Fire Prayer (16 page)

“Your stomach bothering you?”

“A bit. Hope I'm not getting the flu.” He grimaced. “I don't have time.”

“You feeling nauseated?”

“I'll be okay.”

Storm took that as a yes. “I hate it when that happens.” She had a strong feeling if she questioned him any more, he'd just deny any problem. She didn't need to ask if he was short of breath. He was breathing a lot harder than she was, and they hadn't started climbing yet.

They reached the path along the river and made the turn toward the little bridge and the mountains. Storm tried hard not to keep looking over at him.

“Want to rest a minute? It's shadier here.” She sat under a hau tree, making sure to leave the place with the best shade for him.

He lowered himself with a groan. “I wanted to talk to you about some things.”

“I wanted to talk to you, too. I went to Jenny Williams' house the afternoon before she was killed.”

“That's what I heard. I figured it was you, by the description.”

“Hard to keep a secret in a small town.”

Niwa sighed. “Seems like someone's working at it, though.”

“Do you get the feeling it's an old secret?”

Niwa regarded her. “My wife had the same reaction, and she's rarely wrong about these things.” He looked at his watch and got slowly to his feet. “Let's walk and talk. What did you see at Jenny's house?”

He led the way across the bridge and along the narrow walkway back to the water.

As they walked, Storm told him about the argument she'd overheard. “I gathered she was fighting with Tanner, though she never said, and I didn't see him.”

“Why did you go there?”

Storm explained her high school friendship with Tanner, that she hadn't seen him for ages, but that he'd seen her name in the paper and called. “He asked me to look in on his son.”

“Tanner was upset by Luke's diabetes.” They had reached the beach, and sweat ran in rivulets down the side of his face.

“Some other things, too. Right?”

Niwa nodded slowly. “It's hard to make judgments in cases like this.”

They walked along quietly for a few moments. “I get the feeling you think Jenny was doing a pretty good job.”

“Mostly.” Niwa rubbed at his stomach. “I also heard she was seeing someone. That and Luke's recent diagnosis would have upset Tanner.” He burped, then swallowed hard. His steps faltered.

“You okay?”

“I think I'm coming down with something, dammit.”

This had to be a big admission. Storm handed him her water bottle. “Let's rest a minute.”

Hot sunlight baked the top of her dark hair and burned the back of her neck. She was probably turning the color of a rare steak, but Niwa was gray.

She was thirsty, too, but she had water in the car and knew she'd make the climb up the steep, winding path to the road without too much trouble. Niwa was another matter, and he was too big a man for her to move if he couldn't make it under his own power. She eyed the sinuous path's rise through the thick underbrush.

Niwa took a few sips from the bottle, then leaned over and put his hands on his knees. He took deep, careful breaths, and after a few minutes, stood upright. His color was marginally better. He drank a little more. “Let's go.”

Storm followed Niwa up the hill and with each step wondered what she would do if he fell. His breath wheezed and the back of his uniform shirt was soaking wet. So was his hair, and she couldn't see his face, but the color of the skin on the back of his neck wasn't pretty. He was getting up the hill on sheer will power.

Five feet from the top, he caught the toe of his boot in a twist of
kauna‘oa
vines and went down like a gut-shot bison. He hit the ground with a grunt and crash before Storm could cover the few feet between them.

“Detective Niwa,” she shouted and scrambled up the incline to his side. At least he was conscious and trying to struggle to his hands and knees. “Wait, get up slowly. It's too hot.” She grabbed an arm and helped him up.

“Sorry.” He gasped for air and kept his head down, arms braced on his legs. “Dizzy.”

“Take your time. No hurry.”

“Excuse—” His voice came out weak, but he lurched away from Storm into the thigh-high foliage around them, where he made a gagging sound, followed by the gurgling rush of vomit.

Storm winced and stepped a few feet away, trying to give the man some privacy. But she'd seen the start of what he'd thrown up, and it was red. Bright red, like blood.

He staggered out of the tangled plant life and tripped again. This time Storm caught his outstretched arms.

“I'm driving,” she said, and let him lean on her as he tottered the mercifully short distance up the last part of the slope and across the road. Storm unlocked the passenger-side door and let him fall into the front seat.

“Put on the seatbelt.” She ran around to the other side, started the car and rolled down all four electric windows simultaneously, as the car was nearly baking temperature.

She pulled a three-point U-turn and scattered gravel from the side of the road as she bumped onto the pavement.

“Slow down,” Niwa mumbled, and she did, because a car rounded a blind turn and nearly took her side-view mirror with it. The jackass driving gave her stink-eye.

