Spider Bones

Pukui’s bullet took out a piece of Byrd’s shoulder and fractured his clavicle. He’d lost a lot of blood, but medics brought by helicopter got to him in time. He was released from The Queen’s Medical Center two days after his admission.

To date, Ted Pukui’s body hadn’t been found. Perhaps he’d fallen into a crevice or wedged between rocks. Perhaps he’d washed out to sea. Somehow the latter seemed fitting, poetic justice for Kealoha and Faalogo.

L’il Bud T’eo was claiming Pukui acted alone. Could think of no reason why he’d do such a thing. So far the cops had nothing but rumors to tie him to the Atoa hit. Or to the murders of Kealoha and Faalogo. Lô and Hung weren’t giving up. They’d nail him one day.

So much deception. So many secrets. Is that how we live our lives?

Lily deceived us about her relationship with Barry Byrd. Reggie deceived the world by living first as John Lowery, later as Al Lapasa. Spider did the same by going underground as Jean Laurier, by concealing his addiction to plastic, proctoscopes, and pink panties. Plato hid the painful possibility that his family might not be what it seemed, though in fairness he never believed the allegations he was suppressing.

Who knew what Nickie Lapasa kept out of sight?

So questions remained.

And Katy had questions of her own.

Why couldn’t Coop have left a day earlier? Or later? Why was he on that road at that precise moment?

Why do any of us make the decisions we do?

Charlie Hunt phoned the day I got back to Charlotte. I was friendly but noncommittal. Why?

Was it because of Ryan? If so, why did I keep Ryan outside the emotional guardrail?

Why does Ryan blame himself for Lily’s addiction? Why does Lily poison her body with drugs?

I watched my daughter as she considered Alvarez’s epitaph. I knew the pain she was feeling. Alvarez was twenty when he died. Coop was twenty-five.

Katy, with the characteristic droop to her shoulders, upper teeth on lower lip, hair draping the sides of her face.

Looking at my daughter, I felt almost giddy with love. Knew I would do anything for her. Risk my life to protect her.

But I knew I couldn’t shield her from all pain.

Ryan had returned with his daughter to Montreal. His fears about her using heroin again seemed unfounded. For now. I hoped with all my heart that Lily would stay straight.

Lutetia wouldn’t be there to welcome her daughter. She’d returned to Nova Scotia. Another irony. Lutetia’s call to Lily was the spark that had caused Katy to thaw.

I’d asked about the sudden bonding, been surprised by Katy’s answer. By the compassion and maturity it revealed.

Lily grew up without a father, Katy said, and is desperate for approval, especially from men. She found her crying in her room. She complimented her shoes.

I smiled at the memory of that conversation.

Katy turned. Ear-tucked her hair.

“Why are you gri

“No reason,” I said. “On to Charleston?”

She nodded.

We took a gravel path that curved through gravestones and manicured shrubs.

“It’s such a waste,” Katy said. “Coop. Luis Alvarez. That Xander guy. They were all so young and full of life. Now they’re dead.”

I let her talk. We’d been over this, but I understood her need to vent.

“I even wonder about the two guys thrown off Makapu’u Point. And the guys who threw them.”

“That’s totally different. Those men made life choices, to both harm others and put themselves at risk. They hardly deserve pity.”

Katy’s face clouded. “But, at some level, there is a similarity. Decisions are made by young people that cause them to die.”

“It’s unfair to equate soldiers or cops or firemen with people who cause harm and place themselves in danger for personal gain.”

“Of course it is. That’s not what I’m saying. Soldiers like Luis Alvarez are selfless heroes. Bangers like Kealoha and Faalogo are self-serving scum.”

“I guess I’m missing the point,” I said.

“I don’t know.” Katy sighed. “I keep asking myself why one person takes risks to do something meaningful, while another takes risks to cause harm.”

“And why on both sides of the equation some live and some die.”

“And that.”

“People have been asking those questions since they started painting pictures on the walls of caves.” I reminded myself to get her a copy of the The Bridge of San Luis Rey.

As we exited through the big wrought-iron gates, I turned for one last look at John Lowery’s grave.

What a spider’s web you and Reggie wove, I thought. So much grief and deceit. So many people tangled in the threads.

Aloha, Spider.

Gracias, Luis.

Find peace here, Plato.

My Mazda was in the same place I’d parked on the day of the exhumation.

“Got your game on, tough stuff?”

“Ready for the play-offs.” Katy gri

“What do you suppose Coop left you?”

“I have no idea.”

“Let’s find out.”

FROM THE FORENSIC FILES OF DR. KATHY REICHS

UNTIL THEY ARE HOME

The mission of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, JPAC, is to locate Americans held as prisoners of war and to recover those who have died in past conflicts. JPAC was created in 2003 by merging CILHI, the U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory, Hawaii, and JTF-FA, the Joint Task Force–Full Accounting. To date, the United States government has found no evidence of any POW still in captivity, so JPAC’s day-to-day focus is on the investigation of leads and the recovery and identification of remains.

On average, JPAC identifies six sets of human remains each month. The process is complicated, requiring substantial forensic expertise and multiple levels of review.

That’s where I came in. Back in the CILHI day, I served as an external consultant. My duties included analyzing the dossiers of soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines for whom positive IDs had tentatively been established, and visiting the Honolulu lab twice yearly for oversight and briefing.

Hawaii. Midwinter. Think that was an easy sell to my department chair at University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where I was on faculty with a full-time teaching load?

As Ryan complained to Tempe, the military loves its alphabet soup. At CILHI, I was issued a glossary of acronyms as thick as my arm. KIA/BNR: killed in action, body not recovered. DADCAP: dawn and dusk combat air patrol; AACP: advance airborne command post; TRF: tuned radio frequency. Or trident refit facility. I guess context is important for that one. But you get the idea. It makes a civilian want to join the AAAAAA: the Association for the Abolition of Abused Abbreviations and Asinine Acronyms.

While I’ve tried to provide a peek into some of the operations at JPAC, much goes on that I’ve not described in Spider Bones. JPAC representatives engage in constant negotiation with governments around the globe, and they work closely with various U.S. agencies to pursue all leads that might bring missing Americans home.

Each year JPAC recovery teams travel by horseback, boat, train, and helicopter to recover the bodies of U.S. troops missing from World War II, Korea, the Cold War, and Southeast Asia. They slash through jungles, rappel cliffs, scuba dive into trenches, and climb up mountains, toting their weight in survival and excavation equipment. In comparison, my job was a stroll through the park. Physically, at least. Emotionally, it was gripping.

Through Tempe, I’ve tried to convey the feelings I experienced while examining the files of men and women killed long ago and far from home while serving their country. The maps, photographs, correspondence, unit histories, and medical and perso

But my time with CILHI wasn’t all sad. When not focused on work my colleagues and I had fun. I remember when Hugh Berryman, P. Willey, and I splashed in the Waikiki surf, giggling like kids. And the trip Jack Ke