Primitive Secrets (11 page)

“Do you know another way down?” Storm asked.

Maile looked at Storm, her gaze dark and serious. “Yes.” She grabbed Storm's arm for support and led her across the stream bed in the opposite direction they'd come. Despite her scratches and scrapes, she walked quickly. “What did you see? I need to know.”

“Did you see something, too?” Storm gave a little shiver. “The fog distorted my vision. I was getting nervous alone, that's all.”

“Tell me.” Aunt Maile's voice was low and serious.

Storm's hands became clammy. The creature's shadowy image was so real to her that she glanced behind them on the trail. She didn't want to talk about it.

Maile led them into a forest of eucalyptus and large-leafed plants Storm couldn't identify. The leaves and brambles lay so thick on the ground that only someone who knew the forest intimately could have found the trail.

“I need to hear about it.” Maile squeezed Storm's hand as if she were a reluctant child.

Storm told her about the muscular, unworldly creature that moved silently through the meadow.

“I think there was something else, too. I heard a noise, but couldn't see anything. The thing I saw didn't make a sound.” Storm swallowed hard. “Then the smell of gardenias, or some sweet flower, got so strong I could nearly taste it. I knew I had to get out of there.”

“The thing you saw, did its feet touch the ground?” Storm couldn't read Maile's shadowed eyes in the gloom, but she could see the grim lines in her face.

Storm stared back at her aunt.

“Did they? Did its feet touch the ground?”

Storm looked around, then whispered. “I…I'm not sure. I just know it didn't make any noise. I was scared to death because it was going in the direction you'd taken and you wouldn't hear it.”

The lines in Aunt Maile's face deepened. “What did you hear, then?”

“Rustling, but I didn't see what did it. I saw a shape, but I don't know. It might have been human.”

Aunt Maile looked at Storm and her eyes narrowed. “Stay with me,” she ordered. She dropped Storm's hand in order to wind through the trees. The older woman moved her flannel and denim bulk with less crackling and footfall than Storm. Storm had to trot to keep up.

Her aunt's overalls were a benevolent blue smudge in the woodsy darkness of taupe and moss. The forest darkened as the mist coalesced into heavy clouds that began dropping an earnest rain on the leafy canopy. Sporadic chilly splats found their way through to the ground. Like a ghostly reproach, they tapped Storm's shoulders.

Storm hustled to catch up. “What was it?” She wished her aunt would talk to her.

“I don't know.” Maile spoke in hushed tones without looking back.

Storm frowned and glanced at the dense, dripping foliage. The rough scales of tree trunks rubbed against her swinging arms and left their streaky rebuke; briars snagged at the legs of her jeans. She felt like a trespasser in the territory of a spirit who restrained the devilishness of the woods out of respect for Aunt Maile's presence.

When they reached the open field that led to the main road, rain pounded them in earnest. The air temperature rose and Storm stopped shivering despite the water that plastered her shirt to her chest and shoulders and streamed from her wet hair down her back. She drew abreast of Maile.

As if a veil had been lifted from their eyes and a harness from their bodies, relief lightened the air around them. They grinned at each other's appearances, then broke into laughter that caused them to stop walking and turn their faces to the streaming sky.

When they walked through the kitchen door, Uncle Keone rose from his reading chair with a snort, shook his head, and went to find towels. After the women had changed, he helped Maile treat her barbed-wire punctures and scrapes. When Maile put the teapot on to boil, he went back to his reading chair, harumphing gently under his breath.

Storm bent her head gratefully over her mug. The aroma of green tea bathed her in a sensation of safety. She wiggled her toes in Uncle Keone's borrowed wool socks and peered over the rim at Aunt Maile, who sat across from her.

Maile took a sip, then leaned back in her chair with a sigh. “That gardenia smell. You know what that meant?”

“Yeah. To get the hell out of there!”

“Yes, it was the warning of the ancients.” Maile took a sip of tea and spoke gravely. “They were looking out for you.”

“For me?”

“You, or you never would have smelled the warning.” Maile narrowed her eyes over the steam of her tea. “Something bad's going on, Storm. I don't like this at all. That rustling in the bushes….” She shook her head.

“I wasn't as worried about the noise. Whatever it was sounded clumsy, like a human or a cow. What do you think?”

Maile got up to fiddle in the sink. “Don't know. Doesn't matter. What matters is that you were supposed to get away from it.”

“And the creature? Any idea what it was?”

Maile sat down at the table, looked onto the surface of her tea, and gently blew the steam into whorls. She spoke softly in the comfortable kitchen. “Late one night when I was about ten, my grandfather and a friend of his got to talking about a god who was half man, half wild pig. Their low voices made me peek from my sleeping bag next to the beach fire. Grandad's friend sketched a picture in the sand; said it was a beast that walked partly upright, partly on its arms. He said it was Kamapua'a, and told Grandad that he would come out of the volcanic vents when he was angry.”

