Page 44 of Talk Story

“How far back is the narrow passage?” she said. “From the entrance. Walk me through it.”

“The second chamber is maybe fifty yards in,” My mouth had gone dry. “The ceiling drops. Then comes the passage. It’s narrow, single file, and is crossed by a stream. We never went past it. Uncle Kalani stopped us.” I swallowed. “I don’t know what’s on the other side. Nobody with us does—Pali Moku is probably the only person who knows what’s back there.”

Keone was shrugging out of his overshirt, eyeing the boulders as terrain he intended to cross. “I’ll go to the second chamber,” he said. “To the entrance to the narrow passage. I can see if there’s a light or hear if he’s moving, without going into the bad area. That much I can do safely.”

“Nobody goes anywhere until that chopper’s on the ground,” Malia said.

Overhead, the sound of the helicopter swelled up over the ridge, beating the morning air, and the long grass on the valley rim began to flatten and ripple as the bird came down.

Keone met my eyes across the mouth of the cave. I knew that look, and my stomach dropped—because rope or no rope, gear or no gear, we were going after Victor Chang.

I had a feeling that what we found in there was going to be worse than an arrest, and that Awawakapu had collected a price for passage.

15

The beat of the helicopter’s rotors swelled and changed pitch somewhere above us. The hammering thump of them leveled off, then eased, the way an engine does when it’s settling. I couldn’t see the chopper from where we stood at the cave mouth, hemmed in by the green walls of the Valley; they must have been able to find an area flat and open enough to land up above us.

The moment the engine began to wind down, Malia had her radio up. “Airship 1. You copy?”

A burst of static, then Lei’s voice, clearer now that she was on the ground. “Copy. We’re down.”

“Listen.” Malia replied, her voice shifting into deliberate. “There’s another way to get to that deep section where the suspect is. There has to be. That’s how the thieves took the petroglyphs out—they didn’t haul stone panels through this entrance, not past these boulders and up that trail. They had a back route, a wider access on the far side of the ridge. If you can find that opening from up top, you and whoever’s with you could approach the fall site from the other end.”

Static. Lei replied: “That tracks. The grading on the topo printout showed a second access on the north flank. Give me a minute to find it and confer with the pilot.” A beat. “What’s your move on your side?”

“We have one suspect restrained. We leave an officer with her at the entrance, and—” she glanced at Keone and me with a slight smile—“I and two operatives move in as far as the narrow passage, no further. We hold there. We’ll be your ears from this end. If the victim calls out, we’ll know, and we’ll relay whatever we find.” Malia’s jaw set. “But the kahu warned us away from that section. Uncle Kalani was clear. We don’t go past the water without the protocols.”

“Copy that. Will bring the gear we have and a map. We’re moving out now.” A breath of wind tore at her transmission. “Over and out.”

Malia lowered the radio and turned to us. For a second the cop facade faded, and I saw the worry she was carrying—a local woman about to call people into a place her own kupuna had told her to stay out of.

“Souza. Madison Chang stays with you, cuffed. Move her up the trail a bit, clear of the entrance. You’re our anchor. Anybody comes out that isn’t us, stop them.”

“You got it,” Souza said. He tugged Madison Chang to her feet and led her up the trail, out of view of the entrance to the cave.

Then Malia stepped to the mouth of the cave, took a ti leaf lei from around her own neck—I hadn’t even registered she’d been wearing the simple twist of green under her collar all morning. She held it in both hands and bowed her head.

“I’m not the kahu,” she said quietly to Keone and me, and maybe to something further back in time. “Uncle Kalani should be the one to pule for us. But he’s not here, and a man is inside who needs rescue. So I’m going to ask for entry. For protection. On his behalf, and on ours.”

She closed her eyes and began a chant in Hawaiian.

The language came low and steady, the liquid cadence of it filling the cave’s mouth—a chant of permission and respect, asking the ancestors whose bones hid in the deep to allow us passage, to know that we came not to disturb, but to help.

I didn’t have the knowledge to follow it, but I understood the shape of the request in the tone of the words. Beside me, Keone bowed his head, his lips moving too.

The valley went still around us. Even the water seemed to quiet, deep within. The trade winds dropped. For a long moment, the only sound was Malia’s voice.

When she finished, she stood another beat with her eyes closed as if listening. Then she lifted her head, laid the lei carefully on the largest of the three boulders at the entrance, and squared her shoulders.

“Okay,” she said. “Now we go.”

We skirted the boulders and moved into the dark.

The cold met us, that mineral exhale rolling up out of the stone, raising the hair on my arms and neck.

Malia’s flashlight beam swung across the outer chamber—and there they were, exactly as before—the petroglyphs.

What was left of them.