Suddenly, with an electric jolt, my eyes popped open. Could it be that I was the connection? I had been sent to the North Shore to investigate the three murders. Suppose the killer knew that, and wanted to throw me off the track. So he or she killed Brad, knowing of my relationship with him? That was bound to put a whole new spin on things-maybe even to remove me from the investigation.
It was a strange idea, but not the strangest. There were many cases on record where a killer had attacked someone close to an investigator, either as a warning, a tease, or a distraction. Who knew I was looking into these murders? Who could have been threatened?
I started making a list. I had talked to Trish, Melody, Rich Sarkissian, and Tepano about Mike Pratt. Frank, Lucie’s old boyfriend, the bartender at the Drainpipe, had filled me in on her life and directed me toward Butterfly. Brad and his circle of friends: Jeremy, Ari, Rik, George and Larry, all knew I was looking into her death. Since Ari was in business with both Dario and Bishop Clark, I had to assume that they might have heard from him, at least in passing. I had talked to Ronnie’s parents, his high school teacher Victor Texeira, and his old friend Will Wong, as well as his boss, Pierre Lewin. I’d spoken with Lucie’s mother, too.
The only people, besides Lieutenant Sampson, who knew I was officially undercover were Terri and Harry, but both of them were so far removed from the case I couldn’t imagine them having an impact. Anyone on the first list, though, could have been the killer, or could have passed the word on to the killer that I was nosing around.
I let my mind wander on Rich Sarkissian. I knew he was jealous of surfers, that he hated the way they trespassed over Bishop Clark’s land. I realized I’d never checked to see who owned the property where he lived, and I went online to the property appraiser’s office. The cottage was owned by Melody Isaacson, from the halau, so I figured she had made some kind of deal with Rich. Perhaps she was even sleeping with him, though I’d seen her kiss Mary at the bar.
I needed to give up analyzing other peoples’ sexuality. My own was confusing enough.
Back to Rich. Could the case be as simple as that-despite everything else I’d discovered, perhaps Rich had simply killed Mike, Lucie, Ronnie and Tommy because they’d all trespassed. Brad had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Or maybe Rich was dealing ice, too. Those prosthetics had to be expensive, and he lived in a lovely cottage that he couldn’t afford on a security guard’s salary. Maybe he had killed the first three as part of a turf war. He had access to a lot of weaponry in Bishop’s cabinet.
But it was a far cry from anger over trespassing to murder, and there was nothing that tied Rich to either Brad or Tommy. Unless, as I reminded myself, Brad and Tommy had been killed to put me off the scent.
My cappuccino had gone cold. I threw it away and drove back up to Cane Landing, where I spent the next couple of hours going through all the material Sampson had sent, searching for something that would be a clear implication of Rich Sarkissian. He knew I was nosing around, asking questions about Mike, and it was certainly possible that he could have heard I was looking into Lucie, too, either from Bishop Clark, his employer, or Dario Fonseca, his previous employer.
It was incredibly frustrating. I felt that the solution was there, just beyond my reach. A storm swept in from the center of the island, rain lashing at the French doors, and the upset in the weather seemed to mirror the turmoil in my brain. I spent a couple more hours going over the material on Rich, reading it again and again and getting nothing new. After dark I tried to read a novel, and then to watch TV, but I couldn’t focus on anything.
Friday morning I surfed, hoping I could accomplish two things. First, that being out on the water would help clear my brain. And second, that some random surfer would come up to me with the solution to the mystery. Neither happened. I quit around noon, stopped at Fujioka’s for some weekend food supplies, and was on my way back to Cane Landing when Harry called my cell phone to say he was passing Matsumoto’s and needed further directions.
I met him at the entrance to Cane Landing and buzzed him through the gate. “Your surf killer is all over the news in Honolulu,” he said, as I helped him carry his stuff into the house. “They say people have left the North Shore in droves.”
“You’ll see when we get out to Pipeline. The place is deserted.”
I showed Harry to the guest room. “Your mother called me this morning and she sounded pretty frantic,” he said. “She really wants you back home.”
“She called you?”
“She wanted me to persuade you to give up and come home. I told her you wouldn’t leave until you were ready.” He paused. “I got that information we discussed. But I don’t think it’s anything you didn’t already know.”
“Then we can look it over later. Right now I think we should just go surf.”
We grabbed our boards and headed for Pipeline, where we got in a couple of hours of heavenly surfing, the beach almost totally to ourselves.
“Man, I’ve never seen it this empty,” Harry said, when we took a break and collapsed on the sand. “I don’t think I’ve ever caught so many big waves in one day in my life.”
“And you have a serial killer to thank for it.”
We rested in the warm sun, then surfed again. Around four o’clock we dragged ourselves and our boards back up to Cane Landing, where after showers and a couple of Kona lagers we were ready to tackle dinner. I’d bought steaks, which we fixed on the fancy grill in the house’s back yard, accompanied by grilled peppers and baked potatoes. Finally, we sat down at Harry’s laptop a little after eight.
He brought up some spreadsheets he’d created after looking at bank records for Mike Pratt, Lucie Zamora and Ronnie Chang. Lucie’s was the most interesting, because there was almost no activity there. She made the occasional cash deposit, and wrote checks for things like the HECO bill-Hawaiian Electric Company- and the phone bill, to Verizon. No checks to Butterfly, no checks that resembled rent or car payments. Like Brad had said, Lucie was a cash basis customer.
Both Mike and Ronnie had made large cash deposits shortly after they returned from Mexico. Mike had made two deposits, about a week apart, for $5,000 each. “The government requires the bank to fill out forms for amounts larger than ten grand,” Harry said. “That’s probably why he split it up.”
Ronnie had made one deposit, for nearly $7,000. We figured he’d spent the rest on gifts for Lucie and his new board.
“What do you think Lucie did with her ten grand?” Harry asked.
I shrugged. “No clue. But she might not have had the money yet-remember all that crystal meth that I found in her apartment. Maybe she was holding out for a higher price, or waiting for demand to go up.”
I sat back. “This is all interesting, but there’s another guy I’m interested in now.” I told him what I knew about Rich, what I’d learned from Sampson’s reports, my own searches, and my conversations with Dario and with Rich himself.
Harry logged on to the Internet. “What do you want to know?”
“For starters, I’m curious now to know who owns that house where Rich lives, and if there’s any way to find out if he pays rent, and how much he pays.”
“You can’t start out with something simple, like where he went to school?” Harry grumbled. But he applied himself to the laptop, and not too much later he said, “The house is owned by the Sandwich Islands Trust. Isn’t that Terri’s family foundation?”
“Yup.” I frowned. “So it’s probably a Bishop deal, like Dario said. So much for my theory that Rich is living off drug money.”
“Nobody says he isn’t. It’s just that if the Clarks own the house where he lives, he’s probably not paying much rent.”
Harry applied himself to the computer again. When he looked up, he said, “You aren’t going to be able to use this information in court. I just want to let you know before you see it.”