5 Murder at Volcano House (14 page)

“Do I have to wear a tux?” I’m looking for a way out. I’m not much for weddings, or any kind of formal events. Sunset on the beach with a few beers. That’s my kind of celebration.

“Nah,” Tommy replies. “Zahra and I are wearing African wedding robes. You can wear whatever you like.”

“Swell,” I say. “I’ll be there.”

“T’anks, eh?” Tommy hangs up.

I call my voicemail and retrieve my new message.

“Hi, this is Ashley,” says the twenty-something female voice. “I’m totally sorry I haven’t called you back. I like left my cell phone on the airplane, you know?”

Is she asking me or telling me?

“It took the airline a really long to find it!
Bogus.”

Bogus?

“Whatever,” Ashley continues. “I’m flying back tomorrow—okay?—and can meet you Friday, like at noon. I work at Safari in Ala Moana Shopping Center. For sure I’ll bring my pics of Heather and Lindsay’s twenty-first birthday party.
Way
sad.”

Then she says as an afterthought. “Oh, Ethan got your messages. He’s like just a guy I know in Denver. He wasn’t at the twins’ party.”

Okay, Ethan wasn’t at the twins’ party. But why was his phone number riding with them in Fireball’s car?

I save Ashley’s message. Now I have another question to ask her on Friday.

twenty-three

Thursday morning I stop by the desk at the Volcano House and ask Pualani if she has any idea where I might find Ikaika “Sonny Boy” Chang. It’s a big island—but not that big. Like most island communities, this one is tight.

Hearing Sonny Boy’s name seems to startle her. She composes herself and then says that after the Save Pele Coalition disowned him for dragging Ransom from his car, Sonny Boy has been in and out of prison, but recently returned on parole to Volcano, where he lives only about a mile away. She claims he’s a new man.
We’ll see
.

“Sonny Boy stay only one mile from da Volcano House? You got one address fo’ ‘em?”

“No need address,” she says. “Volcano one small kine village, yeah?” She tells me how to find his digs. “But he no
make
da geothermal guy. I know. Pele da one.”

“How you know he no do ‘em?”

“Jus’ know.” She gets a tortured look on her face. “Sonny Boy at home,” she says.

I wonder how she knows. “You okay?” I ask.

She nods, but her eyes tell a different story. Leaving the desk I ponder what just happened and what Pualani has to do with Sonny Boy.

I drive Hilo-bound on Highway 11, from the main gate of Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park to Volcano Village. The journey downslope is barely one mile.

In less than a minute I turn off the highway into Volcano Village. The village’s scattered homes and B&Bs spread over several miles of high rainforest at the cool elevation of nearly four thousand feet. Its post office and dozen or so small businesses—restaurants, hardware store, and two general stores—all straddle Old Volcano Road, once the main highway around the island. Frequent rains keep everything in Volcano green and mossy.

The old highway that connects the village’s main streets is damp. It’s not raining now, but the next shower is always coming. Only a few thousand people live here. The village gives off a hang-loose-aging-hippie vibe. It’s a place where independent-minded artists, crafts- and trade-persons, retirees, wilted flower children, and corporate dropouts end up after long years of playing the game. Not the mention lifelong residents who are none of the above.

How Sonny Boy fits into this vibe, I don’t know. He certainly wasn’t hang-loose when he dragged Ransom from his car some two decades ago. I recall the CEO’s limo driver, Kawika, saying Sonny Boy grew
pakalolo
back then on the land cleared for drilling. Maybe protecting his crop made his protest turn violent? When I asked why Chang had attended
Stan Nagahara’s funeral, Kawika said the former protester was probably just glad to see Nagahara dead. And would also be glad to see Ransom dead.

No surprise Caitlin named Sonny Boy her suspect number one.

Off the old highway sits a plantation-style cottage on an overgrown jungle that’s seen better days. I pull in. That’s not where Sonny Boy lives. He lives down an equally overgrown path that weaves out of sight behind the cottage. I drive down the path, just wide enough for one car, into a clearing. Sitting on blocks is a rust-orange shipping container, the kind you see on Matson ships, with a window cut in at one end and a door at the other.

I knock on the rusty metal door. I expect it to open to the sweet-sour odor of
pakalolo
. No. The container smells like wild ginger. Has he kicked the habit?

