by Cédric Sire
Minutes flew by.
They had passed the town of Villefranche-d’Albigeois when Vauvert’s phone rang. Mira’s name was on the screen.
“Yes, Damien.”
“Holy mother of Christ, what the fuck are you doing?” his anxious colleague exclaimed. “Everyone is talking about you now!”
“You know how it is. Let them talk. I’ll deal with the paperwork later on.”
“No shit, man! I don’t think you realize how deep in the shit you’ve gotten yourself. There’s a warrant for your arrest. The word from Paris is you attacked a colleague. Is that true?”
“The guy’s a cunt, and I’ll have my own version of events to tell when the time comes.”
“You’d better. The boss is on the fucking warpath. If he ever finds out I talked to you, he’ll have my ass, too. Do you understand that you’re wanted just like a criminal now?”
“I swear I had no choice. We don’t have time for this bullshit. Eva is in mortal danger.”
“I understand. And I guess I would have done the same thing. I just wanted to let you know about the warrant. And that Leïla came to see me. The DNA test you requested freaked the shit out of her, you know that?”
“Don’t tell me she told the boss?”
“No, not yet. But she’s going to have to, at some point.”
“Please ask her to wait just a bit longer.”
“I will. Anything I can do to help?”
“Thanks for the offer. There’s something I have to check out first. Then I’ll call you. I promise.” Vauvert paused, then added, in a softer tone, “Don’t worry about me, okay?”
“I’m the one who showed you the ropes when you got here. I’ll always have your back, so let me worry about you if I want to. Where are you right now?”
“Where am I?”
Vauvert paused for a second. Illuminated by the headlights, a sign ahead read: “MILLAU 70 KM.”
“I’m still in Paris. But I’m in the Metro. I’m going to have to call you back, okay?”
He hung up, a look of fierce determination on his face.
“Interesting,” Leroy said.
“What?”
“Well, do you always lie to your partners like that?”
Vauvert smiled sadly.
“Only when I have no choice, Erwan. We just can’t be too careful.”
Leroy nodded and went back to his book. A minute later, he whistled between his teeth.
“Listen to this. One of the rituals that the Dacians practiced was called the Scarlet Feast or the Feast of Blood. Ring a bell?”
It rang a bell, all right.
“The inscriptions on the window in the Chick boardroom.”
“Exactly. According to what I read in here, the Dacians believed it was possible to summon the souls of the dead with this ceremony. It was used to obtain gifts from the gods.”
“What kinds of gifts?”
“All sorts of things, I guess. Money, power.”
“Eternal youth?”
“Why not? The ritual was not that easy to perform, though. The gods were demanding. To please them, you had to sacrifice young flesh. And not just a little flesh. Seventy girls in all.”
“Seventy? That’s mass murder.”
“Anyway, it’s a ritual that only a witch can perform, according to the book. First she has to bleed her victims and cut off their faces. The goal is to free them from both life and death. Then the wolf spirits come to take their souls to the gods. Sounds just like what our killer is doing, doesn’t it?”
“Hell yeah,” Vauvert sighed. “That’s the one ritual she’s reproducing in detail.”
He hesitated.
“Erwan…”
“Yes?”
The black fir trees were whizzing by. Shortly now, they would be in Millau. He had to tell him. God dammit, he couldn’t postpone this any longer.
“I saw them.”
“What?”
“The wolves,” Vauvert said. “I went back to the Salaville farm yesterday. Something strange happened to me over there. A kind of hallucination. I saw two wolves. I even shot at one of them. Except it wasn’t a wolf at all.”
“Uh, sorry, but I don’t get it.”
“I know. It’s impossible to believe, isn’t it? But something attacked me, and that thing had human blood in its veins.”
“Because you killed it?”
“No. It vanished. One moment the beast was there, and the next it was gone. And I have no rational explanation for it. All I know is that it really did happen. There was blood on my bullets. I had it analyzed. It turned out to be the blood of one of the Salaville brothers.”
Leroy digested the information. Vauvert kept on driving, his face inscrutable.
“The blood of a man who died a year ago, right?”
“Yes,” Vauvert said.
“And at Eva’s, there was the blood of a girl who was already dead.” Leroy understood where this logic was leading them. “You think this ritual actually works? That stuff like this is possible? Freeing yourself from death like the Dacians believed you could?”
“What do you want me to say? I don’t know. All I know is that someone is following an ancient ritual and that this person does believe in its power. She’s going to keep on killing until she gets her seventy victims. Real or not, she’s going to see it through to the end. She will slaughter them one by one. And the next one on her list is Eva.”
Leroy thought about it for a few moments.
“She’s up to twenty-six, if we count the twenty-four girls in Ariège and the two we found in Paris. Maybe even up to thirty if the four patients missing from the Raynal Center were actually her first victims.”
“Thirty, that’s a minimum,” Vauvert said. “If the murders did start in the city of Rodez and if she managed to hide them all this time, then it’s possible that the list is a lot longer than that.”
A sign told them that they were arriving in Saint-Affrique. The SUV crossed a bridge, then rushed into a series of narrow deserted streets.