“Kamapua'a? Pele's lover?” Like other kids growing up on the Big Island, Storm had heard tales of the various gods. She'd even seen the altar in Waipio Valley, where humans were sacrificed to placate some of them. It was said that gods, who could be either malevolent or kind, depending on their mood, could walk among the humans. But their feet didn't touch the ground. Many people claimed to have seen the volcano goddess, especially on the Saddle Road, which traveled between the two majestic volcanic mountains.

“He was also her enemy. Pele was a volatile sort.” She chuckled at Storm's rolling eyes. “I couldn't resist.”

Storm didn't want to be distracted with corny puns. “Why do you think he's angry?”

“It was said that Kamapua'a would come out to destroy or defend someone. He could be called by an ‘aamakaa. Especially the pig.”

“Aunt Maile…”

“Storm, these are old stories.”

“I know, but please. You really think some old legend was out on the mountain today?”

“Listen to your gut, Storm. When we were on the mountain, you told me the creature looked otherworldly, unlike any beast you had ever seen.”

Uncle Keone appeared at the kitchen door. “Storm, I almost wen' forget. You had one phone call. From a guy named Hamlet…somethin' like that. He sound pretty serious. His voice shook.”

Chapter 18

Hamlin picked up his office phone on the first ring. “Storm, thank God you called. Lorraine's been in an accident. Some drunk ran a red light in his pickup and hit her while she was crossing the street.”

Storm bit down on her lower lip so hard she drew blood. “Where was she?”

“At the farmer's market. About ten this morning.”

Storm's knees threatened to buckle and she grabbed at the counter top. “Oh God.” Her voice shook. “How badly is she hurt?”

“Bad. She's in intensive care. Storm, before she lost consciousness, she said your name.”

“Hamlin, I tried to call her.”

“Why?”

“Last night, someone chased me on the road to Pa'auilo. I should have warned her.” Storm's voice broke as she told him about her harrowing experience the night before.

“You couldn't have changed anything.” Hamlin's voice was soft. “Storm? You there?”

“Sorry, Hamlin. I'm coming back. I'll get the next plane.”

Storm hung up and rubbed her eyes. She dropped into a chair and wondered if Lorraine knew about Tom Sakai's file. The file was confidential, yet Lorraine and Uncle Miles had worked together for over thirty years. She had to know something. She had mentioned that Hamasaki had started—what were the words she'd used?—to look after a cancer patient who came to see him. Then Lorraine had changed the subject.

Storm dialed the airline desk in Kona. There was no way she was going to drive the road back to Hilo. There was still a seat on the next-to-last flight, at six-thirty. She called Hamlin back. “Can you meet me at the hospital? I should be there by eight.”

She looked at Uncle Keone and Aunt Maile. “I've got to go.”

Keone nodded. “We know. Storm, be careful. Please.”

Maile's eyes were dark with worry. She left the room, then slipped back in. “Come on, I'll help you pack. I've got the plants boxed for you. Just stick them in the refrigerator when you get home. Maybe you can take them to Bebe tomorrow.”

Ten minutes later, Storm spewed gravel down the road to Honoka'a where she would connect with the paved two-lane highway to Kona. Although narrow and curvy, the route had fewer hairpin turns and no sugarcane scum to slick the blacktop. Storm drove five miles over the speed limit and prayed that the few local cops on duty were on the Hilo side of the highway that afternoon. When she turned south at Kawaihae and the road became flatter and wider, she sped up and prayed harder.

An irate car rental company agreed to call Chief Mendoza for the police report and turn the damage issue over to its insurance company, which left Storm free to get into one of the lines of happy, relaxed tourists. She stood there numb, and wondered if she'd ever again be able to share their sunburned nonchalance. In her seat, she observed the perfectly coifed guy and girl duo go through their flight attendant duties with the sincerity of Barbie and Ken dolls, and forty minutes later, the plane glided into Honolulu International. Storm watched the sun bleed its dying rays over the Wai'anae Mountains and wrestled with guilt over Lorraine's accident. Instead of sleeping until eleven, she should have gotten up and called her.

Hamlin stood in the almost deserted lobby of Queen's Hospital, arms folded across his chest, and gazed into the yellow-lit parking lot. When Storm stepped through the wide-open door, she moved to within a couple of feet of him before the drawn expression on his face melted in recognition. He wore a Thai silk aloha shirt that was coming untucked from his pants. The gabardine trousers, a nice cut, bagged at the knees. Deep lines bracketed his mouth.

