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were no K sounds in what Annie was saying. Hawaiians wouldn’t be able to talk if they couldn’t use K’s, she decided. There was something else there, a D sound or something close to it that seemed to recur again and again. Maybe it’s the equivalent of a K? Again she rewound the tape and played it through from the beginning.
    This third time, the words, if they were words, seemed much clearer. They seemed to be telling her something, but they were like the voices she had heard in the Wailuku River one night when she and her mother and father and sister had tented out on its banks. The voices had talked, and sung, and stayed just beyond the edge of understanding.
    Annie’s falsetto ended abruptly, and she heard her own voice asking Annie to read it again. The answer, “No! One time. Only one time,” came through sharp and clear. Lehua sighed, popped the stop button, took her glass, silverware and plate to the sink, scraped off the crumbs and turned on the tap. That was when she had her first inkling something strange had happened.
    The bearer of the tidings was an annoying one. A mosquito buzzed by her ear. Bill was always amused at Lehua’s love-hate relationship with mosquitoes. They loved her. She hated them. Since they never bothered him, it was easy for him to be amused. Somehow, they took special pleasure in searching Lehua out. In bed with the lights out, if there was one mosquito in the house, it would find her, just about to doze off, and would take special delight in making strafing runs only inches above her ear.
    This evening, as this mosquito flew in ever-tightening circles above her arm, she decided she was lucky to have had the creature emerge before bedtime. Tensing, and waiting for the small insect to alight and establish itself so she could be sure to demolish it with a well-placed blow, Lehua saw it settle and start to probe. She was about to make her own move when the mosquito suddenly blew aside and fell into the dishwater.
    Windows were open, but no breeze stirred in the house. Puzzled, Lehua looked around, but the first sign had made only a scant impression on her. The clock on the coffeemaker caught her eye and distracted her. She decided it was time to go to the office and finish the article. The mosquito and its fate were forgotten. More pressing matters intruded. Cy wanted to set the story first thing in the morning, and she had promised it would be on his desk when he arrived.
    * * *
    The Kona News Building was an anachronism, even by the standards of a long-established town. Built in the prosperous years after the economy had recovered from the post World War II recession, the six-story hotel had been completed too late to share in the prosperity. It soon failed, and simply looked out of place in the small village sheltering behind the sea wall on the west coast of the Big Island. By the time tourists discovered the area, it was too late for the old edifice. Purchased by the publisher at a forced sale, it seemed particularly unsuited to be a newspaper office, especially for a paper with the limited circulation of the Kona News.
    As Cy had said, “The publisher’s got more money than he knows what to do with, so let’s make the most of it.” The ample basement became the site for the presses which now filled in the hours between editions with advertising brochures, calendars, and even vanity publications. The first floor became the editorial offices, the second a warehouse for everything from extra newsprint to a badly-kept morgue of old copies, the third the art and photo department, the fourth the advertising department, the fifth and sixth provided offices for reporters and other personnel, with empty rooms left over.
    Lehua found herself happily located alone in one of the top-floor rooms overlooking Kona Bay. “The same floor and view at Waikiki would cost me five hundred a night,” she had said to Bill the first time he visited her in