do than hit the waves.
It was enough to make you crazy. And when I get crazy, I surf-that’s how I let go of what’s bothering me and clear my head so I can get back to work. I knew I needed to think about Brad and what had happened on Saturday night and then on Sunday, and I hoped that I could work it all in between waves. Which led me to Pipeline, just a little while before the bodies were found.
Bodies in the Sand
It was about half an hour before sunrise when I slipped into the water, and the sky above Hale’iwa was already lightening from black to gray. Around me, inky silhouettes of surfers in wetsuits paddled their boards out beyond the breakers, the slap of their hands in the cold water an intermittent counterpoint to the crashing waves. I lay flat on my board and tried to feel the water.
I saw a wave coming, knew intuitively that it was my wave, and started paddling, fast, as the motion of the water thrust me forward. As soon as I could, I stood up, and then I wasn’t thinking any more, I was part of the wave, holding on to it, following it, running with it, first toward the shore, then parallel, surfing the curl, sliding along the crest as the wave and I made our way toward the moment when it threw itself onto the shore in its final dance with death.
I cheated the shore’s embrace just in time, sliding away and dunking myself in the cold water again. For about three minutes, I had forgotten everything about my life, what was right and what was wrong, and just lived in the moment. That was why I loved to surf, why for four years as a patrolman and then two as a detective, surfing most mornings had been the way I made it from day to day with some piece of myself still intact.
The sun finally peeked over the Leilehua Plateau, and the dark shapes around me began to become recognizable. I kept on surfing, pushing myself as much as I could. If I couldn’t be a cop for a while, and had to be a surfer again, then at least I was going to be the best damn surfer I could be.
I had just mounted a mid-sized wave when I heard the scream. It was far away, and the surf was roaring, but something about the pitch or the urgency in her voice penetrated my consciousness. From my peak, I could see her-a young girl, late teens at most, dragging a wide board down the sandy strip from Ke Nui Road. Something had stopped her in her tracks, kept her screaming, hiccupping and finally crying by the time I’d surfed in and run up the beach to her.
I saw what the morning light had revealed to her, in a hollow of sand: two naked men, in the act of embracing, both of them quite clearly dead from bullet wounds to the head. The blood had run downhill and what had not yet sunk into the sand was pooled around their feet. Though one body was unfamiliar to me, I was able to recognize the other immediately, and I felt my heart rate accelerate and sweat begin to accumulate on my forehead and under my arms.
There was already a small crowd standing around, staring at the bodies. “Anybody got a cell phone?” I asked.
A blond haole guy in surfer shorts that revealed a cast on his right leg held one up. “Call 911,” I said. “Everybody get back. Try not to disturb anything.”
“You’re that cop, aren’t you?” a dark-haired girl said. “The gay one.”
“Still gay, but not a cop any more,” I said, as I tried to get everyone to back away. I shrugged. “I guess old habits die hard, though.”
I couldn’t see either of their faces, but the naked man I did not recognize was lithe and trim, a true surfer’s physique. The man I knew was a little older, a little out of shape, but still handsome. I resisted the impulse to kneel down and touch Brad Jacobson because I knew I would only be contaminating the crime scene.
I calmed the screaming girl down, and a girlfriend of hers volunteered to keep an eye on her. Everybody else was eager to get back to the waves, and I had no right to keep them around. While I waited for the cops, I practiced bringing my breathing and my pulse rate back to normal. I had seen a lot of dead bodies, and I tried to remind myself that whatever essence had lived in both of them was now gone, leaving behind only an empty shell.
To keep from staring obsessively, I forced myself to take a look around, as if I was the investigating detective and this was just another crime scene. I found a pile of clothes just behind the rise that sheltered the bodies. I noticed that the men were lying on a faded, oversized towel, the kind you keep in the back of the trunk for picnics. Or midnight cuddles on the beach.
Seeing Brad and that other man there, I finally understood that it was my responsibility to find out who was killing surfers, and why. That I had to solve the case to make all my sacrifices have meaning. That whether I could flash a badge or not, I cared about righting the wrongs of the world, about speaking for the dead and making sure that their killers did not go unpunished.
A black and white was there a few minutes later, parking up on Ke Nui Road, leaving the flashers going. Two cops from the 268 beat began balancing their way over the sand, belts weighing them down with nightsticks, flashlights, radios, handcuffs and more. I had stripped off my wetsuit and stood there in only a pair of board shorts, feeling less like a detective than I had at any point in my career.
I stepped up as the two cops, a haole and a Chinese, approached, and laid the story out for them. “The girl over there was the first one to see the bodies,” I said. “Just after sunrise. I was surfing, heard her scream, came running up.”
The haole cop, Luna, looked at me couldn’t figure out where he knew me from. “I ever pick you up?” he asked.
I had to laugh. “I’m sure I’d remember you.” I stuck my hand out and introduced myself. “I used to be on the force.”
Luna’s face turned bright red. He wouldn’t shake my hand but his partner, whose name was Chan, did. “Good to meet you,” he said. “I admire you, standing up for yourself.”
“Thanks.” I stepped off to the side as Luna and Chan took over the site, calling in for a detective, blocking off the area. They didn’t seem to need me, so I went down to the water’s edge, pacing around and talking to other surfers, returning only when Chan waved me back.
He introduced me to the detectives, Ruiz and Kawamoto. “Detective.. er.. Mr. Kanapa’aka secured the area,” he said.
Kawamoto was probably in his mid-fifties, and maybe fifty pounds overweight, including a belly that rolled over his belt. He reminded me of that caricature you see of Southern sheriffs, only Japanese. He was missing the ten-gallon hat, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find out he chewed tobacco.
Ruiz was haole and younger, maybe mid-forties, dark hair thinning on top. He wore a UH class ring in addition to his wedding band.
I repeated what I’d seen, being careful not to reveal that I knew anything about the other three murders. I gave them an ID on Brad, but didn’t reveal our relationship and told them I didn’t know his companion. “Might have been a lovers’ quarrel,” Ruiz said, pulling on a pair of plastic gloves.
“Might have been,” Kawamoto said. Something about his face, though, told me he was already making the connection I wasn’t mentioning.
I hung around for a while, memorizing the scene, trying, unobtrusively, to take a look at any evidence they found, but there wasn’t much. There were too many footprints between the hollow and the road, even that early in the morning, and it was clear, at least to me, that both had been shot at close range, because of the stippling and powder burns I saw around the wounds. Finally, Ruiz and Kawamoto turned the bodies, so I could get a good look at both faces.
The guy with the surfer physique was young, in his late teens or early twenties, and he didn’t have much of a tan, which probably meant he hadn’t been on the North Shore for very long.
I think maybe up to that point, some part of me had been denying that the other dead body belonged to Brad. But seeing his face, I couldn’t believe that any more. My heart rate zoomed up, and if I’d been connected to an EKG at that point I’m sure it would have gone off the scale.
I realized, too, that I had to tell Ruiz and Kawamoto everything I knew about Brad, including the fact that we had slept together, because they were going to find out quickly enough from Brad’s friends, and I didn’t want them
