Swimsuit

by James Patterson

  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. Pillars 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.

  Charlie ordered a dessert wine and the entire dessert menu: zuccotto, pralines and milk, chocolate mousse, Lanai bananas caramelized by the waiter at the table. The delicious fragrance of burnt sugar made him hungry all over again. He looked at the girl, and she was a girl now, sweet and vulnerable and available to him.

  Four thousand dollars had been well spent, even if he stopped right now.

  But he didn’t.

  They changed into their swimsuits in a cabana by the pool and took a long walk on the beach. Moonlight bathed the sand, turning the ocean into a magical meeting of rushing sound and frothing foam.

  And then Julia laughed, and said, “Last one in the water is an old poop, and that will be you, Charlie.”

  She ran, screamed as the water lapped her thighs, and Charlie snapped off some quick shots before putting his camera back inside his duffel bag and setting it down.

  “Let’s see who’s an old poop.”

  He sprinted toward her, dove into the waves, and surfaced with his arms around her.

  Chapter 38

  AFTER A QUICK DINNER out with Keola, I returned to my hotel room, checked for messages, had no new calls from the woman with the accent, or anyone else. I cranked up my computer, and after a while I sent a pretty fine seven-hundred-word story to Aronstein’s in-box at the L.A. Times.

  Work done for today, I turned on the TV and saw that Kim’s story was headlining the ten o’clock news.

  There was a banner, “Breaking News,” and then the talking heads announced that Doug Cahill was a presumed suspect in the presumed abduction of Kim McDaniels. Cahill’s picture came on the screen, fully uniformed for a Chicago Bears game, smiling at the camera like a movie star, all 6 feet, 3 inches, and 250 pounds of him.

  Anyone would have been able to do the math. Cahill could’ve easily picked up 110-pound Kim McDaniels and carried her under his arm like a football.

  And then my eyes nearly jumped out of my head.

  Cahill was shown in a video clip that had been shot two hours earlier. While I was having pizza with Eddie Keola, the action had taken place right outside the police station in Kihei.

  Cahill was flanked by two lawyers, one of whom I recognized. Amos Brock was dapper in his pearl gray suit, a New York criminal defense attorney with a history of representing celebrities and sports stars who’d gone too far over to the dark side. Brock had turned into a star himself, and now he was defending Doug Cahill.

  Station KITV had cameras trained on Cahill and Brock. Brock stepped to the microphone, said, “My client, Doug Cahill, hasn’t been charged with anything. The accusations against him are preposterous. There’s not a speck of evidence to support any of the allegations that have been going around, which is why my client hasn’t been charged. Doug wants to speak publicly, this one and only time.”

  I grabbed the phone, woke Levon out of what sounded like a deep sleep. “Levon. It’s Ben. Turn on the TV. Channel four. Hurry.”

  I stayed on with Levon as Cahill stood front and center. He was unshaven, wearing a blue cotton button-down shirt under a well-cut sports jacket. Without the pads and the uniform, he looked relatively tame, like a kid in a Wall Street management training program.

  “I came to Maui to see Kim,” Doug said, his voice shaking, thick with the tears that were also wetting his cheeks. “I saw her for about ten minutes three days ago and never saw her after that. I didn’t hurt her. I love Kim, and I’m staying here until we find her.”

  Cahill handed the mic back to Brock: “To repeat, Doug had nothing to do with Kim’s disappearance, and I will absolutely, unequivocally bring action against anyone who defames him. That’s all we have to say for the moment. Thank you.”

  Levon said to me, “What do you make of that? The lawyer? Doug?”

  “Doug was pretty con
vincing,” I said. “Either he loves her. Or he’s a very good liar.”

  I had another thought, one I didn’t share with Levon. Those seven hundred words I’d just sent to Aronstein at the Times?

  They were old news.

  Chapter 39

  I E-MAILED MY EDITOR, told him that Doug Cahill was going to be chum for the media feeding frenzy and why: that a mystery witness had seen him coming on strong with Kim, and that Cahill was being represented by Amos Brock, the current champion bully of defense attorneys.

  “Here’s an updated version of my article,” I wrote Aronstein. “If nothing else, I’m fast.”

  And then I called our sports chief, Sam Paulson. He keeps odd hours, and I knew he’d be up.

