“When was the last time you saw the Grahams?”
“On August 30th.”
“What happened that day?”
“I met Mac on shore and he invited us over to the Sea Wind for dinner that night. There was just the four of us on the island then. Jenny and I went over there about six o’clock that night. The Grahams weren’t there. We waited about half an hour, then went aboard the Sea Wind. I remember Mac said they were going fishing for our dinner, so we just figured that they were late getting back.”
“Did you see them leave to go fishing?”
“Yeah. They went in their Zodiac.”
“What were they wearing?”
“Mac was wearing a T-shirt and shorts. Mrs. Graham was wearing a bathing suit and hat of some kind.”
“You never saw them again?”
“No. We spent the night on the Sea Wind. In the morning, we went out and hunted for them. We found the Zodiac overturned about a hundred yards west of the Sea Wind.”
“If it was only a hundred yards away, you must have been able to see the overturned dinghy without having to search for it,” the agent said without missing a beat.
“It must have been farther away than that. Maybe half a mile.”
“What did you do next?”
“Went over to the dinghy and turned it upright. Nothing seemed to be damaged. I took several pulls on the engine and it turned over. We spent the next three days looking for the Grahams. Never found a trace of them.”
“Did you make any attempt to call for help?”
“We didn’t have a two-way radio. There was a radio on the Sea Wind, but we didn’t know how to use it.”
“So, you left Palmyra on the Sea Wind?”
“We were going to tow the Iola to Fanning. We were using the Sea Wind’s inboard motor to get through the channel, with the Iola in tow, when the Iola got hung up on the reef. We couldn’t get her off, so I cut our line and we kept going through the channel. We anchored the Sea Wind out past the reef, and I went back in the dinghy to try to free the Iola. I put up the sail and tried to get the wind to help her break free. But it didn’t work. We took all our things off and put them on the Sea Wind.”
“You just left the Iola on the reef?”
“Yes.”
“And sailed off on the Sea Wind?”
“Right.”
“So, you headed directly for Hawaii on the Sea Wind?”
Buck nodded. He obviously felt he had gotten past the hard part. “Kauai, actually. We spent the night there, then sailed the next day to Oahu.”
The other agents returned to the car. They had found nothing of any value as evidence in the hotel room.
“Did you do anything to the Sea Wind after reaching Hawaii?” Burns asked as they pulled away from the curb.
“Yeah. We repainted her.”
“Why?”
“Because she needed a paint job.”
“Why did you take the name off the boat?”
Buck shrugged nonchalantly, as if he was beginning to lose interest in the conversation.
“You say the Sea Wind needed to be repainted,” Burns continued.
“We’d been rammed by a swordfish on the way back to Hawaii. Its bill went through the hull. I had to go over the side to patch the hole so it wouldn’t leak so much.”
“That’s why the whole boat needed to be repainted?” Burns asked disbelievingly.
“Yeah.”
“When did you come to the Big Island?”
“About a week ago.”
“Why?”
Buck looked at the agent as if he were a piece of dog meat.
“Because I didn’t want to get caught, stupid.”
The agent looked up from his notebook. “So, how’d you dispose of their bodies?” he asked abruptly.
“Fuck off.”
So ended the FBI’s first, and as it would turn out to be, last question-and-answer session with Buck Walker.
CHAPTER 17
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 1974
A DOZEN OR SO people, all deeply tanned and dressed in sports clothes, gathered quietly aboard the Journeyer for a short trip in choppy seas. Their collective mood was decidedly somber but not mournful. By common agreement this was not to be a funeral service, but rather an informal Hawaiian “service of aloha.” On the other hand, though Mac and Muff were officially still only missing, not dead, like one coming out of anesthesia, everyone had slowly begun to face the sobering reality that it was time to bid a final farewell to Mac and Muff.
Bernard Leonard, wearing Bermudas and a bright-colored shirt, shut down the motor when they were a couple miles off world-famous Diamond Head. The boat bobbed up and down, and for a long moment the only noise was water slapping against the hull. Then a tall, graying man wearing sunglasses moved forward. An experienced yachtsman and coach of the University of Hawaii’s sailing team, he was also a minister.
