Swimsuit - James Patterson [84]
“What did he say?”
“ ‘I love you, Amanda.’ ”
I was listening to Mandy and hearing echoes at the same time. Henri had told me that he’d loved Gina. He’d loved Julia. How long would Henri have waited to prove his love to Mandy by raping her and strangling her with those blue gloves on his hands?
I whispered, “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“I’m the jerk who came here, Benjy. Oh, God, how long was he here? Three hours? I’m sorry. I didn’t understand until now what those three days with him must have been like for you.”
She started crying again, and I hushed her, told her over and over that everything would be all right.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” she said, her voice ragged and strained. “But what makes you so sure?”
I got out of bed, opened my laptop, and booked two morning flights back to the States.
Chapter 114
IT WAS WELL after midnight, and I was still pacing the room. I took some Tylenol, got back under the covers with Amanda, but I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t even shut my eyes for more than a few seconds.
The TV was small and old, but I turned it on and found CNN.
I watched the headline news, bolted upright when the talking head said, “Police have no suspects in the murder of Gina Prazzi, heiress to the Prazzi shipping fortune. She was found murdered in a room at the exclusive French resort Château de Mirambeau.”
When Gina Prazzi’s face came on the screen, I felt as though I knew her intimately. I’d watched her pass in front of the camera in the hotel room, not knowing that her life was about to end.
I said, “Mandy, Mandy,” shook her arm. But she turned away, settled even more deeply into the feather bed and sleep.
I watched the police captain brief the press on TV, his speech translated and recapped for those just tuning in. Ms. Prazzi had checked into the Château de Mirambeau alone. The housekeepers believed that two people stayed in the room, but no other guest was seen. The police were not releasing any further information about the murder at this time.
That was enough for me. I knew the full story, but what I hadn’t known was that Gina Prazzi was a real name, not an alias.
What other lies had Henri told me? For what possible reason? Why had he lied — in order to tell me the truth?
I stared at the TV screen as the anchor said, “In the Netherlands, a young woman was found murdered this morning in Amsterdam. What brings this tragedy to the attention of international criminalists is that elements of this girl’s death are similar to elements of the murders of the two young women in Barbados, and also to the famous American swimsuit models who were murdered this spring in Hawaii.”
I dialed up the volume as the faces came on the screen: Sara Russo, Wendy Emerson, Kim McDaniels, and Julia Winkler, and now another face, a young woman whose name was Mieke Helsloot.
The announcer said, “Ms. Helsloot, twenty years old, was the secretary to the well-known architect Jan Van der Heuvel of Amsterdam, who was at a meeting in Copenhagen at the time of the murder. Mr. Van der Heuvel was interviewed at his hotel minutes ago.”
Jesus Christ. I knew his name.
The picture cut away to Van der Heuvel leaving his hotel in Copenhagen, suitcase in hand, journalists crowding around him at the bottom of a rounded staircase. He was in his early forties, had gray hair and angular features. He looked genuinely shocked and scared.
“I have only just now learned of this terrible tragedy,” he said into the clutch of microphones. “I am shocked and devastated. Mieke Helsloot was a proper, decent young lady, and I have no idea why anyone would harm her. It is a terrible day. Mieke was to be married.”
Henri had told me that Jan Van der Heuvel was an alias for one of the members of the Alliance, the man Henri called “the Dutchman.” Van der Heuvel was the third wheel who’d joined up with Henri and Gina during their romp through the French Riviera.
And now, soon after Henri had killed Gina Prazzi, Van der Heuvel’s secretary had also been murdered.
If I hadn’t once been a cop, I might have dismissed these two killings as a coincidence.