Swimsuit - James Patterson [40]
He grabbed the keys and opened the trunk. Pale moonlight shone on Barbara and Levon. Henri, as Andrew, said, “Is everyone all right back here in coach?”
Barbara launched a full-throated, wordless scream until Henri leaned in and held the knife up to her throat. “Barb, Barb. Stop yelling. No one can hear you but me and Levon, so call off the histrionics, okay? I don’t like it.”
Barb’s scream became a wheeze and a cry.
“What the hell are you doing, Hogan?” Levon demanded, wrenching his body so he could see his captor’s face. “I’m a reasonable man. Explain yourself.”
Henri put two fingers under his nose to resemble a mustache. He lowered his voice and thickened it, said, “Sure, I will, Mr. McDaniels. You’re my number one priority.”
“My dear Christ. You’re Marco? You’re him! I don’t believe it. How could you scare us like this? What do you want?”
“I want you to behave, Levon. You, too, Barb. Act up, and I’ll have to take strong measures. Be good and I’ll move you up to first class. Deal?”
Henri sawed through the nylon ropes around Barbara’s legs and helped her out of the car and into the backseat. Then he went back for Levon, cutting the restraints, walking the man to the back of the car, strapping them both in with the seat belts.
Then Henri got into the driver’s seat. He locked the doors, turned on the dome light, reached up to the camera behind the rearview mirror, and switched it on.
“If you like, you can call me Henri,” he said to the McDanielses, who were staring at him with unblinking eyes. He reached into the pocket of his windbreaker, pulled out a dainty, bracelet-style wristwatch, and held it up in front of them.
“See? As I promised. Kim’s watch. The Rolex. Recognize it?”
He stuffed it into Levon’s jacket pocket.
“Now,” Henri said, “I’d like to tell you what’s going on and why I have to kill you. Unless you have questions so far.”
Chapter 51
WHEN I WOKE UP that morning and snapped on the local news, Julia Winkler was all over it. There, filling the TV screen, was her achingly beautiful face and a headline in bold italics running under her picture: Supermodel Found Murdered.
How could Julia Winkler be dead?
I bolted upright in bed, goosed up the sound, stared at the next shot, this one of Kim and Julia posing together for the Sporting Life photo-story, their lovely faces pressed together, laughing, both absolutely radiant with life.
The TV anchors were going back over the breaking news “for those who’ve just tuned in.”
I stared at the tube, gathering in the stunning details: Julia Winkler’s body had been found in a room at the Island Breezes Hotel, a five-star resort on Lanai. A housekeeper had run through the hotel shouting that a woman had been strangled, that there were bruises around her neck, blood all over the linens.
Next up, a waitress was interviewed. Emma Laurent. She’d waited on tables in the Club Room last night and recognized Julia Winkler. She’d been having dinner with a good-looking man in his thirties, Laurent said. He was white, brown-haired with a good build. “He definitely works out.”
Winkler’s date signed the check with a room number, 412, registered to Charles Rollins. Rollins left a good tip, and Julia had given the waitress her autograph. Personalized it. To Emma from Julia. Emma held up the signed napkin for the camera.
I got a POG out of the fridge, guzzled it, watched the camera cut now to live shots outside the Island Breezes Hotel. Cruisers were everywhere, the loud garble of police radios squawked in the background. The camera held on a reporter with the local NBC affiliate.
The reporter, Kevin de Martine, was well respected, had been embedded with a military unit in Iraq in ’04. He was now standing with his back to a sawhorse barrier, rain falling softly on his bearded face, palm fronds waving dramatically behind him.
De Martine said, “This is what we know. Nineteen-year-old supermodel Julia Winkler, former roommate of the still-missing top model Kimberly McDaniels, was found dead this morning in a room registered to a Charles Rollins