Trace

7

Henri Walden wears fleece-lined suede slippers that make no sound on the carpet as she drifts like a black apparition toward the tan leather wing chair across from the couch.

"I took my shower," she says, perching on the chair and drawing her slender legs under her.

Benton catches the deliberate flash of young flesh, the pale recesses of high inner thighs. He does not look or react the way most men would.

"Why do you care?" she asks him, and she has asked him this every morning since she got here.

"It makes you feel better, doesn't it, Henri?"

She nods, staring at him like a cobra.

"Little things are important. Eating, sleeping, being clean, exercise. Regaining control."

"I heard you talking to someone," she says.

"That's a problem," he replies, his eyes steady on hers over the rim of his glasses, the legal pad in his lap as before, but there are more words on it, the words "Black Ferrari" and "without permission" and "was followed from the camp, likely" and "point of contact, the black Ferrari."

He says, "Private conversations are supposed to be just that. Private. So we need to go back to our original agreement, Henri. Do you remember what it was?"

She pulls off her slippers and drops them on the carpet. Her delicate bare feet are on the chair cushion, and when she bends over to study them, the red robe falls open slightly. "No." Her voice is barely audible and she shakes her head.

"I know you remember, Henri." Benton repeats her name often to remind her who she is, to personalize what has been depersonalized and, in some regards, irrevocably damaged. "Our agreement was respect, remember?"

She bends more deeply and picks at an unpainted toenail, her stare fixed on what she is doing, her nakedness beneath her robe offered to him.

"Part of having respect is allowing each other privacy. And modesty," he says, quietly. "We've talked about boundaries a lot. Violating modesty is a violation of boundaries."

Her free hand crawls up to her chest and gathers the robe together while she continues to study and manipulate her toes. "I just woke up," she says, as if this explains her exhibitionism.

"Thank you, Henri." It is important for her to believe that Benton does not want her sexually, not even in his fantasies. "But you didn't just get up. You got up, came in, and we talked, and then you took a shower."

"My name isn't Henri," she says.

"What would you like me to call you?"

"Nothing."

"You have two names," he says. "You have the name you were christened at birth and the name you used in your acting career and still use."

"Well, I'm Henri, then," she says, looking down at her toes.

"So I'll call you Henri."

She nods, looking at her toes. "What do you call her?"

Benton knows who she means but he doesn't answer.

"You sleep with her. Lucy's told me all about it." She emphasizes the word "all."

Benton feels a flash of anger but he doesn't show it. Lucy would not have told Henri all about his relationship with Scarpetta. No, he reminds himself. This is Henri goading him again, testing his boundaries again. No, crashing through his boundaries again.

"How come she's not here with you?" Henri asks. "It's your vacation, isn't it? And she's not here. A lot of people don't have sex after a while. That's one reason I don't want to be with anyone, not for long. No sex. Usually after six months, people stop having sex. She's not here because I am." Henri stares at him.

"That's correct," he replies. "She's not here because you are, Henri."

"She must have been mad when you told her she couldn't come."

"She understands," he says, but now he isn't being entirely honest.

Scarpetta understood and she didn't. You can't come to Aspen right now, he told her after he got Lucy's panicked phone call. I'm afraid a case has come up and I have to deal with it.

You're leaving Aspen, then, Scarpetta said.

I can't talk about the case, he replied, and for all he knows, she thinks he is anywhere but in Aspen right now.

This really isn't fair, Benton, she said. I set aside these two weeks for us. I have cases too.

Please bear with me, he replied. I promise I'll explain later.

Of all times, she said. This is a very bad time. We needed this time.

They do need this time, and instead he is here with Henri. "Tell me about your dreams last night. Do you remember them?" he is saying to Henri.

Her nimble fingers fondle her left big toe, as if it is sore. She frowns. Benton gets up. Casually, he picks up the Clock and walks across the living room to the kitchen. Opening a cupboard, he places the pistol on a top shelf, and pulls out two cups and pours coffee. He and Henri drink it black.

