James Patterson Page 6

  I nodded, told her that I turned away from my partner because someone called my name and that when I looked back again, he was closing the trunk of our car.

  “I didn’t ask Dennis what he was doing, because I was already thinking ahead. We had reports to write up, work to do. We had to start with identifying the deceased.

  “I was doing all the right stuff, Barbara,” I told her now. “I think it’s pretty common to block out things we don’t want to see. I should have confronted my partner right then and right there. But I didn’t do it. Turns out that that sneaky, half-seen moment changed my life.”

  Chapter 23

  A WAITRESS CAME OVER and asked if we wanted to refresh our drinks, and I was glad to see her. My throat was closing up and I needed to take a break. I’d told this story before, but it’s never easy to get past disgrace.

  Especially when you didn’t earn it.

  Levon said, “I know this is hard, Ben. But we appreciate your telling us about yourself. It’s important to hear.”

  “This is where it gets hard,” I told Levon.

  He nodded, and even though Levon probably had only ten years on me, I felt his fatherly concern.

  My second club soda arrived and I stirred at it with a straw. Then I went on.

  “A few days passed. The accident victim turned out to be a small-time drug dealer, Robby Snow, and his blood came back positive for heroin. And now his girlfriend called on us. Carrie Willis was her name. Carrie was crushed by Robby’s death, but something else was bothering her. She asked me, ‘What happened to Robby’s backpack? It was red with silver reflecting tape on the back. There was a lot of money in there.’

  “Well, we hadn’t found any red backpack, and there were a lot of jokes about Carrie Willis having the nerve to report stolen drug money to the police.

  “But Robby’s girlfriend was convincing. Carrie didn’t know that Robby was a dealer. She just knew that he was buying a piece of acreage by a creek and he was going to build a house there for the two of them. The bank papers and the full payment for the property — a hundred thousand dollars — were in that backpack because he was on his way to the closing. She put all that money in the backpack herself. Her story checked out.”

  “So you asked your partner about the backpack?” Barbara prompted.

  “Sure. I asked him. And he said, ‘Well, I sure as hell didn’t see a backpack, red or green or sky blue pink.’

  “So, at my insistence, we went to the impound, took the car apart, found nothing. Then we drove in broad daylight out to the woods where the accident happened and we searched the area. At least I did. I thought Denny was just rustling branches and kicking piles of leaves. That’s when I remembered his face getting foxy the night of the accident.

  “I had a long, hard talk with myself that night. The next day I went to my lieutenant for an off-the-record chat. I told him what I suspected, that a hundred thousand dollars in cash might have left the scene and was never reported.”

  Levon said, “Well, you had no choice.”

  “Denny Carbone was an old pit bull of a cop, and I knew if he learned about my conversation with the lieutenant he’d come at me. So I took a chance with my boss, and the next day Internal Affairs was in the locker room. Guess what they found in my locker?”

  “A red backpack,” said Levon.

  I gave him a thumbs-up. “Red backpack, silver reflecting tape, bank papers, heroin, and ten thousand dollars in cash.”

  “Oh, my God,” said Barbara.

  “I was given a choice. Resign. Or there would be a trial. My trial. I knew that I wasn’t going to win in court. It would be ‘he said/he said,’ and the evidence, some of it, anyway, had been found in my locker. Worse, I suspected that I was getting hung with this because my lieutenant was in on it with Denny Carbone.

  “A very bad day, blew up a lot of illusions for me. I turned in my badge, my gun, and some of my self-respect. I could’ve fought, but I couldn’t take a chance I’d go to jail for something I hadn’t done.”

  “That’s a sad story, Ben,” said Levon.

  “Yep. And you know how the story turns out. I moved to L.A. Got a job at the Times. And I wrote some books.” “You’re being modest,” Barbara said, and patted my arm. “Writing is what I do, but it’s not who I am.”

  “And who would you say you are?” she asked.

  “Right now, I’m working at being the best reporter I can be. I came to Maui to tell your daughter’s story, and, at the same time, I want you to have that happy ending. I want to see it, report it, be here for all the good feelings when Kim comes back safe. That’s who I am.”

  Barbara said, “We believe you, Ben.” And Levon nodded at her side.

  Like I said, Nice people.

  Chapter 24

  AMSTERDAM. Five twenty in the afternoon. Jan Van der Heuvel was in his office on the fifth floor of the classic, neck-gabled house, gazing out over the treetops at the sightseeing boat on the canal, waiting for time to pass.

  The door to his office opened, and Mieke, a pretty girl of twenty with short, dark hair, entered. She wore a small skirt and a fitted jacket, her long legs bare to her little lace-up boots. The girl lowered her eyes, said that if he didn’t need her for anything she would leave for the day.

  “Have a good evening,” Van der Heuvel said.

  He walked her to the office door and locked it behind her, returned to his seat at the long drawing table, and looked down at the street running along the Keizersgracht Canal until he saw Mieke get into her fiancé’s Renault and speed away.

