Of Fever and Blood

by Cédric Sire

  Eva bit her lip.

  “Listen, guys, who do you think you’re talking to? I was delirious but not that bad. I studied human anatomy enough. I’m telling you that I drove a blade between that woman’s ribs and pierced her heart.”

  She looked at them both, in turns.

  “You didn’t find her body, did you?”

  Vauvert cleared his throat, uneasy.

  “Well…”

  “No,” Leroy cut in. “Not yet.”

  Eva was dumbfounded.

  “I swear I’m telling you the truth,” she insisted.

  “We believe you.”

  “I stabbed her in the heart!”

  “We believe you,” Vauvert repeated. “She must have hidden somewhere after you got out. We’ll find her body. Three whole teams are out there. They’re checking every nook and cranny. Everybody is on the case.”

  Eva said nothing. In her mind’s eye, the memories were playing in an endless loop. There could be no mistake. She had aimed accurately. She knew it. She could see herself driving in the scalpel. The blade had penetrated this woman’s vital organ. She had been splashed by her blood.

  A river of it.

  A black river.

  A shiver ran through her. Eva remembered all of this. Still, parts of her memory were still a blur.

  She had jammed the scalpel into the masked woman’s heart. But, before that?

  Why didn’t remember anything?

  That’s what you’ve done all your life, a voice inside her head whispered. Are you going to keep this up? Are you going to pretend that nothing else happened?

  She didn’t understand.

  But she dug deeper.

  And this time, she remembered.

  She remembered her twin sister leaning over her and the comfort of the little girl’s arms.

  And she remembered that other basement twenty-four years earlier. She remembered the man who had thrown them both down the staircase, her and her sister, and her heart began to pound.

  “Oh,” she said, twisting the bedsheets.

  She remembered the man pressing Justyna’s against his chest, all the while staring at Eva with his blood-red eyes.

  She remembered Justyna’s cries as the knife blade cut into her little-girl flesh.

  Tears streamed down her cheeks.

  Neither of the two men in the room could begin to understand the reason for that sudden outpouring of tears.

  It was better that way.

  She swept away the visions with the back of her hand and took a breath.

  “Say guys, can you find me a pair of sunglasses? The light in here is driving me nuts.”

  79

  Wednesday afternoon

  The Havre-Caumartin Metro Station. The escalator dumps a torrent of metro riders into the afternoon drizzle. Amid the anonymous umbrellas, raincoats, and hoodies, she emerges, draped in a long coat that conceals a decrepit body. No one’s paying attention to her wrinkled skin. In fact, no one pays any attention to her at all. She’s just a stooped-over old lady. There are many of them in this throng of people going in and out of stores, pausing for a few moments at the red light before moving again and spreading out on the boulevard. She moves along with the flow.

  A speeding car hits a puddle and sends up a wave of muddy water. The woman beside her, in heels and holding an outrageously expensive handbag tight, hurls a flood of insults at the driver. But the old lady pays it no mind and continues walking toward her destination. She is saving her strength. Soon she will need it.

  She is absolutely confident.

  She knows she is almost there.

  The gods are watching. The gods are impatient now.

  She turns off Rue de Caumartin and walks along a narrower, quieter street, checking the building numbers, one after the other.

  The building she’s looking for is at the very end of the block. It is a six-story apartment building, its stone facade blackened by pollution.

  Just before she reaches it, two girls pass her. They are talking animatedly about some other girl in school. They are no more than thirteen years old. They run up the stairs, and one of them slaps her key card against the magnetic reader.

  “Rebecca, wait. You’re sure your folks aren’t home, right?”

  The one called Rebecca pushes the door open with a sigh.

  “I told you like a hundred times already! Dad’s at work, and Mom’s at the gym. No chance they’ll be there to bug us. And I have to tell you what that bitch Nadya did today. I swear to God you’re going to freak out!”

  Her friend follows her inside and, without a second thought, holds the door for the old woman climbing the steps.

