“Or stupid.”
“Or they have no idea. Maybe we should tell them, in case they haven’t heard.” Though that was unlikely, given the hype in the papers.
He slowed and pulled the boat alongside the guy farther out, twenty yards away, in deeper water. The other one had just caught a wave, all the way to the shore.
“Hey,” Nalu called, “you hear about the shark incident here last week?”
“Yeah. They’re out here, man,” the guy said, scooping water with both his hands and showering himself with it.
“Were you out here last week?”
“Anytime there’s waves, I’m out here. Gotta get ’em while you can, this side.”
“He’s right. Maui blocks the swell,” Nalu said to Minnow.
“What about Wednesday?” Minnow asked.
The day Stuart and his dad were out.
“Who wants to know?”
A wave swung in and before she or Nalu could answer, the guy spun and caught it, leaving them hanging. But the other surfer paddled into the lineup, giving them a nod. An older local, covered in what appeared to be tribal tattoos on his forearms and chest.
“Brah,” Nalu said, “you heard about the shark attack out here?”
The guy shrugged. “Pretty sure everyone on the island has. It happened once. Chances are slim it’ll happen again in the same exact spot.”
Not entirely true, but Minnow held her tongue.
“Have you seen any big sharks in the area?” she asked. “Or anything out of the ordinary—dead whales or carcasses of any kind?”
“Just a monk seal up at Kiholo last week, but it was lying on the sandy beach, fat and happy. You talk to Sly yet?” He nodded toward the man who had just caught the wave.
“We tried. He caught a wave in.”
“He saw a fat shark out diving last weekend.”
“What kind?”
“White, I think?”
When Sly paddled back out, he came straight to the boat and held on to the gunwale. “Who are you guys?”
“We work for UH. Just looking into the recent attacks and trying to learn more about the shark, nothing more.”
“Yeah, we don’t want this place shut down or turned into a shit show. And there’ve been a ton of boats out here lately. Gawkers and who knows what else.”
It seemed unlikely that anyone would be able to keep surfers out of the water along this coastline, rocky and remote as it was.
She cut in. “No one’s going to shut anything down. We’re just trying to find out if it’s the same shark, and if so, why it’s hanging around.”
“Then yeah, I saw it while I was spearfishing up in Opihi Bay last Saturday morning. The water was still turned up from the dying swell, I was out at the point in twenty feet of water, poking around fortakoin a hole, when I got a weird feeling I wasn’t alone. I spun around and saw a fucking submarine swimming by just at the edge of my visibility, maybe thirty feet away or so. I thought it was a whale at first, it was so big, but from the silhouette it became obvious it was no whale. It never slowed, never acknowledged me. Still, I climbed out on the rocks.” He held up his hand and showed black in some of his fingers. “Got somewanain my fingers.”
“Could you see from the surface if it came back around?” Minnow asked.
“The bugger was just passing through. Never saw it again.”
“How big would you say it was?”
