Death of a Messenger Read online

  “Don’t be so sure,” Jimmy challenged. “The Polynesian idea is neither unique in human history nor outmoded. The Catholic Church sanctified Father Damien’s St. Philomena’s Church on Moloka‘i by sealing the bones of his right hand in a crypt. Many human relics still attract pilgrimages in Europe and the Middle East.”

  Koa tried to puzzle out all this information. It was all too fantastic: The mutilated corpse. The missing eye. Now this secret burial vault. Could it be that someone had killed to preserve the tomb of his kin? Impossible? Perhaps not.

  After killing Hazzard, Koa had thought he’d never escape punishment, yet he’d successfully faked the mill manager’s suicide. Nothing was impossible.

  “What would you say if I told you the corpse we found outside had been mutilated? Missing its left eye?”

  Jimmy’s head snapped around. “The left eye … just the left one?”

  “Yes. The left eye was gouged out. The right eye was intact.”

  “A sacrificial warning,” Jimmy squeaked hesitantly as though he were struggling with the thought.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Ancient Polynesians, including the Hawaiians, made human sacrifices and often gouged out the left eye. They displayed sacrifice victims as warnings to others who might break some kapu, some law or custom.”

  “Jesus.” Koa struggled to maintain his calm. “The secret must have died a hundred years ago.”

  “Perhaps, but I know of Hawaiians living today who possess such secrets. Your victim could have been killed to warn others against intruding on this burial site.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  AS KOA STOOD before the canoe, the memory was vivid, like a movie playing in his mind. When he was six or seven he’d sat at his great-grandfather’s feet, staring wide-eyed as the old man talked story of the kahuna kālai wa‘a, the expert canoe builders who were Koa’s ancestors. Singsong prayers and the roasting of special fishes readied his father’s father four generations past to climb into the forests where the great koa trees made the finest canoes. Like a priest listening for signs, each of the ancient Kāne men was alert for the hollow tapping sound of the ‘elepaio bird. The bird signaled a rotten tree—always to be avoided. ‘Uā ‘elepaio ‘ia ka wa‘a—the canoe is marked out by the ‘elepaio.

  Even with chanted prayers, it took the Kāne men many hundreds of blows with a stone adze to fell a forest giant. Then came the women to tend the fires and cook for the dozens of men who hauled the great log down the mountain, ridden by a guide to keep it safe from harm on the steeper slopes. As a child Koa had always wanted to ride one of those canoe logs. Now he wondered if his ancestors had carved this red burial canoe, painted the color of the gods.

  “Remember the match, Detective?” Jimmy interrupted his reverie.

  Jerked back to the present, Koa thought not of the match itself, but of its dancing reflection in Jimmy’s eyes.

  “Yeah.” Koa kept his voice even, suppressing his irritation at Jimmy’s obliqueness.

  “Remember how the flame danced around?”

  A light dawned in Koa’s mind. “Airflow. That’s why you moved the rocks.”

  “Dead-on, Detective … and the airflow is even stronger in here.” Koa recognized the freshness of the air, even before the archaeologist finished speaking.

  “I should have figured. There’s another entrance.”

  “Don’t kick yourself. I’ve been in these burial caves a bunch of times. Multiple burial sites often branch off of the same tube.”

  Koa advanced beyond the canoe to a recessed area in the opposite wall, and Jimmy hopped along after him. Koa knelt, pressing both hands against the wall and straining against the rock. Nothing happened, except for the pain clawing at his shoulder. Jimmy joined him, and they pushed again. Still no movement.

  “I don’t think it’s going to budge.” Despite the airflow, Koa doubted that the cave extended farther. “One more time. Let’s push together.”

  Both of them heaved against the rock wall. As they strained and Koa clenched his teeth to control the pain, a section of the wall began to shiver. Barely discernible at first, the movement accelerated, leaving a gaping hole.

  Koa’s arm and shoulder hurt like blazes, and he stopped for a moment to choke down two pain pills, dry swallowing, before following his light through the opening into another cavern. The place was immense, so big that the dim light faded in every direction.