  “I can’t stay too long, okay? Or my folks will chew me out again. Wanna’ guess what their latest thing is? They think I’m doing drugs! Just because of the picture I posted on my profile. You know, the one where I’m pretending to drink whisky from the bottle. Can you believe that?”

  “Your folks are, like, so messed up.”

  The elevator doors slide open. The two teens hop inside and then wait for the old lady to walk in.

  “You’re good kids,” she tells them in a sibilant whisper.

  She has an odd smell. The girls frown but don’t say anything. Rebecca presses the sixth-floor button.

  “Which floor you going to, ma’am?”

  “Same as you.”

  The girls give her a wary glance. They’ve never seen this woman in the building before. She looks so old. The doors close silently, and the elevator starts going up.

  Ill at ease, the girls stare at their feet.

  The elevator reaches its destination. It stops with a soft bump.

  “So, that bitch Nadya…”

  But Rebecca stops in midsentence. The elevator doors still haven’t opened.

  “What the hell is going on?”

  The light goes off.

  “Shit!”

  “I can’t believe this!”

  They begin pounding on the door.

  “Hey! Let us out! Can anybody hear us?”

  In the darkness, they don’t see the scalpel in the old lady’s hands.

  80

  Soon they had to leave Eva, as more visitors—colleagues from Homicide and other police departments—started showing up. Vauvert and Leroy did not want to crowd Eva.

  “Want coffee?” Vauvert asked as they walked down a hallway reeking of bleach.

  “Sure,” Leroy answered.

  The visitors lobby for that floor was at the far end of the hallway. As they reached the double doors, out came Jean-Luc Deveraux, a cup of coffee in his hand. He was sporting two shiners above his bandaged nose. The battered face looked odd against the sharp suit he was wearing, and the effect was almost comical.

  Vauvert gave him a polite nod, but Deveraux just walked past him toward Eva’s room.

  “Asshole,” Vauvert muttered under his breath as he pushed open the door to the visitors lobby.

  “I told you Deveraux isn’t that bad a fellow,” Leroy said. “This has upset everyone.”

  Vauvert kept his mouth shut and ordered two cups of coffee from a machine. The small lobby was empty, which suited him fine. He was so exhausted, he did not have the strength to keep up a conversation with any of Eva’s colleagues. His right eye had developed a tick, and his back ached. He lost himself in thought as he watched the coffee trickle into the paper cups.

  Meanwhile, Leroy collapsed into a chair facing the large window. Beyond it, he could make out the see rain-shrouded form of the Austerlitz train station.

  He waited for Vauvert to join him.

  “What do you think of all this?”

  “What do you expect me to think?” Vauvert responded.

  He sat down beside Leroy, sighing with relief as his back settled against the soft cushion.

  They had to broach the topic. Soon enough, they would be filling out a series of reports, and it was imperative that they put together an account that they both could both agree on. One thing w
as certain: there was no way they could tell anyone what they’d seen down there. Doing so would cause nothing but endless trouble.

  “According to Nadal, we were just momentarily confused,” Vauvert said. “He’s convinced that we were hallucinating, and I bet he’ll come up with some explanation or other for it. A gas leak, flashlights reflecting in the mirrors and tricking us, maybe even simple mass hysteria. He’ll write it all up in a believable way, and everything will be just fine and dandy.”

  “How can you be so cynical?” Leroy grumbled. “We were there. We saw what happened.”

  “Because I’ve been doing this job for fifteen years,” Vauvert said, taking a sip of his coffee. “This isn’t the first time I’ve been forced to come up with a rational explanation for things I didn’t understand, believe me. Give it enough time, and we’ll be convincing ourselves that we dreamed it all up.”

  Leroy shook his head.

  “Blood boiling in a trough? Mirrors fucking bleeding? We dreamed that all up, did we? Come on, now!”

  He was right, but that didn’t change anything. Vauvert gave a tired smile.

