Swimsuit (4 page)

“All he said is she’s gone…”

“She never goes anywhere without her cell,” Barb said, starting now to gasp for breath, her asthma kicking in.

Levon bolted out of bed, knocked things off Barb’s night table, spilling pills and papers all over the carpet. He picked the
inhaler out of the jumble, handed it to Barb, watched her take in a long pull.

Tears ran down her face.

He reached out his arms for her, and she went to him, cried into his chest, “Please… just call her.”

Levon snatched the phone off the blanket, punched in Kim’s number, counted out the interminable rings, two, then three, looking
at the clock, doing the math. It was just after ten at night in Hawaii.

Then Kim’s voice was in his ear.

“Kim!” he shouted.

Barb clapped her hands over her face in relief — but Levon realized his mistake.

“It’s only a message,” he said to Barb, hearing Kim’s recorded voice. “Leave your name and number and I’ll call you back.
Byeeee.”

“Kim, it’s
Dad.
Are you okay? We’d like to hear from you. Don’t worry about the time. Just call. Everybody here is fine. Love you, honey.
Dad.”

Barb was crying. “Oh, my God, Oh, my God,” she repeated as she balled up the comforter, pressing it to her face.

“We don’t know anything, Barb,” he said. “He could be some moron with a sick sense of humor —”

“Oh, God, Levon. Try her hotel room.”

Sitting at the edge of the bed, staring down at the nubby carpet between his feet, Levon called information. He jotted down
the number, disconnected the line, then dialed the Wailea Princess in Maui.

When the operator came on, he asked for Kim McDaniels, got five distant rings in a room four thousand miles away, and then
a machine answered. “Please leave a message for the occupant of Room Three-fourteen. Or press zero for the operator.”

Levon’s chest pains were back and he was short of breath. He said into the mouthpiece, “Kim, call Mom and Dad. It’s important.”
He stabbed the 0 button until the lilting voice of the hotel operator came back on the line.

He asked the operator to ring Carol Sweeney’s room, the booker from the modeling agency, who’d accompanied Kim to Hawaii and
was supposed to be there as her chaperone.

There was no answer in Carol’s room, either. Levon left a message: “Carol, this is Levon McDaniels, Kim’s dad. Please call
when you get this. Don’t worry about the time. We’re up. Here’s my cell phone number…”

Then he got the operator again.

“We need help,” he said. “Please connect me to the manager. This is an emergency.”

LEVON MCDANIELS WAS SQUARE-JAWED, just over six feet, a muscular 165 pounds. He had always been known as a straight shooter,
decisive, thoughtful, a good leader, but sitting in his red boxers, holding a dinky cordless phone that didn’t connect to
Kim — he felt nauseated and powerless.

As he waited for hotel security to go to Kim’s room and report back to the manager, Levon’s imagination fired off images of
his daughter, hurt, or the captive of some freaking maniac who was planning God only knew what.

Time passed, probably only a few minutes, but Levon imagined himself rocketing across the Pacific Ocean, bounding up the stairs
of the hotel, and kicking open Kim’s door. Seeing her peacefully asleep, her phone switched off.

“Mr. McDaniels, Security is on the other line. The bed is still made up. Your daughter’s belongings look undisturbed. Would
you like us to notify the police?”

“Yes. Right away. Thank you. Could you say and spell your name for me?”

Levon booked a room, then phoned United Airlines, kept pressing zeros until he got a human voice.

Beside him, Barb’s breathing was wet, her cheeks shining with tears. Her graying braid was coming undone as she repeatedly
pushed her fingers through it. Barb’s suffering was right out in the open, and she didn’t know any other way. You always knew
how she felt and where you stood with Barb.

“The more I think about it,” she said, her voice coming between jerky sobs, “the more I think it’s a lie. If he took her…
he’d want money, and he didn’t ask for that, Levon. So…
why would he call us?
”

“I just don’t know, Barb. It doesn’t make sense to me either.”

“What time is it there?”

“Ten thirty p.m.”

“She probably went for a ride with some cute guy. Got a flat tire. Couldn’t get a cell phone signal, something like that.
She’s probably all worked up about missing the shoot. You
know
how she is. She’s probably stuck somewhere and
furious
with herself.”