"May be a little strong. I can make more," and he sets her cup on an end table and returns to his place on the couch. "Night before last you dreamed about a monster. Actually, you called it 'the beast,' didn't you?" His keen eyes find her unhappy ones. "Did you see the beast again last night?"

She doesn't answer him, and her mood has dramatically altered from what it was earlier this morning. Something happened in the shower, but he'll get to that later.

"We don't have to talk about the beast if you don't want to, Henri. But the more you tell me about him, the more likely I am to find him. You want me to find him, don't you?"

"Who were you talking to?" she asks in the same hushed, childlike voice. But she is not a child. She is anything but innocent. "You were talking about me," she persists as the sash of her robe loosens and more flesh shows.

"I promise I wasn't talking about you. No one knows you're here, no one but Lucy and Rudy. I believe you trust me, Henri." He pauses, looking at her. "I believe you trust Lucy."

Her eyes get angry at the mention of Lucy's name.

"I believe you trust us, Henri," Benton says, sitting calmly, his legs crossed, his fingers laced and in his lap. "I would like you to cover yourself, Henri."

She rearranges her robe, tucking it between her legs and tightening the sash. Benton knows exactly what her naked body looks like, but he does not imagine it. He has seen photographs, and he will not look at them again unless it is necessary to review them with other professionals and eventually with her, when she is ready or if she is ready. For now, she represses the facts of the case either unwillingly or willingly, and acts out in ways that would seduce and infuriate weaker human beings who neither care about nor understand her ploys. Her relentless attempts to sexually arouse Benton are not simply about transference but are a direct manifestation of her acute and chronic narcissistic needs and her desire to control and dominate, degrade and destroy anyone who dares to care about her. Henri's every action and reaction are about self-hate and rage.

"Why did Lucy send me away?" she asks.

"Can you tell me? Why don't you tell me why you're here?"

"Because…" She wipes her eyes on the sleeve of her robe. "The beast."

Benton's eyes are steady on her from his safe position on the couch, the words on rhe legal pad unreadable from where she sits and well beyond her reach. He does not encourage her conversation. It is important that he be patient, incredibly patient, like a hunter in the woods who stands perfectly still and barely breathes.

"It came into the house. I don't remember."

Benton watches her in silence.

"Lucy let it into the house," she says.

Benton will not push her, but he will not allow misinformation or outright lies. "No. Lucy did not let it into the house," Benton corrects her. "No one let it into the house. It came in because the back door was unlocked and the alarm was off. We've talked about this. Do you remember why the door was unlocked and the alarm was off?"

She stares at her toes, her hands still.

"We've talked about why," he says.

"I had the flu," she replies, staring at a different toe. "I was sick and she wasn't home. I was shivering and went out in the sun, and I forgot to lock the door and reset the alarm. I had a fever and forgot. Lucy blames me."

He sips his coffee. Already, it has gotten cold. Coffee doesn't stay hot in the mountains of Aspen, Colorado. "Has Lucy said it's your fault?"

"She thinks it." Henri is staring past him now, out the windows behind his head. "She thinks everything is my fault."

"She's never told me she thinks it's your fault," he says. "You were telling me about your dreams," he goes back to that. "The dreams you had last night."

She blinks and rubs her big toe again.

"Is it hurting?"

She nods.

"I'm sorry. Would you like something for it?"

She shakes her head. "Nothing would help."

She isn't talking about her right big toe, but is making the connection between its having been broken and her now finding herself in his protective care more than a thousand miles from Pompano Beach, Florida, where she almost died. Henri's eyes heat up.

