Swimsuit

Chapter 91

On my first day back from my desert retreat with Henri, Leonard Zagami called to say he wanted to publish fast so we'd get gonzo press coverage for breaking Henri's first-person story before the Maui murders were solved.

I'd called Aronstein, taken a leave from the L.A. Times, turned my living room into a bunker and not just because of the pressure from Zagami. I felt Henri's presence all the time, like he was a boa constrictor with a choke hold on my rib cage, peering over my shoulder as I typed. I wanted nothing more than to get his dirty story written and done, and get him out of my life.

Since my return, I'd been working from six in the morning until late at night, and I found transcribing the interview tapes educational.

Listening to Henri's voice behind a locked door, I heard inflections and pauses, comments made under his breath, that I'd missed while sitting next to his coiled presence and wondering if I was going to make it out of Joshua Tree alive.

I'd never worked so hard or so steadily, but by the end of the second full week at my laptop, I'd finished the transcription and also the outline for the book.

One important item was missing: the hook for the introduction, the question that would power the narrative to the end, the question Henri hadn't answered. Why did he want to write this book?

The reader would want to know, and I couldn't understand it myself. Henri was twisted in his particular way, and that included being an actual survivor. He dodged death like it was Sunday traffic. He was smart, probably a genius, so why would he write a tell-all confession when his own words could lead to his capture and indictment? Was it for money? Recognition? Was his narcissism so overpowering that he'd set a trap for himself?

It was almost six on a Friday evening. I was filing the transcribed audiotapes in a shoe box when I put my hand on the exit tape, the one with Henri's instructions telling me how to get out of Joshua Tree Park.

I hadn't replayed the tape because Henri's message hadn't seemed relevant to the work, but before I boxed it up, I dropped tape number 31 into the recorder and rewound it to the beginning.

I realized instantly that Henri hadn't used a fresh tape for his message. He'd recorded on the tape that was already in the machine.

I heard my drugged and weary voice coming through the speaker, saying, “This is important, Henri.”

There was silence. I'd forgotten what I wanted to ask him. Then Henri's voice was saying, “Finish your sentence, Ben. What is important?”

“Why? do you want to write this book?”

My head had dropped to the table, and I remembered hearing Henri's voice as through a fog.

Now he was coming in loud and clear.

“Good question, Ben. If you're half the writer I think you are, if you're half the cop you used to be, you'll figure out why I want to do this book. I think you'll be surprised.”

I was going to be surprised? What the hell was that supposed to mean?

Chapter 92

A key turned in the lock, and bolts thunked open. I started, swiveled in my chair. Henri?

But it was only Amanda coming across the threshold, hugging a grocery bag. I leapt up, took the bag, and kissed my girl, who said, “I got the last two Cornish game hens. Yea! Also. Look. Wild rice and haricots verts -”

“You're a peach, you know that?” I said.

“You saw the news?”

“No. What?”

“Those two girls who were found on Barbados. One of them was strangled. The other was decapitated.”

“What two girls?”

I hadn't turned on the TV in a week. I didn't know what the hell Amanda was talking about.

“The story was all over cable, not to mention the Internet. You need to come up for air, Ben.”

I followed her into the kitchen, put the groceries on the counter, and snapped on the under-cabinet TV. I tuned in to MSNBC, where Dan Abrams was talking to the former FBI profiler John Manzi.

Manzi looked grim. He was saying, “You call it 'serial' when there've been three or more killings with an emotional cooling-off period in between. The killer left the murder weapon in a hotel room with Sara Russo's decapitated body. Wendy Emerson was found in a car trunk, bound and strangled. These crimes are very reminiscent of the killings in Hawaii a month ago. Despite the distances involved, I'd say they could be linked. I'd bet on it.”

Pictures of the two young women appeared on a split screen as Manzi talked. Russo looked to be in her late teens. Emerson in her twenties. Both young women had big, expectant, life-sized smiles, and Henri had killed them. I was sure of it. I'd bet on it, too.

Amanda edged past me, put the birds in the oven, banged pots around, and ran water on the veggies. I turned up the volume.

Manzi was saying, “It's too soon to know if the killer left any DNA behind, but the absence of a motive, leaving the murder weapons behind, these form a picture of a very practiced killer. He didn't just get started in Barbados, Dan. It's a question of how many people he's killed, over how long a time, and in how many places.”

I said to Mandy over the commercial break, “I've been listening to Henri talk about himself for weeks. I can tell you absolutely, he feels no remorse whatsoever. He's happy with himself. He's ecstatic.”

I told Mandy that Henri had left me a message telling me that he expected me to figure out why he was doing the book.

“He's challenging me as a writer, and as a cop. Hey, maybe he wants to get caught. Does that make any sense to you?”

Mandy had been solid throughout, but she showed me how scared she was when she grabbed my hands hard and fixed me with her eyes.

“None of it makes sense to me, Benjy. Not why, not what he wants, not even why he picked you to do this book. All I know is he's a freaking psycho. And he knows where we live.”

Chapter 93

I woke up in bed, my heart hammering, my T-shirt and shorts drenched with sweat.

In my dream, Henri had taken me on a tour of his killings in Barbados, talked to me while he sawed off Sara Russo's head. He'd held up her head by her hair, saying, “See, this is what I like, the fleeting moment between life and death,” and in the way of dreams, Sara became Mandy.

Mandy looked at me in the dream, her blood streaming down Henri's arm, and she said, “Ben. Call Nine-one-one.”

I threw my arm over my forehead and dried my brow.

It was an easy nightmare to interpret. I was terrified that Henri would kill Mandy. And I felt guilty about those girls in Barbados, thinking, If I'd gone to the police, they might still be alive.

Was that dream-thinking? Or was it true?

I imagined going to the FBI now, telling them how Henri had put a gun on me, took photos of Amanda, and threatened to kill us both.

I would have to tell them how Henri chained me to a trailer in the desert and detailed the killings of thirty people. But were those confessions? Or bullshit?

I had no proof that anything Henri had told me was true. Just his word.

I imagined the FBI agent eyeing me skeptically, then the networks broadcasting “Henri's” description: a white male, six feet, 160 pounds, midthirties. That would piss Henri off. And then, if he could, he'd kill us.

Did Henri really think I'd let that happen?

I stared at headlights flickering across the ceiling of the bedroom.

I remembered names of restaurants and resorts Henri had visited with Gina Prazzi. There were a number of other aliases and details Henri hadn't thought important but that might, if I could figure them out, unwind his whole ball of string.

Mandy turned over in her sleep, put her arm across my chest, and snuggled close to me. I wondered what she was dreaming. I tightened my arms around her, lightly kissed the crown of her head.

“Try not to torment yourself,” she said against my chest.

“I didn't mean to wake you.”

“That's a joke, right? You almost blew me out of bed with all your heaving and sighing.”

“What time is it?”

“It's early. Too early, or late, for us to be up. Benjy, I don't think obsessing is helping.”

“Oh. You think I'm obsessing?”

“Get your mind on something else. Take a break.” “Zagami wants -”

“Screw Zagami. I've been thinking, too, and I have an idea of my own. You won't like it.”

Chapter 94

I was pacing in front of my building with an overnight bag when Mandy roared up on her gently used Harley Sportster, a snappy-looking bike with a red leather saddle.

I climbed on, put my hands around Mandy's small waist, and with her long hair whipping across my face we motored to the 10 and from there to the Pacific Coast Highway, a dazzling stretch of coastal road that seems to go on forever.

To our left and below the road, breakers reared up and curled toward the beach, bringing in the surfers who dotted the waves. It struck me that I had never surfed – because it was too dangerous.

I hung on as Mandy switched lanes and gunned the engine. She shouted to me, “Take your shoulders down from your ears.”

Huh?

“Relax.”

It was hard to do, but I willed myself to unclench my legs and shoulders, and Mandy shouted again, “Now, make like a dog.”

She turned her head and stuck out her tongue, pointed her finger at me until I did it, too. The fifty-mile-an-hour wind beat on my tongue, cracking me up, making both of us laugh so hard that our eyes watered.

I was still grinning as we blew through Malibu and crossed the Ventura County line. Minutes later, Mandy pulled the bike over at Neptune 's Net, a seafood shack with a parking lot full of motorcycles.

A couple of guys called out, “Hey, Mandy,” as I followed her inside. We picked out two crabs from the well, and ten minutes later we picked them up at the take-out window, steamed and cracked on paper plates with small cups of melted butter. We chased the crabs down with Mountain Dew, then climbed aboard the Harley again.

I felt more at home on the bike this time, and finally I got it. Mandy was giving me the gift of glee. The speed and wind were blowing the snarls out of my mind, forcing me to turn myself over to the excitement and freedom of the road.

As we traveled north, the PCH wound down to sea level, taking us through the dazzling towns of Sea Cliff, La Conchita, Rincon, Carpinteria, Summerland, and Montecito. And then Mandy was telling me to hang on as she took the turn off the freeway onto the Olive Mill Road exit to Santa Barbara.

I saw the signs, and then I knew where we were going – a place we had talked of spending a weekend at, but we had never found the time.

My whole body was shaking when I dismounted the bike in front of the legendary Biltmore Hotel, with its red tiled roofs and palm trees and high view of the sea. I took off my helmet, put my arms around my girl, and said, “Honey, when you say you have an idea, you sure don't mess around.”

She told me, “I was saving my Christmas bonus for our anniversary, but you know what I thought at four this morning?”

“Tell me.”

“No better time than now. No better place than this.”

Chapter 95

The hotel lobby glowed. I'm not one of those guys who studies the “House Beautiful” channel, but I knew luxury and comfort, and Amanda, prancing in place beside me, filled in the details. She pointed out the Mediterranean style, the archways and beamed ceilings, the plump sofas and logs burning in a tiled fireplace. The vast, rolling ocean below.

Then Mandy warned me – and she was serious.

“If you mention what' s-his-name, even once, the bill goes on your credit card, not mine. Okay?”

“Deal,” I said, pulling her in for a hug.

