Off the Grid Read online

  Koa asked Basa, “It’s not about Nālani, is it?”

  “No, no, she’s not involved,” Basa reassured his friend, and Koa felt relief. He didn’t need more personal troubles. Ikaika, his youngest brother, on parole following a felony conviction, had managed to find trouble again. Eight years Koa’s junior, Ikaika had flunked out of high school and been a delinquent since his preteen years. Big, rough, and wild as a cornered boar, he’d served two stints in juvie lockups and two more at Kūlani, the Big Island’s isolated prison facility. Although he and his brother shared a criminal past, Koa’s crimes were secret, and Ikaika’s legal troubles created an uncomfortable conflict for Koa as a cop.

  “They’ve got a body,” the sergeant continued, “a partially burned body.”

  At the words “burned body,” Koa flashed back to Somalia.

  “You still there?” Basa asked.

  “Yeah. I was just thinking. Where in the park?”

  “Ma kai, downhill from Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō, near the old Royal Gardens subdivision.”

  “Royal Gardens?” Koa pictured the lava-encrusted remnants of the destroyed community below the Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō vent on the eastern slope of Kīlauea volcano. “Lava burned through that place years ago. How’d anybody find a body out there?”

  “Three rangers hiking in to check on the Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō lava flows stumbled on it about an hour ago. Called it in on their radio. They’re still out there, asking what they should do.”

  “What makes them think it’s a homicide?”

  “Not sure. Something about his being dead before the lava got to him.”

  “Damn!” Koa swore. The Big Island typically had fewer than ten murders a year, and now he had two unrelated killings on the same day. The gods must be angry. He weighed his priorities. He had a bizarre fatal automobile accident and now a partially burned body in a possible homicide. His chief would want him to investigate this accident. The hit-and-run could bust the budget and maybe even cost Mayor Tenaka his job. Chief Lannua was tight with Tenaka. Koa had no doubt about the chief’s priorities, but all Koa’s instincts told him to get to the HVNP murder scene. The chief might be unhappy, but it wouldn’t be the first time.

  “I’m at the scene of a bizarre accident involving a county maintenance truck—”

  “You been demoted to the traffic division?” Basa interrupted.

  “Very funny. No, it looks like a hit-and-run with a county truck driver doing a runner.”

  “County? That’s going to cost big bucks.”

  “Exactly. That’s why I’m here. But I’m going to bail on this scene and go out to HVNP. Get Piki out here. Tell him to talk to Chief Opatta.”

  Pika Piki, at twenty-six the youngest detective in the department, radiated energy. In his first months, he’d been ribbed about his alliterative name, but he’d taken it well. Now everyone just called him Piki. He had great drive as well as superb Internet research skills, but his exuberance often led him to superficial judgments. Koa guessed he’d been a hyperactive child. Piki was, in Koa’s view, a work in progress. Some days there was a lot of progress … other days, not so much.

  “I’m on it.”

  “Can you join me out at HVNP?”

  “Sure.”

  “Good. We’re going to need transport.” From long experience on the mostly rural Big Island, Koa thought through the logistics. “Come out in the police chopper and meet me at the USGS observatory on the Kīlauea crater rim. I’ll tell Opatta what’s going on, so he can work with Piki.”

  “Be there as soon as I can,” Basa responded. “You want support, photographer, medical, and crime-scene techs?”

  Basa was a self-starter, which made a huge difference to Koa. “Photographer and crime-scene techs.” He paused. “I guess we’d better have medical, too. Although Shizuo won’t do us much good.” Koa referred to the seventy-six-year-old Japanese obstetrician who functioned—or, more accurately, failed to function—as the county’s coroner. Koa had a quarrelsome relationship with the incompetent physician after repeatedly, but unsuccessfully, trying to get him replaced.

  Forty-five minutes later, Koa, Sergeant Basa, police photographer Ronnie Woo, and two crime-scene specialists, along with Dr. Shizuo Hori, hovered over a natural war zone on the northern edge of Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park. Just to their west along the east-rift fault line, sulfur-laden plumes of smoke rose from the volcanic cone of Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō. Two miles north along the fault, Pele had vented her wrath again at Kupaianaha. The volcanic vents—the most destructive in Kīlauea’s recent history—looked like pumice pimples on a blackened landscape, hardly large enough to have poured out millions of cubic yards of lava, destroying buildings, roads, a church, and many historic sites.

