Scion

The home was in a well-to-do section with a private beach, surrounded by a seawall. Even seeing it through the sheets of rain and howling wind, the officers were impressed. Who lived here definitely had the money to afford a good location.

Parking their blue-and-whites, they pushed through the wrought-iron gate and sloshed their way to the front door, intending to ring the doorbell. Even when investigating a scene where violence had been reported, always remain cordial and alert but inoffensive until actions reveal otherwise.

One look told them the call—a 415, Disturbance—was turning into something else.

There was no ringing this doorbell, however, nor using the brass door knocker. The button activating the bell had been torn from its fitting, hanging from the door frame, a strung-out series of red, blue, and yellow entwined wires bouncing in the wind, the door-button, encased in its round metal cup, dangling from the end of the wires.

The screen door and the inner one were in no better condition. Both had been ripped off their hinges, the screen with a gaping hole in its center, a corresponding crater in the top half of the wooden door, as though someone had thrown something very heavy at it with such force it plowed through both, buckling the hinges and pulling the screws out of the frame.

The two doors lay flat in the doorway, the outer atop the inner one.

* * *

In response to a 9-1-1- call made by a neighbor, HHPD officers found the front door to the home, located in Waialua Estates, broken and lying in the open entrance…

* * *

The neighbor stated hearing sounds of violence so loud they were audible over the force of the storm striking the island city.

Cautiously walking over the fallen doors, the two officers drew their service revolvers.

“Hello? Honolulu Police…” the older officer, with seven stars on the right side of his uniform under his nametag, called out. “We received a 9-1-1 call…anyone here?”

No answer, only the roar of the wind and the splashing of rain as it pelted through the open doorway. The foyer turned right and left, water running in rivulets into the hallways.

“You go that way.” Joe Maikai told Steven Mays.

Mays had been on the force for a little over two years, still considered a rookie in some ways. He was a haole, a non-native, but a good kid, receptive to island ways and determinedly acclimating. Automatically, he deferred to Maikai, senior by five years, who took the lead, nodding in that direction.

“I’ll go through here.”

Mays stepped into the open archway on the right.

They moved silently through the house, taking room by room, checking behind doors, drapes, even large pieces of furniture…any furniture that was left intact, that is. Everything looked as if a hurricane had hit it, no…more than a hurricane, as if something massive and destructive had whirled through the house Tasmanian Devil style, but more deadly than that animated character had ever been… chairs, tables, smashed to bits, pictures hanging crooked on the walls or on the floor broken and ripped…a china cabinet toppled facedown, its bevel-glass front in shards among broken crockery and crystal, reflecting the light from the officer’s torch.

The carpet held wet smears of some kind, looking like beach mud, but thicker, as well as splotches along the walls, as if something sand-clogged has been wiped upon it. In various spots, there were seaweed-embedded clumps of sand, clinging to the walls and the ragged drapes in odd, sunken-in half-circles.

“Clear…” came the call as Mays finished searching each room on his side. His voice was barely audible above the wind.

“Clear,” Maikai answered back, wondering how the neighbor had heard anything, since the wind was so deafening.

He moved into the kitchen, where everything was an even worse mess, if that was possible…kitchen furniture, appliances—the double-door refrigerator lay on its side, doors open, food spilling out, water spouted from the broken kitchen faucet, overflowing the sink. His first thought was to turn it off, but…

Training set in. Don’t touch anything. He let it keep running—Hell, a little more water didn’t matter at the rate the storm was flooding in from outside—splashing through it, feeling it soak through his shoes and socks.

He and Mays met in front of the sink, the rookie looking around in confusion.

“What the hell happened here?” he demanded, wiping his face as a rush of rainwater swashed him through the shattered window. “Where is everybody? Think they were abducted?”

Maikai shrugged his head. “Doubt they went anywhere willingly, not in this storm.”

He stared at the stove. For some reason, it hadn’t been touched. Luckily, if it was gas. That might’ve caused an explosion in spite of the weather.

That wasn’t what shook him, however. What gave Maikai a chill, running icily from his neck down his back, was the wall above the stove…and the row of knives embedded in the copper-ceramic splashback…six knife protruding from the cracked tiles, driven in so violently only the handles showed.

