Mahu Surfer

by Neil S. Plakcy

  “But he was with someone who did,” Rich said, as we lowered the canoe into the water. “You won’t catch me making that mistake.”

  Melody showed up then, along with a couple of others, enough to fill one canoe. “This place is like a ghost town,” she said. “I never thought I’d see all the surfers chased away.”

  “If it was up to me, I’d chase them all away,” Rich said, as we were pushing the canoe into the water.

  “You don’t mean that,” Melody said, jumping into the front of the boat. “You were a surfer once yourself. You can’t hate surfers all that much.”

  “Try me,” Rich said, and then we were all in the boat, paddling out past the breakers, and there was no more idle conversation. We did a couple of runs up and down the coast, parallel to the shore, and then we did a few in and outs, catching a wave and riding it back in, then paddling out and doing it all over.

  It wasn’t surfing, but it was pretty close. Riding atop a wave like that, the coastline rushing in toward you, the spray in your face and the sun above you. If something happened to me, like Rich, and I couldn’t surf again, I’d definitely find myself in outriggers.

  It was interesting, I thought, as I sat behind Rich and paddled, that I was starting to like him. Underneath the anti-surfer bluster was a real person.

  Of course, I’ve learned that you can be a really nice person and still be a murderer, a rapist, an arsonist, or a child molester. But it always makes it harder for me to hate a suspect if I start to feel like he (or she) is a human being.

  We paddled for a while, but without another canoe to race against there wasn’t a lot of fun in it. We did surf in on the waves a couple of times, and that was fun, but eventually we beached the canoe. Rich and I volunteered to carry it in and hose it down before putting it in the storage shed.

  “So why do you hate surfers so much?” I asked, as he unfurled the hose.

  “I used to surf.” He pointed to his leg. “Can’t any more. Everybody thinks that’s why I hate them.”

  “But that’s not it.”

  He shook his head. “You saw where I work. Mr. Clark’s property. I see the way the surfers treat the place. Like it’s theirs to destroy.”

  I turned the spigot on, and Rich began spraying the canoe. I turned the canoe for him so we could get all the salt water off. “What do you mean?”

  “If the surf’s up, surfers will drive right up on the beach, they’ll drag their boards across the sand, tear up the vegetation. They don’t care that it’s private property. All they care about is catching a wave. That’s not right.”

  “I know a lot of surfers who do care about private property, who do respect the environment,” I said. “You can’t characterize all of us like that.”

  “All I know is that my job would be a lot easier, and the property a lot better off, if there were no surfers up here at all.”

  It felt good working out there in the sunshine, the sweat and salt water drying on my skin. I decided to push Rich a little, see what he had to say. “Somebody told me you used to work at The Next Wave,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I just find it hard to picture you working in a surf shop.”

  “It was when I first moved up here.” He motioned to me and I turned the canoe upside down. “I used to know Dario, before I went into the Army, and I looked him up when I got up here.”

  “Interesting. I used to know Dario a long time ago, too.”

  “I didn’t know him that way,” Rich said. “He tried, but I wasn’t interested.”

  “Man. Who the hell hasn’t Dario screwed, or tried to screw, on the North Shore?”

  “There are a couple of chickens out back of Bishop Clark’s place,” Rich said, laughing. He swung his arm and I righted the canoe again. “But I think it’s just that Dario hasn’t gotten around to them yet.”

  I laughed too. “So what did you do there? Don’t tell me you sold surfboards.”

  “No, I never sunk that low. I worked in the outdoor gear department. Until I let my temper get the best of me when this surfer asshole got on me about my leg.”

  “Wow.”

  I turned the hose off and began coiling it up as Rich stood the canoe on end to drain the water. “Dario was cool about it, and the guy decided not to press charges, but it was clear I couldn’t work there any more. Dario hooked me up with Bishop.”

  “Don’t tell me Dario and Bishop…”

  Rich laughed again. He looked like a whole different person when he laughed. “Not that I know of. They’ve got some real estate deal together.”

  “Oh, yeah, that’s right. He showed us the plans.” I’d forgotten for the moment that Dario was an investor in Ari’s plan to develop Bishop’s property. The whole North Shore seemed to be related in some way or another.

  We stowed the boat away, and Rich peeled off toward the other side of the lot. “See you around.”

  “Yeah, see you.”

  I was sure Dario would tell me the rest of the story about Rich and The Next Wave, so I headed down there, where Dario was sitting at the empty cappuccino bar. “Let me make you a latte,” he said, when I walked in. “Put me out of my misery.”

  “When you phrase it like that. With extra whipped cream?”

  “Only if I get to pick where I put it.”

  I smiled. “Do you ever stop thinking about sex, Dario?”

  “It stops me thinking about bankruptcy.”

  “Surely you aren’t going to go bankrupt after a couple of bad days,” I said, sitting down at the counter across from where he was acting the barista. “What do you do when we get a stretch of bad weather?”

