Who Named the Knife Read online

  In the front, Maryann tried to calm him down. She turned to the back and said, “I think he’s trying his best. Really.”

  Leach switched course then and drove past the golf course, past Aina Haina, and on along the moon-bright ocean, which stretched forever on the passenger side of the car. The drive took no time. Time had stopped. It stretched then shrank then disappeared. He couldn’t describe how uneven it felt. He remembered that he couldn’t focus on anything but the two lanes of highway.

  At Hanauma, he drove down to the parking lot, but there was a car there so he turned back up toward the highway and, near the top, he put his foot on the brake. For a minute they all sat there. A minute of hard breathing. His wallet had been taken during the drive. It didn’t matter. Eighty dollars. His camera too. The girl had taken her pantyhose off, which was strange. Now the man ordered him out of the car. Keep walking. Keep on. Around the bay all that crumbling and all of it steep, Maryann following them down a slope, sometimes slipping. The man told her to use her pantyhose to tie Leach’s hands, but she said she couldn’t; she said she didn’t know how, so the man handed her the gun and told her how to use it. Next he cut the sleeves off Leach’s shirt with a knife. He called the knife Justice. Leach was shaking. He watched Maryann holding the gun, and wondered what kind of people would name a knife.

  6

  Joe Leach had been tied up and gagged and abandoned under the kiawe trees, but he managed to free himself and hobble up to the highway after his captors drove away in his car. He got himself all the way to a police station, which was three miles distant, and someone there took off his gag and listened to what he had to say.

  A few days later, Detective Jimon You at the Homicide Division in Honolulu was going through recent police reports, looking for clues to the murder. Hasker was lying in the morgue, where his wounds were being studied. Two wounds. Two bullets. The district attorney wanted an arrest. There had been a string of syndicate killings, including the murder of his own nineteen-year-old son, who had been taken to Waimanalo Beach late one night and shot in the head. The district attorney had campaigned for his office by promising to put an end to crime in Hawaii. He was determined to bring someone to justice.

  When Jimon You found the police report filed in Hawaii Kai on June 10, he read it carefully – the details about the sleeves, especially, because Hasker’s body had been found near the remnants of another man’s shirt. Joe Leach was brought in for questioning. Drawings were made. And now Maryann Acker was on trial and her husband was the prime witness for the state.

  All weekend I thought about the trial. At night I dreamed that I was on the witness stand. I was the prosecutor; I was the defendant. I stood to argue and question; I sat to answer and defend. When I was standing I addressed my energies to the twelve people on my right. When I was sitting, I paid close attention to the questions and tried to forget the jury. Number twelve was a blond haole, very glamorous. Number eleven was a young Japanese Hawaiian. Number nine, the only haole man, kept to himself. Like me, he’d probably lived in the islands for a long time. As a group, we were a fair representation of Hawaii’s ethnic mix. The first juror in the top row – number eight – was about fifty, part Hawaiian, with tattoos on his arms. He had several kids, straight black hair. Next a nurse, Japanese, in her forties, who was always making a spectacle of herself. Number four was young and smartly dressed. High-waisted pants, Asian and Portuguese. There are some I’ve forgotten, but the last one, Mr. Sugai, had answered a question during voir dire by saying he couldn’t possibly be impartial because of his beliefs about handguns. “I believe anyone who carries a gun must intend to use it.”

  That time, the defence had run out of challenges and, like me, Mr. Sugai had to be placed on the jury.

  I was friendliest with the other female alternate. We paired off for lunch and often spent recesses together. We were both thinking about what we had heard, although much of it made no sense. Rule 403, Judge Au might say. Evidence was put forward, then dropped. Never mentioned again. The testimonies were confusing and I was glad of this new friend’s company although we didn’t discuss our thoughts. The previous Friday she had run off for lunch with her husband and I had settled for tacos and a plastic bowl of refried beans on the courthouse grass. Two blocks away, at the end of the street, I could see a four-masted schooner, all rigging and lines against the sky. At the other end of the street, I could see the white columns of the palace, home of Hawaii’s short-lived monarchy. I was thinking about that morning’s evidence. We’d spent an hour looking at photographs and diagrams. There were colour pictures of Larry Hasker’s body at the murder site and at the morgue. What affected me most were the clear plastic bags, which held a red plaid flannel shirt, brown corduroy pants, underwear, and a pair of rubber slippers. After four years, those objects seemed too intimate to be looked at by us, and I was glad they were not taken out of the bags.

  It was easy to walk down to the palace grounds, where the Royal Hawaiian band plays at noon on Fridays. A nice hula, and Healani Miller singing “Kaulana o Hilo” to the strains of the band. When our last king, Kalakaua, was crowned here in 1883, he allowed the hula to be danced for the first time since its suppression by the missionaries. Now, when the band played “Aloha ’Oe,” everyone stood up, even the tourists.

  Then, back in the courtroom, the girl who had gone for a walk four years before told about finding the body, except that, as she spoke, it was no longer “the body” but “him.” She kept saying “him.” Next, Larry Hasker’s father was called to the stand with something unnamable in his face. Suddenly I wanted to jump up and grab Maryann. She stared at the father and at Larry Hasker’s best friend and at the girl who found the body. She stared at the sister, whose name was Kimberly. These were clear, detached stares with an ounce of fuck you in them.

