And the Sea Will Tell (20 page)

For weeks now, Kit had been praying long and hard that Mac and Muff would be found on Palmyra—stranded, blazing mad over losing their boat, maybe a little hungry and parched, but alive. After hearing the distressing news from the search party, however, she realized she might never again see her brother or Muff.

Desperate for any information about what had happened on Palmyra, Kit agonized over whether she should contact Jennifer Jenkins in jail. She finally decided that she had no choice. She could not rest until she talked to the one person available who might know what happened to Mac and Muff.

Even if that person might have had a hand in whatever horrible fate had befallen them.

N
OVEMBER
7, 1974

K
IT WAS
uneasy as she sat across from Jennifer in the Honolulu jail visiting room, looking directly into the wide-eyed gaze of someone who she felt probably knew everything but hadn’t admitted to anything. If at all possible, she was determined to hide her suspicions.

“Has anyone told you about the sharks?” Jennifer asked.

Kit nodded. “Yes, Mac and Muff wrote about them.”

“They’re real bad in the lagoon. I think, you know, that’s what might have happened. After they flipped their dinghy and fell into the water—well, the sharks—”

Kit tensed noticeably, clutching her purse.

Jennifer changed course. “As I said, we found the Zodiac turned over, upside down. I’m sorry.” She lowered her head. “I’m really sorry. It was such a tragedy. Mac and Muff were wonderful people. They were good to us.”

Kit could see that Jennifer had a bearing of unaffected friendliness. She obviously got along well with others—even the jail matron who brought her in seemed to like her. Kit could not easily picture Jennifer in the act of murder. Then again, she reminded herself, this could all be a very skillful act, the ploy of a manipulative little bitch who had always known how to use people. There was a slippery, evasive quality to Jennifer, or so Kit thought.

Mac’s sister left the jail more puzzled than ever. Jennifer’s story simply didn’t add up. Kit well knew that the Zodiac, designed by the famed French oceanographer Jacques Cousteau, was reputed to be the most stable dinghy in the world. In fact, she had never heard of one flipping over, even in the hands of children or rank amateurs. Moreover, if Mac and Muff had actually disappeared in some sort of freak accident, why hadn’t Jennifer and her boyfriend reported the incident as soon as they reached Hawaii?

Kit was firmly convinced that Jennifer was holding something back.

N
OVEMBER
8, 1974
H
AWI
, H
AWAII

A
ROUND NOONTIME
, Buck Walker sat down at the picnic table beneath the shade of a banyan tree and spread out that day’s
Honolulu Advertiser
. He was interested in only one story—and it was prominently featured on the front page, along with head shots of him and Jennifer. Even his two dogs had become media celebrities since being impounded by animal regulation officials. Dozens of people had called about adopting them.
^*
Now that the FBI knew his real name, a detailed all-points bulletin had been issued for his arrest. The formal charge: boat theft. But the article focused on unexplained disappearances, rumors of conflict, and a possible double murder on an obscure, exotic island.

For ten days he’d been on the move. No one had noticed him come ashore after swimming the length of Ala Wai harbor. Luckily, he’d had some money in the swim trunks he’d been wearing under his trousers. He’d walked dripping wet into a clothing store and bought an aloha shirt, shorts, a straw hat, and wraparound sunglasses. Looking like a tourist, he’d lost himself in the large crowd of vacationers, occasionally glancing back to make sure no one had recognized him. He’d crashed at a friend’s apartment that night.

The next day, he’d taken a bus to the airport, bought a plane ticket under the name of J. Evans, and, right under the nose of a Honolulu cop holding his picture, passed through the gate and boarded an Aloha Airlines jet for the short hop to Hilo. When he arrived, he’d walked from the sleepy airport to the nearest hotel, about a mile away—cab drivers, he knew, were among the first people the police contacted when looking for someone on the run. The next day, he popped in on Gina Allen at her little frame house in a run-down section of Hilo. She had broken up with her boyfriend and seemed pleased to see Buck. They spent the night together. The following morning she lent him some camping equipment and went shopping for a few other essentials for hiding out—food, matches, cigarettes, hunting knife, eating utensils, boots, jeans, shirts, and various toiletries. Later that day, she drove him thirty miles up Saddle Road into the island interior and dropped him off in the Kohala Mountains.

