“It was Groundhog Day, Benjy. Rémy fired Rocco, again,” Amanda said, going into a French accent now. ‘What I have to say to you to make you think like chef? This confit. It looks like pigeon poop.’ He put about twelve ooohs in poop.”
She laughed, said, “Hired him back ten minutes later. As usual. And then I scorched the cr
me brqlée. ‘Merde, Ahmandah, mon Dieu. You are making me craaaaa-zy.’ ” She laughed again. “And you, Benjy? Are you getting your story?”
“I met with the missing girl’s folks. They’re talking to me.”
“Oh, boy. How grim was that?”
I caught Mandy up on the interview with Barbara, told her how much I liked the McDanielses and that they had two other kids, both boys adopted from Russian orphanages.
“Their oldest son was almost catatonic from neglect when the police in Saint Petersburg found him. The younger boy has fetal alcohol syndrome. Kim decided to become a pediatrician because of her brothers.”
“Ben, honey?”
“ Uh-huh. Am I breaking up?”
“No, I can hear you. Can you hear me?”
“Totally.”
“Then listen. Be careful, will you?”
I felt a slight burr of irritation. Amanda was uncommonly intuitive, but I was in no danger.
“Careful of what?”
“Remember when you left your briefcase with all of your notes on the Donato story in a diner?”
“You’re going to bring up the bus again, aren’t you?”
“Since you mention it.”
“I was under your spell, goofball. I was looking at you when I stepped off the curb. If you were here now, it could happen again —”
“What I’m saying is, you sound the same way now as you did then.”
“I do, huh?”
“Yeah, you kinda do. So watch out, okay? Pay attention. Look both ways.”
Ten feet away, a couple clinked glasses, held hands across a small table. Honeymooners, I thought.
“I miss you,” I said.
“I miss you, too. I’m keeping the bed warm for you, so come home soon.”
I sent a wireless kiss to my girl in L.A. and said good night.
Chapter 28
AT SEVEN FIFTEEN Monday morning, Levon watched the driver pull the black sedan up to the entrance of the Wailea Princess. Levon got into the front passenger seat as Hawkins and Barb got into the back, and when all the doors had slammed shut, Levon told Marco to please take them to the police station in Kihei.
During the ride, Levon half listened as Hawkins talked, telling him how to handle the police, saying to be helpful, to make the cops your friends and not to be belligerent because that would work against them.
Levon had nodded, grunted “uh-huh” a few times, but he was inside his head, wouldn’t have been able to describe the route between the hotel and the police station, his mind fully focused on the upcoming meeting with Lieutenant James Jackson.
Levon came back to the present as Marco was parking at the mini–strip mall, and he jumped out before the car had fully stopped. He walked straight up to the shoebox-sized substation, a storefront wedged between a tattoo parlor and a pizzeria.
The glass door was locked, and so Levon jabbed the intercom button and spoke his name, saying to the female voice that he had an appointment at eight with Lieutenant Jackson. There was a buzz and the door opened and they were in.
The station looked to Levon like a small-town DMV. The walls were bureaucrat green; the floor, a buffed linoleum; the long hallway-width room lined with facing rows of plastic chairs.
At the end of the narrow room was a reception window, its metal shutter rolled down, and beside it was a closed door. Levon sat down next to Barbara, and Hawkins sat across from them with his notebook sticking out of his breast pocket, and they waited.
At a few minutes past eight, the shuttered window opened and people trickled in to pay parking tickets, register their cars, God knows what else. Guys with Rasta hair; girls with complicated tattoos; young moms with small, bawling kids.
Levon felt a stabbing pain behind his eyes, and he thought about Kim, wanting to know where she could be right now and if she was in any pain and why this had happened.
After a while, he stood up and paced along the gallery of Wanted posters, looked into the staring eyes of murderers and armed robbers, and then there were the missing-children posters, some of them digitally altered to age the kids to how they might look now, having disappeared so many years ago.
Behind him, Barbara said to Hawkins, “Can you believe it? We’ve been here two hours. Don’t you just want to scream?”
And Levon did want to scream. Where was his daughter? He leaned down and spoke to the female officer behind the window. “Does Lieutenant Jackson know we’re here?”
