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finish the article that morning and then move on to something of even greater interest.
    I’ve got to listen to that tape again, she thought. Maybe I’ll take it over to the University and listen to it with Tessa. She glanced up at the clock. Nine-thirty. OK. Done by twelve-thirty, then I’ll call Tessa. We can have lunch on campus. Maybe by then she’ll have heard from the guy she sent the rubbing to.
    The article did not shape itself up so easily. The first phone call to fill in a blank merely annoyed her. “No. I’m sorry,” the female voice said, “but Mr. Matsuo is gone for the day. No, I’m sorry I can’t help you. He didn’t say where he was going.”
    Matsuo had said he would be in for sure. As head of a major insurance company on the island, he seemed hardly likely to leave in the middle of the week without telling his secretary where he was off to.
    It was the second call that really aroused her suspicions. Tom Wiley was a giant of a man, a big contractor who had a reputation for lifting hundred-pound bags of cement under each arm and tossing them up on the back of a flatbed. A missing front tooth, which he had never bothered to have replaced, along with a broken nose, seemed to tell the world he had taken a lot and had given back in good measure. Today the voice on the phone did not match the looks that went with it. There was no question but that fear was the chief component weaving through the sounds coming from the earpiece. Lehua found it hard to believe.
    â€œYou told me definitely that you saw Wai Chu Drayage trucks dumping that waste along the Steinback highway.”
    â€œI made a mistake. It was getting dark, and I can’t be sure.”
    The uncertainty soon became certainty, certainty that he could not identify the trucks. It had not been getting dark. Lehua knew that for sure, but Tom’s sight had gotten dim. There was no point in pushing any further. The source had dried up—with considerable outside help.
    Three more calls produced only one confirmation for a major point in her article. I suppose I should be glad I’ve got even one.
    Now the article would have to be rewritten, and she would have to go to the office to tap the files. There was still plenty of material, but the emphasis would be different. Her anger decided her to make it even more hard hitting than she had intended. Maybe that will give others the courage to speak up.
    It was almost five before she had the completed article, less a few figures to be checked out, on the monitor in front of her. Two key taps and the information transferred itself to a floppy. She stretched and got up.
    The contents of the refrigerator looked unappetizing, but she managed to scrape together a passable supper. The remains of a loaf of rye bread that had been lost behind the pickle jar for several days provided the basis for an open-face sandwich. A slice of frozen ham thawed in the microwave, a tomato fresh from the landlady’s garden, a thin slice of onion, several slightly limp lettuce leaves, along with mayonnaise, mustard, and one of the pickles from the jar that had hidden the bread, completed the meal.
    Lehua briefly admired her culinary achievement, poured herself a glass of two-percent, pulled the recorder over next to her plate, rewound the tape, and depressed the play button as she began to eat her sandwich. With the board in front of her, she tried to make some connection between the words from the machine and the mysterious symbols.
    If anything, Annie’s voice seemed even stranger as it took on the tinny overtones of the recorder, though now the language sounded somewhat more akin to Hawaiian. Checking the clock on her coffee maker, Lehua estimated the whole recital had taken just under two minutes. None of it made sense. She rewound and pressed the play button again.
    The K’s, she thought. There don’t seem to be any. Listening closely she became convinced there