Swimsuit (3 page)

WHEN KIM WOKE UP she was sitting in a bathtub of warm water, leaning with her back against the sloping rim, her hands tied
under the suds.

The blond stranger was on a stool beside her, washing her with a sea sponge as naturally as though he’d bathed her many times
before.

Kim’s stomach heaved, and she vomited bile into the tub. The stranger stood her up in one powerful swoop, saying “Alley Oops,”
and she noticed again how strong he was. This time she heard a hint of an accent but couldn’t place it. Maybe Russian. Or
Czech. Or German. Then he pulled the bathtub plug and turned on the shower.

Kim swayed under the spray, and he held her up, supported her body as she cried out and hit at him, trying to kick but losing
her footing. She started to go down, and he caught her again, laughing, saying, “You’re a little something special, aren’t
you?”

Then he wrapped her in very plush white towels, swaddled her like a baby. When he settled her on the closed toilet seat, he
held out a glass of something for her to drink.

“Take this,” he said. “It will help you. Honestly it will.”

Kim shook her head, said, “Who are you? Why are you doing this to me?”

“Do you want to remember this evening, Kim?”

“You’ve got to be kidding, you effing pervert.”

“This drink will help you forget. And I want you to be asleep when I take you home.”

“When are you taking me home?”

“It’s almost over,” he said.

Kim raised her hands toward him, noticing that the rope binding her wrists together was different now. It was dark blue, possibly
silk, and the pattern of knots was intricate, almost beautiful. She took the glass from him and emptied it down.

Next the stranger asked her to bend her head forward. She did, and he towel-dried her hair. Then he brushed it, making tendrils
and curls with his fingers, and he brought bottles and brushes out of the long drawer of the vanity surrounding the sink.

He applied makeup to her cheeks and lips and eyes with a deft hand, dabbing a little concealer at a raw place near her left
eye, wetting the brush with his tongue, blending the foundation in, saying, “I’m very good at this, don’t worry.”

He finished his work, then reached his arms around and under her, lifted her towel-wrapped body, and carried her into the
other room.

Kim’s head lolled back as he placed her on the bed. She was aware that he was dressing her, but she didn’t assist him at all
as he pulled a bikini bottom up her thighs. Then he tied the strap of the swimsuit top behind her back.

The suit looked to Kim a lot like the Perry Ellis she’d been wearing toward the end of the shoot. Red with a silver sheen.
She must have mumbled, “Perry Ellis,” because James Blond said, “It’s even better. I picked this out myself when I was in
Saint-Tropez. I got it just for you.”

“You don’t know me,” she said, the words pouring sideways out of her mouth.

“Everyone knows you, honey. Kimberly McDaniels. What a beautiful name, too.” He moved her hair to one side and knotted a second
swimsuit tie behind her neck, tied a bow, apologized if he’d pulled at her hair.

Kim wanted to make a remark, but she forgot what she was going to say. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t scream. She could barely
keep her eyes open. She looked into the pale gray eyes that caressed her.

He said, “Stunning. You look so beautiful for your close-up.”

She tried to say, “Screw you,” but the words blended together and came out as a long, tired sigh. “Scoooooooo.”

INSIDE A PRIVATE LIBRARY on the other side of the world, a man named Horst sat back in his leather-upholstered armchair and
watched the large HD screen beside the fireplace.

“I like the blue hands,” he said to his friend Jan, who was swirling his drink in a chunky glass. Horst turned up the volume
with the remote.

“It’s a nice touch,” Jan agreed. “With the swimsuit, and the skin, she is as American as apple pie. Are you quite sure you
saved
the video?”

“Of course I did. Look now,” said Horst. “Watch now how he quiets his animal.”

Kim was lying on her stomach. She was perfectly hog-tied, her hands behind her back and tethered to her legs, which were bent
up at the knees. Along with the red swimsuit, she was wearing shiny black patent leather shoes with five-inch heels and slick
red soles. They were top designer shoes, Christian Louboutin, the very best, and Horst thought they looked more like toys
than shoes.