Buck camped out for a week in the desolate volcanic range, which has peaks almost fourteen thousand feet high, reading Carlos Castaneda and smoking marijuana. Once, stoned out of his mind, he stripped off his clothes and ran joyously through the Kohala forest during a light, warm rain, dancing to his own internal rhythms, feeling as wild and free as the occasional white-tailed deer he spotted. He could look down upon smooth black fields of pahoehoe lava or imagine that a pile of stones was a heiau, an abandoned Polynesian temple. But his physical comfort soon became a priority, as on Palmyra. He decided to chance going into town to get a hot meal and a good night’s sleep on a real bed. He picked Hawi, the northernmost community on the Big Island, relatively isolated up near Upolu Point. Two roads led into the village—population 797—both unpaved and often impassable in bad weather. The sidewalks were wooden, suggesting a town right out of America’s Old West. After hitching his way down Kohala Mountain Road, Buck checked into Room 19 at the St. Luke’s Hotel, giving his name as Joe Evans. The unpretentious room cost $7.28 a night, and he paid for three nights in advance. It was Friday, November 8, as he perused the morning paper at the picnic table.

Though Buck hadn’t noticed—because he was new in town himself—several strangers were eating lunch right then at the St. Luke’s café. When they finished, they showed the waitress a photo of a man in a clerical collar.

“He’s staying here,” she said excitedly. “In fact, he bought a paper just before you came in.” Pointing out the window, she added: “That’s him right there across the street, sitting under the tree.”

By the time Buck looked up to see them coming, it was too late.

“FBI! Don’t move!”

Several revolvers pointed at his chest.

“Are you Bob Walker?” an agent asked.

“Buck,” he corrected, closing the newspaper. “Yes, I’m Buck Walker.”

“You’re under arrest,” said FBI Special Agent Henry Burns.

“No shit.”

Buck was put in the backseat of a rented car, his wrists handcuffed under his legs.

Burns, thickset, about forty, climbed in beside Buck and read Buck his rights. That formality over, the agent sat back. “Mind answering a few questions?”

For Burns, the long moment that followed was tense with uncertainty. Stony silence is a suspect’s strongest defense.

But Walker shrugged flippantly, with an air of arrogance. “Depends on the questions.”

“Where’ve you been staying?”

“St. Luke’s.”

“Mind if we search your room?”

“I don’t care.”

Burns told two members of his team to search the hotel room.

“You forgot to tell me why I’m under arrest,” Buck said sarcastically. “J. Edgar Hoover wouldn’t approve.”

“Boat theft. We’ve also got a fugitive warrant charging you with failure to appear.”
^*

The old drug charge that had started it all.

“I’d like to ask you some questions about the Grahams,” the agent said, taking out a small, creased notebook. “We’re investigating their disappearance.”

“Who said they disappeared?” Buck asked coyly.

“Jennifer Jenkins has made a statement.”

“Ask away.”

“To start with, when did you meet Jennifer?”

“In late ’72, I guess.” Buck looked off into the distance. “Been together ever since.”

“You were living together?”

“Uh-huh.”

“How did you get to Palmyra Island?”

“By boat,” Buck said, smirking. “Know another way?”

“Your own boat?”

Buck nodded. “We bought her on Maui a couple years ago and fixed her up. Named her the
Iola
.”

“When was the last time you saw the Grahams?”

“On August 30th.”

“What happened that day?”

“I met Mac on shore and he invited us over to the
Sea Wind
for dinner that night. There was just the four of us on the island then. Jenny and I went over there about six o’clock that night. The Grahams weren’t there. We waited about half an hour, then went aboard the
Sea Wind
. I remember Mac said they were going fishing for our dinner, so we just figured that they were late getting back.”

“Did you see them leave to go fishing?”

“Yeah. They went in their Zodiac.”

“What were they wearing?”

“Mac was wearing a T-shirt and shorts. Mrs. Graham was wearing a bathing suit and hat of some kind.”

“You never saw them again?”

“No. We spent the night on the
Sea Wind
. In the morning, we went out and hunted for them. We found the Zodiac overturned about a hundred yards west of the
Sea Wind
.”

“If it was only a hundred yards away, you must have been able to see the overturned dinghy without having to search for it,” the agent said without missing a beat.

“It must have been farther away than that. Maybe half a mile.”

“What did you do next?”

“Went over to the dinghy and turned it upright. Nothing seemed to be damaged. I took several pulls on the engine and it turned over. We spent the next three days looking for the Grahams. Never found a trace of them.”

“Did you make any attempt to call for help?”

“We didn’t have a two-way radio. There was a radio on the
Sea Wind
, but we didn’t know how to use it.”

“So, you left Palmyra on the
Sea Wind?
”

“We were going to tow the
Iola
to Fanning. We were using the
Sea Wind
’s inboard motor to get through the channel, with the
Iola
in tow, when the
Iola
got hung up on the reef. We couldn’t get her off, so I cut our line and we kept going through the channel. We anchored the
Sea Wind
out past the reef, and I went back in the dinghy to try to free the
Iola
. I put up the sail and tried to get the wind to help her break free. But it didn’t work. We took all our things off and put them on the
Sea Wind
.”

