The sun hadn’t come up over the Ko‘olau Mountains by the time I waded into the water, and the surf was cool, but there was a halo of light over the rocky crests beyond the city that promised day was not far behind. The waves were small, and it wasn’t hard to paddle beyond them. I lay on the board, dangling my right hand in the water, trying to get a feel for the surf.
I could take a while like that, falling into the rhythm of the waves. That morning it took even longer than usual. I couldn’t seem to empty my mind of the image of that guy, lying in the alley, or of the shame I felt at leaving him there. Finally, though, I relaxed at least a little, and then saw a good wave building. I paddled fast to catch it, then stood up on the board just as a ray of light rose beyond the top of the Ko‘olau, stabbing me in the eye. The nose of the board pearled, or dipped below the wave, and I wiped out, tumbling into the water. The wave washed over me, dragging my board toward the shore, and the leash that kept me tied to the board dragged me forward with it.
The dunking and the swim toward shore revitalized me. The sets were good, and I caught a couple of powerful waves. Before I knew it, it was daylight and it was time for me to get back home. And sure enough, when I got home I found a message to call dispatch. I called in before I stepped into the shower again. “Homicide reported at 2:38 a.m. in the alley behind the Rod and Reel Club on Kuhio Avenue,” the dispatcher told me. “Detective Hapa‘ele is en route.”
That was Akoni. I jumped through the shower and came out running, and about twenty minutes later I was next to Akoni in the alley, a narrow strip of often-patched pavement that ran between Kuhio and Kalakaua Avenues. It looked even more desolate in the full light of day than it had in the middle of the night.
On the Diamond Head side the alley backed up against the blank rear wall of a budget restaurant, and on the Ewa side sat the Rod and Reel Club’s back door. At the Kuhio Avenue end, a couple of the high trees inside the Rod and Reel’s patio hung out over the alley, but the rest of it was open to harsh sun. There were a couple of small dumpsters scattered at intervals, behind other back doors, and coupons for some tourist restaurant skittered in the wind. The walls that faced into the alley had been painted different colors, and some looked like they hadn’t been painted in years. It was a back side of Waikiki most tourists don’t see.
“You missed him,” Akoni said sadly. “I finally had to let the body boys take him away, because nobody knew where the hell you were.”
“You know where I was,” I said. I nodded my head toward the ocean. The sun had cleared the tops of the mountains and was shining brightly on the tourists, the orange-vested guys working on the street, the Japanese men in suits and the little girls in plaid uniforms on their way to school.
“Jesus, what time did you get to bed last night?”
“Tell me what I missed.”
We started walking down the alley. “Apparent gay bashing,” Akoni said. “Somebody called in a dead body about three this morning. Uniforms on the scene found a John Doe, underneath the kiawe tree over there. The night shift was swamped with a gang-banger scene downtown, so nobody could get here to investigate until dispatch finally called me an hour ago.”
“So no detectives interviewed anybody last night?”
Akoni shook his head. It made me feel worse, knowing that if I’d stuck around I could have started a canvas, interviewed guys at the bar, the bartender, people passing by.
“The ME speculated that the cause of death was blunt trauma to the cranial region. Not hard to do with a big chunk taken out of the side of the guy’s head. No ID. No jewelry except a thick gold chain around the victim’s neck that was probably too bloody to get off.”
My stomach was doing flip-flops. I needed a cup of coffee bad. Saunders, a beefy haole uniformed cop with sandy hair and a bushy mustache, was standing under the tree, trying to look busy, so Akoni and I got him to get us some coffee from the malasada shop across the street. These little shops were springing up all over the islands, serving a kind of Portuguese donut, usually alongside pretty decent coffee.
“I figure the guy left the club late last night, ran into some bad dudes, and they tried to knock him for a loop. They knocked a little too hard and the guy bought it.”
“Think they stole his ID?”
“Maybe. Maybe he was afraid to carry anything.” He leered a little. “Thought he might get lucky, didn’t want to risk getting rolled.”
I nodded toward the club. “They ID there?”
“We can ask, once they open.” He looked at me. “You know I’m not going in there alone.”
“Oh good, can we hold hands when we go in?”
“One of these days I’m going to hurt you,” he said.
The two techs were already searching the alley, while a uniform stood guard at each end, blocking access. They’d strung yellow crime scene tape along both ends and I could see one of the uniforms arguing with a delivery truck. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and one of the techs will find his wallet,” I said. “Maybe the bad guys just took the cash and left the ID somewhere. Why don’t you see if a uniform can check out the trash cans along both of the avenues for a couple of blocks in either direction.”
While Akoni got on the radio, I walked up and down the narrow pavement with my hands behind my back, looking slowly and carefully at everything. There was clear trail of blood from a spot at the back end of the alley up to where the body had been found. I followed it, then walked back to where I’d seen the Cherokee the night before.
Akoni had already taken notes, but I got out my pad and pen and starting taking my own. It was getting hot, so I stood in the shade of the high trees and drew a rough sketch of the alley first, including the back door of the club, the position of the body, and, in a cryptic note only I could understand, the direction the Cherokee had traveled.
Saunders returned with coffee and a malasadas, and I kept writing while I ate and drank, leaning up against the side wall of the club. It was seven a.m., and the street was already busy. Delivery trucks pulling up at the back of the Kuhio Mall, joggers out for their morning runs, elderly mama-sans scurrying home from night jobs. There was a mass of gray cloud cover over the Ko’olau, but a stiff trade wind coming in off the ocean kept it away from Waikiki. It was going to be a great day for the beach, a tourist office poster kind of day, full of thong bikinis, surfboards and palm trees swaying in a gentle breeze. Oh, and murder, too.
I wrote down everything I could remember from the time the giraffe followed me out of the club until the time I left the alley to find a phone. Then I started taking notes on what I saw around me. It’s a rule you have to pound into your head when you graduate from the beat to detective-write everything down. Even if it doesn’t seem important, write it down. You’ll forget it otherwise, and then it’s bound to be the one thing you need to know, or the first thing the D.A. asks when he’s putting together his case.
On my first case as a detective, I neglected to write down whether the window in the victim’s bedroom was open or closed, and we nearly lost the case over whether the perp could have escaped that way. Fortunately a witness came through who remembered seeing the curtains flying through the open window, and I got off the hook. Since then I’ve written everything. I sniff the air, I listen for ambient sounds, I feel the textures of things. Even stuff that seems ordinary, that you take for granted, like garbage cans in an alley, I write down. You never know when you’re going to find out it wasn’t trash day that day, and that there was valuable evidence in the garbage.
I finally ran out of things to write. While the crime scene techs finished up their search, I walked over to Akoni and stood with him at the end of the alley, drinking another cup of coffee. “He look like a tourist?” I asked.