Maybe that was why my heart felt lighter; maybe it was that I thought I was making progress on the case. In any event, I was able to surf for a couple of hours. I was just dragging my board up the beach when I saw Kawamoto’s blue Taurus on Ke Nui Road.
They were both out of the car, talking to a female surfer, though they finished up with her as soon as I got there.
“Morning, detectives.” I thought it was still morning, though noon was fast approaching.
“Need to speak to you, Kimo,” Ruiz said. He was in full Miami Vice mode: beige sports jacket over navy shirt, knife-pressed black slacks, those spit-polished loafers again, all topped with mirrored sunglasses. “Come on, get in the car.”
“I’m wet,” I said. “And I’ve got a lunch date. What do you need?”
He motioned me with his head, and I followed him down the road a hundred feet. “Why are you so interested in Lucie Zamora?”
“Brad had this idea,” I said. “He and Lucie were friends, and he had introduced her to most of his friends, too. He thought you guys weren’t doing enough to find out who killed her.”
I held up my hand to silence his immediate objection. “I know, I told him that a lot of police work goes on behind the scenes, that you guys might be just about to arrest somebody. But he had this idea that since I had some investigative skills, maybe I could nose around and find some things out that might help you.”
He looked down his nose at me, over the mirrored sunglasses. “We don’t need the help.”
“I know. Listen, I know how hard your job is. Remember, I used to do it, up til a couple weeks ago. Just to make Brad happy, I said I’d talk to each of his friends and see what they knew. If I found anything out I was going to bring it to whoever was in charge of the case.”
Behind him, I saw Kawamoto, looking rumpled as ever, fiddling in his pocket and pulling out a crumpled pack of Marlboros. “Did you find anything?”
I shrugged. “Probably nothing you didn’t already know. Lucie Zamora was dealing crystal meth, but nobody knew where she got the stuff. All three of the dead surfers had been to the Mexpipe surfing championships in Mexico in August.”
Ruiz pulled a notepad out of his pocket and started to write. “How do you know that?”
“Brad told me Lucie had gone to Mexico, so I checked the competition listings on the Internet. That’s when I saw all three of them were there.”
“Why didn’t you tell us all this yesterday?”
I tried my best to look casual. “You didn’t ask.”
Ruiz angled his jaw and the sunlight flashed off those mirrored lenses.
“Look, what was I supposed to say? Hey, Lucie’s friends don’t think you’re doing a good job finding the person who killed her, so they asked me to help out. That’s not something I wanted to volunteer. But you see, I’m happy to share anything I found out with you.”
“Obviously, you’ve got some insight that we don’t have,” Ruiz said, putting away his pad. “I want to know everything you’ve discovered.”
“Like I said, I’ve got a lunch date,” I said. “After that I can write it up for you. Give me your card again, I’ll email something down to you by the end of the day.”
“Not something, everything.” Ruiz pulled out his wallet and handed me a card. “Everything you know. Otherwise we’ll be having a little chat again, and you know my partner doesn’t particularly care for you.”
“That’s okay,” I said, glancing at Kawamoto, smoking and glaring in the background. “You can tell him he’s not my type.”
Bishop Clark
Once in my truck, I dialed Sampson’s office. “I think my cover is in danger of being blown.” I explained that Ruiz and Kawamoto had discovered I’d been asking questions about Lucie, and once I gave them a taste of what I’d discovered, they wanted more. “I can’t withhold evidence. I have to tell them what I’ve found.”
“I agree. What do you think of them?”
“Pretty decent interrogation,” I said. “And they’re doing a good job of digging information up now. Otherwise they wouldn’t know anything about me.”
“I think it may be time to let them in on your purpose up there. But only them. I don’t want your cover compromised to the rest of the world.” I didn’t mention, though perhaps I should have, that Harry and Terri already knew. I didn’t know how kindly Sampson would take to Harry’s cyber-snooping, and I didn’t want to find out.
“You’re going to have to be the one who tells them,” I said. “I’m still a suspect, so they won’t believe anything I say.”
“Of course. Let me check my calendar.” He was off the phone for a minute, then back. “Tomorrow afternoon. I can be in Wahiawa by two.”
“I’ll be there.” I hung up and looked at my watch. I had just enough time to run up to the house, shower and change, to meet Terri for lunch at noon.
Like the rest of the North Shore, Rosie’s was nearly empty. It was as if some kind of disease had swept through, wiping out two-thirds of the population. Terri was right on time, despite the possibility of traffic or accidents on the hour-long trip up from Honolulu. But that was her; I’ve never known her to be late for anything. If you asked, she’d simply say it was the way she was raised; Clarks are not late.
“Thanks for meeting me,” she said, after we’d kissed hello and sat down. She looked, as usual, casually elegant; a gray linen blouse, black slacks, black pumps. The dark circles were still there under her eyes, but she looked a little happier, a little healthier than she had on Sunday. “I want to say right up front I’m hoping I can drag you along to this meeting with my uncle.”
“Why?”
“He’s getting nuttier every year,” she said. The waitress came by and we ordered. “Not that I’m really frightened of him, but he’s walled himself in at this old place, with an electrified fence and a security guard. It sounds creepy.”
“Sure. I was supposed to spend today hanging out, asking people if they knew this last dead surfer, but as you can see, the North Shore has pretty much emptied out, and there’s hardly anybody left to ask.”
“It’s so sad, what happened,” she said. “Were you dating that guy, Brad?”
I shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t know what you’d call it.” I explained about meeting him, how I’d spent most of the night with him twice, then how he’d come to the park on Sunday to yell at me.
“Well, can you blame him?” she asked, tilting her head toward me. “You shouldn’t have slept with his friends.”
“I guess not. I wasn’t thinking much about him at the time.”
Terri frowned. “No wonder he was upset.”
“Yeah, you’re right. I keep thinking, what if I’d gone to Sugar’s first, to find him. I might have kept him from going off with that kid, and maybe they’d both be alive today.”
Our food arrived, and as soon as the waitress left, Terri said, “You can’t think like that. There are so many what ifs. What’s important is that you do what you can to find out who killed him.”
“I’m trying, but it’s not easy. I can’t find a single connection between Tommy Singer and the other three surfers.”
We talked as we ate, Terri throwing out ideas, almost all of which I’d tried myself. “Tommy never lived up here, so that cuts a lot of possibilities out,” I said. “Of the other three, only Ronald Chang went to UH, and he graduated while Tommy was still in high school. Tommy wasn’t a good enough surfer to enter competitions, or even to hang out with older, better surfers like Mike Pratt or Lucie Zamora.”
“No drugs, right?”
“His parents say no. The autopsy’s today; I should get the report from Sampson sometime later. But I don’t think any drugs will show up. So he couldn’t have known Lucie that way.”
“A computer connection to Ronald Chang?”
I shook my head. “Tommy had a computer, but just for school and email and games. It’s always possible he ran into one of the three on a beach, and somehow they hooked up, but there’s no evidence.”
We finished, and Terri insisted on paying. “I’m on the Foundation dime.” Much of her family’s money had been funneled into The Sandwich Islands Trust, a family foundation that did charitable works around the islands.