Kane (62 page)

McKenzie nodded.  “On my way over this morning, I stopped by the beach house.  Speaking of which, the rebuilt version looks terrific.  Not as much character as your old house before the fire, but it’s great,” she added.

I remained silent at McKenzie’s mention of the fire, for the second time that morning finding myself venturing into territory I didn’t want to revisit.

“Anyhow, while I was there, your mom told me about Trav’s concert,” McKenzie went on.  “You’re going?”

“Uh-huh.  Mom and I are catching an early flight to D.C. next weekend.  Which reminds me.  Now that you’ve broken up with your college flame, do you want me to tell Trav you’re available?”

“Don’t you dare!” McKenzie squealed.

I grinned.  McKenzie had been sweet on Travis in high school, and I knew she still wasn’t over her crush.  “Whatever you say, Mac.”

“Your mom invited me to a barbecue at the beach house tonight,” McKenzie continued casually, trying to cover her outburst.  “Will you be there?”

“Yep.  My dad’s cooking.  There’s no way I’m going to miss one of his meals.”

McKenzie smiled.  “Me, neither.”

Gradually, as we drove south under a cloudless Southern California sky, the high-rise condos and office buildings of Westwood surrendered to a succession of retail businesses, warehouses, and car dealerships lining the freeway from West Los Angeles to Orange County.  Continuing our rambling discourse, McKenzie and I excitedly compared notes and brought each other up-to-date on our lives.  Forty minutes later, still engaged in nonstop conversation, we exited the freeway on Brookhurst and turned left on the 101 coastal route.  A few miles farther on, as we swung right on Balboa Boulevard, a newsbreak came on the radio.

McKenzie turned up the sound.  “Have you been following this?” she asked, her eyes wide with excitement.

I leaned forward to hear.

“… disappearance of Sharon French, teenaged star of the popular TV series,
Brandy
,” the announcer’s voice was saying.  “Miss French was reported missing from her Pacific Palisades home over a week ago.  Authorities still have no clue as to her whereabouts.  Although no ransom demand has been received, investigators are not ruling out an abduction.  A spokesperson for Paramount Studios, where Sharon was shooting a feature film, announced today that work on the project will continue in the hopes of her speedy return.  In other news—”

McKenzie twisted off the radio.  “Weird, huh?  A newspaper I saw in the supermarket says she’s been spotted in Europe with a French movie star.  Another said she’s in rehab at Betty Ford.”

“I wouldn’t call those rags you read at the checkout stand newspapers.”

“Good point.  Anyway, the
tabloids
are probably exaggerating, but something’s going on,” McKenzie maintained stubbornly.  “You ever watch Sharon’s show?”

“
Brandy
?  Occasionally,” I confessed.  Sharon’s fictional TV series centered on the life of Ambassador Harold Wilkenson, a widowed American living in England with his adolescent daughter Brandy, played by Sharon.  Weekly, regular as clockwork, Ambassador Wilkenson ran afoul of some convoluted, ill-conceived but well-meaning attempt by Brandy to assist him in various affairs of state—not to mention her occasional schemes to find him a wife.  Despite its pedestrian premise, the show worked surprisingly well thanks to imaginative writing, and it was one of the few TV shows that I followed.  “I watch it when I have time,” I added with an embarrassed shrug.

McKenzie grinned.  “Yeah, sure.  So what do you think happened to Sharon?”

Again, I lifted my shoulders.

Noting something in my manner, McKenzie looked over questioningly.  “You know something, don’t you?”

“No.”

“I’ll bet your dad’s got something to do with the case.  C’mon, spill it.”

My father, LAPD Detective Daniel Kane, had for the past several years served as the West Los Angeles Division’s supervising homicide detective, and his jurisdictional boundaries encompassed the Pacific Palisades area where Sharon had vanished.  “It’s not a murder investigation, so my dad’s not on it,” I said.

“But I’ll bet he knows who’s running the case, and I’ll also bet he has an inside track on what’s going on,” McKenzie insisted.  “C’mon, Ali.  I can keep a secret.”

