5 Murder at Volcano House by Chip Hughes Read Free Book Online

Kawika.” I rise from my rocker and leave behind the everlasting flames. And the everlasting gaze of Pele.

nine
    I pass the Ransoms’ room again and this time nothing’s shakin’. Door closed. No voices. I cross to the addition, climb the stairs to my room, and check the phone. No messages. My cell isn’t ringing either. All I can do is wait.
    I’m not what you’d call a patient person. Since there’s no TV in the room, I crack a glossy book on the desk about Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park and flop on the bed. I fluff the pillow behind my head and gaze at the full-color plates of craters, caverns, fissures and vents. It feels good to get horizontal after the flight to Hilo, the drive to Volcano, and the busywork of checking in and getting settled. The park, the book says, was established in 1916 and includes more than five hundred square miles of land and two active volcanoes, Mauna Loa, the world’s most massive, and Kīlauea, one of the world’s most active. Little wonder Pele has such a lively following, since her volcano just keeps on keeping on.
    My cell phone rings. R ANSOM .
    “Kai,” Donnie says in a whisper when I answer, “we’re going to walk the Crater Rim Trail to The Steaming Bluff.”
    “Steaming Bluff?” I say. “Did you see the warning at the hotel desk?” A picture of the almost mystical steam vents comes to mind: wisps of vapor floating up from dozens of openings in the lava rock and hovering over the trail. Eerily beautiful. But the super-heated underground water that rises in misty beauty can carry potentially lethal fumes, such as the Park Service sign warned about. Fumes that may make breathing difficult for even the most robust tourist.
    “There’s no stopping Rex,” she says. “If there were, we wouldn’t be here. And you wouldn’t either.”
    “Okay, I’ll follow you.”
    I hop off the bed, head downstairs, and step outside onto the Crater Rim Trail, where it passes in front of the Volcano House. I move around the corner of the hotel and wait for the Ransoms to show.
    Five minutes pass, and finally they come hand-in-hand, working their way across the lawn to the trail. She’s steadying him as they step onto the path. Rex Ransom looks no more healthy than he did on the airplane. He’s bent and his eyes point down. He hobbles along, a cane in the hand that isn’t held by his wife. Stroll is too elegant a word for how they walk. It’s more like a crawl. But the picture of the two together looks like devotion, despite the harsh tones coming from their room earlier.
    The Ransoms head in the westerly direction, toward the steam vents and Halema‘uma‘u Crater. The trail by the hotel is more like a sidewalk, asphalt and a yard wide. A lava rock retaining wall, about waist high, stands between the cliff and the Kīlauea Caldera, hundreds of feet below. It’s late afternoon and the smell of sulfur hangs in the cool air. Aside from the sulfur, I can spot no immediate threat to the former geothermalking. I give the Ransoms a minute to clear the hotel before I come out of hiding.
    Just as I emerge, a middle-aged man also steps from the hotel and onto the trail. He’s got a touch of grey in his sideburns and is talking on his cell phone. He shuts the phone and heads in the same direction as the Ransoms.
    This is good. If the man stays on the trail between them and me, he will provide concealment. But the more I consider this, the less likely it seems. The man looks fit and should easily overtake the toddling couple. I follow him, not expecting to see him for long.
    Ahead of both of us, the Ransoms are barely moving.
    To my surprise the man with a touch of grey travels as slowly as they do. And it’s not because he’s stopping at every turn to gawk at the caldera below. He’s just ambling along, eyes ahead, keeping pace with the Ransoms. I maintain the same pace, at a distance. The trail loses the asphalt and the lava rock wall upon leaving the Volcano House and turns to