Death and Near Death

When the local mission's Father Duffy shows up at the office of Smith, Chu, Yoshinobu and Correa, it looks at first like a routine case. Father Duffy is seeking an attorney to defend one of his 'clients' on a possible murder charge. The routine aspect rapidly disappears when it turns out that Shelton Williams hasn't turned himself in to the police, for the simple reason that the murder has never been reported.

Matters become more complex when the police investigation at the crime scene, a lookout at the edge of a steep cliff, reveals there is no recent body at the bottom of the gulch. But there is an old one—a woman, not a man as reported by Williams.

As the police try to identify the remains, the discovery at the scene of a wallet containing false police identification indicates Williams was indeed telling the truth, but that the possible victim is still alive and probably still around. Also, it seems likely he's a serial killer who was plying his trade on Oahu and had now shifted to Elima.

In the meantime, Father Duffy, whose storefront mission has been threatened with eviction by the owner, finds that the same owner has gone through a strange conversion, has told Father Duffy he can stay on the premises—and that's when yet another death occurs, one which brings the attorney firm into a case involving far more than murder.