“Well … my dad
does
know the MAC detective in charge,” I admitted.

“MAC?”

“Major assault crimes.  A detective named Carl Peyron is investigating Sharon’s case.  Dad’s known Carl for years.”

“And?”

“And I heard Dad talking on the phone to Detective Peyron about the investigation.  There
are
a couple of things that haven’t been released to the press.”

McKenzie frowned.  “Jeez, this is like pulling teeth.  Are you going to tell me or not?”

“Not.  There’s not much to tell, but Dadzilla would send me on a one-way trip to the moon if it got back to him that I blabbed about the case.”

“He won’t hear it from me.”

“Sorry.  Like I said, if my—”

“I get the picture.  Your dad will go postal if he finds out you talked.  Don’t worry; it’ll be our secret.  Now give.”

I hesitated a moment more.  Then, with a sigh, I said, “Despite what’s being reported on the news, the Frenches
did
receive a ransom letter.  The envelope contained a locket belonging to Sharon, along with a demand for money.”

“Are her parents going to pay?”

“They were willing to,” I answered.  “Unfortunately, the kidnappers haven’t been in touch since.”

“Why not?”

I shook my head.  “Nobody knows for sure.  But my dad has a theory.”

“And that is?”

“He thinks Sharon French is dead.”

2

S
quinting into the camera, Mike Cortese swung his telephoto lens across the beach, searching for the best angle to frame the gigantic waves.  He had already shot fifteen minutes of the colossal slabs of water slamming off the Newport jetty, but he still hadn’t captured the images he wanted.  He weighed shooting a sequence with lifeguard tower W in the foreground, the guard station flying a red storm-surf flag and a black-ball pennant that signified no flotation devices allowed.  Adjusting the focus, Mike assessed the shot, then rejected it.  Shooting past the tower foreshortened the waves, negating the chaotic violence of the storm surf that he wanted to show.

From experience, Mike knew he needed another object in frame with which to gauge the size of the La Niña-generated waves.  Normally a sequence like this included someone in the water—a bodysurfer, for instance—to provide a visual reference.  The trouble was, the waves were simply too big for anyone to ride, especially in the Wedge “bowl,” where reflected energy from the rock jetty rejoined the main swell to throw it up even higher.  Only a handful of local bodysurfers who called themselves the “Wedge Crew” had dared to enter the ocean, and even they, the best of the best, were treading water far outside the break line and taking off only on intermittent ten- to twelve-footers between sets.

With a sigh of exasperation, Mike lowered his camera.  Around him the beach teemed with girls in bikinis, boys in baggy shorts, and families with picnic baskets.  Most present stopped whatever they were doing to stare in awe whenever a particularly large wave thundered ashore, drumming the sand like a monstrous footfall.  In an effort to communicate the power of the swells, Mike recorded several minutes of crowd reaction, then returned his attention to the ocean.  At last he found the shot he wanted.  To the left of the guard tower, three teenaged girls were playing along the shoreline—wading up to their knees during calmer intervals, then retreating with excited squeals of laughter as the next upsurge approached.

Mike moved closer to a berm running the length of the beach.  After a quick refocus, he framed the nearest of the girls in his lens, shooting her scrambling from the water as an oncoming wave threatened in the background.  It was perfect, the adolescent teenager’s slim body giving Mike the size reference he had lacked earlier.  Getting ambient sound with the camera’s shotgun microphone as well, he widened the shot to include the wave just as it broke offshore.

“What’re you doing, mister?”

Mike continued shooting as the girl and her friends once more entered the water, this time wading up to their thighs.  Then, lowering his camera, he turned, finding a young boy standing behind him.

“You look like a sharp kid,” Mike answered.  Kneeling, he rested the camera on his knee.  “You tell me.”

“You’re shooting the big waves for TV.  Channel Two News, right?”

“How’d you know?”

“The eyeball,” the boy replied solemnly, pointing at the CBS logo on Mike’s camera.

Mike pretended to be surprised.  “Hmmm.  I forgot about that.”

