At that moment, Mrs. Witherspoon entered the dining room, dressed in jeans and a green pullover. A tall woman in her early sixties, she moved with an easy grace. Her face even in distress without makeup remained unwrinkled and unblemished. Koa imagined that she’d been stunning in her prime. Gesturing to the other photographs on the dining room walls, he asked, “They’re all the same church?”
“Yes, the Cathedral of Our Lady of Chartres—Arthur’s favorite building.” Her eyes teared, and her voice choked. “We went there on our honeymoon.” She reached out to straighten one of the pictures. “And planned to go back next year for our thirty-eighth wedding anniversary.” She began to cry again and reached for a tissue.
He waited before asking, “If you’re up to it, I need to ask you some questions.”
“Alright, but I need to sit down.” She led him back to the living room and sank onto the couch. Koa pulled a chair close to her. He kept his voice gentle. “I’m sorry for your loss.” Words failed when people confronted death. Most people took it better if you simply acknowledged their loss. She sat stone-faced for what seemed an eternity before beginning to regain her composure.
“Mrs. Witherspoon, you need to tell us what happened.” She stared blankly—her mind lost in faraway spaces—and didn’t seem to hear.
His words, more forceful this time, brought her back, and her eyes focused. She swept a lock of hair away from her face and looked at him through tear-filled eyes.
“What … what do you want?”
“Tell us what happened.”
She pulled a tissue from the pocket and dried her eyes. “He … he got up early. He always does. I’d just woken up when I heard the doorbell. He went to answer it. I heard him say something, and then … and then I heard two gunshots close together.” She started crying again, repeatedly dabbing her eyes. “I ran to the foyer, and … and it was awful. Blood all over the place.” She began to lose control.
He paused, giving her time. “What did he say?”
“I just …” She choked on the words. “… Just heard his voice, not the actual words.”
“Did you see anybody?”
She shook her head. “No, I was in the bedroom upstairs when it happened.”
“Tell me about your husband, his work, his habits.”
“He’s an architect.”
“Yes.”
“He runs his own firm here in Hilo.” Not uncommon in such situations, she used the present tense. “He has lots of clients and works day and night.”
“Have you noticed anything unusual recently?”
“No—” Then she caught herself. “Well, he’s been upset since that awful KonaWili school thing.”
“Why? You didn’t have a child at KonaWili, did you?”
“No, no, but the daughter of our closest friends died there. Karen’s death devastated Arthur. Really upset him.” She paused to blow her nose.
“Anything more than sympathy for a friend’s loss?”
She started to say something and then stopped.
“You need to help us, Mrs. Witherspoon. Tell us anything you know.”
She sighed heavily. “Arthur said he felt guilty about the terrible accident.”
Witherspoon might have been upset about a friend’s loss, but Koa focused on the word “guilty.” “Any reason why your husband would feel guilty?”
“He said he’d done his best, but it hadn’t been enough.”
Had he been referring to the unsuccessful effort to choke the vent off? It made sense. As the project architect, Witherspoon would have inspected the site during construction. He couldn’t have missed the extra concrete. And his words suggested he’d, in fact, designed the massive—but ultimately unsuccessful—concrete cap over the volcanic vent.
“He’d done his best. What did he mean?”
“He didn’t say, but I took him to mean the design of the school. I told him not to be silly. It wasn’t his fault.”
But it was Witherspoon’s fault, Koa thought. He should have stopped the project or at least blown the whistle on it. Why he hadn’t remained a mystery. Why would a respected, successful architect like Witherspoon—a man who’d designed many public buildings in Hilo—keep quiet about a potential threat to grade-school children?
Thinking the answer might be somewhere in the architect’s files, Koa asked, “Where is your husband’s office?”
“On the corner of Pu‘u‘eo and Waiānuenue. On the second floor.”
Koa pictured the filing cabinet in Boyle’s home office—the one with the missing KonaWili file. If Boyle’s killer took the file, then Witherspoon’s killer might have taken his files, too. Koa called Basa to request a check on Witherspoon’s office.
Turning back to Mrs. Witherspoon, Koa asked, “Did your husband have a partner or an assistant?”
“Not really. He mostly worked alone. Sometimes on big jobs, he hired a young woman to make copies and deliver plans, but it wasn’t a regular thing.”
“What’s her name?”
Mrs. Witherspoon looked down at her hands. “Sally … Sally Meacham or something like that.”
“Do you have an address or telephone number?”
“It’s probably somewhere in Arthur’s records.”
Koa sensed an evasion. She couldn’t recall—or more likely didn’t want to remember—the name and address of her husband’s assistant. He considered pursuing it but decided to find Sally and get the story from her.
“Did he receive any threats?”
“Heavens no. Arthur didn’t have enemies.”
As he walked back to his Explorer, Basa called. Witherspoon’s office had been ransacked. Koa drove across town, leaving the SUV, its lights flashing, on Pu‘u‘eo street, and climbed to the architect’s second-floor office. Filing cabinets hung open, files and architectural drawings lay strewn about the floor, desk drawers pulled out.
Witherspoon’s death and this break-in at his office had to be connected. Whoever killed Witherspoon had searched for something—like the KonaWili plans. But as Koa looked around, the complete destruction of the office struck him as odd. Unlike Boyle’s place where a single file had gone missing, Witherspoon’s office resembled the aftermath of a tropical cyclone. If the murderer wanted the KonaWili files, why tear up the place?
Koa took a fresh look around the office. Every file had been ripped out of its place and dumped on the floor. Papers were strewn everywhere. Every drawer opened and its contents scattered. Several drawers had been removed from their slots and turned upside down. Supplies littered the floor. An air-conditioning vent had been ripped from the ceiling. No architect would store files in a ventilation duct. The more he studied the mess, the more he thought the thief left empty-handed. Witherspoon had hidden something—something so incriminating he’d been murdered to keep it secret.
CHAPTER TWELVE
PULU ‘ELO I ka ua o ka ho‘oilo—drenched by winter’s rain—grief filled Kona. The distraught Kona community held a memorial service for its lost children at the United Christian Church. More than a thousand people mobbed the historic house of worship, spilling out onto the lawn and even into the street. Thirteen poster-sized pictures of the dead children bordered in thick black frames lined the walkway leading to the sanctuary. The fourteenth poster had a double black frame around the picture of Mica Osbourne’s daughter, the one child whose body hadn’t been—and probably never would be—recovered. Photos of the dead teachers, one on each corner, guarded the ends of the rows. Leis of maile and ‘okika, orchids, draped every portrait, and mourners brought more flowers until the façade of the church became a single mass of blossoms.