“You just left the
Iola
on the reef?”

“Yes.”

“And sailed off on the
Sea Wind?
”

“Right.”

“So, you headed directly for Hawaii on the
Sea Wind?
”

Buck nodded. He obviously felt he had gotten past the hard part. “Kauai, actually. We spent the night there, then sailed the next day to Oahu.”

The other agents returned to the car. They had found nothing of any value as evidence in the hotel room.

“Did you do anything to the
Sea Wind
after reaching Hawaii?” Burns asked as they pulled away from the curb.

“Yeah. We repainted her.”

“Why?”

“Because she needed a paint job.”

“Why did you take the name off the boat?”

Buck shrugged nonchalantly, as if he was beginning to lose interest in the conversation.

“You say the
Sea Wind
needed to be repainted,” Burns continued.

“We’d been rammed by a swordfish on the way back to Hawaii. Its bill went through the hull. I had to go over the side to patch the hole so it wouldn’t leak so much.”

“That’s why the whole boat needed to be repainted?” Burns asked disbelievingly.

“Yeah.”

“When did you come to the Big Island?”

“About a week ago.”

“Why?”

Buck looked at the agent as if he were a piece of dog meat.

“Because I didn’t want to get caught, stupid.”

The agent looked up from his notebook. “So, how’d you dispose of their bodies?” he asked abruptly.

“Fuck off.”

So ended the FBI’s first, and as it would turn out to be, last question-and-answer session with Buck Walker.

S
UNDAY
, N
OVEMBER
10, 1974

A
DOZEN OR SO
people, all deeply tanned and dressed in sports clothes, gathered quietly aboard the
Journeyer
for a short trip in choppy seas. Their collective mood was decidedly somber but not mournful. By common agreement this was not to be a funeral service, but rather an informal Hawaiian “service of aloha.” On the other hand, though Mac and Muff were officially still only missing, not dead, like one coming out of anesthesia, everyone had slowly begun to face the sobering reality that it was time to bid a final farewell to Mac and Muff.

Bernard Leonard, wearing Bermudas and a bright-colored shirt, shut down the motor when they were a couple miles off world-famous Diamond Head. The boat bobbed up and down, and for a long moment the only noise was water slapping against the hull. Then a tall, graying man wearing sunglasses moved forward. An experienced yachtsman and coach of the University of Hawaii’s sailing team, he was also a minister.

“On behalf of the families of Malcolm and Eleanor Graham,” the minister began, “I should like to thank each of you for joining us in this service of aloha.”

Kit, wearing a stylish sundress, was thankful that both mothers had decided against traveling to Hawaii. Elderly and frail, facing devastating loss as well as the strain of not knowing what had happened, they would surely have found the trip unbearable.
Yes, thank God they didn’t come
, Kit thought.

“Mac and Muff and the
Sea Wind
sailed the oceans of the world together for many years,” the minister went on. “Mac was a supremely capable seaman. A man for all seasons and all situations. A man content with life, yet not completely satisfied. There still were new horizons, and new landfalls beckoning him.

“Muff, I have learned, never felt quite so much at home upon the sea. She found power to overcome a fear of the great expanses of the oceans they traversed, in her confidence and trust in the man she loved. She would sail anywhere with Mac.”

Kit could no longer hold back the tears.

“Their dream, their quest, was so wrongfully interrupted at Palmyra Island. But God has not forsaken Mac and Muff.

“We cannot fully understand the sad events that have led us to this service. We cannot know yet precisely what occurred at Palmyra, nor do we know for certain whether they are indeed dead, or—hope against hope—somehow still alive. But we can believe that wherever Mac and Muff are, God is watching over them.”

The minister offered a prayer.

They all bowed their heads and held hands. Experienced sea legs held them steady as the boat lurched in the waves.

“Oh God, we ask Thee to extend Thy loving arms to all those who have known and cared for Mac and Muff Graham. We pray that justice may be done, but ask that Thou would purge our hearts of the vindictiveness that would poison our souls and deny Thy concern and grace even for the incarcerated.”

Leonard cringed at those last words. They were too close to Gandhi’s admonition that one should hate the sin, but love the sinner. Leonard didn’t feel capable of such a noble dichotomy right now. His friends Mac and Muff had obviously been murdered, and their beloved
Sea Wind
stolen. Leonard wanted justice, not mercy.

Kit was no less vindictive now. A few days earlier, a Honolulu newspaper photo had shown a handcuffed Jennifer being escorted to a court hearing by U.S. Marshals. Something about the scene disturbed Kit, but she couldn’t immediately put her finger on it. With a horrified gasp, she suddenly realized it was the short-sleeved blouse the suspect wore. A peasant blouse with a distinctive embroidered yoke, it had been one of Muff’s favorites. From that moment on, Kit despised Jennifer Jenkins.