“Yes, sir, he sure does.”
Levon sat down next to Barb, pinched the place between his eyes, wondered why Jackson was taking so long. And he thought about Hawkins, how he’d gotten in very tight with Barb. Levon trusted Barb’s judgment, but, like a lot of women, she made friends fast. Sometimes too fast.
Levon watched Hawkins writing in his notebook and then some teenage girls joined the line at the front desk, talking in high-pitched chatter that just about took off the top of his head.
By ten fifteen, Levon’s agitation was like the rumbling of the volcanoes that had raised this island out of the prehistoric sea. He felt ready to explode.
Chapter 29
I WAS SITTING in a hard plastic chair next to Barbara McDaniels when I heard the door open at the end of the long, narrow room. Levon leapt up from his seat and was practically in the cop’s face before the door swung closed.
The cop was big, midthirties, with thick black hair and mocha-toned skin. He looked part Jimmy Smits, part Ben Affleck, and part island surfer god. Wore a jacket and tie, had a shield hooked into the waistband of his chinos, a gold one, which meant he was a detective.
Barbara and I joined Levon, who introduced us to Lieutenant Jackson. Jackson asked me, “What’s your relationship to the McDanielses?”
“Friend of the family,” Barbara said at the same time that I said, “I’m with the L.A. Times.”
Jackson snorted a laugh, scrutinized me, then asked, “Do you know Kim?”
No.
“Have any information as to her whereabouts?”
No.
“Do you know these people? Or did you meet them, say, yesterday?”
“We just met.”
“Interesting,” Jackson said, smirking now. He said to the McDanielses. “You understand this man’s job is to sell newspapers?”
“We know that,” Levon said.
“Good. Just so you’re clear, anything you say to Mr. Hawkins is going directly from your mouths to the front page of the L.A. Times. Speaking for myself,” Jackson went on, “I don’t want him here. Mr. Hawkins, have a seat, and if I need you, I’ll call you.”
Barbara spoke up. “Lieutenant, my husband and I talked it over last night, and it comes down to this. We trust Ben, and he has the power of the L.A. Times behind him. He might be able to do more for us than we can do alone.”
Jackson exhaled his exasperation but seemed to concede the point. He said to me, “Anything out of my mouth has to be okayed by me before you run with it, understand?”
I said I did.
Jackson’s office took up a corner at the back of the building, had one window and a noisy air conditioner; numbers were written on the blue plasterboard walls near the phone.
Jackson indicated chairs for the McDanielses, and I leaned against the doorframe as he flapped open a notepad, took down basic information.
Then he got down to business, working, I thought, off a notion that Kim was a party girl, questioning her late-night habits and asking about men in her life and drug use.
Barbara told Jackson that Kim was a straight-A student. That she had sponsored a Christian Children’s Fund baby in Ecuador. That she was responsibl
e to a fault and the fact that she hadn’t returned their call was way out of character.
Jackson listened with a mostly bored look on his face before saying, “Yeah, I’m sure she’s an angel. I’m waiting for the day someone comes in, says their kid is a meth head or a slut.”
Levon sprang to his feet, and Jackson stood up a beat after that, but by then Levon had the advantage. He shoved his palms into Jackson’s beefy shoulders, sending him backward into the wall, which shook with a loud crack. Plaques and photos crashed to the floor, which is what you’d expect when 180 pounds or so was used as a wrecking ball.
Jackson was the bigger and younger man, but Levon was mainlining adrenaline. Without pause, he reached down and grabbed Jackson up by his lapels and threw him against the wall again. There was another terrible crashing sound as Jackson’s head bounced off the plasterboard. I watched him grab for the arm of his chair, which toppled, and sent him down a third time.
It was an ugly scene even before Levon crowned the moment.
He stared down at Jackson, and said, “Damn, that felt good. You son of a bitch.”
Chapter 30
A HEAVYSET FEMALE OFFICER BARRELED toward the doorway as I stood there like a stump, trying to absorb that Levon had assaulted a cop, shoved him, thrown him down, cursed at him, and said it felt good.
Now Jackson was on his feet, and Levon was still panting. The woman cop yelled, “Hey, what’s going on?”
