Death in Hilo, page 25
“That’s right,” Tanaka confirmed. He decided those two cases were enough; no need to mention Chief Carvalho’s ongoing official review. He knew Pat, as a prosecutor, would grasp the hazards to Kawika of such an investigation, even if Lily the astronomer might not. It would add to an already distressing situation.
“And this other case,” Pat asked, “who was the victim? What was it about? Could it have anything to do with Elle’s death, you think?”
Tanaka shook his head. “No,” he said, “I don’t think so. More likely it relates to a case Kawika and I worked on years ago, or else to a controversy here on the Big Island. The victim, Keoni Parkes, worked for the Thirty Meter Telescope Project. I expect you astronomers”—he nodded toward Lily and Professor Hoff—“know more about TMT than we do. Keoni had a very difficult position, the guy appointed to try to work out a compromise yet still allow the TMT to get built. Passions around TMT are almost out of control. Keoni was really exposed, partly because he was hapa haole and some Hawaiians considered him a traitor.”
Lily had dried her tears and bravely regained her upright position. Now she looked at Tanaka with red-rimmed eyes. “The TMT,” she said, turning to Professor Hoff. “That’s where Emma Gray works.”
“Emma Gray?” asked Tanaka.
“Yes,” Lily replied. “She actually grew up in Puakō. I knew her family when she was a child, while Jarvis and I were still married. I remember her father, Tom, quite well. He doted on Emma and her brother—but especially Emma. Years later I heard he’d died in a boating accident. Emma went to school on the mainland and grew up to be a famous astronomer, very successful while still quite young. I remember the news when the TMT hired her.”
“Emma Gray?” Tanaka asked again in consternation, teetering on the dizzying edge of comprehending every dreadful thing about so many murders—Elle’s included—all at once.
Professor Hoff spoke up. “I think Lily’s referring to Emma Phillips. Maybe Gray was her maiden name? But she’s been Emma Phillips as long as I can remember—certainly years before she joined the TMT. Her husband, Rodney, was a well-known astronomer in his own right. The two of them worked together on complex twin star astrophysics. They were famous for that—but also, I have to say, for elbowing aside professional colleagues. I wondered how her temperament would work for TMT. Anyway, Emma and Rodney had worked together a long time, twenty years or so, when he died in a climbing accident. In Yosemite, on El Capitan or Half Dome, I can’t remember which. I think that’s why she took a sabbatical from hard science and went into administration. That’s what I recall from the publicity when she came here.”
“Wait,” Tanaka again insisted, still trying to grasp it, trying to be certain. “Are you saying that Dr. Emma Phillips of the TMT project is the same person as Emma Gray, the daughter of Thomas Gray?”
“Yes,” Lily said. “I’d forgotten about her married name. David’s right; it is Phillips. I just think of her as Emma Gray, from when she was a girl.”
Tanaka turned to look at Ku‘ulei, who stared back wide-eyed. Tanaka guessed she remembered what Keanu Fuchida had told them: Elle had suggested the name Emma Phillips to Jarvis, and he had responded nuh-nuh-nuh.
“I’m terribly sorry,” Tanaka said abruptly, pushing back his chair. “Ku‘ulei and I have to leave. That’s important information you just gave us. I’ll explain later. Right now we need to go see Kawika about this. Please excuse us.”
Everyone stood and quickly shook hands—Ku‘ulei shared a brief hug with her aunt—and then the detectives departed, leaving the others standing and nonplussed. Tanaka gave instructions to Ku‘ulei as they hurried to the car.
“Call Kawika,” he instructed her. “Tell him we’re on our way to his place. I’ll call Dr. Phillips and see where she is. If Kawika finds out she’s Emma Gray, my guess is he’ll confront her himself. We need to prevent that.” Tanaka was thinking, What if Elle discovered from Jarvis who Emma Phillips is? What might she have done?
Ku‘ulei couldn’t reach Kawika. And Tanaka couldn’t reach Dr. Phillips.
“She’s at the summit this week, at the old Szkody-Brownlee telescope,” her secretary told him. “I can connect you if you like. I connected Major Wong earlier. But then Dr. Phillips called me back and said she and Major Wong have agreed to meet in person Monday morning here at her office in Waimea. She’ll be down from the mountain by then. Shall I make an appointment for you too?”
