Surfing Detective 00 - The Making of Murder on Molokai

out for what lies below.
    Insurance investigation sharpened my instincts for sham. When I finally returned to Hawai‘i I began gathering evidence on my parents’ accident. Someday I will put all the pieces together. Though the statute of limitations may have expired, though I may never win a dime from the guilty parties, at least I will vindicate my father. Anyway, nothing could compensate for what I lost.

VI: Chapter Eleven: Toes on the Nose at Rock Piles

    Before meeting his client Adrienne Ridgely for drinks at sunset at the Halek
u
lani in Waikiki
in chapter eleven, Kai paddles out to a surf break called Rock Piles. He’s getting nowhere with the case at this point, or with his long-distance girlfriend, Niki, who lives in Los Angeles. Out in the water he’s able to sift through the various pieces of the puzzle, and to contemplate the sad state of his love life. As part of the original conception of the series, I’ve tried to include scenes in
each book showing Kai surfing and reflecting on his cases, and
his life. “Sherlock Holmes had his pipe: I have my surfboard,” says Kai in
Murder on Moloka‘i.
In the cut paragraphs below, while he does mention his client, a suspect he’s about
to interview, and a previous case, he focuses mainly on surfing
itself—its dangers and rewards.

(cut from)
eleven

    Sunday afternoon before meeting Adrienne I looked at dismal apartments for rent, made more dismal by the fact that Niki hadn’t popped into town for weeks. Later I tried calling her, but again got only her answering machine. Rather than break the good news that I might see her soon in Los Angeles, I decided to just drop in at her apartment in Marina Del Rey near the L.A. airport. If she was home, we’d have a surprise reunion. If not, the drive wasn’t much out of my way.
    Buoyed by the thought of seeing Niki I squeezed in a surf session before sunset at Rock Piles, offshore of the Ala Wai yacht harbor where I had tangled with that scurvy deadbeat, Leonard Souza. Rock Piles can be an especially good spot in summer–with hollow peaks and occasional tubes breaking over a shallow coral reef–but boards washed against the harbor’s lava rock jetty can end up in splinters, not to mention surfers who ride them.
    Surfing, like any sport, has its hazards. One wrong move on a winter swell at Waimea Bay, for instance, can ruin your whole day. The wave rider who wipes out on a smoking thirty-foot wall may stay under the white water for not seconds, but entire minutes. Or hours. The surfer’s body floats ashore, or is never seen again. It depends. No one knows exactly why the drowned ones disappear, except maybe the sharks.
    I was once asked to find the remains of such an unlucky waterman, a Californian reported missing after getting hammered one big December day at Waimea. His fractured board had rolled in, but not his corpse. It proved an eye-opening case, convincing this middle-aged longboarder to leave those North Shore titans alone.
    Straddling my board at Rock Piles, waiting for one of those lovely peaks to form up, I puzzled over the case of Sara Ridgley-Parke. So far, no witness had admitted to seeing Sara fall, though each was covering up something. Only Archibald had been in a position to observe Sara’s plunge. Would the travel agent shed light on the mystery? In Los Angeles I would soon find out.
    Before long I spotted a clean set rolling in, swung my board around, and blissfully forgot Archibald. On the peaking left break, I planted a rail and turned hard to stay ahead of the curling lip. Trimming to a smooth plane, I cross-stepped forward gingerly, aping the tip-riding logo on my office door
. Toes on the nose!
    Just as my pinkies reached the tip, my longboard suddenly pearled (nose-dived) and I flipped
hulihuli,
head over heels. My board shot tail-first from the soup like a missile. Fortunately, it didn’t hit me in the chops. I felt a big yank on my ankle as the ten foot leash snapped tight.
    My caroming surfboard and I were safe, spared today from the lava rock jetty. But I had taken an embarrassing spill. Especially for a former champion.
    Later I recouped. A few ripping good rides put me in the mood for dinner with Adrienne. At five o’clock I carried my board home, showered, dressed, and then walked back to the Halekulani.

VII: Chapter Twelve: Kai’s Shark Bite

    The centrality of surfing to his character is brought home
through Kai’s frequent surf sessions, his surfboard always