“On behalf of the families of Malcolm and Eleanor Graham,” the minister began, “I should like to thank each of you for joining us in this service of aloha.”
Kit, wearing a stylish sundress, was thankful that both mothers had decided against traveling to Hawaii. Elderly and frail, facing devastating loss as well as the strain of not knowing what had happened, they would surely have found the trip unbearable. Yes, thank God they didn’t come, Kit thought.
“Mac and Muff and the Sea Wind sailed the oceans of the world together for many years,” the minister went on. “Mac was a supremely capable seaman. A man for all seasons and all situations. A man content with life, yet not completely satisfied. There still were new horizons, and new landfalls beckoning him.
“Muff, I have learned, never felt quite so much at home upon the sea. She found power to overcome a fear of the great expanses of the oceans they traversed, in her confidence and trust in the man she loved. She would sail anywhere with Mac.”
Kit could no longer hold back the tears.
“Their dream, their quest, was so wrongfully interrupted at Palmyra Island. But God has not forsaken Mac and Muff.
“We cannot fully understand the sad events that have led us to this service. We cannot know yet precisely what occurred at Palmyra, nor do we know for certain whether they are indeed dead, or—hope against hope—somehow still alive. But we can believe that wherever Mac and Muff are, God is watching over them.”
The minister offered a prayer.
They all bowed their heads and held hands. Experienced sea legs held them steady as the boat lurched in the waves.
“Oh God, we ask Thee to extend Thy loving arms to all those who have known and cared for Mac and Muff Graham. We pray that justice may be done, but ask that Thou would purge our hearts of the vindictiveness that would poison our souls and deny Thy concern and grace even for the incarcerated.”
Leonard cringed at those last words. They were too close to Gandhi’s admonition that one should hate the sin, but love the sinner. Leonard didn’t feel capable of such a noble dichotomy right now. His friends Mac and Muff had obviously been murdered, and their beloved Sea Wind stolen. Leonard wanted justice, not mercy.
Kit was no less vindictive now. A few days earlier, a Honolulu newspaper photo had shown a handcuffed Jennifer being escorted to a court hearing by U.S. Marshals. Something about the scene disturbed Kit, but she couldn’t immediately put her finger on it. With a horrified gasp, she suddenly realized it was the short-sleeved blouse the suspect wore. A peasant blouse with a distinctive embroidered yoke, it had been one of Muff’s favorites. From that moment on, Kit despised Jennifer Jenkins.
“Particularly, we pray for Mac and Muff,” the minister continued. “If, as seems to us inevitable, they indeed are gone from this life, then we commit their spirits into Thy sure hand. Lead them to their high island. Amen.”
Leonard fired up the Journeyer’s motor and the boat began a slow circle. Everyone stood silently at the railing and, one by one, dropped purple and white vanda orchids and red-and-white carnation leis over the side.<
br />
As Kit watched, the sprinkling of flowers began to drift away upon the wind-blown surface of the water, much as, she thought, her brother and Muff had been taken by currents and winds over the horizon to a far-off island named Palmyra on their final voyage.
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON
HER FIRST evening home, Kit went through a box of letters from Mac and Muff. Those from Palmyra were already held together in one pile by a single rubber band. She put them aside. The authorities in Hawaii had asked her to make photostatic copies of them so that they could read the Grahams’ own account of their relationship with the couple on the Iola.
Also, Kit still had all the letters Mac and Muff had sent her from various other locales while they were on their honeymoon cruise. Nearly six years’ worth. She took a stack of them and sat down on the couch in the downstairs den.
On the wall were a mask painted with vegetable dyes and a carved wooden spear, trophies brought by Mac from some distant corner of the world. Kit smiled. It was an endearing memory: Mac holding the mask to his face and hopping goofily around the room, performing what he swore was an authentic tribal dance.