  Below the chopper, tangled rivers of black lava filled the landscape for more than five miles, stretching from the Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō and Kupaianaha vents down to the ocean on the east and far off to the north toward the town of Pāhoa. Smoke rose from breakouts where fresh lava ignited the forests at the fringes of the flow. The lava was mostly pāhoehoe, the smooth, sooty charcoal-colored brand of Mother Nature’s excreta.

  Only an occasional kipuka, an oasis of old vegetation, left untouched but surrounded by new lava, broke the barrenness of the landscape. Here and there a clump of wizened trees clung to life, somehow having survived the searing heat.

  The eastern slope of the Kīlauea volcano hosted even more bizarre kipuka areas—remnants of human civilization. Royal Gardens was one. In the speculative land boom of the 1960s, developers carved up 1,800 acres of volcanic wasteland into one-acre homesites, lacking water, electricity, telephone, and sewage, and sold them to the unsuspecting public for $1,000 per lot. Advertised as directly adjacent to the “spectacular attractions” of Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park, most buyers had no idea their lots were within an earthquake zone, judged by the USGS to be at extreme risk of volcanic activity. By the early 1980s, the community harbored sixty-some homes awaiting the wrath of Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of volcanic fury.

  In January 1983, the ground ruptured and lava fountained along the fault line at Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō, and in July 1986, the eruption moved to Kupaianaha—places not far upslope from Royal Gardens. The buyers got their promised spectacular attractions, but the volcanic fireworks produced streams of molten rock pushing through the streets of Royal Gardens, consuming homes, cars, and everything else in their path. Pele, capricious as always, left remnants of scattered buildings, stop signs sticking out of solid rock, and occasional stretches of unimproved road going from nowhere to nowhere. In other places, she buried the community in over one hundred feet of new lava.

  The helicopter rocked dangerously in the gusting winds. After three tries, the pilot finally planted the skids on the barren rock. Two hikers, wearing wide-brimmed hats to shield them from the sun and thick-soled boots to guard their feet, approached the helicopter as the police team disembarked.

  “I’m Makani Mano,” a ruggedly handsome Hawaiian, nearly as tall as Koa, greeted them, screaming to make himself heard over the roar of the helicopter. “From the USGS volcano observatory. This is USGS volcanologist Randy Pape.” Pape, a shorter, heavyset man, nodded his head in acknowledgment.

  “Chief Detective Koa Kāne,” Koa yelled back. “Didn’t catch the first name …”

  “Makani, the name’s Makani Mano.”

  “Got it.” Shark Wind, Koa thought, translating the man’s name from Hawaiian, when recognition dawned. Nālani had mentioned Mano’s name more than once, and Koa wondered if he was a competitor for her attention. It wouldn’t be surprising that her male colleagues in and around the national park would pursue her. He’d have to keep an eye on Mano and run his name through the computer.

  “Sergeant Basa, police photographer Ronnie Woo, Chip Baxter, and Georgina Pau.” Koa pointed to each in turn. “Chip and Georgina are crime-scene technicians. And this”—Koa turned to the medic—“is Dr. Shizuo Hori.”

  Mano waved a greeting as they all mo
ved away from the whirlybird.

  Koa came straight to the point, yelling to make himself heard. “You found a body out here?”

  “Yes, sir. He’s over there.” Mano pointed toward a lone figure in a Smokey the Bear hat, standing a couple of hundred yards away. “Near Aouli. Aouli Kim, she’s a park ranger.”

  Although he’d never met Aouli, Koa also recognized her name from something Nālani had said. “Let’s have a look.” Koa started toward the park ranger.

  “Hold up. Hold up,” Mano protested. Koa stopped and turned back.

  “Sir …”

  “You can drop the sir. Just call me Koa.”

