Four Scarpetta Novels

by Patricia Cornwell

  “And the detective got you something to eat and drink, sir, isn’t that right?” Berger is asking Chandonne.

  “Yes.”

  “And what was that?”

  “A hamburger and a Pepsi.”

  “And fries?”

  “Mais oui. Fries.” He seems to think this is funny.

  “So you’ve been given whatever you need, isn’t that right?” she asks him.

  “Yes.”

  “And the hospital staff removed your bandages and gave you special glasses to wear. You’re comfortable?”

  “I hurt a little bit.”

  “Were you given any pain medication?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tylenol. Isn’t that right?”

  “Yes, I suppose. Two tablets.”

  “Nothing more than that. Nothing that might interfere with your thinking.”

  “No, nothing.” His black glasses are fixed on her.

  “And nobody is forcing you to talk to me or made you any promises, isn’t that right?” Her shoulders move as she flips a page in what I assume is a legal pad.

  “Yes.”

  “Sir, have I made any threats or promises to get you to talk to me?”

  This goes on and on as Berger runs through her checklist. She is making sure that Chandonne’s eventual representation won’t have any opportunity to say that Chandonne was intimidated, badgered, abused or treated unfairly in any way. He sits straight in his chair, his arms folded on top of each other in a tangle of hair that splays over the top of the table and hangs in repulsive clumps, like dirty cornsilk, from the short sleeves of his hospital-issue shirt. Nothing about the way his anatomy has been put together computes. He reminds me of old campy movies where silly boys on the beach bury each other in sand and paint eyes on their foreheads and make beards look like head hair or wear sunglasses on the backs of their heads or kneel with shoes on their knees to turn themselves into dwarfs—people turning themselves into freakish caricatures, because they think it is amusing. There is nothing amusing about Chandonne. I can’t even find him pitiful. My anger stirs like a great shark deep beneath the surface of my stoical demeanor.

  “Let’s get back to the night you say you met Susan Pless,” Berger says to him on the tape. “In Lumi. That’s on the corner of Seventieth and Lexington?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “You were saying you had dinner together and then you asked her if she would like to drink champagne with you somewhere. Sir, are you aware that the description of the gentleman Susan met and dined with that night doesn’t fit yours in the least?”

  “I have no way to know.”

  “But you must be aware that you have a serious medical condition that causes you to look very different from other people, and it’s hard to imagine, therefore, that you could be confused with someone who absolutely doesn’t have your condition. Hypertrichosis. Isn’t that what you have?”

  I catch the barely perceptible flicker of Chandonne blinking behind the dark glasses. Berger has touched a nerve. The muscles in his face tense. He begins flexing his fingers again.

  “Is that the name of your medical condition? Or do you know what it’s called?” Berger says to him.

  “I know what it is,” Chandonne replies in a tone that is tighter.

  “And you have lived with it all your life?”

  He stares at her.

  “Please answer the question, sir.”

  “Of course. That is a stupid question. What do you think? You come down with it like a cold?”

  “My point is, you don’t look like other people, and therefore I’m having a hard time imagining you might be mistaken for a man described as clean-cut and handsome with no facial hair.” She pauses. She is picking at him. She wants him to lose control. “Someone well groomed in an expensive suit.” Another pause. “Didn’t you just finish telling me you’ve virtually lived like a homeless person? How could that man in Lumi have been you, sir?”

  “I had on a black suit, a shirt and tie.” Hate. Chandonne’s true nature has begun to shine through his mantle of dark deceit like a distant cold star. I expect him to dive over the table any moment and crush Berger’s throat or bash her head against the wall before Marino or anyone else can stop him. I have almost quit breathing. I remind myself that Berger is alive and well, sitting at the table with me inside my conference room. It is Thursday night. In four hours, it will have been exactly five days since Chandonne kicked his way into my house and tried to beat me to death with a chipping hammer.

