The Bone Field

Book 2: Dark Paradise Mystery

by Debra Bokur

Genres: Occult & Supernatural; Police Procedurals

Synopsis

Kali Māhoe, Hawaiian cultural expert and detective with the Maui Police Department, has been called to a bizarre crime scene. In the recesses of a deep trench on Lana'i Island, a derelict refrigerator has been unearthed. Entombed inside are the skeletal remains of someone buried decades ago. Identification is a challenge. The body is headless, the skull replaced with a chilling adornment: a large, ornately carved wooden pineapple.



The old field soon yields more long-buried secrets, and Kali is led along an increasingly winding path that brings to light an unlikely suspect, an illegal cock-fighting organization, and a strange symbol connected to a long-disbanded religious cult. Her task is to dispel the dark shadows lingering over the Palawai Basin plains, and to solve a puzzle that no one wants exposed by the bright, hot tropical light.



To discover the answer, Kali will be drawn deeper in the mysteries of the island's ancient legends—stories that tell of an enraged rooster god and man-eating monsters. For Kali, a detective of sound logic and reason, it's not easy to consider the unknown for explanations for what appears to be a series of illogical links in a twisting chain of deadly events. Or safe. Because the dormant pineapple fields of Lana'i have yet to give up their darkest and most terrifying secrets.

Release date: May 25, 2021

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 291

Sample

The midmorning sun hammered down on the old pineapple field’s rutted surface, imparting a relentless, blazing glare. The ocean breeze had failed, on a colossal scale, to deliver a cooler version of tropical air over the lip of the coastal cliffs and down into the Palawai Basin plains of Lna‘i Island’s central region. It was hot, and it was early, and it was going to get hotter.

Detective Kali Mhoe peered once again into the recesses of the freshly dug trench at her feet. She’d been in, out, and around the hole for most of the morning, and her sleeveless green T-shirt, tied in a messy knot just below her breasts, was soaked with sweat. Streaks of dirt partially obscured a tattoo encircling her upper left arm, depicting a stylized, slightly geometric interpretation of a thrusting spear.

At the bottom of the hole in front of her was an old refrigerator, its door flung open and partially resting on the mound of red-tinged dirt that had been created during its excavation. There was a small backhoe parked close by, on loan from the island’s community cemetery. It was close enough that she could feel the additional heat radiating from the surface of its recently used engine.

The area around the open ground had been enclosed by crime scene tape, while a makeshift tarp on poles covered the hole, tenting it from the unlikely possibility of wind interference on this unusually still morning, and fending off the sun’s glare for the benefit of the police photographer. In place of the abundant natural island light, bright, artificial lights had been set up around the perimeter, angled to illuminate the depths of the hole.

The tarp had proven completely ineffective at providing any semblance of shade. In the trench, Maui medical examiner Mona Stitchard—commonly known as “Stitches,” but only behind her back—was kneeling beside the refrigerator, taking measurements and making notes in a small book. Her hooded, sterile white plastic jumpsuit clung to her arms and the sides of her face, held in place against her skin by a layer of perspiration. Kali could see that her narrow eyeglasses were sliding down her nose.

Kali studied the peculiar contents of the open refrigerator, then took a long swig of water from a bottle hooked onto her belt, leaning her head back as a few drops trickled down off the edge of her chin.

Police Captain Walter Alaka’i walked up and stood beside her. He regarded the refrigerator with curiosity, his frown giving way to a row of creases in his wide brow. “Well, I gotta say this is definitely a new one. Any brilliant initial thoughts you’re not sharing?”

Kali shook her head, considering the question. “Sorry. Nothing yet, beyond the obvious, slightly bizarre component.”

She looked away, across the field, and then back down into the hole. What she didn’t say was that she was keenly aware of a residual sadness and loss still clinging to this space, filling the molecules of earth around her feet, newly disturbed after untold years.

Stitches glanced up at Kali and Walter.

“Well, I suppose we all like a challenge.” She waved her arm at a fly buzzing by her face. “And this should certainly be interesting.”