  Koa’s eyes followed the beam. The circle of artificial light illuminated a large, flat boulder. The rock, nearly four feet long and two and a half feet high, stood like a stone table. A mound of chips surrounded its base. The chips appeared to be nearly a foot deep near the stone and tapered down to a loose carpet a dozen feet away from the boulder. Several round stones, about the size of baseballs, lay atop and intermingled with the flakes.

  Jimmy hopped over next to Koa. “Sweet Jesus, an adze maker’s workshop, untouched by the hands of time.” Koa shifted the light farther down the wall, revealing another large, flat boulder, also surrounded by stone chips. Beyond that rock stood a third stone table and a fourth. The light wouldn’t penetrate the farthest recesses of the cavern.

  “It’s huge.” Koa heard the awe in his own voice. “Dozens of men must have worked in here.”

  Jimmy seemed equally amazed. “It changes our understanding of history.”

  “What understanding of history?” Koa asked.

  “Jesus. We knew only half the story. The flat rocks surrounded by stone chips are workbenches. The round rocks scattered among the stone flakes are hammerstones, used to chip away stone fragments as they shaped the preforms.” Jimmy paused. “This workshop is where the adze makers worked in the wintertime when freezing weather stopped work on the summit.”

  Koa found this giant underground cavern fascinating, but he’d become chief detective only through an unrelenting focus on solving crimes. For him the mission was foremost. He wanted to know if this workshop was connected to the poor tortured soul whose death had brought them out here. He played his light across the floor, looking for anything that might answer that question. He’d trained his eye to look for an oddity, a discordant note, the one thing that didn’t belong in any crime scene.

  Something shiny near the base of the closest stone table reflected the beam of his flashlight. He moved closer and searched for the source of the glimmer. Nothing. He shifted position and directed the beam of light into the pile of stones. There. He knelt to examine the source of the reflection—a tiny piece of cellophane with a thin blue stripe. Packaging … it was a remnant of the wrapper of some modern product … and it instantly changed his whole approach to the cavern. This was more than an ancient workshop, untouched by the hands of time. Someone had been here in contemporary times … maybe only recently. This place might really be related to the murder.

  After searching the immediate floor area for other clues, Koa swung his light up over the cave walls, stopping the beam on a rocky outcropping from which a small piece of broken stick protruded. Although hard to see in the poor light, the stick appeared blackened. “What did they use for light in this cave?”

  “I’d guess that we’ll find the work areas ringed with kukui nut lamps.”

  Koa nodded. Old Hawaiians crushed the nuts of the kukui, or candlenut tree, and burned the oil in hollowed stones, called kukui nut lamps. He turned the light toward the curved roof of the cave. A thick vein of soot blackened the chocolate-colored lava rock wall above the torch holder. “Whatever it was, they burned an awful lot of it, and it smoked.”

  Koa suddenly thought of his last adventure in a cave. He and Basa, along with a half-dozen patrolmen, had cornered an escaped convict in an isolated lava tube. It had taken them three days to root the half-crazed and heavily armed man out of the dark, winding passages. He hoped he wouldn’t have to spend three days in this cavern, but at least here nobody was shooting at him.

  The flickering flame of Jimmy’s match, the airflow in the burial chamber, the clean sme
ll of the air in this huge cavern … all flashed together in Koa’s mind. “There’s got to be another entrance to this place.”

  “Dead-on, Detective.”

  “Someplace down there, I suppose.” Koa pointed the light toward the back of the huge cavern, but the powerful beam dissipated in the darkness.

  Koa swung his light from side to side, examining the workshop. Suddenly, the beam revealed a huge patch of wall where the rough lava rock had been painstakingly smoothed. In the middle of this flattened surface a crude figure stood carved in high relief. A human stick figure.

  A giant X outlined the body and legs of a man. A line across the top of the X formed the arms, while an inverted J created the neck and head. The figure’s right hand held a stick with a square top, while the left hand held what might have been a ball sprouting V-shaped lines. Above the stick figure, a ridge of protruding rock formed a gigantic upside-down V, like a ragged triangular roof. “It’s a petroglyph!” Koa exclaimed. “It’s magnificent—”

  “A relief carving,” Jimmy interrupted. “Petroglyphs are scratched into smooth lava rock surfaces. This figure is raised.” Jimmy’s shrill voice took on a pedantic tone. “Stonecutters chipped away all the surrounding rock, leaving the original rock to make the picture in raised relief. This technique is different and vastly more sophisticated than the traditional Hawaiian petroglyph.”

