Surfing Detective 02 - Wipeout

Corky’s wife.” She offered me her fine-boned hand.
    “Kai Cooke. I’m a private investigator.” As my own hand closed over hers, I tried not to look too astonished at her declaration. Corky now had two widows?
    When she began climbing over the split-rail fence, I followed her. She didn’t try to stop me. I noticed she was in fact wearing a band on her ring finger, though dull like brass rather than gleaming like gold. We stepped warily through the uncultivated fields, searching the sod for what seemed inevitable.
    “What did the men want from Corky?” I asked as gently as I could.
    She didn’t answer, just scanned the barren ground. Then she stopped and turned to me. She had begun to cry.
    “They just kept shouting at him,” she said through her tears. “‘Where is it? Where is it?’ . . . Everybody shouting . . .”
    She started to walk away again, her steps now a stagger.
    “Can you remember what the men looked like?” I tried another question, but too late.
    Maya had frozen in place, suddenly silent and pale. I followed her gaze to the shallow ravine ahead of her.

Fifteen

    The red earth was stained black with blood. The biggest stain formed a ragged circle the size of a car wheel. Smaller spots dotted a meandering path. It looked as if someone had been shot and then dragged away.
He bled profusely,
I said only to myself.
They must have shot him point blank.
    Maya mechanically followed the trail of blood, heading in the direction of the yellow cottage. Part way there, she bent down to pick up a black rubber
zori
. It was large and a local brand—“Surfah.”
    “His slipper,” Maya said without emotion. “That’s Corky’s slipper.”
    She then picked up a pair of mirrored sunglasses that even I recognized. In the photo that Summer had given me, hanging around Corky’s neck by thick cords was this same were pair—the expensive kind some surfers wear. Surfers with money.
    I figured the body of Corky McDahl was probably riding in the trunk of a car at this very moment, or his remains had already been dumped in an upcountry field or into the ocean.
    I turned to Maya. “It looks like they took him away,” I said in the most innocuous way I could. “It looks like they removed him from the scene.”
    She didn’t respond but kept walking toward the cottage. I wondered why Sun had left Maya behind alive. She knew of Corky’s dealings with Sun, I would bet, and now she could identify the men who’d taken him, if not Sun himself.
    “Can you think of what they might have wanted from Corky?” I asked her again as I opened the screen door. Maya walked ahead of me, then stopped at the sight of the half-eaten breakfast. She ran her spider-like fingers through her hair and then looked up and studied my face for a long time. She appeared to be weighing my trustworthiness.
    “It would help with the investigation,” I coaxed her gently. “I wouldn’t want you to be next.
    Maya righted the tilted chair and slumped down into it. “Corky worked for a man in California named D–” Maya began hesitantly, “. . . Damon DiCarlo. At first Corky just took care of his BMW, but then DiCarlo said he would give Corky the car if he helped ship it to Honolulu. All Corky had to do was pick it up at the boat dock in Honolulu—and it was his.”
    “After Sun removed the drugs?” I helped her story along.
    “Ice.” Maya nodded. “Forty pounds hidden in the car.”
    “That’s what, a million in street value?”
    “I guess. But Sun never got it. Corky picked up the car at Sand Island and drove off.”
    “Was he
crazy?
”
    “Corky had it in for DiCarlo, not Sun. He never intended to deliver his car, or the ice, once he found out DiCarlo was sleeping with his wife.”
    “His wife?” I stared. “But you said . . .”
    “Yeah, Corky and I really are married. And he’s still married to her too.” Maya said this with a weird kind of distance. “But her baby’s not Corky’s. It’s DiCarlo’s.”
    “What? Is that what Corky told you?”
    “When Summer got pregnant she wanted Corky to bring home more money, so he agreed to ship DiCarlo’s car.”
    “And DiCarlo is a supplier for Frank O. Sun.”
    “Yeah, he brings drugs from Mexico into California and then ships them to Hawai‘i. Corky hid the ice, sold the car, and faked his wipeout at Waimea Bay,” Maya said matter of factly. “We hid out on the North Shore for a while, then on Lana‘i, now here.”
    “Where is the ice?”
    “On