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 of Loxahatchee, Florida.”

De Martine went on to say that Charles Rollins was not in his room, that he was sought for questioning, that any information about Rollins should be phoned in to the number at the bottom of the screen.

I tried to absorb this horrendous story. Julia Winkler was dead. There was a suspect – but he was missing. Or how the police like to describe it – he was in the wind.

The phone rang next to my ear, jarring the hell out of me. I grabbed the receiver. “Levon?”

“It's Dan Aronstein. Your paycheck. Hawkins, are you on this Winkler story?”

“Yep. I'm on the case, chief. If you hang up and let me work, okay?”

I glanced back at the TV. The local anchors, Tracy Baker and Candy Ko'alani, were on screen, and a new face had been patched in from Washington. Baker asked the former FBI profiler John Manzi, “Could the killings of Rosa Castro and Julia Winkler be connected? Is this the work of a serial killer?”

Those two potent and terrifying words. “Serial killer.” Kim's story was now going global. The whole wide world was going to be focused on Hawaii and the mystery of two beautiful girls' deaths.

Former agent Manzi tugged at his earlobe, said serial killers generally had a signature, a preferred method for killing.

“Rosa Castro was strangled, but with ropes,” he said. “Her actual manner of death was drowning. Without speaking to the medical examiner, I can only go by the witness reports that Julia Winkler was manually strangled. That is, she was killed by someone choking her with his hands.

“It's too soon to say if these killings were done by the same person,” Manzi continued, “but what I can say about manual strangulation is that it's personal. The killer gets more of a thrill because unlike a shooting, it takes a long time for the victim to die.”

Kim. Rosa. Julia. Was this coincidence or a wildfire? I wanted desperately to talk to Levon and Barbara, to get to them before they saw Julia's story on the news, prepare them somehow – but I didn't know where they were.

Barbara had called me yesterday morning to say that she and Levon were going to Oahu to check out what was probably a bum lead, and I hadn't heard from them since.

I turned down the TV volume, called Barb's cell phone number, and, when she didn't answer, I hung up and called Levon. He didn't answer, either. After leaving a message, I called their driver, and when I got forwarded to Marco's voice mail, I left my number and told him that my call was urgent.

I showered and dressed quickly, collecting my thoughts, feeling an elusive and important something I should pay attention to, but I couldn't nail it down.

It was like a horsefly you can't swat. Or the faint smell of gas, and you don't know where it's coming from. What was it?

I tried Levon again, and when I got his voice mail I called Eddie Keola. He had to know how to reach Barbara and Levon.

That was his job.

Keola barked his name into the phone.

“Eddie, it's Ben Hawkins. Have you seen the news?”

“Worse than that. I've seen the real thing.”

Keola told me he'd been to the Island Breezes since the news of Julia Winkler's death had gone over the police band. He'd been there when the body was taken out and he had spoken with the cops on the scene.

He said, “Kim's roommate was murdered. Do you believe it?”

I told him I'd had no luck reaching the McDanielses or their driver and asked if he knew where Barb and Levon were staying.

“Some dive on the eastern shore of Oahu. Barb told me she didn't know the name.”

“Maybe I'm paranoid,” I told Keola, “but I'm worried. It isn't like them to be incommunicado.”

“I'll meet you at their hotel in an hour,” Keola said.

I arrived at the Wailea Princess just before eight a.m. I was heading to the front desk when I heard Eddie Keola calling my name. He came across the marble floor at a trot. His bleached hair was damp and wind-combed, and fatigue dragged at his face.

The hotel's day manager was a young guy wearing a smart hundred-dollar tie and a blue gabardine jacket with a name-tag reading “Joseph Casey.”

When he got off the phone, Keola and I told Casey our problem – that we couldn't locate two of the hotel guests and we couldn't locate their hotel-comped driver, either. I said that we were concerned for the McDanielses' safety.

The manager shook his head, and said, “We don't have any drivers on staff and we never hired anyone to drive Mr. and Mrs. McDaniels. Not somebody named Marco Benevenuto. Not anyone. We don't do that and never have.”

I was stunned into an openmouthed silence. Keola asked, “Why would this driver tell the McDanielses he'd been hired and paid for by your hotel?”

“I don't know the man,” said the manager. “I have no idea. You'll have to ask him.”

Keola flashed his ID, saying he was employed by the McDanielses, and asked to be let into their room.

After clearing Keola with the head of security, Casey agreed. I took a phone book to a plush chair in the lobby.

There were five limousine services on Maui, and I'd worked my way through all of them by the time Eddie Keola sat down heavily in the chair beside me.

“No one's ever heard of Marco Benevenuto,” I told him. “I can't find a listing for him in all of Hawaii.”

“The McDanielses' room is empty, too,” Keola said. “Like they were never there.”

“What the hell is this?” I asked him. “Barbara and Levon left town, and you didn't know where they were going?”

It sounded like an accusation. I didn't mean it that way, but my panic had risen to the high-water mark and it was still climbing. Hawaii had a low crime rate. And now, in the space of a week, two girls were dead. Kim was still missing, and her parents and driver were missing, too.

“I told Barbara it should be me following that lead on Oahu,” Keola said. “Those backpacker joints are remote and kind of rough. But Levon talked me out of it. He said that he wanted me to spend my time here looking for Kim.”

Keola was snapping his wristband, chewing his lip. The two of us, ex-cops without portfolio, were trying desperately to make sense out of thin air.

It was becoming a three-ring circus in the lobby of the Wailea Princess. A queue of German tourists had lined up at the desk, a flock of little kids were begging the gardener to let them feed the koi, even a presentation on tourist attractions was going on thirty feet away, slides and film and native music.

Eddie Keola and I might as well have been invisible. No one even looked at us.

I started ticking off the facts, linking Rosa to Kim, Kim to Julia, and to the driver, Marco Benevenuto, who had lied to me and the McDanielses – who were missing.

“What do you think, Eddie? Do you see the connection? Or am I fanning the flames of my overheated imagination?”

Keola sighed loudly, and said, “Tell you the truth, Ben, I'm in over my head. Don't look at me like that. I do cheating husbands. Insurance claims. What do you think? Maui is Los Angeles?”

I said, “Work on your friend, Lieutenant Jackson, why don't you?”

“I will. I'll get him to reach out to the PD in Oahu, get a serious search going for Barb and Levon. If he won't do it, I'll go over his head. My dad's a judge.”

“That must come in handy.”

“Damned right it does.”

Keola said he'd call me, then left me sitting with my phone in my lap. I stared across the open lobby to the dark aqua sea. I could see the outline of Lanai through the morning mist, the small island where Julia Winkler's life had been snuffed out.