Our room had a fireplace, and when Mandy started tossing her clothes onto the chair, I pictured us rolling around in the king-size bed for the rest of the afternoon.

She read the look in my eyes, laughed, and said, “Oh, I see. Wait, okay? I've got another idea.”

I was becoming a big fan of Mandy's ideas. She stepped into her leopard-print bikini, and I put on my trunks, and we went out to a pool in the center of the main garden. I followed Mandy's lead, diving in, and heard – I couldn't quite believe it – music playing underwater.

Back in our room, I untied the strings of Mandy's swimsuit, pushed down the bikini bottoms, and she climbed up on me, her legs around my waist. I walked her into the shower and not too many minutes later we tumbled onto the bed, where goofiness became heart-pounding lovemaking.

Later we napped, Mandy falling asleep while lying on my chest with her knees tucked up along my sides. For the first time in weeks, I slept deeply without my eyes flying open at some bloody nightmare.

At sundown, Mandy slipped into a small black dress and twisted up her hair, making me think of Audrey Hepburn. We took the winding stairs down to the Bella Vista and were shown to a table near the fire. There was marble underfoot, mahogany-paneled walls, a billion-dollar view of whitecaps below, and a glass-paned ceiling showing cobalt twilight over our heads.

I glanced at the menu, put it down when the waiter came over. Mandy ordered for us both.

I was grinning again. Amanda Diaz knew how to take a day out of the dumper and light up memories that could take the two of us into old age.

We started our five-star dinner with sautéed jumbo scallops and continued with scrumptious honey-cilantro-glazed sea bass with mushrooms and snow peas. Then the waiter brought dessert menus and chilled champagne.

I turned the bottle so I could read the label: Dom Pérignon.

“You didn't order this, did you, Mandy? This is about three hundred dollars.”

“Wasn't me. We must've got somebody else's bubbly.”

I reached for the card the waiter had left on a small silver tray. It read, “The Dom is on me. It's the good stuff. Best regards, H.B.”

Henri Benoit.

Fear shot right up my spine. How had that fucker known where we were when I hadn't known where we were going myself?

I got to my feet, knocking over my chair. I pivoted around, a full 360 and then back again in the other direction to be sure. I scanned every face in the room: the old man with soup on his whiskers, the bald tourist with his fork poised over his plate, the honeymooners standing in the entrance-way, and every one of the waitstaff.

Where was he? Where?

I stood so that I blocked Mandy with my body, and I felt the scream tearing out of my throat.

“Henri, you bastard. Show yourself.”

Chapter 96

After the scene in the dining room, I locked and chained the door to our suite, checked the latches on the windows, closed the drapes. I hadn't brought my gun, a gross mistake I wouldn't make again.

Mandy was pale and shaking as I sat her down next to me on the bed.

“Who knew we were coming here?” I asked her.

“I made the reservation when I went home to pack this morning. That's all.”

“You're sure?”

“Except for calling Henri on his private line, you mean?”

“Seriously. You talk to anyone on your way out this morning? Think about it, Mandy. He knew we'd be here.”

“I just told you, Ben, really. I didn't tell anyone. I just called in my credit card to the reservation clerk. That's all I did. That's all.”

“Okay, okay,” I said. “I'm sorry.”

I had been thorough. I was sure of it. I revisited that night when I'd just returned from New York, and Henri called me at Amanda's apartment minutes after I'd walked in the door. I'd checked Mandy's phones and mine, checked both of our apartments for bugs.

I hadn't noticed anything unusual around us on the highway this afternoon. There was no way anyone could have followed us when we took the off-ramp to Santa Barbara. We had been alone for so many miles that we'd practically owned the road.

Ten minutes ago, after the maitre d' escorted us out of the dining room, he'd told me that the champagne had been phoned in, charged to a credit card by Henri Benoit. That explained nothing. Henri could have called from any point on the globe.

But how had he known where we were?

If Henri hadn't tapped Mandy's phone, and if he hadn't tailed us -

A stunning thought cracked through my mind like a lightning strike. I stood up, and said, “He put a tracking device on your bike.”

“Don't even think about leaving me in this room alone,” Amanda said. I sat back down beside her, took her hand between both of mine and kissed it. I couldn't leave her in the room, and I couldn't protect her in the parking lot either.

“As soon as it's light tomorrow, I'm dismantling your bike until I find the bug.”

“I can't believe what he's doing to us,” Mandy said, and then she started to cry.

Chapter 97

We held on to each other under the bedcovers, our eyes wide open, listening to every footstep overhead, every creak in the hallway outside the room, every groan and pitch of the air conditioner. I didn't know if I was being rational or extremely paranoid, but I felt Henri watching us now.

Mandy had me tightly wrapped in her arms when she started crying out, “Oh, my God, oh, my God.”

I tried to comfort her, saying, “Honey, stop. This isn't such bad news. We'll find out how he's tracking us.”

“Oh, my God – this,” she said, poking me hard high on my right buttock. “This thing on your hip. I've told you about it. You always say it's nothing.”

“That thing? It is nothing.”

“Look at it.”

I threw off the blankets, switched on the lights, walked to the bathroom mirror with Mandy close behind me. I couldn't see it without contorting myself, but I knew what she was talking about: a welt that had been tender for a few days after Henri had clubbed me in my apartment.

I'd thought it was a bruise from the fall, or a bug bite, and after a few days the soreness went away.

Mandy had asked me about the bump a couple of times, and, yes, I'd said it was nothing. I reached around and touched the raised spot, the size of two grains of rice lying end-to-end.

It didn't seem so nothing, not anymore.

I rifled through my toiletry kit, dumped it out on the vanity, and found my razor. I beat it against the marble sink until the shaving head broke into parts.

“You're not going to? Ben! You don't want me to do it?”

“Don't worry. It'll hurt me more than it hurts you.”

“Wow, you're funny.”

“I'm fucking terrified,” I said.

Mandy took the blade from my hand, poured Listerine over it, and dabbed at the spot on my rump. Then she pinched a fold of skin and made a quick cut.

“I've got it,” she said.

She dropped the bloody bit of glass and metal into my hand. It could only be one thing: a GPS tracking device, the kind that are implanted into the necks of dogs. Henri must've injected it into my hide when I was lying unconscious on the floor. I'd been wearing this damned bug for weeks.

“Flush it down the toilet,” Amanda said. “That'll keep him busy.”

“Yeah. No. Tear some tape off that roll, would you?”

I pressed the device against my side, and Mandy ripped off a length of adhesive tape with her teeth. I patted the tape across the chip, securing it to my body again.

“What's the point of keeping it?” Mandy asked.

“As long as I'm wearing it, he won't know that I know that he's tracking me.”

“And? what good is that?”

“It starts the ball rolling in the other direction. We know something he doesn't.”

Chapter 98

FRANCE.

Henri stroked Gina Prazzi's flank as his breathing slowed. She had a wonderful peach-shaped ass, perfect rounded haunches with a dimple on each cheek at the small of her back.

He wanted to fuck her again. Very much so. And he would.

“You can untie me now,” she said.

He patted her, got up, reached under a chair and into his bag, then went to the camera that was clipped to the heavy folds of the curtains.

“What are you doing? Come back to bed, Henri. Don't be so cruel.”

He turned on the floor lamp and smiled into the lens, then went back to the canopied bed, said, “I don't think I caught the part when you were calling out to God. Too bad.”

“What are you doing with that video? You're not sending it? You're crazy, Henri, if you think they'll pay.”

“Oh, no?”

“I assure you, they will not.”

“It's for my private collection, anyway. You should trust me more.”

“Untie me, Henri. My arms are tired. I want a new game. I demand it.”

“You always think of your own pleasure.”

“Suit yourself,” she said. “But there will be a price to pay for this.”

Henri laughed. “Always a price.”

He picked up the remote control from the ornate night table, turned on the television set. He clicked past the hotel welcome screen, found the channel guide, pressed the buttons for the BBC.

First there were sports scores, then a market wrap-up, and then there were the faces of the new girls, Wendy and Sara.

“I absolutely loved Sara,” he told Gina, who was trying to loosen the knots binding her wrists to the headboard. “She never begged for her life. She never asked any stupid questions.”

“If I had use of my, ah, hands, I could do some nice things for you,” Gina said.

“I'll think about it.”

Henri clicked off the remote, rolled over, and straddled Gina's fantastic ass. He put his hands on her shoulders, rubbed his thumbs in circles at the base of her neck. He was getting hard again. Very hard, painfully so.

“This is becoming boring,” she said. “Maybe this reunion was a bad idea.”

Henri closed his fingers gently around her throat, still just playing a game. He felt her body tense and a film of sweat come over her skin.

Good. He liked her to be afraid. “Still bored?” He squeezed until she coughed, pulled at the restraints, wheezing his name as her lungs fought for air.

He released her, and then, as she gulped for breath, he untied her wrists. Gina shook out her hands and rolled over, still panting, said, “I knew you couldn't do it.”

“No. I couldn't do that.”

She got out of the bed and flounced toward the bathroom, stopping first to wink at the camera. Henri watched her go, then he got up, reached into his bag again, and walked into the bathroom behind her.

“What do you want now?” she asked, making eye contact with him in the mirror.

“Time's up,” he said.

Henri pointed the gun at the back of Gina's neck and fired, watched in the blood-spattered mirror as her eyes got large, then followed her body as she dropped to the floor. He put two more slugs into her back, checked her pulse, wiped down the gun and the silencer, placed the weapon at her side.

After his shower, Henri dressed. Then he downloaded the video to his laptop, wiped down the rooms, packed his bag, and checked that everything was as it should be.

He stared for a moment at the three diamond wristwatches on the nightstand and remembered the day he met her.

I? have time for you.

Together, the watches were worth a hundred thousand euros. Not worth the risk, though. He left them on the table. A nice tip for the maid, no?

Gina had used her credit card, so Henri left the room, closing the door behind him. He walked across the forecourt without incident, got into his rented car, and drove to the airport.