  Paulson likes me, but he doesn’t trust anyone. I said, “Look, Sam, I need to know what kind of person Doug Cahill is. My story isn’t going to mess with yours.”

  It was a wrestling match that went on for fifteen minutes, Sam Paulson protecting his position as the sports world’s premiere “in” guy, while I tried to get something out of Paulson that would tell me if Cahill was dangerous off the playing field.

  At last Sam gave me a tantalizing lead.

  “There’s a PR girl. I got her a job working for the Bears. Hawkins, I’m not kidding. This is off the record. This girl’s a friend of mine.”

  “I understand.”

  “Cahill got this girl pregnant a couple months back. She’s told her mother about the baby. She also told Cahill and me. She’s giving Cahill a chance to do the right thing. Whatever the hell that might be.”

  “He was dating Kim when this happened with the other woman? You’re certain?”

  “Yep.”

  “Does he have any history of violence?”

  “They all do. Sure. Bar fights. One zesty one when he played at Notre Dame. Crap like that.”

  “Thanks, Sam.”

  “Don’t mention it,” he said back. “I mean really. Don’t mention it.”

  I sat on this bombshell for a few minutes, thinking through what this meant. If Kim knew Cahill had cheated on her, that was reason enough for her to dump him. If he wanted her back, if he was desperate, a confrontation could have led to something physical that might have gotten out of hand.

  I called Levon. And I was startled by his reaction.

  “Doug is a testosterone machine,” he told me. “Kim said he was strong-willed, and we all know he was a killer on the field. How do we know what he’s capable of doing? Barb still believes in him, but as for me, I’m starting to think maybe Jackson is right. Maybe they’ve got the right guy after all.”

  Chapter 40

  JULIA FELT WEIGHTLESS in Charlie’s arms, like an angel. Her long legs locked around his waist, and all he had to do was raise his knees, and she was sitting on his lap.

  He did just that as they bobbed in the waves. She lifted her face to him, saying, “Charlie, this has been the most. The best.”

  “It gets better from here,” he said again, his theme song for their date, and she grinned at him, kissed him softly, then deeply, a long salty kiss followed by another, electricity arcing like heat lightning around them.

  He undid the string tie at her neck, jerked loose the tie behind her back, said, “You do a lot for a simple white bikini.”

  “What bikini?”

  “Never mind,” he said, and the swimsuit top drifted away, a ribbon of white on the black waves, until it was gone, and she didn’t seem to care.

  Julia was too busy licking his ear, her nipples as hard as diamonds against his chest. She groaned as he shifted her so she was pressed even tighter to him, rubbing like an eager beaver against his dick.

  He reached around and ran his fingers under the elastic of her bikini bottoms, touched the tender places, making her squeal and squirm like a kid.

  She pushed down at the waistband of his swim shorts with the backs of her feet.

  “Wait,” he said. “Be good.”

  “I plan to be great,” she said breathily, kissing him, pulling at his shorts again. “I’m dying for you.” She sighed.

  He unhooked her legs and pulled off the bottom half of her swimsuit. Carrying the naked girl in his arms, he walked out of the waves as water streamed off their bodies, silver in the moonlight.

  Charlie said, “Hang on to me, monkey.”

  He brought her over to where he’d left his duffel bag next to a mound of black lava rock. He stooped and unzipped the bag, pulled out two enormous beach towels.

  Still balancing the girl in his arms, he spread out one towel and laid Julia softly down, covered her with the second towel.

  He turned away briefly, set the Panasonic camera on top of the duffel, and switched it on, angling it just so.

  Then he faced Julia again, shucked his swim trunks, smiled when she said, “Oh my God, oh my God, Charlie.”

  He knelt between her legs, tonguing her until she cried out, “Please, I can’t stand it, Charlie. I’m begging you, please,” and he entered her.

  Her screams were washed away by the ocean’s roar, just as he had imagined they would be, and when they were done, he reached into the duffel bag and took out a knife with a serrated blade. Put the knife down on the towel beside them.

  “What’s that for?” Julia asked.

  “Can’t be too careful,” Charlie said, shrugging off the question. “In case some bad guy is creeping around.”

