CAPITOL MURDER A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I AT MĀNOA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN ENGLISH DECEMBER 2012 By Sara M. K. Young Thesis Committee: Rodney Morales, Chairperson Cynthia Franklin Gary Pak ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank the following people for their assistance with my thesis: Kai Lau, for providing his knowledge of information technology systems; Gary Pak and Cynthia Franklin, for their instruction and participation; Instructor Shawna Yang Ryan and my ENG 613C Fiction Workshop classmates for Spring and Fall 2012, for their commentary and feedback on my workshop drafts; Rodney Morales, for his literary guidance, mentorship, and overall advice; and Marcus Hayden, for his continuous encouragement and support. i TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................... i PROLOGUE ....................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 1 ....................................................................................................................... 6 CHAPTER 2 ..................................................................................................................... 27 CHAPTER 3 ..................................................................................................................... 52 CHAPTER 4 ..................................................................................................................... 75 CHAPTER 5 ..................................................................................................................... 88 CHAPTER 6 ................................................................................................................... 105 CHAPTER 7 ................................................................................................................... 136 CHAPTER 8 ................................................................................................................... 144 CHAPTER 9 ................................................................................................................... 161 CHAPTER 10 ................................................................................................................. 188 CHAPTER 11 ................................................................................................................. 216 ii PROLOGUE MARCH 2012 THURSDAY As he speeds towards Spitting Caves in the early morning darkness, Wesley Kainoa Grant wonders if his wife Christine heard the message chime. Did she see him check his cell phone on top of their dresser? He can’t believe that he forgot to silence his phone before he went to bed, as he usually did. He had hoped the message would be from Shane; maybe that haole friend of hers told Shane to call him. Instead the message was from someone else. The person he didn’t want to hear from. He replied anyway. The annoyance from the message still lingers in him as he grips the steering wheel and pushes on the gas pedal. The luxury homes of his neighborhood blur past. It’s five in the morning. Prior to the message, he had been in his office, unable to sleep. The office is the former nursery, as around Thanksgiving, his daughter Wendy announced that she was sharing a room with her older brother Wesley Jr. The walls of the office are still painted a soft pistachio green. Baby jungle animal cartoon decals cover the walls. A beady-eyed tiger smiles from behind Kainoa’s easy chair, half of its face peeling from the wall. A few months back, Kainoa was in the process of removing the decals one-by-one. As he peeled off the tiger, Christine barged into the office and snapped at him to stop messing with the animals, because she needed the nursery again. That was how she told him that she was pregnant. Unlike the last two announcements, there were no tears of joy, no hugs and kisses, no pregnancy tests waving in the air. Kainoa had pressed the tiger back onto the wall, but after a week, the face flopped forward again. The adhesive lost its strength. 1 Now, in his SUV, he thinks about the emails he sent before he left the house. He forgot his laptop at the office, so he answered emails on Christine’s computer. It’s an election year, and campaigns are heating up. He sent an email to Senator Morris Takahashi, promising look over Morris’ campaign materials. There’s no telling if his colleague will even be re-elected. So far a challenger to Morris’ incumbent seat hasn’t been announced, but supposedly some hotshot real estate broker has been garnering some possible-contender-buzz around the district. Kainoa hasn’t even thought of his own re- election campaign yet. He knows that since he’s represented this district for so long, if anyone ran against him, the person wouldn’t win. Hours earlier, at a Kaimuki district fundraiser for Senator Mark Kiguchi, he had posed for pictures with other politicians, talked story with local business people, met with constituents of influence from Mark’s district. During his usual meet-and-greet bullshit, he flirted with the hot female lobbyists, many of who fawned over his handsome hapa boy face and overlooked the gold wedding band on his finger. Kainoa’s nearing forty, but he’s still good-looking, and he knows it. His stomach and chest are still defined, and the graying hair around his temples only emphasizes the tight smooth skin of his face. He knows that his popularity is in fact due to his handsomeness, coupled with his charm. He knows this from the lobbyists who hit on him, from the tutus who take pictures with him at neighborhood board meetings, from the Kaiser High School girls who scream from school bus windows when he’s sign waving. His looks win him votes. His looks win him elections. In the car, he exhales loudly as he thinks about how, luckily, at the fundraiser he had avoided another lobbyist, a round-assed Japanese girl whom he hooked up with a few 2 years ago, late at night in his office at the Capitol. He remembers being slouched in his desk chair as she blew him, and he played with her tits as she moaned and groaned into his lap. After that night in his office, she had stalked him for a good six months, showing up at his office randomly, trying to corner him at his own fundraisers or district events. To his relief, that girl hadn’t attended tonight’s event. He thinks about how that lobbyist almost reminds him of Christine, who is snoring softly in their bed. When he had finished his work and returned to the bedroom, he had looked at his wife’s beautiful face, at the small curve of her belly, at her nipples through her white Save Hawai‘i Kai t-shirt. He had reached his fingers towards the bottom hem of her shirt, tempted to lift the fabric and take one of her small breasts in his mouth, a move that she used to love before. They hadn’t fucked in a while, especially since Christine found out she was pregnant again. In the early days of their relationship, they used to have sex all the time, but now Christine rarely gives into his attempts. In fact, he can’t even remember when they had sex to conceive this new baby. Instead of rousing his wife and pissing her off, he had dropped his hand. That was when he received the message and rushed to the phone. He sees a stop sign in the distance and is tempted to run the sign since the streets are empty, but he knows better. He takes his foot off the gas and slows down to a stop. He sits there for some time, staring at the luxury homes around him, before he drives off again. As he heads towards Portlock Point, the homes are bigger and more lavish. He thinks about his family sleeping in their house, his house, the house he bought. When they first moved into the place last year, there were many nights that he would lie awake, unable to sleep in the enormous four-bedroom house. He would often walk through the 3 home in the dark, in awe at the fact that he, alone, could finally purchase something like this for his family. For years, he had to listen to his parents gush about how his brother Jeremy does well as a surgeon in Los Angeles, how Jeremy could afford a posh condo in Beverly Hills. His father had told him that he didn’t want to keep putting up his youngest son, who was only a “goddamn full-time local politician,” and Christine in their mansion, Kainoa’s childhood home, on the other side of Portlock. Now, thanks to his new business venture, Kainoa could afford a home of his own, could provide for his family on his own. Now that he’s set, Christine can finally quit her job at the firm and take care of the kids. His mother, may she rest in peace, stayed at home to take care of him and Jeremy while his father spent the day in his judge’s bench. Christine should do the same. It’s what a woman should do. Children are a handful, and he knows it. He’d never admit it to Christine, but sometimes he prefers staying at the Capitol until late at night and coming home when the kids are in bed, when the house is finally quiet and calm. He thinks about how, on his way to the garage this morning, he had peeked into his kids’ room. He had watched Wessie and Wendy sleep in their twin beds, each of them clutching a ragged stuffed animal in need of a good washing. For a moment, he wondered what his children would amount to when they got older. What would their future hold? He thought about himself at their age and wonders if his father, the Honorable Milton W. Grant, thought the same of him. He knew the answer to that, so he scoffed at the thought, chuckling bitterly. Wessie stirred in his bed and Kainoa froze, braced himself for the crying or wailing that might happen next. Instead of waking up, the boy kicked the sheet off his legs and rolled over, oblivious to the fact that his father was watching him. 4 Now, as he drives towards Portlock Point, he passes China Walls, his favorite surfing spot, and heads towards the beach access area that leads to Spitting Caves, a local cliff jump-off point. He glances at the tall wooden construction walls that block the view of the Naupaka Kahakai’s construction site, the same spot where he staged a protest for constituents.