I surfed all day Friday, then returned to The Next Wave with my laptop to use their internet connections. I sent a quick email to Harry about the waves, and then a check-in message to Terri, who had just lost her husband a few weeks before. I felt bad that I had left town when she or her young son Danny might need me.
I wrote to my parents, too, a quick note about the surf and how the North Shore had changed in the past ten years. I sent Lieutenant Sampson a longer message about surf bags, rifles, and talking to surfers.
I sat back and thought about the case. If the only thing that connected the three victims was surfing, then maybe if I learned more about them as surfers, I’d find a clue. The dossier I’d been given didn’t have much detail, but I found that by searching for all three names online, I could find out which events they had competed in and what their results were. The only pad I could buy at The Next Wave was one in the shape of an aloha shirt, but with that and a surfboard-shaped pen, I began making notes. Soon there were shirt-shaped pieces of paper piling up, and I built a matrix, looking for any events where they might all have been entered.
Pratt was the best surfer of the three. He was twenty-five, and had been surfing competitively since he was a teenager on the Jersey shore. He’d placed in the top ten in a number of contests, including Mexpipe in Puerto Escondido, on the Pacific Coast of Mexico.
Lucie Zamora had also competed at Mexpipe, though she hadn’t placed anywhere near the top. And way at the bottom of the men’s list I found Ronald Chang’s name.
Interesting, I thought, sitting back. All three had been at Mexpipe. Was it just a coincidence, or a real connection? I couldn’t know for a while if it meant anything. I jumped over to email, and sent a message to my brother Lui, asking if he could dig up any video footage of the Mexpipe championship. I told him I was interested in studying form, but I thought perhaps I could see one or more of the murder victims there.
I printed out a list of the top 100 finishers at Mexpipe; hopefully a couple would be around the North Shore, and I could ask them some questions. I also spent some time on the competition web site, learning about the races and the atmosphere surrounding them.
The three dead surfers had been at very different places in the surf hierarchy. Pratt was at the top, a real competitor. Lucie Zamora was struggling to make it out of the pack. Ronald Chang was a weekend surfer who would probably never have finished in the money.
Where did I fit, on that scale? I had to put myself somewhere between Lucie Zamora and Ronald Chang, though without Lucie’s obvious drive and determination. I had some natural ability as a surfer, and I’d been doing it nearly all my life. But to be the best at anything, you have to pour yourself into it, heart and soul. Dario Fonseca had shown me that I couldn’t do that, not while I was hiding my sexuality. I guessed I ought to be grateful for that, but gratitude was a hard emotion to feel around him.
I saw him pass by a couple of times while I worked at the computer. I don’t know why, but I tried to look busy each time, so that he wouldn’t stop and chat. I wasn’t comfortable with him, and I didn’t want to give him another opportunity to proposition me.
I found one interesting piece of information about Mike Pratt that I hadn’t seen in his dossier. He rowed with the outrigger team that practiced in Waimea Bay. Cross-referencing them, I discovered that they practiced every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday mornings, and competed in single, double and six-man races. That worked for me; I could stop by the next day.
By then it was late and I was hungry. I stopped for dinner at a bar called the Surfrider, where I had a beer and a burger. Neither were that good. The waitress seemed to recognize me, and so did a guy who was about twenty years too old for me, wearing a Heineken T-shirt that was too tight. He came up to me as I was finishing dinner and asked me, in a low voice, if I wanted to go home with him. I politely declined.
Saturday morning, I awoke to the NOAA’s surf report in my drab, dingy room at Hibiscus House, confused at first as to where I was and what I was doing. Then as my body’s aches and pains began to catalog themselves, I remembered.
I dragged myself out of bed and into the bathroom, considering what had brought me there, and all the unfinished business I had left behind in Honolulu. For a minute, I wanted to chuck the whole North Shore business and go back to Lieutenant Sampson’s office, tell him to get someone else to solve this case, give me back my gun and my shield and put me to work in District 1.
But I didn’t. Instead, I looked at the case files again and again, memorizing every detail of the three dead surfers. Then I headed down to Hale’iwa Beach Park, to where the North Shore Canoe Club practiced, across the street from Jameson’s by the Sea. There were already a few people there by the time I arrived, and while we waited I helped bring out the canoes.
The light was bright and harsh, glinting in shards off the placid water. Almost everyone knew everyone else. I introduced myself as Kimo and we began stretching exercises as the sun moved up over the hills behind us. A fit, blonde woman named Melody introduced herself to me and asked if I’d ever paddled before.
“Yup, in Honolulu. For a while when I was a kid, we belonged to this native Hawaiian club after school, where we practiced speaking Hawaiian. We made leis out of kukui nuts, we surfed, we learned to paddle. A little hula, too, but don’t ask me to dance for you.”
