“I'm sorry,” Henri said. “I wanted to pray without being disturbed. I'm with the Camaldolese monastery. In Big Sur. I'm on retreat.”
“I don't care if you're an acrobat with the Cirque du Soleil. You have no business being here.”
“God led me here,” said Henri. “I'm on His business. But I didn't mean any harm. I'm sorry.”
I could feel the tension outside the door. If the ranger used her radio to call for help, she was a dead woman. Years ago, back in Portland, I'd backed my squad car into a wheelchair, knocked over an old man. Another time, I put a little kid in my gun sights when he'd jumped out from between two cars, pointing a squirt gun at me.
Both times I thought my heart couldn't beat any harder, but honest to God, this was the worst.
If my belt buckle clanked against the metal sink, the ranger would hear it. If she saw me, if she questioned me, Henri might feel he had to kill her, and her death would be on me.
Then he'd kill me.
I prayed not to sneeze. I prayed.
Chapter 87
The ranger told Henri that she understood about desert retreats, but that the campsite wasn't safe.
“If the chopper pilot hadn't seen your trailer, there would be no patrols out this way. What if you ran out of fuel? What if you ran out of water? No one would find you, and you would die,” Lieutenant Brooks said. “I'll wait while you pack up your gear.”
A radio crackled, and I heard the ranger say, “I got him, Yusef.”
I waited for the inevitable gunshot, thought of kicking open the door, trying to knock the gun out of Henri's hand, save the poor woman somehow.
The lieutenant said to her partner, “He's a monk. A hermit. Yeah. He's by himself. No, it's under control.”
Henri's voice cut in, “Lieutenant, it's getting late. I can leave in the morning without difficulty. I'd really appreciate one more night here for my meditation.”
There was silence as the park ranger seemed to consider Henri's request. I slowly exhaled, took in another breath. Lady, do what he says. Get the hell out of here.
“I can't help you,” she said.
“Sure you can. Just one night is all I ask.”
“Your gas tank is full?”
“Yes. I filled up before I drove into the park.”
“And you have enough water?”
The refrigerator door squealed open.
The ranger said, “Tomorrow morning, you're outta here. We have a deal?”
“Yes, we do,” Henri said. “I'm sorry for the trouble.”
“Okay. Have a good night, Brother.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant. And bless you.”
I heard the ranger's car engine start up. A minute later, Henri opened my door.
“Change of plans,” he said, as I edged out of the washroom. “I'll cook. We're pulling an all-nighter.”
“No problem,” I said.
I looked out the window and saw the lights of the patrol car heading back to civilization. Behind me, Henri dropped hamburger patties into the frying pan.
“We've got to cover a lot of ground tonight,” he said.
I was thinking that by noon of the next day, I could be in Venice Beach watching the bodybuilders and the thong girls, the skaters and bikers on the winding concrete paths through the beach and along the shore. I thought of the dogs with kerchiefs and sunglasses, the toddlers on their trikes, and that I'd have huevos rancheros with extra salsa at Scotty's with Mandy.
I'd tell her everything.
Henri put a burger and a bottle of ketchup in front of me, said, “Here ya go, Mr. Meat and Potatoes.” He started making coffee.
The little voice in my head said, You're not home yet.
Chapter 88
The kind of listening you do when interviewing is very different from the casual kind. I had to focus on what Henri was saying, how it fit into the story, decide if I needed elaboration on that subject or if we had to move along.
Fatigue was coming over me like fog, and I fought it off with coffee, keeping my goal in sight. Get it down and get out of here alive.
Henri backtracked over the story of his service with the military contractor, Brewster-North. He told me how he'd brought several languages to the table and that he'd learned several more while working for them.
He told me how he'd formed a relationship with his forger in Beirut. And then his shoulders sagged as he detailed his imprisonment, the executions of his friends.
I asked questions, placed Gina Prazzi in the time line. I asked Henri if Gina knew his real identity, and he told me no. He'd used the name that matched the papers his forger had given him: Henri Benoit from Montreal.
“Have you stayed in contact with Gina?”
“I haven't seen her for years. Not since Rome,” he said. “She doesn't fraternize with the help.”
We worked forward from his three-month-long romance with Gina to the contract killings he did for the Alliance, a string of murders that went back over four years.
“I mostly killed young women,” Henri told me. “I moved around, changed my identity often. You remember how I do that, Ben.”
He started ticking off the bodies, the string of young girls in Jakarta, a Sabra in Tel Aviv.
“What a fighter, that Sabra. My God. She almost killed me.”
I felt the natural arc of the story. I felt excited as I saw how I would organize the draft, almost forgot for a while that this wasn't some kind of movie pitch.
The murders were real.
Henri's gun was loaded even now.
I numbered tapes and changed them, made notes that would remind me to ask follow-up questions as Henri listed his kills; the young prostitutes in Korea and Venezuela and Bangkok.
He explained that he'd always loved film and that making movies for the Alliance had made him an even better killer. The murders became more complex and cinematic.
“Don't you worry that those films are out in the world?”
“I always disguise my face,” he told me. “Either I wear a mask as I did with Kim, or I work on the video with a blur tool. The software that I use makes editing out my face very easy.”
He told me that his years with Brewster-North had taught him to leave the weapons and the bodies on the scene (Rosa was the one exception), and that even though there was no record of his fingerprints, he made sure never to leave anything of himself behind. He always wore a condom, taking no chances that the police might take DNA samples from his semen and begin to link his crimes.
Henri told me about killing Julia Winkler, how much he loved her. I stifled a smart-ass comment about what it meant to be loved by Henri. And he told me about the McDanielses, and how he admired them as well. At that point, I wanted to jump up and try to strangle him.
“Why, Henri, why did you have to kill them?” I finally asked.
“It was part of a film sequence I was making for the Peepers, what we called a documentary. Maui was a big payout, Ben. Just a few days' work for much more than you make in a year.”
“But the work itself, how did you feel about taking all of those lives? By my count, you've killed thirty people.”
“I may have left out a few,” Henri said.
Chapter 89
It was after three in the morning when Henri told me what fascinated him most about his work.
“I've become interested in the fleeting moment between life and death,” he said. I thought about the headless chickens from his childhood, the asphyxiation games he played after killing Molly.
Henri told me more, more than I wanted to know.
“There was a tribe in the Amazon,” he continued. “They would tie a noose high under the jaws of their victims, right under their ears. The other end of the rope was secured around the tops of bent saplings.
“When they cut off a victim's head, it was carried upward by the young tree snapping back into place. These Indians believed this was a good death. That their victim's last sensation would be of flying.