Chapter 3

Aside from hispart-time duties as my partner at K K Investigations, Keone Kaihale's primary job was as a pilot. He flew small planes on short routes, currently Kahului to Hana and back, and occasionally a quick jaunt over to Moloka‘i or down to Hilo. Mr. K takes his job seriously and is all business when he's in his tailored white uniform, but the only thing I can think of when I see him in that uniform is peeling it off. I mean, dang is he cute.

Mr. K called me on the post office landline a few minutes after two o'clock. "Sorry, Kat. I picked up another flight this afternoon. One of the Moloka‘i guys came down with something and they need me to do a hop over there."

I told him about the girl in the window.

"I don't like the idea of you going out there by yourself," he said.

"I promised Lei I wouldn't do anything but check it out. Maybe shoot a couple of pics if there's anything that seems to be off. But no other shooting. She made me promise no firearms."

"You sure you're okay to handle this alone?"

"I got this. I'll tell you all about it when you get back."

"That's my Kitty Kat. More qualified to kick butt than any guy I know."

I felt a warm fuzzy as I said goodbye. One of my favorite things about Mr. K (besides how awesome he looked in his uniform) was that he wasn't threatened by my height, my sharpshooter skills, or the fact that I could lift him as easily as he could lift me.

* * *

Four p.m. came at last,and I locked up the Post Office and walked across the road after waving goodbye to Pua. The sweet half-moon of sand, jetty, and aqua waves just across from the post office, bounded by the Hana Highway, was the nearest spot where I could get a good cell phone signal outside of New Ohia.

No matter how long I lived here I'd never tire of the zing of pleasure I got when the ocean, or more specifically, Ohia Bay, came into view. Every day the water looked different, with as many moods as a teenager has hormones. Today, the water was the color of antique Chinese jade—an intense deep green.

Palms beside the pier waved. Off in the distance, a great black ‘iwa frigate bird soared; it was paradise all right.

I took off my Nikes, peeled off my socks, and walked down to the gently foaming surf. I sighed with pleasure as the cool water lapped around my feet, massaging my tired toes in the wet sand, enjoying the gentle waves as they played around my feet.

I took out my phone and tapped in "Halepua‘a Road" on the directions app. Nothing came up. I tried various versions of the word; my Hawaiian spelling was still goofy half the time, so maybe that was the problem.

Still nothing.

"Darn it." I got out of the water reluctantly, put my shoes back on, and crossed back over the road heading toward the Ohia General Store. Grandiosely named Hana Highway was barely a two-lane road with not much in the way of shoulders and a faded-out center line, but it was the only way to get anywhere on this side of the island.

Opal and Artie Pahinui owned and operated the store beside the post office which functioned not only as a repository of daily needs such as food and basic housewares, but as the nerve center for the community. If you needed to buy something, they probably had it. If you needed information about local life, they probably knew it, and that included the latest gossip.

What would they know about the hermit?

"Hey,Kitty Kat," said Artie as I came up onto the porch. He was the one who'd nicknamed me that until Mr. K had adopted it too.

"I'm amazed at how you can tell who's coming," I said. Artie was blind. He could play stunning Hawaiian music on ukulele and guitar, though he could no longer see his own reflection in a mirror.

"I recognize your walk," he said. "And I feel your presence. You'd be surprised at how much you miss by relying on eyes only."

Opal, his wife of many decades, came outside onto the porch and joined us. She wore an emerald flowing muumuu with a pale pink, loosely knit shawl secured with a silver pin depicting a plumeria blossom. I didn't know how many scarves and shawls Opal had, but it must've been dozens. The closet of their attached home behind the grocery business must be as crammed with garments as a shopping mall stocked up for the Christmas rush.

"Hey there, Kat," she said. "What brings you over? Haven't seen you in a while."

Since I'd moved from the shack behind the post office to New Ohia, I'd been a bit neglectful of my former neighbors. They'd been beyond helpful when I'd first come to town, second parents almost, and I felt the sting of abandonment guilt. "I'm sorry, Opal. I've just been so busy with work and the move, and the kittens and?—

She laughed and cut me off. "No worries. We miss seeing your beautiful smile, that's all." That made me feel even more negligent. "And speaking of kittens . . ." The two rambunctious boys from Tiki's litter that Aunt Fae and I had given Opal and Artie came bouncing out through the rubber flap the Pahinuis had installed in the screen door of the store. Ben and Jerry were growing even faster than their sister Misty, and they ran over and pounced on my loose shoelaces.

We all laughed at their antics; it was good to see Opal and Artie smiling so hard. I was relieved the kittens were working out for the elderly couple.