She laughed. “I won’t.” She sized me up. “You want to try the back of the canoe?”
“Sure.” I knew that’s where they put the biggest and strongest guys. I joined a team of six in pushing an outrigger into the water, and then we all jumped in and started paddling out to sea.
I sat in the fifth seat, behind a slim Hawaiian guy with incredible biceps and triceps, and in front of a stocky haole guy. I noticed that his right leg, from the knee down, was prosthetic, but he was able to move around easily on it, and use his awesome upper body strength in the outrigger. Whenever I lost the rhythm of the oars, I felt his jabbing me in the back. I never heard him whoop or yell as the others did when we crested the wave. He approached his rowing as if he were on work-release from prison, with a grim determination that sapped some of my fun.
We got a good workout, paddling out beyond the surf, then turning around, catching a wave, and paddling like hell to catch it. We did some quick races as well, and then returned to the beach. The Hawaiian guy introduced himself to me as we dragged the canoe back up on the sand. “I’m Tepano. You rowed before?”
“When I was a kid. How about you, you been doing this for a long time?”
“Couple of years. It’s a great workout.” The rest of the team streamed off around us, leaving me walking up toward the parking lot with Tepano. “Everybody’s pretty friendly, too.”
“That guy behind me didn’t seem so friendly,” I said, referring to the haole with the prosthetic leg.
“Rich? He’s okay. He just doesn’t like surfers.”
The sun was fully up, and there was a nice breeze coming in off the ocean. It was going to be a beautiful day. “Some awful surfboard incident in his childhood?”
Tepano laughed. “Not exactly.” His face got serious then. “He was a pretty good surfer, once. Then the Army sent him to Bosnia and his leg got blown off. That prosthetic is state of the art, but he can’t feel a board under him, so he could never surf again. Made him a little bitter.”
“I guess.” I could only imagine how I’d feel if I couldn’t surf any more.
“Plus he has this job, security guard for this crazy old guy who owns a stretch of beach. He’s always chasing surfers away.”
“I’ll keep my distance.”
“Probably a good idea.” He gave me a shaka, the Hawaiian two-fingered salute, and said, “Hope to see you here again some time.”
“You probably will.” As I was walking the last bit to my truck, Melody was walking past with another woman, Mary, who was, like Melody, in her late twenties or early thirties, and very fit. Mary’s skin was tanned dark, and her glossy black hair was pulled into a long ponytail.
Melody asked me, “You going to be around for a while? We could use some strength on our B team.”
“A few weeks,” I said. “I can’t commit to anything, but I’d like to drop by practice again some time, if that’s okay?”
“Sure.”
Mary said, “Gotta go, Mel. See you later,” and kissed Melody on the mouth. It seemed like a pretty intimate gesture to me, and I noticed that Mary wore a yellow gold wedding band. I wondered if they were lesbian partners, but Melody did not wear a band at all.
As Mary walked away, Melody turned back to me. “What brought you out today?”
I shrugged. “I’ve been surfing the last couple of weeks, saw your poster.” I decided to take a gamble. “I remembered that a surfer I knew recommended you. Jersey guy named Mike Pratt?”
Melody’s face fell. “I guess you didn’t hear. Mike died about a month or two ago.”
“No!” I said. “Surfing?”
“You could say that. He was on his board at Pipeline, and somebody shot him. Dead by the time he washed up on the shore.”
Tears began forming at the corners of Melody’s eyes. “Gosh, I’m sorry. Was he a friend of yours?”
“Yeah, I guess. He was on our A team for a while. Really strong guy. You probably saw, we’re like a family here. Mike’s death hit us all pretty hard.”
“They catch the guy who did it?”
She shook her head. “Not a clue. The police came around, but they didn’t know anything.”
“I’m surprised anybody would even talk to them,” I said. “Surfers and cops don’t usually get along.”
“If they’d known the right questions to ask, we might have talked,” Melody said. She looked at me strangely. “Hey, do I recognize you?”
“Kimo Kanapa’aka,” I said. “Formerly of the Honolulu PD.”
“Oh, my God, I read about you. That is so totally unfair, what they did to you.” I could see the wheels turning behind her eyes. “Say, maybe you could look into what happened to Mike. I could make some introductions here for you.”
“I don’t know. The police aren’t exactly eager to hear from me-or my lawyer-these days.”
“But you could show them. Find out what happened to Mike, prove you should be a detective again.”
I knew the friends and family of victims were eager to see murderers caught and punished, but I’d never seen this side before, this view that the police were clueless and needed the help of someone outside the force to solve crimes.
“You think people here know something the police don’t?”
“I’m sure of it,” Melody said. “You got time for a cup of coffee?”