Chapter 99

By Sunday afternoon, I was back in my bunker, back to my book. I had a month's supply of junk food in the cupboard and was bent on finishing the expanded chapter outline for Zagami, who was expecting it in his e-mail box by morning.

At seven p.m., I turned on the tube: 60 Minutes had just started, and the Barbados murders were headlining the show.

Morley Safer was speaking: “Forensic experts say that when combined with the five Maui murders, the deaths of Wendy Emerson and Sara Russo are part of a pattern of brutal, sadistic killings, with no end in sight.

“Right now, detectives around the world are reexamining unsolved murder cases, looking for anything that can lead to a serial murderer who has left no known witnesses, no living victims, not a trace of himself behind. CBS correspondent Bob Simon talked with some of those detectives.”

Film clips came on the screen.

I watched retired cops interviewed in their homes and was struck by their somber expressions and quavering voices. One cop in particular had tears in his eyes as he displayed photos of a murdered twelve-year-old whose killer had never been found.

I turned off the set and screamed into my hands.

Henri was living inside my brain – in the past, the present, and the future. I knew his methods, his victims, and now I was adapting my writing to the cadence of his voice.

Sometimes, and this really scared me – sometimes I thought that I was him.

I uncapped a beer and drank it down in front of the open fridge. Then I wandered back to my laptop. I went online and checked my e-mail, something I hadn't done since leaving with Mandy for the weekend.

I opened a dozen e-mails before I came to one with the subject heading “Is everybody happy?” The e-mail had an attachment.

My fingers froze on the keys. I didn't recognize the sender's address, but I blinked at the heading for a long time before I opened the message: “Ben, I'm still working like a madman. Are you?”

The note was signed “H.B.”

I touched the strip of bandage stuck to my left side and felt the small device that was beaming my location to Henri's computer.

Then I downloaded the attachment.

Chapter 100

The video opened with a burst of light and an extreme close-up of Henri's digitally blurred face. He turned and walked toward a canopied bed in what looked to be a very expensive hotel room. I noted the elaborate furnishings, the traditional European fleur-de-lis pattern that was repeated in the draperies, carpet, and upholstery.

My eyes were drawn to the bed, where I saw a naked woman lying facedown, hands stretched out in front of her, tugging at the cords that tied her wrists to the headboard.

Oh no, here we go, I thought as I watched.

Henri got into bed next to her, and the two of them spoke in offhand tones. I couldn't make out what they were saying until she raised her voice sharply, asking him to untie her.

Something was different this time.

I was struck by the lack of fear in her voice. Was she a very good actor? Or had she just not figured out the climax?

I hit the Pause button, stopping the video.

Henri's ninety-second cut of Kim McDaniels's execution flashed into my mind in sharp detail. I would never forget Kim's postmortem expression, as if she was in pain even though her head had been detached from her body.

I didn't want to add another Henri Benoit production to my mental playlist.

I didn't want to see this.

Downstairs, an ordinary Sunday night was unfolding on Traction Avenue. I heard a street guitarist playing “Domino” and tourists applauding, the whoosh of tires on pavement as cars passed under my windows. A few weeks ago, a night like this, I might have gone down, had a couple of beers at Moe's.

I wished I could do it now. But I couldn't walk away.

I pressed the Play button and watched the moving pictures on my computer screen: Henri telling the woman that she cared only about her own pleasure, laughing, saying, “Always a price.” He picked up the remote control and turned on the TV.

The hotel welcome screen flashed by, and then an announcer on BBC World News gave a sports update, mostly football. Another announcer followed with a summary of various international financial markets, then came the breaking news of the two girls who'd been killed in Barbados.

Now, on my computer screen, Henri shut off the TV. He straddled the naked woman's body, put his hands around her neck, and I was sure that he was going to choke her – and then he changed his mind.

He untied her wrists, and I exhaled, wiped my eyes with my palms. He was letting her go – but why?

On screen, the woman said to Henri, “I knew you couldn't do it.” Her English was accented. She was Italian.

Was this Gina?

She got out of the bed and strolled toward the camera, and she winked. She was a pretty brunette in her late thirties, maybe forty. She headed to an adjoining room, probably the bathroom.

Henri got out of the bed, reached down, and pulled a gun from a bag that looked to be a 9-millimeter Ruger with a suppressor extending the muzzle.

He walked behind the woman and out of camera range.

I heard muffled conversation, then the phfffft sound of the gun firing through the suppressor. A shadow passed over the threshold. There was a soft, heavy thud, two more muffled shots, then the rush of running water.

Except for the empty bed, that's all I saw or heard until the screen went black.

My hands shook as I played the video again. This time I was looking for any detail that could tell me where Henri had been when he had surely killed this woman.

On my third viewing, I saw something I'd missed before.

I stopped the action when Henri turned on the TV. I enlarged the picture and read the welcome screen with the name of the hotel at the top of the menu.

It had been shot on an angle, and it was damned hard to make out the letters, but I wrote them down and then went out to the Web to see if such a place existed.

It did.

I read that the Château de Mirambeau was in France, in the wine country near Bordeaux. It had been built on the foundations of a medieval fortress founded in the eleventh century, reconstructed in the early 1800s, and turned into an expensive resort. Pictures on the hotel's Web site showed fields of sunflowers, vineyards, and the château itself, an elaborate fairy-tale construction of vaulted stone, capped with turrets surrounding a courtyard and formal gardens.

I searched the Web again, found the football scores and the market closings that I'd seen on the TV in Henri's room.

I realized that this video had been shot on Friday, the same night Amanda had brought home Cornish game hens and I had learned about the deaths of Sara and Wendy.

I put my hand over the bandage against my ribs and felt the banging of my heart. It was all clear to me now.

Two days ago, Henri was in France, about a five-hour drive from Paris. This coming week marked the beginning of September. Henri had told me that he always went to Paris in September.

I had a pretty good idea where he might be.

Chapter 101

I slammed down the lid of my laptop, as if I could actually shut out the images Henri had left to my imagination.

Then I called Amanda, talking rapidly as I threw clothes into a suitcase.

“Henri sent me a video,” I told her. “Looks like he killed Gina Prazzi. Maybe he's doing cleanup. Getting rid of people who know him and what he's done. So we have to ask ourselves, Mandy, when the book is finished, what's he going to do to us?”

I told her my plan, and she argued with me, but I got the last word. “I can't just sit here. I have to do something.”

I called a cab, and once we were rolling I ripped the adhesive tape from my rib cage and stuck the tracking device underneath the cab's backseat.

Chapter 102

I caught a direct flight to Paris – midcabin coach, next to the window. As soon as I put the seatback down, my eyes slammed shut. I missed the movie, the precooked meals, and the cheap champagne, but I got about nine hours of sleep, waking only as the plane started its descent.

My bag shot down the luggage chute like it had missed me, and within twenty minutes of landing I was sitting in the backseat of a taxi.

I spoke to the driver in my broken French, told him where to take me: the Hôtel Singe-Vert, French for “Green Monkey.” I'd stayed there before and knew it to be a clean two-and-a-half-star lodging popular with journalists on location in the City of Lights.

I walked through the unmanned lobby door, passed the entrance to the bar called Jacques' Américain on my left, then crossed into the dark inner lobby with its worn green couches, racks of folded newspapers in all languages, and a large, faded watercolor of African green monkeys behind the front desk.

The concierge's nametag read “Georges.” He was flabby, fiftyish, and pissed that he had to break off his phone conversation to deal with me. After Georges ran my credit card and locked my passport in the safe, I took the stairs, found my room on the third floor at the end of a frayed runner at the back of the hotel.

The room was papered with cabbage roses and crowded with century-old furniture, jammed in wall to wall. But the bedding was fresh, and there was a TV and a high-speed Internet connection on the desk. Good enough for me.

I dropped my bag down on the duvet and found a phone book. I'd been in Paris for an hour, and before I did another thing I had to get a gun.

Chapter 103

The French take handguns seriously. Permits are restricted to police and the military and a few security professionals, who have to lug their guns in cases, carry them in plain sight.

Still, in Paris, as in any big city, you can get a gun if you really want one. I spent the day prowling the Golden Drop, the drug-dealing sinkhole around the Basilica of Sacré-Coeur.

I paid two hundred euros for an old snub-nosed.38, a ladies' pistol with a two-inch barrel and six rounds in the chamber.

Back at the Green Monkey, Georges took my key off the board and pointed with his chin to a small heap on one of the sofas. “You have a guest.”

It took me a long moment to take in what I was seeing. I walked over, shook her shoulder, and called her name.

Amanda opened her eyes and stretched as I sat down beside her. She put her arms around my neck and kissed me, but I couldn't even kiss her back. She was supposed to be home, safe in L.A.

“Gee. Pretend you're glad to see me, okay? Paris is for lovers,” she said, smiling cautiously.

“Mandy, what in God's name are you thinking?”

“It's a little rash, I know. Look, I have something to tell you, Ben, and it could affect everything.”

“Cut to the chase, Mandy. What are you talking about?”

“I wanted to tell you face-to-face -”

“So you just got on a plane? Is it about Henri?”

“ No -”

“Then, Mandy, I'm sorry, but you have to go back. No, don't shake your head. You're a liability. Understand?”

“Well, thank you.”

Mandy was pouting now, which was rare for her, but I knew that the further I pushed her, the more obstinate she'd get. I could already smell the carpet burning as she dug in her heels.

“Have you eaten?” she asked me.

“I'm not hungry,” I said.

“I am. I'm a French chef. And we're in Paris.”

“This is not a vacation,” I said.

A half hour later, Mandy and I were seated at an outdoor café on the Rue des Pyramides. Night had blotted up the sunlight, the air was warm, and we had a clear view of a gilded statue of Saint Joan on her horse where our side street intersected with the Rue de Rivoli.

Mandy's mood had taken an upturn. In fact, she seemed almost high. She ordered in French, put away course after course, describing the preparation and rating the salad, the pâté, and the fruits de mer.

