LATER THAT MORNING Koa drove to Hilo Memorial Hospital, running twenty minutes late for his eleven o’clock appointment with the county physician to witness the autopsy. He found Shizuo Hiro behind his desk in a tiny, cramped second-floor office. X-ray light boxes, several holding large panels of film, covered one swath of the wall behind Shizuo. The white room, with its white desk and white-frocked doctor, had an antiseptic smell that reminded Koa how thoroughly he disliked hospitals. Not to mention the doctors who hung out there.
“Hello, Shizuo.” Koa put on his best public demeanor for the Japanese obstetrician.
“You lose your watch?” snarled Shizuo. “You said you’d be here at eleven.”
“I got held up.”
“I hear you found a bunch of old Hawaiian junk out at Pōhakuloa.”
Koa felt the color rise in his face and his jaw harden. “No, Shizuo. We found a royal grave and an underground workshop from the 1600s. It’s a significant discovery.”
“The 1600s … that’s nothing. Japanese culture extends back to 30,000 BC.”
Koa wanted to shove the arrogant Japanese doctor’s head inside one of his light boxes, but he restrained himself. “Is Dr. Cater here?”
“Down the hall. But make it damn fast. I’ve got one in the labor room. Any time now.”
“Good. You should stick to what you do …” Koa faltered. He couldn’t imagine the man did anything “best,” and left the sentence unfinished as he turned away.
Two doors down the hall, Koa found a man in a white hospital coat with miniature medical corps insignia on one lapel and a tiny silver oak leaf on the other. Red-faced and heavyset with baggy jowls, the man plainly knew his way to the officers’ club bar. “Dr. Cater?”
“That’s me.” He spoke with an Irish brogue thick as tar. “You must be Chief Detective Kāne?”
“Koa … my friends call me Koa.” Koa offered a hand, which the Irishman shook vigorously. As pain radiated through his shoulder, Koa wished people would back off the power handshakes.
“Sean McHaney from the Honolulu force sends his regards.”
Sean had been on the Hilo force back when Koa had returned from overseas to be with his sick mother—the one rock-solid pillar in his life. A native healer of some local renown, she’d used all her connections to get Koa into the prestigious Kamehameha schools for children of Hawaiian descent and prodded him to perform. In the tug-of-war between his father’s failure and his mother’s hope, she’d won. It was a debt he could never repay.
He’d never thought of leaving the Special Forces until his friend Jerry, who’d always wanted to be a policeman, had died in Koa’s arms and Sean had suggested he come home to join the Hilo police force. The need to be with his ailing mom and the necessity for someone to exert some measure of control over his seriously wayward, frequently incarcerated brother had sealed the deal. Sean’s career had later stalled, while Koa’s had kept charging ahead.
“Sean McHaney … that old Irish cop got me started in police work. How do you know Sean?”
“The Army’s teamed up with the Honolulu police many times, and Sean has a nose for the tough ones. We’d better go see your so-called coroner. He’s on OB call and doesn’t have much time.” The venomous tone in Dr. Cater’s voice took Koa aback, but the doctor hustled out the door and down the hall to Shizuo’s office before Koa had a chance to question the source of his hostility. But something, Koa sensed, was seriously wrong.
“Ready to do the autopsy?” Koa asked as he and Cater reentered Shizuo’s office.
“It’s already done,” Shizuo said with a gleeful little snarl.
“What?” Koa demanded. Christ, this was an unwelcome surprise.
“Yes, sir,” Shizuo chirped. “I’m seeing OB patients this morning, so I did the autopsy last night.”
“Damn! You knew I wanted to witness it.” Koa could barely contain his anger.
“Cops don’t add much to autopsies … they just get in the way,” Shizuo responded dismissively.
Fuck, Koa thought to himself. When am I ever going to be rid of this arrogant asshole, this make-believe coroner? Shizuo was one of the ironies of Koa’s life. He’d avoided prosecution for his own crime because of an incompetent medical examiner, and now he was stuck working with an equally unskilled medical hack.
His control reasserted itself. What was done, however wrong, was done. He’d simply have to make the best of it. “So what did you find?”
“I’ll make this quick.” Shizuo picked up a red folder from his desk. “I’ve got some surprises.” The Japanese obstetrician held up a single finger and paused for effect. Koa grimaced at the clichéd gesture. He’d seen defense lawyers mimic that same pose—just before they tore Shizuo apart on cross-examination. “First, the visible wounds were not fatal. Any premortem damage to the facial structure and the hands was painful, but not fatal.”
Shizuo raised a second finger. “Second, there was inadequate blood in situ. The degree of hemorrhage is not consistent with the tissue damage. That evidences postmortem trauma. It is my opinion”—Shizuo didn’t bother to acknowledge his military colleague—“that your victim was dead for at least two hours before the lacerations were inflicted.”
“Then what was the cause of death?”
“We—” Dr. Cater tried to interrupt.
