Better late than never! I was scheduled to share this awesome excerpt a while back, and well, as is the common theme in these postings, time got away from me. One move, 3 holidays, 2 surgeries, and one pandemic have me going crazy half the time! Enough about me. Today, I share with you an excerpt from Treachery Times Two, the next book in Robert McCaw’s Koa Kane Hawaiian Mystery series:
Chapter One
Pele, masquerading as a glassy-haired old woman, wandered the lava trails around the
massive smoking volcanic caldera called Kīlauea. Over millennia, her temper tantrums
had created the Hawaiian Islands, including Kīlauea and the four other volcanoes that
make up the Big Island of Hawai‘i. Fiercely jealous of Poli‘ahu, her sister deity, the snow
goddess of Mauna Kea, and locked in eternal combat with Kamapua‘a, the demigod of
rain, Pele’s exploits fueled the oral history of the islands.
Often called the stone eating woman, she’d resided inside Halema‘uma‘u, the pit crater
within Kīlauea’s caldera on the Big Island’s southeastern edge. Inside Halema‘uma‘u,
Pele’s red-hot lava often bubbled and smoked. Ancient Hawaiians left flowered leis and
other tributes to the fiery goddess while Western haoles gifted bottles of gin. She’d
quaked and rumbled over the past millennia, but, whether driven by climate change or
sheer perversity, Pele’s sizzling rage had recently spiked to a 200-year high. In ancient
times, she’d smothered an army of Hawaiian warriors, changing the course of Hawaiian
history, and now she sought to teach present-day mortals renewed respect for her
awesome powers.
Over the past month, thousands of earthquakes had rattled Hawai‘i’s Kīlauea caldera
and the adjacent tiny village of Volcano, shattering windows, cracking foundations,
disrupting utility connections, and spreading concern among its residents. Some with
other places to go, had left, but most had lived for years with Kīlauea’s dangers and
become inured to Pele’s antics.
The shaking opened fissures in the nearby Hawai‘i Belt Road, forcing motorists to slow
to a crawl and, at times, closing the artery altogether. Massive cracks surrounding
Halema‘uma‘u and stretching across the remaining caldera floor warned of Pele’s
continuing anger and foretold calamities to come both near and far.
At the Jagger Volcano Observatory on the edge of the caldera, its number two
volcanologist, stood looking out at the caldera. She was observing the primordial
landscape when a monster earthquake rocked the building making it vibrate beneath
her feet. Glass shattered. Cracks darted across the concrete floor. Thunderous sounds
blasted her ears. She grabbed the edge of a massive worktable for support. The
seismometer on her computer screen began bouncing off the chart before her computer
suddenly stopped dead. She scanned the scene through the windows, now empty holes
devoid of glass, overlooking the caldera and gasped.
Whole sections of the caldera floor had collapsed, plunging into the abyss created by
the withdrawal of magma from the chamber beneath the volcano. Clouds of debris rose
like thunderheads. In an instant, the Halema‘uma‘u crater doubled in size and depth.
The pit that had been a small part of Kīlauea’s five-square mile caldera now threatened
to swallow it whole. Before the violent shaking could tear the building apart around her,
she ran for her life.
Unbeknownst to anyone near Kīlauea, Pele’s tentacles snaked out from the crater into a
small neglected cemetery less than a half-mile away on the outskirts of Volcano village.
The ground rolled and heaved, ancient rock walls crumbled, a giant tree crashed to the
ground, and headstones toppled. Cracks appeared across the graveyard and expanded
first by the foot and then by the yard. Subterranean forces propelled caskets upward.
Boards splintered, and caskets broke open. Cadavers lay exposed. In destroying this
sacred ground, Pele unearthed a man-made mystery.
***
On the other side of the Big Island, Hilo Chief Detective Koa Kāne stood in a different
cemetery, the one behind the old white clapboard church on the edge of Kapa‘a. He
didn’t have to hunt for the gravestone he sought. He’d come often over the years and
could have found his way blindfolded. After resolving each murder investigation, he
always returned to Anthony Hazzard’s tombstone. Penance for the man he’d killed thirty
years earlier and solace for the guilt he’d suffered in the intervening years required it.
Hazzard’s death had been on his mind of late, haunting his nightmares. It was like that
for him when an investigation ended. Time buried many mistakes and healed many
wounds, but not murder. It was a stain on his soul, one he’d carry to his deathbed.
Putting his hand on Hazzard’s gravestone, Koa bowed his head and thought of the
investigation just ended. He’d found justice for fourteen murdered school children and
four of their teachers, just as he’d earlier solved the murders of an astronomer and a
pair of loners living off the grid. Inadequate recompense for killing Hazzard, those
successes did nothing to assuage his guilt. But they still empowered his empathy for
murder victims and motivated him to pursue the most challenging cases. He stood for a
long moment contemplating his life.
Turning away from the graveyard, the killer turned cop wondered what new crime would
next command his attention and define his quest for atonement.
Reprinted from Treachery Times Two with the permission of Oceanview Publishing.
Copyright © 2022 by Robert McCaw.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this preview of Treachery Times Two! Until next time, my friends…
In Literary Love 
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