Swimsuit - James Patterson [69]
“Very possibly, Lieutenant Brooks or one of her colleagues may drop by and give you a lift. Be careful what you say, Ben. Let’s keep our secrets for now. You’re a novelist, remember. So be sure to tell a plausible lie.
“Your car is behind the Luxury Inn where you left it, and I’ve put your keys in your jacket pocket with your plane ticket.
“Oh, I almost forgot the most important thing. I called Amanda. I told her you were safe and that you’d be home soon.
“Ciao, Ben. Work hard. Work well. I’ll be in touch.”
And then the tape hissed and the message was over.
The bastard had called Amanda. It was another threat.
Outside the trailer, the desert was cooking in the July inferno, forcing me to wait until sundown before beginning my trek. While I waited, Henri would be erasing his trail, assuming another identity, boarding a plane unhindered.
I no longer had any sense of security, and I wouldn’t feel safe again until “Henri Benoit” was in jail or dead. I wanted my life back, and I was determined to get it, whatever it took.
Even if I had to put Henri down myself.
Part Four
BIG GAME HUNTING
Chapter 91
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,