Paradise Crime Mysteries

by Toby Neal

  Two lifeguards were standing, hands on hips, their heads close together as they talked, their faces somber. Lei caught the eye of the taller of the two and gestured for him to come talk. He and his partner, younger and slighter, came across the beach.

  When Lei had their attention, she said, “I’m going to need to interview each of you. I’ve called the medical examiner, Dr. Gregory, and he should be here any minute to examine the body.”

  The lifeguard, a muscular Hawaiian man in traditional red shorts and a bright yellow rash guard shirt, nodded. He extended his hand to shake hers.

  “I’m Sam Napua. I saw the surfers waving for help in the lineup and went out. Two of them were holding Makoa up. Soon as I signaled my partner, he joined me in the water and we got him in to the beach as fast as we could. Started CPR, but he was never responsive.”

  Dr. Gregory, the ME, pushed through the crowd, which had swelled as the news of the surf star’s death spread via “coconut wireless” gossip. The portly doctor, whom she knew from various cases, was wearing one of his trademark aloha shirts, this one decorated with menehunes doing hula. He waved to Lei with a gloved hand as he signed in with the patrol officer on the log.

  “These are the paramedics who tried to revive the victim,” Lei told the doctor as he approached. Dr. Gregory, usually talkative and good-humored, sobered at the size of the crowd and the celebrity of the victim. He nodded, and with his assistant, Tanaka, knelt in the sand beside the body to begin their assessment.

  “Can you help me identify the rescuers who were helping Makoa in the lineup?” Lei asked, turning back to Sam Napua.

  “Sure. I thought you’d need to take statements once we saw Makoa wasn’t reviving, so I asked them to wait on the steps.” He gestured to where two surfers sat on the metal stairs of the lifeguard tower. Lei hadn’t noticed them before because the lifeguards had been standing in front of the steps, blocking them.

  “Thanks. I’ll talk with them next. Did you know the victim?”

  “I did. Great kid.” The lifeguard blinked his eyes hard, and Lei could see moisture in their dark brown depths. “Always friendly and down-to-earth. He’s been surfing here for years.”

  “Tell me what you saw when you first approached the victim in the water.”

  “Well, I was using ol’ Kelly here.” Sam pointed to a huge white surfboard with a red cross on it. “This is our rescue board. We use it as our primary rescue device at this beach, with all the surf we deal with here.”

  “Kelly?”

  “After Kelly Slater. Best all-around surfer in the world.” Sam’s teeth flashed in a brief smile as they both looked at the cumbersome board propped against the metal stairs of the tower.

  Lei and her husband, Michael Stevens, had been beginner surfers for some time now, so she knew the riders were gathered around wave peaks that broke regularly in a certain spot, a predictable point where surfers could “line up” with a geographic marker of some kind on the beach and be positioned to take off. A good deal of the skill of surfing was being in the right place at the right time to get an optimal position on a wave, and that was rarely accidental.

  “Which peak was he at?”

  Sam pointed. “Over there.”

  Lei saw he’d been at the Point, the first of the peaky areas. Today the surf was coming in at around six feet in wave height from trough to crest. Even as Lei looked, a surfer took off, making the drop and pulling up to position himself for a “tube,” where water covered him and he traveled inside the wave.

  Another rider dropped in on him, spoiling the ride by blocking his passage. The wave closed over the first rider, and Lei saw him disappear, wiping out. She frowned, watching the surfer who’d stolen the ride, on a green board, pump his way down the wave as it broke and finally kick out at the end.

  “Did you see that?” Lei asked Sam. Getting caught inside a barrel, hitting another surfer’s board or the bottom, even tangling with your own board in a wipeout were all common hazards that could cause death—but it would be highly unusual for a surfer of Makoa’s ability to drown in such relatively minor water conditions.

  “Yeah. There’s been a lot of bad manners in the water lately,” Sam said. “I’ve had to break up quite a few beefs on the beach.” Even as they watched, the first surfer who’d lost the wave was yelling, pumping his board through the water toward the man who’d stuffed him. He smacked the water and cursed when he reached the other surfer. The drop-in surfer on the green board shrugged and moved off.

