Something has licked my heel
Like a sturgeon
And I have a problem
With my right foot and my life.
FBI Headquarters, Honolulu
At 8 P.M., a late evening meeting was called by Parry, who'd rounded up the principal agents working the case. With Jessica looking on. Parry warned that they were a far cry from a conviction against Hal Ewelo as either Oniiwah's murderer or the serial killer who'd been terrorizing the city.
“ Having any of you rousted Ewelo before? Have any of you given consideration to the possibility that Ewelo could be the Trade Winds Killer before his arrest on the Oniiawh charges?”
Amazingly enough, several had pursued leads along this line after tips and informants had suggested the notion, including Tony, but he, like the others, had come up empty-handed. “Except for his petty crimes, drugs and prostitution,” said Tony, “Hal Ewelo's clean. No murder charges. Always has an alibi that checks, and he doesn't own a history of violence reserved for women only, since he spreads it around.”
Jessica had to agree that Ewelo did not fit as neatly as they'd all like to make him fit. “The nature of his type of violence is considered to be within normal parameters by any law-enforcement standard, and certainly well below the 'norm' of mutilation set by the Cane Cutter.”
“ Whoa up there, Doctor,” said Parry. 'This man had George Oniiwah's sex organs sliced off while the boy was bound to a chair.”
Jessica had found traces of blood and feces in the hastily wiped chair when gathering evidence at Paniolo's.
Parry's statement silenced the room, but still no one who'd responded to Jim's call tonight believed Ewelo was the Cane Cutter. Parry went on like a desperate prosecuting attorney, trying to convince the others of Ewelo's guilt as a serial killer with a lust for mutilation murder. 'The man's record places him in Maui during a period when seven women there disappeared, their bodies never recovered.”
This got a few rethinking Paniolo Ewelo.
“ The man also worked for a time in a cane field.”
“ Beggin' your pardon, Chief,” said Haley, a big Australian-born American agent, “but what kanaka hasn't worked a cane field at some time in his bleedin' life?”
This brought laughter to the group, all except Jim. “Something's got to break,” shouted Parry to his people in the debriefing room. The wall was lined with the photos of young victims. “We've got to share our snitches, pool our knowledge. Is there anyone here who has any leads whatever they have not shared with command?”
“ What about this business in the press, Chief?” asked Terri Reno, the well-formed blond agent who'd been walking the Waikiki strip in a brave effort to bait the Trade Winds Killer. “Any truth to it?”
All eyes went to Terri, who was in full dress as a hooker. Parry replied cryptically at first, saying, “Some, yes.” He then quickly separated fact from fiction in the Ala Ohana article.
As Parry spoke, Terri combed out her long, black wig. Then she paused and said, “You know, Chief, I've been getting nibbles, but no bites; we got quite a few lockups for solicitation, but nothing of the caliber we're looking for, not that I'm complaining. On the other hand…”
“ What?” pressed Parry.
“ There's this one guy… kinda strange.”
“ Strange how?”
“ We got tapes on him, if you want to listen. Just that he never does anything. Flirts, says he would rather not have to pay for sex. Wants it given to him freely. Imagine that, telling a working girl that. So I brushed him off the first time, but he keeps sniffing around like a dog in heat.”
“ But he never does anything except talk,” interjected her partner, Haley.
Parry was interested. “Did he ever give out with a name, Terri?”
She blinked and shook her head, saying, “Robert, I think, yeah, Robert… that's all, Boss.”
“ Nothing more?”
“ Sorry.”
“ He never invited you elsewhere to 'talk'?”
“ Sure, every time. Wants me to walk to his car with him, go to his place, he says. Says he thinks I'm pretty; say's he'd like to take care of me, shit like that, but when I mention money and tell him he can have me for an hour, he backs off and repeats himself. Then he tells me I shouldn't sell myself on the street like common garbage, tells me that I could be happy being taken care of by a man like him.”
Her partner, Haley, laughed at this. “Pip-squeak.”
“ Compared to you, Haley, everybody's a pip-squeak,” replied Gagliano.
Reno went on. “And last night I answered with how I could use a place for the night, because my pimp's been looking for me to beat the shit outta me, and he says he knows the guy.”
“ Knows the guy?”
