Barbara was gagging and sobbing, telling him to stop, but Levon was in a different kind of hell, clearly trying to balance his grief and horror with a desire to keep the two of them alive.
He'd said, “Let us go, Henri. We don't know who you really are. We can't hurt you.”
Henri had said, “It's not that I want to kill you, Levon. It's about the money. Yes. I make money by killing you.”
“I can get you money,” Levon said. “I'll beat their offer. I will!”
And now there on his laptop, Barbara was pleading for her boys. Henri stopped her, saying it was time for him to go.
He'd stepped on the gas, the soft tires rolling easily over the sand, the car plowing into the surf. When it had good momentum, Henri had gotten out of the car, walked alongside it, until the water rose up to the windshield.
Inside, the camera on the rearview had recorded the McDanielses begging, the water sloshing over the window frames, rising up the seats where the McDanielses' arms were locked behind them, their bodies lashed in place with the seat belts.
Still he'd given them hope.
“I'm leaving the light on so you can record your goodbyes,” he heard himself saying on the small screen. “And someone on the road could see you. You could be rescued. Don't count it out. But if I were you, I'd pray for that.”
He had wished them luck, then waded back up to the beach. He'd stood under the trees and watched the car sink completely in only about three minutes. Faster than he would have guessed. Merciful. So maybe there was a God after all.
When the dome light winked out, he'd changed his clothes, then walked up the highway until he caught a ride.
Now he closed his laptop, finished the champagne as the hostess handed him the lunch menu. He decided on the duck r l'orange, put on his Bose speakers, and listened to some Brahms. Soothing. Beautiful. Perfect.
The last few days had been exceptional, a fantastic drama every minute, a highlight of his life.
He was quite sure everybody would be happy.
Chapter 56
Hours later, Henri Benoit was in the washroom of the first-class flight lounge at Honolulu International. The first leg of his flight had been a pleasure, and he was looking forward to the same for his flight to Bangkok.
He washed his hands, checked out his new persona in the mirror. He was a Swiss businessman based in Geneva. His white-blond hair was short, his eyeglass frames were large and horn-rimmed, giving him an erudite look, and he wore a five-thousand-dollar suit with some fine handmade English shoes.
He had just sent a few frames of the McDanielses' last moments to the Peepers, knowing that by this time tomorrow, there would be a good many more euros in his bank account in Zurich.
Henri left the washroom, went to the main waiting area in the lounge, set his briefcase beside him, and relaxed in a soft gray chair. Breaking news was coming over the television, a cable news special. The anchorwoman Gloria Roja was reporting on a crime that she said “evoked horror and outrage.”
She went on, “A young woman's decapitated body has been founded in a rental cabin on a beach in Maui. Sources close to the police department say the victim has been dead for several days.”
Roja turned to the large screen behind her and introduced a local reporter, Kai McBride, on the ground in Maui.
McBride said into the camera, “This morning, Ms. Maura Aluna, the owner of this beach camp, found the decapitated head and body of a young woman inside. Ms. Aluna told police that she had rented her house to a man over the telephone and that his credit card cleared. Any minute now, we expect Lieutenant Jackson of the Kihei PD to make a statement.”
McBride turned away briefly from the camera, then said, “Gloria, Lieutenant James Jackson is coming out of the house now.”
McBride ran, and her cameraman ran right alongside her, the picture jiggling. McBride shouted, “Lieutenant, Lieutenant Jackson, can you give us a minute?”
The camera closed in on the lieutenant.
“I have nothing to say to the press at this time.”
“I have just one question, sir.”
Henri leaned forward in his seat in the flight lounge, transfixed by the dramatic scene that was unfolding on the large screen.
He was witnessing the endgame in real time. This was just too good to be true. What he'd do later is lift the broadcast from the network's Web site, cut it into his video. He'd have the whole Hawaiian saga, the beginning, middle, phenomenal ending, and now – this epilogue.
Henri quashed a giddy desire to say to the guy sitting two seats away, “Look at that cop, would you? That Lieutenant Jackson. His skin is green. I think he's going to throw up.”
On screen, the reporter persisted.
“Lieutenant Jackson, is it Kim? Is the body you found that of the supermodel Kim McDaniels?”
Jackson spoke, tripping over his words. “No comment at this, on this. We're right in the middle of something,” he said. “We've got a lot of moves we have to make. Will you turn that thing off? We never comment on an ongoing investigation, McBride. You know that.”
Kai McBride turned back to the camera.
“I'm going to take a wild flying leap and say that Lieutenant Jackson's no-comment dodgeball was a confirmation, Gloria. We're all waiting now for a positive ID that the victim was Kim McDaniels. This is Kai McBride, reporting from Maui.”
Chapter 57
That morning at low tide the roof of a car had looked at first to the passing jogger like the shell of a giant sea turtle. When he realized what it was, he'd called the police and they'd responded in force.
Now the crane had lowered the waterlogged car to the beach. The fire department crew, search and rescue, and cops from two islands were standing in groups on the sand, watching the Pacific flow out of the chassis.
A cop opened one of the back doors and called out, “Two DBs wearing their seat belts. I recognize them. Jesus God. It's the McDanielses. The parents.”
My stomach dropped, and I spewed a string of curse words that didn't make any literal sense, just me venting all the bile I could without getting physically violent or sick.
Eddie Keola was standing beside me outside the yellow tape that ran from a branch of driftwood to a chunk of lava rock thirty yards away. Keola was not only my ticket to police intel and crime scenes, but I was starting to think of him as the younger brother I never had.
Actually, we looked nothing alike, except that we both looked like shit right now.
More vehicles pulled up, some with sirens, some without, all braking on the potholed asphalt running above and parallel to the beach, a road that had been closed for repairs.
These new additions to the law enforcement fleet were black SUVs, and the men who got out of them wore jackets stenciled “FBI.”
A cop friend of Eddie's came over to us, said, “Only thing I can tell you is that the McDanielses were seen having dinner at the Kamehameha Hostel. They were with a white man, six foot or so, grayish hair and glasses. They left with him, and that's all we've got. Based on that description, the guy they had dinner with could've been anyone.”
“Thanks,” said Eddie.
“It's okay, but now you guys really have to leave.”
Eddie and I walked up a sandy ramp to Eddie's Jeep.
I was glad to go.
I didn't want to see the corpses of those two good people I'd come to care about so very much. Eddie drove me back to the Marriott, and we sat in the lot for a while just chewing it over.
The deaths of everyone attached to this crime spree had been premeditated, calculated, almost artistic, the work of a very smart and practiced killer who'd left no clues behind. I felt sorry for the people who had to solve this crime. And now Aronstein was terminating my all-expenses-paid Hawaiian holiday.