  “Okay, Koa. There’s new lava out here, and it’s dangerous. Maybe you and your people could follow me?”

  Koa instinctively looked down at his shoes but didn’t see anything cooking. “Sure.”

  “And watch your footing. It’s easy to bust an ankle,” Mano warned. Koa, well aware of that risk, said nothing.

  Mano led them in a wide arc downhill before angling back toward the lone figure of Aouli. It was rough going, especially for Woo with his camera bag and the techs with their equipment cases. Deep crevices, many large enough to swallow a man, separated lobes of ebony rock. Porous charcoal-like stubble coated the recently cooled lava, and brittle bubbles of rock left by air pockets crunched beneath their feet. The smell of sulfur gas came and went with the wind gusts. The sooty surface absorbed the fierce heat of the sun until it scorched the soles of their shoes. The distance, maybe three hundred yards even with their circuitous route, seemed like a mile. Despite the trade winds blowing puffy clouds from the east, sweat drenched the team long before they reached their destination.

  When Koa approached Aouli, he pegged her as a Hawaiian in her late twenties—younger than his girlfriend, but lacking Nālani’s grace. Up close, he registered the distressed look on her face.

  She offered no aloha or other greeting. “There.” She pointed at a dark rain poncho, anchored to the ground with rocks along the sides. “It’s over there.”

  Koa took a deep breath and mentally prepared himself for a gruesome sight.

  “Be careful,” Aouli warned with an edge in her voice, making him stop. “See that toe?”

  “Toe?”

  “It’s a small finger of the lava flow.” She pointed at a long snake of dull black stone that appeared to end under the poncho. “That’s a new flow within the last thirty-six hours. It’ll support your weight, but it’s still hot inside.”

  Avoiding the new lava, but nevertheless feeling the heat it radiated, Koa knelt next to the plastic and removed the rocks anchoring one side. Before he could lift the sheet, a gust of wind caught the edge, whipping it away. The ugly odor of decomposing flesh assaulted him. “Jesus Christ …” The words were out before he could control himself.

  He’d seen scorched bodies—way too many of them. Men caught by mortar fire or too close to an exploding RPG. For years after Somalia, reddened, blistered faces shorn of hair had joined Hazzard’s face in his nightmares. Now he faced another scorched corpse. For a moment, the sight triggered horrible memories, but with great effort, he forced them away. He had to concentrate, to focus on the present, on his job. Get the job done for Jerry … for his own redemption. That’s how he’d become chief detective.

  He forced himself to study the corpse, taking in every detail. He’d taught himself to go slowly, to absorb every facet of a crime scene, to look not only for what was there but also for what was missing. And false clues. His experience with Hazzard made him paranoid.

  The shriveled, naked, partially burned corpse lay in an irregular gap between two lobes of lava rock. The new toe of lava had extended into the hole, covering most of the corpse’s left arm. The heat in the confined space must have been horrendous.

  He turned his attention to the remains, starting with the man’s face. Birds had pecked out the man’s eyes, leaving gory sockets. Heat had seared the man’s flesh, but Koa noted the high, wide forehead and pointed jawline. The man’s nose had been broken earlier and healed with a distinctive twist to the left. His lips had shriveled and his mouth hung open in a grin. The man’s teeth were stained a brownish yellow, like the teeth of a smoker or a coffee addict, and he had a double gap in his upper front teeth.

  Koa turned his attention to the rest of the man’s body. The hot rock must have ignited the deceased’s clothes, leaving burnt scraps of blue denim. The man had been wearing jeans. Strangely, a thick leather belt, although blackened, had resisted the heat, and lay unbuckled atop the body. That puzzled Koa. The lava couldn’t have unhooked the belt or stripped it from around the man’s waist. Heat had roasted the man’s skin, but a series of deep circular burns disfigured the man’s chest, groin, and thighs. At first Koa assumed flecks of burning lava made the marks, but as he examined the scars, he suspected a more vicious cause.

  The loose belt suggested the man had been dumped with the belt discarded on top of the body. The appearance of burn marks pointed to torture, probably with cigarettes. There were lots of burn marks. It was a bad scene. The man had suffered unimaginable pain before he’d passed. What kind of animal tortured another human being like this, and why? Had this man sought to hide some secret?