I made do with crackers and cheese and I drank strong coffee, my mind working on what I had to do, feeling the time rushing by.

“Just try this,” Mandy said, holding out a spoonful of crcme brulée.

“Honestly, Amanda,” I said with frank exasperation. “You shouldn't be here. I don't know what else to say to you.”

“Just say you love me, Benjy. I'm going to be the mother of your child.”

Chapter 104

I stared at Amanda; thirty-four years old, looking twenty-five, wearing a baby blue cardigan with ruffled collar and cuffs and a perfect Mona Lisa smile. She was astonishingly beautiful, never more so than at this very moment.

“Please say that you're happy,” she said.

I took the spoon out of her hand and put it down on her plate. I got out of my chair, placed one hand on each of her cheeks, and kissed her. Then I kissed her again. “You are the craziest girl I ever knew, trcs étonnante.”

“You're very amazing, too,” she said, beaming.

“Boy, do I love you,” I said.

“Moi aussi. Je t'aime you to pieces. But are you, Benjy? Are you happy?”

I turned to the waitress, said to her, “This lovely lady and I are going to have a baby.”

“It is your first baby?”

“Yes. And I love this woman so much, and I'm so happy about the baby I could fly circles around the moon.”

The waitress smiled broadly, kissed both my cheeks and Mandy's, then made a general announcement that I didn't quite understand. But she made wing motions with her arms, and people at the next table started laughing and clapping and then others joined in, calling out congratulations and bravos.

I smiled at strangers, bowed to a beatific Amanda, and felt the flush of an unexpected and full-blown joy. Not long ago I was thanking God that I have no children. Now I was lit up brighter than I. M. Pei's glass pyramid at the Louvre.

I could hardly believe it.

Mandy was going to have our child.

Chapter 105

As quickly as my expanding love for Mandy sent my heart to the moon, my happiness was eclipsed by an even greater fear for her safety.

As we trekked back to our little hotel, I told Amanda why she had to leave Paris in the morning.

“We'll never be safe as long as Henri is calling the shots. I have to be smarter than he is, and that's saying something, Amanda. Our only hope is for me to get out in front of him. Please trust me about this.”

I told Mandy that Henri had described walking with Gina around the Place Vendôme.

I said, “It's like looking for one needle in a hundred haystacks, but my gut is telling me that he's here.”

“And if he is, what are you going to do about it, Benjy? Are you really going to kill him?”

“You've got a better idea?”

“About a hundred of them.”

We took the stairs to our room, and I made Amanda stand back as I drew my dainty Smith and Wesson and opened the door. I checked the closets and the bath, pushed aside the curtains, and looked out into the alley, seeing popup monsters everywhere.

When I was sure the room was clear, I said, “I'll be back in an hour. Two hours at most. Sit tight, okay? Watch the tube. Swear to me you won't leave the room.”

“Oh please, Benjy, call the police.”

“Honey. One more time. They can't protect us. We're not protectable. Not from Henri. Now promise me.”

Mandy reluctantly held up the three-fingered Girl Scout salute, then locked the door behind me as I headed out.

I'd done some homework. There were a handful of first-class hotels in Paris. Henri might stay at the Georges V or the Plaza Athénée. But I was betting on my hunch.

It was an easy walk to the Hôtel Ritz on the Place Vendôme.

Chapter 106

Henri popped his knuckles in the backseat of a metered Mercedes taxi heading north from Orly toward the Rue de Rivoli and from there to the Place Vendôme. He was hungry and irritated, and the ridiculous traffic was barely crawling across the Pont Royal on the Rue des Pyramides.

As the taxi idled at a traffic light, Henri shook his head, thinking again about the mistake he'd made, a genuine amateur boner, not knowing that Jan Van der Heuvel would be out of town when he visited Amsterdam earlier that day. Rather than leave immediately, he'd made a decision on the fly, something he rarely did.

He knew that Van der Heuvel had a secretary. He'd met her once, and he knew she'd be locking up Van der Heuvel's office at the end of the day.

So he'd watched and waited for Mieke Helsloot, with her cute little body and her short skirt and lace-up boots, to lock Van der Heuvel's big front door at five on the nose. Then he'd followed her in the intense silence of the canal district, only the sound of church bells and seabirds breaking the stillness.

He followed quietly, only yards behind her, crossing the canal after her, turning down a winding side street. Then he called out, “Hello, excuse me,” and she'd turned to face him.

He'd apologized right away, falling in step beside her, saying he'd seen her leaving Mr. Van der Heuvel's office and had been trying to catch up to her for the last couple of blocks.

He'd said, “I'm working with Mr. Van der Heuvel on a confidential project. You remember me, don't you, Mieke? I'm Monsieur Benoit. I met you once in the office,” Henri had said.

“Yes,” she said doubtfully. “But I don't see how I can help you. Mr. Van der Heuvel will be back tomorrow.”

Henri had told her that he'd lost Mr. Van der Heuvel's cell phone number, and that it would really help him if he could explain how he'd gotten the date of their meeting wrong. And Henri had continued the story until Meike Helsloot had stopped at the front door to her flat.

He thought of her now, holding the key in her hand, impatience showing on her face, but in her politeness and willingness to help her employer she'd let him into her flat so that she could make the call for him to her boss.

Henri had thanked her, taken the one upholstered chair in Meike's two-room flat that had been built under a staircase, and waited for the right moment to kill her.

As the girl rinsed out two glasses, Henri had looked around at the sloping bookshelves, the fashion magazines, the mirror over the fireplace that was almost completely covered with photos of Mieke's handsome boyfriend.

Later, when she understood what he was going to do, she'd wailed, no-no-no, and begged him, please not to, she hadn't done anything wrong, she would never tell anyone, no, never.

“Sorry. It's not about you, Mieke,” he'd said. “It's about Mr. Van der Heuvel. He's a very wicked man.”

She'd said, “So why do this to me?”

“Well. It's Jan's lucky day, isn't it? He was out of town.”

Henri had bound her arms behind her back with one of her own bootlaces and was undoing his belt buckle when she said, “Not that. Please. I'm supposed to get married.”

He hadn't raped her. He hadn't been in the mood after doing Gina. So he'd told her to think of something nice. It was important in the last moments of life to have good thoughts.

He looped another bootlace around her throat and tightened it, holding her down with his knee in the small of her back until she stopped breathing. The waxed shoelace was as strong as wire, and it cut through her thin neck and she bled as he killed her.

Afterward, he arranged the pretty girl's body under blankets and patted her cheek.

He was thinking now, he'd been so angry at himself for missing Jan that he hadn't even thought to videotape the kill.

Then again – Jan would get the message.

Henri liked thinking about that.

Chapter 107

Still sitting in the interminable slog of traffic, Henri's mind turned back to Gina Prazzi, thinking of her eyes getting huge when he shot her, wondering if she'd really understood what he'd done. It was truly significant. She was the first person he'd killed for his own satisfaction since strangling the girl in the horse trailer more than twenty years ago.

And now he'd killed Mieke for the same reason. It wasn't about money at all.

Something inside him was changing.

It was like a light slipping beneath a door, and he could either open it to its full blinding brightness, or slam the door shut and run.

The horns were blaring now, and he saw that the taxi had finally crept to the intersection of Pyramides and Rivoli, and then stopped again. The driver turned off the air-conditioning and opened the windows to save gas.

Disgusted, Henri leaned forward, tapped on the glass.

The driver took a break from his cell phone to tell Henri that the street was jammed because of the French president's motorcade, which was just leaving the Elysée Palace on its way to the National Assembly.

“There's nothing I can do, Monsieur. My hands are tied. Relax.”

“How long will it be?”

“Perhaps another fifteen minutes. How should I know?”

Henri was more furious at himself than before. It had been stupid to come to Paris as some kind of ironic postscript to killing Gina. Not only stupid, but self-indulgent, or maybe self-destructive. Was that it? Do I want to be caught now? he wondered.

He watched the street through the open window, desperate for the absurd politician's motorcade to come and go, when he heard shouts of laughter coming from a brasserie at the corner.

He looked that way.

A man wearing a blue sports jacket, a pink polo shirt, and khakis, an American of course, made a comic bow to a young woman in a blue sweater. People began clapping, and as Henri looked more closely, the man seemed familiar and then – Henri's mind stopped cold.

In fact, he couldn't believe it. He wanted to ask the driver, Do you see what I see? Is that Ben Hawkins and Amanda Diaz? Because I think I've lost my mind.

Then Hawkins wiggled the metal frame chair, turning it, sitting so that he faced the street, and Henri knew without a doubt. It was Ben. When he'd last checked, Hawkins and the girl had been in L.A.

Henri's mind flashed back over the weekend to late on Saturday night, after he'd shot Gina. He'd e-mailed the video to Ben, but he hadn't checked the GPS tracker, not then. Not for a couple of days.

Had Ben discovered and discarded the chip?

For a moment, Henri felt something completely new to him. He was afraid. Afraid that he was getting sloppy, losing his hard-won discipline, losing his grip. He couldn't let that happen.

Never again.

Henri barked at the driver, saying that he couldn't wait any longer. He pushed a wad of bills into the driver's hand, grabbed his bag and briefcase, and got out of the cab on the street side.

He walked between cars, before doubling back to the sidewalk. Moving quickly, he ducked into an alcove between two storefronts only ten yards or so from the brasserie.

Henri watched, his heart racing, as Ben and Amanda left the restaurant and walked arm in arm, east up Rivoli.

When they had gone far enough ahead, Henri fell in behind them, keeping them in view as they reached the Singe-Vert, a small hotel on Place André Malraux.

Once Amanda and Ben disappeared inside, Henri went into the hotel bar, Jacques' Américain, adjacent to the lobby. He ordered a Scotch from the bartender, who was actively putting the moves on a horse-faced brunette.

Henri sipped his drink and viewed the lobby through the bar's back mirror. When he saw Ben come downstairs, Henri swiveled in the stool, watched as Ben handed his key to the concierge.

Henri made a mental note of the number under the key hook.

