Swimsuit (9 page)

I wanted to give them some privacy, so I lowered the window, stared out at the beachfront whizzing by, at the families picnicking
by the ocean, as Kim’s parents suffered terribly. The contrast between the campers and the weeping couple behind me was excruciating.

I made a note, then swiveled in my seat and, trying for something comforting, I said to Levon, “Jackson isn’t subtle, but
he’s on the case. He might be a pretty good cop.”

Kim’s father leveled hard eyes on me.

“I think you’re right about Jackson. He nailed you in five seconds. Look at you. You parasite. Writing your story. Selling
newspapers on our pain.”

I felt the accusation like a gut punch — but there was some truth in it, I guess. I swallowed the hurt and found my compassion
for Levon.

I said, “You’ve got a point, Levon. But even if I’m exactly what you say, Kim’s story could get out of control and eat you
alive.

“Think of JonBenet Ramsey. Natalee Holloway. Chandra Levy. I hope Kim is safe and that she’s found fast. But whatever happens,
you’re going to want me with you. Because I’m not going to fan the flames and I’m not going to make anything up.
I’m going to tell the story right.
”

MARCO WATCHED UNTIL Hawkins and the McDanielses passed between the koi ponds and entered the hotel before he put the car in
gear, eased out onto Wailea Alanui Drive, and headed south.

As he drove, he felt under the seat, pulled out a nylon duffel bag, and put it beside him. Then he reached behind the rearview
mirror where he’d parked the cutting-edge, wireless, high-resolution, micro–video camera. He ejected the media card and dropped
it into his shirt pocket.

He had a thought that maybe the camera had slipped during the drive back from the police station and the angle might have
been off, but even if he just got the crying, he had his sound track for another scene. Levon talking about bad hands? Priceless.

Sneaky Marco.

Imagine their surprise when they figure it all out. If they ever do.

He felt a rush as he added up the cash potential of his new contract, the thick stack of euros with the possibility of doubling
his take, depending on the vote of the Alliance on the project as a whole.

He would thrill them to the roots of their short hairs, that’s how good this film would be, and all he had to do was what
he did best. How could a job possibly be better than this?

Marco saw his turn coming up, signaled, got into the right lane, then entered the parking lot of the Shops at Wailea. He parked
the Caddy in the southernmost section of the lot, far from the mall’s surveillance cameras and next to his nondescript rented
Taurus.

Hidden behind the Caddy’s tinted glass, the killer stripped himself of all things Marco: the chauffeur’s cap and wig, fake
mustache, livery jacket, cowboy boots. Then he took “Charlie Rollins” out of the bag. The baseball cap, beat-up Adidas, wraparound
shades, press pass, and both cameras.

He changed quickly, bagged the Marco artifacts, then made the return trip to the Wailea Princess in the Taurus. He tipped
the bellman three bucks, then checked in at the front desk, lucking out, getting a king-size bed, ocean view.

Leaving the desk, heading for the stairway at the far end of the marble acreage of the lobby, Henri as “Charlie Rollins” saw
the McDanielses and Ben Hawkins sitting together around a low glass table, coffee cups in front of them.

Rollins felt his heart kick into overdrive as Hawkins turned, looked at him, pausing for a nanosecond — maybe his reptilian
brain was making a match? — before his “rational” brain, fooled by the Rollins getup, steered his gaze past him.

The game could have been over in that one look, but
Hawkins hadn’t recognized him
— and he’d been sitting right beside him in the car for hours. This was the real thrill, skating along the razor’s edge and
getting away with it.

So Charlie Rollins, photographer from the nonexistent
Talk Weekly,
jacked it up a notch. He raised his Sony —
say cheese, mousies
— and snapped off three shots of the McDanielses.

Gotcha, Mom and Dad.

His heart was still pounding as Levon scowled and leaned forward, blocking his camera’s-eye view of Barbara.

Ecstatic, the killer took the stairs to his room, thinking now about Ben Hawkins, a man who interested him even more than
the McDanielses did. Hawkins was a great crime writer, every one of his books as good as
The Silence of the Lambs.
But Hawkins hadn’t quite made it to the big time. Why not?