"I hate to cut this visit short, but I've got to ask you something and then get on the road," I said. "It's a case."

"What's going on?" Opal tugged her shawl tighter as though she felt a chill.

I told them about the UPS driver's report of the girl he'd seen in the window at the hermit's place.

"I'm surprised that guy even has glass in his windows," she said. "I heard he put that shack together using old pallet lumber and stuff he dragged out of the landfill."

"Do you know him?"

"Nobody ‘knows' him, but we're aware of him. He comes into the store every few months. Doesn't talk to anyone. Real sour attitude. Most folks steer clear. I heard he was stationed in the Middle East and he got that PTSD or some such thing. In any case, if he's got a child out there, I'd be worried."

Artie gave a dramatic strum on the ukulele balanced on his knee. "Me too. That man carries darkness."

"Do you know how to get to his place?"

Opal said she wasn't entirely sure. "I don't think his road is far from here. But his place is real isolated, way deep in the jungle. If I was going out that way, I'd try turning off the highway at the big white rock and then I'd keep an eye out for the next turnoff after the little clearing with the coconut tree. The road out there is to the right. I don't think it's possible to go left at that point. Anyway, I think that's it, but like I said, I can't be sure."

That was about as clear as mud, but I asked her for a pen and paper, made notes, thanked her and agreed to come by the next day and tell them about what I found.

"You want me to read the runes before you go?" Opal shook the small bag of kukui nut shells she carried deep in a pocket of her tentlike dress. The sound reminded me of shaking a kitty treats container to bring Tiki out of hiding. Opal used her homemade runes to get a "read" on situations and the results were always interesting.

"I'd love that, but I don't have time. I want to get out and surveil the place before it gets too dark."

"The sun leaves that area earlier than here," Artie said on an ominous note.

I waved goodbye, jogging home to get my car. How did Artie differentiate between daylight and dark? He hadn't always been blind, but now that he was, he must sense the change in temperature to recognize that night was coming—or maybe Opal kept him on track.

In any case, his comment wasn't about the literal daylight but a spiritual darkness he sensed. Opal wasn't the only one with a touch of the psychic. He could tell things about people and so far, he'd been a hundred percent right in his perceptions on my previous cases.

His warning didn't make me feel a whole lot better about my urgent solo quest into the jungle.

I jogged home and grabbed a bottled water and my pepper spray. Yeah, I had to leave my former service weapon at home, but between my hands, feet, and the thumb-sized canister of spray, I was likely to be the winner in any confrontation that didn't involve a bullet. Hopefully the hermit wouldn't be packing one.

Happy to have good signal, I took a minute to call Doug Beachum, the UPS guy. He confirmed his story to me. "There's a front window visible when you drive up. She was standing there, and when she saw me, she put her hands up against the glass."

"What did she look like? How old?"

"I don't have kids, so I'm not good at guessing—but elementary school age at least. Brown hair. Couldn't tell much else."

"Was she asking for help? Like, trying to get your attention?"

He paused; I heard him swallow. "I'm not sure. It was just . . . sad and spooky. Something was wrong."

The hair rose on my neck; I could picture it. "Okay, thanks. I've passed this on to the police, just so you know."

He whooshed out a breath of relief. "Oh, good. That guy is a real piece of work and shouldn't have a kid out there."

I thanked him and ended the call.

I got into the big white Ford Explorer my gig at Security Solutions provided me and drove out of New Ohia. I took a left and followed Opal's directions; I soon found the white rock and finally, the road that only went to the right.

The big SUV I drove took the ruts in stride, but I wasn't looking forward to seeing the rust red mud that was no doubt coating the undercarriage and side panels of the vehicle like a frosted birthday cake. After a half-mile of barely passable dirt road, I understood why the UPS guy had had to go all the way to the end to turn around. The potholed lane was so narrow in spots that bushes and vines scraped both sides of the SUV at the same time.

I was sure I'd come the right way when I started seeing a profusion of "No Trespassing" and "Private Property" signs nailed to tree trunks in positions both high and low. As I rolled past the first sets of signs, the warnings became more ominous. "Violators Will Be Shot, Survivors Shot Again" and "If You Can Read This, You're In Range," along with a couple of signs so faded I couldn't make out the message. By that point I was pretty sure the unreadable ones didn't say things like "E Komo Mai means Welcome" or "Aloha!"

My odometer signaled that I'd traveled nearly a mile down the narrow road when I spotted an ancient gray Jeep Wrangler parked at the edge of a grassy cleared area; in the middle of the clearing was a house.