Fifteen minutes later, Storm had chewed the inside of her lower lip until she could taste blood and increased her average speed from ten miles an hour on the hairpin turns to almost twenty-five on the marginally straighter road. Thank God no one else was out driving. In another fifteen minutes, she was doing sixty in a thirty-five zone. Where the devil were the cops when you needed them?

Except for an occasional moan, Niwa didn't open his eyes. Fortunately, he would grunt an acknowledgment to Storm's periodic frantic questions. “You okay?” she'd blurt every ten minutes or so. She wasn't sure what “Unnnh” meant, except that he was conscious.

Storm had never been to the Moloka‘i Hospital, but found it with only one wrong turn because Kaunakakai was a small town and Niwa revived enough to say two words: “Left here.”

She slowed to thirty miles an hour across the parking lot, which drew the anxious glances of three families and the middle finger from one old fellow with a walker. When she jerked to a stop near the front door, she leaped from the car and left both Niwa's and her doors open in her rush to get the detective inside.

The receptionist's eyes went wide as silver dollars when Storm and Niwa stumbled through the front doors, and she called for help. A husky male nurse hustled to Niwa's side, and about ten seconds later a tall man in coke-bottle thick glasses, a long white coat, and the posture of someone leaning into hurricane force winds soared around the corner like a giant seagull. When he got close enough, Storm saw the embroidery over his breast pocket.
Alan Goldbaum, M.D
.

“Gurney, stat!” Goldbaum shouted down the corridor in a voice that rattled windows, and with utmost care he eased Niwa from Storm's grasp and helped him onto the gurney that had materialized from smoke.

“Hey, Alan,” Niwa whispered.

“Dave, you putz,” Goldbaum said, and Storm saw him give Niwa's hand a gentle squeeze on their way down the hall.

Chapter Twenty-seven

Tanner got to Halawa a couple hours ahead of Skelly and the tour group and used the camp shower behind the canoe shed. By the time Skelly arrived with the two families from Michigan, nine people in all, Tanner felt presentable and fairly calm. He'd taken his medicine, and he frequently rubbed his fingers over the note in the pocket of his cargo shorts. Luke had let him know he would spend the night in Kaunakakai, and that he felt okay and had access to insulin. He'd written “see you soon,” which meant he would be at the cabin by sundown. If he'd written “see you later,” it would mean the next day. Some time ago, he and Luke worked out a simple code so that they could arrange outings Jenny didn't approve of.

Tanner always locked the cabin when he wasn't there. He even had a couple of indicators set up to let him know if anyone had been snooping around, but Luke knew all about them, and he was the only other person to know where the key was hidden. Tanner had a small generator so that the refrigerator and some of his equipment would work, and since Luke's diagnosis, he always kept a stock of insulin and some basic food supplies on hand.

Tanner helped Bob Crowder instruct the families on how to operate their kayaks safely and made sure all the younger kids were carefully paired with adults. The visitors seemed enthusiastic and willing to dive into the fun—or water, whatever was needed. Every now and then, Tanner would get a prima donna, someone whose acrylic nails would prevent her from paddling, or who had a fit when his Blackberry didn't connect with the office. He couldn't figure out what people like that were doing away from the Four Seasons, let alone on Moloka‘i.

This group looked like fun, and two of the boys were about Luke's age. If this worked the way he planned, he and Luke could meet up with them again on Sunday afternoon. Providing Luke felt okay. He'd have to play that by ear.

The paddle around the point went well, with only the sixteen-year-old girls capsizing and splashing happily around in the calm, blue water while they worked to right their boat. The boys wanted to join them, and Tanner told them to go ahead; he even encouraged the adults to go for a swim. Tanner had his own boat, which was filled with supplies, and he offered to hold the swimmers' kayaks, as he didn't want the boats to drift apart.

He was nearly as delighted as the swimmers to see three green sea turtles pop their heads warily out of the water to take a look at the commotion. Tanner knew they lived in the vicinity, and had hoped they'd show up. Two were big, probably forty or fifty years old. Even the small one was close to two feet across.

Sometimes on the trips, he saw humpback whales from a distance, but they visited Hawai‘i in the winter when the surf was often too big to paddle through, even for experienced boaters. Most of them left by the end of March, though Tanner always kept an eye out for stragglers, maybe a mother who was waiting for her calf to mature before making the long trek to Alaska. Porpoises were another thrilling surprise that visitors loved. So did Tanner, but he didn't see any that day.

