Death in hilo, p.10
Death in Hilo, page 10
Elle bit her lip and thought for a moment, looking at Patience searchingly. Then Elle decided to take Patience into her confidence.
“I can explain some things,” Elle said. “But not everything. And almost none of this is public. But let’s put our heads together. You may know things I don’t.”
They began with what Kawika believed: that two years before Parkes became a body thrown off Shark Cliff, he’d helped murder a man named Thomas Gray aboard Gray’s fishing boat. Elle knew from Kawika that Patience had been the first to suggest Gray must’ve been murdered—by the resort developer Ralph Fortunato—and not drowned in a fishing accident. Gray had sold Fortunato the land for his planned Big Island resort. The motive Patience and Kawika had ascribed to the killing was that Fortunato and Gray had colluded to defraud Fortunato’s investors and Fortunato didn’t want Gray available to testify against him if the feds came after him, which they’d done previously in Washington for a resort Fortunato had been developing there.
Elle pointed out that Kawika and Patience had parted long before the Handcuffed Haole was identified as D. K. Parkes. And only later, Elle explained, had Kawika guessed that Parkes had been Fortunato’s accomplice in the Thomas Gray murder—a conclusion he’d mentioned to no one, not even Tanaka. No one until Elle, that is.
Yet neither of them could puzzle out why different women had telephoned recently to ask Patience and Sammy about Parkes so many years after his death, and why those women seemed interested solely in whether Parkes had children.
Impulsively taking a risk, and not at all sure Kawika would approve, Elle revealed to Patience the still-unreleased news that Parkes did have a child—Keoni. And that after those curious phone calls to Sammy and Patience, Keoni had turned up dead, a headless corpse in a Honolulu park.
It was easy to speculate that some connection might exist between the calls and Keoni’s murder. But did the murder of Keoni relate to the fate of his father? Neither Elle nor Patience could guess. Elle didn’t mention that Keoni had worked for the TMT. It seemed more important that Keoni was D. K.’s son and that both had been murdered—Keoni after two people had inquired about whether D. K. Parkes had children.
After pondering these mysteries inconclusively, Elle and Patience decided to return to Jarvis’s bedside. “He must be wondering if we got into a catfight,” Elle joked.
“A catfight! Not a term I thought a journalism professor would use these days,” Patience teased. They left the flower-fragrant courtyard and stepped back into the antiseptic corridors of the care center. Jarvis awoke when they reentered his room.
“Sorry to leave you alone,” Elle said. She took his hand and kissed him on the head. “But I hope you didn’t worry. Patience and I got along just fine.” To demonstrate this, Elle released his hand and gave Patience a hug. Although Patience seemed surprised, she hugged Elle back. Both women smiled in Jarvis’s direction.
Then Elle handed Patience her phone. “Here,” she said. “Why don’t you give me your number?” Without hesitation, Patience took the phone and began typing. Elle hoped the gesture would further reassure her father-in-law. She felt moved that Patience had continued to be a friend to Jarvis through the years, especially with his immobility and near muteness.
“I just had an idea,” Elle said as Patience handed back the phone. “Would you be willing to come to O‘ahu sometime and speak to my journalism class? If you talked about your career, about freelancing, about bouncing between Hawai‘i and the mainland, it would be so valuable for the students, open their eyes to possibilities they might never imagine otherwise. For years my speakers have only been local reporters and editors. I’d be so grateful!”
Patience smiled. “Of course,” she said. “I’m flattered you’d ask. I don’t get to O‘ahu often enough, and that would be a great reason to go.”
“Terrific!” Elle replied delightedly. “I’ll call you and we’ll set it up.”
Then, with another kiss to Jarvis’s head and another squeeze of his hand, Elle said she’d leave them to continue the conversation she’d interrupted. “But I’ll see you soon, Jarvis,” Elle promised. “Take you to the Saturday market in Waimea, yeah?”
Yuh-yuh-yuh, Jarvis replied. Yuh-yuh-yuh.
