Swimsuit by James Patterson, Maxine Paetro Read Free Book Online Page B

about Kim?” Barbara asked me.
    “I want to know everything,” I said. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to tape our conversation.”
    Barbara nodded, and Levon ordered G and Ts for them both. I was working, so I declined alcohol, asked for club soda instead.
    I had already started shaping the Kim McDaniels story in my mind, thinking about this beautiful girl from the heartland, with
     brains and beauty, on the verge of national fame, and about how she had come to one of the most beautiful spots on earth and
     disappeared without trace or reason. An exclusive with the McDanielses was more than I’d hoped for, and while I still couldn’t
     know if Kim’s story was a book, it was definitely a journalistic whopper.
    And more than that, I’d been won over by the McDanielses. They were nice people.
    I wanted to help them, and I would.
    Right now, they were exhausted, but they weren’t leaving the table. The interview was on.
    My tape recorder was new, the tape just unwrapped and the batteries fresh. I pushed Record, but, as the machine whirred softly
     on the table, Barbara McDaniels surprised me.
    It was
she
who started asking questions.

Chapter 22
    BARBARA RESTED her chin on her hands, and asked, “What happened with you and the Portland police department — and please don’t
     tell me what it says in your book jacket bio. That’s just PR, isn’t it?”
    Barbara let me know by her focus and determination that if I didn’t answer her questions, she had no reason to answer mine.
     I wanted to cooperate because I thought she was right to check me out, and I wanted the McDanielses to trust me.
    I smiled at Barbara’s direct interrogatory style, but there was nothing amusing about the story she was asking me to tell.
     Once I sent my mind back to that place and time, the memories rolled in, unstoppable, none of them glorifying, none of them
     very pleasant, either.
    As the still-vivid images flashed on the wide screen inside my head, I told the McDanielses about a fatal car wreck that had
     happened many years ago; that my partner, Dennis Carbone, and I had been nearby and had responded to the call.
    “When we got to the scene, there was about a half hour left of daylight. It was gloomy with a drizzling rain, but there was
     enough light to see that a vehicle had skidded off the road. It had caromed off some trees like a two-ton eight ball, crashing
     out of control through the woods.
    “I radioed for help,” I said now. “Then I was the one who stayed behind to interview the witness who’d been driving the other
     car — while my partner went to the crashed vehicle to see if there were survivors.”
    I told the McDanielses that the witness had been driving the car coming from the opposite direction, that the other vehicle,
     a black Toyota pickup, had been in his lane, coming at him
fast.
He said that he’d swerved, and so had the Toyota. The witness was shaken as he described how the pickup had left the road
     at high speed, said that he’d braked — and I could see and smell the hundred yards of rubber he’d left on the asphalt.
    “Response and rescue vehicles showed up,” I said. “The paramedics pulled the body out of the pickup, told me that the driver
     had been killed on impact with a spruce tree and that he’d had no passengers.
    “As the dead man was taken away, I looked for my partner. He was a few yards off the roadside, and I caught him sneaking a
     look in my direction. A little odd, like he was trying not to be seen doing something.”
    There was a sudden flurry of girlish laughter as a bride, surrounded by her maids of honor, passed through the bar to the
     lounge. The bride was a pretty blonde in her twenties. Happiest day of her life, right?
    Barbara turned to see the bridal party, then turned back to look at me. Anyone with eyes could see what she was feeling. And
     what she was hoping.
    “Go on, Ben,” she said. “You were talking about your partner with the guilty look.”
    I