Chapter 108

It was already half past eight p.m. by the time I reached the Place Vendôme, an enormous square with traffic lanes on four sides and a tall bronze memorial to Napoléon Bonaparte in the center. On the west side of the Place is Rue St.-Honoré, shopping paradise for the wealthy, and across the square was the drop-dead-fantastic French Gothic architecture of the Hôtel Ritz, all honey-colored stone and luminous demilune awnings over the doorways.

I stepped onto the red carpet and through a revolving door into the hotel lobby and stared at the richly colored sofas, chandeliers throwing soft light on the oil paintings, and happy faces of the guests.

I found the house phones in an alcove and asked the operator to ring Henri Benoit. My heartbeats counted off the seconds, and then the operator came back on and told me that Monsieur Benoit was expected but had not checked in. Would I care to leave a message?

I said, “I'll call back. Merci.”

I had been right. Right.

Henri was in Paris. At least he would be very soon. He was staying at the Ritz.

As I hung up the phone I had an almost violent surge of emotion as I thought about all the innocent people Henri had killed. I thought about Levon and Barbara and about those suffocating days and nights I'd spent chained in a trailer, sitting face-to-face with a homicidal madman.

And then I thought about Henri threatening to kill Amanda.

I took a seat in a corner where I could watch the door, ducked behind the pages of a discarded copy of the International Herald Tribune, thinking this was the same as a stakeout in a squad car, minus the coffee and the bullshit from my partner.

I could sit here forever, because I'd finally gotten ahead of Henri, that freaking psychopath. He didn't know I was here, but I knew he was coming.

Over the next interminable two hours, I imagined Henri coming into the hotel with a suit bag and checking in at the desk, and that whatever disguise he was in, I would recognize him immediately. I would follow him into the elevator and give him the same heart-attack surprise he'd once given me.

I was still unsure what I would do after that.

I thought I could probably restrain him, call the police, have them hold him on suspicion of killing Gina Prazzi.

Or maybe that was too chancy. Maybe I'd put a bullet in his head and turn myself in at the American embassy, deal with it after the fact.

I reviewed option one: The cops would ask me, “Who is Gina Prazzi? How do you know she's dead?” I imagined showing them Henri's film in which Gina's dead body was never seen. If Henri had disposed of the body, he wouldn't even be arrested.

But I'd be under suspicion. In fact, I would be suspect number one.

I ran through the second option, saw myself pulling the.38 on Henri, spinning him around, saying, “Hands against the wall, don't move!” I liked the idea a lot.

That's how I was thinking when, among the dozens of people crossing the lobby, I saw two beautiful women and a man pass in front of me, heading toward the front door. The women were young and stylish, English-speaking, laughing and talking over each other, directing their attention to the man sandwiched between them.

Their arms were entwined like school buddies, breaking apart when they reached the revolving door, the man hanging back to let the very attractive women go through first.

The rush I felt was miles ahead of my conscious thought. But I registered the man's bland features, his build, the way he dressed.

He was very blond now, wearing large, black-framed eyeglasses, his posture slightly stooped.

This was exactly how Henri disguised himself. He'd told me that his disguises worked because they were so simple. He adopted a distinct way of walking or speaking, and then added a few distracting, but memorable visual cues. He became his new identity. Whatever identity he'd assumed, this much I knew.

The man with those two women was none other than Henri Benoit.

Chapter 109

I dropped the newspaper to the floor and followed the threesome with my eyes as the revolving door dispensed them one at a time into the street.

I headed for the main door, thinking I could see where Henri was going, buy some time to come up with a plan. But before I reached the revolving door, a clump of tourists surged in front of me, staggering and giggling and bunching up inside the blades of the door as I stood by wanting to scream, “You assholes, get out of my way!”

By the time I got outside, Henri and the two women were far ahead of me, walking along the arcade that lined the west side of the street.

They were now heading down the Rue de Castiglione and toward the Rue de Rivoli. I just caught a glimpse of them turning left when I reached the corner.

Then I saw the two pretty women standing with their heads together in front of a designer shoe store, and I saw Henri's white-blond hair far up ahead.

As I tried to keep him in sight, he disappeared down into the Tuileries Métro station at the end of the street.

I ran across the stream of traffic, ran down the stairs to the platform, but the station is one of the Métro's busiest, and I couldn't see Henri.

I tried to look everywhere at once, my eyes piercing the clots of travelers weaving through the station.

And there he was, at the far end of the platform. Suddenly he turned toward me, and I froze. For one eternal minute, I felt completely vulnerable, as if I'd been illuminated with a spotlight on a black stage.

He had to see me.

I was in his direct line of sight.

But he didn't react, and I continued to stare at him while my feet behaved as though they were glued to the cement.

Then his image seemed to shift and clarify. Now that I was looking at him straight on, I saw the length of his nose, the height of his forehead, his receding chin.

Was I this crazy?

I'd been so sure – but I was just as sure now that I'd gotten it all wrong. That I was a dumb-ass, a total jerk, a failure as a sleuth. The man I had just followed from the Ritz? He wasn't Henri at all.

Chapter 110

I climbed up out of the Métro, remembering that I'd told Mandy I'd be back in an hour or so but had now been gone for three.

I walked back to the Hôtel Singe-Vert empty-handed, no chocolates, no flowers, no jewelry. I had nothing to show for my Ritz-to-Métro escapade except one scrap of information that could turn out to be critical.

Henri had booked a room at the Ritz.

The lobby of our small hotel was deserted, although a cloud of cigarette smoke and loud conversation floated out from the bar and into the shabby main room.

The concierge desk was closed.

I went behind the desk and grabbed my key from the hook.

I took the stairs to my room, more than anything wanting to sleep.

I knocked on the door, called Mandy's name, and when she didn't answer, I turned the knob, ready to tell Mandy that she had no right to be girlish and irresponsible anymore. She had to be careful for two.

I opened the door and felt instantly that something was wrong. Mandy wasn't in bed. Was she in the bathroom? Was she okay?

I stepped into the room, calling her name, and the door slammed behind me. I swung around and tried to make sense of the impossible.

A black man was holding Mandy, his left arm crossing her chest, his right hand with a gun to her head. He was wearing latex gloves. Blue ones. I'd seen gloves exactly like those before.

My eyes went to Mandy's face. She was gagged. Her eyes were wild, and she was grunting a wordless scream.

The black man grinned at me, tightened his hold on her, and pointed the gun at me.

“Amanda,” the man said. “Look who's home? We've been waiting for a long time, haven't we, sweetheart? But it's been fun, right?”

All the fragments of information came together: the blue gloves, the familiar tone, the pale gray eyes, and the stage makeup. I wasn't mistaken this time. I'd heard hours of his voice piped directly into my ear. It was Henri. But how had he found us here?

My mind spun in a hundred directions, all at once.

I'd gone to Paris out of fear. But now that Henri had come to my door, I wasn't afraid anymore. I was furious, and my veins were pumping a hundred percent adrenaline, lifting-a-car-off-a-baby-carriage kind of adrenaline, the running-into-a-burning-building kind of damn-it-to-hell rush.

I whipped the.38 out of my waistband, pulled back the hammer, yelled, “Let her go.”

I guess he didn't believe I would fire. Henri smirked at me, said, “Drop your gun, Ben. I just want to talk.”

I walked up to the maniac and put the gun's muzzle against his forehead. He grinned, gold tooth winking, part of his latest disguise. I got off one shot at the exact moment that he kneed me in the thigh. I was sent crashing backward into a desk, the wooden legs shattering as I went down.

My first thought – had I shot Mandy? But I saw blood flowing from Henri's arm and heard the clatter of his gun sliding across the wooden floor.

He shoved Mandy away from him, hard, and she fell on me. I rolled her off my chest, and as I tried to sit, Henri pinned me – with his foot on my wrist, looking down with contempt.

“Why couldn't you just do your job, Ben? If you'd just done your job, we wouldn't be having this little problem, but now I can't trust you. I only wish I'd brought my camera.”

He leaned down, bent my fingers back, and peeled the gun from my hand. Then he aimed it – first at me, and then at Mandy.

“Now, who wants to die first?” Henri said. “Vous or vous?”

Chapter 111

Everything went white in front of my eyes. This was it, wasn't it? Amanda and I were going to die. I felt Henri's breath on my face as he screwed the muzzle of the.38 into my right eye. Mandy tried to scream through her gag.

Henri barked at her, “Shut up.”

She did.

Water filled my eyes then. Maybe it was from the pain, or the fierce regret that I'd never see Amanda again. That she would die too. That our child would never be born.

Henri fired the gun – directly into the carpet next to my ear, deafening me. Then he yanked my head and shouted into my ear.

“Write the fucking book, Ben. Go home and do your job. I'm going to call you every night in L.A., and if you don't pick up the phone, I will find you. You know I'll do it, and I promise you both, You won't get a second chance.”

The gun was pulled away my face. Henri grabbed up a duffel bag and a briefcase with his good hand and arm, slammed the door on his way out. I heard his footsteps receding down the stairs.

I turned to Mandy. The gag was a pillowcase pulled across the inside of her mouth and was knotted at the back of her head. I plucked at the knot, my fingers trembling, and when she was free, I took her into my arms and rocked her back and forth, back and forth.

“Are you okay, honey? Did he hurt you?”

She was crying, saying she was fine.

“You're sure?”

“Go,” she said. “I know you want to go after him.”

I crawled around, feeling under the spindly legs and ruffled skirts of the wall-to-wall collection of antique furniture, saying, “You know I've got to. He'll still be watching us, Mandy.”

I found Henri's Ruger under the dresser and wrapped my hand tightly around the grip. I twisted open the blood-slicked doorknob and shouted to Mandy that I'd be back soon.

Leaning heavily on the banister, I walked off the pain in my thigh as I made my way down the stairs, trying to hurry, knowing that I had to kill Henri somehow.

Chapter 112

The sky was black, but the streetlights and the large and perpetually booked Hôtel du Louvre next door had just about turned night into day. The two hotels were only a few hundred yards from the Tuileries, the huge public garden outside the Louvre.