“All the TV stations have camera logos.”

“You’re right,” Mike laughed, ruffling the youngster’s hair.  “I knew you were a sharp kid.”

“Dex, don’t bother that man while he’s working,” a tanned woman in shorts and a halter top called from a nearby blanket.

“It’s okay, ma’am,” Mike called back, raising his voice to be heard above the surf.  “He’s not bothering me.”

The woman, an attractive brunette in her early thirties, smiled at Mike with obvious interest.  “Not
yet
, maybe” she shot back.

Mike smiled in return, then kept working.  He had to get the beach footage to the newsroom by three, and it was already past eleven.  But as he started to turn back toward the ocean, another pair of young women caught his eye.  They’d apparently just arrived and were laying beach towels on the sand near the lifeguard tower.  One, a raven-haired beauty who wiggled out of a skimpy pair of shorts and a sleeveless blouse to reveal a tiny red bikini, had great legs and knockout figure.  But it was the taller of the two who drew Mike’s attention.

Momentarily forgetting the waves, Mike watched as she stripped off a pair of gray sweats.  Beneath the sweats she was wearing a black Speedo swimsuit cut high at the hips and low in the back, accenting a captivating figure that was both feminine and athletic.  Shaking free her tousled mane of reddish-auburn hair, the girl looked up.  Her pale-green eyes turned quizzical as they noticed Mike watching, her unabashed look displaying a startling directness that held his gaze.

At that instant the boy began tugging on Mike’s arm.  “Hey, mister.  Look!”

Reluctantly, Mike glanced toward the ocean, noting that the teenaged girls who’d earlier been playing in the shallows had ignored a warning from the lifeguard and ventured into deeper water.  Caught in the outflow, they were now having difficulty making it back to the safety of the beach.  Without warning, a strong backwash buffeted the trio, sweeping two of them over an abrupt drop-off.  Realizing the danger, Mike kicked off his sandals, asked Dex to hold his camera, and started for the water.  He hesitated when he saw a lifeguard bolting from the guard tower, orange rescue tube in tow.

A second backwash surged seaward, carrying away the third girl.  With a chill, Mike realized that the situation had turned deadly.  Noting another guard running from a tower a hundred yards distant, Mike retrieved his camera and resumed shooting, knowing he would need saving himself were he to enter the water.  He was a good swimmer, but not
that
good.

Trailing his rescue tube from a nylon shoulder strap, the first guard dived in and swam toward the closest girl.  He reached her just as a six-foot crest of boiling foam rolled over them.  Mike kept his lens trained on the spot where they’d disappeared.  When they resurfaced seconds later, he got a shot of the guard wrapping the flexible orange tube around the girl’s body, securing the device with a brass clip.  By now the other guard had arrived.  Mike shot him entering the water, then raked his camera across the ocean, searching for the other girls.  A head popped up forty yards out.  No sign of the third girl.

The second lifeguard had purposely entered the water in an outflowing riptide, which was rapidly shuttling him seaward.  Mike kept shooting, hoping the guard would reach the teenager before she was swept into the breaking waves farther out.  From down the beach came the distant wail of a siren.  Mike turned.  A lifeguard jeep was speeding toward them, its lights flashing as it raced along the hard sand at the water’s edge.  It wouldn’t arrive for minutes.

With a sense of dread, Mike kept shooting.  By now every eye on the beach was glued to the unfolding drama.  The second guard in the water had covered half the distance to the flailing youngster farther out.  It appeared he would reach her before the current carried her out to the break line, but getting her to safety would be another story.  The first guard, victim in tow, had given up taking a direct route to shore and was now swimming parallel to the beach, attempting to move laterally out of the strong riptide.  The second guard would have to do the same.

Suddenly Mike spotted the third girl, far from shore.  He adjusted his telephoto lens, bringing her into focus.  She had been dragged through the break line and was lying facedown in the water.  Mike pulled back to reveal the two guards already in the surf.  Busy with a rescue apiece, there was no way they would reach the final girl in time.