***

The last thing Luke did before going to bed was to poke his finger and test his blood sugar with the device he'd lifted from the hospital. He did it first thing Saturday morning, too. The nurse had told him he needed one of his own, and she'd instructed him as to the range his blood sugar should fall into. When all this was over, he'd take the gadget back to the hospital. He supposed he'd still be using it if he was in the hospital, so he wasn't depriving anyone else of the contraption. Though he guessed hospital personnel wouldn't see it that way. He hoped he could explain later.

Luke was more concerned with how he was going to get to Halawa this time around. In the past, he'd hitchhiked, which was easy. Lots of people were willing to give a kid a ride, and many of them were neighbors or friends of his mom or dad. Except now he knew one of them had killed his mother. And that person believed Luke could identify him. Lord, he wished that were true.

When Luke woke up in the gray of early dawn, he sat up slowly to check how he felt that morning. He'd slept soundly, safely tucked away in Rolly's little apartment. He hadn't even known exactly where Rolly lived, and was pleasantly surprised to find he had a small clean place above the store, toward the back so that it wasn't obvious from the street.

Now he listened for signs that Rolly might be up. He wanted to thank him, though they'd talked last night. They'd discussed what Luke had seen, and how he was going to get to Halawa and when he needed to leave. Rolly didn't have a car, and rarely drove. Normally, Luke would hitchhike to the end of the road, then hike down and back into the valley. The cabin was a good two hours beyond the bay.

Rolly had provided Luke with a backpack and a sweatshirt that must have belonged to a relative or someone, because though it was large on Luke, Rolly couldn't have put an arm in a sleeve. He'd packed various supplies: four or five vials of insulin, sandwiches, snacks, and plenty of water and sports drinks for the trip.

But most of all, Rolly worried about how Luke didn't know whose shadowy figure he'd seen. “Close your eyes and remember. Tell me what you see,” Rolly said, his ubiquitous glass of ice water sweating in his huge hand.

Luke did, glad to have someone to share his sorrow and fear. He ignored his tear-stung eyes, as did Rolly, and tried to make his face the expressionless mask Rolly used. “He was big.”

“You sure it was a man? There are some big women.”

“The only woman this big is Aunty Makalani Pili‘au,” Luke said. “And the shadow was taller, but not as wide.” He held his arms out to show Rolly.

Rolly pushed his glasses up with his forefinger. “Aunty Makalani never hurt anyone her whole life. She only teaches hula, heals people with dance.”

“I know. Mom took classes for a while, but she stopped.”

“Why'd she stop?”

“I dunno. No time, I guess.” Luke shrugged. “She was going out with someone then. Uncle Dusty, I think.”

Rolly nodded. “Hula takes a lot of time, you do it right. Now, close your eyes and think.”

Luke took a deep breath and suppressed a shudder. “The window let in some light from outside, but the corner by the door was dark. He disappeared there.”

“You saw him move?”

Luke nodded, his eyes still closed.

“Was he holding anything?”

Luke sat absolutely still. “He held a white or light colored cloth. Like clothing.”

“Good.” Rolly took a drink of water. “You saw your mom, right?”

Luke couldn't stop a few tears from escaping, and Rolly acted like he didn't see them. “Yes,” he whispered. “On the floor.”

“Any of her clothing missing?”

“No.” The word strangled in Luke's throat.

“Okay. What was this guy wearing?”

“I don't know.” Luke slumped. “He was dark, except when the light came through the blinds.”

“If you had to guess, what do you think he was doing with that cloth?”

Now Luke's voice shook, and not even his self-control could stop it. “There was a lot of blood. I didn't know until I went up to her, but now I can't stop thinking about it.”

“Was the cloth just hanging there, like a rag? Like he was wiping up?”

“Not exactly.” Luke's eyes popped open. “It looked hard, like he was covering something.”

“Good. Close your eyes again.” Rolly gave Luke a moment to compose himself. “What else you see?”

“Sunglasses on top of his head.”

“Good, anything else?”

Luke's voice came out in a whisper. “A strip of light from the window went across him. He's got a tattoo. Like a tribal one.”

“Where?”

“On his arm, his biceps.” Luke's voice shook.

“Good, Luke. Open your eyes now.”

Luke turned his head so that Rolly wouldn't see him wipe a cheek dry.

“I been thinking,” Rolly said, and tipped his bottle for a long swallow. “You gotta catch a ride with some tourist tomorrow. Whoever did this is local, so you need to ride with someone from off-island.” He pointed to his water. “Helps me lose weight, you know? I try and drink twelve glasses minimum a day.”

“Yeah.” Luke's head bobbed gratefully. “You're doing good, man.”

“But I pee all day.” Rolly smiled, and Luke thought that it was the first time he'd ever seen Rolly's face change. “It's not the diabetes, either.”