Free Mahu Surfer by Neil Plakcy Page A

I’m in a competition, but you could get anything you wanted there. Just had to walk around the town for a few minutes and somebody would try to sell you something.”
     
    “I’m trying to track down some people who were there—maybe you knew them. Mike Pratt, Lucie Zamora, Ronald Chang.”
     
    Ben narrowed his eyes at me. It was obvious that he recognized the names and had an idea of why I was interested in them. “I thought you were done being a cop.”
     
    I shrugged. “Old habits die hard.”
     
    Ben considered that. “I knew Mike Pratt pretty well,” he said finally. “Interesting guy. Really good surfer—I think he was just about to make a name for himself. He got in with this weird crowd in Mexico, though.”
     
    “Weird how?”
     
    “This Christian surfing ministry—they run a café at the main surfing beach down there, and they have Bible study sessions at this place called El Refugio. Now, I’m not against any religion—I figure, you want to believe, man, more power to you.”
     
    He stopped to take another swig from the water bottle. “But Mike, man, he really took it to heart. Then when we got back, he started bitching about his board not being right. You ask me, it’s his head that wasn’t right.”
     
    “You ever see him hang out with Lucie or Ronnie?”
     
    “A couple times, I saw him with Lucie. But you know, she didn’t really belong there—she wasn’t good enough. I think she was just there for the party. The other guy—Ronnie—I just met him once or twice because he was with other people from the North Shore. He was a total wannabe.”
     
    He drained the last of his water. “I gotta get back. You gonna be around for a while?”
     
    “For a while.”
     
    “Cool. See you around, then.” He gave me a shaka and walked back toward his friends.
     
    Ben had seen Mike and Lucie talking to each other at a party. It didn’t mean that they were best friends, or involved together in some way, but it was a start.
     
     
     
     
     

Coach Tex
     
    I surfed all day Saturday, hoping to see Trish. Though I talked to a bunch of surfers, I didn’t learn anything new, and I was starting to get discouraged. Once I actually heard the word “faggot” muttered under someone’s breath—but I couldn’t tell who had said it. I was discovering information, but very slowly, and that was frustrating. By late afternoon, I was beat. Though I had surfed regularly in Waikiki, that was nothing compared to the punishment I was putting my body through. I couldn’t even keep my promise to get out for meals—I stopped at Fujioka’s and bought some takeout sushi, and nearly fell asleep eating it.
     
    Sunday morning, I put on my wetsuit and walked out into the pre-dawn darkness, dragging my board with me. I couldn’t help thinking about the murders as I surfed. Usually the water is the place where I can put everything else aside, but knowing that all three victims had been surfers somehow connected the act of surfing with their deaths, making it impossible for me to forget them.
     
    I surfed most of the day, resting between waves, scanning the sand for Trish and talking to whoever passed by. I had a burrito for lunch, bought from a roach coach that drove past around noon playing a complicated tune on its horn. By around three o’clock, I gave up, and after a quick shower back at Hibiscus House I drove over to The Next Wave, hoping that Dario had the day off.
     
    Either he did, or he was holed up in his office the whole time. I was grateful, and it allowed me to focus on doing more computer searching. I already knew a lot about Mike Pratt, so I decided to spend some time on the other two. I knew it would be hard to zero in on someone with as common a name as Chang, but I wanted to give it a shot.
     
    After a number of fruitless searches, I found a site from Lahainaluna High School in Lahaina which listed winners of a science fair. One Ronald Chang had won second prize for a case study of