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My Kind of Town Don Chapman |
Epilog
>> Big Island
After the call to police from the helicopter pilot, Pele's Bath was soon aswarm with choppers, cops and media. While medics went to work on Virgil Root's punctured forearm and the crime scene crew handled the two dead bodies, Root, Nick Ornellas and the pilot gave their accounts.
The moment they were done, Ornellas and the pilot were airborne and speeding back to Kona. On the advice of Cruz MacKenzie, Ornellas called KHON in Honolulu and that evening, after agreeing to a healthy six-figure fee, his video of Daren Guy leaping into the sea just ahead of an orange lava flow and being eaten by a 14-foot shark led off "The O'Reilly Factor" on Fox News.
Night had fallen when the yacht now called Wet Spot reached the bay at Kona. Under cover of darkness, Sonya Chan dropped off Sushi Leclaire and his 12 Filipinas. He called a taxi company and soon he was introducing the girls to their new home in the hills above Kona. Next day, Sushi's porn Web site was up and running, and it would make him a very wealthy man.
Sonya stayed in touch with the girls, especially Magdalena who was taking on-line classes, and was pleased to see that Sushi was paying them well, most of which they sent back to family in the Philippines.
Later they learned that the Japanese fisherman Hideki, who had leaped from the deck of the Japanese trawler Tuna Maru to be with the girl Agnes, died of the injuries before Mano Kekai could get him to shore. Mano chanted, prayed and gave Hideki a burial at sea.
It took months, but at last Sonya was given Daren Guy's original $2 million Lotto prize and $3 million in insurance. Because, while he had in fact tried to defraud the insurance company, in the end he died from a shark attack.
Sonya went to visit Virgil Root in the hospital and soon was falling in love with him. He looked exactly like Daren -- tall, handsome and well-muscled -- but he'd been raised differently. There was no edge, he was comfortable with his life and himself, and so he was comfortable to be with. Six months later they were married.
As for Cruz MacKenzie, with Daren Guy's hand-written confession Sonya had given him, he wrote a series of stories that won several journalism awards. But better than solving a crime, Pele revealed herself to him. He'd seen her up close. He felt forever blessed, and that they would meet again.
When the police investigation was done, they returned Pet Shop to its owner and determined that Daren Guy had killed four people, and that with his death justice had been served, poetic and otherwise.
In the case of Mano the shark god, dinner had been served.
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek. His serialized novel runs daily in the Star-Bulletin. He can be e-mailed at dchapman@midweek.com