  “This place is extraordinary. Unbelievable.” Koa could barely control his excitement. He’d never imagined he would be part of a historic discovery. Even without specialized training, he knew he’d made a spectacular find. “What’s the figure holding?” Koa held his light on the figure’s right hand. “The right hand could be holding an adze.”

  “Gee, I’ll bet that’s right,” Jimmy conceded. “It looks sort of like a hammer or a hatchet. What about the left hand?”

  Koa shifted the light to the figure’s left side. “That’s harder. The upper part could be the sides of a cup or a bowl. Maybe it’s a bird.” Even as Koa spoke, he knew he had nailed it.

  Jimmy turned to Koa with an astonished look. “My God, you’re right, Detective. It’s a petrel, a dark-rumped petrel …”

  “Seabirds? The ones that loiter about behind ships?” Koa asked.

  “Yes, seabirds … seabirds that nest on the ground. The Hawaiians called them ‘ua‘a. You won’t find many around here today, but in ancient times hundreds of thousands of petrels nested in the saddle lands. Even when the first haoles arrived, thousands of petrels nested here.”

  “The Hawaiians hunted them for food?” Koa continued to hold the light on the figure’s upraised arm.

  “Yes. The chicks still dressed in down were a delicacy, a treat reserved for the chiefs.”

  “So what do you make of this guy holding the petrel aloft?”

  “An adze and a petrel. It’s a celebration of ancient natural resources in this part of the island.”

  “And the talisman, the bird woman … did she have the head of a petrel?” Koa guessed.

  “Dead-on. You missed your calling, Detective. You should have been an archaeologist.”

  Koa grinned, pleased with the compliment. “This place is a major historical and archaeological find, isn’t it?”

  “The combination of that grave and this massive underground workshop represents a previously unknown power center. Think of the work required to build and maintain this place. Food for the workers. Oil for the lamps. Stone for the stonecutters. Wood for the adze handles. Think of the social organization and power structure required to control the manpower. People developed the skills and devoted the time to make that rock carving and the bird woman talisman. A powerful man or group of men governed this place. Power derived from stone. Stone implements. And we had no idea before today—”

  Jimmy stopped talking as Sergeant Basa and Lieutenant Zeigler came crawling through the tunnel into the cavern, followed by one of Zeigler’s soldiers, dragging an electric arc light with its trailing electric cable. Jimmy’s body stiffened and he scowled. Before the archaeologist could open his mouth to speak, Koa placed a hand on the man’s shoulder. Jimmy tried to shake off the restraining hand, but Koa tightened his grip.

  Koa spoke in a low, urgent tone. “Jimmy, I don’t know what the Army did to you—”

  “The fucking Army killed my buddies an’ took my legs. Pissant lieutenant called in the artillery on us.” Jimmy leaned forward as though straining to rise off his cushion. His high-pitched voice quavered with uncontrolled rage.

  “I’m sorry for that, but Lieutenant Zeigler didn’t do it.” Koa spoke slowly, trying to appeal to Jimmy’s rational side. “He’s a good man.”

  “There ain’t no good Army lieutenants. They’re all bastards.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” Koa snapped, before forcing himself to speak slowly. “You’re going to need Zeigler’s help to study this site. It’s on Army land. You would like to be the archaeologist who reveals this workshop to the world, wouldn’t you?”

  That had the desired effect. Jimmy slowly rocked backward on his cushion. Koa, who continued to grip Jimmy’s shoulder, felt the tension drain out of the man’s body. The angry mask of Jimmy’s face began to dissolve, replaced by a crooked half smile. “You know how to get what you want, don’t you, Detective.”

  “Dead-on, Jimmy.” Koa returned Jimmy’s half smile as he released his grip on the archaeologist’s shoulder.

