Free Mahu Blood by Neil Plakcy Page A

she come in contact with him through her volunteer work for the organization?
    I called his office again and left another message for him. “Please tell him it’s regarding an ongoing police investigation.”
    “I will, Detective,” his secretary said. “But it’s a very important case, and with the time difference between here and Washington, DC he probably just hasn’t had a chance to get back to you.”
    “Does this case involve Kingdom of Hawai’i?” I asked.
    “You’d have to talk to Mr. O’Malley. It’s our firm’s policy not to discuss clients or ongoing litigation.”
    I did a quick Google search on Adam O’Malley and Fields and Yamato, trying to figure out what sort of case might have taken him to Washington. The firm specialized in land use issues, but I couldn’t pull up anything on a specific case that was going on in DC at the moment.
    When I saw Ezekiel up close I was surprised to see that he was older than I’d expected, or maybe it was that life had treated him harshly. Although he was only in his forties, his hair was graying, there were bags under his eyes and his left eye twitched.
    He wore a faded blue polo shirt and cheap jeans, the kind that always look too shiny no matter how much you wash them.
    “Thanks for coming in,” I said.
    “I don’t have much time,” Maile said. She treated Ezekiel as if she were his mother, though I doubted she was much older than he was. Maybe I just got a motherly impression from her dowdy clothes and old-fashioned pin curls. “My boss is coming down on me for the time I’ve been spending on KOH.”
    “You can wait out here,” I told her. “We’ll try and get Mr.
    Kapuāiwa in and out as fast as we can.”
    “I’d rather stay with Ezekiel.”
    “Sorry, that’s not the way we do things here.” I put my hand on Ezekiel’s shoulder and turned him toward an interview room.
    We sat down across the table from him, after he’d declined our MAhu BLood 61
    offers of coffee or soda.
    “We’ll make this quick,” I said. “Mr. Kapuāiwa, did you know Edith Kapana?”
    He nodded. “Growing up, on the Big Island. Aunty Edith lived in our village.”
    “That would be Opihi?”
    “Yes. Madame Pele was not kind to us, and our houses were destroyed by Kilauea.” From the casual way he talked about the goddess of fire, whom ancient Hawaiians thought controlled volcanoes, you’d think she was a neighbor back in Opihi just like Edith Kapana.
    He spoke in an oddly stilted way, as if he were reading a script and didn’t understand the words himself. “Did you and Edith both move here to O’ahu at the same time?”
    He shook his head. “I had already left Opihi some time before.”
    “But you had been in touch with her recently?”
    He looked down at the table. “Aunty Edith was a volunteer for Kingdom of Hawai’i,” he said, in his strange monotone.
    “She was very kahiko, a great reservoir of information about the Hawaiian people.”
    “This information. Was it written down? Records of some kind?”
    He looked back up. “Not that I know of. It was more like history and lore than actual records.” His eye twitched rapidly, and he clutched the edge of the table. His fingernails were ragged, and his knuckles were scarred.
    “Do you know any reason why someone might want to kill her?”
    He pursed his lips together and blinked his eyes rapidly. “No, not at all.”
    “How about why someone might break into her room and tear it apart?”
    62 Neil S. Plakcy
    His hands started to shake. “No, no,” he said.
    I looked at Ray. I was afraid Ezekiel would have some kind of nervous breakdown or epileptic fit if we kept going. Ray nodded, and we both stood.
    “We may have some more questions for you later, Mr.
    Kapuāiwa. Thank you for coming in.” We led him back to the reception area, where Maile glared at us and took charge of him, hustling him out.
    “The guy’s a little squirrely, isn’t he?” Ray asked after they’d left. “And