The three of them regarded the derelict refrigerator. It was an older General Electric model, with a single, large main compartment and a smaller freezer door on the top. The shelves from the main compartment were missing.

“My mother had a refrigerator like this one,” said Walter, pointing at it with the opened bottle of water he was holding. “And a matching stove. She was crazy proud of them. Horrible shade of yellow, if you ask me.”

“Technically, the color is harvest gold,” said Stitches. “Hugely popular from the 1960s all the way through the ’70s.”

Walter frowned at her.

“You think it’s been here that long?”

“Hard to say,” she answered, shrugging. “Though it doesn’t seem likely someone would bury a new one.”

She stood up, passing her medical bag to Kali with one hand and stretching out the other toward Walter, which he grabbed and pulled. Emerging from the depths of the trench with impressive composure, she tugged the plastic hood away from her face and hair, now plastered wet against her head. She peeled off her jumpsuit with relief, and stood beside them, taking off her glasses to clean them. Walter passed her the bottle of water he’d been holding for her. She replaced her glasses and took the bottle, drinking from it gratefully.

There were a number of people milling about the area surrounding the trench, each involved in either further securing the scene or attending to some detail: Tomas Alva, Lna‘i’s only full-time cop, officially part of the Maui County Police Department; a police photographer busily loading equipment into the back of his car; the crime scene team from the main station in Wailuku on Maui; Burial Council officials who were required to attend the scene of any uncovered grave that might have a cultural tie; and a terrified-looking young couple who were clearly tourists, huddled by a rocky outcropping at the edge of the field. They were dressed in matching brightly patterned Hawaiian shirts, and on the ground beside them were two metal detectors, their long, narrow handles clearly visible.

Looking over at the couple, Kali sighed. “I guess I should go and talk to them one more time before the woman passes out or starts wailing again,” she said.

The offer sounded half-hearted, even to her own ears. Stitches glanced at her. Walter regarded her with a raised eyebrow.

Kali glared at them. “Seriously? Surely both of you can see she’s one wrong word away from another bout of hysteria,” she said in a defensive tone. “And yes—before anyone points it out, I’m fully aware I’m not at my best with overexcited twenty-somethings.”

Both Stitches and Walter turned toward the young couple, considering.

“Probably put a big dent in her day, right?” said Walter, his smile lopsided. “They’re just kids on vacation. Not every day you go looking for buried treasure and turn up something like this.”

Kali exhaled. “Okay, okay. Point made.”

Walter’s grin widened. “One of these days, you’ll realize I’m always right.”

Kali snorted. “Playing the uncle card?”

He reached out and patted her lightly on the shoulder. “I can safely say that not only are you my only niece, you’re absolutely, without doubt, my favorite one.”

He turned to Stitches, who had begun to wad her used jumpsuit into a ball.

“You all through here?”

She nodded. “For now. I’ll know more, of course, once we’ve moved everything back to the morgue and I can do a proper examination.” She surveyed the long-abandoned appliance in the hole. “Meanwhile, good luck with the search. Hopefully you can find something that will be useful in ascertaining an identification.”

“Well, we’ve searched as much as we can with the fridge still there,” said Walter. “Maybe there’s something still hidden beneath it. We’ll see, I guess.” He wiped a few drops of sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. “I’m going to head back to Maui after we get the body and fridge loaded up on the launch.”

Stitches had already walked off, making her way toward a waiting car that would take her to the harbor for the roughly nine-mile boat crossing back to Maui across the ‘Au‘au Channel. Walter strode toward the backhoe, gesturing to the driver. The engine turned over. Parked beside it, a truck fitted with a flatbed also roared to life. The drivers of both vehicles made their way slowly toward the open hole, guided by Walter.

Kali peered once more into the depths of the trench. Lying inside the no-longer-gleaming harvest-gold refrigerator, dressed in a pair of rotting overalls, was a skeleton, its bony hands folded neatly across the chest. It was lying on its side, both legs bent at the knees, feet pressed together. She had the impression it had been placed there with great care—even reverence, perhaps. She looked more closely. Her initial feeling suggested to her that whoever had performed this strange burial had possibly cared about the dead person in some way.

