When Jennifer spotted the cutter closing on her, she started rowing more rapidly. She had almost reached land already.
She made it to a pile of rocks, leaped from the dinghy, and scrambled over a low seawall like a spooked lizard. From the cutter, Leonard and Shishido saw her pause momentarily to allow a small dog to catch up. She scooped it up maternally in her arms and ran toward the nearby Ilikai Marina Hotel.
AFTER DIVING into the water, Buck Walker took several powerful strokes underwater, clearing the keel of a boat, then surfaced, gulped a deep breath, and began swimming under boats and docks alike, heading in the general direction of shore.
Lungs bursting, he finally surfaced between two boats. He heard some frantic yelling. “I lost him. Anybody see him?” Buck took another deep breath and went under again. When he came up next, he was in a narrow space under a dock. He heard footsteps pounding overhead and excited voices shouting.
He cursed to himself. Goddamn dogs! She should have left them alone. Not more than twenty minutes before, a man on a neighboring boat had yelled to Jennifer, on her way in the dinghy to the public rest room ashore, that the Coast Guard had been around the night before asking questions about them. She returned to the boat immediately, and told Buck. He had known then it was time to abandon the Sea Wind, and they had done so with dispatch. As they grimly rowed to shore, Buck’s two dogs—left behind on deck—began barking loudly. Jennifer, apparently afraid they would disturb the neighbors, wanted to return and put them below deck. Buck had argued that the idea was crazy. When she insisted, he demanded she drop him off first at the nearest dock. They had intended to meet at the bathhouse on the beach. But as he was walking up the dock toward shore, he had spotted an armed Coast Guardsman off in the distance coming his way. Buck turned down a narrow offshoot of one dock, slowing his pace so as not to look suspicious. Pretending to be interested in the boats tied up on either side of him, he watched the serviceman out of the corner of his eye. While the detour had prevented a face-to-face encounter for the moment, it had also cut off Buck’s access to shore. He was trapped. When, a minute or so later, the serviceman started getting closer, Buck didn’t hesitate. He quickly stripped down to a bathing suit he had on and dove in.
Now, under a dock, Buck didn’t move a muscle. He stayed where he was long after his teeth began chattering from the cold water.
IN HOT pursuit of Jennifer, Bernard Leonard and Lieutenant Wallisch had immediately gone ashore in a launch.
Shishido, still no more than an observer of a Coast Guard inquiry, elected to stay aboard the cutter.
Pulling up where Jennifer had abandoned the Sea Wind’s dinghy, Leonard and the officer ran toward the hotel. In the lobby, they rounded a pillar and spotted a woman crouching ludicrously behind a potted plant near the elevators. She was cradling a small dog.
Leonard, his heart pounding, nodded at the officer.
“Miss,” the Coast Guardsman said, “you’ll have to come with us.”
Jennifer stood up, keeping a hold on Puffer. “Hi, Bernie,” she said with a sheepish grin.
“Hello, Jennifer,” he responded sternly.
“I want to tell you what happened. I really do. But can I go to the bathroom first?”
The officer replied that they had to return to the ship immediately. He put his hand under her elbow and led the way out of the hotel lobby.
Outside, he decided to tow the Sea Wind’s dinghy with the cutter’s launch. He asked Leonard to stay with Jennifer in the dinghy for the short ride.
Once they pushed off from shore, Leonard looked solemnly at Jennifer and asked: “Are Mac and Muff alive?”
“You’ll never believe what happened. They invited us over for dinner. They were going fishing and they knew they were going to be late. They told us to make ourselves at home. After dark, we turned on the masthead light and waited all night for them. They never showed up. The next morning, we went looking for them and found the Zodiac capsized. We searched for days and didn’t find any sign of them. We left a few days later on the Iola, but she got hung up on the reef, and when we couldn’t get her off, we went back and got the Sea Wind.”
“You wouldn’t have left on the Iola,” Leonard said in a tone that suggested he wasn’t buying one syllable of her story. “Not with the Sea Wind sitting there.”
She looked at him, but didn’t say anything.
