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.”
Chapter 93
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.
Mandy turned over in her sleep, put her arm across my chest, and snuggled close to me. I wondered what she was dreaming. I tightened my arms around her, lightly kissed the crown of her head.
“Try not to torment yourself,” she said against my chest.
“I didn't mean to wake you.”
“That's a joke, right? You almost blew me out of bed with all your heaving and sighing.”
“What time is it?”
“It's early. Too early, or late, for us to be up. Benjy, I don't think obsessing is helping.”
“Oh. You think I'm obsessing?”
“Get your mind on something else. Take a break.” “Zagami wants -”
“Screw Zagami. I've been thinking, too, and I have an idea of my own. You won't like it.”
Chapter 94
I was pacing in front of my building with an overnight bag when Mandy roared up on her gently used Harley Sportster, a snappy-looking bike with a red leather saddle.
I climbed on, put my hands around Mandy's small waist, and with her long hair whipping across my face we motored to the 10 and from there to the Pacific Coast Highway, a dazzling stretch of coastal road that seems to go on forever.
To our left and below the road, breakers reared up and curled toward the beach, bringing in the surfers who dotted the waves. It struck me that I had never surfed – because it was too dangerous.
I hung on as Mandy switched lanes and gunned the engine. She shouted to me, “Take your shoulders down from your ears.”
Huh?
“Relax.”
It was hard to do, but I willed myself to unclench my legs and shoulders, and Mandy shouted again, “Now, make like a dog.”
She turned her head and stuck out her tongue, pointed her finger at me until I did it, too. The fifty-mile-an-hour wind beat on my tongue, cracking me up, making both of us laugh so hard that our eyes watered.
I was still grinning as we blew through Malibu and crossed the Ventura County line. Minutes later, Mandy pulled the bike over at Neptune 's Net, a seafood shack with a parking lot full of motorcycles.
A couple of guys called out, “Hey, Mandy,” as I followed her inside. We picked out two crabs from the well, and ten minutes later we picked them up at the take-out window, steamed and cracked on paper plates with small cups of melted butter. We chased the crabs down with Mountain Dew, then climbed aboard the Harley again.
I felt more at home on the bike this time, and finally I got it. Mandy was giving me the gift of glee. The speed and wind were blowing the snarls out of my mind, forcing me to turn myself over to the excitement and freedom of the road.
As we traveled north, the PCH wound down to sea level, taking us through the dazzling towns of Sea Cliff, La Conchita, Rincon, Carpinteria, Summerland, and Montecito. And then Mandy was telling me to hang on as she took the turn off the freeway onto the Olive Mill Road exit to Santa Barbara.
I saw the signs, and then I knew where we were going – a place we had talked of spending a weekend at, but we had never found the time.
My whole body was shaking when I dismounted the bike in front of the legendary Biltmore Hotel, with its red tiled roofs and palm trees and high view of the sea. I took off my helmet, put my arms around my girl, and said, “Honey, when you say you have an idea, you sure don't mess around.”