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My Kind of Town Don Chapman |
Suspects or witnesses
>> Honolulu
Back in his office, Cruz MacKenzie found a message from Nick Ornellas, the ex-cop who'd sold Daren Guy his life insurance policy on the night he won the Lotto and shortly after disappeared, and returned the call.
"Hancock's half of the shorts were the right size, the left side, the weave of the fabric seems the same, and the color was a match," Cruz told Ornellas. "Well, sort of. The half on Maui, the right side, was a little faded from sun and saltwater, but I'm 95 percent sure."
Ornellas thought for a moment: "You're the only person who saw both halves. You're sure?"
"At the very least, it's too close to ignore."
"OK, let's run through this again," Ornellas said. "What do we know? From the start. Daren Guy disappears after winning the Lotto and taking out an insurance policy."
"And after changing his appearance."
"They find half of his shorts, shark-bitten."
"There's raw tuna in the fringe of the shorts, but tuna is a deep water fish and tigers are nearshore."
"And there's also some of Guy's blood in the shorts," Ornellas reminded.
"Four days later, what appears to be his shorts wash up on Maui, far enough away from the attack scene that it could only have been carried by a human."
"Which human did the carrying?" Ornellas said pointedly.
"What about foul play?"
"The cops cleared your pal Mano. Their lab guys finally found the beard hairs. No other suspects, nobody else was seen out there." Ornellas sighed.
"It all makes sense -- Daren Guy dead by shark attack -- except for the green fabric washing up on Maui, and you're only 95 percent sure about that. That other five percent is pretty big."
"Then there's the absence of a corpse."
"Still, in the absence of a suspect or motive or substantive evidence or a witness, it looks like just another fatal shark attack."
"Speaking of suspects or witnesses ..." Cruz said, thinking out loud.
"What?"
"I saw somebody else out there. Not at first, but it was dark, and I was concentrating on, well, Sonya."
"What'd you see?"
"Old guy on a sailboat with kind of a funny name. Wet Spot."
"Geez, why didn't you say anything about it sooner?!"
"It was just a boat, an old man, and everybody was thinking sharks ..."
"It's a start. We got nothing else to go with. I'll get back to you."
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek. His serialized novel runs daily in the Star-Bulletin. He can be e-mailed at dchapman@midweek.com