  “So tell me what you saw when you got to Makoa and his rescuers,” Lei said.

  “They were holding him on one of their boards. They said they’d found him facedown, floating. They saw Makoa take off on a wave, and they were watching him because they were paddling back out. Then another surfer dropped in on him, and both of them wiped out. Or at least, that’s what it looked like to them. But the other surfer paddled away, and Makoa’s board came back up without him.”

  “Where’s that other surfer?” Lei focused on Sam’s face. She saw worry and suspicion in his weathered brown features—a tightening of the lips, a narrowing of eyes bracketed by fans of wrinkles from squinting into the dazzle of sea and sun.

  “They said they didn’t know. He paddled back out, and by the time they got Makoa up and out of the impact zone where the waves were breaking, they couldn’t see him anymore.”

  “So he’s not that guy that just snaked somebody again?” Lei asked. The aggressive surfer they’d been watching had just dropped in on another rider.

  “No, but dat buggah goin’ get in scraps when he come in,” Sam said, lapsing into pidgin, frowning. “Okay if I call him out of the water?”

  “Yeah. That’s dangerous, what he’s doing. I want to see if he’s the guy Makoa tangled with.”

  Sam jogged to the lifeguard tower, said something to the surfers, retrieved a bullhorn and an air horn, and climbed the steps of the tower. He blew the air horn, and everyone on the beach jumped.

  “Surfer on the green board, exit the water,” he bellowed into the megaphone. Lei started at the loudness of the bullhorn. She turned to look out at the man who’d been violating surfing etiquette—and was surprised to see that, instead of exiting the water as he’d been ordered, the man was paddling downwind toward the next break as fast as his arms would propel him.

  Sam repeated his direction.

  “Stupid,” Lei said to Pono, who’d materialized at her side. “Where the hell does he think he’s going?”

  “Out to sea, looks like.”

  Sam returned, dark eyes flashing with irritation. “Want me to catch him on the Jet Ski?”

  “Yeah. Bring the fool in,” she said. “Where does he think he can get away on a surfboard?”

  Lei walked toward the lifeguard tower and the two men who had rescued the victim as Sam and his partner ran back and drove a quad with a Jet Ski already trailered on the back, across the beach. Sam’s partner turned the quad and backed the vehicle into the shifting sand lapped by surf as Sam guided the Jet Ski off the trailer and into the water.

  Sam then jumped aboard, flipping down a floating rubber tow mat, and throttled the engine, turning the craft to zoom across the choppy inside of the bay toward the fleeing surfer. The man had made it all the way past the last Ho`okipa break.

  Backup patrol officers had arrived, and Pono was organizing them to canvass the crowd. Dr. Tanaka and Dr. Gregory had erected a privacy shield, a pop-up metallic-looking tent, over the body to screen out the sun and prying eyes as they did undignified things to what remained of Makoa Simmons.

  Lei refocused her attention on the two rescuers. “Tell me what happened,” she said.

  Lieutenant Michael Stevens sometimes wished he wasn’t so good at his job. If he weren’t, he wouldn’t have been given new duties. Stevens rubbed a knot of tightness between his brows. He’d gotten the unwelcome news that, due to budget cuts, his little station out in Haiku was being reabsorbed into bigger Kahului Station. He was keeping hi
s rank, but he’d been reassigned by Captain C. J. Omura to be head training officer for new detectives.

  Stevens sighed as he set his station’s expenditure report down. Glancing out the door of his office, he could see his men packing up—at least he wouldn’t have to work on budget reports anymore, and he’d gotten a raise. But he didn’t like the idea of not having his own active cases.

  He took one of a stack of cardboard boxes he’d picked up behind Foodland and began cleaning out his desk.

  “Boss.” Detective Joshua Ferreira, closest thing he had to a partner, knocked on the doorframe. “Want I should get some guys to bring their trucks to move all this furniture?”

  “I have to check with the captain, see how much of it is already down at Kahului and how much we’re going to have moved into the state storage facility,” Stevens said. “Thanks for reminding me.” He picked up the phone and rang through to Omura’s office.

