Swimsuit - James Patterson [87]
“Hey!” I said, slapping the table, jumping to my feet. “Don’t screw with me. I came here to find Henri. I don’t care about you or Horst Werner or Raphael dos Santos or the rest of you sick, pathetic motherfuckers. If you can’t help me, I have no choice but to go to the police and give them everything.”
Van der Heuvel laughed again and told me to calm down, take a seat. I was rocked to my core. Had Van der Heuvel just answered the question of why Henri wanted to write the book? To glorify his life story?
“The Dutchman” opened his laptop, said, “I got an e-mail from Henri two days ago. The first one he ever sent to me directly. He wanted to sell me a video. I think I just saw it for free. You say you have no interest in us?”
“I don’t care about you at all. I just want Henri. He’s threatened my life and my family.”
“Maybe this will help your detective work.”
Van der Heuvel ran his fingers over the keyboard of his laptop as he talked, saying, “Henri Benoit, as he calls himself, was a juvenile monster. Thirty years ago, when he was six years old, he strangled his infant sister in her crib.”
The shock showed on my face as Van der Heuvel nodded, smiling, tapping ashes into a tray, assuring me that this was true.
“Cute little boy. Fat cheeks. Big eyes. He murdered a baby. He was diagnosed with psychopathic personality disorder, very rare that a child would have all the hallmarks. He was sent to a psychiatric facility, the Clinic du Lac in Geneva.”
“This is documented?”
“Yes, indeed. I did the research when I first met him. According to the chief psychiatrist, a Dr. Carl Obst, the child learned a lot during his twelve years in the crazy house. How to mimic people, of course. He picked up several languages and learned a trade. He became a printer.”
Was Van der Heuvel telling me the truth? If so, it explained how Henri could become anyone, forge documents, slip through the cracks at will.
“After he was released at age eighteen, our boy got busy with casual murders and robberies. He stole a Ferrari, anyway. Whatever else, I don’t know. But when he met Gina four years ago, he didn’t have to dine on scraps anymore.”
Van der Heuvel told me that Gina “fancied Henri,” that he opened up to her, told her how he liked his sex and that he had committed acts of extreme violence. And he said he wanted to make a lot of money.
“It was Gina’s idea to have Henri provide entertainment for our little group and Horst went along with this plan for our sex monkey.”
“This is where you came in.”
“Ah. Yes. Gina introduced us.”
“Henri said you sat in a corner and watched.”
Van der Heuvel looked at me as though I was an exotic bug and he hadn’t decided whether to smash me or put me under glass.
“Another lie, Hawkins. He took it up the ass and squealed like a girl. But this is what you should know because it is the truth. We didn’t make Henri who he is. We only fed him.”
Chapter 118
VAN DER HEUVEL’S fingers flew across the keyboard again. He said, “And now, a quick look, for your eyes only. I’ll show you how the young man developed.”
Delight brightened his face as he turned the screen toward me.
A collection of single frames taken from videos of women who’d been tied up, tortured, decapitated, flickered across the computer screen.
I could hardly absorb what I was seeing as Van der Heuvel flashed through the pictures, smoking his cigarette, providing blithe commentary for a slide show of absolute and, until now, unimaginable horror.
I felt light-headed. I was starting to feel that Van der Heuvel and Henri were the same person. I hated them equally. I wanted to kill Van der Heuvel, the worthless shit, and I thought I could even get away with it.
But I needed him to lead me to Henri.
“At first I didn’t know that the murders were real,” he was saying, “but when Henri began to cut off heads, then, of course, I knew.… In the last year, he began writing his own scripts. Getting a little too drunk with attention. Getting too greedy.
“He was dangerous. And he knew me and Gina, so there was no easy