They pulled alongside the cutter, which had come down the channel toward the hotel. They boarded and then climbed down a ladder to a compartment below deck. Cal Shishido was waiting with several Coast Guard investigators.
“Are you Jennifer Allen?” asked Wallisch.
“Yes—er, well, Jenkins,” she stammered, sounding nervous. “Jennifer Jenkins is my name.”
“What is the name of the boat you came here on?”
“The Sea Wind.”
“Whose boat is it?”
“Mac and Muff Graham’s.”
“What happened to them?” the officer asked.
“They drowned on a fishing trip,” Jennifer replied without hesitation. “It was an accident.”
Shishido stepped in to advise Jennifer of her constitutional rights. The boat’s owners were missing under suspicious circumstances, and this woman had ended up on their boat, which had been sailed to Hawaii. At the very least, he had reason to believe that the federal crime of interstate transportation of stolen property had been committed.* Of course, the agent was now far more concerned about the fate of the Grahams. If their deaths had truly been accidental, why hadn’t Jenkins and Allen reported the incident to authorities immediately upon their return to Hawaii?
For the next hour, Jennifer recounted how she and her boyfriend had ended up on Palmyra, become friends with the Grahams, and been upset by their puzzling disappearance. This discourse was interrupted only twice—once when she finally was allowed to use the bathroom, and again when she was taken back to the Sea Wind to restrain Buck’s dogs so that authorities could search the vessel. On the return trip to the cutter, Jennifer dropped off Puffer at a nearby boat whose owner agreed to look after the pet.
Developments in the search for Roy Allen were relayed to Shishido throughout the morning. Jennifer’s boyfriend had not been seen since diving into the water. The pants and shirt he’d shucked at the end of the dock were brought to the cutter, and Shishido went through them.
Inside a wallet, he found a Hawaii driver’s license and ID picture in the name of Roy Allen. There was also a separate small photo of the same man wearing a clerical collar.
Shishido held up the driver’s license and asked Jennifer if this was her companion, whom she had previously identified by the name of Roy Allen.
“Yes,” she said.
“Is he a minister?” the agent asked.
Jennifer smiled. “Universal Life Church. You know, that place in California that will ordain you through the mail for ten dollars.”
“I see.” He put the wallet down. “Tell me, if the Grahams were killed in an accident and you did nothing wrong, why were you attempting to flee?”
“We came here on a boat that doesn’t belong to us.” She looked as if she wanted to say something more.
“Is that all?”
She simply nodded.
Shishido later wrote up a summary of what Jennifer told him: His report read in part:
Jennifer Jenkins furnished the following information: On the last Friday in August, 1974, she and Roy Allen were making preparations to leave Palmyra the next day. She was on the boat Iola while ALLEN was on shore. He returned and told her that they were invited to dinner at the GRAHAM’S boat the Sea Wind. ALLEN left the Iola and stated he was going to take a bath and went ashore. He returned shortly after and told her that the GRAHAMS told him that they were going fishing for the evening dinner and would be a little late but to make themselves at home. The dinner invitation was for 6:30 P.M. that evening. At about 6:30 P.M., she and ALLEN went aboard the Sea Wind to await the GRAHAMS’ return. The GRAHAMS did no
t return that evening, and she and ALLEN spent the night aboard the Sea Wind.
The next morning she and ALLEN conducted a search of the area and located a dinghy overturned in the lagoon at Cooper islet, part of Palmyra Island. The dinghy was the Zodiac dinghy which was used by the GRAHAMS the day before when they went fishing. The outboard motor on the dinghy was also overturned, and they found the gas tank floating in the lagoon nearby. They turned the dinghy upright, reattached the gas tank, and continued further searching in the Zodiac. They continued the search for the GRAHAMS until September 11, 1974, and finally decided the GRAHAMS were gone. Since they did not know how to operate a radio, they were unable to call for assistance or to report the incident.
They rationalized the GRAHAMS last statement to them to make themselves at home to mean the GRAHAMS would like for her and ROY ALLEN to keep the boat if anything happened to them. They therefore tied a 50-foot tow rope to the Iola and attempted to tow it back to Honolulu with the Sea Wind. She was on the Iola steering and ROY ALLEN was on the Sea Wind. On September 11, the Iola ran into a reef while being towed out of Palmyra and when last seen was still stuck on the reef.
