Central Park

by Guillaume Musso

  Western Paris Traumatized

  (Le Parisien, October 9, 2011)

  Virginie André, a divorced bank employee and the mother of a little boy, was found this morning strangled in her apartment on Avenue de Wagram. Her body was discovered by her ex-husband as he was dropping off the three-year-old son, whose custody they shared.

  Fear in the City: Hundreds of Police

  Track the West Paris Killer

  (Le Parisien, October 10, 2011)

  This extraordinary investigation has now mobilized hundreds of police on the trail of a murderer who remains nameless and faceless, but who has been terrorizing single women in the 16th and 17th arrondissements for the better part of a year.

  What connects Clara Maturin, schoolteacher, strangled on November 12, 2010; Nathalie Roussel, flight attendant, killed on May 10, 2011; Maud Morel, nurse, found dead on August 19; and Virginie André, bank employee, murdered last Sunday? These young women were all single or divorced, and their pasts and personal relations have been investigated by police, but so far no significant clues have been discovered.

  Four homicides conforming to the same modus operandi. Four victims without any apparent connection, but all of whom seem to have been sufficiently intimate with their killer to have invited him into their apartments.

  This series of murders has caused disbelief and terror among inhabitants of these two arrondissements. To reassure the populace, the prefecture has vastly increased the number of police on patrol and asked citizens to report any suspicious behavior.

  Paris

  November 21, 2011

  Solferino Métro station

  I struggle breathlessly up the station steps. At the top of the stairs, rain blows into my face. I open my umbrella facing the wind to keep it from turning inside out. I am seven and a half months pregnant and I have an appointment with Rose-May, the midwife who is supposed to be with me when I give birth.

  November has been one long, dark, rainy tunnel, and today is no exception. I do not rush. The white façades of Rue de Bellechasse shine in the downpour.

  My feet are swollen, my back is killing me, and my joints ache. I am having a hard time adapting to the weight gain caused by my pregnancy. I have grown so fat that I need Paul to help me tie my shoes! Pants tend to cut into my crotch, so I am condemned to wear only dresses. My nights are short, and whenever I want to get out of bed, I have to roll over to the side before I can put my feet on the floor. And just to add to my misery, I’ve had nausea for the last few days, as well as sudden waves of exhaustion that wipe me out.

  Thankfully, the distance between the Métro exit and Rue Las Cases is only about two hundred yards. I reach the clinic in less than five minutes. I walk in, sign in at the reception desk, and—under the disapproving glare of the other patients—grab a coffee from the vending machine in the waiting room.

  I am worn out. My belly jumps as if huge bubbles are moving under the skin, as if there is an ocean inside it. Paul finds it very funny when this happens at home.

  My own feelings are more complicated. Pregnancy is an amazing, magical state, but I find it hard to surrender to it. My excitement is always tempered by a vague worry, a bad feeling, a series of painful questions without answers: Will I be a good mother? Will my son be healthy? Will I know how to look after him?

  I have, theoretically, been on maternity leave for the past week. Paul has done his part by decorating the baby’s room and fitting the car seat in my car. I have made plans to do lots of things—buy clothes, a stroller, a baby bathtub, toiletry products—but I keep putting them off.

  The truth is that I have never really stopped working on the investigation—my investigation—into those four women strangled in the west of Paris. My team was put in charge of solving the first murder, but we failed. After that, the case became too big and we lost it. I was sidelined, but I can’t stop seeing those faces frozen in horror. This obsession is polluting my pregnancy, preventing me from thinking about the future. The same images keep appearing in my mind, the same theories circling in my head. I lose myself in conjectures, trying to find the missing thread.

  The thread…

  I must find the invisible thread that connects Clara Maturin, Nathalie Roussel, Maud Morel, and Virginie André. Even if no one has spotted it yet, there has to be a link. Those four women have something in common that is eluding the investigators.

  Even me.

  Especially me.

  I just know that some crucial piece of evidence is right under my nose, unseen, and this certainty is ruining my life. If we don’t stop him, this man will continue killing women. One woman, two women, ten women…he is careful, invisible, uncatchable. He leaves no trace, no fingerprints or DNA. No one can explain why the four victims opened the door to him quite late in the evening. All we have is a vague eyewitness account of a man in a black helmet fleeing on a three-wheel scooter. And there are thousands of vehicles like that in the Paris area.

  Another vending-machine coffee. It’s cold and drafty in this room. I grip the plastic cup with both hands in search of some warmth. Staring into space, I go over the case in my head for the thousandth time, reciting the facts to myself like a mantra.

  Four victims—four women living alone. Three of them single, one a divorced mother. In the same geographic area. Killed with the same MO.