Jackson said, “We’re fine here, Millie. Lost my balance. Gonna need a new chair.” And he waved her off. Then he turned back to Levon, who was shouting at him, “Don’t you get it? I told you last night. We got a fricking phone call in Michigan. The man said he took my daughter, and you’re trying to say Kim’s a tramp?”
Jackson straightened his jacket, his tie, righted his chair. His face was red and he was scowling. He jerked the chair around, then shouted back at Levon, “You’re crazy, McDaniels.
You realize what you just did, you stupid fuck? You want to be locked up? Do you? You think you’re a tough guy? You want to find out just how tough I am? I could arrest your ass and have you put away for this, don’t you know that?”
“Yeah, throw me in jail, damn you. Do that, because I want to tell the world how you treated us. What a yahoo you are.”
“Levon, Levon,” Barbara was up, begging her husband, pulling at his arm. “Stop, Levon. Control yourself. Apologize to the lieutenant, please.”
Jackson sat down, rolled his chair up to his desk, said, “McDaniels, don’t ever put a hand on me again. Due to the fact that you’re out of your fucking mind, I’ll minimize what just happened in my report. Now sit down before I change my mind and arrest you.”
Levon was still blowing hard, but Jackson gestured to the chairs, and Levon and Barbara sat down.
Jackson touched the back of his head, rubbed his elbow, then said, “Half the time, a kid goes missing, one of the parents knows what happened. Sometimes both of them. I had to see where you were coming from.”
Levon and Barbara stared. And we all got it. Jackson had provoked them to see how they’d react.
It had been a test. They’d passed. In a manner of speaking.
“We’ve been investigating this case since yesterday morning. Like I told you when I called,” Jackson said, glaring at Levon. “We’ve met with the Sporting Life people, also the desk and bar staff at the Princess. So far, we got nothing from that.”
Jackson opened his desk drawer, took out a cell phone, one of those thin, half-human devices that takes pictures, sends mail, and tells you when you’re low on oil.
“This is Kim’s phone,” Jackson said. “We found it on the beach behind the Princess. We’ve dumped the data and found a number of phone calls to Kim from a man named Doug Cahill.”
“Cahill?” Levon said. “Doug Cahill used to date Kim. He lives in Chicago.”
Jackson shook his head. “He was calling Kim from Maui. Called her every hour until her mailbox filled up and stopped taking incoming calls.”
“You’re saying Doug is here?” Barbara asked. “He’s in Maui now?”
“We located Cahill in Makena, worked on him for two hours last night before he lawyered up. He said he hadn’t seen Kim. That she wouldn’t talk to him. And we couldn’t hold him, because we have nothing on him,” Jackson said, putting Kim’s cell phone back in the drawer.
“McDaniels, here’s what we’ve got. You got a phone call saying Kim was in bad hands. And we have Kim’s cell phone. We don’t even know if a crime has been committed. If Cahill gets on a plane, there’s nothing we can do to stop him from leaving.”
I saw Barbara start, shock coming over her face again.
“Doug’s not your guy,” Levon said.
Jackson’s eyebrows shot up. “Why do you say that?”
“I know Doug’s voice. The man who called us wasn’t Doug.”
Chapter 31
WE WERE BACK in the black sedan. This time I was in front, beside the driver. Marco adjusted his rearview mirror, and we exchanged nods, but there was nothing to say. It was all going on in the backseat between Barbara and Levon.
Levon was explaining to his wife, “Barb. I didn’t tell you what that bastard said verbatim because there was nothing to be gained from it. I’m sorry.”
“I’m your wife. You had no right to hold back what he said.”
“ ‘She’s fallen into bad hands,’ okay? That’s the only thing I didn’t tell you, and I still wouldn’t tell you, but I had to tell Jackson. I tried to spare you, sweetheart, I wanted to spare you.”
Barb cried, “Spare me? You lied to me, Levon. You lied.” And then Levon was crying too, and I realized that this was what had been binding Levon up, why he’d been so glassy-eyed and removed. A man had said that he was going to hurt his daughter and Levon hadn’t told his wife. And now he couldn’t pretend anymore that it wasn’t true.
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.”
Chapter 32
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.
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