Shizuo held up his hand, cutting Dr. Cater off. “I am the county physician. This is my report.” Koa bit his tongue to control his frustration.
“Proceed, Dr. Hiro.” Exasperation hung heavy in Dr. Cater’s voice.
“Asphyxiation is the cause of death.”
It was the last cause of death Koa expected. From the looks of the corpse, he’d assumed the man had died from one of the many blows to his head. “Asphyxiation?”
“Yes, a fractured hyoid bone blocks the tracheae.” Shizuo swiveled in his chair and stood up, stabbing a finger to the center X-ray film on the light boxes behind him.
“This X-ray shows your victim’s neck and head.” Shizuo ran his finger up and down the picture in front of the spinal column. “Here’s the trachea. The hyoid bone is here.” He jabbed the X-ray with his finger. “The hyoid is laterally displaced into the trachea, interfering with the respiratory function and causing asphyxia. It’s a choke hold injury, most common in police brutality—”
An insistent beeping prompted Shizuo to grab his electronic pager and examine its message window. “My delivery calls,” he announced and strutted out of the room.
Dr. Cater shook his head. “I feel sorry for the baby.”
“I usually feel sorry for the corpse. And for me.”
“At least he does OB work. Otherwise, he’d be bleeding patients.”
The men shared a look of consternation before Koa continued. “Seriously, we appreciate your help with less than ideal cooperation.”
Dr. Cater nearly choked. “You’ve got a gift for understatement, Detective.”
“Were you able to learn anything from the autopsy?”
“Only a little, I’m afraid. Your baby doctor”—Cater inclined his head toward the door—“started the autopsy before I arrived.”
Koa should have known. “Christ. It never occurred to me …”
“He made a mess of it. First-year medical students know more about forensic medicine.”
“So you’ve got nothing for me.”
“I didn’t say that. I just want you to understand I did a salvage job. It’s tough enough to autopsy a decomposed body without treading in the tracks of an obstetrician who hasn’t cracked a medical text printed after World War II.”
Although he agreed with this opinion, Koa couldn’t help noticing Dr. Cater’s own tone of superiority. Doctors were a tribe of arrogant know-it-alls. “I hear you. Tell me what you can.”
“All right, let’s start with the cause of death. Your baby doctor’s right about the fractured hyoid bone, but I’m not convinced that’s the cause of death.”
“Why?”
“The blood chemistry doesn’t square with asphyxiation.”
“You can tell despite the decomposition?”
“Yes, with the right sampling technique.”
“Then this hyoid bone”—Koa stepped to the X-ray and pointed to the top of the windpipe—“was broken by a postmortem blow?”
“I don’t think so.” Cater exhaled as he spoke. “Despite the decomposition, we found no evidence of broken skin or torn flesh on the neck. The postmortem blows seem to have been confined to the head and hands.”
Koa had lots of experience with injuries causing death, but he wasn’t following. “I don’t understand. If the hyoid bone wasn’t fractured postmortem …”
“The extreme, but largely superficial, nature of the visible injuries, the lack of hemorrhaging, and the fractured hyoid all suggest strangulation. If the blood chemistry were right, I would conclude, as your baby doctor did, that strangulation was the cause of death. But the blood chemistry doesn’t fit.”
“You’re saying that the deceased was choked, but that strangulation wasn’t the cause of death?”
“You got it.”
The light started to dawn. “You think the killer might have subdued the deceased with a choke hold before inflicting the fatal injury?”
“That’s … that’s my hypothesis.”
“Then what was the cause of death?”
“I suspect some sort of trauma to the brain, but I haven’t been able to pinpoint the physiology because your baby doctor opened up the skull before I arrived.”
“Damn,” Koa swore.
“My sentiments exactly.”
“How do you account for the lack of blood in situ, as my baby doctor refers to the crime scene?”
“That’s a puzzle. Putting aside improbables, such as anticoagulants and extreme cold, it would appear that the victim may have been dead for an hour or two before the killer inflicted the external injuries. In fact, it’s possible—we can’t tell for sure—that the killer may have choked and killed the deceased somewhere else, moved the body into the lava tube, and then mutilated the corpse, most likely to conceal his identity.”
Koa whistled softly. “So the killer either spent a couple of hours in that lava hole killing the victim, waiting all that time, and then mutilating him, or else he killed the victim somewhere else and carried the body out to Pōhakuloa, mutilated it, and then left.”
“Exactly.” Dr. Cater nodded.
“What about the date and time of death?”
“None of the standard methods for determining time of death works. When the victim’s been dead for days, temperature, rigor mortis, and skin color tell us nothing.”
Koa really wanted a time of death. That way he could match it with the disappearance of any missing persons, and later with the actions of possible suspects. “You mean you can’t give me any kind of estimate? None at all?”