“How is she?” Storm asked.

“No change. She hasn't regained consciousness.” Hamlin led Storm to a bank of elevators.

“I thought she called me.”

“One of the doctors reported that she said something about a coming storm. We thought she might have meant you.” They got on an elevator and Hamlin pushed a button.

“How'd you find out about the accident?”

“Her husband called the office. Meredith was there, so she called me at home.” He stared into the blankness of the stainless steel doors.

“So Lorraine was alone when it happened?”

“Ben was waiting in the car for her, reading the paper. Looked up in time to see the truck go through the light. Poor guy's a basket case.”

“That's horrible.” Storm's throat tightened with sadness.

“I saw her hand you something before lunch on Friday. A half-dozen people were standing around the office.”

“Who was there? I can't even remember.”

“A handful of us. Another associate was with me, a couple of secretaries, Ed Wang, Meredith…wasn't Cunningham coming out of your office, too? What's this list about?”

“Phone calls to Hamasaki. Mostly about a family disagreement over David and the will. There were some calls from clients, I guess.”

Hamlin's eyes were bloodshot when he looked at her. “I want you to be very careful. A few days ago, I thought some addict broke into your house. I don't think so anymore. We have to tell the cops about all of this.”

“I've been in touch with them.”

“Does HPD know about the driver on the Big Island?”

Storm looked at the toes of her tennis shoes. “Chief Mendoza and I go back a ways. He'd love to pin the accident on me.”

“That's all you need.” Hamlin held the elevator door open for her and they got out. “Have you talked to Detective Fujita about it?”

“I haven't had time, but I will.” The breath snagged in Storm's throat. She pondered telling him about the herb-gathering incident with Aunt Maile, but stopped. It was too bizarre.

“If I'd got hold of Lorraine yesterday, I might have been able to stop this.” Storm's voice shook.

“Storm, you can't blame yourself. She goes every week.” Hamlin sighed. “The cops are sure it's a hit and run.”

“But if I'd told her about the guy who rammed me?”

“You think she wouldn't have bought her groceries?” Hamlin looked at her with sad eyes.

Storm didn't answer and Hamlin shoved open a door that stood ajar. They entered a room lit with the greenish glow of monitors. Backlit by a screen, Lorraine's husband sat by the bed with his head bowed. Storm thought he might have been dozing, but he raised his face slowly to them. His eyes were glazed and swollen.

“Any change?” Hamlin asked softly.

The neck wattles trembled on Ben Tanabe's neck when he shook his head silently from side to side. Storm moved to the bedside and involuntarily took a step back.

She would never have known the person in the bed was a woman, let alone Lorraine. Clear tubing ran from the purple mottling on the shaved scalp; other tubes of varying sizes ran into her nose, her mouth, under the sheet to hidden parts of the lumpy form. Her facial features were swollen and dark, flecked with darker material at the corners of eyes, nose, and mouth.

Storm couldn't breathe; her chest had seized in an inflated state and wouldn't move. She swallowed three times in a row, and then forced herself to take a step closer to the bed.

“Oh, Lorraine,” she murmured. “Lorraine, please get better.” Storm reached out to the older woman's arm, then withdrew it when she connected with an IV line. She wasn't sure where the real Lorraine was. She stepped back and knelt down next to Ben Tanabe.

He glanced at her only once and positioned his gaze back on the bed. When he mumbled, Storm leaned closer to hear him.

She opened her mouth to say, “Pardon?” but he began to speak without being prompted. With a little start, she realized that he spoke to himself. “I didn't know, I didn't know…”

Storm's eyes filled with tears. She looked at Hamlin, whose face was dark in the shadows of the room. “What can we do for her…for him?”

“Say a prayer,” he whispered. He squeezed the old man's shoulder and moved toward Lorraine's still form. Hamlin reached out, snaked his hand under some clear tubing, and squeezed Lorraine's hand. He closed his eyes tight, opened them, and turned to go.

Storm stumbled after him.

Halfway down the hallway, neither of them had spoken a word. The tapping of high heels echoed closer and closer on the tiles. Meredith Wo turned the corner. With a brief nod to Storm, she put her hand on Hamlin's arm and stepped close to him.

“Has she spoken again?” Her head was tilted back to look up at Hamlin's face. Storm watched the sleeve of her gauzy shirt flutter against Hamlin's chest.

Hamlin shook his head. He could have taken a step back, Storm wasn't sure. Meredith looked at Storm, her almond eyes so dark that Storm couldn't read them. “She wanted to tell you something, Storm.”

“We don't know for sure, Meredith,” Hamlin said.

“That's what you said, Ian.”

“She has a terrible head injury.”

