“Aboard Ferrity, permission to board.” The voice projected over the idling outboard of the Maui Police boat, now less than five yards away.
“Come aboard.”
Gybe hung two ten-inch diameter inflatable fenders from the lifelines as a cushion against the police boat. The officer on the bow handed him a line and Gybe wrapped it around the midship cleat.
Choosing cooperation over confrontation this morning, Gybe offered coffee to the two officers who now sat in the cockpit. From yesterday, he knew the younger officer.
“Gybe, this is Detective Kai Kane of the Maui Police. Murders are very rare on Moloka‘i, so Detective Kane has come from Maui to lead the investigation. As you know, the island of Moloka‘i is part of Maui County.”
Gybe nodded to the detective.
“Gybe, I know you’ve told your story several times. I’ve read the reports and I have some questions. But, it is important for me to hear it directly.”
The mantra was cooperate. He must cooperate.
Detective Kane began the questioning by asking about his name. Gybe told the officers that Gybe was Gaelic for ‘the place where one breeds horses.’ The small talk continued for a few minutes.
“And your last name?”
Gybe’s “Don’t have, don’t need one” met arched eyebrows of Detective Kane.
During the first half hour of the police interview, Detective Kane listened intently as Gybe answered his questions. The questions mirrored, more or less, the ones Gybe had answered yesterday.
“Gybe, yesterday you listed your occupation as sushi chef. Care to elaborate on that?”
Gybe shrugged.
Detective Kane retrieved a folder from a daypack that he carried. “According to our records, Gybe of no last name, you have worked as a computer programmer and have sold freelance articles to several magazines.” Detective Kane looked up from the folder. “When did you become a sushi chef?”
Gybe explained his theory about answering don’t need to know type questions. Besides, he could be a sushi chef. When a mahimahi latched onto the hand-line fishing rig that he trailed behind Ferrity, he often carved off a piece of sashimi, dipped it in shoyu sauce, added a dab of wasabi, and downed it while the remainder of the fish lay trembling on the cockpit sole.
“Gybe. It is a serious offense to give false information to a police officer. I suggest that you bear that in mind as we continue our conversation.”
The interview continued for another hour as Detective Kane created, revised, and re-checked his notes against Gybe’s responses.
Gybe learned that both victims worked in the biotechnology field. The male victim worked for SynCorn, Inc. and the female victim worked for GeNesRus, Inc. Like a calf in a steer-roping contest, he felt the rope land around his neck. Less than two weeks ago, he had accepted an assignment to write an article about the genetic research activities on Moloka‘i.
“Any suspects?”
“It’s early, but I have a couple of ideas. The coroner thinks the bodies had been in the water between one and two days when you found them. When he runs more tests, I suspect he will narrow it to the night before you arrived.”
“I think that’s all for now, Gybe. We would like you to stay in the area for the next couple of days.”
“Are you ordering me to stay?”
“It’s not an order. Here’s my card.”
Gybe nodded.
Detective Kane turned to the other officer. “Wait for me in the boat?”
As the officer moved to the police boat, Detective Kane stood and motioned for Gybe to follow him to the bow. Lowering his voice, the detective continued. “Gybe, I know about the business in San Francisco. I’m sorry. There is no excuse for what happened between you and that officer. But, you are in Hawai‘i now.”
Gybe nodded.
“I also know how you, shall we say, irritated a couple of officers here on Moloka‘i last week. I have only their side of the story. As a fellow police officer in the same department, I tend to support them. However, there have been other incidents with one of those officers. I operate on evidence and reason.”
“What are you saying Detective Kane? Those officers last week were way out of line. If I hadn’t stepped in when I did, I hate to think what they would have done to Mongoose. They shouldn’t be on the force.”
“Mongoose a friend of yours?”
“He’s over on that schooner.” Gybe tilted his head towards Makani. “I met him ten days ago. Co-worker or not, your steroid enhanced, IQ-challenged officer needs to be shutdown.”
“That a threat?”
Gybe shrugged. “No threat, just feedback from a citizen.”