  “I have gone through periods where my condition isn’t as bad as it is now.” Chandonne has steadied himself. His politeness returns. “Stress makes it worse. I’ve been under so much stress. Because of them.”

  “And who is them?”

  “The American agents who’ve set me up. When I began to realize what was happening, that they were setting me up to look like a murderer, I became a fugitive. My health deteriorated to the worst it has ever been, and the worse I got, the more I had to hide. I haven’t always looked like this.” His dark glasses point slightly away from the camera as he stares at Berger. “When I met Susan, I was nothing like this. I could shave. I could get odd jobs and manage and even look good. And I had clothes and money sometimes because my brother would help me.”

  Berger stops the tape and says to me, “Possible the bit about stress could be true?”

  “Stress tends to make everything worse,” I reply. “But this man has never looked good. I don’t care what he says.”

  “You’re talking about Thomas,” Berger’s voice resumes on the videotape. “Thomas would give you clothes, money, maybe other things?”

  “Yes.”

  “You say you were wearing a black suit in Lumi that night. Did Thomas give you the suit?”

  “Yes. He liked very fine clothes. We were about the same size.”

  “And you dined with Susan. Then what? What happened when you were finished eating? You paid the check?”

  “Of course. I’m a gentleman.”

  “How much was the bill?”

  “Two hundred and twenty-one dollars, not including the gratuity.”

  Berger corroborates what he says as she stares straight ahead at the TV screen, “And that’s exactly what the bill was. The man paid in cash and left two twenty-dollar bills on the table.”

  I quiz Berger closely on how much about the restaurant, the bill, the tip was publicly disclosed. “Was any of this ever in the news?” I ask her.

  “No. So if it wasn’t him, how the hell did he know what the damn bill was?” Frustration seeps into her voice.

  On the videotape she asks Chandonne about the tip. He claims he left forty dollars. “Two twenties, I believe,” he says.

  “And then what? You left the restaurant?”

  “We decided to have a drink at her apartment,” he says.

  CHAPTER 14

  CHANDONNE GOES INTO great detail at this point. He claims he left Lumi with Susan Pless. It was very cold, but they decided to walk because her apartment was only a few blocks from the restaurant. He describes the moon and the clouds in sensitive, almost poetic detail. The sky was streaked with great swipes of bluish-white chalk and the moon was partially obscured and full. A full moon has always excited him sexually, he says, because it reminds him of a pregnant belly, of buttocks, of breasts. Gusts of wind kicked up around tall apartment buildings and at one point, he took off his scarf and put it around Susan to keep her warm. He claims to have been wearing a long, dark cashmere coat, and I remember the chief medical examiner of France, Dr. Ruth Stvan, telling me about her encounter with the man we believe was Chandonne.

  I visited Dr. Stvan at the Institut Médico-Légal not even two weeks ago because Interpol asked me to review the Paris cases with her, and during our conversation she recounted to me a night when a man came to her home, feigning car trouble. He asked to use her phone, and she recalled he was wearing a long dark coat and seemed very much a gentleman. But Dr. Stvan said something el
se when I was with her. It was her recollection that the man had a strange, most unpleasant body odor. He smelled like a dirty, wet animal. And he made her uneasy, very uneasy. She sensed evil. All the same, she might have let him in or, more likely, he would have forced his way in except for one miraculous happenstance.

  Dr. Stvan’s husband is a chef at a famous Paris restaurant called Le Dome. He happened to be home sick that night and called out from another room, wanting to know who was at the door. The stranger in the dark coat fled. The next day a note was delivered to Dr. Stvan. It was written in block printing on a bit of bloody, torn brown paper and signed Le Loup-Garou. I have yet to really face my denial of what should have been obvious. Dr. Stvan autopsied Chandonne’s French victims and then he went after her. I autopsied his American victims and didn’t take serious measures to prevent him from coming after me. A great common denominator underlies this denial, and it is this: People tend to believe that bad things happen only to others.