  March 22

  Today, when Larry’s father came in, Mr. Hasker Senior, when he glanced at you and then sat staring, only pulling his eyes away when the prosecutor demanded his attention, I thought I could actually see the thin, transparent membrane that separates the accused of this world from the accusers. As Mr. Hasker spoke about his son, I wanted to throw myself at you. I could see your face pushed down, my hands around your neck. I could see your tongue sticking out, your legs kicking. Sullen, brutal bitch.

  It had never occurred to me before that the reason we kill murderers is that they have this effect on us – of making us murderous.

  7

  On Tuesday, March 24, my daughter Esta came into town with me because Philip was going to pick her up at the courthouse. We had time to go into the lobby for a snack and, while we were standing there, Maryann was brought through – the accused – passing near enough that we could have touched her.

  We bought a muffin and a bread pudding from the blind woman who worked the coin machine and microwave oven and kept tabs on all the ice cream, drinks, candy, and snacks. When someone asked for a newspaper, she said that they were all gone. I thought: blind justice. Then I remembered the knife. I introduced Esta to my alternate-friend, who promised to have lunch with me later, when we would sit at Heidi’s, outside in the cold wind. But for most of the day we would listen to Maryann’s husband, who was the prime witness for the state. For most of the day he would be a little cocky, but charming. “This time I must get it right. I want to tell the truth the truth the truth.” High-strung and eerily sexy, William Acker kept looking at us and smiling. Spousal immunity is part of American law. Husbands and wives cannot testify against each other, being considered incapable of objectivity. But in Hawaii this law had been overturned the year before, possibly, I thought, to catch Maryann.

  The prosecutor began by establishing facts. William was born in Illinois in 1950 and grew up in Paramount, California. He’d met Maryann Bray in Phoenix in April 1978 at Arizona Hardware, where she was an accounts receivable clerk. He was just out of jail, recently paroled to his sister, and he got a job working in the warehouse. “Correct?”

  “Yes, ma
’am.”

  “And what were you doing there?”

  “Shipping clerk.”

  I tried to imagine being eighteen and seeing William saunter over to my desk. I’m at work, my head bent over some receipts, and I look up and there is that off-centre smile, that sloping hello. I could imagine dropping my pencil and hoping my hair was okay. I remembered Philip in his checked jacket the first time I saw him in a bar. He was standing by the door, using the pay phone, and my heart almost stopped.

  “When is it that you were married?”

  “April 29, that same month.”

  “And why did you and your wife leave Arizona?”

  “Lot of bill collectors knocking on the door.” William grinned.

  “What kind of bills?”

  “She had this bank card that enabled her to write cheques, buy things, you know.” He shrugged. “There was nothing in the bank, but it was a guaranteed card. Even if you perhaps didn’t have money in the bank, you could still use it.” William made me want to take him home and feed him a steak.

  “Now how did you buy the tickets to come to Hawaii?” Jan Futa’s face was alive with quizzical looks.

  “With that guaranteed card.”

  “And what is it that you brought with you?”

  “Luggage and a gun and a knife and things that belonged to us.”

  Keeping her head down, Maryann made notes on a piece of paper and never once looked at the man she must once have loved. The prosecutor took William through their first hours in Hawaii, when one of “the luggages” was lost. “What was in that piece of lost luggage?”

  “The knife. Also a .38 revolver.”

  “Can you describe it?”

  “It was a snub-nosed Smith & Wesson.”

  “And the knife?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Justice.”

  “So you got that piece of lost luggage back.” Futa was twirling the gold pen between her fingers like a tiny wand. “And after you moved to the Makiki Arms here in Honolulu, what were you doing to make a living?” The apartment Maryann shared with her husband in 1978 was just around the corner from the place my brother had lived with his wife and baby. I knew the neighbourhood: Punchbowl, the ancient crater, and the Chinese cemetery I used to walk around when I was fourteen, looking at the narrow stones with their calligraphy.

  “She made me feel pretty bad. We didn’t have nothing to eat and no job. So we discussed robberies.” William was oddly childlike. “Yes, ma’am. I wanted to rob people who wanted to buy narcotics, kind of like a sting or a burn. The reason is that’s what I wanted to do.”

  “And why is it that you chose that plan?”

  “Because it’s pretty safe in two ways. It was easy to live with. And, you know, plus what are they going to tell the cops: I wanted to buy some dope and he ripped me off?”

  “And when you say easy to live with, what do you mean?”

  “It’s hard for me to pull robberies, you know. It’s hard to initiate force or violence.” The prosecutor was showing us William’s soft side. “I didn’t want to influence her; I didn’t want her to influence me. It had to be right. And she convinced me that it could be right to go ahead.”

  Jan Futa asked what happened when Maryann met Joe Leach in the Garden Bar and William smiled. “I romanced some chick walking by and went and danced while they were dancing.”

  The prosecutor twirled her pen. “And how was Maryann acting toward Joe in the bar?”