“ Yeah, and get this… says his name is Paniolo. You believe that?”
Parry's eyes lit up. “You didn't say Paniolo first?”
“ No, I swear.”
“ And you were wired? You got this on tape?”
“ Damn straight, mate,” said Haley.
“ Any film on the guy?”
“ No, we're not budgeted for film,” Haley said with a moan.
“ All right… go on, Terri.”
“ Course, at the time, I didn't know Paniolo from shinola, but I said sure, that's the guy, so Robert says that he'd be happy to put me up for the night.”
“ What happened then?”
“ Weirdest thing.”
“ Yeah?”
“ He wanted to know what I was.”
“ What you were?” Jessica asked before Parry could.
She nodded, the comb in her hand at a standstill now. “My nationality. Wanted to know if I was even part Hawaiian, and I told him I was one-quarter Hawaiian, part French — 'cause I thought that would turn his burners up-and part American.” She was punctuating with the hairbrush now. “I figured he'd never believe me if I told him I was Hawaiian, you know.”
“ So what happened then?”
“ Nothing.”
“ Nothing?”
“ He didn't come back. Said he had to go get his car, which he said was over by the park, and — “
“ The park?”
“ Fort DeRussy, I took him to mean. Anyway, I asked the guys on the mike what rating they'd given the guy.”
“ Rating?” asked Jessica.
“ On the nut scale. One to ten. Anyway, they just gave him a mild rating, so I waited, not particularly interested, and when he didn't come back, I figured he'd thought better of crossing this guy Paniolo.”
“ How many times did he come back to speak to you on the street?”
“ Last night? Just the once, but others, whew… and if he wasn't speaking, he was watching. Spooky guy, really, but I took him for a mental, and since they're generally harmless, well…”
“ How many times in all did this guy approach you?” asked Parry, clarifying Jessica's question.
Reno pursed her lips and thought about this for a moment. “Hmmmmm… four, maybe five different nights.”
“ Consecutive nights?”
“ No, no… scattered.”
“ You haven't been out there more'n a week,” said Tony Gagliano, getting the picture.
“ And he'd come up to me two or three times a night to just make small talk until I brushed him off, telling him I had business to attend to and how he was cramping my style. Now I hear about this guy Paniolo here, and suddenly I'm wondering all over about this guy I thought was a nerd, that maybe he could be the Cane Cutter.”
Parry was instantly at her. “I want you to sit down with Don Myers, get as good a sketch of this guy as possible to put in Kaniola's paper and the Union Jack News. And Tony, you and I are going to be backing Terri out there tonight, and if this toad shows, we're going to corner his ass. The connection with Paniolo is just too sweet.”
“ It's the bottom of the ninth and two outs,” said Jessica, “and we're due for a little luck.”
“ I don't get this,” said Haley. “I've seen this guy. He's a kanaka worm.”
'Then he's Hawaiian?” asked Jessica.
“ Would figure if he's acquainted with Ewelo,” Tony Gagliano put in.
Parry asked, “A worm in what sense?”
“ Slinks like a goddamn worm, Chief. He's hefty, eats well, I'd say, works out maybe, but he's low to the ground and he's mealy mouthed. Hell, even Terri scares him.”
'Terri scares me,” joked Gagliano, breaking the others up.
Terri threw her carefully brushed wig at Tony.
Haley continued after all had settled down. “I figured the Trade Winds Killer for a ladies' man. Chief, not a worm.”
“ He's dysfunctional where women are concerned,” corrected Jessica.
“ And he bides his time like a damned spider,” Parry stated. “Crawls in and out of the darkness to locate food, goes back in, comes back out again. He spends hours, no, days, laying it out, planning, lulling his victims into the same complacency you and Terri're in, Haley, making his intended vies think he's a harmless little shit. This guy's exhibiting the very traits of our killer, Haley, and you don't even recognize him. He's like a street lamp to you, a garbage pail, and he's damned glad you see him that way.”
The room was silent after Jim's emotion-laden lecture, thick with Parry's accusation that the hardworking agents weren't thinking clearly, weren't seeing even though they were looking.