  “What do you want me to say? They pay professionals for this. You and I will be sent to an expert shrink. You’d be surprised how those guys can twist your mind around, believe me.” He took another sip of his coffee before adding, “And frankly, I don’t give a rat’s ass. Eva’s alive and out of danger. That’s all that matters. And you and I, we got out of this mess in pretty good shape, all things considered.”

  Leroy nodded. It had been a very close shave. Getting back to Paris hadn’t been as easy as he’d told Eva. In Rodez, Nadal and his superiors were totally opposed to their leaving. They tried to detain them until they had put together all the facts. It was clear that they wanted to drop the hammer. Leroy and Vauvert owed everything to the intervention of the regional chief of police, an old friend of Ô’s, who signed the release forms himself and threatened the local boss with demotion if he refused to let them go.

  In the distance, a flash illuminated the lead-colored clouds. The storm was still smoldering.

  Leroy broke the silence.

  “Her ritual. It really did work, didn’t it? This woman summoned things that had been sleeping in the netherworld.”

  “Even if that’s the case, we can’t prove anything.”

  “So everything we’ve been through, we just keep to ourselves, is that it? You don’t think Eva is going to talk about seeing us in Saint-Clair’s mask?”

  “No, I don’t think she will. No more than I intend to tell anyone that I saw her in the mirror in that house. We were four hundred miles away. Nobody would believe it.”

  “But it was real!” Leroy said, raising his voice. “And Captain Nadal saw the same things that we did! We were surrounded by those… those black beasts!”

  “I know,” Vauvert said. “But it doesn’t do any good to freak out.”

  They stared at each other. Fuming, Leroy downed the rest of his coffee.

  “They were the same kind of beast I saw at the Salaville farm,” Vauvert said. “It’s like they’re everywhere Saint-Clair has been.”

  “So, what do you think they could be?”

  “I still don’t have a clue,” Vauvert said. “But I have a hunch that they were human beings once.”

  “People who turned into wolves?”

  “They say wolves come to take dead people’s souls, right?”

  “According to a lot of myths, yes.”

  “Maybe that’s what it is,” Vauvert said. “Maybe those things are really carriers of souls. Or maybe they’re spirits that remained in this world in the guise of wolves.”

  “Jesus Christ, that’s completely insane.”

  Vauvert wanted to make sense of it all for Leroy, but he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  “Something else is bugging me big time,” Leroy said.

  “What?”

  “What if—I hate to say it, but—what if this isn’t over?”

  “Eva says she stabbed Saint-Clair to death.”

  “She could have stabbed a normal person to death. But someone like this woman?”

  “If Saint-Clair is dead, we’ll find her body eventually,” Vauvert said. “And then we’ll know for sure.” He stared at the city through the window. “Only then will I feel better.”

  A voice at their backs startled them.

  “As of now, anyway, she’s nowhere to be found.”

  Turning around, they saw Chief Ô at the coffee machine. He was ordering a cappuccino as though everything were completely normal.

  81

  “Oh hi, boss,” Leroy said, chagrined.

  “Hi,” Vauvert added.

  The chief turned to them, his cappuccino in hand. He looked as tired and drawn as they did. He probably had not gotten much sleep either.

  “Hello, gentlemen. But please, enough with the long faces. You came back in one piece, didn’t you?” He took a seat beside them. “The same can’t be said about our two colleagues from Rodez,” he said, staring hard at them in turns.

  “Anything new down there?” Leroy asked.

  “Depends what you mean by new. They found parts of sixteen bodies in various stages of decomposition. The entire force is on the case. They’ve identified about fifty girls out of the sixty photos. The sixteen bodies are among those. They’re going through the missing-persons files from the past few years with a fine-tooth comb.” He paused to sip his cappuccino. “They autopsied Officer Arnaud Puech’s body. The boy had been eaten by beasts that seem to be dogs or wolves. The problem is, no such animals could be found anywhere in the area. Our friends down there are tearing their hair out trying to come up with a plausible explanation.”

