Swimsuit

Ben: Play this.

I pushed the Play button and heard Henri's voice.

“Good morning, partner. I hope you had a good rest. You needed it, and so I gave you a sedative to help you sleep. You understand. I wanted some time alone.

“Now. You should take the trail to the west, fourteen miles to Twenty-nine Palms Highway. I've left plenty of water and food, and if you wait until sundown, you will make it out of the park by morning.

“Very possibly, Lieutenant Brooks or one of her colleagues may drop by and give you a lift. Be careful what you say, Ben. Let's keep our secrets for now. You're a novelist, remember. So be sure to tell a plausible lie.

“Your car is behind the Luxury I

“Oh, I almost forgot the most important thing. I called Amanda. I told her you were safe and that you'd be home soon.

“Ciao, Ben. Work hard. Work well. I'll be in touch.”

And then the tape hissed and the message was over.

The bastard had called Amanda. It was another threat.

Outside the trailer, the desert was cooking in the July inferno, forcing me to wait until sundown before begi

I no longer had any sense of security, and I wouldn't feel safe again until “Henri Benoit” was in jail or dead. I wanted my life back, and I was determined to get it, whatever it took.

Even if I had to put Henri down myself.

Part Four. BIG GAME HUNTING

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 begi

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.”