Terri Reno swallowed hard, thinking of what might have happened had she gone to this thick-necked, thick-armed creep's place with him last night. According to information Jessica had released to them on the killer, once he had his victim where he wanted her, he struck so ferociously and quickly that she could be killed or maimed for life before anyone could break in a door.
Jessica could see the pained expression on Tern's face from across the room, and she could well imagine what was going through Terri's mind at the moment. She flashed on a time when she was defenseless against a maniac bent on taking her own life. Parry continued. “While you two are busy with a sketch artist, Haley, the rest of us want to hear those surveillance tapes. Terri, you get started with Don Myers. Haley, fetch those tapes.”
“ Will do, Boss.” Kalvin Haley needed no second telling, relieved to be going out of earshot of his chief.
“ The guy knows Hal Ewelo,” Parry said thoughtfully, “and Ewelo ironically kills an innocent kid in an attempt to leam the killer's identity!” He shook his head. “Sometimes people do prove the stereotype, and Ewelo's one stupid kanaka. We push Ewelo harder, find out who his friends are, who his goddamned relatives are, who he knows that's kinky or strange or sexless in his estimation, anything out of the norm. Promise the bastard a deal. Tony, you're on that, and don't hesitate to use this information to get some leverage with the bastard.”
“ He's called in a lawyer.”
“ Then do it with his lawyer present, but do it.”
Tony hustled off, disappearing as Haley had before him.
“ We're going to end the killing,” said a resolved Parry.
Every wheel went into motion. Parry, along with Jessica, listened intently to the taped meanderings of their latest mystery suspect, and she found Robert all that Haley had said and more. He sounded like a pitiful soul, a poor castaway wretch, just searching the city for a little kind word, a soft touch, a pleasant smile. He talked of everything and anything, almost nonstop, as if Terri were a long-lost relative, and with each contact, he became more and more familiar while maintaining a mewing, whimpering voice, conspiratorial actually, in which he maintained that he was a lot like Terri, a down-and-outer, misunderstood by his parents, his friends and relatives, not to mention his bosses, and that he had kicked about from one job to the next, always being pushed around by some bully or a boss, and always fired or let go because someone didn't like him. Politics, he called it. On subsequent tapes he let Terri know more about himself, or about his false self, one could not tell for certain. He spoke of his favorite job once as a cowboy.
This made both agents sit up after the long and tedious rendition of the previous tapes.
“ Oh, really? A cowboy.” Terri's leering laughter followed, and then: “Ever ride a cowgirl? Want to break this mare? Huh, cowwwww-booooyT'
“ You don't believe me?” he asked her.
“ Sure… sure, cowboy. I believe you.”
“ It was a big ranch on Maui. I was in charge of strays and fence-mending. I did an excellent job.”
“ Then why did you leave your pony on Maui, cowboy, for this? Bright lights, big city and pretty things like me?”
“ You are pretty.”
“ You want me? You got the money, cowboy?”
“ I… I tol' ya, I don't cheapen a lady like that. If you just come with me, I… I can take care of you, make you eternally happy. It's not about money.”
“ Honey, everything's about money.”
“ No, not everything. I tell ya, I can set you up with everything. Maybe, in time, you get to know me better, you might wanna marry me or something…”
Terri laughed uproariously and contemptuously, which effectively served to end the conversation, but still he came back for more the following night.
“ Now we've got two cowboys who know each other, both from Maui. This guy and Ewelo,” Parry said. “Let's go see how Terri and Kalvin are doing with the sketch artist.”
The sketch artist, Don Myers, with Terri Reno's help had accomplished a great deal. Myers was better than the usual police sketch artist and was in fact an accomplished painter on the island, doing Hawaiian scenes that sold in the boutiques around Honolulu. The rendition here was a true creation with pigmentation and shading, detailed and sharp. Obviously, Terri Reno had remembered far more of her strange night visitor than even she'd realized. With Haley's additions, the portrait of the killer was remarkably clean and distinctive, the eyes like emotionless blue stones.
“ If we're going to see him tonight or tomorrow night, why bother with a sketch?” Terri, the junior member of the team, wanted to know. “Why not just pick him up?”
Haley raised a hand asking that he be allowed to field this one while the others looked on. Haley told his partner, “You see, dearie, it's like this. If we have the sketch of the suspect ahead-a-time, before we nab 'im, it's just one more nail in his bloody coffin.”