Kim was pleading with the man his audience knew as “Henri.” She was sobbing softly. “Please, please untie me. I’ll play my
role. It will be even better for you, and I’ll never tell
anyone.
”

Horst laughed, said, “That is the truth. She will never tell anyone.”

Jan put down his glass, then said with edgy impatience, “Horst, please roll back the video.”

On screen, Kim said again between sobs, “I’ll never tell
anyone.
”

“That’s good, Kim. Our secret, eh?”

Henri’s face was transformed by the plastic mask and his digitally altered voice, but his performance was strong and his audience
was avid. Both men leaned forward in their chairs, watched as Henri stroked Kim, rubbed her back, and murmured to her until
she stopped whimpering.

And then, as she seemed to go to sleep, he straddled her body, wrapping his hand in the young woman’s long, damp, yellow hair.

He lifted her head from the flat of the bed, pulling hard enough that Kim’s back arched, and the force of the pull made her
cry out. Possibly she saw that he’d picked up a serrated knife with his right hand.

“Kim,” he said. “You’ll wake up soon. And if you ever remember this, it will seem like a bad dream.”

The beautiful young woman was surprisingly quiet as Henri made the first deep cut across the back of her neck. Then, as the
pain caught up with her — hauled her violently out of her stupor — her eyelids flew open and a curdled scream erupted from
her painted mouth. She wrenched her body as Henri sawed and cross-sawed through her muscles,
and then the scream cut out,
leaving an echo as Henri completely severed Kim’s head from her body in three long strokes.

Arterial blood spurted against the yellow walls, emptied onto the satin bedsheets, ran down the arm and loins of the naked
man kneeling over the dead girl.

Henri’s smile was quite visible through the plastic mask as he held Kim’s head by her hair so that it swung gently as it faced
the camera. A look of pure despair was still fixed on her beautiful face.

The killer’s digitized voice was eerie and mechanical, but Horst found it extremely satisfying.

“I hope everybody’s happy,” Henri said.

The camera held on Kim’s face for another long moment and then, although the audience wanted more, the screen went black.

FLY BY NIGHT

A MAN STOOD at the edge of a lava-rock seawall staring out at the dark water and at the clouds turning pink as dawn stormed
Maui’s eastern shore.

His name was Henri Benoit, not his real name, but the name he was using now. He was in his thirties with medium-length blondish
hair and light gray eyes, and he stood at about six feet tall in his bare feet. He was shoeless now, his toes half-buried
in the sand.

His white linen shirt hung loosely over his gray cotton pants, and he watched the seabirds calling out as they skimmed the
waves.

Henri thought those birdcalls could have been the opening notes of another flawless day in paradise. But before the day had
even begun, it was down the crapper.

Henri turned away from the ocean and jammed his PDA into a trouser pocket. Then, as the wind at his back blew his shirt into
a kind of spinnaker, he strode up the sloping lawn to his private bungalow.

He swung open the screened door, crossed the lanai and the pale hardwood floors to the kitchen, poured himself a cup of Kona
java. Then out again to the lanai, where he sank down into the chaise beside the hot tub and settled in to think.

This place, the Hana Beach Hotel, was at the top of his A-list: exclusive, comfortable, no TV or even a telephone. Surrounded
by a few thousand acres of rain forest, perched on the coast of the island, the unobtrusive cluster of buildings made a perfect
haven for the very rich.

Being here gave a man a chance to relax fully, to be whoever he truly was, to realize his essence as a human.

The cell phone call from Europe had shot his relaxation all to hell. The conversation had been brief and essentially one-way.
Horst had delivered both the good and bad news in a tone of voice that attacked Henri’s sense of free agency with the finesse
of a shiv through a vital organ.

Horst had told Henri that the job he had done had been well received, but there were
issues.

Had he chosen the right victim? Why was Kim McDaniels’s death the sound of one hand clapping? Where was the press? Had they
really gotten all they’d paid for?

“I delivered a brilliant piece of work,” Henri had snapped. “How can you deny it?”

“Watch the attitude, Henri. We’re all friends, yes?”

Yes. Friends in a strictly commercial enterprise in which one set of amigos controlled the money. And now Horst was telling
him that his buddies weren’t quite happy enough. They wanted
more.
More twists. More action. More clapping at the end of the movie.

