Barb couldn’t stand to be in the same room with Carol.
The senior suit, Barb forgot his name as soon as she heard it, told Levon, “We have a security team working to find out where Kim may have gone.”
He didn’t even look at Barb. Directed his attention to Levon. Pretty much, they all did. She knew she looked emotional, fragile. And who could say she didn’t have good reason.
“What more can you tell us?” Barb asked the lawyer.
“There’s no sign that anything happened to her. The police assume she’s sightseeing.”
Barb thought, Levon, tell them, but Levon had said to her before the magazine people arrived, “We’ll take information in. We’ll listen. But we’ve got to keep in mind that we don’t know these people.” Meaning, anyone attached to the magazine could have had something to do with Kim’s disappearance.
Susan Gruber put her elbows on her knees and leaned forward, said to Levon, “Kim was inside the hotel bar with Del, and Del went to the men’s room, and when he returned, Kim was gone. No one took Kim. She left on her own.”
“So that’s the story?” Levon asked. “Kim left the hotel bar on her own, and no one’s heard from her, and she’s been gone for a day and a half, and that means to you that Kim ditched the shoot and went sightseeing? Am I getting that right?”
“She’s an adult, Mr. McDaniels,” Gruber said. “It wouldn’t be the first time a girl dumped a job. I remember this girl, Gretchen, took off in Cannes last year, showed up in Monte Carlo six days later.”
Gruber was talking like this was her office, and she was patiently explaining her job to Levon. “We’ve got eight girls on this shoot.” She went on to say how many people she had to supervise and all the things she had to cover, and how she had to be on the set every minute or looking at the day’s shots…
Barbara felt the pressure building inside her head. All that gold on Susan Gruber, but no wedding ring. Did she have a child? Did she even know one? Susan Gruber didn’t get it.
“We love Kim,” Carol Sweeney blurted to Barb. “I… I felt that Kim was safe here. I was having dinner with one of the other models. I mean, Kim is such a good girl and so responsible, I never thought we had reason to worry.”
“I only turned my back for a minute,” said Del Swann. And then he started to cry.
It all became clear to Barb, why Gruber had brought her people to see them. Barbara had been raised to be nice, but now that she’d stopped denying the obvious, she had to say it.
“You’re not responsible? Is that why you’re all here? To tell us that you’re not responsible for Kim?”
No one met her gaze.
“We’ve told the police everything we know,” said Gruber.
Levon stood up, put his hand on Barb’s shoulder, and said to the magazine people, “Please call if you learn anything. Right now, we’d like to be alone. Thanks.”
Gruber stood, slung the strap of her handbag across her narrow chest, said, “Kim will be back. Don’t worry.”
“You mean, you hope and pray with every miserable breath you take,” said Barbara.
Chapter 19
A MAN STOOD in the thick of the media gaggle outside the Wailea Princess main entrance, waiting for the press conference to start.
He blended in well, appeared to be a guy living out of a duffel bag, maybe sleeping on the beach. He had on sports sunglasses wrapped around his face like a windshield, even though the sun was going down. Dodgers cap over his rusty brown hair, vintage Adidas, rumpled cargo pants, and hanging down in front of his cheap Hawaiian shirt was a perfect replica of a press pass identifying him as a photographer, Charles Rollins of Talk Weekly, a publication that didn’t exist.
His video camera was expensive, though, a state-of-the-art Panasonic, HD-compatible with a stereo microphone boom and a Leica lens, costing over six thousand bucks.
He pointed the lens at the grand front entrance of the Wailea Princess, where the McDanielses were taking up their positions behind a lectern.
As Levon adjusted the mic, Rollins whistled a few notes through his teeth. He was enjoying himself now, thinking that even Kim wouldn’t recognize him if she were alive. He lifted his vid cam over his head and recorded Levon greeting the press, thinking he’d like the McDanielses if he got to know them. Well, fuck it anyway, he already liked them. What was not to like about the McDanielses?
Look at them.
Sweet, feisty Barbara. Levon, with the heart of a five-star general. Both of them, salt of the fucking earth.
They were grief-wracked and terrified, but still comporting themselves with dignity, answering insensitive questions, even the de rigueur “What would you say to Kim if she’s listening to you now?”
“I’d say, ‘We love you, darling. Please be strong,’ ” Barbara said with a quavering voice. “And to everyone hearing us, please, we’re offering twenty-five thousand dollars for information leading to the return of our daughter. If we had a million, we’d offer that…”
And then Barbara’s air seemed to run out. She turned, and Rollins saw her take a hit off an inhaler. And still, questions were fired at the supermodel’s parents: Levon, Levon! Have you gotten a ransom demand? What was the last thing Kim said to you?
Levon leaned toward the microphones, answered the questions very patiently, finally saying, “The hotel management has set up a hotline number,” and he read it to the crowd.