  “Like he had a play coming.”

  “What do you mean?” She tilted her head.

  “Romance. Without getting gross, that’s the best way I can say it.”

  We were not allowed to write in the courtroom, so I made notes during recess, or after we had quit for the day. I sat under a tree. Or I wrote in the car. I’d feed the meter another quarter and write before I drove home. Maybe I did this because I wanted to understand Maryann. Maybe that’s why I directed the notes to her. If you discussed robberies beforehand … Or maybe I liked the feel of the pen in my hand – like the prosecutor – the feel of importance, as if the case depended on me. I was the daughter of a lawyer. I’d spent summers working in his office and hundreds of hours watching Perry Mason win cases on TV. William had two criteria for his victims. They should be involved with drugs and they should be tourists. Hasker and Leach were both residents, but William said Maryann had chosen them. “We argued a little bit.”

  I knew the prosecutor would be easy on William because he was her witness. In fact, by the time Jan Futa had moved on to the kidnapping and murder of Larry Hasker, William was almost enjoying himself. “Well I thought, yeah, we’ll rob him. It’s something he did or something he said that let me know that he was tied in with nobody, you know. I was kind of playing with him, you know. But I had told Maryann if I leave, that means no. And I left, I told him I got to go take care of something.”

  “Did Maryann leave with you?”

  “No. She met up with me later. She couldn’t be rude and just leave. Then later we ran into him again at another disco …” William paused and put his head back as if he could find the name on the ceiling. For a long minute he stared up and we waited. “To me it seemed like he was on his way to find us and he bought us some drinks, flashed big money, you know, and I told him, I said maybe he and Maryann could get together.”

  “And what was your impression as to how Maryann was feeling?”

  “She wanted to rob him from the beginning. Even we argued when she came back to meet me. Wow, that guy had money, you should have stung him.”

  With Joe Leach, they had gone directly to Hanauma Bay, but they took Hasker to their own apartment first, as if they were all going to sit down together and have a friendly drink. William said he had second thoughts at that point. “Because when we rob him, then he can know where we live.” So, while Larry sat in the living room, William and Maryann closed the door to the bedroom and had another argument. I tried to picture it – the cheap furniture, the length of blue nylon cord on the unmade bed, the gun on a water-stained dresser. William said the knife was in Maryann’s purse. “That’s where it always was. That was her role.”

  Back in the living room, William tied Larry up with the blue nylon cord. “We had both taken our shirts off. You know, it was hot. And I tied him behind his back, put his shirt on him, and told him … oh, he didn’t think, you know, when I first pulled down on him, he didn’t think he was going to be robbed. He said, Oh come on, man, or something like that. This can’t be real. I assured him it was and put his shirt over him and told him to play drunk, man, in case the neighbours were out and about, like I’m helping him to his car.”

  This time Maryann drives. Another difference. She drives to Hasker’s building and then goes up in the elevator while the two men wait in the car. I pictured her at the door, clutching the key. She must have been nervous. Hasker and his sister lived on the tenth floor of a high-rise near the university. It’s a crowded building. Maryann lets herself in very quietly. She listens. What if the sister is home? On the other side of the room there is a bureau and in it the book where Hasker hides his money. She crosses the floor and takes it out of the top drawer and shakes it, picking up $400 in twenties. Then she grabs a tape recorder. Hasker has asked her to bring him a joint. Next, back in the car, he’s smoking the joint and William’s holding the gun when Maryann says, “Let’s drive him to the bay where the other guy was.”

  “Did you or Maryann smoke any dope?”

  “No. I think he finished it before we … I think he was already pau.” Finished. In the courtroom, there was a communal intake of breath. Pidgin is our trademark, our shared code. William was one of us.

  8

  It was King Kamehameha who proclaimed the first law against murder in Hawaii, and he used witnesses to test innocence or guilt. This happened almost a century before King Kalakaua wrote the national anthem and allowed his people to revert to the old ways by performing the hula. First, Kamehameha united the islands, murdering thousands in
the process. Next, he established a system of taxation for his large kingdom that recompensed governors, district chiefs, and village headmen. If there was a disagreement – since all the ancient kapus were in place and the number of criminal offences was vast, Kamehameha was the final arbiter. In front of his grass house he gathered witnesses in a circle while the accused was told to hold his hands over a calabash of water. If the hands trembled, the person was guilty.

  That was the start of our monarchy, which was conquered in 1893, when the American plantation owners brought out their guns and flags and took over.

  9

  On the fourth day of the trial, William described the murder. “He said he wanted to use the bathroom. His words were ‘I want to take a piss.’ ”

  “And where were you at the time?”

  “I walked around him, got in the driver’s seat, put on the gloves.”

  “And where was Maryann?”

  “She was standing on the passenger side of the door with the gun.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “She shot him, shot him.”

  “How many times?”

  “Three.”

  “Where was Larry when she shot him?”

  “He had finished taking a piss. He zipped up. And he turned toward her a little bit. Not to jump on her, nothing like that. In fact, he said, I’m going to fall. I told him, I know it, you’re going to fall. That way you won’t know which way we go.”