“OK, noted. Back to my earlier comment, you saved an innocent man’s life in San Francisco from an overzealous enforcement coalition. I respect that. Now, I’m asking you to respect me. Give me a call if you think of anything else.”
Gybe watched the police boat motor back towards the launch ramp. A large pickup, maybe a Ford 250 with crew cab, backed a trailer down the ramp and prepared to load the police boat.
A buzzing noise to his left drew Gybe’s attention to the incoming dinghy. Red and blue light beams reflected from the mouth of Mongoose sitting at the throttle. Gybe waved him alongside.
Ashore, the other officer – Gybe had forgotten his name – stood alongside the ramp and scanned Mongoose’s approach with binoculars.
5
Still closed eyes sensed the emerging light of dawn while his subconscious mind scanned for unusual sounds. Gybe awakened in the vee-berth. Ferrity rode at anchor in Kaunakakai Harbor. He heard more splashing. Refracted sunlight streamed into one cracked eyelid as he peered towards the portlight above the berth.
Like a newly energized GPS receiver acquiring satellites, he felt the warmth of the tropics, saw the light that marked the end of one day of life and the beginning of another, heard splashing about the boat, but he couldn’t smell the coffee. Must have coffee.
As the water heated, Gybe pulled the Maui French Roast beans from the reefer and ground enough for a full pot of coffee – he had a guest. Unlike the average tourist, the high priced Kona coffee of the Big Island held little interest to Gybe or his budget. Besides, most of it was Kona Blend, which contained at most fifteen percent Kona beans. That is, if he could believe the barista who worked at the Coffee Gallery in Hale‘iwa. Scarred by too many jalapeños, his tongue could not distinguish the unique flavor. While the aroma filled the cabin, Gybe replayed the events of the last evening.
Late yesterday afternoon Gybe had been sitting at the Hotel Molokai Lanai Bar washing down a bowl of tortilla chips with back-to-back Fire Rock Ales when a travel-weary woman dropped anchor on the adjacent barstool. Actually, upon closer inspection, Gybe heaved the anchor metaphor.
In Gybe’s mind, the Lanai Bar represented the stereotypical South Seas beach bar. Similar to many tropical structures, a thatched roof deflected the sun and rain while the persistent trade winds, or trades, blew through the room, a room unburdened with walls.
Throughout most of the year, the northeasterly trade winds cool the islands. Trade winds, known since ancient sailing days, blow towards the equator between the horse latitudes and the doldrums – northeasterly above the equator, southeasterly below the equator.
The trades were a natural air-conditioner to the tropical islands of Hawai‘i.
Waves, always gentle after crossing the fringing reef, lapped the sandy beach at the edge of the bar. The coral reef lay between 50 yards and a half-mile offshore along most of the south coast of Moloka‘i. In front of the bar, the reef was two hundred yards offshore.
Beyond the reef and about nine miles across Kalohi Channel, Gybe could see the island of Lāna‘i. From his barstool, he watched humpback whales spout and sometimes breach near the reef.
Attired in winter clothes of surfer shorts, aloha shirt, and sandals, Gybe raised his bottle to the woman, “to winter.” It was December 11 across the Hawaiian Islands.
Th
e top of the brunette’s head was level with his nose and she weighed maybe one twenty. She wore shorts with a sleeveless chambray shirt and was barefoot. Iridescent blue toenails, if dipped in the ocean’s edge, would send Nemo into a mating frenzy.
“Have some chips.” Gybe moved the chips basket and salsa bowl towards the newcomer.
A few weeks earlier the bar had begun offering complementary chips and salsa. Every day since then, guests and locals had packed the bar during happy hour. The holiday green colored tortilla chips and bright red salsa lent a festive atmosphere. In the tropics one seldom smelled roasting chestnuts, skated at the winter rink, or saw a dishwater gray sky through barren tree limbs. In the tropics, one noticed the little things like the green and red of chips and salsa or the seasonal return of humpback whales.
She started with the small talk and soon introduced herself, “I’m Kara.”