“I never said that. The standard methods don’t work, Detective, so I used a relatively new technique called the vitreous fluid potassium test. You see, after death the red cells in the blood break down. Potassium, one of the resulting chemicals, seeps into the vitreous fluid inside the eyeball.” Dr. Cater produced a graph showing the expected increase in potassium with the lapse of time. “The process occurs slowly.” He ran his finger over the graph.
“Unfortunately, the vitreous fluid test has a wider margin of error than traditional methods, but when properly conducted in an adult victim, the test results are accurate to within twenty-four hours in the first 200 hours postmortem. Based on the amount of potassium in the eye fluid and the temperature in the lava tube, I estimate that your victim died between 208 and 256 hours before the police found the body and Dr. Hiro drew the vitreous fluid sample. So about eight to ten days. That would put the time of death between 1:00 a.m. on January 20 and 1:00 a.m. on January 22.”
That was more like it. Koa could work within that window.
“Moreover, his stomach contents show he died about five to six hours after eating lamb. That’s a guess, but it’s not too far off the mark. If the deceased ate a lamb dinner between 5:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m., that would put his death in the 10:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. time range.
“Combining these data, your victim likely died during the early morning hours of Tuesday, January 20; Wednesday, January 21; or Thursday, January 22. Pinning down exactly when he ate lamb would allow you to fix the date and time more precisely.”
“Excellent, Doc.” That could prove to be crucial information. “What about the cuts? I figure a razor or knife with a sharp edge.”
“Without a doubt. And brace yourself, Detective—it was used on the genitals, too.”
The words came at Koa like a body blow. “Jesus. That’s all I need … a ritual sex killing.”
“The killer cut off the head of the victim’s penis, an act that should tell you a good deal about the mental state of your killer. I’m not a psychiatrist, but …”
“Christ.” Koa frowned. “If the newspapers get hold of this … You better keep the file locked up and caution all your medical personnel who are privy to this information.”
“There’ll be no leak from my end, but you’ll have to put a lid on your baby doctor.”
“I’ll talk to Shizuo,” Koa muttered. “Say, you got anything for me on identity?”
“Not much.” Cater opened a red folder and started to read from his notes:
“Almost certainly a Hawaiian male …”
“How can you tell?”
“Ethnic identification is hard. But, given the nature of this killing, we used DNA tests. Went to military data banks for DNA comparables. They give us a high degree of confidence that the deceased was of Hawaiian ancestry.”
Koa couldn’t understand that at all. “That only adds to the puzzle.”
“Why?”
“If the deceased was Hawaiian, that increases the chances he was local. Family, friends, an employer … someone should have reported the victim missing. Why no missing-persons report?”
“Can’t help you on that one, Detective.”
Koa realized he was thinking out loud. He couldn’t expect this doctor to know that side of the investigation. “Your exam tell you anything about the killer?”
“Yes, at least I can offer you a couple of tentative guesses.”
“Like what?”
Dr. Cater closed the red folder. “You understand, these are just guesses.”
“Sure.”
“There was no evidence of external trauma to the neck, such as would have been present if the victim had been strangled with a rope or garroted with a wire. Therefore, I’d guess that he was strangled from behind using a choke hold.”
“So? Spell it out for me.”
“The hyoid bone is at the top of the windpipe. It would most likely be broken by pressure angled back and up. To get upward pressure with a choke hold, the killer must have been taller than the deceased.”
“How tall was the victim?”
“Five feet, nine inches.”
“How tall would the killer have to be?”
“I figure at least six feet, minimum, maybe even six-two. That, of course, assumes that the killer and the victim were both standing on level ground. It is possible that the killer could have pulled the victim over backward and applied the upward pressure while the victim was falling.”
Koa knew all about choke holds. The department frowned on their use because of the risk of killing the perp, but sometimes with a big, drug-crazed moron a cop had no other way to bring the offender down without undue personal risk. You simply got behind the subject, wrapped an arm around the neck beneath the chin, and pulled backward. The more the perp struggled, the more you tightened your hold. It was even easier if you started on a higher level than the bad guy.
“But your best guess is that the killer was six feet or taller?”
“Yes, and strong too, Koa. You have to be pretty strong to strangle an able-bodied adult male. Even with a sharp knife, it takes a strong, steady hand to slice up a man’s chest that way. I have little doubt that your killer is physically powerful.”
“Anything else?”
“Just that the killer has nerves of steel.”
“Why?”
“Those cuts across the chest—they were straight, like railroad tracks—could have been made with a razor and a straightedge. Those cuts were administered almost professionally … without the slightest sign of nervousness or panic.”
“Great. So I’ve got a tall, strong, psychologically unbalanced killer with nerves of steel. The perp from hell.”
Koa racked his brain trying to figure how a Hawaiian had been killed and missing for more than eight days without a missing-persons report. That most likely pointed to a native who had left the islands and recently returned. Maybe a native connected to archaeology. He needed to explore that angle. Maybe Jimmy Hikorea had a missing colleague.