On the dashboard, the clock read 11:47.
Time kept ticking.
52
“I’m scared,” Eva whispers.
She has shut her eyes, and she is trembling.
Against her, she can feel the reassuring presence of her sister. Whether or not she really exists does not matter any longer. She is there. With her. That is all that counts.
“Don’t be scared,” Justyna whispers in her ear.
“You know she’s going to come back. She’s going to torture me. I won’t be able to stand it.”
“You will have to hold on.”
Tears stream down Eva’s cheeks and onto her dry lips. They’re salty, burning tears.
“I won’t be able to. I know I won’t be able to.”
Her sister snuggles against her, reassuring.
“I’m so sorry, Justyna. I don’t know why he took you and not me.”
“That’s all in the past,” the little girl says softly.
Eva shakes her head.
“I promised you that nothing was going to happen to us.” She gags and spits out blood. “I told you that if we stayed together nothing would happen to us. It was a lie. You died because of me. And the monster, he didn’t even want me.”
“It was never your fault. You couldn’t have known.”
“I should have known. Like I should have known that one day or another the monster would come back, that it would be for me. That time has come, you know. The monster has changed. He’s wearing a mask now, but deep down, he’s the same. He came to finish his job.”
Justyna gives Eva two light and loving kisses on her closed eyes.
She was only six years old.
She does not want to remember any of this.
She has tried so hard to banish what happened from her mind.
But here she is. It never worked. Every time she shuts her eyes, it is as though she’s reliving that day.
The day when everything fell
apart.
The very last time Mommy kissed them as she went to work, leaving them with Mrs. Rieux, that kind woman who always had fruit juice and cookies in her house and so many channels on her television. Eva and Justyna spent a good part of the afternoon watching episodes of Captain Harlock. Then they played cops and robbers. Eva insisted on being the cop, as always. She knew that was what she would be when she grew up. A supercop. She would be the one putting all the bad men in prison so that all the moms in the world would not have to be scared anymore. So they would not have to move from one house to another all the time.
Mommy told them, often. It was very difficult to recognize the bad men. You could never go by first impressions. Sometimes, someone who looked very nice could be a bad man in disguise, a man who wanted only one thing, to catch you and do very bad things to you. That is the reason you had to be on your guard and watch out, always. The idea was a bit difficult for little girls to grasp, of course, but what they did understand—and had for a very long time—was that Mommy was very afraid of bad men. That told them more than all the explanations in the world, so they followed Mommy’s instructions to the letter. Never, ever did they talk to strangers. When a man seemed to be looking at them on the street, they immediately tugged Mommy’s sleeve to let her know.
Yet on that day, Mommy did not see it coming.
She did not even look stressed.
Maybe she had made the fatal error of letting her guard down for just a moment. Maybe for that brief moment she had allowed herself to think that the monsters were no longer after them. That was as good as offering their throats to the monsters’ teeth.
In any case, Mommy was late, and the girls were tired of playing. Mrs. Rieux kept looking out the window. She was trying her best to hide it, but she was feeling uneasy.
And the little girls, they were not stupid. They knew that Mommy’s car was parked in front of their house, and she had not come to get them. Why hadn’t she come?
Time passed. Mrs. Rieux was making phone calls.
The alarm in her was growing.
She used the phone in the kitchen, where they could not hear her.
Then they heard the sirens.
Police cars filled the street, their flashing lights discoloring their house. Eva and Justyna watched them through Mrs. Rieux’s living room window. There were men in uniforms putting up barriers. And other men, dressed in white from head to toe, were getting out of a truck with a stretcher.
Something had happened. Something terrible.
“What’s going on?” Eva cried.
“How come Mommy isn’t here yet?” Justyna asked with sudden anguish in her voice.
Mrs. Rieux offered them a large smile and told them that everything was fine. Mommy would be here soon.
Then she went to the front door to speak to a police officer.
The man talked in a low voice. He gestured at their house, down the street. Mrs. Rieux crossed herself several times while listening. Curious, the little girls sneaked up on them.
“How am I supposed to tell them something like that?” Mrs. Rieux whispered.
“You don’t have to, ma’am,” the policeman says. “We called Social Services. They’re sending someone for them. She’s going to take care of everything. Don’t worry. All you have to do is keep them here until that person arrives so that the kids don’t see, well, what’s going on, you understand?”
The little girls did not understand what was happening. But, whatever it was, it was very serious, and it had to do with Mommy, obviously. They went back to the window, trying to see something, anything. People had begun to gather in the street. Everybody in the neighborhood seemed to be very interested in their house all of a sudden.
“Did something happen to Mommy?” Eva asked.
“I want Mommy!” Justyna screamed.
The police officer gave them an uneasy look. He tried to smile, but it was a fake smile. His eyes were sad. Mommy told them to never trust men they didn’t know. Even if they were smiling. Especially if they are smiling.
Then Mrs. Rieux closed the door and came over to the two children. Her face was sad, too. So sad.