Conversations
Melody and I met a few minutes later at the Kope Bean, a little coffee shop in a strip center on the Kam Highway. A lot of surfers were getting a caffeine fix before hitting the waves, and a bunch of clearly Honolulu-bound business types were doing the same before hitting the H2 down toward the city.
The place was decorated in a style I can only describe as island Starbucks; the walls were painted with murals of coffee beans, called kope in Hawaiian, growing on bushes on the slopes of what looked like Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea. There were two groups of overstuffed arm chairs, and a number of blond wood tables and chairs for the laptop set.
Melody ordered a tall vanilla soy latte and I got their signature macadamia mocha latte in the longboard size, their largest. We snagged a pair of the comfortable chairs and settled down. She was dressed for work by then, a light yellow linen dress and sandals, a lei of shiny brown kukui nuts and a sports watch her only jewelry. With her tanned skin and her sun-bleached blonde hair, she could have been an advertisement for healthy summer living.
Mana’o Company was playing low in the background, encouraging us to “Spread a Little Aloha” around the world, and in one corner of the room a bust of King Kamehameha surveyed us, an electric blue plastic lei around his neck.
“So how long did you know Mike?” I asked, when we were settled.
“About three years. He came to the halau right after he got to the North Shore, as part of his strength training.”
Though most people think halau means a place you can learn to hula, it also means a long house for canoes. “How well did you know him?”
Melody sipped her latte and considered. “Better than an acquaintance, not as well as a friend,” she said finally. “We talked a lot, and I heard all about his background, but I didn’t see him socially. Of course, you can’t help running into people up here; it really is a small world.”
“I’ve heard he was a dedicated surfer.”
“Fierce. It was what he lived to do. Everything else revolved around surfing. How he trained, who he hung out with, how he supported himself.”
“How did he support himself?”
She slipped one sandal off and twisted around so that leg was under her, smoothing the edges of the yellow linen dress. “Part of the reason why he came up here was because he met a shaper at some tournament who offered him a job,” Melody said.
A shaper’s a guy who customizes surfboards by sanding, polishing and shaping standard boards.
“Mike did the scut work, he called it, for this guy, Palani Anderson. Dragging boards around, cleaning up the mess, that kind of thing. He did that for about year, I guess, and then he started having breathing problems from the Fiberglas fumes so he had to stop.”
“Bummer.”
She nodded. “By then, though, Mike was good enough that he was able to start teaching. He worked out of the marina for a while, giving lessons, and then he started landing in the money at tournaments. His career was just taking off when he died.”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
Melody had to think about that one. The foot that was still wearing a sandal tapped lightly on the floor. “It was just a couple of days before he was shot,” she said finally. “I remember he went down to Mexico for a tournament, and so I didn’t see him for a couple of weeks, but then he was back at the halau. I remember he got into a fight with Rich over something and it really disrupted practice.”
“Rich is the guy who hates surfers?”
Melody nodded. “He’s not a bad guy, you know, but he and Mike used to argue about property rights-whether the beaches should be free for everyone, you know, that sort of thing.” She waved her hand a little for emphasis, and I saw she had a small tattoo of a sun on the inside of her right wrist.
“I heard Rich used to be a surfer himself. I’m surprised that his attitude changed so much.”
“Well, he’s a security guard for this guy who owns a piece of beach, and he’s always chasing surfers away. I think some friend of Mike’s-maybe his girlfriend-was surfing there and Rich frightened her. So they got into an argument and we had to cancel the practice.”
“And that was the last time Mike came to the halau?”
She sipped her latte, thinking. “Yes, because I didn’t hear he’d been killed for a week, and I worried that he’d stopped coming to practice because of the argument.”
She drained the last of her latte and patted her mouth with a napkin, then stood up and slipped her sandal back on. “I’ve gotta get to work. If you come back to the halau again for practice, I can introduce you to some of the other people who knew Mike.” She pulled a business card out of her purse and handed it to me. Her last name was Isaacson, and she worked for an investment firm in Honolulu.
“Deal.” I stood up with her, cracking my back. “I got a good workout today.” I wanted to thank her for the information, but since I was playing it that I was helping her out all I could do was smile.
I left Melody and headed back to Hibiscus House, where I showered and ate my Pop Tarts, thinking about my day. I decided I had to learn more about Mexpipe, which meant I had to find someone who had surfed there. I pulled out the printout I’d made the day before at The Next Wave of the top finishers, and scanned the names, looking for any I recognized.
Pay dirt. My cousin Ben’s name was there. I made a point of keeping an eye out for him that morning at Pipeline, and when I saw him taking a break I went over to where he was hanging out on the beach with a couple of friends.