  For a long time, the newspapers nicknamed the murderer “the phone-thief killer.” Even the cops thought at first that he was stealing the victims’ cell phones in order to erase certain compromising information: calls, videos, photos…but this theory doesn’t hold up. In spite of what the press claimed, the phones of the first and fourth victims were eventually found. And while the phone of the second victim, the flight attendant, has never been located, that of the third victim—the nurse—was simply forgotten in a taxi.

  I look at my own phone. I have downloaded hundreds of photos of the four victims onto it. Not those morbid crime scene shots but images from their daily lives, taken from their computers.

  I scroll through these, always coming back to those of Clara Maturin. The first victim, the schoolteacher. The one I feel closest to. One of her photos particularly moves me. It’s a traditional class picture, dated October 2010, taken on the school playground. All the kindergartners from the Joliot-Curie school are gathered around their teacher. The image is full of life. The kids’ faces fascinate me. Some children are very serious, while others fool around—silly grins, fingers up nostrils, bunny ears, and so on. At their center, Clara Maturin smiles openly. She is a pretty, reserved-looking woman with blond hair cut in a bob. She is wearing a beige raincoat over a rather elegant pantsuit and a Burberry silk scarf. She must have especially liked this outfit, because she wears it in quite a few other pictures: at a friend’s wedding in May 2010 in Brittany; during a vacation in London in August of the same year; and even in the last photo of her, taken a few hours before her death by a security camera on Rue de la Faisanderie. I scroll from one to the next, finding the same favorite outfit in each one: raincoat, Working Girl suit, Burberry scarf around her neck like a cowl. When I linger over this last detail, however, something hits me: It’s not the same scarf. To make sure, I zoom in, using three fingers on the touchscreen. In spite of the poor resolution of the security-camera image, I am almost certain—the scarf has a different print.

  The day she died, Clara was not wearing her favorite scarf.

  A faint shiver runs down my back.

  An unimportant detail?

  Maybe, but my brain goes to work anyway, trying to make sense of this fact. Why did Clara Maturin change her scarf that day? Did she lend it to a friend? Did she take it to be dry-cleaned? Did she lose it?

  Maybe she lost it.

  Maud Morel, the third victim, also lost something—her cell phone, which was finally discovered in a taxi. And Nathalie Roussel’s phone, which we assumed had been stolen—maybe that had been lost too?

  Lost.

  Two phones, a scarf…

 
; And Virginie André? What did she lose?

  Her life.

  But what else? I quit the photo app on my phone and call Seymour. “Hey, it’s me. Listen, about Virginie André’s murder, do you know if anything was ever mentioned about her having lost something just prior to her death?”

  “Alice! You’re supposed to be on maternity leave! Just concentrate on getting ready for your baby!”

  I ignore this. “Do you remember or not?”

  “No, I have no idea, Alice. We’re not working that case anymore.”

  “Could you find her ex-husband’s number? Text it to me. I’ll ask him myself.”

  “All right.” He sighs.

  “Thanks, Seymour.”

  Three minutes after I hang up, I receive his text. I call the ex-husband immediately and leave a message on his voice mail asking him to contact me as soon as possible.

  “Madame Schafer! You walked here again!” Rose-May exclaims, wide-eyed.

  She is a plump woman from Réunion with a strong creole accent, and every time I see her, she gives me a scolding as if I’m a little girl.

  “No, I didn’t. Honestly!” I say, following her into one of the third-floor rooms where she gives her birthing classes.

  She asks me to lie down, then takes her time examining me. She assures me that the cervix is still closed, that I am not at risk of giving birth prematurely. She is pleased to see that the baby has turned over and is no longer breech.

  “The head is pointing down now, and the baby’s back is to the left. The perfect position! He’s even begun to descend a little.”

  She straps sensors to my bare belly and connects the monitor that records the baby’s heartbeat and my Braxton-Hicks contractions.

  I hear my son’s heartbeat.

  I am deeply moved—tears well in my eyes—but at the same time, my chest tightens with anxiety. Rose-May explains what I have to do when I begin to feel contractions, which should normally happen in about four to five weeks.

  “If they’re happening every ten minutes, take a Spasfon tablet and wait thirty minutes. If the pain goes away, it was a false alarm. If it persists and—”

  I feel my phone vibrate in the pocket of my parka, which is close by. I interrupt the midwife, sit up, and lean down to grab the phone.

  “Jean-Marc André,” a voice announces. “I was just checking my messages and—”

  “Thank you for calling me back, monsieur. I’m Captain Schafer, one of the officers investigating the murder of your ex-wife. I was wondering if you remember whether she lost something in the days prior to her death?”

  “Lost what?”

  “I don’t know, I’m afraid—that’s the point. Maybe an item of clothing? Or a piece of jewelry? Her purse?”

  “What does this have to do with the murder?”

  “Maybe nothing, but we have to pursue every line of investigation. So this doesn’t ring any bells for you—something she may have lost?”