Rollins watched the journalists jumping up like flying fish, calling out more questions even as the McDanielses were stepping down, moving toward the embrace of the hotel lobby.
Rollins looked through his lens, zoomed in on the back of the McDanielses’ heads, saw someone coming through the crowd, a semicelebrity he’d seen on C-Span hawking his books.
The subject of Rollins’s interest was a good-looking guy of about forty, a journalist and best-selling detective novelist, dressed in Dockers and a pink button-down shirt, sleeves rolled up. Kind of reminded him of Brian Williams reporting from Baghdad. Maybe a little more rough-and-ready.
As Rollins watched, the writer reached out and touched Barbara McDaniels’s arm, and Barbara stopped to speak with him.
Charlie Rollins saw an interview with the legitimate press in the making. He thought, No kidding. The Peepers will love this. Kim McDaniels is going big-time. This is turning into a very big event, indeed.
Chapter 20
THE JOURNALIST in the Dockers and pink shirt?
That was me.
I saw an opening as Levon and Barbara McDaniels stepped away from the lectern, the crowd closing in, circling them like a twister.
I lunged forward, touched Barbara McDaniels’s arm, catching her attention before she disappeared into the lobby.
I wanted the interview, but no matter how many times you see parents of lost or abducted children begging for their son or daughter’s safe return, you cannot fail to be moved.
Barbara and Levon McDaniels had gotten to me as soon as I saw their faces. It killed me to see them in such pain.
Now I had my hand gently on Barbara McDaniels’s arm. She turned, and I introduced myself, handed her my card, and lucky for me, she knew my name. “Are you the Ben Hawkins who wrote Red?
“Put It All on Red, yes, that’s mine.”
She said she liked the book, her mouth smiling, although her face was rigid with anguish. Right then, hotel security made a cordon with their arms, a path through the crowd, and I walked into the lobby with Barbara, who introduced me to Levon.
“Ben’s a best-selling author, Levon. You remember, we read him for our book club last fall.”
“I’m covering Kim’s story for the L.A. Times,” I told Mr. McDaniels.
Levon said, “If you want an interview, I’m sorry. We’re out of steam, and it’s probably best that we don’t talk further until we meet with the police.”
“You haven’t spoken with them yet?”
Levon sighed, shook his head. “Ever talk to an answering machine?”
�
�I might be able to help,” I said. “The L.A. Times has clout, even here. And I used to be a cop.”
“Is that right?” Levon McDaniels’s eyelids were sagging, his voice ragged and raw. He walked like a man who’d just run his feet off in a marathon, but he was suddenly interested in me. He stopped walking and asked me to tell him more.
“I was with the Portland PD. I was a detective, an investigator. Right now I cover the crime desk for the Times.”
McDaniels winced at the word “crime,” said, “Okay, Ben. You think you can give us a hand with the police? We’re going out of our minds.”
I walked with the McDanielses through the cool marble lobby with its high ceilings and ocean views until we found a semisecluded spot overlooking the pool. Palm trees rustled in the island breeze. Wet kids in bathing suits ran past us, laughing, not a care in the world.
Levon said, “I called the police several times and got a menu. ‘Parking tickets, press one. Night court, press two.’ I had to leave a message. Can you believe that?
“Barb and I went over to the station for this district. Hours were posted on the door. Monday to Friday, eight to five, Saturday, ten to four. I didn’t know police stations had closing hours. Did you?”
The look in Levon’s eyes was heartbreaking. His daughter was missing. The police station was closed for business. How could this place look the way it did — vacation heaven — when they were slogging through seven kinds of hell?
“The police here mostly do traffic work, DWIs, stuff like that,” I said. “Domestic violence, burglary.”
I thought, but didn’t say, that a few years ago a twenty-five-year-old female tourist was attacked on the Big Island by three local hoods who beat her and raped her and killed her.
She’d been tall, blond, sweet-looking, not unlike Kim.
There was another case, more famous, a cheerleader for the University of Illinois who’d fallen off the balcony of her hotel room and died instantly. She’d been partying with a couple of boys who were found not guilty of anything. And there was another girl, a local teenager, who called her friends after a concert on the island, and was never seen again.
“Your press conference was a good thing. The police will have to take Kim seriously,” I said.
“If I don’t get a call back, I’m going over there again in the morning,” Levon McDaniels said. “Right now we want to go to the bar, see where Kim was hanging out before she vanished. You’re welcome to join us.”
Chapter 21
THE TYPHOON BAR was on the mezzanine floor, open to the trade winds, wonderfully scented by plumeria. Café tables and chairs were lined up at the balustrade, overlooking the pool and beyond, a queue of palm trees down to the sands. To my left was a grand piano, still covered, and there was a long bar behind us. A bartender was setting up, slicing lemon peel, putting out dishes of nuts.