She supposed it looked like a small man, but it was difficult to tell. Resting on the corpse’s narrow shoulders, in lieu of a skull, was a large, ornately carved wooden pineapple, a macabre adornment that gave no sense at all of who the long-dead figure might have been—or how he’d come to be resting here, in a dormant field of fruit, bereft, headless, and utterly alone.

It was well after noon by the time Kali had compiled her notes with details about the burial setting and finished her final interview with Brad and Jan, the tourist couple. As she’d predicted, the woman had broken down into a fit of wild crying midway through her account of the morning’s events.

Brad had been more pragmatic, even a little excited.

“We thought maybe we could find some old coins, you know? Something to take home as a souvenir that didn’t come from a gift shop.”

Kali refrained from pointing out that removing a historic artifact from the islands wasn’t likely to be looked upon kindly by the authorities. She watched his face, fascinated by the difference between his reaction to the discovery of a body, and that of his girlfriend.

“When the metal detector starting going off, we dug around the spot and kept hitting metal. Jan thought it might be a treasure chest, but I figured it was probably some old piece of harvesting equipment that got covered up.” He patted the girl on her leg, as if consoling her for the loss of an imaginary fortune.

Kali frowned. “And when you realized it was an old refrigerator, why did you keep digging?”

He grinned. “Well, why would someone bury a refrigerator? I mean, maybe something important had been stashed inside of it. You know, valuable—not just a pile of old bones.”

He fumbled as he saw the expression on Kali’s face. “I mean . . .”

“You mean that the body of some long-dead human being, perhaps a local person, is of no possible concern, or any value.” She watched as he squirmed. “Correct?”

“Well, no, of course not. It’s just that . . .” He looked from Kali to Jan, and back to Kali. “Jan called 911 right away, you know? I mean, a body, right?”

“Yes, a body. Exactly right.”

Jan made a fresh sobbing noise. “I didn’t want to open it,” she said, making an effort to keep her voice from breaking. “In the movies, opening the box buried in the remote field never turns out to be a good thing. I knew there was something bad in there. I just knew it.”

“The skeleton belonged to an actual person, you know,” said Kali. “A living human being who probably had a family and friends.”

“And at least one enemy,” Brad joked.

Kali swallowed her irritation at his shallow response, doing her best to temper her character assessment with some degree of kindness. She turned to the woman, ignoring Brad.

“You could look at it this way: Thanks to you, maybe someone will finally find some peace and closure knowing that their loved one has been found.”

The woman grasped at the thought gratefully.

“Well, glad to have helped, of course. I mean, anything we can do . . .”

“You’re absolutely sure you didn’t find anything else?” Exchanging glances, Brad and Jan shook their heads. They looked directly at her with no apparent subterfuge.

“No,” said Jan. “Nothing at all.”

Kali waited, but they just sat there, disheveled and sweaty. The woman’s shoulders sagged. Kali noticed a small tear in her shirt, as well as soil stains on her beige sneakers. “I’d appreciate a call if anything occurs to you.”

Again the couple looked at one another, before Jan spoke.

“So, it’s okay if we go back to Maui tonight? We have a flight home to California the day after tomorrow. Should we cancel it? Will you need to hold us for more questioning or anything like that?”

Kali suppressed a smile. There were, she thought, simply too many police shows on television these days.

“I don’t think that will be necessary, but we’d appreciate it if you could keep all of this to yourselves until we’ve been in touch,” she said, keeping her voice even. She could tell they were more than ready for cold showers and the hotel bar, where they’d most likely retell their story over and over, no matter how many times she might ask them not to. “Just make sure Officer Alva has all of your contact information before you leave.” She lent them a more serious gaze. “Just in case.”

The refrigerator, still holding the body, was carefully lifted from the ground and loaded onto the flatbed truck. To give them space to work, a command center for the police and crime scene crew had been set up near the parking area. The surrounding area was searched diligently, the soil sifted for any small item that might shed some light on the moment when the refrigerator had been covered and abandoned. As the day lent itself toward dusk, more lights were set up around the now-empty hole. Armed with a bucket, sieve, and small shovel, Kali helped turn over the loose earth meticulously.