He’s good-looking, in a scrawny, surfer way. There isn’t an ounce of fat on his six-foot something body, and he wears his black hair loose, down to his shoulders. His father was a haole Aunt Pua married in a quickie ceremony in Vegas, who left her life, and our family circle, shortly after Ben was born. So, like me, Ben has just a slight epicanthic fold around his eyes, and his skin takes a tan well.
“Yo, cuz, how’s it going?” he said as I came up. “You guys know my cousin Kimo?” he said to his friends.
We nodded all around. “You got a minute?” I asked. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”
“Sure.” He and I walked down the beach a little to a refreshment shack, where we both got bottles of water. “Your folks still upset about what happened to you?” Ben asked, as we sat down on benches overlooking the water.
“Pretty much. I talk to them every night and you know my mother, she’s full of ideas for me.”
He laughed. “Boy, I know that. You should hear my mother talk.”
“I never imagine Aunt Pua as the type to tell anybody how to run his life.”
“That’s because you’re not her son. That laid-back act is for the rest of the world. Not for me. She keeps telling me I could be teaching surfing at a resort and making good money.”
“My mother keeps telling me things like when the next LSAT test is. ‘You can still go to law school,’ she says. ‘Lots of people go back to school in their thirties.’”
“Man, those two will never change,” Ben said, shaking his head. “So what’s on your mind, dude?”
“You went to Mexpipe, didn’t you?”
“Sure. Did better than I expected, not as good as I hoped.”
“What’s it like?”
He took a swig from his water bottle. “Zicatela’s the beach that everybody surfs. Six to fifteen foot ground swells; lots of tubes. Wipeouts can be really bad. There’s this break called the Point, and you can get some long, fast, challenging rides.”
“How’s Mexpipe itself?”
“Lots of good surfers show up, and the waves can be awesome.” He shifted around on his bench. “Big party scene, too.”
“Yeah?”
“Toga party, bikini contest-I mean, they try to make it fun.”
“Lot of drugs down there?”
He nodded. “I don’t do anything more than pot, and never when I’m in a competition, but you could get anything you wanted there. Just had to walk around the town for a few minutes and somebody would try to sell you something.”
“I’m trying to track down some people who were there-maybe you knew them. Mike Pratt, Lucie Zamora, Ronald Chang.”
Ben narrowed his eyes at me. It was obvious that he recognized the names and had an idea of why I was interested in them. “I thought you were done being a cop.”
I shrugged. “Old habits die hard.”
Ben considered that. “I knew Mike Pratt pretty well,” he said finally. “Interesting guy. Really good surfer-I think he was just about to make a name for himself. He got in with this weird crowd in Mexico, though.”
“Weird how?”
“This Christian surfing ministry-they run a cafe at the main surfing beach down there, and they have Bible study sessions at this place called El Refugio. Now, I’m not against any religion-I figure, you want to believe, man, more power to you.”
He stopped to take another swig from the water bottle. “But Mike, man, he really took it to heart. Then when we got back, he started bitching about his board not being right. You ask me, it’s his head that wasn’t right.”
“You ever see him hang out with Lucie or Ronnie?”
“A couple times, I saw him with Lucie. But you know, she didn’t really belong there-she wasn’t good enough. I think she was just there for the party. The other guy-Ronnie-I just met him once or twice because he was with other people from the North Shore. He was a total wannabe.”
He drained the last of his water. “I gotta get back. You gonna be around for a while?”
“For a while.”
“Cool. See you around, then.” He gave me a shaka and walked back toward his friends.
Ben had seen Mike and Lucie talking to each other at a party. It didn’t mean that they were best friends, or involved together in some way, but it was a start.
Coach Tex
I surfed all day Saturday, hoping to see Trish. Though I talked to a bunch of surfers, I didn’t learn anything new, and I was starting to get discouraged. Once I actually heard the word “faggot” muttered under someone’s breath-but I couldn’t tell who had said it. I was discovering information, but very slowly, and that was frustrating. By late afternoon, I was beat. Though I had surfed regularly in Waikiki, that was nothing compared to the punishment I was putting my body through. I couldn’t even keep my promise to get out for meals-I stopped at Fujioka’s and bought some takeout sushi, and nearly fell asleep eating it.
Sunday morning, I put on my wetsuit and walked out into the pre-dawn darkness, dragging my board with me. I couldn’t help thinking about the murders as I surfed. Usually the water is the place where I can put everything else aside, but knowing that all three victims had been surfers somehow connected the act of surfing with their deaths, making it impossible for me to forget them.
I surfed most of the day, resting between waves, scanning the sand for Trish and talking to whoever passed by. I had a burrito for lunch, bought from a roach coach that drove past around noon playing a complicated tune on its horn. By around three o’clock, I gave up, and after a quick shower back at Hibiscus House I drove over to The Next Wave, hoping that Dario had the day off.