Rollins slipped the card key into the slot and got the green light. His door opened onto a scene of casual magnificence that
he barely noticed. He was busy turning ideas over in his mind, thinking about how to make Ben Hawkins an integral part of
his project.

It was just a question of how best to use him.

LEVON PUT DOWN HIS COFFEE CUP, the porcelain chattering against the saucer, knowing that Barb and Hawkins and probably the
entire gang of Japanese tourists trooping by could see that his hands were shaking. But he couldn’t do a thing about it.

That damned bloodsucking paparazzo pointing the camera at him and Barb! Plus he was reeling from the aftershocks of his out-of-control
fight with Lieutenant Jackson. He still felt the shove in the balls of his hands, still felt a flush of mortification at the
idea that he could be in a jail cell right now, but hell, he’d done it, and that was that.

The bright side: maybe he’d motivated Jackson to bust his ass on Kim’s behalf. If not, too bad. They weren’t going to be relying
entirely on Jackson anymore.

Levon felt someone coming up behind him, and Hawkins was getting out of his chair, saying, “There he is now.”

Levon looked up, saw a thirtyish man coming across the lobby in slacks and a blue sports jacket over a bold Hawaiian-print
shirt, his bleached-blond hair parted in the middle. Hawkins was saying, “Levon, Barbara, meet Eddie Keola, the best private
detective in Maui.”

“The
only
private detective in Maui,” Keola said, his smile showing braces on his teeth. God, Levon thought, he’s not much older than
Kim.
This
was the detective who found the Reese girl?

Keola shook hands with the McDanielses, sat down in one of the richly upholstered rattan-backed chairs, and said, “Good to
meet you. And forgive me for jumping right in, but I’ve already got some feelers out.”

“Already?” Barb asked.

“As soon as Ben called me, I reached out. I was born about fifteen minutes from here and I was on the force for a few years
when I got out of school, University of Hawaii. I’ve got a good working relationship with the police,” he said. He wasn’t
show-offy in Levon’s opinion, was just stating his credentials.

“They’ve got a suspect,” Keola added.

“We know him,” Levon said, and he told Keola about Doug Cahill being Kim’s ex-boyfriend, then went over the phone call back
home in Michigan that had cracked open his universe like it was a raw egg.

Barb asked Keola to tell them about Carol Reese, the twenty-year-old track star from Ohio State who’d gone missing a couple
of years before.

“I found her in San Francisco,” Keola said. “She had a bad-news, violent boyfriend and so she kidnapped herself, changed her
name and everything. She was powerfully mad at me for finding her,” he said, nodding his head as he remembered.

Levon said, “Tell me how this would work.”

Keola said he’d want to talk to the
Sporting Life
photographer, see if he might have filmed some bystanders at the shoot, and that he’d talk to hotel security, see the security
tapes from the Typhoon Bar the night Kim disappeared.

“Let’s hope Kim shows up on her own,” Keola went on, “but if not, this is going to be basic, shoe-leather detective work.
You’ll be my only client. I’ll pull in additional help as needed, and we’ll work around the clock. It’s over when you say
it’s over and not before. That’s the right way to go.”

Levon discussed rates with Keola, but it really didn’t matter. He thought about the hours posted on the door at the police
station in Kihei. Monday through Friday, eight to five. Saturday, ten to four. Kim, in a dungeon or a ditch, helpless.

Levon said, “You’re hired. You’ve got the job.”

MY PHONE RANG as soon as I opened the door to my room.

I said hello to a woman who said, “ Ben-ah Haw-keens?” Strong accent.

I said, “Yes, this is Hawkins,” and I waited for her to tell me who she was, but she didn’t identify herself. “There’s a man,
staying in the Princess hotel.”

“Go on.”

“His name is Nils Bjorn, and you should talk to him.”

“And why’s that?”

My caller said that Bjorn was a European businessman who should be investigated. “He was in the hotel when Kim McDaniels went
missing. He could be… you should talk to him.”

I pulled at the desk drawer, looking for stationery and a pen.

“What makes this Nils Bjorn suspicious?” I asked, finding the paper and pen, writing down the name.

“You talk to him. I have to hang up now,” the woman said — and did.