Barbara spoke. “The night manager told us that Kim was sitting at this table, the one nearest the piano,” Barbara said, tenderly patting the table’s marble surface.
Then she pointed to an alcove fifteen yards away. “That would be the famous men’s room over there. Where the art director went, to ah, just turn his back for a minute…”
I imagined the bar as it must have been that night. People drinking. A lot of men. I had plenty of questions. Hundreds of them.
I was starting to look at this story as if I were still a cop. If this were my case, I’d start with the security tapes. I’d want to see who was in the bar when Kim was there. I’d want to know if anybody had been watching her when she’d gotten up from this table, and who might have paid the check after she left.
Had Kim departed with someone? Maybe gone to his room?
Or had she walked to the lobby, eyes following her as she made her way down the stairs, her blond hair swinging.
What then? Had she walked outside, past the pool and the cabanas? Had any of those cabanas been occupied late that night? Had someone followed her out to the beach?
Levon carefully polished his glasses, one lens, then the other, and held them out to see if he’d done a good job. When he put them back on, he saw me looking out at the covered walkway beyond the pool area that led to the beach.
“What do you think, Ben?”
“All of the beaches in Hawaii are public property, so there won’t be any video surveillance out there.”
I was wondering if the simplest explanation fit. Had Kim gone for a swim? Had she waded out into the water and gotten sucked under by a wave? Had someone found her shoes on the beach and taken them?
“What can we tell you about Kim?” Barbara asked me.
“I want to know everything,” I said. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to tape our conversation.”
Barbara nodded, and Levon ordered G and Ts for them both. I was working, so I declined alcohol, asked for club soda instead.
I had already started shaping the Kim McDaniels story in my mind, thinking about this beautiful girl from the heartland, with brains and beauty, on the verge of national fame, and about how she had come to one of the most beautiful spots on earth and disappeared without trace or reason. An exclusive with the McDanielses was more than I’d hoped for, and while I still couldn’t know if Kim’s story was a book, it was definitely a journalistic whopper.
And more than that, I’d been won over by the McDanielses. They were nice people.
I wanted to help them, and I would.
Right now, they were exhausted, but they weren’t leaving the table. The interview was on.
My tape recorder was new, the tape just unwrapped and the batteries fresh. I pushed Record, but, as the machine whirred softly on the table, Barbara McDaniels surprised me.
It was she who started asking questions.
Chapter 22
BARBARA RESTED her chin on her hands, and asked, “What happened with you and the Portland police department — and please don’t tell me what it says in your book jacket bio. That’s just PR, isn’t it?”
Barbara let me know by her focus and determination that if I didn’t answer her questions, she had no reason to answer mine. I wanted to cooperate because I thought she was right to check me out, and I wanted the McDanielses to trust me.
I smiled at Barbara’s direct interrogatory style, but there was nothing amusing about the story she was asking me to tell. Once I sent my mind back to that place and time, the memories rolled in, unstoppable, none of them glorifying, none of them very pleasant, either.
As the still-vivid images flashed on the wide screen inside my head, I told the McDanielses about a fatal car wreck that had happened many years ago; that my partner, Dennis Carbone, and I had been nearby and had responded to the call.
“When we got to the scene, there was about a half hour left of daylight. It was gloomy with a drizzling rain, but there was enough light to see that a vehicle had skidded off the road. It had caromed off some trees like a two-ton eight ball, crashing out of control through the woods.
“I radioed for help,” I said now. “Then I was the one who stayed behind to interview the witness who’d been driving the other car — while my partner went to the crashed vehicle to see if there were survivors.”
I told the McDanielses that the witness had been driving the car coming from the opposite direction, that the other vehicle, a black Toyota pickup, had been in his lane, coming at him fast. He said that he’d swerved, and so had the Toyota. The witness was shaken as he described how the pickup had left the road at high speed, said that he’d braked — and I could see and smell the hundred yards of rubber he’d left on the asphalt.
“Response and rescue vehicles showed up,” I said. “The paramedics pulled the body out of the pickup, told me that the driver had been killed on impact with a spruce tree and that he’d had no passengers.
“As the dead man was taken away, I looked for my partner. He was a few yards off the roadside, and I caught him sneaking a look in my direction. A little odd, like he was trying not to be seen doing something.”<
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There was a sudden flurry of girlish laughter as a bride, surrounded by her maids of honor, passed through the bar to the lounge. The bride was a pretty blonde in her twenties. Happiest day of her life, right?
Barbara turned to see the bridal party, then turned back to look at me. Anyone with eyes could see what she was feeling. And what she was hoping.
“Go on, Ben,” she said. “You were talking about your partner with the guilty look.”
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