Either he did, or he was holed up in his office the whole time. I was grateful, and it allowed me to focus on doing more computer searching. I already knew a lot about Mike Pratt, so I decided to spend some time on the other two. I knew it would be hard to zero in on someone with as common a name as Chang, but I wanted to give it a shot.
After a number of fruitless searches, I found a site from Lahainaluna High School in Lahaina which listed winners of a science fair. One Ronald Chang had won second prize for a case study of how one could hack into the school’s computer system and change student grades. Chang’s photo, which was close enough for my purposes to the one I’d seen in his dossier, clinched the deal for me.
There was a little note on the web page thanking Mr. Chang for his insight, which resulted in a total revamp of the school’s computer grading system. If Ronnie could do that at 16, I thought, what was he capable of at 25?
I went back to the dossiers on the dead surfers. Ronnie Chang was a computer technician for a firm in Honolulu, and the investigating detectives had spoken to his co-workers, but as far as I could tell, no one had spoken to his family or friends back in Maui. I wondered about that, and sent a quick email to Lieutenant Sampson asking if there had been a reason why not.
There was almost nothing online about Lucie Zamora, other than her name on the roster of a couple of surfing tournaments. The original detectives had run all three surfers through the police system, checking for arrests, warrants, and other malfeasance, and all three had come up clean.
My brother Lui emailed that he still felt bad about running the stories on me, even though both the series on gay cops around the country, which ran while I was suspended, and the series on coming out, which ran during my first week on the North Shore, got great ratings and great viewer feedback. He suggested that a big family luau at Waimea Bay Beach Park might make me feel better.
I replied by saying I’d only agree if I could challenge him and Haoa to a surf contest, and I copied the entire family on the message.
My older brothers had been great surfers in their day. Neither had pushed it as far as I had, but both were good, and both still kept their boards in their garages, though I doubted either had been on the water for years. My father even promised that he would join us for a wave or two if we would all go out together. I could just imagine what my mother thought of that idea, but as my father got older, he never missed a chance to hang out with his boys.
Sampson must have been online himself that afternoon, because I got an email back almost immediately, authorizing me to fly to Maui to talk to people about Ronnie Chang. It wasn’t a big deal; an inter-island flight takes about half an hour, and the round trip, with a rental car, would be under $200. I was able to get a reservation for the next morning, which meant I needed to be at the airport in Honolulu early. I decided to drive down that night and sleep in my own bed-but I didn’t tell my family or friends, because I didn’t want to have to come up with yet another lie.
It was strange pulling into my own parking lot, climbing the stairs to my own little studio apartment. I had only been away for two weeks, but I had immersed myself so much in my new life on the North Shore that I almost felt like I didn’t belong back in Honolulu. Or maybe it was that I knew I didn’t belong back there until I had solved the murders.
I had been waking before sunrise every day, so the next morning I was able to make it to the airport in plenty of time for my flight. The Hawaiian Airlines agent recognized my name at the gate and winked at me, but that was the extent of my notoriety. I figured I had finally slid out of the newspapers, and I was able to settle back into a bit of anonymity.
I got into Kapalua-West Maui Airport on the Valley Isle a little after ten. I had a list of things to check out-Ronald Chang’s high school, and his parents’ restaurant, for starters. I was also going to cruise a couple of surf shops, looking for anyone who might have known him.
I took the Honoapiilani Highway, which circles around West Maui, down to Lahaina, where I was looking for Victor Texeira, the computer science teacher at Lahainaluna High. I was somewhat surprised to discover, when I asked at the office for him, that I was directed to the gym, rather than to a computer lab.
There was only one teacher in the gym when I stuck my head in there, a very fit guy in very tight clothes, with a whistle around his neck. When one of the kids called him, “Coach Tex,” I was even more confused.
“Can I help you?” he asked, coming over to me. “You guys do two laps, then hit the showers,” he called to the kids, who promptly took off around the perimeter of the gym.
I gave him my name, and he said, “I’m Victor Texeira.” He smiled. “The kids call me Coach Tex, as you heard.”
I had worked out a story in advance. I explained that I was a former homicide detective, and that I’d been asked to look into a series of murders that had occurred on the North Shore. All that was true. I have discovered, in years of listening to lies and pulling them apart, that those lies which are most closely rooted in truth are the easiest ones to maintain.
One of the victims had been Ronnie Chang, his former student, I continued. “I’m a little confused, though,” I said. “I thought from what I read online that you taught computer science.”
“I do, one class. Mostly I’m the gym teacher, though.” He motioned to a room at one corner of the gym with glass windows looking out on the floor. “Come on into my office and I’ll explain.”