  “Bad weather is my best friend. It pulls the surfers off the beach and into the store. This is like a month of blue skies and mauka trades.”

  He handed me the coffee. “You been out on the water yet today?”

  “At the outrigger halau,” I said. “I met a guy there used to work for you.”

  “Rich Sarkissian. Rich-punch-the-customer-in-the-kisser-ian.”

  “He really did that?”

  “In front of my very eyes.” Dario leaned back against the cabinets behind him. He had a barista’s apron on over his logo T-shirt. There was not a single customer in the store, and as far as I could see Dario was the only employee on duty.

  “Not that the guy didn’t have it coming,” Dario continued. “Made a rude crack about Rich’s leg. But still, I couldn’t keep Rich here after that. Rich was damn lucky the customer didn’t press charges. I had to go over and see him at the place where he was staying and have a little chat with him. I told him the case could drag on long beyond surfing season, and convinced him the judge wouldn’t look too kindly on someone who made fun of the handicapped.”

  I wondered what else Dario had done to seal the deal as I sipped the coffee. It was pretty good, better than what the regular barista made. “You referred Rich to Bishop?”

  Dario nodded. “Bishop was going crazy with surfers traipsing all over his land, and we were worried that if he didn’t enforce his property line somebody might claim an easement, the right to get to the water. Rich was low on cash and needed a job, and it seemed like a good match.”

  A good match indeed, I thought, since Bishop Clark had a collection of firearms, and Rich Sarkissian seemed like the kind of guy who could use most, if not all, of them. The only real question was, how good a shot would he be—good enough to shoot a surfer off his board? The doorbell rang and Dario pounced on a potential customer, leaving me to my latte, and my thoughts.

  Ladies, Ladies

  While I was at The Next Wave, I figured I might as well fire up my laptop and check for email. There was a message from Sampson with a reminder about our meeting in Wahiawa at two, as well as a copy of the ballistics results.

  Brad Jacobson and Tommy Singer had been killed with a rapid-fire pistol, probably a Beretta. Crime scene investigation had revealed that they had both been fully clothed when shot, though very close to each other, and
both had been dispatched with multiple bullets to the brain. Quick, relatively painless deaths. The killer had then stripped them down, posed them, and quickly rinsed their clothes in the ocean.

  It was definitely the work of an unstable mind, and it bothered me. The first three murders had been cold and efficient; the motivation here was a lot murkier. There was no clear connection between the murders I’d been sent to the North Shore to investigate and these two; virtually everything was different. The only links were the location—Brad’s and Tommy’s bodies had been found at Pipeline, and Mike had been shot there—and the fact that like the first three, Tommy was a surfer, although in an entirely different class.

  But I had some gut feeling, similar to the one Sampson had, that these murders were related. It was possible that the first three killings had been steps in a process that unhinged the killer—with each death, he or she became progressively unstable, leading to the weirdness surrounding Brad’s and Tommy’s death.

  That was very spooky, because it meant that a killer whose brain was increasingly deteriorating was loose on the North Shore with a wide selection of weapons at his or her disposal.

  Along with the ballistics results, Sampson had included some basic information on Rich Sarkissian, including his address, which I had been unable to find myself—his phone was unlisted, and as a renter, he wasn’t listed in any of the property records I could search. I didn’t know how Sampson had found the address, but I was glad he had.

  I went out to my truck and got my street map of the North Shore; Rich’s address seemed to be on a rise overlooking Kawailoa Beach, not far from Bishop Clark’s place. I decided I’d swing past on my way to Wahiawa. Maybe I could peek through the windows, see the murder weapon lying out on a table, and solve the whole case before lunch. Unlikely, but a boy can dream.

  I figured that Rich would already be at Bishop’s, but I was careful as I cruised past his place. It was a cute little cottage, perched on a bluff with what I figured was a fabulous view of the ocean, and the few surfers who were already out on the waves, daring both the Pacific and the possibility of getting shot off their boards.

  It was kind of ironic that, hating surfers as he did, Rich’s front windows had a perfect view of them. As I looked around, I wondered idly how Rich could afford to live in such a place. Sampson’s notes had indicated that Rich was a renter, and I knew from the signs up at Fujioka’s that a place like his was pretty expensive. It was possible, of course, that he had some kind of deal, the way I did at Cane Landing. Perhaps Bishop Clark owned the property and it was part of Rich’s salary.

  But I remembered Terri saying that Bishop had pretty much run through his inheritance and sold off everything he owned except that beachfront property. So it was unlikely that he owned the cottage. I made a note to check the property records myself.

  Where could Rich get the money to afford a place like that, I kept wondering, as I drove down to the beach. The first answer that sprung to my mind was the same place Lucie Zamora got the money to afford her designer clothing—crystal meth. I wondered if Rich knew Lucie.

  Perhaps Rich had been killing off his competition. Maybe Mike, Lucie and Ronnie had all been crystal meth dealers, and Rich had killed them off to corner the market?

