“He was dating Kim when this happened with the other woman? You're certain?”

“Yep.”

“Does he have any history of violence?”

“They all do. Sure. Bar fights. One zesty one when he played at Notre Dame. Crap like that.”

“Thanks, Sam.”

“Don't mention it,” he said back. “I mean really. Don't mention it.”

I sat on this bombshell for a few minutes, thinking through what this meant. If Kim knew Cahill had cheated on her, that was reason enough for her to dump him. If he wanted her back, if he was desperate, a confrontation could have led to something physical that might have gotten out of hand.

I called Levon. And I was startled by his reaction.

“Doug is a testosterone machine,” he told me. “Kim said he was strong-willed, and we all know he was a killer on the field. How do we know what he's capable of doing? Barb still believes in him, but as for me, I'm starting to think maybe Jackson is right. Maybe they've got the right guy after all.”

Chapter 40

Julia felt weightless in Charlie's arms, like an angel. Her long legs locked around his waist, and all he had to do was raise his knees, and she was sitting on his lap.

He did just that as they bobbed in the waves. She lifted her face to him, saying, “Charlie, this has been the most. The best.”

“It gets better from here,” he said again, his theme song for their date, and she grinned at him, kissed him softly, then deeply, a long salty kiss followed by another, electricity arcing like heat lightning around them.

He undid the string tie at her neck, jerked loose the tie behind her back, said, “You do a lot for a simple white bikini.”

“What bikini?”

“Never mind,” he said, and the swimsuit top drifted away, a ribbon of white on the black waves, until it was gone, and she didn't seem to care.

Julia was too busy licking his ear, her nipples as hard as diamonds against his chest. She groaned as he shifted her so she was pressed even tighter to him, rubbing like an eager beaver against his dick.

He reached around and ran his fingers under the elastic of her bikini bottoms, touched the tender places, making her squeal and squirm like a kid.

She pushed down at the waistband of his swim shorts with the backs of her feet.

“Wait,” he said. “Be good.”

“I plan to be great,” she said breathily, kissing him, pulling at his shorts again. “I'm dying for you.” She sighed.

He unhooked her legs and pulled off the bottom half of her swimsuit. Carrying the naked girl in his arms, he walked out of the waves as water streamed off their bodies, silver in the moonlight.

Charlie said, “Hang on to me, monkey.”

He brought her over to where he'd left his duffel bag next to a mound of black lava rock. He stooped and unzipped the bag, pulled out two enormous beach towels.

Still balancing the girl in his arms, he spread out one towel and laid Julia softly down, covered her with the second towel.

He turned away briefly, set the Panasonic camera on top of the duffel, and switched it on, angling it just so.

Then he faced Julia again, shucked his swim trunks, smiled when she said, “Oh my God, oh my God, Charlie.”

He knelt between her legs, tonguing her until she cried out, “Please, I can't stand it, Charlie. I'm begging you, please,” and he entered her.

Her screams were washed away by the ocean's roar, just as he had imagined they would be, and when they were done, he reached into the duffel bag and took out a knife with a serrated blade. Put the knife down on the towel beside them.

“What's that for?” Julia asked.

“Can't be too careful,” Charlie said, shrugging off the question. “In case some bad guy is creeping around.”

He raked back her short hair, kissed her closed eyes, put his arms around the naked girl, and warmed her up with his skin. “Go to sleep, Julia,” he said. “You're safe with me.”

“It gets better from here?” she teased.

“Piggy.”

She laughed, snuggled against his chest. Charlie pulled the towel up over her eyes. Julia thought he was talking to her when he said into the camera lens, “Is everybody happy?”

“Totally, completely happy,” she said with a sigh.

Chapter 41

Another wrenching twenty-four hours passed for Levon and Barbara, and I felt helpless to ease their despair. The news shows were running the same old clips when I went to bed that night, and I was somewhere, deep in a troubling dream, when the phone rang.

Eddie Keola spoke to me, saying, “Ben, don't call the McDanielses on this. Just meet me in front of your hotel in ten minutes.”

Keola's Jeep was running when I jogged out into the warm night, then quickly climbed up into the passenger seat.

“Where are we going?” I asked him.

“A beach called Makena Landing. The cops may have found something. Or somebody.”

Ten minutes later, Eddie parked along the curving roadside behind six police cruisers, vans from the Special Response Team and the coroner's office. Below us was a semicircle of beach, a cove that was bounded by fingers of lava rock before tapering out into the ocean.

A helicopter hovered noisily overhead, beaming its spotlight on the scramble of law enforcement people moving like stick figures along the shoreline.

Keola and I made our way down to the beach, and I saw that a fire department rescue vehicle had backed down to the water's edge. There were inflatable boats in the water, and a scuba team was going down.

I was sickened at the thought that Kim's body was submerged there and that she had disappeared to get away from an old boyfriend.

Keola interrupted my reverie to introduce me to a Detective Palikapu, a heavyset young cop in a Maui PD jacket.

“Those campers over there,” Palikapu said, pointing to a cluster of children and adults on the far side of the lava-rock jetty. “They saw something floating during the day.”

“A body, you mean,” said Keola.

“They thought it was a log or garbage at first. Then they saw some shark activity and called it in. Since then, the tides took whatever it is under the bubble rock and left it there. That's where the divers are now.”

Keola explained to me that the bubble rock was a shelf of lava with a concave undersurface. He said that sometimes people swam into caves like this one at low tide, didn't pay attention when the tide came in, and drowned.

Was that what had happened to Kim? Suddenly it seemed very possible.

TV vans were pulling up on the shoulder of the road, photographers and reporters clambering down to the beach, the cops stringing up yellow tape to keep the scene intact.

One of the photographers came up to me, introduced himself as Charlie Rollins. He said he was freelance and if I needed photos for the L.A. Times he could provide them.

I took his card, then turned in time to see the first divers coming out of the water. One of them had a bundle in his arms.

Keola said, “You're with me,” and we skirted the crime scene tape. We were standing on the lip of the shore when a boat came in.

The bright light from the chopper illuminated the body in the diver's arms. She was small, maybe a teenager or maybe a child. Her body was so bloated that I couldn't tell her age, but she was bound with ropes, hand and foot.

Lieutenant Jackson stepped forward and used a gloved hand to move the girl's long, dark hair away from her face.

I was relieved that the victim wasn't Kim McDaniels and that I didn't have to make a call to Levon and Barbara.

But my relief was swamped with an almost overwhelming sorrow. Clearly another girl, someone else's daughter, had been savagely murdered.