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My Kind of Town Don Chapman |
Thursday, May 8, 2003
Killing quickly
>> North Shore
Shauny Nakamura, Royce the college boy and Imelda the Manilla street kid ran, but the terrain was steep and the three men chasing them on horses were just yards away now. And the malnourished Imelda was tiring, so Shauny had to practically drag her along.
The Aussie flicked his whip and wrapped the end around Royce's ankle and brought him down. Clive dismounted, pulling a long hunting knife from a sheath.
Shauny and Imelda ran on. They heard a loud shot and a bullet kicked up pebbles between them. Imelda panicked, loosened her grip on Shauny's hand and darted behind an 'ohia tree. That was Victor Primitivo's intent, to separate them. Now the hunt would really begin, him and Shauny.
What Primitivo didn't know -- although he'd been warned that it could happen by a factory recall, which he ignored -- was that after his perfect shot the trigger of his $100,000 Blazer R-93 did not return to its original position.
Behind her tree, Imelda saw the Arab swooping in with his huge curved sword drawn, poised to hack at her, and shrieked. Shauny ran to her, grabbed her hand, began to run when Primitivo's rifle fired again. The blast startled him -- he hadn't pulled the trigger. The Arab went down, bleeding from his right shoulder, cursing, dropping the sword.
At that moment, passing Shark's Cove, HPD Detective Sherlock Gomes heard a KSSK radio news bulletin about the search for Shauny Nakamura and Victor Primitivo. Hopefully this would lead to tips from the public. The report added that Royce Kalia, a prominent gay anti-war protest leader from UH was also missing. Both the young woman and the young man, Larry Price and Michael W. Perry noted, were last heard from just before they went on first dates with people they'd met on the Internet.
At the Rockin' Pikake Ranch, Tets Nakajima, in an SUV towing a trailer with four ATVs toward the hunt zone, heard the same report, and shuddered. This meant several things. This would be Primitivo's last hunt. And the Aussie's.
Their last anythings. And the rules were going to change -- no more BYO Kills. But that was for later. Right now what the radio report meant was that his hunt club had become the hunted. Someone was looking for Shauny Nakamura and the college kid. Someone was looking for Primitivo. Nakajima didn't know exactly which agencies they represented, HPD for sure and probably more, but he knew they were coming this way.
Nakajima pointed an air horn out the window, gave one long blast, two shorts. Meaning you've got two minutes to wrap it up, boys, so do your killing quick and let's get the hell out of Dodge.
Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek.
His serialized novel runs daily in the Star-Bulletin
with weekly summaries on Sunday.
He can be e-mailed at dchapman@midweek.com