  Only then did Van der Heuvel attend to his computer. The teleconference wasn’t for another forty minutes, but he wanted to establish contact early so that he could record the proceedings. He tapped keys until he made the connection and his friend’s face came on the screen.

  “Horst,” he said. “I am here.”

  At that same time, a brunette woman of forty was on the bridge of her 118-foot yacht anchored in the Mediterranean off the coast of Portofino. The yacht was custom-made, constructed of high-tensile aluminum with six cabins, a master suite, and a video conference center in the saloon, which easily converted to a cinema.

  The woman left her young captain and took the stairs down to her suite, where she removed a Versace jacket from the closet and slipped it on over her halter top. Then she crossed the galleyway to the media room and booted up her computer. When the connection was made to the encrypted line, she smiled into the webcam.

  “Gina Prazzi checking in, Horst. How are we today?”

  Four time zones away, in Dubai, a tall bearded man wearing traditional Middle Eastern clothing passed a mosque and hurried to a hole-in-the-wall restaurant down the street. He greeted the proprietor and continued on through the kitchen, aromatic with garlic and rosemary.

  Pushing aside a heavy curtain, he took the stairs down to the basement level and unlocked a heavy wooden door leading to a private room.

  In Hong Kong’s Victoria Peak section, a young chemist flicked on his computer. He was in his twenties with an IQ in the high 170s. As the software loaded, he looked through his curtains, down the long slope, past the tops of the cylindrical high-rises, and farther below to the brightly lit towers of Hong Kong. It was unusually clear for this time of year, and his gaze had drifted to Victoria Harbour and beyond, to the lights of Kowloon, when the computer signaled and he turned his attention to the emergency meeting of the Alliance.

  In So Paulo, Raphael dos Santos, a man of fifty, drove to his home at just past three in his new Wiesmann GT MF5 sports coupe. The car cost 250,000 U.S. dollars and went from zero to sixty in under four seconds with a top speed of 193 miles per hour. Rafi, as he was called, loved this car.

  He braked at the entrance to the underground garage, tossed the keys to Tomás, and took the elevator that opened inside his apartment.

  There he crossed several thousand square feet of Jatoba hardwood floors, passed ultramodern furnishings, and entered his home office with its v
iew of the gleaming facade of the Renaissance Hotel on Alameda Santos.

  Rafi pressed a button on his desk, and a thin screen rose vertically up through the center. He wondered again at the purpose of this meeting. Something had gone wrong. But what? He touched the keyboard and pressed his thumb to the ID pad.

  Rafi greeted the leader of the Alliance in Portuguese. “Horst, you old bastard. Make this good. You have our undivided attention!”

  Chapter 25

  IN THE SWISS ALPS, Horst Werner sat in the upholstered chair in his library. Flames leapt in the fireplace and pin lights illuminated the eight-foot-long scale model of the Bismarck he had made himself. There were bookshelves on every wall but no windows, and behind the cherrywood paneling was a three-inch-thick wall of lead-lined steel.

  Horst’s safe room was linked to the world by sophisticated Internet circuitry, giving him the feeling that this chamber was the very center of the universe.

  The dozen members of the Alliance had all signed on to the encrypted network. They all spoke English to greater and lesser degrees, their live pictures on his screen. After greeting them, Horst moved quickly to the point of the meeting.

  “An American friend has sent Jan a film as an amusement. I am very interested in your reaction.”

  A white light filled twelve linked computer screens and then clarified as the camera focused on a Jacuzzi-style tub. Inside the tub was a dark-skinned young girl, nude with long black hair, lying on her stomach in about four inches of water. She was tied up in the way that Americans quaintly call “hog-tied,” her hands and feet behind her with a rope that also passed around her throat.

  There was a man in the video, his back to the camera, and when he half turned, one of the Alliance members said, “Henri.”

  Henri was naked, sitting on the edge of the tub, the clear plastic mask obscuring his features. He spoke to the camera. “You see there is very little water, but enough. I don’t know which is more lethal for Rosa. Whether she will choke or if she will drown. Let’s watch and see.”

  Henri turned and spoke in Spanish to the sobbing child, then translated for the camera. “I told Rosa to keep her legs pulled back toward her head. I said if she could do that for another hour, I would let her live. Maybe.”

  Horst smiled at Henri’s audacity, the way he stroked the back of the child’s head, soothing her, but she cried out, clearly a great effort when she was so tired of trying to live.

  “Por favor. Déjame marchar. Eres malvado.”

  Henri spoke to the camera. “She says to let her go. That I am evil. Well. I love her anyway. Sweet child.”

  The girl continued to sob, gasping for air every time her legs relaxed and the rope tightened around her throat. She wailed, “Mama.” Then her head dropped, her final exhalation causing bubbles to break the surface of the water.

  Henri touched the side of her neck and shrugged. “It was the ropes,” he said. “Anyway, she committed suicide. A beautiful tragedy. Just what I promised.”

  He was smiling when the video faded to black.