They arrived at Nawiliwili, Kauai, on the Sea Wind October 12, 1974. They stayed at Nawiliwili overnight and sailed to Pokai Bay, Oahu, arriving October 15, 1974. They stayed at Pokai Bay about one week, left and arrived at Keehi Lagoon on October 21, 1974. The next day, they docked at Kewalo Basin and dry docked the Sea Wind at the Tuna Packers. There, she and ALLEN repainted the boat another color. The boat was in dry dock for a week, and on October 28, it went back into the water, and they went to the Ala Wai Yacht Harbor, arriving there in the late afternoon.
She and ALLEN found $400 in currency on the Sea Wind, consisting of $20 bills—$300 in a book, and $100 in MALCOLM GRAHAM’S wallet located under the floor board of the Sea Wind.
She stated the Sea Wind did not belong to them but they loved it as much as the GRAHAMS and thought the GRAHAMS would like for them to have it. She also stated they did not report the incident at Palmyra to proper authorities upon arrival in Hawaii because they knew the boat would be taken from them.
Bernard Leonard, who had listened closely to Shishido’s interview of Jennifer, was finding it almost impossible to remain silent. He believed Mac and Muff would never tell anyone to “make themselves at home” on the Sea Wind when they weren’t there. And the idea that the Grahams would make such an offer to Roy and Jennifer, of all people, was preposterous.
Moreover, Leonard had quietly fumed when Jennifer now claimed that the Iola had gotten hung up on a reef at Palmyra while it was being towed by the Sea Wind—a direct contradiction of her story to him just minutes earlier that she and Roy had intended to leave Palmyra on the Iola, and while attempting to sail it, not tow it, out of the channel, it went aground, necessitating their returning to get the Sea Wind. Obviously, she had changed her story because he had scoffed at it. She’s a liar, he thought. And undoubtedly a murderer, too.
Shishido handcuffed Jennifer and escorted her off the cutter.
By then, the news media had gotten wind of the action at the Ala Wai, and newspaper photographers and TV camera crews eagerly filmed Jennifer as she was led off the cutter on her way to FBI headquarters for further questioning. Her arrest—the opening volley in what promised to be a big story—made the lead of the evening news and the following morning’s front pages.
Later that afternoon, Jennifer was booked into the Honolulu jail on charges of stealing the Sea Wind and four hundred dollars cash from Mac and Muff Grahamn. Bail was set at twenty thousand dollars.
AFTER HIDING under the dock an hour or so, Buck heard a group of more leisurely footsteps and quieter voices approach. As they passed overhead, a woman’s voice asked, “What in the world has been going on around here?”
“Someone said they’re looking for a murderer,” a man answered.
But no one was there to see Buck Walker when, around noontime, he finally emerged from the water—chilled to the bone, exhausted, desperate, frightened.
THE NEXT day, Cal Shishido headed for the Drug Enforcement Administration’s office in Honolulu’s federal building. He was following through on a hunch. Jenkins and Allen weren’t your regular yachties. They were hippie dropouts, with all that that might imply. No large quantities of heavy-duty drugs had been found on the Sea Wind, just some marijuana seeds and stems in a small plastic bag. Even so, the couple had arrived in Hawaii on a boat that didn’t belong to them—drug runners often used stolen boats to cover their trail when smuggling drugs in these waters—and Shishido suspected there might be a drug connection in the case. He needed any leads he could get on the mysterious Roy Allen.
At the DEA, Shishido showed the Roy Allen driver’s license to the first agent he came across.
“Hey, that’s Buck Walker,” said the surprised DEA man. “Where did you get his picture?”
“You know him?”
“Yeah, we’re after his ass.”
Shishido couldn’t believe his luck. For the very first DEA agent to know the fugitive’s identity was more than he could have hoped for. Some aliases hold up for weeks, even months.
The agent walked over and handed the license to a colleague seated several desks away. “Tell Shishido who this turkey is,” he said.