“Particularly, we pray for Mac and Muff,” the minister continued. “If, as seems to us inevitable, they indeed are gone from this life, then we commit their spirits into Thy sure hand. Lead them to their high island. Amen.”

Leonard fired up the
Journeyer
’s motor and the boat began a slow circle. Everyone stood silently at the railing and, one by one, dropped purple and white vanda orchids and red-and-white carnation leis over the side.

As Kit watched, the sprinkling of flowers began to drift away upon the wind-blown surface of the water, much as, she thought, her brother and Muff had been taken by currents and winds over the horizon to a far-off island named Palmyra on their final voyage.

S
EATTLE
, W
ASHINGTON

H
ER FIRST
evening home, Kit went through a box of letters from Mac and Muff. Those from Palmyra were already held together in one pile by a single rubber band. She put them aside. The authorities in Hawaii had asked her to make photostatic copies of them so that they could read the Grahams’ own account of their relationship with the couple on the
Iola
.

Also, Kit still had all the letters Mac and Muff had sent her from various other locales while they were on their honeymoon cruise. Nearly six years’ worth. She took a stack of them and sat down on the couch in the downstairs den.

On the wall were a mask painted with vegetable dyes and a carved wooden spear, trophies brought by Mac from some distant corner of the world. Kit smiled. It was an endearing memory: Mac holding the mask to his face and hopping goofily around the room, performing what he swore was an authentic tribal dance.

She began reading. In one letter, dated July 16, 1962, Mac had written to her, “I love life and living so much that the constant realization of its passing hurts.”

She picked up another letter, written in the fall of 1966, when Mac and Muff were heading up the west coast of Mexico on the final leg of their round-the-world trip. At the time, Mac had asked her not to tell their parents this story. It still took her breath away.

Kit let the letter drop into her lap. They had made it that time, in part because they were a good team. She knew they had also survived a South Pacific typhoon, a perilous journey through the Red Sea, and the close call with a pirate ship in the Mediterranean. How could they have disappeared now, not in a storm at sea, but on an idyllic island?

Kit found another letter, which Mac had written to himself. He titled it “Unconnected Fragments,” and it was one of her favorites. It revealed a sensitivity in Mac that he did not show everyone. He had written it shortly after their father’s death in 1973. A few “Fragments”:

Kit took solace in the fact that her brother, more than any person she knew, had lived life the way he wanted. She went to a nearby bookcase and returned with a worn photo album. She sat down and opened to a page that had a square black-and-white picture of her parents on their honeymoon, looking so young, so hopeful for the future. Daddy was an engineering student at MIT when they got married, and Mother was attending Miss Windsor’s, an exclusive Boston finishing school. On the same page was a photo of the spacious family home where the bridegroom was born. Most of the money in the family had come from Grandfather (Malcolm) Graham, who at one time owned Remington Rand, only to quickly sell it for a profit. He became a Wall Street investor, and when the stock market crashed in 1929, Grandpa lost a fortune, though when he died in the mid-1940s, he left trusts for Mac and Kit (both then in their teens). At his direction, the trusts were not distributed to them until the mid-1960s. The inheritance tax laws in those days encouraged the skipping of a generation, so their father received nothing. (When she and Mac finally received their grandfather’s trust assets—$120,000 each—they decided to buy their father a sailboat. “I’m too old for sailing,” he protested. “Get me something with a motor.” So they got him a new twenty-six-foot Chris-Craft cabin cruiser. By then, Mac had already bought the
Sea Wind
with his uncle’s inheritance. And Kit, herself a sailing aficionado, had followed her brother’s lead and, with her own inheritance from their uncle, bought a smaller, more modest vessel good for day sailing on Puget Sound.)

On the next page was a snapshot of Kit, age two, playing with a toy train set, on December 25, 1930. It had been her last Christmas as an only child. Mac was born on April 13, 1931, and there was a picture of him taken with Mother the following December 25. Kit read her own unevenly penned caption: “And then my brother joined us.”

Pictures of Kit and Mac together filled the album’s pages. Here was one she had always loved—the two of them, ages eleven and nine, at the beach in high summer. Dressed in old-fashioned tank-top swim suits, they were lying on their stomachs in the sand, flashing the camera identical pixie grins. Mac had made an enlargement of the picture and kept it in an album aboard the
Sea Wind
. Kit’s original had faded, but she ran her fingers gently across the old print, as if reading Braille, as if touch could restore this lost moment in her life. “Oh, Mac, we had such great fun.”

Kit looked up, and gazed unseeing at the African mask on the wall. “Mac, Mac,” she whispered, shutting the album gently.