Swimsuit

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.