* * *
“So,” Patience resumed when Elle had departed, taking the bedside chair again and holding Jarvis’s hand. “Where was I? Oh yes—I was saying I’m going to write an article about the Thirty Meter Telescope Project. I’m learning from Hawaiians about Earth Mother, Papa, and Sky Father, Wākea, connecting to one another at the summit of Mauna Kea. And from astronomers about Chile and the Canary Islands and space telescopes and why they aren’t substitutes for the TMT. Most people on the mainland know nothing about the TMT, I’m guessing. And anyone who’s heard of it probably thinks it’s a simple fight between Hawaiians and astronomers. But from what I can tell, it’s more complicated.”
She looked at Jarvis for a reaction, as if forgetting momentarily that he couldn’t display one.
“What do you think about the TMT, Jarvis?” she asked, knowing he was a proud Hawaiian by ancestry and inclination, well schooled in Hawaiian culture and beliefs. “You opposed to it?”
Yuh-yuh-yuh, he said. Yuh-yuh-yuh. Patience felt gratified that Jarvis answered yes-or-no questions for her, his longtime friend, even if he couldn’t or wouldn’t for his caregivers and most others.
“I’m not surprised. But let me ask you something Elle reminded me of just now,” she said, veering off the topic. “You knew Thomas Gray, right? When he was your neighbor in Puakō?”
Yuh-yuh-yuh.
“Kawika thinks Thomas Gray was murdered—murdered by Ralph Fortunato.” She didn’t add and I think so too. “Elle just told me Kawika believes Fortunato’s accomplice was a man named D. K. Parkes. Did you know him too?”
Yuh-yuh-yuh.
“Oh, that’s interesting. It seems his son Keoni Parkes was murdered in Honolulu recently. Did you know Keoni?”
This time she got a negative: Nuh-nuh-nuh.
“What about the children of Thomas Gray? I remember reading about them in his obituary. Both of them already adults back then. You knew them when they were growing up in Puakō?”
Yuh-yuh-yuh.
“Also interesting,” Patience said. “I wonder what became of them?”
It wasn’t a yes-or-no question. Jarvis couldn’t help her with it. And he couldn’t shrug.
Patience picked up her phone and made herself a note to check.
16
Waikoloa Village
Kawika had seen Tanaka looking ashen only once before. But he certainly looked ashen now. It was Saturday morning. Elle had gone off to visit Jarvis while Kawika and Tanaka met in a nearly empty Waikoloa Village coffee shop. A convenient spot, Kawika had thought in suggesting it: nice ambience, wood paneled, pleasant aromas. And they too could drop in and visit Jarvis once the two of them had talked.
As they settled themselves, it seemed to Kawika that apart from the drained and somber look on Terry’s face, Tanaka hadn’t aged much. His skin had wrinkles Kawika didn’t remember, but Tanaka was still small and wiry and flexible. He sat with one heel on the seat of his chair, raising his knee to just below his chin, his other leg crossed under him—almost like a yoga position, Kawika thought. Yet today Tanaka also slumped where he sat, clearly morose. His normally dignified bearing had deserted him.
Kawika had often talked with Tanaka by phone—countless times, really—for more than a decade. But he’d seen him in person only rarely. The last time had been two years earlier, when Jarvis suffered his stroke. Kawika had rushed to the Big Island and found Tanaka at Jarvis’s hospital bedside. Tanaka had looked drained and somber then too.
“Let’s start with what we know,” Kawika suggested. “Then we can consider how to handle Ana’s investigation. It might take a while; more than one cup of coffee for me and a cup of tea for you. But we have to make a decision, Terry—together. So, maybe a full pot for you?” He smiled, trying to lighten the mood.
Tanaka nodded glumly. “We can go about this however you want, Kawika,” he said, conceding the necessity of it. “But I know where it’s going to end up. You and I are both going to be in the soup.” Not in deep shit, Kawika noted. Even in crisis, Tanaka didn’t use profanity.
“Maybe,” Kawika replied. “But not if we both tell Ana the same story. That’s the decision we have to make.”
“How can we tell her the same story?” Tanaka asked with asperity. “You were right, I was wrong. It’s all going to come out.”
“Terry, don’t assume that. Let’s take this one step at a time. The two cases Ana’s looking at, Fortunato and D. K. Parkes, are both from 2002. Now someone’s murdered Keoni Parkes in Honolulu. And Keoni turns out to be the son of D. K. Parkes.”
“Right.”
