says the only way I’m going to make my life better is to start trusting some people, and go back to school, and work hard, and become responsible for myself.” He paused. “So can I start with you? Trusting you, I mean?”

Sampson looked at me and I looked back at him. “All right,” he said, after a while. Jimmy got up and hugged him, and then shyly went over to Aunt Mei-Mei, who rose and began to fuss over him.

A paramedic had taped Kitty’s ankle up, and after she and Sampson had said goodbye to everyone, she hobbled away with her dad, leaning on him. I was happy she had him in her life-and equally happy I had my own father and mother, my brothers and their families.

My father asked if I wanted to spend the night at their house, and there was a hopefulness in his eyes that I wanted to respond to. I knew that I would have to make more time for him and my mother in the future, to make sure that they knew how much I loved them before something else bad happened. But I had one more thing I had to do that night. My family was expanding beyond the one I had been born into.

I shook my head and said my good-byes. But instead of heading for home, I drove my truck up St. Louis Drive to Ruth Place, the entrance to Wa’ahila State Park. Along the way I passed a black pickup with red and orange flames painted along the side, parked by the side of the road.

There was one fire truck from the Twenty-Two company left up there, and a couple of cops cleaning up the road block. They left as I went over to the truck.

A single fireman was there, and I asked him if he knew Mike whereabouts. “I’m Detective Kanapa’aka. I’ve been working with him on this case.”

“Oh, I know who you are,” he said. “Let me see if I can raise Mike on the radio.”

I stood there in the damp, smoky air waiting for a response from Mike. “Yeah, he’s just up the road,” the fireman said, pointing uphill. “He’s on his way down.”

I took a deep breath. I didn’t realize until then how scared I had been. Scared for the safety of the innocent people on the mountain, Eli and Fran Harding and their kids, Kitty Sampson and Jimmy Ah Wong; for the houses in St. Louis Heights, homes of my parents and their friends and neighbors. For my brothers, out on the trails of the mountain with fire on one side and two crazy killers on the other. For myself. And for Mike.

I was on the other side of what my family must have felt about me, what the husbands, wives, boyfriends, girlfriends and family had to feel about my fellow officers every day. I wondered if this was what it was going to be like for both of us, each knowing that the other could be in danger at any time. Just the pain of being separated, of not having him close, was tough enough. I wondered how people dealt with it.

And then he was there, coming out of a stand of trees in his yellow fire suit, the helmet pushed back from his face, his curly black hair slicked down with perspiration, a smudge of soot on his right cheek. I remembered how I had seen him the night of the bombing, how I’d wanted to clean his cheek that night but had restrained myself.

I wasn’t holding back any more.

Mike went back up to the ruins of the Hardings’ cottage to collect evidence, and I drove down to The Queen’s Medical Center to check on everyone who’d been taken there. As I walked in the emergency room entrance, I met Gary Saunders, with his petite Chinese wife. “Good job up there,” I said. I reached out to shake his hand.

He hesitated for a minute, but then he shook mine. “Sheila White’s on the third floor, with a uniform on the door.”

I nodded. “You keep this guy out of trouble,” I said to his wife, and she smiled.

Lieutenant Sampson was standing outside a curtain in the ER talking on his cell phone. He snapped it shut as I approached. “How’s Kitty?” I asked.

“Just a bad sprain. We’re waiting for her to be discharged.”

I stood there awkwardly, not knowing what to say.

“She put you in a very bad position, Kimo. I understand that, and she and I are going to have a serious talk about her future. I can’t see her entering the police academy until she learns some self-control.”

A smile quirked the edges of his lips. “I don’t think you’re exactly the person to teach her that, though.”

“Jim,” Kitty said from behind the curtain.

“You did a good job out there today, Kimo. I just want you to know that I’m proud to have you on my squad.”

“Thanks, Lieutenant. That means a lot.”

“Jim, can we go yet?” Kitty said.

“Self-control, Kitty,” I said, sticking my head around the side of the curtain. “All things come in time.”

She jangled her bracelets and I laughed.

I found Fran, Eli and Caitlin Harding in the OR waiting room. As I arrived, a young haole doctor in green scrubs stepped out. “Mr. and Mrs. Harding?”

The Hardings jumped up and Fran squeezed Caitlin’s hand. “Cole came through like a champ,” the doctor said. “He’s going to be in recovery for a while, but the bullet missed all his vital organs. Kids bounce back fast.”