  Lifting his head, Koa examined the surrounding area. It was desolate, with nothing but ebony lava for a half mile in every direction. He doubted the man had been tortured out here in the open, not with active lava so close. More likely, the poor devil had been tortured elsewhere, and his killers had dumped the body so the advancing lava would hide their crime. But where? And how had the killer or killers transported the body to this wasteland?

  Sergeant Basa knelt beside Koa and peered into the small pit. “Poor guy. Looks like he fell and got trapped in the lava. Hell of a way to die.”

  “I’m not so sure.” Koa added up the factors in his head. “Look at those burn marks and the belt. How’d his belt come loose and land on top of him? And I’m wondering whether the heat burned the clothes off his body, or he was naked and his clothes were thrown in on top.”

  Basa leaned down to get a better look at the burns. “You’re right. And there’s a pattern to those circular burns. They’re all the same, like cigarette burns. You’re thinking torture?”

  “Yeah, it looks that way,” Koa said. “And like the killers discarded the body.”

  “Killed elsewhere and dumped so Pele would bury the evidence,” Basa suggested.

  “Yeah, only Pele didn’t cooperate.” Koa pointed to the toe of lava covering only a small portion of the body. “Another couple of yards of lava flow, and no one would ever have found this poor bastard.”

  The two policemen exchanged a hard look. “Jesus, you think Shizuo can sort this out?” Basa asked.

  Koa let out a short, dispirited laugh. “He couldn’t tell the time of death if he witnessed the killing. But that’s no matter. We need to protect this site until we can get the body out of here. We’d better get some fire and rescue folks to cut this poor slob out of the lava.”

  Koa stood and signaled Ronnie Woo forward. The diminutive Japanese photographer was a genius with his Nikon. Koa never worried about the quality or thoroughness of Woo’s crime-scene shots. “Looks like a homicide. Shoot a full set of photos. Get a picture of the belt on top of the body and close-ups of the burn marks on the torso and groin.” He thought about warning Woo about the hideous sight but didn’t. The photographer never showed the slightest emotion no matter how horrible the crime scene. For a second, Koa wondered how Woo dealt with violent death, then let the thought go.

  Koa joined Mano and his colleagues standing a short distance away. “How’d y’all stumble on the body?”

  “This,” Mano responded, holding up a piece of charred blue denim. “We found this hooked on an outcropping of lava, and then saw the swarm of flies. Aouli went to check and found the body.”

  “Any of you move anything or touch the body?”

  “Touch that corpse? No, sir. We just put a rain pon
cho over the hole to keep the flies away.” Koa checked the others for their replies and was rewarded with a “no” from Aouli and a headshake from Pape.

  “Any idea about his identity?”

  “You kidding? I wouldn’t recognize anyone from … what is left.” Mano’s face, like Aouli’s, had taken on an ashen color.

  Koa understood. A human corpse discarded in a lava moonscape—let alone one savagely burned—would turn anyone’s stomach. “How does one get in or out of this area?”

  “Drive, hike, or fly—”

  “Drive?” Koa interrupted. “I thought Pele destroyed the roads into Royal Gardens.”

  “Lava flows cut all the roads and destroyed most all the buildings, but residents still get in and out on ATVs and motorcycles. They’re mostly crazy, but they do it.”

  “People still live here?” Koa looked around at the desolate expanse of black rock.

  “The sensible ones left when the eruptions first threatened Royal Gardens. Some had to be forcibly evacuated just before their homes went up in flames. But there are diehards, and Pele’s nothing if not fickle. A few buildings, including a couple of partial homes, survived in islands surrounded by lava. And there’s folks who live in tents or shacks.”

  “And they ride motorcycles in and out?” Koa was incredulous despite the explanation.

  “Yeah. Motorcycles and ATVs, right past county emergency personnel, who’ll have to evacuate them next time Pele throws a tantrum.”

  “Just pupule … nutty,” Koa remarked, although his thoughts were already trending in a different direction.