“I think we’re going to have to wait a bit longer, my ’lil treasures. Your mom…”
It was as though a ball had formed in her throat. The little girls could see the tears welling in her eyes. They just didn’t understand why.
“I want Mommy,” Justyna whined. “Why doesn’t she come to pick us up? I want to go home!”
“Mommy will be here later,” Mrs. Rieux said, and they both could hear the lie in her broken voice. “You stay here with me for now. Come on, I have some nice juice.”
The two sisters shared a distraught look.
Out in the streets, more sirens wailed.
53
A quarter past midnight
“So, how long have you two been working together?” Vauvert asked.
The road was plunging in a series of steep switchbacks toward the bottom of the valley, and the SUV was swerving too close to the guardrail each time.
Leroy grabbed the handle above the passenger window.
“Me and Eva? I don’t know. Two years. No, actually, it’s already been three years now. Hey, you sure this car can handle the road all right?”
“Sure it can. So, you guys never talked about her past?” Vauvert went on. “What happened when she was a child, and when that killer kidnapped her? The Night Scourge?”
“I told you, she never talks about herself. I think she put that part of her life behind her.”
Vauvert had a hard time believing that. You could not erase such a thing from your existence. You could fake it maybe, pretend it was all in the past, but it would keep crushing and shaping you. He knew that all too well.
“And so you think she has never taken advantage of her job to try to find the identity of the man who killed her mother and sister? Give me a break, Erwan.”
Entering a small village with high beams glaring, he shot full-speed through back-to-back traffic circles.
“You really should be more careful,” Leroy said. “You’re going to get us killed.”
“Don’t worry. There’s nobody else on the road.”
Leroy closed the book on his lap and slipped it into his leather bag. There was no way he could keep reading.
He grabbed the handle once again.
“Okay, listen. I really don’t know any more. When I first got to Homicide, some of the guys told me the story. I tried to find out more about it, as you can imagine. It’s not every day that you work with the victim of a serial killer. And well, I guess I was also trying to find out more about Eva. I admit that. People were saying so many things about her.”
“And?”
“And nothing. Nobody ever knew the details. All we know is that the Night Scourge held the two girls in a basement and that he slit the throat of Eva’s sister, probably right in front of her eyes. Her name was Justyna. I remember it because it’s not a name you see every day.”
“Yeah,” Vauvert responded. “But we never found out who he was? Not even a guess?”
“Nothing at all,” Leroy said. “He stopped killing overnight.”
“After that one night,” Vauvert said. “Just like that.”
“Exactly. Those were his last known murders. It’s possible that the man killed himself. It happens. Or maybe he died in an accident. We’ll never know.”
“You don’t think it’s a bit odd? That a killer would take so many risks to abduct two kids, going as far as staying in an area swarming with cops, only to spare one of them while he had her in his grasp?”
“We’re talking about a psychopath. Who knows what goes on in a mind like that? Anyway, no one has ever figured out why he attacked all those girls in the first place.”
“Yeah.”
Up ahead, an overpass appeared. It was a simple and massive structure, lined with red and blue lights. It looked like something out of a sci-fi movie.
“Almost ther
e.”
The SUV shot past the road sign, cut through yet another rotary and ended up on a street decorated with holiday lights.
“For Christ’s sake, slow down. We’re there already,” Leroy implored.
Dr. Fabre-Renault’s house was on a drab gray avenue. Across from it was a car dealership. Vauvert parked in front of the dealership. He was so tired, his head was spinning.
“You okay?” Leroy asked, unbuckling his seat belt.
“Of course I’m fine,” Vauvert grumbled.
The cold wind hit them as soon as they stepped out of the SUV, and their breaths vaporized in the air. Despite the holiday decorations, this street, like those in all the villages they had driven through, was deserted. A motorcycle revved on a nearby street, and a traffic signal beeped at the corner, but otherwise everything was silent.
They hurried to the house across the street, tightening their coats against the cold. Looking up, Vauvert could see a golden light seeping through the second-floor windows. He pressed the bell under the brass plate that read “Dr. J. Fabre-Renault, Psychiatrist.”
A man in his fifties opened the door. He had a tired expression, gray hair, and a face covered with freckles. He was wearing huge yellow eyeglasses. They looked like novelty glasses, not something that someone would seriously wear. But then again, he was also wearing a thick red sweater and gray corduroys that looked a good thirty years out of date.
“Doctor Fabre-Renault? I’m Inspector Vauvert from Homicide, and this is Detective Leroy.”
“We called you earlier,” Leroy said. “We need to talk to you.”
“Yes,” the doctor said in a solemn voice. “I knew you people would show up sooner or later.”
He invited them inside.
“Come on in. We’ll be more comfortable in my office. I just made fresh coffee. You guys look like you could both use a cup.”
V
JUDITH SAINT-CLAIR
54
12:25 a.m.
He led them up a stone staircase to the second floor. It was a big house with rooms crammed full of old mismatched furniture that seemed to have been scavenged from garage sales. The walls were covered with gaudy paper—yellow fleur-de-lis in one room crimson-and-black stripes in the next room, and green toile in still another room.