“I see.” She shook her head. “What a shame. Is there anything we can do for Mr. Tanabe?”

Storm answered, though Meredith had addressed the question to Hamlin. “The firm needs to support him. We should send flowers, bring him food. Each person should visit when they can.”

Meredith and Hamlin looked at Storm. Wo spoke first. “Good idea. Why don't you send a memo around the office Monday?”

“We need to start now. Could you talk to the other partners?” Storm said.

Meredith cocked an eyebrow, looked back at Hamlin, and walked away. Hamlin walked with Storm to her car. It had rained while they were in the hospital and the yellow streetlights reflected dully from the wet blacktop. The air hung motionless around them, dragging their moods to the level of the mists that hovered below their knees.

“Will you be okay to drive?” Hamlin looked past her shoulder to ask the question.

“Yes, thanks.” His face looked gray in the shadows. “Uh, could I buy you a beer? Or a sandwich?”

“No thanks. I'd…I'd better get going.” He gave her a little wave and headed toward the other side of the parking lot. Storm lost him in the shadows of the big monkey pod tree that spanned the area. In the day, it shaded cars from the scorching sun. Tonight, it dropped tears into the darkness.

Storm stopped by Leila's house to pick up Fang, but she declined Leila's invitation to spend the night. “It's too late. Leila, Hamasaki's secretary was in an accident. I'll call and tell you everything tomorrow.”

With Fang tucked under one arm and a bag of goodies from the bakery that Leila insisted on giving her under the other, Storm headed for home. She was glad she had company when she opened the door to her dark little cottage.

She was doubly glad Fang was with her when she heard the knock on the door ten minutes later, not that the cat could do anything to protect her. She wondered if Fang would be offended if she were to add a Doberman to their tiny family.

Storm flicked on the front light, relieved that she'd locked the door behind herself, and peeked through the window. “Hamlin! Are you okay?” She opened the door to the aroma of hot pizza.

“I got to thinking about the break-ins in your neighborhood and thought I'd make sure you got in all right.” His eyes looked green as a forest at twilight in the glow of the porch lamp. “Is it too late to take you up on dinner?”

“Come on in. I've got beer.” It was the one thing Storm could count on not having grown green fuzz in her refrigerator.

Hamlin left a trail of delicious aromas as he walked to the living room and plopped the box onto the coffee table. Storm hurried from the kitchen with a couple of plates and two bottles of Beck's. They sat on the couch and scooped melting cheese, black olives, and onions back onto thick wedges with their fingers.

Storm sat back with a sigh. “I was hungrier than I thought.”

“Yeah, me, too.” Hamlin took another bite and wiped his mustache with a paper napkin. He chewed a moment, then spoke. “You were right about supporting Tanabe. And Meredith should approach the partners, not you.”

“Didn't look like she liked me suggesting it.”

“She's pretty strong-willed,” Hamlin said.

“You know her well, don't you?” Storm asked, then hoped the floor lamp next to them wasn't bright enough to show her reddening face. She shoved a piece of pizza in her mouth.

Hamlin picked stray black olives out of the box and popped a few into his mouth. “Yeah. She was the one who lured me away from the prosecutor's office into private practice, though it was Miles who solidified my decision.”

“How'd it happen that Meredith was working with the prosecutor?” Storm asked.

“She had a medical negligence case, a strong one, but Meredith wanted to get criminal charges approved so that the doctor would be tried for wrongful death instead of just malpractice or negligence.”

“Wow, the guy must have really screwed up.”

“He did, but he didn't deserve to be tried as a criminal.” Hamlin shoved a few onions back onto a wedge of pizza. “He was seventy-two, a neurosurgeon who should have retired a decade before this case, but he was famous for developing this technique for fusing cervical discs. He was also one of those guys who live on past glories. Drove a big Mercedes with vanity plates with the name of this technique on them. He even had special tools patented for this surgery. The manufacturer used his name and often called him in to work certain cases and run seminars for residents and other doctors.

“Anyway, he was doing a case and nicked the patient's spinal cord. Unfortunately, it was a forty-five-year-old woman with four young kids who ended up quadriplegic.”

“God, that's awful.”

“Yeah, it was tragic.” Hamlin sat back with a sigh and rearranged some olives on his pizza slice.

“But how could Meredith turn it into criminal negligence?”

Hamlin took a long pull on his beer. “Meredith comes from a big Chinese family. She's probably related to half of Chinatown. Her first cousin's son—is that a second cousin?—was a resident anesthesiologist on the case and observed the whole thing. Said the doctor's hands shook like he'd been on a three-day binge. Another of her uncles was a major in the police department. The department was getting bad press lately and wanted a big collar.”