I followed him, noting privately how his little gym shorts hugged his ass, the way his pecs and biceps bulged out of the skin-tight polo shirt he wore. I was pretty sure he was straight; he wore a wedding band and one of those little Jesus fish pins at his collar. Even so, I rarely saw a straight man dress so provocatively. I could even tell he was wearing a jock strap under his shorts-that’s how tight they were.
“I want you to know, I’m not normally the type of guy to speak ill of the dead,” he said, opening the door to the office and motioning me inside. “But in this case, I’ll make an exception.”
“Tell me how you knew Ronald Chang,” I said, sitting across from his desk. The room was lined with trophies, certificates and commendations, including pictures of Coach Tex with the governor and both state senators.
“It was my first year here,” he said, sitting. “I was hired as a coach, but the state had just installed this email system for us, and they needed somebody to administer it. I had just graduated from UH, and I’d lived in a computer-equipped dorm, so that made me the most qualified.”
“Ronald Chang was a student then? How old was he?”
“He was a junior,” Texeira said. “Ringleader of a bunch of kids who didn’t take gym seriously. Every day they’d come in with obviously faked excuses-recovering from a cold, can’t get overheated, that kind of thing. Then on the weekend I’d see them all at Breakwall or Shark Pit, surfing like there was nothing wrong with them.”
I knew Breakwall and Shark Pit, both decent surfing spots in Lahaina. “That must have pissed you off,” I said.
“It did. So one day I decided I’d get even. I came up with a bunch of exercises designed specifically for surfing. Nothing elaborate-your standard strength conditioning, flexibility and so on, but I packaged it right. I waited to collect everybody’s excuses, then I announced this special program all week. But anybody who was sick that day couldn’t start, and would have to miss the whole week.”
He shrugged. “What can I say? I was twenty-two and cocky. I thought I’d really put one over on them.”
“Something happened, I’m sure.”
He nodded. “The next day, somebody hacked into the school’s computer system, and sent a bunch of x-rated emails from my address to a bunch of the female teachers. I nearly got fired-it was clear that I didn’t send the emails, but I wasn’t doing a very good job of keeping the network secure either.” He shrugged. “Like I said, I didn’t know all that much about computers. Ronnie hacking into the system showed our weak points.”
“You know it was him?”
“We couldn’t prove it, but I just had to see his nasty smirk to know he did it. I had one more trick up my sleeve, though.”
“What was that?”
“I created a computer club, and made him the president. The club was charged with helping the school maintain its system. So he had to find every hole and plug it up.”
“Isn’t that dangerous-putting the fox in the henhouse?”
“It was a risk. But I thought if everyone knew he had all access, and then something happened, suspicion would fall directly on him. So he had to keep things clean to protect himself.”
“He must have been a pretty sharp kid.”
“He was. But he had a sneaky side, and I never trusted him. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t surprised at all when I heard he’d been killed.” Suddenly a thought occurred to him, and he got serious. “You won’t tell his parents any of this, will you? I wouldn’t want to trespass on their grief. I’m just telling you this because, you know…”
“I appreciate everything you’ve said, and I’ll keep it in confidence.” I stood up, and Victor Texeira stood with me. “Thanks for your help. I appreciate your candor.” I paused before walking out the door, though. “Is there anyone here in Maui who might know more about Ronnie as an adult?”
Texeira thought for a moment. “There’s a guy named Will Wong who was a classmate of Ronnie’s. He works in a surf shop in downtown Lahaina called Totally Tubular.”
“Great. Thanks.” We shook hands, and maybe it was my imagination, but I thought he held my hand a little longer than he should have, and looked a little too directly into my eyes.
Man, I thought as I left, I’ve got to get my gaydar working.
Lahaina Harbor
I drove slowly down into the center of Lahaina, thinking about what Victor Texeira had said. I pulled into a parking space in the quaint downtown area, and before I got out of the car I looked back at Ronnie Chang’s dossier. He had attending UH for two years, leaving without a degree to work for the company that let him telecommute from the North Shore. Even though the original detectives had been there, I figured they would be worth a stop, deciding that I’d sleep in my own bed again that night, visit them the next morning, and then head back to Hale’iwa.
It was just lunch time, and the restaurant owned by Ronnie’s parents, Wok ‘n Roll, was crowded, so instead of going in I went for a walk through Lahaina. By the time I’d strolled through the harbor, I’d built up an appetite.
Ronnie’s mother, Yee Chang, was working the register, his father Lan behind the stove cooking. Though I’d never met them, their pictures had been included in my dossier. Yee had lost weight since the picture was taken; grief will do that to you. I waited until there was a break in the crowd, and walked up to introduce myself, with the same story I’d given Victor Texeira.
