Diamond Head Read Online Free Page A

the person who tied the cord at her feet was either untrained or had been a different person from the one who tied her hands, or both. The direction of the knots hinted that the one who tied her hands may have been left-handed. Toxicological tests came back negative for drugs. There was only a trace of
alcohol. I didn’t see where drugs could be involved. Perhaps it was because there wasn’t any evidence directly relating to drugs. Perhaps it was because I’ve learned that where there’s smoke, there could be a smoke screen.
    I poured my last cup of coffee and went out on deck. The sun was shining proudly behind a low band of clouds scudding across the sky. Rain in the mountains above Pearl Harbor gave me a rainbow, arching over Pearl City and Makakilo. The clouds would go away and the sun would stay, and it would be another perfect, beautiful day.
    What did you do, little girl, I thought, that got you into so much trouble? Who were you running with that did that to you? There were no answers. There was only the breeze, slapping the rigging against the mast.
    Someone had profited from her death. That was an assumption, a logical place to start. No one but a thrill killer does this unless there is a profit. Could the profit have been pleasure? It was plausible. There are some sick people out there and she had been ill-used before her death. Could it have been a rough game gone bad? Perhaps. She was young and strong, and I could not imagine how a man could have forced her to get on the X-brace without her cooperation. Even two men. Could the profit have been something else? Something like guaranteed silence? Protecting what? Nothing in the file specifically stated anything about her behavior. But implications were everywhere.
    I went below and forced myself to look at the photographs again. She had been discarded on the rocky coastline near the mouth of the Shark Cave, north of Makaha. That’s rough country, rough in the sense that blond haoles like me just do not go there at night. It’s also Hawaiian Homelands, rural slums set aside for descendants of the original inhabitants of these islands. Was someone trying to shift the blame to the people who lived out there?
    Years back, a band of Samoans rampaged through the area,
killing haoles sleeping on the beach, but they had been an aberration and were quickly caught and convicted. This was not that kind of thing. Mary had been killed somewhere else and dropped there. And the location had been for a reason.
    I dug out my map book of Oahu. The Shark Cave is a legendary lava tube halfway between Makaha and Kaena Point, the end of the road. There is no way even a sturdy four-wheel drive can make it around the point to the other side anymore. The roadway used to be the route of the old cane railway, but the tracks were removed more than fifty years ago and the roadbed eventually washed out. It’s as close to nowhere as you can get on this island.
    The file had not been illuminating. The interviews and narratives were too vague, filled with sparse and unintelligible references to files not available to me. There was something going on here, but I couldn’t afford to ask for more files from Chawlie. I needed to speak to the lead investigator on the case. But first I needed to see the place where the body had been found.
    I did my morning exercises and took a quick shower, washing away the cobwebs. Lately I’d dropped to my fighting weight of 190 pounds. I’m not a heavyweight. I don’t have the bone structure. For most of my adult life I’ve drifted between 185 and 210 pounds. Once or twice, when I got real lazy, I ballooned up to 220. The effort to get back to my prime weight gets harder every year. The effort to maintain it is less difficult than allowing myself to lose control and get sloppy again. Staying in shape is actually taking the path of least resistance. When I finally give up and get totally out of shape I’ll have to