Micro - Michael Crichton [51]
She got out a sweater and a well-thumbed Conrad novel, Chance. “Are you sure, Vin? Seems like a setup.”
“Has his name in it.”
“All right. Who’s next to him?”
“Jenny. She feels sorry for him.”
A delicate printed scarf, a belt of white python, shoved back.
“Expensive. Isn’t that illegal?”
“Python? Just in California.”
Then Peter Jansen’s glasses, a pair he was always losing; Erika Moll’s bathing suit; and a pair of board shorts.
They went on to finish dressing the front seat, with Karen King driving. Then Vin Drake splashed lab alcohol over the back of the car, cracked the bottle, dropped it in the front, where it would catch under the dashboard.
“Don’t want to overdo it.” He looked around, at the fleecy clouds in dark blue, the white surf far below. “Beautiful night,” he said, shaking his head. “Beautiful world we live in.” He walked to the left side of the car and surveyed it from a distance. “There’s a downslope just ahead,” he said. “Drive a few yards until you hit the downslope, and then you can get out and we can push the rest.”
“Hey.” Alyson held up her hands. “I, uh…I don’t want to get in there again, Vin.”
“Don’t be silly. We’re talking ten feet of driving. Just ten feet.”
“But what if something—”
“Nothing will happen.”
“Why don’t you drive to the downslope, Vin?”
“Alyson.” A firm eye in the darkness. “I’m taller, I’d have to move the seat back, it would look suspicious in a police investigation.”
“But—”
“We agreed.” He opened the door for her. “Come on, now.”
She hesitated.
“We agreed, Alyson.”
She got behind the wheel, shivering despite the evening warmth.
“Now put up the top,” he said.
“The top? Why?” she asked.
“To keep everything in the car.”
She turned on the engine, pressed a button, and the Bentley’s top rose and folded over. Vin stood some distance away, and with his hand indicated for her to move the car forward. The car tilted downward, slid a few feet—she yelped—then it skidded to a stop.
“Okay, perfect,” Vin said, reaching into his pocket for the nitrile lab gloves. “Keep it there. In park, engine on.”
He came forward, and she started to get out. She didn’t hear the snapping sounds as he drew on the gloves. In a swift movement he slammed the door shut, locked it, reached in through the window, and grabbed her by the hair with both hands. He slammed her head against the metal of the windshield frame, where there was less padding. She started to scream but he pounded her head again and again. Then he banged her forehead on the steering wheel a few times to be sure. She was still conscious but that wouldn’t matter for long. He reached across her back and jerked the car into drive. It was awkward. He fell backward as the Bentley rolled past him, over the broken bridge, and then twisting, dropping six hundred feet to the river and ocean below.
Drake scrambled to his feet. He was too late to see the impact. Yet he heard it, the rending of metal against stone. The convertible had landed upside down, and he watched for a while, to see if there was any movement from beneath. One wheel spun loosely, but otherwise nothing. “Trust is everything, Alyson,” he said softly, and turned away, peeling off the gloves.
He had left his own car a hundred yards back, and the dirt path was rock-hard, dry, and would take no tire impressions. He got in his car and backed slowly down the narrow path—no mistakes now!—until he found a space wide enough to turn his car around. Then he headed south, back to Honolulu. It would be several days before the police discovered the fallen car, and he should probably hurry things along. He’d call in the morning to report that his graduate students were missing and he was worried about them. They’d been taken for a night on the town by the lovely Ms. Alyson Bender.
As for wider publicity, reaching back to Cambridge and Boston, Vin Drake had few fears. Hawaii would be helpful in this regard. Hawaii was a tourist destination, traditionally reluctant to report how many visitors died from rogue waves, strong surf, crumbling hiking trails, and the other attractions