"I was walking on a trail," she says. "There were rocks on one side, this sheer wall of rocks very close to the trail. There were cracks, this crack between the rocks, and I don't know why I did it, but I wedged myself into it and got stuck." Her breath catches and she shoves blond hair out of her eyes, and her hand shakes. "I was wedged between rocks… I couldn't move, I couldn't breathe. I couldn't get free. And nobody could get me out. When I was in the shower I remembered my dream. The water was hitting my face, and when I held my breath I remembered my dream."

"Did someone try to get you out?" Benton doesn't react to her terror or pass judgment on whether it is real or false. He doesn't know which it is. With her, there is so little he knows.

She is motionless in her chair, struggling for breath.

"You said nobody could get you out," Benton goes on, calmly, quietly, in the unprovocative tone of the counselor he has become for her. "Was another person there? Or other people?"

"I don't know."

He waits. If she continues to struggle for breath, he will have to do something about it. But for now, he is patient, the hunter waiting.

I can't remember. I don't know why, but for a minute I thought someone… it occurred to me in my dream, maybe, that someone could chip away at the rocks. Maybe with a pickax. And then I thought, no. The rock is way too hard. You can't get me out. No one can. I'm going to die. I was going to die, I knew it, and then I couldn't take it anymore, so the dream stopped." Her rambling rendition stops as abruptly as the dream apparently did. Henri takes a deep breath and her body relaxes. Her eyes focus on Benton. "It was awful," she says.

"Yes," he says. "It must have been awful. I can't think of anything more frightening than not being able to breathe."

She flattens her hand against her heart. "My chest couldn't move. I was breathing very shallowly, you know? And then 1 just didn't have the strength."

"No one would be strong enough to move the rocky face of a mountain," he replies.

"I couldn't get air."

Her assailant may have tried to smother or asphyxiate her, and Benton envisions the photographs. One by one he holds up the photographs in his mind and examines Henri's injuries, trying to make sense of what she has just said. He sees blood trickling from her nose and smeared across her cheeks and staining the sheet beneath her head as she lies on her belly on the bed. Her body is naked and uncovered, her arms stretched out above her head and palms down on the bed, her legs bent, one more bent than the other.

Benton examines another photograph, focusing on it in his memory as Henri gets up from her chair. She mutters that she wants more coffee and will get it herself. Benton processes what she says and the fact that his pistol is in the kitchen cabinet, but she doesn't know which cabinet because her back was to him when he tucked the pistol out of sight. He watches her, reading what she is doing in the moment while he reads the hieroglyphics of the injuries, the peculiar marks on her body. The tops of her hands were red because he or she, and Benton will not assume the gender of her assailant, bruised her. She had fresh contusions on the tops of her hands, and she had several reddish areas of contusion on her upper back. Over the next few days, the redness from subcutaneous broken blood vessels darkened to a stormy purple.

Benton watches Henri pour more coffee. He thinks about the photo oraphs of her unconscious body in situ. The fact that her body is beautiful is of no importance beyond Benton's consideration that all details of her appearance and behavior may have been violent triggers to the person who tried to murder her. Henri is thin but most assuredly not androgynous. She has breasts and pubic hair and would not appeal to a pedophile. At the time of the assault, she was sexually active.

He watches her return to the leather chair, both hands cupping the mug of coffee. It doesn't bother him that she is inconsiderate. A polite person would have asked if he would like more coffee too, but Henri is probably one of the most selfish, insensitive people Benton has ever met and was selfish and insensitive before the attack and will always be selfish and insensitive. It would be a good thing if she were never around Lucy again. But he has no right to wish that or make it happen, he tells himself.

"Henri," Benton says, getting up for more coffee, "are you up for doing a fact-check this morning?"

"Yes. But I can't remember." Her voice follows him into the kitchen. "I know you don't believe me."

"Why do you think that?" He pours more coffee and returns to the living toom.

"The doctor didn't."

"Oh yes, the doctor. He said he didn't believe you," Benton says as he sits back down on the couch. "I think you know my opinion of that doctor, but I'll express it again. He thinks women are hysterical and doesn't like them, certainly he has no respect for them, and that's because he is afraid of them. He's also an ER doctor, and he knows nothing about violent offenders or victims."