  “Yes.” Omura always sounded clipped and in a hurry. It kept calls short and made her more efficient, he realized, but he never looked forward to calling her.

  “Hey, Captain. What do we do with the furniture here? Are you putting all the men in with other details, or will we have our own corner in the building?”

  “In with the rest. You can tell them their reassignments,” Omura said. She rattled off the six men’s names and their new assignments. “Just take your personal things out of the building. We’ll have to squeeze you guys into the existing space, and we’ll have Buildings Division move the Haiku furniture into the big storage facility.”

  “Okay,” Stevens said. “What about where you’re putting me?”

  “You’re going to share an office with the recruiter and new officer trainer, Eric Tadeo. I told him you’re coming.”

  “Great,” Stevens muttered.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I said, great. Whatever works for the department,” Stevens said louder.

  “Good.” Omura hung up with a click.

  Stevens sighed again and stood up. Ferreira was still waiting in the doorway. “We’re all being reassigned and the stuff goes into storage,” Stevens said. “I have everyone’s assignments. Tell the guys to come in.”

  He continued to gather up and sort the files in his desk drawer, his mind going, as it often did, to the bust on the Big Island that he and his wife, Lei, had made three months ago. Their house had burned down as collateral damage of that case, and Lei had lost their first child four months into the pregnancy.

  The new house they were building, a simple three-bedroom in concrete block, was almost finished. He couldn’t wait to be done with spending every non-working moment laboring on the house. The insurance hadn’t paid out enough to rebuild, so they’d had to rely on the help of friends and coworkers, which didn’t make for speedy construction.

  Stevens felt like he’d been slogging through molasses ever since that Big Island case. Complicating things was a nagging worry that the shroud killer, an enemy who’d targeted those closest to them, might not be the one they had in custody. He hoped they’d seen the last of the shroud killer’s relentless attacks, but there hadn’t been enough evidence to prosecute the man they’d arrested for those particular crimes.

  Every day seemed to take superhuman effort to get through, and he wondered if he could be suffering some sort of depression or if it was just grief over the fire and losing their baby. He’d begun to look forward to that daily belt of Scotch at the end of the day, because it seemed like they’d both been operating on autopilot.

  The only person who really made him and Lei smile was his son from his first marriage. Kiet, at seven months, was happy and active, always crawling to grab something and put it in his mouth, jade-colored eyes sparkling with curiosity and humor.

  Stevens wasn’t looking forward to developing a training program when he wasn’t enthusiastic about the changes or sure they would work. In the past, candidates for detective studied, passed the test, and then worked closely for six months with a “mentor” senior partner until they were ready to take their own cases.

  Now the dictate had come down from central on Oahu that they needed to have more procedural standardization to reduce variability in case write-ups and other errors that had plagued departments statewide. He’d been given the assignment to develop that program and work with all new detective trainees.

  Stevens finished his sorting and looked up as his small team filed into his office.

  “Hey, guys. I have Omura’s new assignments for you.” He read off their names and new assignments, allowing the groans and teasing that erupted at some of the assignments. “Just pack your personal stuff. Department furnishings are going into storage.”

  The group was returning to the main room, grumbling side conversations going on that Stevens pretended not to hear, when Brandon Mahoe, one of his trainees now doing a turn at the watch desk, knocked on the doorjamb.

  “Someone here to see you, sir. Says she’s your mother.”

  Chapter Two

  Lei jotted down the names of the two rescuers in her spiral notebook: Barrett Sharkey and Ipo Gomez. They were both mid-twenties, muscular and tan, and had known the victim for years.

  “We were stoked Makoa was home for the weekend,” Sharkey said. “He lives on Oahu now, on the North Shore. Lives with some other team riders at the Torque house at Pipeline.”

  Lei noted this. “So he was home for the weekend. I take it he stays with his parents when he’s home?”

  “Yeah, or at his girlfriend’s.” Sharkey pointed at the girl in the towel, whom Lei had already noticed. The girl had collapsed in the sand, her head on arms looped around her knees. Her friend was pressed close to her next to the plastic barrier tape. “Her name’s Shayla Cummings.”