“Let’s check the upstairs.”

Retracing their steps, in some places having to crawl over overturned pieces of furniture, in others splashing through sodden carpeting, they made their way through the living room to the foot of the stairs leading to the bedrooms. It was awkward and slow. In some spots, the floor was submerged in ankle-deep puddles, crushed as if a heavy weight had been dropped upon it.

Again, Maikai called out. Again, no answer.

Cautiously, they went up the stairs. There was no banister, it had been torn out of its base, dangling into the foyer. Like the downstairs walls, those on the landing were also sand-and-seaweed-smeared.

“What did this?” Mays wondered aloud. “Could it have been the storm? The outside of the house doesn’t appear damaged. Neither do the ones on either side…”

He broke off as Joe waved a warning hand.

“Shh. Did you hear that?

They both stopped, listening. All they could hear was the wind and the rain, drops striking the roof with the sound and solidity of baseballs.

“Check those rooms,” Maikai ordered and turned the other way.

Mays disappeared into the darkness, flashlight beam bouncing off the walls as he jog-splashed toward an open door. A backyard light, cutting through the rain, shone through an open window.

Two doors down this side of the upper hall weren’t open, only one at the end. Something dark lay in the doorway. Joe aimed the flash downward.

A man’s body.

The owner of the house, it had to be, but the body had an odd, flattened appearance, as if it was long dead, and not someone killed within the last hour. Maikai didn’t move to touch the body. There was something so odd about the way it lay in the doorway he didn’t want to touch it—Don’t touch anything—even if protocol demanded he disturb nothing.

* * *

Officers discovered the body of Dr. Daniel Walker in the doorway to an upper bedroom…

* * *

“Mays!” Maikai’s voice shook as he called for his partner. He heard the rookie’s hurried splashes coming toward him.

Mays looked down at the body in the flash’s spotlight circle. “Dead?”

Maikai knelt, pressed two fingers against the side of the neck, held it there a moment, then nodded as he stood again. He studied the body, its arms spread wide as if fending off someone—or something.

“He was standing in the doorway,” he swung the flashlight back and forth, illustrating the doctor’s supposed movements, “trying to stop them, but they got by him.”

“…and got to her,” Mays looked past him into the room, flicking his light over Joe’s shoulder.

* * *

     A second body, later identified as Felicia (Lisa) Walker, the doctor’s wife, was found inside the bedroom, near the bed. The corpse of the household pet, a cat named Timothy, lay nearby…

* * *

A woman lay beside the bed, in a similar condition, body twisted and mangled and…again, oddly flat. The limp, red hair, looking almost like a heap of red seaweed, told him it was probably the doctor’s wife.

An involuntary shudder shook Maikai. He covered it with, “Damn, it’s cold in here…” and didn’t go near the body.

That was when he saw the orange and white bit of fur protruding from under Lisa Walker’s left arm.

“What…?” Seizing the baton hanging from his belt, he extended it, slid the tip under the wrist and raised the crushed forearm, revealing a feline’s bedraggled hindquarters. “She must’ve been holding the family cat.”

He slid the truncheon away, letting the arm drop.

Outside, the wind rose to a high-pitched squeal, then abruptly fell silent. Generally, during a hurricane, that was the signal for everyone to take cover, the ‘lull before the storm’ when the next phase would sweep in, bringing with it the monstrous destruction some islanders likened to the wrath of the gods. Maikai and Mays ignored that, however. For some reason, this silence felt different, as if even the storm was hurrying to get as far away from this spot as possible.

That’s when they heard it…a slight creak, a snuffle, as of someone shifting weight, breathing behind a muffling hand. Both looked toward a set of louvered doors on the far side of the room.

Carefully, Maikai approached, Mays hanging back slightly, aiming his gun at the door and steadying himself as the other officer reached for one of the glass doorknobs. He jerked open the door, immediately aiming revolver and torch right and left.

Nothing.

A rod crossed the space, clothes hanging on it. Kid’s clothes, looked like. A boy’s, tees, jeans, a couple of dress shirts, child-size. Maikai pushed aside the clothes. He looked down…

The tip of a sneaker retreated into the darkness at the side of the closet. Lowering the flashlight, he pushed a terrycloth robe out of the way.