Levon had held back the truly terrifying part of the phone call. He hadn’t told Barb that the caller had said that Kim had
fallen into “bad hands.” How would that help Barb? He couldn’t bring himself to say it.

“We have to keep our heads on straight,” he said.

Barb nodded. “Absolutely. Oh, we’re going over there, Levon. But Kim is going to be as mad as
bees
that you told the hotel to call the police. Watch out when Kim’s mad.”

Levon smiled.

“I’ll shower after you,” Barb said.

Levon came out of the bathroom five minutes later, shaven, his damp brown hair standing up around the bald spot at the back.
He tried to picture the Wailea Princess as he dressed, saw frozen postcard images of honeymooners walking the beach at sunset.
He thought of never seeing Kim again, and a knifing terror cut through him.

Please, God, oh, please, don’t let anything happen to Kim.

Barb showered quickly, dressed in a blue sweater, gray slacks, flat shoes. Her expression was wide-eyed shock, but she was
past the hysteria, her excellent mind in gear.

“I packed underwear and toothbrushes and that’s all, Levon. We’ll get what we need in Maui.”

It was 3:45 in Cascade Township. Less than an hour had passed since the anonymous phone call had cracked open the night and
spilled the McDanielses out into a terrifying unknown.

“You call Cissy,” Barb said. “I’ll wake the kids.”

BARBARA SIGHED UNDER HER BREATH, then turned up the dimmer, gradually lighting the boys’ room. Greg groaned, pulled the Spider-Man
quilt over his head, but Johnny sat straight up, his fourteen-year-old face alert to something different, new, and maybe exciting.

Barb shook Greg’s shoulder gently. “Sweetie, wake up now.”

“Mommmmm, nooooo.”

Barb peeled down her younger son’s blanket, explained to both boys a version of the story that she halfway believed. That
she and Dad were going to Hawaii to visit Kim.

Her sons became attentive immediately, bombarding Barb with questions until Levon walked in, his face taut, and Greg, seeing
that, shouted, “Dad! What’s goin’ on?”

Barb swooped Greg into her arms, said that everything was fine, that Aunt Cissy and Uncle Dave were waiting for them, that
they could be asleep again in fifteen minutes. They could stay in their pj’s but they had to put on shoes and coats.

Johnny pleaded to come with them to Hawaii, made a case involving jet skis and snorkeling, but Barb, holding back tears, said
“not this time” and busied herself with socks and shoes and toothbrushes and Game Boys.

“You’re not telling us something, Mom. It’s still dark!”

“There’s no time to go into it, Johnny. Everything’s okay. We’ve just — gotta catch a plane.”

Ten minutes later, five blocks away, Christine and David waited outside their front door as the arctic air sweeping across
Lake Michigan put down a fine white powder over their lawn.

Levon watched Cissy run down the steps to meet their car as it turned in at the driveway. Cissy was two years younger than
Barb, with the same heart-shaped face, and Levon saw Kim in her features, too.

Cissy reached out and enfolded the kids as they dashed toward her. She lifted her arms and took in Barb and Levon, as Barb
said, “I forwarded our phone to yours, Cis. In case you get a
call.
” Barb didn’t want to spell it out in front of the boys. She wasn’t sure Cis got it yet either.

“Call me between planes,” Cis said.

Dave held out an envelope to Levon. “Here’s some cash, about a thousand. No, no, take it. You could need it when you get there.
Cabs and whatever. Levon, take it.”

Fierce hugs were exchanged and wishes for a safe flight and love-you’s rang out loudly in the morning stillness. When Cissy
and David’s front door closed, Levon told Barb to strap in.

He backed the Suburban out of the drive, then turned onto Burkett Road, heading toward Gerald R. Ford International Airport,
ramping the car up to ninety on the straightaway.

“Slow down, Levon.”

“Okay.”

But he kept his foot on the gas, driving fast into the star field of snow that somehow kept his mind balanced on the brink
of terror rather than letting it topple into the abyss.

“I’ll call the bank when we change planes in L.A.,” Levon said. “Talk to Bill Macchio, get a loan started against the house
in case we need cash.”

He saw tears dropping from Barb’s face into her lap, heard the click of her fingernails tapping on her BlackBerry, sending
text messages to everyone in the family, to her friends, to her job. To Kim.