“Use your imagination, Henri. Surprise us.”

They would pay more, of course, for additional contracted services, and after a while the prospect of more
money
softened the edges of Henri’s bad mood without touching the core of his contempt for the
Peepers.

They wanted more?

So be it.

By the time his second cup of coffee was finished, he had mapped out a new plan. He dug a wireless phone out of his pocket
and began making calls.

THAT NIGHT SNOW FELL LIGHTLY on Levon and Barbara McDaniels’s house in Cascade Township, a wooded suburb of Grand Rapids,
Michigan. Inside their efficient but cozy three-bedroom brick home, the two boys slept deeply under their quilts.

Down the hall, Levon and Barbara lay back-to-back, soles touching across the invisible divide of their Sleep Number bed, their
twenty-five-year connection seemingly unbroken even in sleep.

Barbara’s night table was stacked with magazines and half-read paperbacks, folders of tests and memos, a crowd of vitamin
supplements around her bottle of green tea.
Don’t worry about it, Levon, and please don’t touch anything. I know where everything is.

Levon’s nightstand favored his left brain to Barb’s right: his neat stack of annual reports, annotated copy of
Against All Reason,
pen and notepad, and a platoon of electronics — phones, laptop, weather clock — all lined up four inches from the table’s
edge, plugged into a power strip behind the lamp.

The snowfall had wrapped the house in a white silence — and then a ringing phone jarred Levon awake. His heartbeat boomed,
and his mind reeled in instant panic.
What was happening
?

Again the phone rang, and this time Levon made a grab for the landline.

He glanced at the clock, which read 3:14 a.m., and wondered who the hell would be calling at this hour. And then he knew.
It was Kim. She was five hours behind them. He figured she’d gotten that mixed up somehow.

“Kim? Honey?” Levon said into the mouthpiece.

“Kim is gone,”
said the male voice in Levon’s ear.

Levon’s chest tightened, and he couldn’t catch his breath. Was he having a heart attack? “Sorry? What did you say?”

Barb sat up in bed, turned on the light.

“Levon?” she said. “What is it?”

Levon held up a hand.
Give me a second.
“Who is this?” he asked, rubbing his chest to ease the pain.

“I only have a minute, so listen carefully. I’m calling from Hawaii. Kim’s disappeared. She’s fallen into bad hands.”

Levon’s fear filled him from scalp to toes with a cold terror. He clung to the phone, hearing the echo of the man’s voice:
“She’s fallen into bad hands.”

It made no sense.

“I don’t get you. Is she hurt?”

No answer.

“Hello?”

“Are you listening to what I’m saying, Mr. McDaniels?”

“Yes. Who is this speaking, please?”

“I can only tell you once.”

Levon pulled at the neck of his T-shirt, trying to decide what to think. Was the man a liar, or telling the truth? He knew
his name, phone number, that Kim was in Hawaii. How did he know all that?

Barb was asking him,
“What’s happening? Levon, is this about Kim?”

“Kim didn’t show up at the shoot yesterday morning,” said the caller. “The magazine is keeping it quiet. Crossing their fingers.
Hoping she’ll come back.”

“Have the police been called? Has someone called the police?”

“I’m hanging up now,” said the caller. “But if I were you, I’d get on the next plane to Maui. You and Barbara.”

“Wait! Please, wait. How do you know she’s missing?”

“Because I did it, sir. I saw her. I liked her. I took her. Have a nice day.”

“WHAT DO YOU
WANT?
Tell me what you
want!
”

There was a
click
in Levon’s ear followed by a dial tone. He toggled the directory button, read “Unknown” where there should have been a caller
ID.

Barb was pulling at his arm. “Levon!
Tell me! What’s happened?
”

Barb liked to say that she was the flamethrower in the family and that he was the fireman — and those roles had become fixed
over time. So Levon began to tell Barb what the caller had said, strained the fear out of his voice, kept to the facts.

Barb’s face reflected the terror leaping inside his own mind like a bonfire. Her voice came through to him as if from a far
distance. “Did you
believe
him? Did he say where she
was?
Did he say what happened? My God, what are we talking about?”