This week some kind of carnival was going on there: games, big rides, oompah music, the works. Even at this late hour, giddy tourists and folks with kids flowed out onto the sidewalk, adding their raucous laughter to the sharp shocks of fireworks and blaring car horns. It reminded me of a scene from a French movie, maybe one that I'd watched somewhere.

I followed a thin trail of blood out to the street, but it disappeared a few yards from the front door. Henri had done his disappearing act again. Had he gone into the Hôtel du Louvre to hide? Had he lucked out and caught a taxi?

I was staring through the crowds when I heard police sirens coming up the Place André Malraux.

Obviously, shots had been reported. Plus, I'd been seen running around with a gun.

I stuffed Henri's Ruger into a potted planter outside the Hôtel du Louvre. Then I gamely limped into the lobby, sat in an overstuffed chair, and thought about how I would approach the agents de police.

Finally, I was going to have to explain Henri and everything else to the cops.

I wondered what the hell I was going to say.

Chapter 113

The sirens got louder and louder, my shoulders and neck stiffened, and then the looping wail passed the hotel and continued on toward the Tuileries. When I was sure it was over, I reclaimed Henri's gun, made my way back to the Singe-Verts, and climbed the stairs like an old man. I knocked on the door to my room, said, “Mandy, it's me. I'm alone. You can open the door.”

Seconds later, she did. Her face was tear-stained, and there were bruises at the corners of her mouth from the gag. I opened my arms to her, and Mandy fell against me, sobbing like a child who might never be soothed again.

I held her, swayed with her for a long while. Then I undressed us both and helped her into bed. I shut off the overhead light, leaving on only a small boudoir lamp on the night table. I slid under the covers, and took Mandy into my arms. She pressed her face to my chest, tethered herself to my body with her arms and legs.

“Talk to me, honey,” I said. “Tell me everything.”

“He knocked on the door,” she finally said. “He said he had flowers. Is that the most simpleminded trick ever? But I believed him, Ben.”

“He said they were from me?”

“I think so. Yeah, he did.”

“I wonder – how did he know we were here? What tipped him? I don't get it.”

“When I unlocked the door, he kicked it open and grabbed me.”

“I wish I'd killed him, Mandy.”

“I didn't know who he was. A black man. He wrenched my arms behind my back. I couldn't move. He said? oh, this makes me sick,” she said, crying again.

“What did he say?”

“ 'I love you, Amanda.' ”

I was listening to Mandy and hearing echoes at the same time. Henri had told me that he'd loved Gina. He'd loved Julia. How long would Henri have waited to prove his love to Mandy by raping her and strangling her with those blue gloves on his hands?

I whispered, “I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.”

“I'm the jerk who came here, Benjy. Oh, God, how long was he here? Three hours? I'm sorry. I didn't understand until now what those three days with him must have been like for you.”

She started crying again, and I hushed her, told her over and over that everything would be all right.

“Don't take this the wrong way,” she said, her voice ragged and strained. “But what makes you so sure?”

I got out of bed, opened my laptop, and booked two morning flights back to the States.

Chapter 114

It was well after midnight, and I was still pacing the room. I took some Tylenol, got back under the covers with Amanda, but I couldn't sleep. I couldn't even shut my eyes for more than a few seconds.

The TV was small and old, but I turned it on and found CNN.

I watched the headline news, bolted upright when the talking head said, “Police have no suspects in the murder of Gina Prazzi, heiress to the Prazzi shipping fortune. She was found murdered in a room at the exclusive French resort Château de Mirambeau.”

When Gina Prazzi's face came on the screen, I felt as though I knew her intimately. I'd watched her pass in front of the camera in the hotel room, not knowing that her life was about to end.

I said, “Mandy, Mandy,” shook her arm. But she turned away, settled even more deeply into the feather bed and sleep.

I watched the police captain brief the press on TV, his speech translated and recapped for those just tuning in. Ms. Prazzi had checked into the Château de Mirambeau alone. The housekeepers believed that two people stayed in the room, but no other guest was seen. The police were not releasing any further information about the murder at this time.

That was enough for me. I knew the full story, but what I hadn't known was that Gina Prazzi was a real name, not an alias.

What other lies had Henri told me? For what possible reason? Why had he lied – in order to tell me the truth?

I stared at the TV screen as the anchor said, “In the Netherlands, a young woman was found murdered this morning in Amsterdam. What brings this tragedy to the attention of international criminalists is that elements of this girl's death are similar to elements of the murders of the two young women in Barbados, and also to the famous American swimsuit models who were murdered this spring in Hawaii.”

I dialed up the volume as the faces came on the screen: Sara Russo, Wendy Emerson, Kim McDaniels, and Julia Winkler, and now another face, a young woman whose name was Mieke Helsloot.

The announcer said, “Ms. Helsloot, twenty years old, was the secretary to the well-known architect Jan Van der Heuvel of Amsterdam, who was at a meeting in Copenhagen at the time of the murder. Mr. Van der Heuvel was interviewed at his hotel minutes ago.”

Jesus Christ. I knew his name.

The picture cut away to Van der Heuvel leaving his hotel in Copenhagen, suitcase in hand, journalists crowding around him at the bottom of a rounded staircase. He was in his early forties, had gray hair and angular features. He looked genuinely shocked and scared.

“I have only just now learned of this terrible tragedy,” he said into the clutch of microphones. “I am shocked and devastated. Mieke Helsloot was a proper, decent young lady, and I have no idea why anyone would harm her. It is a terrible day. Mieke was to be married.”

Henri had told me that Jan Van der Heuvel was an alias for one of the members of the Alliance, the man Henri called “the Dutchman.” Van der Heuvel was the third wheel who'd joined up with Henri and Gina during their romp through the French Riviera.

And now, soon after Henri had killed Gina Prazzi, Van der Heuvel's secretary had also been murdered.

If I hadn't once been a cop, I might have dismissed these two killings as a coincidence. The women were different types. They were killed hundreds of miles apart. But what I saw were two more flags on a grid, a part of a pattern.

Henri had loved Gina Prazzi, and he killed her. He'd hated Jan Van der Heuvel. Maybe he'd wanted to kill him, too, so, just thinking it out? what if Henri hadn't known that Van der Heuvel was in Denmark that day?

What if he'd decided to kill his secretary instead?

Chapter 115

I woke up to sunlight seeping in through a small window. Amanda was lying on her side, facing away from me, her long, dark hair fanned out over the pillow. And in a flash, I was enraged as I remembered Henri in blackface, his gun pointed at Amanda's head, her eyes wild with fear.

Right then, I didn't care why Henri had killed anyone, what he was planning to do next, why the book was so important to him, or why he seemed to be spinning out of control.

Only one thing was important to me. I had to keep Mandy safe. And the baby, too.

I grabbed for my watch, saw that it was almost seven thirty. I shook Mandy's shoulder gently, and her eyes flew open. She gasped, then saw my face and sagged back into the bedding.

“I thought for a moment -”

“That it was a dream.”

“Yeah.”

I put my head very gently on her belly, and she stroked my hair.

“Is that the baby?” I asked.

“You dummy. I'm hungry.”

I pretended she was speaking for the baby. I made a little megaphone with my hands, called out, “Hellloooo in there, Foozle. This is Dad,” as though the tiny clump of our combined DNA could hear me.

Mandy cracked up, and I was glad she could laugh, but I cried in the shower, where she couldn't see me. If only I'd killed Henri when I had him in my gun sight. If only I had done that. Then it would all be over now.

I kept Mandy close to me as I paid the bill at the front desk and then hailed a cab and told the driver to take us to Charles de Gaulle airport.

Mandy said, “How can we go back to L.A.?”

“We can't.”

She turned her head and stared at me. “So what are we doing?”

I told Mandy what I'd decided, gave her a short list of names and numbers on the back of my business card, and told her that she'd be met when the plane landed. She was listening, not fighting with me, when I told her that she couldn't phone me, or send me e-mail, nothing. That she had to rest and eat good food. “If you get bored, think about the dress you want to wear.”

“You know I don't wear dresses.”

“Maybe you'll make an exception.”

I took a ballpoint pen out of my computer case and drew a ring on Mandy's left ring finger with lines radiating out from a big sparkly diamond in the center.

“Amanda Diaz, I love every bit of you. Will you marry me?”

“Ben.”

“You and Foozle.”

There were happy tears rolling down our cheeks now. She threw her arms around me, said, “Yes, yes, yes,” and swore she wouldn't wash off the ring I'd drawn until she had a real one.

I bought breakfast for us at the airport, chocolate croissants and café au lait, and when it was nearly time to board, I walked with her as far as I could go. Then I wrapped my arms around her, and she sobbed against my chest until I was crying again, too. Could anything be scarier than this? The thought of losing someone you love so much? I didn't think so.

I kissed Mandy's poor bruised mouth again and again. If love counted for anything, she would be safe. Our baby would be safe. And I would see them both soon.

But the opposing thought went through me like a lance. I might never see Amanda again. This could be the end for us.

I dried my eyes with the palms of my hands, then watched Mandy go through the checkpoint. She looked back, waved, threw kisses, then turned away.

When I couldn't see her any longer, I left the airport, took a cab to the Gare du Nord, and boarded a high-speed train to Amsterdam.

Chapter 116

Four hours after I boarded the train in Paris, I disembarked in the Centraal Station in Amsterdam, where I used a public phone to call Jan Van der Heuvel. I had contacted him before I left Paris about our getting together as soon as possible. He asked me again what made this meeting so urgent, and this time I told him, “Henri Benoit sent me a video I think you should see.”

There was a long silence, then Van der Heuvel gave me directions to a bridge that crossed the Keizersgracht Canal only a few blocks from the train station.

I found Van der Heuvel standing by a lamppost, looking into the water below. I recognized him from the news clip that had been shot of him in Copenhagen, the journos asking him to comment on Mieke Helsloot's murder.

