Swimsuit (13 page)

“Levon, look! See that? The trunk release.”

The two turned painfully by inches, scraping cheeks and elbows against the carpeting, Barb working off her shoes, pulling
at the release lever with her toes. The lever moved, but there was no resistance, no release of the lock.

“Oh, God, please,” Barbara wailed, her asthma kicking in, her voice trailing into a wheeze, then a burst of coughs.

“The cables are cut,” said Levon. “The
backseat.
We can kick through the backseat.”

“And then what? We’re tied up!” Barb gasped.

Still they tried, the two of them kicking without full use of their legs, getting nowhere.

“It’s latched, goddammit,” said Levon.

Barb was fighting to take one breath and then another, trying to stop herself from going into a full-blown gag attack. Why
had Hogan taken them? Why? What was he going to do with them? What was to be gained from kidnapping them?

Levon said, “I read somewhere, you kick out the taillights and you can stick a hand out, wave until someone notices. Even
if we just bust the lights, maybe a cop will pull the car over. Do it, Barb.
Try.
”

Barb kicked, and plastic shattered. “Now you!” she shouted.

As Levon broke through the taillight on his side of the trunk, Barbara turned so that her face was near the shards and wires.

She actually could see blacktop streaming below the tires. If the car stopped, she’d scream. They weren’t helpless, not anymore.
They were still alive and dammit, they would fight!

“What’s that sound? A cell phone?” Levon asked. “In the trunk with us?”

Barb saw the glowing faceplate of a phone by her feet. “We’re getting out of here, honey. Hogan made a big mistake.”

She struggled to position her hands as the first ring became the second, thumbing the buttons blindly behind her back, hitting
the Send key, turning on the phone.

Levon yelled, “Hello! Hello! Who’s there?”

“Mr. McDaniels, it’s me.
Marco.
From the Wailea Princess.”

“Marco! Thank God. You’ve got to find us. We’ve been kidnapped.”

“I’m sorry. I know you’re uncomfortable back there. I’ll explain everything momentarily.”

The phone went dead.

The car slowed to a stop.

HENRI FELT BLOOD charging through his veins. He was tense in the best possible way, adrenalized, mentally rehearsed, ready
for the next scene to play itself out.

He checked the area again, glancing up to the road, then taking in the 180 degrees of shoreline. Satisfied that the area was
deserted, he hauled his duffel bag out of the backseat, tossed it under a tangle of brush before returning to the car.

Walking around the all-wheel-drive sedan, he stooped beside each tire, reducing the air pressure from eighty to twenty pounds,
slapping the trunk when he passed it, then opening the front door on the passenger side. He reached into the glove box, tossed
the rental agreement to the floor, and removed his ten-inch buck knife. It felt like it was part of his hand.

He grabbed the keys and opened the trunk. Pale moonlight shone on Barbara and Levon. Henri, as Andrew, said, “Is everyone
all right back here in coach?”

Barbara launched a full-throated, wordless scream until Henri leaned in and held the knife up to her throat. “Barb,
Barb.
Stop yelling. No one can hear you but me and Levon, so call off the histrionics, okay? I don’t like it.”

Barb’s scream became a wheeze and a cry.

“What the hell are you doing, Hogan?” Levon demanded, wrenching his body so he could see his captor’s face. “I’m a reasonable
man. Explain yourself.”

Henri put two fingers under his nose to resemble a mustache. He lowered his voice and thickened it, said, “Sure, I will, Mr.
McDaniels. You’re my number one priority.”

“My dear Christ. You’re
Marco?
You’re him! I don’t believe it. How could you scare us like this? What do you want?”

“I want you to behave, Levon. You, too, Barb. Act up, and I’ll have to take strong measures. Be good and I’ll move you up
to first class. Deal?”

Henri sawed through the nylon ropes around Barbara’s legs and helped her out of the car and into the backseat. Then he went
back for Levon, cutting the restraints, walking the man to the back of the car, strapping them both in with the seat belts.

Then Henri got into the driver’s seat. He locked the doors, turned on the dome light, reached up to the camera behind the
rearview mirror, and switched it on.

“If you like, you can call me Henri,” he said to the McDanielses, who were staring at him with unblinking eyes. He reached
into the pocket of his windbreaker, pulled out a dainty, bracelet-style wristwatch, and held it up in front of them.