He thinks I did this to myself," Henri replies angrily. "He thinks I didn't hear what he said to the nurse."

Benton is careful how he reacts. Henri is offering new information. He can only hope that it is true. "Tell me," he says. "I would very much like to know what he said to the nurse."

"I should sue the asshole," she adds.

Benton waits, sipping his coffee.

"Maybe I will sue him," she adds, spitefully. "He thought I didn't hear him because The had my eyes shut when he walked into the room. I was lying there half asleep and the nurse was in the doorway and then he showed up. So I pretended I was out of it."

"Pretended you were asleep," Benton says.

She nods.

"You're a trained actor. You used to be a professional actor."

"I still am. You don't just stop being an actor. I'm just not in any productions right now because I have other things to do."

"You've always been good at acting, I would imagine," he says.

"Yes."

"At pretending. You've always been good at pretending." He pauses. "Do you pretend things often, Henri?"

Her eyes get hard as she looks at him. "I was pretending in the hospital room so I could hear the doctor. I heard every word. He said, 'Nothing like being raped if you're mad at someone. Payback's hell.' And he laughed."

"I don't blame you for wanting to sue him," Benton says. "This was in the ER?"

"No, no. In my room. Later that day when they moved me to one of the floors, after all the tests. I don't remember which floor."

"That's even worse," Benton says. "He shouldn't have come to your room at all. He's an ER doctor and isn't assigned to one of the floors. He stopped by because he was curious, and that's not right."

"I'm going to sue him. I hate his guts." She rubs her toe again, and her bruised toe and the bruises on her hands have faded to a nicotine-yellow. "He made some comment about Dextro Heads. I don't know what that is, but he was insulting me, making fun of me."

Again, this is new information, and Benton feels renewed hope that with time and patience, she will remember more or be more truthful. "A Dextro Head is someone who abuses allergy and flu remedies or cough syrups that have opiates. It's popular among teenagers, unfortunately."

"The asshole," she mutters, picking at her robe. "Can't you do something to get him into trouble?"

"Henri, do you have any idea why he indicated you were raped?" Benton asks.

"I don't know. I don't think I was."

"Do you remember the forensic nurse?"

She slowly shakes her head, no.

"You were wheeled into an examination room near the ER, and a physical evidence recovery kit was used. You know what that is, don't you? When you got tired of acting, you were a police officer before Lucy met you in L.A. this fall, just a few months ago, and hired you. So you know about swabs and collecting hair and fibers and all the rest."

"I didn't get tired of it. I just wanted time off from it, to do something else."

"Okay. But you remember the PERK?"

She nods.

"And the nurse? She was very nice, I'm told. Her name is Brenda. She examined you for sexual assault injury and evidence. The room is also used for children and was filled with stuffed animals. The wallpaper was Winnie the Pooh, bears, honeypots, trees. Brenda wasn't wearing a nurse's uniform. She had on a light blue suit."

"You weren't there."

"She told me over the phone."

Henri stares at her bare feet, which are up on the chair cushion. "You asked her what she had on?"

She's got hazel eyes, short black hair." Benton tries to dislodge what Henri is repressing or pretends to be repressing, and it is time to discuss the physical evidence recovery kit. "There was no seminal fluid, Henri.

No evidence of sexual assault. But Brenda found fibers adhering to your skin. It appears you had on some sort of lotion or body oil. Do you remember if you put on lotion or body oil that morning?"

"No," she quietly replies. "But I can't say I didn't."

"Your skin was oily," Ben ton says. "According to Brenda. She detected.1 fragrance. A nice fragrance like a pertumed body lotion.'

"He didn't put it on me."

"He?"

"It must have been a he. Don't you think it was a he?" she says in a hoprfu! rone1 tku imgs off key, the way voice.-)»ound \\iicn people are trying to fool themselves or others. "It couldn't have been a she. A woman. Women don't do things like that."