“No,” Tanaka said, his voice growing tight. “Just connect me with her now. Please.”
The connection worked, but there was no answer. No answer from Dr. Phillips. No answer from Kawika. Tanaka drew the worrisome conclusion. “Kawika is up at the summit, I bet,” he told Ku‘ulei, giving voice to an awful premonition. “He’s going to get right in Emma Phillips’s face, I just know it. And that darn guy refuses to carry a gun.”
“Like you,” she said. “But not like me.” She touched her sidearm quickly, as if reassuring herself that she’d remembered to bring it.
“Call Tommy in Waimea,” Tanaka instructed Ku‘ulei hurriedly. “Tell him we’ll pick him up in twenty minutes. We’re going up the mountain. Ask him to bring warm jackets if he’s got ’em. And enough oxygen kits from the EMTs so there’s one for Kawika too. We’re not stopping to acclimate. We don’t have time. Just remind Tommy that Keoni drove the getaway boat, and tell him Emma Phillips is Emma Gray and she’s up at the summit and we think Kawika’s gone there to confront her. Tommy will understand right away.”
Then Tanaka turned on his siren and flashing lights. He stood on the accelerator, his wiry body actually rising from the seat as he put all his weight into spurring the car to greater speed along the Queen K.
Moldy old fishing boat story, my ass, Tanaka thought. But even now he wouldn’t say such a thing aloud. Not with Ku‘ulei in the car.
38
On Mauna Kea
Kawika regained consciousness with cold water dripping off his face. He shook his head and tried to wipe his eyes but discovered his hands were bound with tape and bound in turn to his belt. His ankles were bound as well. He was in pain and felt terribly groggy from the blow and the altitude. He’d acclimated only partially at the visitor information station, not having paused for anything close to the two hours Dr. Phillips had recommended. He realized he was on his back in the telescope control room, his aching head propped up with a now-drenched cushion.
Dr. Phillips came into focus. She was pointing a gun at him. “Hello, Major Wong,” she said. “Sorry to splash you; I thought it was time to wake you up.”
“It’s too late,” Kawika said weakly, wasting no time. “You left your prints at Keoni’s house.”
Dr. Phillips laughed dismissively. “I believe the prints you’re referring to belong to some random checkout person at some random retail store somewhere on either of two islands. If you choose dish towels first when shopping, Major Wong, you don’t have to leave prints on anything else you put in your basket. The checkout folks will handle things from there.”
Thinking as well as he could, yet still befogged, Kawika attempted a different approach, trying desperately to think logically and fast. “Major Tanaka knows Keoni drove the getaway boat,” he said.
“Oh, good!” she replied. “I only learned that a few weeks ago myself, from Keoni. Maybe it’ll help Major Tanaka solve my dad’s murder at long last. But it won’t help him solve Keoni’s, will it? Not even if he discovers I’m Emma Gray, as your wife did—and which he might not, unless he has reason and skill enough to elicit that information from Jarvis.”
He might have skill enough, Kawika almost told her. And so might Ku‘ulei. But Kawika realized, groggily, that suggesting they might possess that skill could get Jarvis killed, and maybe Tanaka and Ku‘ulei too.
“Even if Major Tanaka discovers my maiden name, he won’t suspect me of anything,” Dr. Phillips asserted. “I’ll be shocked, just shocked, to learn that Keoni took part in killing my father—what a weird coincidence, right? I mean, Daddy’s death was supposedly an accident, right? Not a murder! Major Tanaka will just go on looking for Keoni’s killer among his dozens of TMT-related enemies. And, of course, HPD will keep looking in Honolulu.”
Kawika didn’t want to say Major Tanaka doesn’t believe in coincidences; that too might get Terry killed. He thought of saying, If Major Tanaka learns you’re Thomas Gray’s daughter, he’ll suspect you of killing Keoni in revenge, and if he suspects you, he’ll find ways to nail you. But he knew telling her that wouldn’t save Terry or stop her from eliminating Kawika, the immediate threat lying at her feet.