She began reading. In one letter, dated July 16, 1962, Mac had written to her, “I love life and living so much that the constant realization of its passing hurts.”
She picked up another letter, written in the fall of 1966, when Mac and Muff were heading up the west coast of Mexico on the final leg of their round-the-world trip. At the time, Mac had asked her not to tell their parents this story. It still took her breath away.
October 1966
Dear Kit,
The Gulf of Tehuantepec, feared by all ships for her 100-mph-plus winds, lay in our path. It is 200 miles across. We made 100 miles when the engine broke. Then, chubascos, the grand-daddy of all thunderstorms, hit us. Do we retreat 300 miles to the hardly adequate port of Acajutla, or try for the ports ahead on the other side of the gulf without a working engine? We turned back. I put the dinghy down and tried to tow with the outboard. We could make only one knot. We spotted a shrimp fishing fleet. They found someone to speak English with me over the radio and arranged for a tow from Camaroner #18. It was 200 miles to Salina Cruz. The skies darkened and the chubascos started moving in. We were pulled through huge seas and wind that made steering practically impossible. Hardly a moment in thirty hours did we not think of a chafed splice in our tow rope. If it broke, we would founder.
Muff is terrified, and every instant wanting to help. She is on my left, holding on, when an awful bolt of lightning splinters the world ahead with such an ear-breaking sound and ragged brilliance that with it comes the knowledge that this IS hell. The jagged shape of that bolt keeps violently twitching in our eyes, as the explosion of lightning turns our world an eerie blue-white. The mad steering goes on. I go forward to check the tow rope, leaving Muff at the helm.
Muff screams, “The breakers! We’re in the breakers!”
The first roaring breaker seemed to tower over us. Our boat was at a fantastic angle. The wave came down. “This is it, Muff!” I yelled. I wanted to say I was sorry, but I didn’t. I didn’t want her to know I’d given up hope. The wave crashed down and hit our hull. Only the foaming top came over us, but the hatch was open and it poured inside. As the next roller broke, I saw the breaker engulf the shrimp boat. When it passed, #18 miraculously had held her position. I saw the tow rope chain come up hard. #18 was going at right angles to us. Something had to break. Our bow was virtually yanked toward her. She started climbing the swell. I screamed at Muff, “Hard left, damn it!” Then, “Follow him!” Muff was doing a wonderful job at the helm, and I felt horrible for yelling at her. With certain knowledge that no rope could hold that fantastic strain, I concentrated on readying the anchor for when we broke loose. But then, we climbed out over the last comber to safety, which must surely rate as the luckiest moment of our lives.
We are safe now in a Mexico port, getting our engine repaired. Will be home soon.
Love, Mac
Kit let the letter drop into her lap. They had made it that time, in part because they were a good team. She knew they had also survived a South Pacific typhoon, a perilous journey through the Red Sea, and the close call with a pirate ship in the Mediterranean. How could they have disappeared now, not in a storm at sea, but on an idyllic island?
Kit found another letter, which Mac had written to himself. He titled it “Unconnected Fragments,” and it was one of her favorites. It revealed a sensitivity in Mac that he did not show everyone. He had written it shortly after their father’s death in 1973. A few “Fragments”:
The hours and days of working on the boat with the constant thought that I would be able to show Dad how well each piece fit—someday. The machinery all set for his inspection, with a rehearsed monologue. I wished to please him so. I would have liked to have shown him a happy family with grandchildren—and the painful list goes on. But I most horribly regret not being able to thank him for everything he gave me. There’s one less kind, thoughtful, quiet man in this world. As for me, I am so afraid of the future that I can’t enjoy the present. I want to live my life and be happy, but I don’t know how. I think that “how” is not having to worry about the future.