"Women do all sorts of things. Right now we don't know if it was a man or a woman. Several head hairs were found on the mattress in the bedroom, black curly ones. Maybe five, six inches long."

"Well, we'll know soon enough, right? They can get DNA from the hair and find out it's not a woman," she says.

"I'm afraid they can't. The kind of DNA testing they're doing can't determine gender. Possibly race, but not gender. And even race will take at least a month. Then you think you might have put on the body lotion yourself."

"No. But he didn't. I wouldn't have let him do it. I would have fought him if I'd had a chance. He probably wanted to do it."

"And you didn't put the lotion on yourself?"

"I said he didn't and I didn't and that's enough. It's none of your business."

Benton understands. The lotion has nothing to do with the attack, assuming Henri is telling the truth. Lucy enters his thoughts, and he feels sorry for her and is angry with her at the same time.

"Tell me everything," Henri says. "Tell me what you think happened to me. You tell me what happened and I'll agree or disagree." She smiles.

"Lucy came home," Benton says, and this is old information now. He resists revealing too much too soon. "It was a few minutes past noon, and when she unlocked the front door, she noticed immediately that the alarm wasn't armed. She called out to you, you didn't answer, and she heard the back door that leads out to the pool bang against the doorstop, and she ran in that direction. When she got into the kitchen, she discovered the door leading out to the pool and the sea-wall was wide open."

Henri stares wide-eyed past Benton, out the window again. "I wish she'd killed him."

"She never saw whoever it was. It's possible the person heard her pull up in the driveway in her black Ferrari and ran…"

"He was in my room with me and then had to go down all those stairs," Henri interrupts, staring off with wide eyes, and at this moment, it feels to Benton that she is telling the truth.

"Lucy didn't park in the garage this time because she was only stopping by to check on you," Benton says. "So she was in the front door quickly, came in the front door as he was running out the back door. She didn't chase him. She never saw him. At that moment, Lucy's focus was you, not whoever had gotten into the house."

"I disagree," Henri says, almost happily.

"Tell me."

"She didn't drive up in her black Ferrari. It was in the garage. She had the California blue Ferrari. That's the one she parked out front."

More new information, and Benton remains calm, very easygoing. "You were sick in bed, Henri. Are you sure you know what she drove that day?"

"I always know. She wasn't driving the black Ferrari because it got damaged."

"Tell me about the damage."

"It got damaged in a parking lot," Henri says, studying her bruised toe again. "You know, the gym up there on Atlantic, way up there in Coral Springs. Where we go to the gym sometimes."

"Can you tell me when this happened?" Benton asks, calmly, not showing the excitement he feels. The information is new and important and he senses where it leads. "The black Ferrari got damaged while you were in the gym?" Benton prods her to tell the truth.

"I didn't say I was in the gym," she snaps, and her hostility confirms his suspicions.

She took Lucy's black Ferrari to the gym, obviously without Lucy's permission. No one is allowed to drive the black Ferrari, not even Rudy.

"Tell me about the damage," Benton says.

"Someone scratched it, like with a car key, something like that. Scratched a picture on it." She ^rarrs clown at her feet, picking at her yellowish big toe.

"What was the picture?"

"She wouldn't drive it after that. You don't take out a scratched Ferrari."

"Lucy must have been angry," Benton says.

"It can be fixed. Anything can be fixed. If she'd killed him, I wouldn't have to be here. Now I'll have to worry the rest of my life that he's going to find me again."

"I'm doing my best to make sure you'll never have to worry about that, Henri. But I need your help."

"I may never remember." She looks at him. "I can't help it."

"Lucy ran up three flights of stairs to the master bedroom. That's where you were," Benton says, watching her carefully, making sure she can handle what he is saying, even though she has heard this part before. All along, he has feared that she might not be acting, that none of what she says and does is an act. What if it isn't? She could break with reality, become psychotic, completely decompensate and shatter. She listens, but her affect isn't normal. "When Lucy found you, you were unconscious, but your breathing and heart rate were normal."