“But we don’t know Keoni’s murder is linked to his father’s, do we? Maybe it’s linked to the TMT or to Keoni’s personal life—or possibly even the Slasher, although I doubt it. The point is, unless we discover that Keoni’s murder somehow relates to the murder of his father, you and I just need to decide what we’re going to tell Ana about Fortunato and D. K. Parkes. And I have a suggestion for that.”
Tanaka sighed. “Okay, Kawika. But there’s something I have to tell you first. Something I need you to understand. When I gave my press conference after charging Cushing, I really did believe Cushing’s hit man had killed Fortunato. But when you and I talked the next day, I understood what you were suggesting. You didn’t come right out and say it, but you didn’t have to.” He looked at Kawika almost pitiably now, as if seeking forgiveness.
This was a completely different Tanaka from Kawika’s experience, a Tanaka he’d never had a hint of. “Terry,” Kawika reassured him. “If I’d reached you a day earlier, things might have been different. But I was detained, as you know—and it wasn’t by Patience Quinn.”
Tanaka looked surprised. “It wasn’t?”
“No, it wasn’t,” Kawika declared. “I had to see you face-to-face, because there was evidence I couldn’t tell you about by phone; our phones weren’t secure. I couldn’t even tell you that by phone.”
“I finally guessed that, about our phones,” Tanaka said with a nod. “But what I want to tell you, Kawika, the important thing, I still haven’t said—”
“Terry, you don’t have to—”
“But I do,” Tanaka insisted. “I do. I was blinded by anger, Kawika. Anger at Cushing. Very unprofessional, getting angry at a suspect. But I was angry because he tried to have you killed. Could’ve killed Ku‘ulei too.”
“Yes,” Kawika agreed. “I think about that almost every day. Ku‘ulei was only eleven. She probably doesn’t think about it quite so often now. But she sure did at the time!” He gave a small chuckle, trying to lighten things a bit.
But Tanaka seemed close to tears, wrenchingly for Kawika, who’d long recognized—a recognition that now hit him again, like a punch to the solar plexus—how much he owed and admired and even loved this older man, his mentor and former colleague, despite how they’d been separated and in part estranged by time, distance, and the Fortunato case, a painful and indigestible lump for them both.
“You came so close to being killed,” Tanaka went on. “I just wanted to throw the book at Cushing. I wanted him sent away for a lot more than fifteen years.”
Kawika laid a hand on Tanaka’s arm. “I know you always looked out for me, Terry,” he assured him. “You always protected me.”
“But I—” Tanaka began.
Kawika stopped him. He wasn’t Tanaka’s protégé anymore, or even his junior colleague. He was his equal, if not more than that now, and in the matter of Carvalho’s review, effectively his guidance counselor and coach.
“No, Terry, listen,” he began. “You’ve confided in me now. And I hear you. But charging Cushing for Fortunato’s murder was still perfectly reasonable, given the evidence. All of it pointed to Cushing.”
Tanaka, unconvinced, shook his head.
“Terry,” Kawika said firmly, “what matters now is this: we have to make a decision. We don’t have a choice; we can’t escape it. We must decide. This awful case coming to life again—it’s not our doing, it’s Cushing and Sammy talking to that reporter and Ana starting her investigation. We just have to agree on what to tell her. We have to get our stories straight.”
Tanaka’s eyes widened. Suddenly he looked more alert, but possibly more alarmed too, Kawika thought.
“Maybe it’s time for another cup of coffee,” Kawika said, rising and nodding toward the counter. “More tea for you?” A few people were in line. More time for Tanaka to collect himself, Kawika hoped. Kawika joined the line while Tanaka, already full of tea, visited the men’s room.
With the single barista working at island speed, by the time they’d regained their seats with another round of hot drinks, almost ten minutes had passed. They’d chatted about other things once Tanaka joined Kawika waiting in line. Kawika saw that Tanaka had indeed collected himself—a bit.
“Now here’s a key point, Terry,” he said, leaning toward his mentor and picking up where he’d left off. “It’s really important. No one was harmed by your charging Cushing. Fortunato was a killer who deserved what he got. So was Cushing.”