  “Can you describe what the doorman looked like?” Berger asks Chandonne on the videotape.

  “A thin mustache. In a uniform,” Chandonne says. “She called him Juan.”

  “Wait a minute,” I speak up.

  Berger stops the tape again.

  “Did he have a body odor?” I ask her. “When you sat in the room with him early this morning.” I indicate the television. “When you interviewed him, did he have . . .”

  “No kidding,” she interrupts. “Smelled like a filthy dog. Kind of a strange mix of wet fur and bad body odor. It was all I could do not to gag. I guess the hospital didn’t give him a bath.”

  It is a misconception that people are automatically bathed in the hospital. Usually, only the injuries are scrubbed unless the person is a long-term patient. “When Susan’s murder was investigated two years ago, did anyone in Lumi mention a body odor? That the man she was with smelled bad?” I ask.

  “No,” Berger replies. “Not at all. Again, I just don’t see how that person could have been Chandonne. But listen. It gets stranger.”

  For the next ten minutes I watch Chandonne suck down more Pepsi as he smokes and tells the incredible account of his alleged visit with Susan Pless in her apartment. He describes where she lived in amazing detail, from the rugs on the hardwood floor to the floral upholstered furniture to the faux Tiffany lamps. He says he was not impressed with her taste in art, that she had a lot of rather pedestrian museum exhibit posters and some prints of seascapes and horses. She liked horses, he said. She told him she grew up with horses and missed them terribly. Berger taps the table inside my conference room whenever she verifies what he is saying. Yes, his description of the inside of Susan’s apartment certainly leads one to believe he was there at some point. Yes, Susan did grow up with horses. Yes, yes, to everything.

  “Jesus.” I shake my head as fear coils tightly in my gut. I am afraid of where this is going. I resist thinking about it. But a part of me can’t stop thinking about it. Chandonne is going to say that I invited him into my house.

  “And it’s what time now?” Berger asks him on the tape. “You said Susan opened a bottle of white wine. What time was it when she did that?”

  “Maybe ten or eleven. I don’t remember. It was not good wine.”

  “How much had you had to drink at this point?”

  “Oh, maybe half a bottle of wine at the restaurant. I didn’t drink much of the wine she poured for me later. Cheap California wine.”

  “Then you weren’t drunk.”

  “I am never drunk.”

  “You were thinking clearly.”

  “Of course.”

  “In your opinion, was Susan drunk?”

  “Only maybe a little. I would say happy, she was happy. So we sat on the sofa in her living room. It has a very nice view, a southwest view. From the living room you can see the red sign for the Essex House hotel on the park.”

  “All true,” Berger says to me as she taps the table again. “And her blood alcohol was point-one-one. She’d had a few,” she adds details from Susan Pless’s postmortem examination.

  “Then what happened?” she is asking Chandonne.

  “We hold hands. She puts my fingers in her mouth, one after the other, very sexy. We started kissing.”

  “Do you know what time it was at this point?”

  “I had no reason to be looking at my watch.”

  “You were wearing a watch?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you still have that watch?”

  “No. My life got worse because of them.” He spits the word them. Saliva sprays through the air every time he says “them” with a loathing that seems genuine. “I no longer had money. I pawned the watch maybe a year ago.”

  “Them? These same people you keep referring to? Law enforcement agents?”

  “American federal agents.”

  “Back to Susan,” Berger directs him.

  “I am a shy person. I don’t know how much detail you will want me to go into at this point.” He lifts his Pepsi and his lips curl around the straw like grayish worms.

  I can’t imagine anyone wanting to kiss those lips. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to touch this man.

  “I want you to tell me everything you remember,” Berger says to him. “The truth, sir.”

  Chandonne sets down the Pepsi and I am slightly jarred when Talley’s sleeved arm enters the picture again. He lights another Camel for Chandonne. I wonder if it occurs to Chandonne that Talley is a federal agent, that he is one of the very people who Chandonne says have been following him and ruining his life. “Yes then, I will tell you. I don’t want to, but I’m trying to be cooperative.” Chandonne blows out smoke.