"I didn't have anything on." She doesn't mind that detail. She likes reminding him of her naked body.

"Do you sleep in the nude?"

"I like to."

"Do you remember if you'd taken off your pajamas before you got back into bed that morning?"

"Probably I did."

"So he didn't do it? The attacker didn't. Assuming it's a he."

"He didn't need to. I'm sure he would have, though."

"Lucy says that when she saw you last, at about eight A.M., you were wearing red satin pajamas and a tan terry-cloth robe."

"I agree. Because I wanted to go outside. I sat in a lounge chair by the pool, in the sun.

More new information, and he asks, "What time was this?"

"Right after Lucy left, I think. She drove off in the blue Ferrari. Well, not right after," she corrects herself in a flat tone and stares out at the snow-covered, sun-dazzled morning. "I was mad at her."

Benton slowly gets up and places several logs on the fire. Sparks fly up the chimney and flames greedily lick the bone-dry pine. "She hurt your feelings," he says, drawing the mesh curtain shut.

"Lucy isn't nice when people get sick," Henri replies, more focused, more poised. "She didn't want to take care of me."

"What about the body lotion?" he asks, and he has figured out the body lotion, he's pretty sure he has, but it is smart to make absolutely sure.

"So what? Big deal. That's a favor, now isn't it? You know how many people would love to do that? I let her as a favor. She'll only do so much, only what suits her, then she gets tired of taking care of me. My head hurt and we were arguing."

"How long did you sit out by the pool?" Benton says, trying not to get distracted by Lucy, trying not to wonder what the hell she was thinking when she met Henri Walden, and at the same time he is all too aware of how impressive and bewitching sociopaths can be, even to people who should know better.

"Not long. I didn't feel good."

"Fifteen minutes? Half an hour?"

"I guess half an hour."

"Did you see any other people? Any boats?"

"I didn't notice. So maybe there weren't any. What did Lucy do when she was in the room with me?"

"She called nine-one-one, continued checking your vital signs while she waited for the rescue squad," Benton says. He decides to add another detail, a risky one. "She took photographs."

"Did she have a gun out?"

Yes.

"I wish she'd killed him."

"You keep saying 'he.'"

"And she took pictures? Of me?" Henri says.

"You were unconscious but stable. She took pictures of you before you were moved."

"Because I looked like I had been attacked?"

"Because your body was in an unusual position, Henri. Like this." He straightens out his arms and holds them over his head. "You were facedown with your arms stretched out in front of you, palms down. Your nose was bleeding, and you had bruises, as you know. And your right big toe was broken, although that wasn't discovered until later. You don't seem to remember how it got broken."

"I might have stubbed it going down the stairs," she says.

"You remember that?" he asks, and she has remembered nothing or admitted nothing about her toe before now. "When might this have happened?"

"When I went out by the pool. Her stone stairs. I think I missed a step or something, because of all the medicine and my fever and everything. I remember crying. I remember that. Because it hurt, really hurt, and I thought about calling her but why bother. She doesn't like it when I'm sick or hurt."

"You broke your toe going down to the pool and thought of calling Lucy but didn't." He wants to make this clear.

"I agree," she says, mockingly. "Where were my pajamas and robe?"

"Neatly folded on a chair near the bed. Did you fold them and put them there?"

"Probably. Was I under the covers?"

He knows where she is going with this, but it is important that he tell her the truth. "No," he replies. "The covers were pulled down to the bottom of the bed, were hanging off the mattress."

"I didn't have anything on and she took pictures," Henri says, and her face is expressionless as she looks at him with hard, flat eyes.

"That figures. She would do something like that. Always the cop." "You're a cop, Henri. What would you have done?" "She would do something like that," she says.