Swimsuit - James Patterson [79]
“Yes,” she said doubtfully. “But I don’t see how I can help you. Mr. Van der Heuvel will be back tomorrow.”
Henri had told her that he’d lost Mr. Van der Heuvel’s cell phone number, and that it would really help him if he could explain how he’d gotten the date of their meeting wrong. And Henri had continued the story until Meike Helsloot had stopped at the front door to her flat.
He thought of her now, holding the key in her hand, impatience showing on her face, but in her politeness and willingness to help her employer she’d let him into her flat so that she could make the call for him to her boss.
Henri had thanked her, taken the one upholstered chair in Meike’s two-room flat that had been built under a staircase, and waited for the right moment to kill her.
As the girl rinsed out two glasses, Henri had looked around at the sloping bookshelves, the fashion magazines, the mirror over the fireplace that was almost completely covered with photos of Mieke’s handsome boyfriend.
Later, when she understood what he was going to do, she’d wailed, no-no-no, and begged him, please not to, she hadn’t done anything wrong, she would never tell anyone, no, never.
“Sorry. It’s not about you, Mieke,” he’d said. “It’s about Mr. Van der Heuvel. He’s a very wicked man.”
She’d said, “So why do this to me?”
“Well. It’s Jan’s lucky day, isn’t it? He was out of town.”
Henri had bound her arms behind her back with one of her own bootlaces and was undoing his belt buckle when she said, “Not that. Please. I’m supposed to get married.”
He hadn’t raped her. He hadn’t been in the mood after doing Gina. So he’d told her to think of something nice. It was important in the last moments of life to have good thoughts.
He looped another bootlace around her throat and tightened it, holding her down with his knee in the small of her back until she stopped breathing. The waxed shoelace was as strong as wire, and it cut through her thin neck and she bled as he killed her.
Afterward, he arranged the pretty girl’s body under blankets and patted her cheek.
He was thinking now, he’d been so angry at himself for missing Jan that he hadn’t even thought to videotape the kill.
Then again — Jan would get the message.
Henri liked thinking about that.
Chapter 107
STILL SITTING IN THE INTERMINABLE SLOG of traffic, Henri’s mind turned back to Gina Prazzi, thinking of her eyes getting huge when he shot her, wondering if she’d really understood what he’d done. It was truly significant. She was the first person he’d killed for his own satisfaction since strangling the girl in the horse trailer more than twenty years ago.
And now he’d killed Mieke for the same reason. It wasn’t about money at all.
Something inside him was changing.
It was like a light slipping beneath a door, and he could either open it to its full blinding brightness, or slam the door shut and run.
The horns were blaring now, and he saw that the taxi had finally crept to the intersection of Pyramides and Rivoli, and then stopped again. The driver turned off the air-conditioning and opened the windows to save gas.
Disgusted, Henri leaned forward, tapped on the glass.
The driver took a break from his cell phone to tell Henri that the street was jammed because of the French president’s motorcade, which was just leaving the Elysée Palace on its way to the National Assembly.
“There’s nothing I can do, Monsieur. My hands are tied. Relax.”
“How long will it be?”
“Perhaps another fifteen minutes. How should I know?”
Henri was more furious at himself than before. It had been stupid to come to Paris as some kind of ironic postscript to killing Gina. Not only stupid, but self-indulgent, or maybe self-destructive. Was that it? Do I want to be caught now? he wondered.
He watched the street through the open window, desperate for the absurd politician’s motorcade to come and go, when he heard shouts of laughter coming from a brasserie at the corner.
He looked that way.
A man wearing a blue sports jacket, a pink polo shirt, and khakis, an American