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.
Chapter 33
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.”
Chapter 34
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.
Chapter 35
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.”
“You talked with him?”
“Bjorn had checked out before anyone knew Kim was missing. McDaniels, I know you don’t buy it, but Cahill is our guy. We just need time enough to break him.”
Chapter 36
HENRI, in his Charlie Rollins gear, was having lunch at the Sand Bar, the hotel’s exquisite beachside restaurant. Yellow market umbrellas glowed overhead, and teenagers ran up the steps from the beach, their tanned bodies glistening with water. Henri didn’t know who was more beautiful, the boys or the girls.
Henri’s waitress brought him liquid sugar for his iced tea and a basket of cheesy breadsticks and said his salad would be coming shortly. He nodded pleasantly, said he was enjoying the view and had no place he’d rather be than here.
A waiter pulled out a chair at the next table, and a pretty, young woman sat down. She wore her black hair in a short, boyish style, was dressed in a white bikini top and yellow shorts.
Henri knew who she was behind her Maui Jim shades.
When she put down her menu, he said, “Julia. Julia Winkler.”
She looked up, said, “Sorry. Do I know you?”
“I know you,” he said, held up his camera to say, I’m in the business. “Are you on a job?”
“I was,” she said. “The shoot wrapped yesterday. I’m going back to L.A. tomorrow.”
“Oh. The Sporting Life job?”
She nodded, her face getting sad. “I’ve been waiting around, hoping… I was rooming with Kim McDaniels.”
“She’ll be back,” Henri said kindly.
“You think? Why?”
“I have a feeling she’s taking a holiday. It happens.”
“If you’re so psychic, where is she?”
“She’s out of my vibrational reach, but I can read you loud and clear.”
“Sure. So what am I thinking?”
“That you’re feeling sad and a little lonely and you wish you were having lunch with someone who would make you smile.”
Julia laughed, and Henri signaled to the waiter, asked him to set Ms. Winkler up at his table, and the beautiful girl sat down next to him so that they were both looking out at the view.
“Charlie,” he said, putting out his hand. “Rollins.”
“Hi, Charlie Rollins. What am I having for lunch?”
“Grilled chicken salad and a Diet Coke. And here’s what else. You’re thinking you’d like to stay over another day because a neighbor is taking care of your cat and it’s so nice here, so what’s the rush to go home?”
Julia laughed again. “Bruno. He’s a Rottweiler.”
“I knew that,” Henri said, sitting back as the waitress brought his salad and asked Julia for her order, grilled chicken and a mai tai.
“Even if I were to stay over another night, I never date photographers,” she said, eyeing the camera resting on the table facing her.
“Have I asked you out?”
“You will.”
Their grins turned into laughter, and then Rollins said, “All right, I’ll ask you out. And I’m taking your picture so the guys in Loxahatchee won’t think I made this up.”
“Okay, but take off your sunglasses, Charlie. I want to see your eyes.”
“Show me yours, I’ll show you mine.”
Chapter 37
“WHOOOOOOO,” Julia screamed as the chopper yawed into the coral-gold sky. The little island of Lanai grew huge, and then they were dropping softly to the tiny private heliport at the edge of the vast Island Breezes Hotel’s greener-than-green golf course.
Charlie got out first and helped Julia to the ground as she held the collar of her windbreaker closed, her curly hair parting, her cheeks flushed. They ducked under the rotor blades and ran to a waiting car.
“You’ve got a great expense account, buddy,” she said breathlessly.
“Our dream date’s on me, Julia.”
“Really?”
“What kind of person would expense a date with you?”
“Awww.”
The driver opened the doors, and then the car rolled slowly over the carriage road to the hotel, Julia gasping as she entered the lobby, all velvety teal and gold and burgundy, dense Chinese carpets and ancient statuary. The sunset streamed through the open-air space, almost stealing the show.
Julia and Charlie had their twin massages in a bamboo hut open to the ocean’s rhythmic pounding on the shore. The masseurs quartered the plumeria-scented sheets that covered them as their strong hands massaged in cocoa butter before proceeding to the long strokes of the traditional lomi lomi massage.
Julia, lying on her stomach, smiled lazily at the man she’d just met, saying, “This is too good. I don’t want it to ever stop.”
“It only gets better from here.”
Dinner came hours later at the restaurant on the main floor. P
illars and soft lighting were the backdrop for their feast of shrimp and Kurubuta pork chops with mango chutney and an excellent French wine. And Julia was happy to let Charlie lead her in conversation about herself. She opened up to him, talking about her upbringing on an army base in Beirut, her move to Los Angeles, her lucky break.
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