  The flip side to that was that someone else had been doing the killings, and Rich himself might be a target.

  But Tommy Singer didn’t connect to any of them—Mike, Lucie, Ronnie or Rich. How did he fit in? I felt sure that there was something I was still missing, and that was the one thing that would point me in the right direction.

  I headed toward the Kam Highway for the trip south. I tried not to think about what was going to happen, but by the time I arrived at the station I couldn’t avoid it. Most likely, Ruiz and Kawamoto wouldn’t be happy about getting outside help. I know if I was in their position, I wouldn’t want anyone else butting in on my case.

  It was one thing to get help from an outside source, an expert, say. And if I’d been undercover on this case from day one, the way you might be on a drug case, then no one would have any cause for resentment. But now it would be clear to Ruiz and Kawamoto that Sampson wasn’t happy with their progress, didn’t trust them, and felt they needed somebody else.

  Me. That was the second part of the equation. I wasn’t every cop’s favorite person, because my sexuality and my notoriety combined to make me an outcast. Sampson would not have an easy time bringing me back inside; but that’s why he was the lieutenant.

  The best thing would be for the detectives to accept me, and leave me on my own. I’d be happy to report in, pass along whatever I found out. I didn’t need to be on the inside, looking over their shoulders, questioning everything they did. I just had to make them understand that.

  Though I knew it was the coward’s way out, I waited in the parking lot for Sampson, so we were able to go inside together and meet with Ruiz and Kawamoto immediately. He was wearing what I had come to realize was one of his trademark polo shirts, this one black, with gray slacks. He did not look happy.

  “I don’t like to do this, Kimo,” he said to me in the parking lot, looking around to make sure no one could hear us. “But I’m going to ask you to keep an eye on these guys. If you pass on information, I want to know that they run with it as necessary. Any time you feel they’re ignoring you, I want to hear about it.”

  “I need to know what I’m walking into, Lieutenant. Do you suspect something is going on?”

  He frowned. “I just don’t know. But I looked at the evidence you came up with, and I don’t see why Kevin and Al didn’t find out at least some of it. I mean, you just looked the three surfers up on the Internet and found they’d all been in Mexico, right?”

  I nodded.

  “So why couldn’t they? Jesus, they’ve got computers, and they’ve both been to training classes. They aren’t stupid guys—they’ve got a damned good clearance rate. Which makes me think there’s something fishy going on.” He looked at his watch. “I’ve got to be back at headquarters in an hour, so we’re going to have to make this quick. Come on.”

  Sampson led me inside, and once we met with Kevin Ruiz and Al Kawamoto, he got right to the point. “When I took over this investigation, you guys told me you were having trouble getting information,” he said. “You thought that the surfers up here didn’t trust cops and wouldn’t tell you what you needed to know. Am I right?”

  Kawamoto’s posture, slouched back in his chair, accentuated his fat belly and made him seem even more like dumb country boy. That was reinforced when he started to argue, and Sampson cut him off. “Am I right?”

  “Yes,” Ruiz said. Ruiz, on the other hand, was still looking slick, as if he’d visited some fancy men’s clothing store on his way to work.

  “So I brought somebody in who could talk to the surfers for you. Contrary to popular belief, Detective Kanapa’aka did not turn in his badge. Instead, he has been working undercover to supplement your efforts.”

  Kawamoto started to speak, but Sampson held up his hand. “Notice I said supplement, not replace. Kanapa’aka has been reporting directly to me. He’s now prepared to share everything he has found with you, with the idea that you will remain the primaries on this case, and he will remain undercover. But from now on, he will pass his information directly to you. Are we understood?”

  “Yes, sir,” Ruiz said. “I spoke to Detective Kanapa’aka yesterday and I was impressed at the information he had gathered. He emailed some materials to me yesterday evening that I think can help us move along our investigation. I’m sure we will all be able to work together.” He shot a look at his partner that I’m pretty sure Sampson missed, one that said, ‘keep your mouth shut.’

  “Good. I’ll leave you to it, then.” He got up and walked out of the room.

  “I’ve only worked for him for a couple of weeks,” I said. “He always like this?”

  “He wants results,” Ruiz said. “We haven’t delivered. You have.”

  I pulled
out my notes, really just a rehash of what I had emailed the evening before. “Okay, I’m ready if you are.”

  Kawamoto was largely silent the whole time Ruiz and I talked. I went over every step of my investigation with them, beginning with the lucky break of running into Brad Jacobson at the North Shore Marketplace.

  “I thought there was something fishy about your story, but I figured it had to do with sex,” Ruiz said. “Like you met him in a chat room or an X-rated bookstore.”

  “You were right, I was holding out. But not any more.” I walked them through Brad’s makeover one more time, then meeting up at the bar with all his friends.

  “Like a gay grapevine,” Ruiz said, nodding. “We could never have tapped into that.”