Koa would never forget the waves of fear and self-revulsion that consumed him when he’d realized he’d killed Hazzard. He sat for hours blaming himself for his recklessness and stupidity. The sugar barons who still controlled the police and the courts would have him locked up for life. He considered fleeing to a foreign country or even ending his life. After hours of agony that seemed like days, he decided to hide the killing. He considered, but rejected, burning the cabin with Hazzard in it, and instead, disguised Hazzard’s death as a hanging suicide in which the rope broke, allowing Hazzard’s body to topple onto the iron fire tools, explaining Hazzard’s head injury. Koa then left the cabin door open, hoping that pua‘a, wild pigs, roaming the forest would ravage the body, making it difficult for the authorities to detect the murder.
He hadn’t been convinced his subterfuge would work and was haunted by fear of discovery. He saw Hazzard’s face in every passing stranger and in the ao ‘āla‘apapa, the “circus-train” cloud formations, so common in Hawai‘i’s evening skies. He jumped at every knock on the door or passing policeman. Yet, gradually, his fears subsided. Days passed before the Hawai‘i Tribune Harald reported that hikers had found Hazzard’s body in the remote cabin. It had been ravaged by pua‘a, and the coroner had called it a suicide.
Although he didn’t realize it at the time, Koa came to understand that the first sparks of his life’s mission were born in the crucible of penetrating guilt and self-loathing caused by Hazzard’s death. That death drove him into the U.S. Army. Officer Candidate School and Special Forces training made him into a man. Stints in Afghanistan and Somalia taught him about the world outside Hawai‘i. The death of Jerry, his closest friend, had been the final turning point.
Unlike Ikaika, Koa’s crimes were secret even from his family. But Koa hadn’t escaped the guilt, which ultimately drove him to become a cop and devote his life to exacting justice. Fear and guilt, he imagined, accounted for the difference between brothers. He was terrified of getting caught and facing society’s wrath, and he suffered penetrating guilt prompting the need to make recompense for what he’d done. Ikaika feared nothing and felt no remorse.
“So, my cop brother has come to gloat,” Ikaika hissed when the guard brought him into the room. Ikaika, a big man, well over six feet, had the hard face of a convict and a sea of prison ink. Tattooed with black, genealogical, geometric bands spiraling around his neck and down his arms, he looked old beyond his years. Telegraphing attitude, Ikaika’s eyes shocked Koa, exuding a strange, demented anger as he paced the small room, turning frequently to glare at Koa. Koa wondered if his brother was sick or if jail had further warped his twisted mind.
Koa never understood what had gone wrong with Ikaika. Eight years apart, they’d both grown up in a shack on the hill overlooking Laupāhoehoe on the northern coast of the Big Island. Koa’s father, a humble sugar plantation worker, and his mother, a native healer of local renown, presided over a poor but close-knit family. Except for Ikaika. He’d lived in a world steeped in cruelty and violence. Barely halfway through grade school, Ikaika beat up another kid, breaking his jaw and putting out one of his eyes. With time and punishment, Ikaika only got worse. His white-hot temper and swift left hook enabled him to break records for schoolyard fights and later barroom brawls. Ruggedly handsome and physically powerful, true to the meaning of his name, Ikaika had left a trail of broken hearts and hāpai, or pregnant girls. Graduating to car theft and drug dealing, stints in juvie, and later prison, only made him more violent.
“You think I want to see you like this?” Koa responded.
“Sure you do, big brother. You and that asshole Moyan got me locked up.” Ikaika referred to Hardy Moyan, his hard-assed parole officer. Ikaika clenched and unclenched his fists while he prowled the room.
“I opposed Moyan’s pulling your parole. Maopopo ‘iā ‘oē, you know that.”
“Bullshit!” Ikaika screamed, turning to face Koa. He leaned forward like he might lunge across the table that separated them. “You like seeing me locked in a cage.” Ikaika’s spittle sprayed Koa’s face, but he didn’t back away.
“‘A‘ole, not true,” Koa responded in a calm voice. “You were in the courtroom. You heard me plead for your release.”
“Yeah, yeah, sure you did. All mouth. Only lies.”
The previous year, Ikaika, on parole after a burglary conviction, got himself mixed up in a child sex ring. After a complicated investigation, Koa ultimately arrested his brother but fought against parole revocation—to no avail. Hardy Moyan, his brother’s parole officer, despised Ikaika, telling the parole commissioners that he was “a mean, nasty bastard with no moral code, a violent streak, and an uncontrolled temper.” Ikaika’s involvement in the sex ring hadn’t helped. He wound up sentenced to a minimum of four more years behind bars. Worse yet, Hawai‘i had contracted with a corporate prison company to house its convicts in Arizona.
Looking at Ikaika, Koa thought of a split screen. On the left half, Koa saw his handsome baby brother cradled in his mother’s arms, waiving some household object and cooing with delight. On the right-hand side, he saw Ikaika, his knuckles bruised and face bloodied with a malicious snarl, after beating some classmate to a pulp. Koa couldn’t reconcile the two halves of the screen nor comprehend the tortured route that led from one to the other.
Ikaika refused to acknowledge that Koa had fought to keep his brother out of prison. Instead, Ikaika blamed Koa for all his problems, and Koa wasn’t going to convince him otherwise, so Koa changed the subject. “How was the trip back here from Arizona?”
“A goddamn joyride, sittin’ in the last fuckin’ row in cuffs with the motherfuckin’ tourists starin’ at me. Just like one of ’em paradise posters.”
Koa had promised himself not to rise to his brother’s bait, but Ikaika’s self-pity rubbed his nerves raw. Koa displayed self-restraint when he was on the job, but when it came to family, he found it difficult to control his emotions. He wanted to say, “You’ve got only yourself to blame, little brother,” but instead asked, “When are you scheduled to testify?” His brother had been blackmailed into helping a criminal gang prostitute runaway children and had been returned to the Big Island to testify at the trial of one of the gang’s leaders.
“No ask me. They don’t tell me shit.”
That, Koa thought, had the ring of truth. “I asked, ’cause Māmā’s coming in to see you.”
At the mention of his mother, Ikaika’s face softened, and his whole body relaxed like someone had pulled a plug letting the tension drain out. Māmā, something of a mystic, had defended and protected Ikaika no matter how outrageous his conduct, and she alone had the ability to reach through his convict shell to his core.
“When?” Ikaika asked.
“Your sister is driving her in from Laupāhoehoe as we speak.”
Ikaika, who’d been pacing the room like a caged animal, slumped into the chair across the table from Koa.
Koa, responding to the change in demeanor, softened his tone. “So, pehea, how are you doing, little brother?”
“Shitty. Being locked in a cage ain’t a fuckin’ picnic. Every damn day is the same. Time don’t move much.”