Kit took solace in the fact that her brother, more than any person she knew, had lived life the way he wanted. She went to a nearby bookcase and returned with a worn photo album. She sat down and opened to a page that had a square black-and-white picture of her parents on their honeymoon, looking so young, so hopeful for the future. Daddy was an engineering student at MIT when they got married, and Mother was attending Miss Windsor’s, an exclusive Boston finishing school. On the same page was a photo of the spacious family home where the bridegroom was born. Most of the money in the family had come from Grandfather (Malcolm) Graham, who at one time owned Remington Rand, only to quickly sell it for a profit. He became a Wall Street investor, and when the stock market crashed in 1929, Grandpa lost a fortune, though when he died in the mid-1940s, he left trusts for Mac and Kit (both then in their teens). At his direction, the trusts were not distributed to them until the mid-1960s. The inheritance tax laws in those days encouraged the skipping of a generation, so their father received nothing. (When she and Mac finally received their grandfather’s trust assets—$120,000 each—they decided to buy their father a sailboat. “I’m too old for sailing,” he protested. “Get me something with a motor.” So they got him a new twenty-six-foot Chris-Craft cabin cruiser. By then, Mac had already bought the Sea Wind with his uncle’s inheritance. And Kit, herself a sailing aficionado, had followed her brother’s lead and, with her own inheritance from their uncle, bought a smaller, more modest vessel good for day sailing on Puget Sound.)
On the next page was a snapshot of Kit, age two, playing with a toy train set, on December 25, 1930. It had been her last Christmas as an only child. Mac was born on April 13, 1931, and there was a picture of him taken with Mother the following December 25. Kit read her own unevenly penned caption: “And then my brother joined us.”
Pictures of Kit and Mac together filled the album’s pages. Here was one she had always loved—the two of them, ages eleven and nine, at the beach in high summer. Dressed in old-fashioned tank-top swim suits, they were lying on their stomachs in the sand, flashing the camera identical pixie grins. Mac had made an enlargement of the picture and kept it in an album aboard the Sea Wind. Kit’s original had faded, but she ran her fingers gently across the old print, as if reading Braille, as if touch could restore this lost moment in her life. “Oh, Mac, we had such great fun.”
Kit looked up, and gazed unseeing at the African mask on the wall. “Mac, Mac,” she whispered, shutting the album gently.
CHAPTER 18
HONOLULU
TWO WEEKS BEFORE CHRISTMAS 1974, Buck Walker appeared in court to be sentenced on the MDA drug charge that had caused him to flee with Jennifer to Palmyra seven months earlier. U.S. District Court Judge Samuel P. King delayed sentencing, however, when court-appointed de
fense attorney Jon T. Miho made a surprise announcement.
“Mr. Walker is willing to take a polygraph test with respect to the disappearances of Mr. and Mrs. Malcolm Graham,” the lawyer told the judge. “We believe the results will be of assistance in our discussions with the Government.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney William Eggers agreed to the delay.
Soon after his client was escorted from the courtroom by armed marshals, Miho met in the hallway with reporters. “While a polygraph is not admissible in court,” he explained, “results favorable to Mr. Walker could be used for plea-bargaining purposes.”
It didn’t take long for Jennifer’s attorney, Mark Casden, to go public with her agreement to take a polygraph.
Jennifer had made bail on November 13 when her widowed aunt (Uncle Buddy had passed away two years earlier) posted a security bond listing her $120,000 Oahu home as collateral. Since then, Jennifer had been living with friends on the Big Island, but Buck had remained in custody in Halawa Jail since his arrest.
During Christmas week, prosecutors huddled with an FBI polygraph expert and came up with a list of proposed questions to ask both defendants. As previously agreed, the list was submitted to the defense attorneys for their review.
Within days, Buck Walker withdrew his offer to take a polygraph. It would later be hotly disputed whether Jennifer also backed off or the Government decided to administer the test only if both defendants cooperated.
While the legal skirmishing continued, the press trailed after the Palmyra case like ants scenting watermelon juice at a family picnic. Of course, the bare facts were intrinsically compelling—mysterious disappearances and a possible double murder set against the alluring backdrop of an uninhabited tropical island, an ocean voyage on a stolen yacht, the suspenseful capture of the two lovers who were the prime suspects.