Calling it a "house" was generous. The structure was more like a larger version of the shack I'd lived in behind the post office before I moved to New Ohia. Mismatched pieces of different sized lumber had been nailed together to form the rough, unpainted dwelling. A rectangular front opening in the building threw off a shimmer from the leaf-filtered late afternoon sunlight that indicated it probably did, indeed, contain glass.

I put Sharkey, my pet name for my "Great White Shark" of an SUV, in Reverse. I backed up a few yards so the vehicle couldn't be spotted from the house. Even coated in mud, the white vehicle probably looked like an alien spacecraft in the midst of all that jungle greenery.

I got out and stepped into ankle-deep mud. "Oh crab on a cracker," I whispered, prying my foot out and hopping to dry ground. I had taken off my Nikes in anticipation of mud, but the slippers weren't a great second choice—too flimsy, and now slippery. I wiped the rubber sandal on the grass and my foot too—good enough for now. The one great thing about wearing flip-flops, or what the locals called "rubbah slippahs," is that they could be hosed off in a minute, along with feet.

Shoe dilemma solved for the moment, I stood beside Sharkey, listening. The dark recesses of the native forest were alive with birdsong and skritching noises I imagined were either lizards or some kind of tropical insects. But after about half a minute, I heard something else.

A rhythmic sound.

It was like someone beating a large wet towel against a wall, or maybe throwing an axe into a tree trunk. Thwap, pause. Thwap.

It didn't sound like chopping wood, and the noise raised my neck hairs, which had been happening a lot today.

I stealthily made my way down the rutted track, keeping to the side so I could dive for cover if necessary. This kind of surveillance brought out my primal fight-or-flight instinct; I hated doing it unarmed.

But I didn't have to like it. Not one bit.

When I got within recon distance of the dwelling, I pulled out my phone and snapped a few photos. The outside walls of the shack were a patchwork of rough wood, and the nearly flat roof consisted of various sizes of corrugated metal sheets slapped together in no discernible pattern. In addition to a small paned window, the front of the place had a weathered, unfinished front door that didn't fit properly in the frame, although it did sport various locks and deadbolts festooned above a tarnished brass handle.

On closer inspection, I noticed the window frame was bent, as if it had been salvaged from a junkyard or pulled from an abandoned property. The casing was corroded metal, probably aluminum, and whoever had fitted it into the hole had slapped white caulk around the edges as a sealant, but they hadn't bothered to wipe away the excess.

There was no front porch or any effort at making an entryway for visitors. The door opened directly onto a two-by-two-foot patch of packed red earth, surrounded by an approximately thirty-by-ten-foot "yard" of knee-high grass and brush.

Who knows what lurked in that grass in the way of critters, or maybe even booby traps? But then, maybe that was the point. The dwelling was not, in any way, designed to be welcoming.

The strange thwap noise I'd heard was still coming from behind the house.

What should I do first: peer in the window and risk getting my head blown off? Or go behind the house to check out the noise, and risk getting my head blown off?

I could also announce my presence and be highly likely to get my head blown off.

I drew a mental line through the last option; Lei had forbidden me from engaging the target.

But what if the noise turned out to be the guy doing some unspeakable act to his captive? There was no way I could live with myself if I didn't at least attempt the other two options and see if I could find the little girl.

I crept through the grass toward the window, carefully placing one foot in front of the other, fiercely aware that my rubber-slipper-clad feet were as vulnerable as if they were bare. I should have taken the time to put on my rubber ankle boots . . .

As I inched forward, I searched for metal animal traps, hidden trip wires, or deep holes camouflaged to swallow up unsuspecting delivery drivers or religious folks hoping to convert an unrepentant sinner to everlasting life.

I cupped my hands at the sides of my face and peered in when I reached the window. It was darker inside, making it hard to see into the interior of the shack. All I could discern was a sparsely furnished room with an unpainted wood floor, two straight-backed chairs, a small table, and what appeared to be some kind of washstand or workbench with a bucket at the base of it. To the left was a rough wall dividing the room from the rest of the shack. A doorway led to that area of the dwelling, but from my angle, it was hard to see into that space.

I backed away from the window and considered my next move.

So far, I hadn't seen the girl, nor any evidence of one. Maybe the UPS driver had been hitting the pakalolo, or happy weed, and after a mile of shifting jungle shadows and teeth-jarring ruts, he'd fantasized the face of a little girl who didn't exist.

But he'd been so clear about it. She had to be hidden here, somewhere.

Thwack. There was that sound again.

My last option—to go around back—was no longer a choice, but a necessity.