She looked like she might cry. She reached out and took my hand. “We are so happy you investigate who kill our son,” she said.
“I’m doing my best.”
“Eat first, then talk,” she said. “What you like? Honey chicken very good today. My husband make everything fresh. Lan! Make honey chicken special for detective. Give extra rice!”
She wouldn’t take money from me. I took the plastic cup she handed me, filled it with ice and lemonade, and waited for Lan to serve up my chicken, reminding myself why I didn’t like to interview the parents of the deceased. They almost never had anything bad to say about their child, and though occasionally they could point you in the direction of a bad influence, the dead child was almost always blameless, an innocent victim. Even when the deceased had a laundry list of warrants, arrests and convictions, his parents always believed the best of him.
I had almost finished my chicken when Yee had a young girl replace her at the register so she could come sit with me. The dining room was bright and airy, spotlessly clean, looking out on Front Street and the harbor. It had to be expensive real estate, I thought, which meant that the Changs were doing well.
My father’s best friend, Uncle Chin, is Chinese, so I was very familiar with Chinese culture. I began by telling Mrs. Chang how sorry I was about her son’s death, and how I knew it was impolite of me to ask questions about him, but that I believed it was important to bring whoever killed him to justice.
She nodded eagerly. “His spirit very restless. Must have peace. You can bring my son peace?”
“I can try.” I paused for a minute, then began asking simple questions. She did not know much about his life on O’ahu, but she knew that he loved to surf. He did not have any enemies that she knew of, no one who held a grudge or had any reason to dislike him.
“How about his friends,” I said. “Did you ever meet any of them?”
The few names she gave me were already in his dossier. “And his fiancee, of course,” she said.
“Fiancee?”
“We never meet her, you know, engagement too soon before he died. And not Chinese girl either.” For a moment a frown crossed her face. “But she make Ronnie happy.”
“What was her name?”
“Filipina girl. Lucie…”
“Zamora?”
“That’s it!” she said. “She must be so sad, to lose Ronnie.”
“I’m afraid she was killed, too, Mrs. Chang. Around the same time Ronnie was.”
Her mouth opened into a wide O, and her hand flew up to cover it. Her surprise mirrored my own. I had a feeling that there was no formal engagement between Ronnie Chang and Lucie Zamora; if there was anything between them at all beyond friendship I thought it was either a figment of Ronnie’s imagination, or Lucie was playing him for something.
Mr. Chang came out from behind the stove, and his wife quickly told him, in Mandarin I only partially understood, that Ronnie’s fiancee had been killed, too. His surprise was less visible than hers, but it was clear he hadn’t known.
I thanked both Changs again for the delicious lunch, and walked out onto Front Street, which was busy with tourists in matching aloha shirts, slippas, and uneven tans. I strolled down Front Street, looking for Totally Tubular and Will Wong. The surf shop was a little hole in the wall near the marina, with nowhere near the selection you could find at The Next Wave. But they were doing a good business, and I had to wait a few minutes before the exceptionally tall Chinese guy I assumed was Will Wong could talk to me.
He must have been six-four or six-five, at least, and he was skinny as a rail. I was surprised he wasn’t playing basketball for some mainland team. That is, until he stumbled over a boogie board on his way to talk to me and knocked over a rotating display of sunglasses.
After I introduced myself, we sat outside in the sunshine to talk about Ronnie Chang. “We were tight in high school, man,” he said. “Ronnie was like, awesome with computers. Crappy surfer, but man, he could figure out a way into any system.”
“He still a crappy surfer when he died? I know he went to a tournament in Mexico.”
“That was a joke, man,” Will said. “He only went because he was chasing some girl, and she said she’d party with him down there.”
“And did she?”
“He was pretty cagey when he got back,” Will said, sitting back on a bench and stretching his long legs out across the sidewalk. “He came back with a whole lot more money than he left with, and I know he didn’t win it.”
“What do you mean?”
A noisy bunch of Japanese tourists passed us, on their way to a whale-watching excursion, or at least that’s where I guessed they were going, from all the whale paraphernalia they were either wearing or carrying; a half dozen of them wore paper crowns that looked like whale’s tails. When they passed, Will said, “He really wanted this top of the line board, but he didn’t have the dough, especially with buying presents for this chick and paying for the trip to Mexico-for both of them, by the way.”
“You know this chick’s name?”
“Sure. Lucie. He used to make a joke about it, you know, I Love Lucie.”
“And when he came back, he had the money for the board?”
“Right on. He ordered it through me, and I had it shipped to him in Hale’iwa. He only had it like a week before he got killed.”
“Bummer.”