“See? As I promised. Kim’s watch. The Rolex. Recognize it?”

He stuffed it into Levon’s jacket pocket.

“Now,” Henri said, “I’d like to tell you what’s going on and why I have to kill you. Unless you have questions so far.”

WHEN I WOKE UP that morning and snapped on the local news, Julia Winkler was all over it. There, filling the TV screen, was
her achingly beautiful face and a headline in bold italics running under her picture:
Supermodel Found Murdered.

How could Julia Winkler be dead?

I bolted upright in bed, goosed up the sound, stared at the next shot, this one of Kim and Julia posing together for the
Sporting Life
photo-story, their lovely faces pressed together, laughing, both absolutely radiant with life.

The TV anchors were going back over the breaking news “for those who’ve just tuned in.”

I stared at the tube, gathering in the stunning details: Julia Winkler’s body had been found in a room at the Island Breezes
Hotel, a five-star resort on Lanai. A housekeeper had run through the hotel shouting that a woman had been strangled, that
there were bruises around her neck, blood all over the linens.

Next up, a waitress was interviewed. Emma Laurent. She’d waited on tables in the Club Room last night and recognized Julia
Winkler. She’d been having dinner with a good-looking man in his thirties, Laurent said. He was white, brown-haired with a
good build. “He definitely works out.”

Winkler’s date signed the check with a room number, 412, registered to Charles Rollins. Rollins left a good tip, and Julia
had given the waitress her autograph. Personalized it.
To Emma from Julia.
Emma held up the signed napkin for the camera.

I got a POG out of the fridge, guzzled it, watched the camera cut now to live shots outside the Island Breezes Hotel. Cruisers
were everywhere, the loud garble of police radios squawked in the background. The camera held on a reporter with the local
NBC affiliate.

The reporter, Kevin de Martine, was well respected, had been embedded with a military unit in Iraq in ’04. He was now standing
with his back to a sawhorse barrier, rain falling softly on his bearded face, palm fronds waving dramatically behind him.

De Martine said, “This is what we know. Nineteen-year-old supermodel Julia Winkler,
former roommate
of the still-missing top model Kimberly McDaniels, was found dead this morning in a room registered to a Charles Rollins
of Loxahatchee, Florida.”

De Martine went on to say that Charles Rollins was not in his room, that he was sought for questioning, that any information
about Rollins should be phoned in to the number at the bottom of the screen.

I tried to absorb this horrendous story. Julia Winkler was dead. There was a suspect — but he was missing. Or how the police
like to describe it —
he was in the wind.

THE PHONE RANG next to my ear, jarring the hell out of me. I grabbed the receiver. “Levon?”

“It’s Dan Aronstein. Your paycheck. Hawkins, are you on this Winkler story?”

“Yep. I’m on the case, chief. If you hang up and let me work, okay?”

I glanced back at the TV. The local anchors, Tracy Baker and Candy Ko‘alani, were on screen, and a new face had been patched
in from Washington. Baker asked the former FBI profiler John Manzi, “Could the killings of Rosa Castro and Julia Winkler be
connected? Is this the work of a serial killer?”

Those two potent and terrifying words. “Serial killer.” Kim’s story was now going global. The whole wide world was going to
be focused on Hawaii and the mystery of two beautiful girls’ deaths.

Former agent Manzi tugged at his earlobe, said serial killers generally had a signature, a preferred method for killing.

“Rosa Castro was strangled, but with ropes,” he said. “Her actual manner of death was
drowning.
Without speaking to the medical examiner, I can only go by the witness reports that Julia Winkler was manually strangled.
That is, she was killed by someone choking her with his hands.

“It’s too soon to say if these killings were done by the same person,” Manzi continued, “but what I can say about manual strangulation
is that it’s personal. The killer gets more of a thrill because unlike a shooting, it takes a long time for the victim to
die.”

Kim. Rosa. Julia. Was this coincidence or a wildfire? I wanted desperately to talk to Levon and Barbara, to get to them before
they saw Julia’s story on the news, prepare them somehow — but I didn’t know where they were.