“Buck Walker,” said the deskbound agent without a moment’s hesitation. “He sold to an undercover agent, pled out, and skipped before sentencing.”
“When?” Shishido asked.
“About six months ago. You got a lead on him?”
“He jumped off a dock at the Ala Wai two days ago and swam for it when he saw us coming,” Shishido said.
“Whaddaya know. Buck Walker’s back.”
CHAPTER 16
SUNNY HAD BEEN SO conscientiously tending her roses that she nearly missed the phone. “Hello,” she gasped, out of breath from hurrying into the house.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Jennifer—thank God!” Sunny exclaimed. “Where are you?”
“Hawaii.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yes and no. I’m not hurt or anything, but I’m in jail.”
“Jail? Jennifer, what for?”
“For stealing a boat,” she said. “Only we didn’t really steal it. See, Mac and Muff, this nice couple on the island with us, died in a boating accident. We sailed their boat to Hawaii and the cops arrested me for boat theft. Will you bail me out?”
“Where’s Buck?” Sunny asked warily.
“I don’t know. He ran away.”
Sunny thought quickly. If Jennifer got out on bail, she might well hook up with Walker and take off again.
“I’m not going to get you out, honey. Not now.”
“Mom…”
“No,” Sunny said firmly. “You’re safe and sound. At least I know where you are. That’s the way I want to keep it for now.”
ON THE morning of October 30, San Diego—based FBI special agents Darwin Wisdom and Earl Harris drove out to see Muff’s mother, Rose King, who lived in a modest bungalow on Meade Avenue in San Diego.
The visitors settled on the couch in the sensibly furnished living room. Mrs. King, frail and white-haired, sat with her hands clasped like a vise in her lap. She knew that her daughter and son-in-law had been out of touch, and their sailing friends in Hawaii were very concerned. Like any worried parent, she had tried to avoid thinking the worst. Surely, they would show up. They were so well prepared for anything.
Also present was Muff’s sister, Peggy Faulkner, a demure woman in her mid-forties who was slimmer and taller then her sister.
Both women listened intently as the agents briefed them on the previous day’s events in Hawaii. It sounded like the plot for a television show, not something that actually touched on the lives of one’s own family.
For Mrs. King, the most frightening part was that the Sea Wind had been found in the hands of strangers, with her daughter and Mac nowhere around. They would never abandon their boat. “Whe
re are they?” she asked forlornly.
“We don’t know,” Wisdom answered. “All we know is that your daughter and her husband are missing. With the Coast Guard’s help, we’ll be searching for them, of course. In the meantime, it would be helpful if you could provide us with some information.”
After Mrs. King gave the agents a physical description of LaVerne, as she called Muff (“born on December 18, 1932, in Pueblo, Colorado, blond hair, blue eyes, 5-foot-3, 135 Ibs., appendectomy scar,” etc.), she gave them several letters Muff had sent from Palmyra. The agents also borrowed a recent photo of Mac and Muff, smiling and holding hands, aboard the Sea Wind.
“Just a few other matters,” said Wisdom, sensitive to the worried mother’s distress.
Mrs. King nodded.
“Do you know how much cash they had when they departed for Palmyra?”
“My impression is that they took four or five thousand dollars to Hawaii,” Muff’s sister answered for her mother. “I don’t know if they intended to take that much with them to Palmyra. They had enough food and supplies on their boat to last them two years.”
“Did either Mr. and Mrs. Graham drink?” Harris asked.
“Rarely.” Peggy Faulkner seemed to have put up her guard. “Neither was a heavy drinker.”
“There was that ticket, honey,” Mrs. King said quietly, peering over the top of rose-hued bifocals at her daughter.
“My sister was arrested for drunk driving just before she and Mac left on their trip.”
The agent was scribbling away in his pad.
“But it was very unlike her,” Peggy added with conviction. “Really.”
Muff had had a bad case of hepatitis when she was in her late twenties, Mrs. King explained, and the doctors had advised her to avoid alcohol.
“Do you know if anything was bothering her around the time of the drunk driving?” asked Wisdom, his curiosity roused.