Today he was wearing a smart gray gabardine suit, a white dress shirt, and a charcoal-colored tie with a silken sheen. The part in his hair was as crisp as if it had been drawn with a knife, and it highlighted his angular features.

I introduced myself, saying that I was a writer from Los Angeles.

“How do you know Henri?” he asked after a long pause.

“I'm writing his life story. His autobiography. Henri commissioned it.”

“You met with him?”

“I did, yes.”

“All of this surprises me. He told you my name?”

“In publishing, this type of book is called a ' tell-all.' Henri told me everything.”

Van der Heuvel looked extremely uncomfortable out on the street. He appraised my appearance, seemed to weigh whether or not to take this meeting further, then said, “I can spare a few minutes. My office is right over there. Come.”

I walked with him across the bridge to a handsome five-story building in what appeared to be an upscale residential area. He opened the front door, indicated that I should go first, and I took the four well-lit flights of stairs to the top floor. My hopes rose as I climbed.

Van der Heuvel was as twisted as a snake. As part of the Alliance, he was as guilty of multiple murders as if he'd killed people with his own hands. But as despicable as he was, I wanted his cooperation, and so I had to control my anger, keep it hidden from him.

If Van der Heuvel could lead me to Henri Benoit, I would get another chance to bring Henri down.

This time, I wouldn't blow it.

Van der Heuvel took me through his design studio, a vast uncluttered space, bright with blond wood and glass and streaming sunlight. He offered me an uncomfortable-looking chair across from him at a long drawing table near the tall windows.

“It is hilarious that Henri is telling you his life story,” Van der Heuvel said. “I can only imagine the lies he would say.”

“Tell me how funny you find this,” I said. I booted up my laptop, turned it around, and pushed the Play button so that Van der Heuvel could see the last minutes of Gina Prazzi's life.

I didn't think he had seen the video before, but as it ran, his expression never changed. When it was over, Van der Heuvel said, “What is funny is? I think he loved her.”

I stopped the video, and Van der Heuvel looked into my eyes.

I said, “Before I was a writer, I was a cop. I think Henri is doing mop-up. He's killing the people who know who he is. Help me find him, Mr. Van der Heuvel. I'm your best chance for survival.”

Chapter 117

Van Der Heuvel's back was to the tall windows. His long shadow fell across the blond table, and his face was haloed by the afternoon light.

He took a pack of cigarettes from his drawer, offered me one, then lit one for himself. He said, “If I knew how to find him, there would no longer be a problem. But Henri has a genius for disappearance. I don't know where he is. I have never known.”

“Let's work on this together,” I said. “Kick around some ideas. There must be something you know that can lead me to him. I know about his imprisonment in Iraq, but Brewster-North is a private company, closed tight, like a vault. I know about Henri's forger in Beirut, but without the man's name -”

“Oh, this is too much,” Van der Heuvel said, laughing, a terrible laugh because there was actual humor in it. He found me amusing. “He is psychopathic. Don't you understand this man at all? He's delusional. He's narcissistic, and most of all he lies. Henri was never in Iraq. He has no forger other than himself. Understand something, Mr. Hawkins. Henri is glorifying himself to you, inventing a better life story. You're like a small dog being pulled along -”

“Hey!” I said, slapping the table, jumping to my feet. “Don't screw with me. I came here to find Henri. I don't care about you or Horst Werner or Raphael dos Santos or the rest of you sick, pathetic motherfuckers. If you can't help me, I have no choice but to go to the police and give them everything.”

Van der Heuvel laughed again and told me to calm down, take a seat. I was rocked to my core. Had Van der Heuvel just answered the question of why Henri wanted to write the book? To glorify his life story?

“The Dutchman” opened his laptop, said, “I got an e-mail from Henri two days ago. The first one he ever sent to me directly. He wanted to sell me a video. I think I just saw it for free. You say you have no interest in us?”

“I don't care about you at all. I just want Henri. He's threatened my life and my family.”

“Maybe this will help your detective work.”

Van der Heuvel ran his fingers over the keyboard of his laptop as he talked, saying, “Henri Benoit, as he calls himself, was a juvenile monster. Thirty years ago, when he was six years old, he strangled his infant sister in her crib.”

The shock showed on my face as Van der Heuvel nodded, smiling, tapping ashes into a tray, assuring me that this was true.

“Cute little boy. Fat cheeks. Big eyes. He murdered a baby. He was diagnosed with psychopathic personality disorder, very rare that a child would have all the hallmarks. He was sent to a psychiatric facility, the Clinic du Lac in Geneva.”

“This is documented?”

“Yes, indeed. I did the research when I first met him. According to the chief psychiatrist, a Dr. Carl Obst, the child learned a lot during his twelve years in the crazy house. How to mimic people, of course. He picked up several languages and learned a trade. He became a printer.”

Was Van der Heuvel telling me the truth? If so, it explained how Henri could become anyone, forge documents, slip through the cracks at will.

“After he was released at age eighteen, our boy got busy with casual murders and robberies. He stole a Ferrari, anyway. Whatever else, I don't know. But when he met Gina four years ago, he didn't have to dine on scraps anymore.”

Van der Heuvel told me that Gina “fancied Henri,” that he opened up to her, told her how he liked his sex and that he had committed acts of extreme violence. And he said he wanted to make a lot of money.

“It was Gina's idea to have Henri provide entertainment for our little group and Horst went along with this plan for our sex monkey.”

“This is where you came in.”

“Ah. Yes. Gina introduced us.”

“Henri said you sat in a corner and watched.”

Van der Heuvel looked at me as though I was an exotic bug and he hadn't decided whether to smash me or put me under glass.

“Another lie, Hawkins. He took it up the ass and squealed like a girl. But this is what you should know because it is the truth. We didn't make Henri who he is. We only fed him.”

Chapter 118

Van Der Heuvel's fingers flew across the keyboard again. He said, “And now, a quick look, for your eyes only. I'll show you how the young man developed.”

Delight brightened his face as he turned the screen toward me.

A collection of single frames taken from videos of women who'd been tied up, tortured, decapitated, flickered across the computer screen.

I could hardly absorb what I was seeing as Van der Heuvel flashed through the pictures, smoking his cigarette, providing blithe commentary for a slide show of absolute and, until now, unimaginable horror.

I felt light-headed. I was starting to feel that Van der Heuvel and Henri were the same person. I hated them equally. I wanted to kill Van der Heuvel, the worthless shit, and I thought I could even get away with it.

But I needed him to lead me to Henri.

“At first I didn't know that the murders were real,” he was saying, “but when Henri began to cut off heads, then, of course, I knew.? In the last year, he began writing his own scripts. Getting a little too drunk with attention. Getting too greedy.

“He was dangerous. And he knew me and Gina, so there was no easy way to end it.”

Van der Heuvel exhaled a plume of smoke and went on.

“Last week, Gina planned to either pay Henri off or make him disappear. Obviously, she misjudged him. She never told me how she contacted him, so once again, this is the truth, Mr. Hawkins, I have no idea where Henri is. None at all.”

“Horst Werner signs Henri's paychecks, doesn't he?” I said. “Tell me how to find Werner.”

Van der Heuvel stubbed out his cigarette. His delight was gone. He spoke to me with dead seriousness, emphasizing every word.

“Mr. Hawkins, Horst Werner is the last person you ever want to meet. In your case in particular. He will not like Henri's book. Take my meaning. Don't let it out of your hands. Scrub your computer. Burn your tapes. Never mention the Alliance or its members to anyone. This advice is worth your life.”

It was too late to scrub my hard drive. I'd sent my transcripts of the Henri interviews and the outline of the book to Zagami in New York. The transcripts had been photocopied and passed around to editors and Raven-Wofford's outside law firm. The names of the Alliance members were all over the manuscript. I had planned to change the names, as I'd promised Henri, in the final draft.

I bulled ahead. “If Werner helps me, I'll help him.”

“You have the brain of a brick, Hawkins. Listen to what I'm telling you. Listen. Horst Werner is a powerful man with long arms and steel fists. He can find you wherever you are. Do you hear me, Hawkins? Don't be afraid of Henri, our little windup toy.

“Be afraid of Horst Werner.”

Chapter 119

Van Der Heuvel abruptly called our meeting to an end, dismissed me, saying that he had a flight to catch.

My skull felt like a pressure cooker about to blow. The threat against me had been doubled, a war on two fronts: If I didn't write the book, Henri would kill me. If I did write the book, Werner would kill me.

I still had to find Henri, and now I had to stop Van der Heuvel from telling Horst Werner about Henri's book, and about me.

I dug Henri's Ruger out of my computer case and aimed it at the Dutchman. My voice was hoarse from the stress of unexpressed fear and fury when I said, “You remember I said I didn't care about you and the Alliance? I've changed my mind. I care a lot.”

Van der Heuvel looked at me with scorn.

“Mr. Hawkins, if you shoot me, you will be in a prison for the rest of your life. Henri will still be alive and living in luxury somewhere in the world.”

“Take off your coat,” I said, hefting the gun in my hand. “And everything else.”

“What is the point of this, Hawkins?”

“I like to watch,” I said. “Now shut up. Take off all your clothes. The shirt, the shoes, the pants, every stitch you have on.”

“You are really a fool,” he said, obeying me. “What have you got on me? Some pornography on my computer? This is Amsterdam. We are not prudes like your citizens of the United States. You can't tie me to any of it. Did you see me in any of those videos? I don't think so.”

I stood with the gun clasped in both my hands, leveled at Van der Heuvel, and when he was naked, I told him to grab the wall. Then I whacked him on the back of his head with the gun butt, the same treatment Henri had given me.

Leaving him unconscious on the floor, I lifted Van der Heuvel's tie from the pile of clothes on the chair and used it to secure his wrists tightly behind his back.

His computer was connected to the Internet, and I worked fast, attaching the Henri Benoit videos to e-mails that I addressed to myself. What else?

There was a box of marking pens on his desk, and I dropped one of them into my coat pocket.