  He gave them a curious glance, and, for a just a moment, Vauvert wondered how much of their talk the chief had heard.

  Vauvert said nothing.

  “The teams are still collecting evidence over there. The lab in Bordeaux is in charge of the analysis. They’re the best, by far. Until further notice, we’re all on this case.”

  Vauvert cleared his throat.

  “I’m really sorry about what happened down there.”

  “You should be,” Ô snapped. “Eventually, there will be an investigation. Internal Affairs will suspend your ass, and there’s not a damn thing I can do to change that. You realize that, don’t you?”

  “Perfectly, sir.”

  “I’ll make sure you can stay here, but in exchange, I demand full cooperation.”

  “You’ve got it,” Vauvert said.

  He hesitated before asking the question that had been eating at him. “Say, did you have the chance to speak with the doctors about Eva?”

  Ô looked him in the eye.

  “She’ll recover quickly. She lost a lot of blood, but the doctors got her a transfusion in time, and they sewed up her wounds. It doesn’t look like any infection has set in. Basically, all she needs now is rest.”

  “Eva told us she stabbed Judith Saint-Clair,” Leroy said. “She thinks she killed her.”

  “I hope she’s right, and that the bitch is actually dead somewhere,” the chief replied. “The entire area is being heavily searched as we speak. Come hell or high water, there’s just no fucking way we won’t find her hidden in some hole.”

  “Come hell, yeah.” Vauvert said, sarcasm in his voice.

  “Where was she holding Eva, anyway?” Leroy asked.

  “No one told you?” Ô said, looking surprised.

  The two men shook their heads.

  “Well, she was in Audrey Desiderio’s summer house, in Seine-et-Marne.”

  Vauvert exploded.

  “How the fuck could we have missed that? No one checked?”

  “Not that one house,” the chief admitted. “Saint-Clair stole the keys from Desiderio when she slaughtered her. That was actually where Desiderio and Meyer were supposed to spend their weekend.”

  “You think she found out about the house while she was torturing Barbara Meyer
?” Leroy asked.

  “That’s the most logical explanation. She must have made Meyer talk, and then she went over to Desiderio’s office.”

  Vauvert understood better how things happened, now. This was totally consistent with Saint-Clair’s logic.

  “She’s always done that. She finds out-of-the-way places where she can commit her murders and stash her victims. Like the Salaville farm.”

  “That’s the conclusion we all came to,” Ô said.

  He stood up and straightened his suit. “I have to leave you now. I’m expected at Homicide. Until all of this is settled, keep me posted about everything you do. And the same goes for you, Erwan.”

  Then, before leaving, he added: “One last thing, guys, I’m setting up an appointment with a psychologist for you. You’ve been through some pretty traumatic events. He’ll help you sort things out.”

  82

  The blood.

  Oh, the blood.

  Flowing over her skin again. The delicious fluid oozes between her fingers and streams down her face. Its powerful smell rises. The salty metallic flavor fills her mouth.

  She twists the girl’s inanimate body into the perfect position.

  The blade of the scalpel makes an incision, ever so softly, around her charming little face. She drives her fingers underneath, and she pulls. The skin peels off the muscle with a wet sigh.

  Gently, she lays the skin on her own face. Her wrinkles start quivering. A mask of blood. A mask of innocence.

  “May my blood be yours. May your blood be mine,” she chants.

  And with each syllable, her voice becomes younger.

  Lightning sets the sky ablaze.

  Thunder rolls over the city.

  The gods exult. The gods are impatient, too.

  The moment is near. It will come. Any minute now.

  The final victim will soon be here. It is written. It has always been written this way. The gods chose her long ago. This is how it must happen. There’s no other way.

  And then. Oh yes, then. The cycle will be completed.

  The seventy will have been sacrificed.

  The gods will be satiated.

  Shivering with expectancy, she lays the skin on the table and removes her dress. It had become too large for her. The garment crumples onto the floor.