She could see the undulating landscape of the pineapple field rolling off into the distance, shrouded by the growing shadows. Tomas Alva stood just outside the line of light, waiting patiently. Like Kali, he was covered in dirt.

“We’re going to shut this down for the night,” he said wearily. “Probably take forever, but we’ve got a team using ground-penetrating radar coming in the morning, and a crew to start digging up the rest of the field if necessary . . . in case the head’s nearby.”

It won’t be, Kali told herself. The pineapple suggested that the burial had had some sort of ritual significance, and it was unlikely that a head had been relegated to a separate box and conveniently planted somewhere in the vicinity. She kept her thoughts to herself. It wouldn’t hurt the SOC crew to spend a few days with backhoes and shovels. The last thing she wanted to do was keep anyone from feeling useful.

She felt Tomas’s eyes on her. They’d known one another for years, and she suspected that he’d likely read the gist of her thoughts. He said nothing, only grinned tiredly.

“I’ll give you a ride into town when you’re ready,” he said.

She brushed herself off, succeeding only in making her hands dirtier than they already were.

“I’m going to make a mess of your car seat,” she said, somewhat apologetically.

“Can’t get any dirtier than my seat will be,” he said. “Come on. Let’s get you settled, and I’ll go and see if there’s any supper left for me at home.”

They walked to the car and climbed inside. For a moment, Tomas sat with his head back against his headrest. He reached forward slowly, turning the key that had been left in the ignition. As the car’s engine rumbled softly, he backed out of the makeshift parking spot and pulled onto the narrow track leading to the two-lane main road.

They rode in silence for a minute. Then Tomas turned to Kali. “Can you think of any reason someone would replace a head with a wooden hala kahiki?”

She considered his question. “Well . . . it’s an obvious way to conceal the victim’s identity, at least in the short term,” she offered. “But I think it’s more likely there was something significant about the choice. Why not a real hala kahiki? It’s not as though there’s a pineapple shortage here. Market shelves are full of them.”

“That’s what I was thinking. Seems like someone went through considerable effort to find a wooden one.”

Not if the person’s death had been planned in advance, and the carved pineapple had been conveniently at hand, she thought. That scenario suggested a premeditation that might somehow tie to the image of this particular fruit. “I don’t love these cold cases,” she said instead. “It’s bad enough when we know who the victim is to begin with, but when we have to figure out who it is before we can hunt for a reason, I start losing sleep.”

“Maybe,” Tomas responded, his voice thoughtful, “it was a natural death, or an accidental one, and the pineapple was an afterthought.”

She looked at him sideways. “Natural death by decapitation?”

Tomas shrugged. “Yeah, it does sound a little crazy, doesn’t it? What about an accident, maybe with some of the equipment, and someone wanted to hide it?”

It was Kali’s turn to shrug. “I’m sure stranger things have happened. But in all likelihood this wasn’t just an accident.”

They drove the rest of the short distance in silence. Darkness had almost completely fallen as Tomas pulled the car up in front of the entrance of the Hotel Lna‘i in Lna‘i City.

She unclipped her seat belt and opened the car door, already anticipating the magic of a long shower and late dinner.

“Mahalo for the ride,” she said, climbing out. “I’m heading back to Maui early, but I’ll be in touch before I leave.”

“Pomaika’i,” called Tomas, using the Hawaiian word for “good luck.” He gave a wave as he pulled back out into the street, taillights fading as the road curved away into the night.

Kali turned, gazing at the small plantation-style building that housed the hotel. It was painted a soft yellow and surrounded by blooming foliage. She climbed the front steps, stopping halfway with her hand on the rail, scanning the tranquil setting in appreciation. The designation of “city” was stretching things more than a little bit, she thought. The tiny town was hardly more than a pretty square bordered by a few shops and restaurants, with beautiful residential neighborhoods spreading out beyond.

Never the tourist magnet that continuously drew hordes of visitors to Maui and O‘ahu, the island of Lna‘i had become identified with the sweet, prickly crops of fruit growing in orderly rows across its face. The small hotel had once served as private lodging, and was modest in comparison to the two enormous resorts located in other parts of the island.