Immediately, there were shrieks of fear.

…a boy and a girl, the boy looked to be about ten, the girl several years younger. They were dressed in tees and jeans but as far as he could tell were unhurt, and surprisingly dry. In fact, the inside of the closet wasn’t even damp, the water stopping at the closet door.

* * *

The couples’ children, son Robin, aged 10 and daughter Jennifer, aged 6, were discovered in an upstairs closet by investigating officers.

* * *

The girl buried her face in the boy’s shoulder. Her body shook. He put his arms around her and wriggled further into the closet, his back striking the wall. They both began sobbing.

“Hey…hey, it’s okay.” Maikai holstered his gun, reaching out, touching a shoulder. AS the boy flinched, he lowered the light. “Hey, there.”     

Behind him, he heard May talking on his shoulder radio, a low muffled whispered, the only words coming, “11-44.” Deceased person, coroner required.

“It’s all right.”

No way was that true, but he had to lie a little, didn’t he? To get the kids to calm down?

“I’m Office Maikai. What’s your name?”

The boy controlled his crying, swiping a hand across his face. It was a second or two before the answer came. “Robbie…Robin Walker…
“Well, Hi, Robbie.” Maikai hated the false cheerfulness in his tone. It was so inappropriate. “Is this your little sister?”

He looked down at the little girl. She had a hand over her eyes. Raising her head, she opened her fingers and peeped out at him.

Robbie nodded. “Jenny…Jennifer…where’s my mom and dad?”

Maikai ignored that. “Why are you hiding in here?”

“D-Dad told me to. He said they were coming. Told us to hide…”

“They? Who’s ‘they?’” Had someone broken into the house, using the storm as a cover? Did the doctor know them? The condition of the front door certainly looked like it. Maikai refused to speculate. That wasn’t his job. He and May had to secure the area before the others arrived. And that meant getting these kids out of here. “Did you see who it was?”

Maybe they’d get a description from the kids.
The boy didn’t answer, instead asking, “Where are they? I want my mom.” His voice trembled, but he looked determined not to cry again.

“Let’s get you out of here.” Again, Maikai ignored the question. These kids needed to be anywhere but here…in a hospital, where they could be checked to make certain they weren’t hurt, then relatives or Child Protective Services or someone, would be called but…

He didn’t want them to see what lay on the floor and in the doorway.

“Can you stand up?”

Somehow, he got the boy to his feet, pulling the little girl from his arms. The kid didn’t want to let her go., and for a minute, there was a tug-of-war with Maikai pulling the child and her brother jerking her back. At last, he released her.

Something fell to the floor. The boy bent, scooping it up quickly, clutching it to his chest. Maikai got a brief glimpse of a round, flat disk on a leather thong. A necklace?

“My dad gave it to me when he put us in here,” the boy explained. “He said, it’d keep us safe.”

Maybe it had. They were alive, weren’t they? In a house that might or might not have been wrecked by the storm, with the bodies of two adults killed in some horrible way.

Taking the necklace from the boy, Maikai dropped it over the child’s head. He got a good look at it, baked red clay, the figure of a cat of some kind—another cat, Maikai thought irrelevantly, though this one was a more powerful one than a mere housekitty—creeping low to the ground, incised into it. He gave it a pat, settling it on the boy’s chest.

Stooping, Joe gathered both kids into his arms. It should’ve been awkward, lifting a ten-year-old and another child, but he was Hawaiian, big and strong and proud of it. He hugged both to his chest.

At that moment, the sound of sirens trilled through the night air. Maikai relaxed slightly, because that gave him the excuse to say what he did.

“Close your eyes,” he instructed. “There are going to be bright lights and I don’t want your eyes to be hurt.”

As both obediently obeyed, he backed out of the closet, carefully stepping over the bodies, and hurrying through the hallway to the stairs that were now illuminated by the headlights of approaching ambulance and detectives’ cars.

* * *

Neither child was harmed but were unable to give a description of the killers. The children are now in the custody of Child Protective Services pending notification of relatives.

The incident is being classed as a home invasion gone bad and is an ongoing investigation. Anyone who might have any information on the event or may have seen anything to aid in the apprehension of the suspects are asked to notify the Honolulu Police Department…