“Gybe. Nice to meet you. What brings you to this little island?”
Kara was from Mendocino – in Northern California. “It’s about a hundred and fifty miles north of San Francisco.”
“Yeah I know. Beautiful town. I used to live in the Bay area. One of my favorite road trips was the drive north along the coast. You here on vacation?”
Less than an hour earlier, Kara had checked into a room after a tedious two-day trip from the mainland. She told him that she was on Moloka‘i to help her friend Susan. They had been friends for several years and Susan worked for the organization that Kara founded.
“Susan is in jail. She’s in the Moloka‘i Police Station. They think she murdered two people.”
The noose around his heck tightened as he felt the cowboy flick the lasso. Walk away. Walk away now. Pretend you have to be somewhere else soon. Gybe took a second scan of the pretty young woman and signaled the bartender for another beer.
“She murdered those two scientists that were found a couple of days ago?” Gybe asked without revealing that he had found the bodies.
“NO! She didn’t murder them. She didn’t murder anyone. Susan would not, could not, murder anyone.”
The deepening aroma of fresh coffee snapped Gybe’s thoughts back to the present. He stepped up through the companionway and into the cockpit, favorite coffee mug in hand. From long habit, Gybe took visual bearings to confirm Ferrity’s position. Makani rested at her anchor shoreward, the pier rested at the end of the causeway to the east, the island of Lāna‘i lay to the south, and to the west, the ocean was open to the horizon.
In the distance, Kara turned and backstroked toward the boat.
“Want some fresh coffee?” Gybe hollered.
“Absolutely.”
Just as he thought, she wasn’t wearing a suit.
As Kara stepped over the lifeline, he handed her a fresh towel emblazoned with a boat under full sail in front of a setting sun. Or was it a rising sun? “Any additives for your coffee?”
He hoped that she didn’t require something exotic like half-n-half. Aboard Ferrity, he carried unrefined sugar. And somewhere he had seen a pinkish block that once upon a time might have been individual sweetener packets. If necessary, he could break off a piece and toss it in the coffee grinder.
“No thanks.”
He handed her a steaming mug with “Foggy’s” stenciled on the side. His mind wandered back to the little café near San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf. He halted that train of thought before it derailed into the swamp of past loves and heartbreaks. Each of his eleven coffee mugs had a story to tell if only mugs could tell stories.
“How’s the coffee?”
“Thick.” She grimaced. “This isn’t Kona, is it?”
“Nope, Kona is on the Big Island.” He said without explanation. “How about some cereal?”
Entertaining women on the morning after involved coaxing them into his inflatable dinghy, Aweigh, for a quick and preferably silent ride ashore. Kara had shattered his routine with her wakeup splash. She had slid from his berth, then into the water without awakening him. How?
Trapped, he ducked below for cereal. Into a bowl, he mounded four-grain granola from a Honolulu health food store. The granola was the least sweet and contained the least fat of the several granolas available. Why, he wondered, had the granola manufacturers felt obligated to add sweetener and fat? If he wanted fat and sugar, he was capable of adding them himself.
To each bowl, he added two shakes of whole sesame seeds, a generous topping of flax seeds, and six almonds – cut into thirds. An island grown apple banana sliced onto the mixture expanded the meal into the fruit group.
In the reefer, there was low-fat milk, and under the settee, he had several cartons of soy milk. “Do you want moo juice or bean squeeze on your cereal?”
As expected, she opted for the bean squeeze.
He passed Kara the cereal and a glass of orange juice before re-joining her in the cockpit. To the east, the sun had yet to scale Mt. Haleakalā on Maui. To the south, a two-foot swell broke along the reef on either side of the narrow channel into the harbor. Shoreward, the town of Kaunakakai lay silent beyond Mongoose’s Makani.
“So tell me more about yourself Gybe. And you can start with your name.” Kara asked as she handed him the empty bowl. “And don’t think I didn’t notice that you served my cereal in a dog bowl!”
