Now, my informant’s bedroom isn’t far from this beach, because nothing in Hanalei is far from the beach. Already the waves beat incessantly against my ears. Another hundred yards and the Pacific Ocean will wash up before me, and there she’ll soar, Irene Lindquist herself, right across its surface, hiding in plain sight. Assuming that dear, strapping boy was telling me the truth last night, of course. Boys will say anything when you have them at your mercy. But I have the feeling this one was on the level. He has an earnest face; the kind of face I’d like to photograph, if some grander mystery weren’t consuming my imagination at the moment.

At first glance, the beach appears empty. The waves hurtle in from the northwest, golden-pink in the rising sun, but nobody rides them. On the other hand, Hanalei Bay swoops down in a magnificent arc, and there’s plenty more beach to explore. If I were a surfer, I might know where to go looking for this woman, who has surfed all her life. Where the best waves form, according to the laws of physics and geography. But I don’t surf and never have. I’ve got my instincts, that’s all, my instincts and a Rand McNally map, and it seems to me that the beach to the right ends in some kind of river mouth, while the beach to the left winds all the way around to a cliff called Makahoa Point, if I’m interpreting Rand McNally correctly, which I am. Maps and I, we get along pretty well.

To the left it is.

The sand is soft and cool, like powder. I remove my shoes—a pair of ragged espadrilles I acquired in Spain—and enjoy the way this unfamiliar substance pools around my feet. The dawn grows bright behind me. Ahead, the beach turns northward and narrows as it approaches the cliffs at the tip of Makahoa Point. Thus far, no Lindquist. Nobody at all. I might be the only person left alive after some great epidemic. Of course, it’s also possible that Lindquist has had some advance notice of my arrival, and chooses not to expose herself to discovery. You ask a few questions in a tiny, no-account burg like this one, where everybody’s knee-deep in each other’s beeswax, and it doesn’t take long for word to get around. And believe me, I understand the impulse to run for cover at the first sign of predators. I’m camera-shy myself. Would a million times rather stand on the taking side of the lens than the giving, and I don’t have half as much to hide as this Irene Lindquist. If indeed she’s the woman I’m searching for.