He steps toward me. He’s not a big man, but wiry and muscular.

“Ikaika?” I say. “I’m Kai. Pualani say maybe you like talk wit’ me?”

“Shoots,” he says, “Call me Sonny Boy.” He shows me in.

The ginger scent intensifies as I follow him. Then I see why. In one corner a plastic bucket that says L
ONDON
D
RILLING
E
QUIPMENT
—a relic of his protesting days?—brims with the yellow ginger that grows along the highway.

“You know Pualani long?” I ask and check him out more closely.

Mop of brown hair. Sun-bleached dreadlocks. Dark, intense eyes—with the martyr look in those biblical illustrations of Jesus. But Sonny Boy’s eyes are fiercer.

“Pualani no tell you?” His fierce eyes warm.

“No tell me what?” I say.

“I’m Malia’s daddy.”

Whose daddy?
Then it dawns on me.
Pualani’s tortured look. Her teenage girl
.

“Shoots,” I say. Sonny Boy and Pualani must have hung out together during the protests. Then on one of his return trips from prison, I guess, Pualani had his baby.

“You surprise?” he asks. “Das why I here in Volcano. To be wit’ Malia.”

I shrug and look around the rusty container. On the plank floor sits a small bookshelf with volumes on Hawaiian history and law. And a photo of a smiling teenager who looks like Pualani. No TV. No electricity, I guess. There’s one short stool and a sagging single bed against one metal wall and a surfboard against the other. That’s it.

I try to connect with him. “Where you surf, brah?”

“Pohoiki in Lower Puna.” Sonny Boy gestures to the stool. I plant myself on it and he sits cross-legged on the floor. “Da bes’, brah. But when I can go surfing? No wheels.”

“Maybe we go togeddah sometime,” I say. “I got one car hea, but no board.”

He perks up. Regardless of what I’ve heard about him, I’m starting to like Sonny Boy. His daughter is his life. He surfs. Maybe he is a changed man?

“What you t’ink ‘bout da guy Rex Ransom wen’
huli
in da steam vent?” I ask.

Sonny Boy’s eyes turn fierce again. “Good riddance. He deserve ‘em. He rip up da rainforest and he rape Pele.”

“You like tell me, brah, you hea when he wen’
huli?”

“Wuz hea in Volcano,” Sonny Boy says. “Pele did ‘em. Case close. When I pull da guy outta his car, I do ‘em fo’ Pele. She acting t’rough me.”

“Maybe Pele act t’rough again?”

“Nah,” Sonny Boy says. “Dis time she no need me, or anybody.” He looks me in the eyes. “No mo’ jail again fo’ dat guy
. Nevah
. I stay wit’ Malia.”

Sonny Boy didn’t get off lightly. Most men in Ransom’s position, for PR sake, would have let an incident like this go. But he pressed charges, attended court hearings, and spoke out against Chang at every opportunity. Why wouldn’t Sonny Boy carry a grudge? Not to mention that he seems to think his actions were divinely inspired.

“Why I
make
Ransom?” he continues. “No need. Pele do ‘em. All t’ree dead now. Firs’ da plant manager. Den da attorney. And now da beeg boss. It more den one coincidence. Don’t you t’ink, brah?”

“Could be,” I say. And I wonder:
Would he risk parole to take another hack at Ransom? Would he risk being with his daughter?

“If you don’t believe me,” Sonny Boy says, “ask Pele’s sistah, Hi’iaka. She see da whole t’ing.”

“She see Pele kill Ransom? Da crazy woman? Da escape mental patient?”

“Sure t’ing, brah. Go ask her yourself.”

“Where I fine’ her?”

“Secret place,” Sonny Boy says. “You got one car?”

I nod. “Told you awready, brah.”

“I take you, den,” he says.

twenty-four

Sonny Boy and I climb into my car. He’s carrying a plastic shopping bag half filled with papayas and apple-bananas. We start to roll and he says, “You like take one
makana
, one gift, to Hi‘iaka?”

“What
kine
gift?” I ask.

“One bottle of gin,” Sonny Boy says. “An’ one pack of Camels.” He tells me Hi‘iaka should be honored in the same way her sister Pele is honored.