  Lei made another note. “Okay. Why don’t you tell me exactly what happened.”

  Gomez took the lead this time. “We were both paddling out, so we saw Makoa take off on a big set wave. Then this kook dropped in on him. Guy we’ve never seen before.”

  “Not the guy on the green board? The one the lifeguard’s chasing?” Lei asked, frowning.

  “No. He was short and dark like that guy, but he was on a white board,” Sharkey chimed in.

  Could the aggressive surfer have changed boards somehow?

  “Anyway, that guy dropped in late, and they tangled. Looked like a mean wipeout. And then the white water from the set hit us, and as we were trying to get through it, I saw the guy on the white board paddling in. Makoa’s board was floating.” Gomez pointed to it, a white board with red stripes and a lot of sponsorship decals, set on the beach. “But Makoa never came up. So I yelled to Bear, and we paddled for the board. I got it, and Bear used the leash to follow it down to Makoa. He was underwater.”

  “Was he stuck on something?”

  “No. He was just deep underwater. Must have had his lungs really full, and he’s got just about no body fat, so…” They all looked over at the surf star, now being lifted by Dr. McGregor and Tanaka into a long black bag.

  Sharkey hung his head and rubbed his eyes. “Damn,” he whispered. “Never thought it could happen to someone like Makoa.”

  Gomez shook his head. “Neither did I.”

  With the help of the remaining lifeguard and a couple of the uniforms, McGregor and Tanaka carried the bagged body up the beach. The group carefully lifted the young man into the back of the ME’s van. The girls wailed, and Lei saw friends try to comfort them.

  She pulled the witnesses’ attention back to her. “Did you see any sign of foul play?”

  “No. Unless you call dropping in on a guy and crashing into him foul, which I do,” Gomez said. “That bastard bagged out of there because he knew he did wrong.”

  Another disruption pulled their attention away as the lifeguard arrived back at the beach on the Jet Ski with the runaway surfer dragging behind him on the flotation sled. Lei and the two rescuers watched as the lifeguards both lectured the guy as he got out of the water. Lei, following a
hunch, held up a hand to Sharkey and Gomez. “Wait here a minute.”

  She gestured for one of the uniforms to follow her and walked down to the water, her black Nikes sinking into the soft, deep yellow sand, the sun hot on her hair. Sam Napua had a hand on the surfer’s shoulder as he said, “You’re off the beach for a week.”

  “Whatevahs,” the man said. “Plenty of other places to surf.”

  “I wonder if you could explain what you’re thinking when you drop in on somebody,” Lei said. “It’s not just rude. It’s dangerous. Someone drowned here today after getting stuffed in a wave.”

  The young man, lean and dark with well-defined muscles moving easily, picked up his board from the water’s edge and raked her with a contemptuous glance. He couldn’t miss the badge on her belt and her weapon in the shoulder holster, let alone the uniformed officer beside her.

  “I’m born and raised on this island, and if I want a wave I’m going to take it. My family been here longer than all these haoles.”

  “So you think being a local entitles you to something.” Lei narrowed her eyes at him. “I think it entitles you to a citation for disturbing the peace. With a side of reckless endangerment.” She gestured to the officer beside her. “Ticket him, please.” She didn’t usually carry a ticketing pad but had learned that there was often a need when responding to calls at the beach. The officer wrote the ticket and ripped it off, holding the slip of paper out to the angry surfer.

  “Happy to meet you in court,” the officer said. “I saw the whole thing. And you disobeyed the lifeguards and cost the county money and time bringing you in. I can write you up for that, too. You can take me to your vehicle so we can check your ID.”

  Lei saw the young man’s eyes flicker and his jaw tense as he bit back angry words. He took the ticket, daring a “stink eye” glare at them as he broke into a trot for the parking lot with the officer behind him.

  “Glad you cited him. Guy like that needs a smack down. He just doesn’t get it,” Sam Napua said. “Those kind of attitudes are no way to live aloha.”