  “Please go on. In as much detail as you can remember.”

  “We kissed for a while and it quickly progressed.” He says nothing more.

  “What do you mean, it quickly progressed?”

  Ordinarily, it is enough for someone to say he had sex and leave it at that. Ordinarily, the officer or attorney conducting the interview or the direct or cross-examination doesn’t find it relevant to ask for explicit details. But the sexual violence done to Susan and to all of the women we believe Chandonne murdered makes it important to know the details, all the details of what his idea of sex might be.

  “I am reluctant,” Chandonne says, playing with Berger again. He wants coaxing.

  “Why?” Berger asks him.

  “I don’t talk about such things, certainly not with a woman present.”

  “It would be better for all of us if you would think of me as a prosecutor and not a woman,” Berger tells him.

  “I can’t talk to you and not think woman,” he says softly. He smiles a little. “You are very pretty.”

  “You can see me?”

  “I can barely see, not really. But I can tell you are pretty. I’ve heard you are.”

  “Sir, I’ll ask you to make no further personal references to me. Are we clear on that?”

  He stares at her and nods.

  “Sir, what exactly did you do after you began kissing Susan? What next? You touched her, fondled her, undressed her? Did she touch you, fondle you, undress you? What? Do you remember what she was wearing that night?”

  “Brown leather pants. I would describe them as the color of Belgian chocolate. They were tight but not in a way that was cheap. She had on boots, brown leather half boots. She had on a black top, sort of a leotard. Long-sleeved.” He looks up at the ceiling. “A scoop neck, rather low scooped neck. The kind of top that snaps between the legs.” He makes a snapping motion. His fingers with their short, pale hair remind me of cacti, of bottle brushes.

  “A bodysuit,” Berger helps him out.

  “Yes. I was a bit confused at first when I tried to touch her and couldn’t pull out her top.”

  “You were trying to put your hands under her top but couldn’t because it was a bodysuit that snapped between her legs?”

  “Yes, that’s it.”

  “And what was her r
esponse when you tried to untuck her top?”

  “She laughed at my confusion and made fun of me.”

  “She made fun of you?”

  “Oh, not in a mean way. She thought I was funny. She made a joke. She said something about Frenchmen. We are supposed to be such skilled lovers, you know.”

  “Then she knew you’re from France.”

  “But of course,” Chandonne blandly answers.

  “Did she speak French?”

  “No.”

  “She told you that or did you just assume it?”

  “I asked her at dinner if she knew French.”

  “So she teased you, then, about her bodysuit.”

  “Yes. Teased. She slid my hand down her pants and helped me undo the snaps. I remember she was aroused and I was a little surprised that she had gotten aroused so quickly.”

  “And you know she was aroused because . . . ?”

  “Wet,” Chandonne says. “She was very wet. I really don’t like saying all this.” His face is animated. He loves saying all this. “Is it really necessary for me to continue in such detail?”

  “Please, sir. Everything you can remember.” Berger is firm and unemotional. Chandonne may as well be telling her about a clock he took apart.

  “I begin to touch her breasts and unhook her bra.”

  “Do you remember what her bra looked like?”

  “It was black.”

  “Were the lights on?”

  “No. But the bra was a dark color, I think black. I could be mistaken. But it wasn’t a light color.”

  “How did you unhook it?”

  Chandonne pauses, his dark glasses boring into the camera. “I just unhooked it in back.” He makes an unhooking motion with his fingers.

  “You didn’t rip her bra off?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Sir, her bra was ripped in front. Ripped off from the front. Literally torn in half.”

  “I didn’t. Someone else must have done that after I left.”

  “All right, let’s get back to your taking her bra off. Are her pants undone at this time?”

  “Undone but still on. I pull up her top. I am very oral, you see. She liked that quite a bit. It was difficult to slow her down.”