“I wondered what it must be like to have those feelings,” he told me.

“You know about the most famous of the serial killers, don't you, Ben? Gacy, BTK, Dahmer, Bundy. They were all run by their sexual compulsions. I was thinking last night that it's important for the book to make a distinction between those killers and me.”

“Wait a minute, Henri. You told me how you felt raping and killing Molly. That video of you and Kim McDaniels? Are you telling me now you that you're not like those other guys? How does that follow?”

“You're missing the point. Pay attention, Ben. This is critical. I've killed dozens of people and had sex with most of them. But except for Molly, when I've killed I've done it for money.”

It was good that my recorder was taking it all down because my mind was split into three parts: The writer, figuring out how to join Henri's anecdotes into a compelling narrative. The cop, looking for clues to Henri's identity from what he told me, what he left out, and from the psychological blind spots he didn't know that he had. And the part of my brain that was working the hardest, the survivor.

Henri said that he killed for money, but he'd killed Molly out of anger. He'd warned me that he would kill me if I didn't do what he said. He could break his own rules at any time.

I listened. I tried to learn Henri Benoit in all of his dimensions. But mostly, I was figuring out what I had to do to survive.

Chapter 83

Henri came back to the trailer with sandwiches and a bottle of wine. After he uncorked the bottle, I asked him, “How does your arrangement with the Peepers work?”

“They call themselves the Alliance,” Henri said. He poured out two glasses, handed one to me.

“I called them 'the Peepers' once and was given a lesson: no work, no pay.” He put on a mock German accent. “You are a bad boy, Henri. Don't trifle with us.”

“So the Alliance is German.”

“One of the members is German. Horst Werner. That name is probably an alias. I never checked. Another of the Peepers, Jan Van der Heuvel, is Dutch.

“Listen, that could be an alias, too. It goes without saying, you'll change all the names for the book, right, Ben? But these people are not so stupid as to leave their own breadcrumbs.”

“Of course. I understand.”

He nodded, then went on. His agitation was gone, but his voice was harder now. I couldn't find a crack in it.

“There are several others in the Alliance. I don't know who they are. They live in cyberspace. Well, one I know very well. Gina Prazzi. She recruited me.”

“That sounds interesting. You were recruited? Tell me about Gina.”

Henri sipped at his wine, then began to tell me about meeting a beautiful woman after his four years in the Iraqi prison.

“I was having lunch in a sidewalk bistro in Paris when I noticed this tall, slender, extraordinary woman at a nearby table.

“She had very white skin, and her sunglasses were pushed up into her thick brown hair. She had high breasts and long legs and three diamond watches on one wrist. She looked rich and refined and impossibly inaccessible, and I wanted her.

“She put money down for the check and stood up to leave. I wanted to talk to her, and all I could think to say was, 'Do you have the time?'

“She gave me a long, slow look, from my eyes down to my shoes and back up again. My clothes were cheap. I had been out of prison for only a few weeks. The cuts and bruises had healed, but I was still gaunt. The torture, the things I'd seen, the afterimages, were still in my eyes. But she recognized something in me.

“This woman, this angel whose name I did not yet know, said, 'I have Paris time, New York time, Shanghai time? and I also have time for you.' ”

Henri's voice was softened now as he talked about Gina Prazzi. It was as if he'd finally tasted fulfillment after a lifetime of deprivation.

He said that they'd spent a week in Paris. Henri still visited every September. He described walking with her through the Place Vendôme, shopping with her there. He said that Gina paid for everything, bought him expensive gifts and clothing.

“She came from very old money,” Henri told me. “She had connections to a world of wealth I knew nothing about.”

After their week in Paris, Henri told me, they cruised the Mediterranean on Gina's yacht. He called up images of the Côte d'Azur, one of the most beautiful spots in the world, he said.

He recalled the lovemaking in her cabin, the swell of the waves, the wine, the exquisite meals in restaurants with high views of the Mediterranean.

“I had nineteen fifty-eight Glen Garioch whisky at twenty-six hundred dollars a bottle. And here's a meal I'll never forget: sea urchin ravioli, followed by rabbit with fennel, mascarpone, and lemon. Nice fare for a country boy and ex-Al Qaeda POW.”

“I'm a steak and potatoes man myself.”

Henri laughed, said, “You just haven't had a real gastronomic tour of the Med. I could teach you. I could take you to a pastry shop in Paris, Au Chocolat. You would never be the same, Ben.

“But I was talking about Gina, a woman with refined appetites. One day a new guy appeared at our table. The Dutchman – Jan Van der Heuvel.”

Henri's face tightened as he talked about Van der Heuvel, how he had joined them in their hotel room, called out stage directions from his chair in the corner as Henri made love to Gina.

“I didn't like this guy or this routine, but a couple of months before I'd been sleeping in my own shit, eating bugs. So what wouldn't I do to be with Gina, Jan Van der Heuvel or not?”

Henri's voice was drowned out by the roar of a helicopter flying over the valley. He warned me with his eyes not to move from my chair.

Even after the silence of the desert returned, it was several moments before he continued his story about Gina.

Chapter 84

I didn't love Gina,” Henri said to me, “but I was fascinated by her, obsessed with her. Okay. Maybe I did love her in some way,” Henri said, admitting to having a human vulnerability for the first time.

“One day in Rome, Gina picked up a young girl -”

“And the Dutchman? He was out of the picture?”

“Not entirely. He'd gone back to Amsterdam, but he and Gina had some strange connection. They were always on the phone. She'd be whispering and laughing when she spoke with him. You can imagine, right? The guy liked to watch. But in the flesh, she was with me.”

“You were with Gina in Rome.” I prompted him to continue with the main narrative.

“Yes, of course. Gina picked up a student who was screwing her way through college, as they say. A first-semester prostitute from Prague, at Universitr degli Studi di Roma. I don't remember her name, only that she was hot and too trusting.

“We were in bed, the three of us, and Gina told me to close my hands around the girl's neck. It's a sex game called 'breath play.' It enhances the orgasm, and yes, Ben, before you ask, it was exciting to revisit my singular experience with Molly. This girl passed out, and I loosened my grip so that she could breathe.

“Gina reached out, took my cock in her hand, and kissed me. And then she said, 'Finish her, Henri.'

“I started to mount the girl, but Gina said, 'No, Henri, you don't understand. Finish her.'

“She reached over to the bedside table, held up the keys to her Ferrari, swung the keys in front of my eyes. It was an offer, the car for the girl's life.

“I killed that girl. And I made love to Gina with the dead girl beside us. Gina was electrified and wild under my hands. When she came, it was like a death and a rebirth as a softer, sweeter woman.”

Henri's body language relaxed. He told me about driving the Ferrari, a leisurely three-day ride to Florence with many stops along the way, and about a life he believed was becoming his.