‘Maybe they’ll marry and settle in closer to her new bar if it catches on, but it’s a difficult city to compete in and chances are her bar will just limp along. The inspector will see a fine goodbye party with the police force, but will the police force or the city be any different for his having been there? I don’t think so and though they’ll use him sporadically after he retires, his utility will decline. His purpose in life will vanish and with it his reason for being. That night I went to that threshold. You have to act to make a difference.’
La Rosa wasn’t going to let this pass, but Raveneau caught her eye. Raveneau didn’t care if Casey had hired private investigators to look into his life. His look said let that part be, so she asked, ‘Have you ever killed anyone other than in war?’
‘I’m going to ask you to leave now. We’re both out of time. I need to think about my plans and you need to drive to make it to your lunch.’
‘We can call and tell her we’re running late. We’d like to know more about you.’
He turned to Raveneau.
‘A thing can be justified if you have a higher object and you achieve it, but focus has to stay on the goal, the result. I know you understand that. You flew over here because you have the murder weapon and the sense you’re closing in. But even if it’s true that’s the gun used to kill Alan, and I suppose it’s likely true, you still don’t know what you can do with it, do you? Or are you just hoping things will evolve? I’ve passed the point where I can wait for that evolution.’
‘Tell us about the argument between Jim Frank and Alan Krueger,’ Raveneau said.
‘Jim was able to walk on and off a flight without any risk of his luggage being checked. He sometimes smuggled money or weapons for AK. He may have stolen counterfeit bills he was carrying from here to the mainland. He was very short of money. He had a fairly large land deal go bad here and lost everything. Ask his ex-wives how much alimony they ever saw. Alan accused him, they argued, and that was the last I saw of Alan, but, of course, I’m not saying Jim had anything to do with killing him.’
He smiled at la Rosa.
‘When you get back I’ll tell you what it feels like to napalm a village and watch some of them try to run while their skin is melting. The kids didn’t get far, but some of those women would get twenty or thirty yards, like a torch moving in the twilight. When I put a gun to my head I think about them, but I don’t feel guilty. I just think about them as part of a balance sheet, an expense. The meaning of our lives is capital we spend and you cannot make a mark on history without inflicting some pain on some people.’
‘What are you focused on now?’ Raveneau asked.
‘That’s already in motion.’
‘Are you going to tell us about that?’ la Rosa asked. ‘We’d really like to know.’
‘I’m sure you would.’
FIFTY-THREE
‘ What was that about?’ la Rosa asked. ‘Was he threatening us?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Has he talked this way before?’
‘Not quite like this, but he can move quickly from threatening to get me fired to asking what I want to drink.’
‘You ought to call Coe and ask for help finding out more about him. He knew Krueger. Krueger is tied into the counterfeit notes and the counterfeit money ties into the Secret Service/FBI investigation. The Feds will help us on this, don’t you think?’
‘They will and I’ll call him when we get down to the beach.’
‘Why are we going back there?’
‘Before we make the drive to Ito’s gallery, I want to see if Matt Frank is still at Hapuna.’
When they didn’t spot Frank’s pickup in the beach lot, Raveneau said, ‘Let’s pick up the can he was drinking from. I saw him put it down on top of a garbage can. But we need something to put it in.’
‘I’ve got a plastic bag in my purse and I’ll go get the can while you call Coe. I know where to look for it.’
Coe picked up on the first ring and asked, ‘Have you met with him?’
‘We left his house fifteen minutes ago. We’re on our way to interview a woman on the other end of the island and then we want to meet with him again. He’s nervous and agitated.’
‘You checked in with our satellite office?’
‘Yeah, they said call if we need backup. We’ll give them a call but what can you do to help us find out more about Casey?’
‘I’ll do what I can. I’ll call you.’
The can was still there. La Rosa had it with her as she walked back. By the time she reached the car he was off the phone. They drove south skirting Hilo and then the long grade on the road up to Volcanoes National Park. The gallery was set back among trees. They parked in a gravel lot across from an outdoor garden where it looked like pieces of sculpture were for sale. Inside the gallery were paintings and photographs. Many depicted scenes from the park up the road.
Raveneau spotted a woman in the back with a customer and couldn’t be certain it was her, but it looked like it was. She became aware of them but she was still in conversation with her customer. As they waited, Raveneau studied a black and white photograph of a small group of men at the edge of Kilauea Crater taken perhaps a hundred years ago. The starkness of the crater and the small figures of the men at the edge of it said something he couldn’t quite put a name to.
Then from behind him a voice said, ‘I like that photograph very much myself. In a scene that is so stark you realize what is fragile. Are you looking for a particular artist?’
‘We have an appointment with Aolani Ito.’
‘That’s me.’
It turned out Ito knew Thomas Casey as an islander whose family through a corporation had wrested control of a large block of ranchland and an even larger former sugar plantation in the interior. She believed Casey to be very wealthy and heard the money came from timber, coal, and land long before Casey was born.
‘I didn’t like him,’ she said. ‘He thought Jim wanted me there because I was pretty and young and it was all about sexual pleasure. He thought I was there to get away from my family and have a place to live for free and play at being an artist. He came on to me once and his way of doing that was to remind me that the land and the house and Jim being there was because of his generosity. But he inherited it all. He got Captain Jim into the land deal where he lost all his money.’
‘What about politics?’ la Rosa asked.
‘I didn’t listen to that. When they drank the things they said were all crazy. They would talk about killing like you would talk about picking fruit, as if it was normal to make plans and then kill your enemies. Even Captain Jim was that way but I didn’t listen too closely to any of that.’
Raveneau had divided the photos in half. One stack was face down. He showed her a photo of Krueger.
‘Do you recognize this man?’
‘Of course, that’s Alan. He and Captain Jim were good friends until they had an argument and I don’t really know what it was about, but it was Alan who was angry first. He was a gentle man. He was funny and kind and sort of sad. He was a government agent of some sort and there were other men that came with him sometimes. They also worked for the government. There were two of them. One in particular who came around more and several times on his own. He was careful not to talk too much around me. But he was nice.’
‘Would you look through the photos and tell me who you recognize?’
‘Sure.’
Raveneau handed her the partial stack printed from Matt Frank’s Facebook photos. She had barely looked through ten before she said, ‘These are from little Matt. He was so cute with the camera around his neck all the time. He saw a professional photographer and copied the movements. He was very serious and made everybody laugh, but look at these. He was good.’
She touched another photo.