Tanaka nodded to concede the point. “Not sure that’s really relevant, though,” he said. “I didn’t do what I should have done.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Kawika resumed, laying his hand on Tanaka’s forearm again. “In the end, the Fortunato murder didn’t add a single day to Cushing’s sentence. Plus he’s getting out early, for what that’s worth.”
Tanaka frowned, as if struggling to follow Kawika’s logic. “So what are you saying?”
Kawika grasped Tanaka’s arm again. “Just this, Terry. I’m saying we stick with your original story. The one you gave at your press conference after you arrested Cushing. We both tell Ana the same thing. That’s our key decision. We tell her we checked all kinds of suspects in the Fortunato case, but none of those suspects did it. And then we got the hit man’s confession, fingering Cushing—just like the physical evidence.”
“But you knew the Fortunato part of the confession was false,” Tanaka began. “Intentionally misleading, anyway.”
“Yes, I knew. But no one else did. No one. You didn’t know it yourself.”
Tanaka shook his head again. “Not when I read it,” he admitted. “Not before my press conference. But I knew it the next day, after you and I met and I read it again. Even then, I still let Cushing be prosecuted for that murder. That was more than a mistake, Kawika. It was probably a crime.”
“But Terry, I never gave you another name,” Kawika insisted. “There’s nothing in the files about any suspect who remained plausible after our investigation, other than Cushing. There’s no indication anywhere, except between you and me, that I ever disagreed with you about Fortunato’s murderer. It’s our secret, Terry. We have to keep it that way.”
Kawika remained convinced, if only barely, that he’d done the right thing in 2002 by not calling out Tanaka’s mistake when Tanaka charged Cushing for Fortunato’s murder. Kawika had been very young. He hadn’t been willing to contradict, much less expose, his mentor. He’d had other reasons too. To come clean now would mean exposing Tanaka not just for having made a mistake but for failing to correct it. Kawika couldn’t do that to him.
Moreover, Kawika had let the killer’s accomplices go. Kawika had known who they were—three of them, at least. Tanaka did not. Kawika guessed they’d still be alive. To set the record straight now would mean having to expose and prosecute them all, because there was no statute of limitations for murder in Hawai‘i.
Finally—and even he couldn’t tell how much this affected his thinking—to admit being part of a twelve-year cover-up in one of Hawai’i’s most notorious murder cases wouldn’t help his chances of becoming chief of police in Honolulu. Not at all.
No, Kawika thought, he’d trapped himself long ago. What he needed now was to make sure the past remained the past, as dead as Fortunato himself. That meant Tanaka had to go along.
Tanaka looked searchingly into Kawika’s eyes. But he seemed almost repelled, not relieved. Accusation shone from his gaze. “Kawika,” he said, “I used to call you Mr. Clean. What’s happened to you over there in Honolulu? You were never this kind of cop before.”
Kawika felt as if he’d been slapped. But he had to keep going. He grasped both of Tanaka’s arms, shaking them lightly to emphasize his point. “Terry, you protected me for years. Fiercely. You’re my role model—my hero, really. Please let me return the favor. Let’s just stick with the official story: Cushing’s hit man killed Fortunato. Sammy can go pound sand on one of his retirement beaches. He’s got nothing to show or tell Ana but his own suspicions. She won’t believe him.”
Tanaka’s face shut down, went blank. “No, she won’t believe him,” he said in a flat tone. “And she won’t believe us either, Kawika.” He stood and began to return his teapot and cup to the counter.
Kawika didn’t know what to do. He realized Tanaka didn’t agree with him, couldn’t be counted on to reaffirm what he’d said and done originally. Maybe he would think it over? Kawika hoped for that much, at least.
But then, turning to face him again, Tanaka added, “So, what lies shall we tell Ana about D. K. Parkes?”
17
Waimea
“If you’re up to it, Dr. Phillips, we hope you’ll tell us more about the fight over the TMT,” Kawika began gently, once they were all seated at Dr. Phillips’s Waimea home. “We need to interview members of the different groups, starting with their leaders.”
“Why TMT?” she asked, sounding surprised but still subdued, still weary. “Someone killed Keoni in Honolulu—don’t you think someone from his personal life did it? That’s my only solace, that he didn’t die because of TMT. I mean, what’s the scene in Honolulu for single gay guys, for example? Could it have been a bad hookup or something?”
