Tiger sharks were nothing to be messed with, and they were responsible for the most shark-related fatalities in Hawaiian waters. Even Minnow knew that.
“Were any teeth or fragments found?”
“Not with this one. That’s why I kept looking for the board, but it still hasn’t shown up.”
“Do we have a description of the board?”
“Orange shortboard, shaped by Dick Brewer.” He pulled out a small digital camera and offered it to her. “I still need to get to Longs to print out the pics. As you can imagine, I haven’t had a second. They’re in chronological order.”
There were more photos of the injuries. The evidence pointed to a classic great white attack, the animal coming from underneath with enormous force and stunning its prey, then biting. But humansweren’t on the white shark menu, so after a bite or two, the shark would have swam off without actually consuming Stuart.
Beyond the injury shots were pictures of a point break with perfect peeling right-handers, a surfer’s dream, allowing them to ride the waves all the way into the bay. Minnow kept flipping through the photos. Turquoise water and roping blue lines of surf. Then another of a boulder-strewn cove. Joe narrated as she looked through them.
“That’s where the Callahans were surfing. It takes twenty minutes to hike in from where they parked. Mr. Callahan had a tough choice to make: stay with his son while he died or leave Stu alone and go for help. Stu was a big guy, around one eighty, so there was no way Mr. Callahan could carry him all that way.”
Minnow felt for the father. Felt for the son, who had been left on a bed of sea-smoothed coral and lava rock under a small heliotrope tree. This was her second time in as many years investigating an incident, and it reminded her why she preferred the business of studying shark behavior and observing them in their natural habitat, far away from any people.
“So, what about yesterday’s incident?” she asked, after Joe had shown her the rest of the photos, which were purely location.
He scratched his head. “I’ll tell you something that’s been nagging at me. Two years ago, a white shark was reported in these waters by fishermen, and we had a diver disappear. And two years before that, we had another missing person, a boogie boarder. He was never seen again, but his shorts washed up ashore shredded the following week. What do you make of that?”
The two-year timing was interesting because it followed the white shark migration pattern. “White sharks have a two-year cycle. Especially the females. Their gestation period is sixteen months.”
“So this could be the same one returning?”
“Not necessarily. They aren’t always that predictable.”
But one was, she knew.
He pushed the other file toward her, but when he saw the waitress coming, he quickly pulled it back. He ordered another beer and Minnow took another glass of the ice-cold, tart lilikoi juice that tasted like summer and winter shaken together.
When the waitress left, Joe shoved the folder back her way. “I’m surprised this hasn’t leaked already. Hold on to your bikini.”
Minnow glanced up at him. “What do you mean?”
“I mean we are well and properly screwed. There literally could not be a worse possible victim and the press is going to be all over this in the next day or two.”
A victim was a victim was a victim. But when she opened the folder and saw the first photo, she immediately knew what he meant.
Journal Entry
From the journal of Minnow Gray
November 1, 1992
White sharks are not white. They’re slate gray, the color of wet ash left over from a bonfire on the beach. Whoever named the animal must have seen it from underneath, looking up at its marble-white underbelly. In science speak, it’s calledcountershading, a form of camouflage. And it reminds me of the first time I saw a white shark while I wasinthe water.
Journal Entry
From the journal of Minnow Gray
Farallon Islands, September 3, 1995
They call them the Sisters and I’ve yet to see one. Top of the food chain giants, all female, at least seventeen or eighteen feet and massive. That’s longer than this Boston Whaler we are in, and I am acutely aware of this fact.
When a shark makes a kill, you can often tell by the clouds of birds overhead and a radio call from the spotter up in the lighthouse—what they call Shark Watch. As soon as it happens, I follow Gordon or Max and run to the landing and help them swing the boat, which hangs on a crane, out over the water. With arms carved from hard work, they winch the boat down several stories of crumbling cliff into the roiling sea. We speed out, catching air at the crest of a large swell.
So far, we are above water, not in it, where strangely I feel more at ease. There is only one man who dives down there and he goes alone, gathering urchins below his boat. Ron Elliott is famous around these parts and the guys talk about him with a kind of awe. I want to know more about him and have asked Max to introduce us when the time is right.