So, with his adrenaline fighting the altitude and his throbbing head, Kawika finally grasped the obvious thing to say. “You wouldn’t get away with it, Emma. I’m here. My rental car’s here. We’d be found. We won’t vanish.”
“Oh, Major Wong,” she said, shaking her head sadly. “I’m a scientist; don’t sell me short. No one’s found Keoni’s car or your wife’s car, have they? Yours is a nondescript rental, not a cop car. Not conspicuous up here; four-wheel-drive rental cars come and go all the time. No one will notice. No one will remember. No one will know what became of you.”
“We haven’t found their cars, but we did find their bodies,” Kawika reminded her, hoping to make her pause.
Dr. Phillips smiled. “Not up on Mauna Kea, you didn’t. It’s an extremely large mountain, you know. There are still ancient cattle pits better hidden than the one David Douglas fell in. And the only reason anyone found him is because they had a good idea where to look. No one will know where to look for you. There’s a one-in-a-billion chance anyone will find you. Billions are things astronomers understand, Major Wong.”
“It’ll never work,” was all he could think to respond. Dr. Phillips smiled dismissively.
“I called my secretary,” she said. “I told her you and I agreed to meet first thing Monday in my office. I’ll be as astonished as everyone else when you don’t show up. So unless you told someone or left a note—did you? I didn’t think so—no one in the world knows you’re up here.”
She put down the gun and picked up the roll of duct tape, tearing off two strips. Then she stood, looming over him and seeming even taller than when they’d first met and he’d thought she looked like an Olympic athlete. “Now I need to keep you quiet, Major Wong. Not because anyone can hear you. No, just because there’s a lot I have to tell you, and then a lot I’ll have to do. I don’t want this to take all day. You can blink if I ask you a question. Three blinks for yes, okay? Three slow blinks. That’s my scientist’s mind at work. No ambiguity about three slow blinks. Anything else is a no.”
Three Blinks for Yes: Kawika felt the horror of the bizarre coincidence. Immediately, though, he focused on struggling as hard as he could, trying to evade Dr. Phillips by rolling violently away from her. He thrashed his head from side to side, yelling at her, and tried to bite her as she attempted to apply the tape. But she proved even stronger than she looked; she also had every other physical advantage. Eventually she subdued him, forced his mouth shut, and put both strips of duct tape across it, the shorter one diagonally across the longer for extra security. She wiped her hands on her thighs—she was dressed in a mechanic’s blue coveralls—and stood up, regaining the swivel chair in which she’d sat earlier. She again trained the pistol on him.
“I had a chance to talk with your wife a bit,” she began. “We discussed that scene in fiction where the bad guy holds the good guy at gunpoint and instead of just shooting him, the bad guy starts talking and boasting, expecting to be recognized for his criminal genius or whatever. And then—surprise!—out of the blue, Sergeant Preston of the Yukon or someone rides in to the rescue and the bad guy’s thwarted. I told her I’d always considered that a hackneyed literary device, something to build suspense. It’s only in fiction that Sergeant Preston shows up in time. Not much chance of that in real life. I could keep you here a week or a month or a year and Sergeant Preston still wouldn’t show up. I won’t do that to you, of course—don’t worry. Or at least don’t worry about that.
“I don’t know what your wife thought about that scene, whether it’s just a literary device for suspense or serves some other purpose,” Dr. Phillips continued, with an apologetic smile. “She couldn’t talk by then, for the same reason you can’t now. She did do a lot of blinking, though. Anyway, I explained to her what I’d learned from Keoni: in real life, there’s an altogether different reason the killer takes time to talk while holding a gun on the detective. It’s because the killer needs to confide in someone, Major Wong—someone who can’t turn that confidence into a confession.”
She paused and let the point sink in. “Confiding gets the matter out in the open,” she explained. “Off one’s chest and off one’s back at the same time, so to speak. Confiding brings you all the good things about confessing with none of the bad ones—as long as the person you confide in doesn’t tell anyone, of course, or isn’t in a position to. Confession has messy downsides, especially if you’re confessing to murder. Keoni knew that, which is why he never confessed—he just confided. His impulse to confide was sound; his choice of confidants was unlucky. That wasn’t his fault; he didn’t know the person he’d helped murder was my father. He didn’t know I was Emma Gray. You with me so far?”