  Gina spoke now, indignant. “Horst, this is in violation of his contract, yes?”

  “Actually, Henri’s contract only says he cannot take work that would prevent him from fulfilling his obligations to us.”

  “So. He is not technically in violation. He is just freelancing.”

  Jan’s voice came over the speakers. “Yes. You see how Henri looks for ways to give us the finger? This is unacceptable.”

  Raphael broke in. “Okay, he is difficult, but let’s admit, Henri has his genius. We should work with him. Give him a new contract.”

  “That says what, for example?”

  “Henri has been making short films for us like the one we just saw. I suggest we have him make… a documentary.”

  Jan jumped in, excited. “Very good, Rafi. Wall-to-wall with Henri. A year in the life, ja? Salary and bonuses commensurate with the quality of the action.”

  “Exactly. And he’s exclusive to us,” said Raphael. “He starts now, on location with the parents of the swimsuit girl.”

  The Alliance discussed terms, and they put some teeth into the contract, penalties for failure to perform. That phrase provided a light moment, and then, after they had voted, Horst made the call to Hawaii.

  Chapter 26

  THE McDANIELSES AND I were still in the Typhoon Bar as dusk dropped over the island. For the past hour, Barbara had sweated me like a pro. When she was satisfied that I was an okay guy, she brought me into her family’s lives with her passion and a natural gift for storytelling that I wouldn’t have expected from a high school math and science teacher.

  Levon could barely string two sentences together. He wasn’t inarticulate. He just wasn’t with us. I read him as choked up with fear and too anxious about his daughter to concentrate. But he expressed himself vividly with his body language, tightening his fists, turning away when tears welled up, frequently taking off his glasses and pressing his palms over his eyes.

  I’d asked Barbara, “How did you learn that Kim was missing?”

  At that, Levon’s cell phone rang. He looked at the faceplate and walked away toward the elevator.

  I heard him say, “Lieutenant Jackson? Not tonight? Why not?” After a pause, he said, “Okay. Eight a.m.”

  “Sounds like we have a date with the police in the morning. Come with us,” Barbara said. She took my phone number, patted my hand. And then, she kissed my cheek.

  I said good night to Barbara, then ordered another club soda, no lime, no ice. I sat in a comfortable chair overlooking the hundred-million-dollar view, and in the next fifteen minutes the atmosphere at the Typhoon Bar picked up considerably.

  Handsome people in fresh suntans and translucent clothing in snow-cone colors dropped into chairs at the railing while singles took the high-backed stools at the long bar. Laughter rose and fell like the warm breeze that gusted through the wide-open space, riffling hairlines and skirt hems as it passed.

  The piano player uncovered the Steinway, then turned sideways on the piano seat and broke into an old Peter Allen standard, delighting the crowd as he sang “I Go to Rio.”

  I noted the security cameras over the bar, dropped several bills on the table, and walked down the stairs and past the pool, lit now so that it looked like aqua-colored glass.

  I continued past the cabanas, taking a walk that Kim might have taken two nights ago.

  The beach was nearly empty of people, the sky still light enough to see the shoreline that ringed the whole of Maui like a halo around an eclipse of the moon.

  I pictured walking behind Kim on Friday night. Her head might have been down, hair whipping around her face, the strong surf obliterating all other sound.

  A man could have come up behind her with a rock, or a gun, or a simple choke hold.

  I walked on the hard-packed sand, passing hotels on my right, empty chaises and cockeyed umbrellas as far as I could see.

  After a quarter mile, I turned off the beach, walked up a path that skirted the Four Seasons, another five-star hotel where eight hundred bucks a night might buy a room with a view of the parking lot.

  I continued on through the hotel’s dazzling marble lobby and out to the street. Fifteen minutes later I was back sitting in my rented Chevy, parked in the leafy shadows surrounding the Wailea Princess, listening to the rush of waterfalls.

  If I’d been a killer, I could’ve dumped my victim into the surf or slung her over my shoulder and carried her out to my car. I could’ve left the scene without anyone noticing.

  Easy breezy.

  Chapter 27

  I STARTED my engine and followed the moon to Stella Blues, a cheerful café in Kihei. It has high, peaked ceilings and a wraparound bar, now buzzing with a weekend crowd of locals and cruise ship tourists enjoying their first night in port. I ordered a Jack Daniel’s and mahimahi from the bar, took my drink outside to a table for two on the patio.

  As the votive candle guttered in its glass, I called Amand
a.

  Amanda Diaz and I had been together for almost two years. She’s five years younger than me, a pastry chef and a self-described biker chick, which means she takes her antique Harley for a run on the Pacific Coast Highway some weekends to blow off the steam she can’t vent in the kitchen. Mandy is not only smart and gorgeous, but when I look at her, all those rock-and-roll songs about booming hearts and loving her till the day I die make total sense.

  Right then I was aching to hear my sweetie’s voice, and she didn’t disappoint, answering the phone on the third ring. After some verbal high fives, and at my request, she told me about her day at Intermezzo.