While the nickname Pineapple Island had eventually become popular, promoted in newspapers, magazines, movies, and television, Kali knew that the island’s dark history had little to offer in the way of sweetness. Lna‘i, so green and peaceful, was steeped in dark myth and violent legends that whispered of man-eating spirits that stalked the living.

“I wonder how many of the tourists who make their way across the channel know about the Lna‘i monsters?” murmured Kali, half to herself.

“Probably none of them,” answered a male voice.

Kali started, surprised that anyone had heard her. A very old man was standing on the porch above her, partly in the shadows near the rail, looking out toward the dangling moon, which was surrounded by faint, glittering stars. She halted her ascent up the stairs just before the stranger.

“Do you think it would make a difference to them if they did know?” she asked.

The old man shrugged. “I doubt it,” he said. “Just fodder for T-shirt slogans, I would think. No one believes in anything anymore unless they can see or taste it.”

She mused over his words, and the abundant truth in them. “Or unless it touches their own life directly,” she added.

“Exactly so,” he said. He bowed slightly in her direction, then turned back to the rail, resuming his observance of the moon’s widening glow. “You must excuse me. I have an agreement with Hina, you see, that I will, whenever possible, greet her as she arrives to light the night.”

Kali was surprised to hear him speak the name of Hina. The Hawaiian goddess of the moon.

“That’s quite an honorable agreement,” she said, her voice carrying a genuine respect. “I’m sure, Grandfather, that she looks forward to seeing you each evening.”

The man smiled broadly, evidently finding her use of the title grandfather friendly. They stood together in companionable silence for several minutes, looking at the sky as the cool night breeze whispered across their faces. As she turned toward the door, she noticed the deep lines around his eyes; there was old grief written there, but laugh lines as well, deep crevices that came from a lifetime of many smiles. For a fleeting moment she wondered what her own face revealed, and if others might someday look at her and see nothing but regret or the disillusionment that regularly arose from constantly dealing with the results of the cruelty and selfishness of her fellow humans.

“Aloha ahiahi,” she said softly to the man, nodding her head. As he returned the gesture, she opened the door quietly and passed into the hotel foyer, imagining the imminent comfort of climbing beneath the fresh, cool sheets of her temporary bed, where she might dream, all the while bathed in Hina’s silvery light.

In the morning after coffee, Kali checked with Tomas by phone to see if anything useful had been uncovered at the pineapple field. Nothing had, so she climbed into a golf cart taxi waiting by the hotel’s front steps, ready to transport her to the dock at Manele Harbor. The police launch was already there, waiting in a slip, and the trip across the channel—a short, pleasant journey—delivered her to the parking lot at the port in Lahaina on Maui, where she’d left her ragged, army-issue Jeep in the parking lot.

The Jeep was a relic from the years following the attack on Pearl Harbor, when squadrons of US military had been stationed throughout the islands, and the sturdy workhorse vehicle became ubiquitous on the tropical landscape. While the deteriorating condition of Kali’s Jeep had become an increasing concern, she wasn’t yet ready to part with it. A newer model would serve the same purpose of negotiating the rough, uneven back roads found on the island’s southeast coast where she lived, but a new vehicle would be devoid of the memories carried in the patched seats and scratched paint of her current car.

She inserted the key into the ignition, but before she turned it, she patted the dashboard superstitiously as she’d recently begun to do whenever it had been left untended for any notable length of time. The tension in her face dissipated when the engine turned over. She eased out slowly from her parking space and drove to the lot exit. Instead of joining the flow of traffic heading south on Highway 30, she turned north, then followed the road along the coast until it joined Highway 340, eventually crossing the narrow isthmus connecting Maui’s two sides.

From here, she chose the inland road that allowed her to avoid the unpredictable, bumper-to-bumper tourist traffic along the legendary Hana Highway. The roads she followed had no coastal views, but she loved driving through the island’s lush interior landscape, where every possible shade of green could be discerned among the trees and foliage. This route option was exactly why her Jeep was so necessary—the paved roa. . .