“Fo’ sure?” I’m thinking this is a scam. I’m thinking the gin and Camels will end up in Sonny Boy’s hands.

He nods. He’s not kidding.

Sonny Boy directs me to a little general store on the Old Volcano Highway. It’s one of those tiny, all-purpose marts where villagers can get everything they need without having to drive to Hilo. The fifth of gin and pack of Camels sets me back nearly twenty-five bucks. I pocket the receipt, wondering how to justify this expense to my client.

We climb into the car again and head into the park. I take Crater Rim Drive past the Volcano House and start to circle the three-ī-mile Kīlauea Caldera. Sonny Boy is not saying where we’re going.

So I ask, “How you know da goddess?”

“Hi‘iaka?” he asks.

“Yeah, Hi‘ iaka—Serena Barrymore.”

“From da protess’,” he says. “Not name Serena anymo’. Dat was befor’ da protess’. We protess’ togeddah da drilling in da rainforest.”

“You know da guy she
make
, da guy she push in front da bus?”

“Nevah know da guy. Was in prison den.”

I nod and keep driving. The caldera stays on our left as we continue along the counterclockwise circle. It’s mid-morning and The Steaming Bluff, where Ransom died, raises a thin mist into the sapphire sky. The odor of sulfur seeps into the car, despite closed windows.

I turn to Sonny Boy. “Where we going?”

He nods in a forward direction.

I keep my eyes on the road ahead. We pass the Kīlauea Military Camp, site of Stan Nagahara’s funeral, and then the Jaggar Museum and the Southwest Rift Overlook.

Sonny Boy’s face looks confident, even amused. He’s got a secret. And he knows I want it. But at least he seems to be cooperating with me. Or is he leading me into some remote, quiet place where I could easily disappear?

Soon we approach Halema‘uma‘u Crater, where Karl Kroften’s crushed BMW was found.

I shrug. “Here? Where Pele live?”

Sonny Boy gazes ahead and grins, like the cat that ate the bird. He’s enjoying himself. He likes to keep me wondering.

We swing around the bottom of the circle, where Crater Rim Drive carves into lava flows of the 1970s and 1980s. As
long ago as that was, the roadside still looks charred. Only a few sprigs of green sprout from cracks in the black rock.

We pass Devastation Trail—a winding path into a scorched forest. Then Thurston Lava Tube, a tunnel as big around as an airliner that was formed by a river of molten lava. Sonny Boy raises his brows and says, “Almos’.”

I drive by the Thurston Tube. About a half-mile later he says, “Pull ovah.”

I do and we climb out. He grabs his shopping bag with papayas and bananas and I grab my gin and smokes. We walk back toward the lava tube.

“Where we goin’, brah?” I ask.

“I show you.” He keeps walking.

We walk in single file along the shoulder of the road. Soon Sonny Boy steps through a break in a fern hedge and we find ourselves on a trail that weaves through a forest. The air is moist and cool. An invisible stream gurgles. A chorus of crickets and birds serenades us.

“Dis where Hi‘iaka live?” I ask. “On dis trail?”

“In one secret lava tube, brah,” Sonny Boy says.

I consider what he’s said. The Thurston Tube is the most famous, but there are hundreds in the park and in the East Rift Zone where lava flows to the sea. Some tubes have been charted and explored, by the likes of Stan Nagahara who died in one, but others remain mysteries.

Sonny Boy leads the way. The trail gets narrower and the forest thicker. This would be a perfect place to rub out a PI who’s too
niele
—too nosey. If the ex-con has anything to do with Rex Ransom’s death, or the deaths of his two officers under equally suspicious circumstances, he could disappear me
here—if not forever, for a very long time. I size up Sonny Boy again and decide to take my chances.

“We there yet?” I’m already breaking into a sweat. The sun is blazing, we’re hiking up and down and around, and there’s not much air among the giant ferns.

“Almos’,” he says again.

And, true to his word, not one minute later he slows down, stops, and scans the trail as if he’s searching for something. He looks and looks and then says: “Hea.” Meaning, this is the place.

He squeezes through some more tree ferns into one of those hidden, uncharted lava tubes. While the Thurston Tube is lighted for the convenience and safety of park visitors, this tube is dark.