“You’re telling me the builder knew about a volcanic vent and nevertheless built the school?” Zeke asked in his abnormally loud voice.
“There’s no other explanation for the fire door and the six-foot-thick walls,” Koa responded. “And a lot of people besides the builder had to know, including the architect and the building inspectors.”
“Christ, that’s reckless endangerment and adds up to murder.” Zeke pounded his desk, which had absorbed numerous blows over his six terms as county prosecutor.
“And somebody killed Boyle to keep him from talking,” Koa continued.
“Makes me want to check out Samantha’s school,” Basa, who had two children, Samantha and Jason, in Hilo schools, added.
Koa, no stranger to Basa’s family, knew both Samantha and Jason and saw the concern in Basa’s eyes. “You and every other parent,” he said.
“In a way,” Piki said, “it’s worse than Columbine, Sandy Hook, or Parkland.” He referred to three of the worst school shootings in U.S. history. “I mean, in those cases, disturbed kids killed their classmates. Here the people who were supposed to protect kids put them in mortal danger.”
Zeke steered the meeting back to its purpose. “So how do we proceed?”
“We need,” Koa laid out his plan, “to learn everything we can about the KonaWili school—who owned the land, who selected and approved the site, who designed the school, who besides Boyle built it, who served as a watchdog during construction, and who inspected the final building. We need to understand the players, their backgrounds, their motivations, and the ugly choices they made.”
“What should I do?” Piki, ever eager, asked.
“Piki, you hit the internet. Get everything you can on the school and everyone involved in siting, planning, and building it. Basa, you go collect all the county planning, inspection, and other public records.”
“And I’ll,” Zeke said, “trace the ownership and get the property records.”
“Great. We’ll meet back here this afternoon,” Koa said.
On the way down the hall, Piki, his eyes wide, turned to Koa. “Are those real Lucchese boots … I mean, like John Wayne real?”
Koa laughed. “Yeah, there’s nothing phony about Zeke.”
After completing their searches, they had twenty-five names spanning four key areas. First, the present and former owners of the school property. Second, the land planning officials who zoned the site. Third, the DOE officials who authorized and accepted the completed school. And finally, the construction group, consisting of architects, contractors, and subcontractors.
Zeke addressed the property issues. “The land around the KonaWili school originally belonged to one of Hawai‘i’s original big five landowners, who then sold it off to two ranchers. In the 1960s during one of Hawai‘i’s cyclical land development booms, the ranchers sold the property to the Paradise Land Company, but Paradise failed to develop it. In 2004, Paradise sold several thousand acres to Hualālai Hui, a partnership planning to build hundreds of homes, a recreation center, and a shopping plaza.”
“Hualālai Hui sold the land for the school?” Koa asked.
“Yeah,” Zeke responded. “The development plan called for public facilities, and in 2006, Hualālai Hui sold the KonaWili school parcel to the state at a premium price as the site for the future elementary school.”
“Who owes Hualālai Hui?” Piki asked.
“Damn good question,” Zeke responded. “State records identify two Big Island personalities—Howard Gommes and Cheryl Makela—as the owners, but most of these land deals have sub-huis with silent partners.”
“What do the records show about the share of ownership?” Koa asked.
“Gommes 60 percent and Makela 40 percent, but like I said, they’ve probably got silent partners.”
“I’ve seen Gommes on TV. He’s all over the tube.” Piki’s eyes glowed.
“Yeah,” Zeke responded, not sharing Piki’s enthusiasm. “He’s a big swinging dick with a local Hawai‘i-based Apprentice-type reality TV show. Made his money in shady real estate deals on the Big Island and Maui where he developed several large residential subdivisions and a half-dozen major hotel projects.”
“And the other owner, this Cheryl person?” Basa asked.
“Ahh,” Zeke sighed, “Cheryl Makela, the Teflon lady. She’s buddy-buddy with Mayor George Tanaka, who appointed her director of the county planning department before her retirement.”
“Teflon lady?” Piki asked.
“Yeah,” Zeke responded. “She’s rumored to have more conflicts than Hawai‘i has beaches, but nobody’s ever made anything stick.”
“She approved the KonaWili development while serving as director of planning even though she owned a share of the development?” Basa asked with raised eyebrows.
“Yes, indeed,” Zeke acknowledged.
“More than a little conflict of interest there,” Piki added.
“Government in Hawai‘i is rife with conflicts,” Zeke said with a disapproving shake of his head.
Koa turned to Basa. “What did you find in the county files?”
“Francine Na‘auao, the director of the Department of Education, approved the selection of the school site.”
“I got a whole lot of stuff off the internet about her,” Piki interjected. “She’s been the DOE director for ages and ages. I mean like more than a decade. And she’s close to Governor Bobbie Māhoe.”
“Then,” Basa resumed, “the DOE hired Arthur T. Witherspoon to be the architect and Boyle Construction to be the builder. The school cost nine point nine million dollars and took eleven months to complete.”
Koa knew the Witherspoon name. One of the most sought-after architects in Hilo, he’d designed Hilo’s new government center and numerous other local public buildings. “So,” Koa summarized, “we’ve got the four key players in the KonaWili disaster: Gommes, Makela, Na‘auao, and Boyle—developer, planning director, DOE head, and general contractor.”
Piki again spoke up. “Boyle may not be the only key player on the construction side. According to one press story, Boyle hired a guy named Tony Pwalú to do the excavation and grading for the project. I figured as excavator, he’d know about the volcanic vent.”
“Nice catch,” Koa said. “He might be a good place to start. We could get some background before we move up to the central actors.” Koa always liked to start with lower-level people before working his way up to the big kahunas. “Piki, you got an address for this Pwalú guy?”
“Sure do.”
Zeke nodded his agreement. “I like starting with Pwalú. Then what?”
“Witherspoon,” Koa responded. “As the architect, he must have visited the site both before and during construction. Then Makela and Gommes.”
“What about Na‘auao?” Zeke asked.
“She’s in Honolulu and outside my jurisdiction, so I’m going to need your help to get to her and other DOE people.”
“I’ll start working on it,” Zeke responded. “We have a plan?”