“Back at you syrup girl!” Aboard Ferrity, Gybe used dog food bowls for cereal, salads, soups, and anything else that wouldn’t stay on a plate tilted at thirty-degrees. The high sides and non-slip bottoms of the bowls were perfect for use either underway or when the boat rocked at anchor.
“Syrup is C-A-R-O not Kara.” She spelled.
Trying to recover while wondering why she was still aboard, he began his story. “Gybe, it’s German for the man who shoes horses.”
“And why would your parents name you after a farrier?”
Last night at the Lanai Bar, after three amber ales, or were there more, Kara agreed – a little too quickly he recalled - to come back to the boat with him. Back aboard Ferrity with the moon four days past full, they stripped one another and dove over the side. Their intent was to swim off the alcohol. Nude, inebriated, and adrift near Ferrity, they attempted sex. They tried, laughed, and tried again. However, unlike astronauts who don taxpayer funded, two hundred thousand dollar, Velcro and bungee cord mating harnesses – the male with loops, female with hooks – Gybe and Kara could not engage locks and keep their heads above water. After several efforts to hold their breath, they returned to the inflatable dinghy where they coupled with ease, without grace, and with considerable noise.
After her swim this morning, Kara had failed to dress. The woman sitting across from him with a towel around her waist was five feet seven. Using his own features as a reference, Gybe had perfected a technique for determining a woman’s height. When writing, he often modeled a character after a street acquaintance or someone at the mall. For accuracy, he developed a technique for estimating the height of strangers. Since he was six one, he determined that if the top of her head came to his eyebrows, she was five nine, to his nose, she was five seven, and so on. As a sportsman, he supported tag and release for those women whose stature failed to reach his chin.
Kara wore her brunette hair short and manageable. Her large round eyes were of some color and she was physically fit. Her skin suggested that one or more of her ancestors had fornicated somewhere near the Mediterranean. The light almond skin would soon glow in the tardy sun still struggling to rise above Mt. Haleakala. Like a ripening fruit on the tree of love, she was at that yummy age – firm, sweet, juicy, and delicious.
Ignoring her comment about his name and anticipating her next question, Gybe continued.
“As to the rest of the story, I’m a sailor or more accurately a cruiser. I sail about the world from port to port with neither destination nor terrestrial home. The boat is my home; each new port becomes my yard; the waterways - my streets. In most ports and anchorages, I stay from one night to a fortnight. Sometimes when I like the port or the women
or need to replenish the cruising kitty, I may stay up to a year.”
Having heard enough, Kara interrupted. “So how long will it take you to sail around the globe?”
“Around? I don’t know. I’m sailing ABOUT the world.”
“And for money?”
“Bit nosy are we? Now, tell me about yourself?”
Kara told him that she was the founder and president of the activist organization called Oceans Now. She had founded Oceans Now six years earlier modeling it somewhat after the environmental groups Earth First and Earth Liberation Front. Like those groups, Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang had served as inspiration. Kara was quick to point to the A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold, Silent Spring by Rachael Carson, and more recently Sea Change by Sylvia Earle. Like the bibliography to a thesis, she rattled on with names including Roszak, Traven, Dillard, Lopez, Berry, and Jackson before Gybe held up his hand to signal her to stop.
“Whoa wahine. Just e-mail me your card file. I’ve read some of those and looked at the pictures in others. But, what does Oceans Now do?”
He learned that O.N., as Kara referred to it, believed that the ocean was the life of the planet. Not just the source, the original primordial soup of high school science classes, but the life that recognized every sunrise. Kara believed that the ocean was more important than the land, hence Oceans Now before a literal Earth First. Misanthropic as he, she believed that the third major rock from the Sun was misnamed. The ocean covered seventy one percent of the surface of this marble, and that number grew as the glaciers melted.
Kara bragged that the organization had chapters in every coastal state, Canadian province, and most Mexican states. Kara’s now jailed friend, Susan, lead the Hawai‘i chapter. Hawai‘i was the only U.S. state in the Tropics. When the two hundred nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone was included, Hawaii was larger than the state of Alaska.
Molokai Reef Page 2