Then I walked through Van der Heuvel's immaculate, full-floor flat. The man was house-proud. He had beautiful things. Expensive books. Drawings. Photographs. His closet was like a clothes museum. It was sickening that a man this base, this vile, could have such a carefree and luxurious life.

I went to Van der Heuvel's magazine-quality kitchen and turned on the gas burners on his stove.

I set dish towels and two-hundred-dollar ties on fire, and as flames reached for the ceiling, the overhead sprinkler system opened.

An alarm rang out in the stairwell, and I was sure another alarm was ringing in a firehouse nearby.

As water surged across the fine wooden floors, I returned to the main room, packed away the computers, slinging both mine and Van der Heuvel's over my shoulder.

Then I slapped Van der Heuvel's face, yelled his name, jerked him to his feet. “Up! Get up. Now!” I yelled.

I ignored his questions as I marched him down the stairs to the street. Smoke billowed from the windows and, as I'd hoped, a thick crowd of witnesses had congregated around the house: men and women in business attire, old people and children on bicycles that the city provided free to residents.

I sat Van der Heuvel down on the curb and uncapped the marking pen. I wrote on his forehead, “Murderer.”

He called out to people in the crowd, his voice shrill. He was pleading, but the only word I could understand was “police.” Cell phones came out and numbers were punched.

Soon sirens screamed, and as they came closer I wanted to howl along with them. But I kept Henri's gun trained on Van der Heuvel and waited for the police to arrive.

When they finally did, I set down the Ruger on the sidewalk, and I pointed at Van der Heuvel's forehead.

Chapter 120

SWITZERLAND.

Two cops were in the front seat, and I sat in the back of a car speeding toward Wengen, a toylike Alpine town in the shadow of the Eiger. Despite the ban on cars in this idyllic ski resort, our armored vehicle twisted around the narrow and icy roads. I clenched the armrest, leaned forward, and stared straight ahead. I wasn't afraid that the car would sail over a guardrail. I was afraid that we wouldn't get to Horst Werner in time.

Van der Heuvel's computer had yielded his contact list, and in addition to the complete playlist of Henri Benoit's videos, I'd turned over my transcripts of Henri's confessions in the trailer. I'd explained to the police the connection between Henri Benoit, serial killer for hire, and the people who paid him.

The cops were elated.

Henri's trail of victims, dozens of horrific killings in Europe and America and Asia, had been linked only since the recent murders of the two young women in Barbados. Now the Swiss police were optimistic that with the right kind of pressure, Horst Werner would give Henri up.

As we sped toward Werner's villa, law enforcement agents were moving in on members of the Alliance in countries around the world. These should have been triumphant hours for me, but I was in a state of raw panic.

I'd made calls to friends, but there were no phones where Amanda was staying. I didn't know if it would be hours or days before I would know if she was safe. And although Van der Heuvel had referred to Henri as a toy, I had more evidence than before of his ruthlessness, his resourcefulness, his lust for revenge. And I finally understood why Henri had drafted me to write his book. He wanted the Alliance, his puppeteers, to be caught so that he could be free of them, to change his identity again and lead his own life.

The car I was riding in braked, wheels shimmying on ice and gravel, the heavy vehicle sliding to a stop at the foot of a stone wall. The wall fronted a fortresslike compound built into the side of a hill.

Car doors opened and slammed, radios chattered. Armored commando units flanked us, dozens of men in flak jackets who were armed with automatic weapons, grenade launchers, and high-tech equipment I couldn't even name.

Fifty yards away, across a snowy field, glass shattered. A window had been knocked out in a corner room of the villa. Bullets flew, and grenades boomed as they exploded inside the target area.

Under covering fire, a dozen agents charged the villa, and I heard the rumble of snow cracking loose from the steep grade behind Horst's stronghold. There was shouting in German, more small-arms fire, and I visualized Horst Werner's dead body coming out on a stretcher, the final act of this takedown.

With Horst Werner dead, how would we find Henri?

The massive front door opened. The men who were leaning against the wall aimed their weapons.

And then I saw him.

Horst Werner, the terror who Van der Heuvel had described as a man with long arms and steel fists, “the last man you'd ever want to meet,” came out of his house of stone. He was barrel-chested, with a goatee and gold wire-framed glasses, and he wore a blue overcoat. Even with his hands folded on top of his head, he had a confident “military” bearing.

This was the twisted man behind it all, the master voyeur, the murderer's murderer, the Wizard of some hellacious, perverted Oz.

He was alive, and he was under arrest.

Chapter 121

Horst Werner was bundled into an armored car, and Swiss cops piled in behind him. I went with two Interpol investigators in another. An hour after the takedown, we arrived at the police station in Bern, and the questioning of Horst Werner began.

I watched anxiously from a small observation chamber with a window onto the interrogation room.

As Werner waited for his lawyer to arrive, his face streamed with sweat. I knew that the heat had been turned up, that the front legs of Werner's chair were shorter than the back, and that Captain Voelker, who was questioning him, was not getting much information.

A young officer stood behind my chair and interpreted for me. “Herr Werner says, 'I do not know Henri Benoit. I haven't killed anyone! I watch, but I do nothing.' ”

Captain Voelker left the interrogation room briefly and returned holding what looked like a CD. Voelker spoke to Werner, and my interpreter told me that this disc had been found inside a DVD player, along with a cache of other discs in Werner's library. Werner's face stiffened as Voelker inserted the disc into a player.

What video was this? The Gina Prazzi murder? Maybe some other killing by Henri?

I angled my chair so that I could see the monitor, and I took a deep breath.

A man's bowed head came on the screen. I could see him from the crown of his skull to the middle of his T-shirt. When he lifted his swollen and bloodied face, he turned away from the camera, away from me.

From the one brief glimpse, the man looked to be in his thirties and had no distinguishing features.

An interrogation was clearly in progress. I felt the most extreme tension as I watched. Off camera, a voice said, “ Onnn-reee, say the words.”

My heart jumped. Was it him? Had Henri been caught?

The bloodied prisoner said to his questioner, “I'm not Henri. My name is Antoine Pascal. You've got the wrong man.”

“It's not hard to say, is it, Henri?” asked the voice from the wings. “Just say the words, and maybe we will let you go.”

“I tell you, I'm not Henri. My identification is in my pocket. Get my wallet.”

The interrogator finally came into view. He looked to be in his twenties, dark-haired, had a spiderweb tattooed on his neck and the inked netting continued to his left cheek. He adjusted the camera lens so that there was a wide shot of the bare, windowless room, a cellar lit by a single bulb. The subject was hog-tied to a chair.

The tattooed man said, “Okay, 'Antoine.' We've seen your ID, and we admire how you can become someone else. But I am getting tired of the game. Say it or don't say it. I give you to the count of three.”

The tattooed man held a long, serrated knife in his hand, and he slapped it against his thigh as he counted. Then he said, “Time is up. I think this is what you've always wanted, Henri. To know that moment between life and death. Correct?”

The voice I'd heard from the hostage was familiar. So was the look in his pale gray eyes. It was Henri. I knew it now.

Suddenly I was filled with horror as I realized what was going to happen. I wanted to shout out to Henri, express some emotion that I didn't understand myself.

I had been prepared to kill him, but I was not capable of this. I couldn't just watch.

Henri spit at the lens, and the tattooed man grabbed a hank of his brown hair. He pulled his neck taut. “Say the words!” he yelled.

Then he made four powerful sawing strokes at the back of Henri's neck with the knife, separating the screaming man's head from his shoulders.

Blood spurted and poured everywhere. On Henri. On his killer. On the camera lens.

“ Onnnn-reee. Henri. Can you hear me?” asked the executioner. He brought the severed head on a level with the camera.

I backed away from the glass, but I couldn't stop watching the video. It seemed to me that Henri was making eye contact with me through the monitor, through the glass. His eyes were still open – and then he blinked. He actually did that – blinked.

The executioner bent to the camera, his chin dripping sweat and blood, smiling with satisfaction, as he said, “Is everybody happy?”

Chapter 122

Gorge rose in my throat, and I was trembling horribly, perspiring heavily. I suppose I was relieved that Henri was dead, but at the same time my blood was screaming through my arteries. I reeled from the sickening, indelible images that had been freshly branded on my brain.

Inside the silent interrogation room, Horst Werner's unfeeling expression hadn't changed, but then he looked up and smiled sweetly as the door opened, and a man in a dark suit came in, put a hand on his shoulder.

My interpreter confirmed what I'd guessed; Werner's lawyer had arrived.

The conversation between the lawyer and Captain Voelker was a short, staccato volley that boiled down to one unalterable fact: the police didn't have enough to hold Werner at this time.

I watched in shock as Werner strolled from the interrogation room with his lawyer, a free man.

A moment later, Captain Voelker joined me in the observation room, told me emphatically that it wasn't over yet. Warrants for Werner's bank and phone records had been obtained. Alliance members around the world would be squeezed, he said. It was just a matter of time before they had Werner locked up again. Interpol and the FBI were on the case.

I walked out of the police station on unsteady legs, but into clean air and daylight. A limo was waiting to drive me to the airport. I told the driver to hurry. He started the engine and raised the glass divider. But still, the car took off and maintained only a moderate speed.

Inside my mind, Van der Heuvel was saying, “Be afraid of Horst Werner” – and I was. Werner would find out about my transcripts of Henri's confession. It was admissible evidence against him and the Peepers. I had replaced Henri as the Witness, the one who could bring Werner and the rest of them down on multiple murder charges.

My brain sped across continents. I slapped at the divider, shouted to the driver, “Go faster. Drive faster.”

I had to get to Amanda, by plane, by helicopter, by pack mule. I had to get to her first. We had to draw the walls around us and stay hidden, I didn't know for how long, and I didn't care.

I knew what Horst Werner would do if he found us.

I knew.

And I couldn't stop myself from wondering one other thing. Was Henri really dead?

What had I just watched back there at the station?

That blink of his eye – was it a wink? Was the film some kind of video trick he'd played?

“Drive faster.”