A ping sounded from Horst's computer, and he walked to his desk, told his friend he was downloading now, and then forwarded the e-mail to Jan in his office in Amsterdam.
The images appeared simultaneously on their screens.
The background was a moonlit beach. A pretty girl was lying faceup on a large towel. She was nude, slim-hipped, small-breasted, and her short hair was finger-combed in a boyish fashion. The black-and-white images of form and shadow gave the film a moody quality, as though it had been shot in the 1940s.
“Beautiful composition,” said Jan. “The man has an eye.”
When Henri entered the frame, his face was digitally pixilated to a blur, and his voice had been electronically altered. Henri talked to the girl, his voice playful, calling her a monkey and sometimes saying her name.
Horst commented to Jan, “Interesting, yes? The girl isn't the least bit afraid. She doesn't even appear to be drugged.”
Julia was smiling up at Henri, reaching out her arms, opening her legs to him. He stepped out of his shorts, his cock large and erect, and the girl covered her mouth as she stared up at him, saying, Oh my God, Charlie.
Henri told her she was greedy, but they could hear the teasing and the laughter in his voice. They watched him kneel between her thighs, lift her buttocks, and lower his face until the girl squirmed, grinding her hips, digging her toes into the sand, crying out, “Please, I can't stand it, Charlie.”
Jan said to Horst, “I think Henri is making her fall in love. Maybe he is falling in love, too? Wouldn't that be something to watch.”
“Oh, you think Henri can feel love?”
As the two men watched, Henri stroked, teased, plunged himself into the girl's body, telling her how beautiful she was and to give herself to him until her cries became sobs.
She reached her hands around his neck, and Henri took her in his arms and kissed her closed eyes, her cheeks and mouth. Then his hand became large in front of the camera, almost blocking the image of the girl, and reappeared again, holding a hunting knife. He placed the blade beside the girl on the towel.
Horst was leaning forward, watching the screen intently, thinking, Yes, first the ceremony, now the ultimate sacrifice, when Henri turned his digitally obscured face to the camera and said, “Is everybody happy?”
The girl answered, yes, she was completely happy, and then the picture went black.
“What is this?” Jan asked, jerked out of what was almost a trance state. Horst reversed the video, reviewed the last moments, and he realized it was over. At least for them.
“Jan,” he said, “our boy is teasing us, too. Making us wait for the finished product. Smart. Very smart.”
Jan sighed. “What a life he is having at our expense.”
“Shall we make a wager? Just between you and me?”
“On what?”
“How long before Henri gets caught?”
Chapter 44
It was almost four in the morning, and I hadn't slept, my mind still burning with the images of Rosa Castro's tortured body, thinking of what had been done to her before her life ended under a rock in the sea.
I thought about her parents and the McDanielses and that these good people were suffering a kind of hell that Hieronymus Bosch couldn't have imagined, not on his most inspired day or night. I wanted to call Amanda but didn't. I was afraid I might slip and tell her what I was thinking: Thank God we don't have kids.
I swung my legs over the bed, turned on the lights. I got a can of POG out of the fridge, a passion fruit, orange, and guava drink, and then I booted up my laptop.
My mailbox had filled with spam since I'd checked it last, and CNN had sent me a news alert on Rosa Castro. I scanned the story quickly, finding that Kim was mentioned in the last paragraph.
I quickly typed Kim's name into the search box to see if CNN had dragged any new tidbits into their net. They had not.
I opened a can of Pringles, ate just one, made coffee with the complimentary drip coffeemaker, then pecked away at the Internet some more.
I found Doug Cahill videos on YouTube: frat house clips and locker-room antics, and a video of Kim sitting in the stands at a football game, clapping and stomping. The camera went back and forth between her and shots of Cahill playing against the New York Giants, nearly decapitating Eli Manning.
I tried to imagine Cahill killing Kim, and I couldn't rule out that a guy who could slam into three hundred pounders was a guy who could get physical with a resistant girl and accidentally, or on purpose, break her neck.
But, in my heart, I believed that Cahill's tears were real, that he loved Kim, and, logically, if he had killed her he had the means to get lost anywhere in the world by now.
So I sent my browser out to search for the name the female tipster had whispered in my ear, the suspected arms trader, Nils – middle name, Ostertag – Bjorn. The search returned the same leads I'd gotten the day before, but this time I opened the articles that were written in Swedish.
Using an online dictionary, I translated the Swedish words for “munitions” and “body armor,” and then I found another photo of Bjorn dated three years earlier.
It was a candid shot of the man with the regular, almost forgettable, features getting out of a Ferrari in Geneva. He was wearing a handsome chalk-striped suit under a well-cut topcoat, carrying a Gucci briefcase. Bjorn looked different in this photo from the way he looked at the industrialist's black-tie dinner, because Bjorn's hair was now blond. White blond.
I clicked on the last of the articles about Nils Ostertag Bjorn, and another photo filled my screen, this one of a man in a military uniform. He looked about twenty or so, had wide-spaced eyes and a boxy chin. But he looked nothing like the other photos of Nils Bjorn I'd seen.
I read the text beneath the photo and made out the Swedish words for “ Persian Gulf ” and “enemy fire,” and then it hit me.
I was reading an obituary.
Nils Ostertag Bjorn had been dead for fifteen years.
I went to the shower, let the hot water beat down on my head as I tried to fit the pieces together. Was this simply a case of two men with the same unusual name? Or had someone using a dead man's identity checked into the Wailea Princess?
If so, had he abducted and possibly murdered Kim McDaniels?
Chapter 45
Henri Benoit woke up between soft, white layers of bedding in an elegant four-poster bed in his room at the Island Breezes Hotel on Lanai.
Julia was snoring gently under his arm, her face warm against his chest. Late morning sunlight filtered through the filmy curtains, the whole wide Pacific only fifty yards away.
This girl. This setting. This inimitable light. It was a cinematographer's dream.
He brushed Julia's hair away from her eyes with his fingers. The sweet girl was under the spell of the kava kava, plus the generous lacing of Valium he'd put in her cup. She'd slept deeply, but now it was time to wake her for her close-up.
Henri shook Julia's arm gently, said, “Wakey, wakey, monkey face.”
Julia cracked open her eyes, said, “Charlie? What? Is it time for my flight?”
“Not yet. Want another ten minutes?”
She nodded, then dropped off against his shoulder.
Henri eased out of bed and got busy, turning on lamps, replacing the media card in his video camera with a new one, setting the camera on the dresser, blocking out the scene. Satisfied, he removed the silk tassel tiebacks from the curtains, letting the heavy drapery fall closed.
Julia mumbled a complaint as he turned her onto her stomach. He said, “It's okay. It's just Charlie,” as he tied her legs to the posts at the foot of the bed, making a clove hitch knot with the cords, and then he tied her arms to the headboard using an exotic Japanese chain knot that photographed beautifully.