Barbara had called me yesterday morning to say that she and Levon were going to Oahu to check out what was probably a bum
lead, and I hadn’t heard from them since.

I turned down the TV volume, called Barb’s cell phone number, and, when she didn’t answer, I hung up and called Levon. He
didn’t answer, either. After leaving a message, I called their driver, and when I got forwarded to Marco’s voice mail, I left
my number and told him that my call was urgent.

I showered and dressed quickly, collecting my thoughts, feeling an elusive and important
something
I should pay attention to, but I couldn’t nail it down.

It was like a horsefly you can’t swat. Or the faint smell of gas, and you don’t know where it’s coming from. What was it?

I tried Levon again, and when I got his voice mail I called Eddie Keola. He had to know how to reach Barbara and Levon.

That was his job.

KEOLA BARKED his name into the phone.

“Eddie, it’s Ben Hawkins. Have you seen the news?”

“Worse than that. I’ve seen the real thing.”

Keola told me he’d been to the Island Breezes since the news of Julia Winkler’s death had gone over the police band. He’d
been there when the body was taken out and he had spoken with the cops on the scene.

He said, “Kim’s roommate was murdered. Do you believe it?”

I told him I’d had no luck reaching the McDanielses or their driver and asked if he knew where Barb and Levon were staying.

“Some dive on the eastern shore of Oahu. Barb told me she didn’t know the name.”

“Maybe I’m paranoid,” I told Keola, “but I’m worried. It isn’t like them to be incommunicado.”

“I’ll meet you at their hotel in an hour,” Keola said.

I arrived at the Wailea Princess just before eight a.m. I was heading to the front desk when I heard Eddie Keola calling my
name. He came across the marble floor at a trot. His bleached hair was damp and wind-combed, and fatigue dragged at his face.

The hotel’s day manager was a young guy wearing a smart hundred-dollar tie and a blue gabardine jacket with a name-tag reading
“Joseph Casey.”

When he got off the phone, Keola and I told Casey our problem — that we couldn’t locate two of the hotel guests and we couldn’t
locate their hotel-comped driver, either. I said that we were concerned for the McDanielses’ safety.

The manager shook his head, and said, “We don’t have any drivers on staff and we never hired anyone to drive Mr. and Mrs.
McDaniels. Not somebody named Marco Benevenuto. Not anyone. We don’t do that and never have.”

I was stunned into an openmouthed silence. Keola asked, “Why would this driver tell the McDanielses he’d been hired and paid
for by your hotel?”

“I don’t know the man,” said the manager. “I have no idea. You’ll have to ask him.”

Keola flashed his ID, saying he was employed by the McDanielses, and asked to be let into their room.

After clearing Keola with the head of security, Casey agreed. I took a phone book to a plush chair in the lobby.

There were five limousine services on Maui, and I’d worked my way through all of them by the time Eddie Keola sat down heavily
in the chair beside me.

“No one’s ever heard of Marco Benevenuto,” I told him. “I can’t find a listing for him in all of Hawaii.”

“The McDanielses’ room is empty, too,” Keola said. “Like they were never there.”

“What the hell is this?” I asked him. “Barbara and Levon left town, and you didn’t know where they were going?”

It sounded like an accusation. I didn’t mean it that way, but my panic had risen to the high-water mark and it was still climbing.
Hawaii had a low crime rate. And now, in the space of a week, two girls were dead. Kim was still missing, and her parents
and driver were missing, too.

“I
told
Barbara it should be me following that lead on Oahu,” Keola said. “Those backpacker joints are remote and kind of rough.
But Levon talked me out of it. He said that he wanted me to spend my time
here
looking for Kim.”

Keola was snapping his wristband, chewing his lip. The two of us, ex-cops without portfolio, were trying desperately to make
sense out of thin air.

IT WAS BECOMING a three-ring circus in the lobby of the Wailea Princess. A queue of German tourists had lined up at the desk,
a flock of little kids were begging the gardener to let them feed the koi, even a presentation on tourist attractions was
going on thirty feet away, slides and film and native music.

Eddie Keola and I might as well have been invisible. No one even looked at us.

I started ticking off the facts, linking Rosa to Kim, Kim to Julia, and to the driver, Marco Benevenuto, who had lied to me
and the McDanielses — who were missing.