  He raked back her short hair, kissed her closed eyes, put his arms around the naked girl, and warmed her up with his skin. “Go to sleep, Julia,” he said. “You’re safe with me.”

  “It gets better from here?” she teased.

  “Piggy.”

  She laughed, snuggled against his chest. Charlie pulled the towel up over her eyes. Julia thought he was talking to her when he said into the camera lens, “Is everybody happy?”

  “Totally, completely happy,” she said with a sigh.

  Chapter 41

  ANOTHER WRENCHING TWENTY-FOUR hours passed for Levon and Barbara, and I felt helpless to ease their despair. The news shows were running the same old clips when I went to bed that night, and I was somewhere, deep in a troubling dream, when the phone rang.

  Eddie Keola spoke to me, saying, “Ben, don’t call the McDanielses on this. Just meet me in front of your hotel in ten minutes.”

  Keola’s Jeep was running when I jogged out into the warm night, then quickly climbed up into the passenger seat.

  “Where are we going?” I asked him.

  “A beach called Makena Landing. The cops may have found something. Or somebody.”

  Ten minutes later, Eddie parked along the curving roadside behind six police cruisers, vans from the Special Response Team and the coroner’s office. Below us was a semicircle of beach, a cove that was bounded by fingers of lava rock before tapering out into the ocean.

  A helicopter hovered noisily overhead, beaming its spotlight on the scramble of law enforcement people moving like stick figures along the shoreline.

  Keola and I made our way down to the beach, and I saw that a fire department rescue vehicle had backed down to the water’s edge. There were inflatable boats in the water, and a scuba team was going down.

  I was sickened at the thought that Kim’s body was submerged there and that she had disappeared to get away from an old boyfriend.

  Keola interrupted my reverie to introduce me to a Detective Palikapu, a heavyset young cop in a Maui PD jacket.

  “Those campers over there,” Palikapu said, pointing to a cluster of children and adults on the far side of the lava-rock jetty. “They saw something floating during the day.”

  “A body, you mean,” said Keola.

  “They thought it was a log or garbage at first. Then they saw some shark activity and called it in. Since then, the tides took whatever it is under the bubble rock and left it there. That’s where the divers are now.”

  Keola explained to me that the bubble rock was a shelf of lava with a concave undersurface. He said that sometim
es people swam into caves like this one at low tide, didn’t pay attention when the tide came in, and drowned.

  Was that what had happened to Kim? Suddenly it seemed very possible.

  TV vans were pulling up on the shoulder of the road, photographers and reporters clambering down to the beach, the cops stringing up yellow tape to keep the scene intact.

  One of the photographers came up to me, introduced himself as Charlie Rollins. He said he was freelance and if I needed photos for the L.A. Times he could provide them.

  I took his card, then turned in time to see the first divers coming out of the water. One of them had a bundle in his arms.

  Keola said, “You’re with me,” and we skirted the crime scene tape. We were standing on the lip of the shore when a boat came in.

  The bright light from the chopper illuminated the body in the diver’s arms. She was small, maybe a teenager or maybe a child. Her body was so bloated that I couldn’t tell her age, but she was bound with ropes, hand and foot.

  Lieutenant Jackson stepped forward and used a gloved hand to move the girl’s long, dark hair away from her face.

  I was relieved that the victim wasn’t Kim McDaniels and that I didn’t have to make a call to Levon and Barbara.

  But my relief was swamped with an almost overwhelming sorrow. Clearly another girl, someone else’s daughter, had been savagely murdered.

  Chapter 42

  A WOMAN’S HIGH-PITCHED scream cut through the chopper’s roar. I turned, saw a dark-skinned woman, five feet two or so, maybe a hundred pounds, make a run toward the yellow tape, crying out, “Rosa! Rosa! Madre de Dios, no!”

  A man running close behind her shouted, “Isabel, don’t go there. No, Isabel!” He caught up and pulled the woman into his arms and she beat at him with her fists, trying to break free, the cords in her neck stretched out as she cried, “No, no, no, mi bebé, mi bebé.”

  Police surrounded the couple, the woman’s frantic cries trailing behind as she was hustled away from the scene. The press, a pack of them, ran toward the parents of the dead child. You could almost see light glinting in their eyes. Pathetic.