“ One more item to stack onto the evidence side when a judge and jury get at him,” added Parry.
“ But it's just our suspicions, now isn't it?” she replied in a mock Cockney accent. “How's it going to hold up in a court of law these days?”
“ Police suspicions are still worth a little something in a court of law, and FBI suspicions even more. Add the fact we were concurrently working on this sketch along with what we got from the connection with Hal Ewelo, and every bit helps,” Jim Parry explained. “I just hope Tony can get something out of Ewelo before we have to use the sketch and taped voice on him. It'd sit better if the bastard would implicate our man before we flash a picture or run a tape in the interrogation room, believe me.”
Jessica only half heard the legal discussion among the others, becoming lost in the sad, doe eyes of their possible mass murderer, marveling at the features, so mild on the surface, not the least resembling a Halole Ewelo; rather this was the face of anonymity here in the islands, the face of a half-breed, a hapa haole, of which there were literally hundreds of thousands, many with the telltale wide cheekbones of the native, the somewhat slanting eyes, the thick neck and nappy, native red-brown hair and the softened nose and bone structure of the white race. The only feature that marked him as remarkable were those cerulean eyes in the native face. There was no telltale distinguishing scar or birthmark, nothing but the vacant blue coals for eyes and a slight haole tinge to his skin. The natives had called the first whites they'd encountered haoles because of their pale skin, assuming they were the dead ancestors come back to roam the earth in ashen and anemic form, risen as it were from the grave. There was certainly something dead about this man, Jessica thought, and much to mark him as partially white. His Hawaiian features dominated, but there was a muted understatement that spoke of his mixed-blood ancestry, possibly part American, certainly Caucasian.
“ At least now we've got something real to rattle the snake with, heh. Chief?” asked Haley, whose infectious smile and bright Aussie eyes had lightened the intense work.
Everyone in the room knew the value of actually having hard information before walking into an interrogation room, and knew that at the moment Tony was only working a bluff with Paniolo. “Get a copy down to Tony right away, Don,” Parry instructed the artist. “And spread 'em around. Call Dave Scanlon and share it with him. Tell him he can take it to the nightly news guys tonight if he wants.”
The decision to allow Scanlon to give it to the press represented a gamble. Parry was damned if he did, damned if he didn't. They could sit on the suspect's description or put it out as an APB. If they withheld the information from the public, it could end up costing another life; by the same token, if they published it along with the sketch, the killer was also likely to know, and his first reaction most likely would be fleeing and going into extended hiding, possibly escaping the island. Because Parry wanted him off the streets of Oahu at any cost, he chose to put out an APB and to involve the TV and radio stations as well as the press. At the same time, he had all the airlines, passenger ships and Port Authority points notified.
Myers picked up his art materials and promised to get copies around as ordered, took a bow to a standing ovation and quickly left.
“ Now, let's get back out on the street, and this time, Haley, I'm going to be there with you when Junior here shows up. As for you, Terri, just play the creep the exact same as always. Bat it right back at him. He says he's a cowboy, stomp on his horse.”
She smiled at this. “Got it, but what if he wants me to go bye-bye with him? Not so sure I want to be alone with the Devil, if you know what I mean.”
“ We'll escort you to the door, and as soon as he's home and closing the door on you, we'll kick it in and search the place on probable cause.”
“ The tape and the sketch?” she asked, wondering if that was enough to make probable cause.
“ That and the connection with Ewelo, yeah. But we need to know where his den is, and unless Ewelo comes clean with it, well, it's up to us.”
“ Been a hell of a night for discovery,” commented Jessica.
“ Quantum leap!” Parry replied, smiling for the first time all day. Jessica agreed with Jim's moves. Something had to end. Either the killings or the killer's life had to stop. Something had to shake loose. Something had to give.
No more women could be abducted, mutilated and cast into the sea by the Cane Cutter.
The description alone would cause a great ripple effect across the islands: Hawaiian male of mixed ancestry, light-skinned, thickly built, five-nine, 165 pounds, age twenty-seven to thirty, dark blue eyes, driving a Buick sedan, possibly black to maroon in color.
It wasn't much, but it was, along with the sketch, far more than they'd had before now.