  Koa signaled to the newcomers and they gathered around him. He told them about the small piece of cellophane he’d found. “We’re here to check for any evidence that might connect this cavern to our murder site. Beyond that we don’t disturb anything.” His voice had the hard ring of authority, like a troop commander. “We’ll report this archaeological site to the state and federal governments.”

  “The National Park Service and the Hawaiian government are going to request the Army to suspend military operations here until this site can be properly evaluated and perhaps even excavated,” Jimmy squeaked as he looked malevolently at Lieutenant Zeigler.

  “Christ, that’s beyond my pay grade,” said Zeigler. “I’m just a lowly lieutenant.”

  Koa held up his hand for silence. “We’re out here on a murder investigation. We need to know why a ritual killing occurred in the shadow of an undiscovered archaeological site.”

  “Hell, this cavern would sure as hell explain someone sneaking past my MPs at night,” Zeigler said, spreading his arms, indicating the scope of the cave.

  “Agreed, if—and it’s a big if—the victim or the killer knew about this underground workshop,” Koa said. “But as near as we could tell, nobody had disturbed that rockfall before Jimmy arrived.”

  The men moved deeper into the cavern, crunching over the loose carpet of stone chips as they passed the four large stone tables. For a moment, Koa thought he spied a fifth worktable, but as they approached, he realized that the boulder was neither flat on top nor surrounded by stone flakes. Then he saw the opening in the wall and hurried forward. Directing his light through the opening, he saw not another entrance, as he had expected, but a second burial crypt. A disturbed burial crypt. Empty, aside from a pile of bones. Jimmy hopped up next to him.

  “What do you make of this?” Koa moved the light around the desolate chamber.

  “An archaeologist’s worst nightmare.”

  “Vandalism?”

  “Looks like it. The ancients never buried their dead like that.”

  “The question is when. Is this the work of modern hands or was this crypt robbed eons ago?” Koa held the light on the jumble of bones.

  “Can’t say. Grave robbing is as old as time.” Koa heard melancholy in Jimmy’s voice.

  As they approached the far end of the cavern, all four men felt the steady flow of air emanating from another tunnel.

  “There’s a good breeze blowing in here. This tunnel has to have another outlet,” Zeigler commented.

  “Where do you suppose it comes out?” Basa responded.

  “It’s
anybody’s guess. We won’t know until we explore it.” Jimmy grinned, obviously eager to continue exploring.

  “Koa, look at this!” Zeigler had moved into the mouth of the tunnel. Koa moved to the lieutenant’s side and knelt. He removed a plastic evidence envelope from his pocket and used it to pick up a small cylindrical object. Suddenly, he made the connection—butt and cellophane wrapper—both from a package of cigarettes.

  “These two things increase the likelihood of a connection between what we’ve found and our murder,” Koa announced.

  “What is it?” Basa stepped forward, looking at the object in the small plastic bag.

  “A cigarette butt.” Koa held the unfiltered butt for the others to see. The stub bore a marking identifying it as a Gauloises, a European cigarette. “That’s not a common smoke out here … maybe we can trace it.”

  “Suggests a modern grave robber, doesn’t it?” The melancholy in Jimmy’s voice had turned to anger.

  Although the vast majority of Koa’s work involved burglaries, street crimes, and drug cases, he knew a bit about the black market. “Things from this cave would be pretty valuable on the black market, wouldn’t they?” Koa looked toward Jimmy.

  “Oh, they’re valuable. The burial canoe and the talisman are priceless. Archaeological history is unfortunately full of murderous grave robbers. That part of Raiders of the Lost Ark was real enough.”

  Koa directed his light down the tunnel. “Exploring that tunnel just became a part of our murder investigation.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ARC LIGHTS BLAZED at the far end of the ancient underground workshop. Koa, Basa, Zeigler, and Detective Piki, Koa’s most junior detective, who’d been on cave-exploring expeditions, assembled the ropes, hand lights, and safety equipment necessary to explore the tunnel that fed fresh air into the stone workers’ cavern. Jimmy Hikorea joined them, riding a small three-wheeled scooter, retrieved from the back of his Bronco.