I took a bottle of Perrier from the fridge and went out to my balcony. I was staying at the Marriott, a quarter mile up the
beach from the much pricier Wailea Princess but with the same dazzling ocean view. I sipped my Perrier and thought about my
tipster. For starters, how had she found me? Only the McDanielses and Amanda knew where I was staying.

I went back through the sliding doors, booted up my laptop, and when I got an Internet connection I Googled “Nils Bjorn.”

The first hit was an article that had run in the London
Times
a year before, about a Nils Bjorn who had been arrested in London, held on suspicion of selling arms to Iran, released for
lack of evidence.

I kept clicking and opening articles, all of which were similar if not identical to the first.

I opened another Perrier and kept poking, found another story on Bjorn going back to 2005, a charge of “aggravated assault
on a woman,” the legal term for rape. The woman’s name wasn’t mentioned, only that she was a model, age nineteen, and again,
Bjorn wasn’t indicted.

My last stop on Bjorn’s Internet trail was
Skoal,
a glossy European society magazine. There was a photo that had been taken at a reception dinner for a Swedish industrialist
who’d opened a munitions factory outside of Gothenburg.

I enlarged the photo, studied the man identified as Bjorn, stared at his flashbulb-lit eyes. He had regular features, light
brown hair, straight nose, looked to be in his thirties, and had not one remarkable or memorable feature.

I saved the photo to my hard drive and then I called the Wailea Princess and asked for Nils Bjorn. I was told he’d checked
out the day before.

I asked to be put through to the McDanielses.

I told Levon about my phone call from the woman and what I knew about Nils Bjorn: He’d been charged with selling arms to a
terrorist nation, and he’d been charged with raping a model. Neither charge had stuck. Two days ago he’d been staying at the
Wailea Princess hotel.

I was trying to keep my excitement in check, but I could hear it in my voice.

“This could be a break,” I said.

LEVON WAS HOLDING for Jackson. After five minutes of Muzak, he was told the police lieutenant would call him back. He hung
up the phone, turned on the television, a big plasma thing, took up half the wall, as the news was coming on.

First came the flashy graphic intro to
All-Island News at Noon
with Tracy Baker and Candy Ko‘alani, and then Baker was talking about the “still-missing model, Kim McDaniels” and cutting
to a picture of her in a bikini. Then Jackson’s face was on the screen above the word “Live.”

He was talking to the press in front of the police station.

Levon shouted, “Barb, come in here,
quick,
” as he cranked up the volume. Barb sat next to him on the sofa just as Jackson was saying, “We’re talking to a person of
interest, and this investigation is ongoing. Anyone with information about Kim McDaniels is asked to call us. Confidentiality
will be respected. And that’s all I can say at this time.”

“They arrested someone or not?” Barb said, clutching his hand.

“A ‘person of interest’ is a suspect. But they don’t have enough on him, or they’d be saying he was in custody.” Levon cranked
up the volume a little more.

A reporter asked, “Lieutenant, we understand you’re talking to Doug Cahill.”

“No comment. That’s all I have for you. Thank you.”

Jackson turned away and the reporters went nuts, and then Tracy Baker was back on the screen, saying “Doug Cahill, linebacker
for the Chicago Bears, has been seen on Maui, and informed sources say he was Kim McDaniels’s lover.” A picture came on the
screen of Doug in his uniform, helmet under his arm, huge grin, cropped blond hair, mid-western good looks.

“I could see him pestering her,” Barb said, chewing on her lower lip, snatching the remote out of Levon’s hand, dialing the
volume down. “But hurt her? I do
not
believe that.”

And then the phone rang. Levon grabbed it off the hook.

“Mr. McDaniels, this is Lieutenant Jackson.”

“Are you arresting Doug Cahill? If you are, it’s a mistake.”

“A witness came forward an hour ago, a local who said he’d seen Cahill harassing Kim after the photo shoot.”

“Didn’t Doug tell you he hadn’t seen Kim?” Levon asked. “Right. So maybe he lied to us and so we’re talking to him now. He’s
still denying any involvement.”

“There’s someone else you should know about,” Levon said, and he told Jackson about Hawkins’s recent phone call concerning
a tip about an international businessman named Nils Bjorn.

“We know who Bjorn is,” Jackson said. “There’s no link between Bjorn and Kim. No witnesses. Nothing on the surveillance tapes.”