Kawika responded with three blinks. Twice, in fact. Anything to slow this down.
“Good. Well, I executed Keoni because he was one of my father’s killers. That’s how I thought of it, and still do: execution. Simple justice, eye for an eye. That was as far as I ever expected this to go. I don’t like killing people, Major Wong. I hope to God I never have to do it again. But as I told your wife, I wasn’t about to sacrifice my entire career, my work at the TMT, my eminence in my field, the chance to assist an enormous leap in astronomy and human knowledge and complete some of the work my husband and I had started together—all of that has literal cosmic significance—just because I’d executed the last of Daddy’s killers, the one you police allowed to escape, and just because your wife had come too close to figuring that out. As you’ve come too close yourself, Major Wong. But this will be the end of it, thank God, because no one else will ever come as close again.”
Kawika remembered when Fortunato’s killer had confided in him while holding him at gunpoint. But Fortunato’s killer had silenced him with appeals to Kawika’s sense of morality and justice, not a bullet. Kawika knew Emma Phillips intended the bullet.
She paused, then picked up a paper tablet from the countertop beside her. “After you called and I knew you were coming up here, I made notes of what I want to confide,” she said. “The situation is more stressful for you than for me, I know, but it’s plenty stressful for me too, believe me. I’m the one who has to talk and then pull the trigger. And the altitude still affects me a bit too. So forgive me for relying on notes.”
She donned glasses to look over the notes, seeming to gird herself for a major effort. Kawika could see her hand trembling. He hoped her gun hand wouldn’t tremble; he hoped she’d take her time. He was thinking as fast as he could—which wasn’t very fast, the blow and the altitude still impeding him—trying to figure out how to avoid ending up undiscovered in an ancient cattle pit on the vast slopes of Mauna Kea.
Yet a little voice subversively suggested he consider just that. What would it be like to live without Elle and his unborn child? Why not join them? He remembered Tanaka advising him to pay attention to those little voices. This time he tried hard to ignore it, to stay focused on surviving. He could join Elle later.
“Okay,” Dr. Phillips resumed, looking up from the notes. “You have to understand, I wasn’t always this mad scientist, crazed with finding and executing my father’s killers. I would’ve been fine with you police catching and convicting them, but you failed at that.” She gave him an accusing look.
“Unlike the cops, though, I never believed my father drowned accidentally. Never. My brother and I told your dad that at the memorial service. It made no sense. Daddy wouldn’t have taken the boat out by himself. I even confronted D. K. Parkes about it. I knew D. K. pretty well; we’d been out on the boat with him when Daddy first bought it. But D. K. swore Daddy had insisted he teach him all the controls, all the fishing stuff. He said Daddy wanted to be able to take Mahi Mia out alone, not have to pay D. K. each time. But I didn’t believe that. Daddy could never run that boat, especially if he wanted to fish at the same time—and he would never have gone out except to fish. If he could afford the boat, he could certainly afford to pay D. K. whenever he went out.”
At first, she explained, she’d thought D. K. or someone else must’ve killed her father on shore and sent Mahi Mia out to sea unmanned in order to mislead investigators. But the Coast Guard had found the boat with its ignition off and half a tank of fuel—enough for the boat to beach herself on Maui if someone had pointed her in that direction. Nothing had been programmed into the navigational equipment. The boat hadn’t been on autopilot. Someone must’ve been aboard.
Emma said she’d spent time over the years trying to work out how D. K. Parkes might have killed her father alone, without help—and why. She couldn’t see how one person could do it and get to shore. And she couldn’t think of any motive for Parkes. But if Parkes worked with someone else, the logistics seemed feasible. And she knew someone who might’ve had a motive: Ralph Fortunato.
“I knew Daddy and Mr. Fortunato had engaged in something shady in the sale of that land,” she said. “Before Mr. Fortunato came along, Daddy always said it was practically worthless. Then suddenly he sells it for a huge price, makes a bundle off it. He’s instantly rich and promptly retires, spending a boatload of money—pardon the expression—to buy Mahi Mia and have her fitted out with top-of-the-line stuff. There was a lot of wink-wink, nod-nod about that real estate transaction.