Barb called Kim’s cell phone again as Levon parked the car, held up the phone so Levon could hear the mechanical voice saying,
“The mailbox belonging to —
Kim McDaniels —
is full. No messages can be left at this time.”

THE MCDANIELSES HOPSCOTCHED by air from Grand Rapids to Chicago and from there to their wait-listed flight to Los Angeles,
which connected just in time to their flight to Honolulu. Once in Honolulu, they ran through the airport, tickets and IDs
in their hands, making Island Air’s turbo prop plane. They were the last people on, settling into their bulkhead seats before
the doors to the puddle jumper closed with a startling bang.

They were now only forty minutes from Maui.

Only forty minutes from Kim.

Since leaving Grand Rapids, Barbara and Levon had slept in snatches. So much time had elapsed since the phone call that it
was starting to feel unreal.

They now spun the idea that after Kim had given them hell for coming there, they’d be laughing about all of this, showing
off a snapshot of Kim with that “oh, please” look on her face and standing between her parents, all of them wearing leis,
typical happy tourists in Hawaii.

And then they’d swing back to their fear.

Where was Kim? Why couldn’t they reach her? Why was there no return call from her on their home phone or Levon’s cell?

As the airplane sailed above the clouds, Barb said, “I’ve been thinking about the bike.”

Levon nodded, took her hand.

What they called “the bike” had started with another terrible phone call, seven years ago, this time from the police. Kim
had been fourteen. She’d been riding her bike after school, wearing a muffler around her neck. The end of the scarf, whipping
back behind her, got wrapped around the rear wheel, choking Kim, pulling her off the bike and hurling her onto the roadside.

A woman driving along saw the bike in the road, pulled up, and found Kim lying up against a tree, unconscious. That woman,
Anne Clohessy, had called 911, and when the ambulance came, the EMTs couldn’t get Kim to come back to consciousness.

Her brain had been deprived of oxygen, the doctors said. She was in a coma. The hospital’s posturing told Barb that it might
be irreversible.

By the time Levon had been reached at the office, Kim had been medevaced to a trauma unit in Chicago. He and Barb had driven
three hours, got to the hospital, and found their daughter in intensive care, groggy but awake, a terrible bruise around her
neck, as blue as the scarf that nearly killed her.

But she was alive. She wasn’t back to a hundred percent yet, but she’d be fine.

“It was weird inside my head,” Kimmy had said then. “It was like dreaming, only much more real. I heard Father Marty talking
to me like he was sitting on the end of the bed.”

“What did he say, sweetheart?” Barb had asked.

“He said, ‘I’m glad you were baptized, Kim.’ ”

Now Levon took off his glasses, dried his eyes with the back of his hand. Barb passed him a tissue, saying, “I know, sweetie,
I know.”

This is how they wanted to find Kim now.
Fine.
Levon gave Barb a crooked smile, both of them thinking how the story in the
Chicago Trib
had called her “Miracle Girl,” and sometimes they still called her that.

Miracle Girl who got onto the varsity basketball team as a freshman. Miracle Girl who was accepted into Columbia premed. Miracle
Girl who’d been picked for the
Sporting Life
swimsuit shoot, the odds a million to one against her.

Levon thought,
What kind of miracle was that?

BARB TWISTED a tissue into a knot, and she said to Levon, “I should never have made such a fuss about that modeling agency.”

“She wanted to do it, Barb. It’s no one’s fault. She’s always been her own person.”

Barb took Kimmy’s picture from her purse, a five-by-seven headshot of eighteen-year-old Kim, taken for that agency in Chicago.
Levon looked at the picture of Kim wearing a low-cut black sweater, her blond hair falling below her shoulders, the kind of
radiant beauty that gave men ideas.

“No modeling after this,” Levon said now.

“She’s twenty-one, Levon.”

“She’s going to be a
doctor.
Barb, there’s no good reason for her to be modeling anymore. This is the end of it. I’ll make her understand.”

The flight attendant announced that the plane would be landing momentarily.

Barb raised the shade and Levon looked out at the clouds flowing under the window, the peaks of them looking like they’d been
hit with pink spotlights.

As the tiny houses and roads of Maui came into view, Levon turned to his wife, his best pal, his sweetheart.

“How’re you doin’, hon? Okay?”

“Never better,” Barb chirped, attempting a joke. “And you?”