Will nodded. We talked for a couple more minutes, and then he said that his break was over and he had to get back to work. That was fine with me, because I had to catch my flight to O’ahu. I drove to the airport, thinking about what I’d heard. Lucie Zamora and Mexpipe connected Mike Pratt and Ronnie Chang, and something had happened in Mexico that upset Mike and brought Ronnie cash.
Could Ronnie have rigged the results at Mexpipe, moving Mike’s position up so he could win more money, by hacking into a computer? Or perhaps Ronnie had rigged Mike’s board with some kind of computer sensors that gave him an edge-that would explain why Mike had been bitching about his board after he returned.
Then Mike had joined up with the Christian surfers at El Refugio, making him regret what he’d done. Or perhaps he was just angry that his board didn’t work right any more.
I fell asleep almost the moment my butt hit the airplane seat, and didn’t wake up until we were just about to land. I was so tired I could barely drive back to my apartment, and after scarfing down a quick dinner I went directly to bed.
The next morning, Tuesday, I slept late. Sure, I could have gotten up at dawn and surfed Kuhio Beach Park, but I was getting spoiled by those big North Shore waves. And since the park was right next to the police station where I had worked for six years, there was a good chance I’d run into an old colleague or two, people I didn’t want to have to explain myself to at present.
By ten o’clock I was on my way to Aloha Security, the company where Ronnie had worked. His boss, a haole named Pierre Lewin, was a reformed hippie with a French accent and brown hair in a ponytail halfway down his back. His office was filled with posters, half of them from rock concerts and the other half advertising computer software.
I gave him the same story, that I’d been asked to look into Ronnie’s death, and he didn’t question me. “Ronnie was a gifted hacker,” Lewin said. “You know what that is?”
“Somebody who breaks into computer systems?”
Lewin nodded. “And what we do here is consult with folks who don’t want anyone to break into their systems. Ronnie’s job was to do his best to exploit all the weaknesses in customer systems. Then we’d come up with ways to block those holes, and he’d test again. We have a lot of very big clients-none of whom I can mention because of security issues.”
“That’s fine. So Ronnie could probably break into any system he wanted to?” Even the one tabulating the scores at a surfing competition, I wanted to add.
“Anyone other than one of our established clients,” he said, leaning forward.
“That’s a pretty dangerous skill, isn’t it?”
He laughed. “We’re not talking about Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible, dangling from a wire into somebody’s computer bank. Ronnie mostly worked from his apartment in Hale’iwa.”
“You ever have the idea that he was breaking into other systems-ones you weren’t paying him to test?”
“Our employees have to undergo rigorous background checks. They’re bonded, and they know there are dire consequences for anybody who circumvents the law.”
Yeah, right, I was thinking. We talked some more about computer security and hacking, and then I left. I wondered how seriously Ronnie had taken those consequences. Clearly, he hadn’t recognized how bad they might be.
I decided I’d swing past the Prince Kuhio, the hotel on Waikiki where Lucie’s mother worked, and see if I could talk to her. I knew the Kuhio well; it was only a couple of blocks from my apartment, so I stopped back at my place for a few minutes, to read through the file on Lucie one more time.
The investigating detectives had talked to Mrs. Zamora, and to her son, Frankie. Neither of them had any idea why someone would want to kill Lucie-she was such a sweet, kind girl. She went to church every Sunday, her mother said.
Knowing what Ronnie Chang had told his parents about Lucie-that she was his fiancee-I wanted to know if she had told her mother about the engagement. She hadn’t, I discovered. Mrs. Zamora, a petite, trim woman in a gray and white uniform, was able to meet me on her break, in a garden just off the hotel’s lobby.
She’d never even heard Ronnie’s name. The investigating detectives hadn’t mentioned him or his murder, and Lucie had never told her mother they were engaged. “You’re sure my Lucie knew him?”
I nodded. “They had friends in common. And he spoke of her to his parents.”
“He was a good boy, this Ronnie?”
“I think so,” I said. “He had a good job. Their friends say he took Lucie out, and bought her gifts.”
“She no tell me anything after she move to Hale’iwa,” Mrs. Zamora said sadly. “She only say what she know I want to hear. Yes, Mama, I go to church. Yes, Mama, I marry nice Filipino boy. Yes, Mama, I make you proud of me.” Tears welled up in the corners of her eyes, and she dabbed at them with a tissue. “She give me money so her brother can go to college. Every week, she send me an envelope with a hundred dollars, cash money. I tell her no send cash through the mail, but my Lucie, she so honest. She say no one steal the money. She say she make lots of money soon, she buy me a house, let me stop work.”
I told Mrs. Zamora that I would do my best to find out who killed her daughter, and she smiled sadly. “My Lucie with the angels now. She sit at Jesus’s right hand.”