James Patterson - Swimsuit

Even if I had to put Henri down myself.

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?

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.”

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.