  He pauses to think for a moment, and then: “Actually, there was—”

  He breaks off midsentence; I sense that his voice is tight with emotion. He starts again.

  “It was one of the reasons we argued the last time she left our son with me. I was annoyed with her because she’d lost Gaspard’s favorite teddy bear; he couldn’t sleep without it. Virginie said she’d lost it in Parc Monceau. She was talking about the lost-and-found office there, but…”

  Lost-and-found office…

  My heart speeds up in my chest. A burst of pure adrenaline.

  “Wait a minute, Monsieur André, I want to make sure I’ve fully understood. Had Virginie gone to the lost-and-found office herself or was she planning to go?”

  “She told me she’d already been and that she’d filled out a form so they would let her know if the bear was found.”

  I can’t believe my ears. “All right, thank you. I’ll call you back if I have any news.”

  I remove the electrodes, stand up, and hurriedly get dressed. “I’m sorry, Rose-May, but I have to go.”

  “No! This is ridiculous, Madame Schafer. In your state, you should—”

  But I am already through the door. I am already in the elevator. I get out my phone to call a taxi. I shuffle my feet impatiently in the lobby while I wait for it to arrive.

  This is my investigation.

  My pride rises again. I think of all those cops in the Criminal Division who have gone through the victims’ diaries with a fine-tooth comb and yet may have missed something vital.

  Something I have just found.

  36 Rue des Morillons, fifteenth arrondissement, just behind Parc Georges-Brassens

  The taxi drops me off at the door of the lost-and-found office, housed in a handsome 1920s building in pink brick and white stone. Although the department is part of the Paris police prefecture, there are no cops in this office, and I have never set foot here before.

  I show my badge at the reception desk and ask to see the manager. While I wait, I glance around me. Behind the counters, a dozen employees apathetically deal with people turning in objects they’ve found or those who have lost something or come to pick something up.

  “Stéphane Dalmasso, pleased to meet you.”

  I look up. A bushy mustache, hanging jowls, little round glasses with colored plastic frames—the boss of the lost-and-found office has a pleasant face and a strong Marseille accent.

  “Alice Schafer, Criminal Division.”

  “Welcome. Are you due soon?” he asks, looking at my belly.

  “Six weeks, maybe less.”

  “A child, huh? Your life is about to change forever!” he says, inviting me into his office.

  I enter a spacious room laid out like a little museum, an exhibition of the oddest objects ever handed in to the department: a Legion of Honor medal, a wooden leg, a human skull, a shard of metal from the World Trade Center, an urn containing the ashes of a cat, a yakuza sword, even a wedding dress.

  “A taxi driver brought it here a few years ago,” he explains, pointing to the dress. “He was driving a couple who had just gotten married. They had a fight and broke up during the trip.”

  “It’s like Aladdin’s cave in here…”

  “Yes, but most of what we receive are wallets, glasses, keys, phones, and umbrellas.”

  “Impressive,” I say, glancing at my watch.

  “I have an endless store of anecdotes, but I imagine you’re in a hurry,” he says, gesturing for me to sit down. “So, to what do I owe this visit?”

  “I’m working a murder case. I would like to know if a certain Virginie André came here recently.”

  “In connection with what?”

  “To ask if you’d found her son’s teddy bear, which he lost in Parc Monceau.”

  Sitting on a wheeled office chair, Dalmasso rolls toward his desk and touches his computer keyboard. The machine hums in response.

  “Virginie André, you said?” he asks, curling his mustache.

  I nod. He types the name into his computer.

  “No, sorry, there hasn’t been any request made under that name in the past few months.”

  “She might have reported a missing object online or by phone.”

  “It would have shown up if she had. All requests are automatically registered in our database. The forms our employees fill out are all electronic.”

  “That’s strange—her husband told me she’d reported it missing with your office. Could you check three other names for me, please?”

  I write the names on the spiral-bound notebook lying on the desk and turn it around so he can read what I’ve written.

  Dalmasso deciphers my handwriting and enters the three names, one by one: Clara Maturin, Nathalie Roussel, Maud Morel.

  “No, nothing for any of those.”

  I feel so disappointed. It takes me a few seconds to accept my mistake.

  “Oh, well, never mind. Thanks for your help.”

  As I stand up, I feel a tingling sensation in my belly and put my hand
to it. The baby is still moving a lot. He pushes so hard sometimes, it’s as if he’s trying to stretch my skin. At least I’m not having contractions.

  “Are you all right?” Dalmasso asks. “Should I call you a taxi?”

  “That would be great,” I say, sitting down again.

  “Claudette!” he shouts to his secretary. “Please call a cab for Mademoiselle Schafer.”

  Two minutes later, a small woman with a severe, irritable face and badly dyed red hair enters the office, carrying a steaming cup. “The taxi will be here very soon,” she assures me. “Would you like some sweet tea?”

  I accept the drink and gradually start to feel better. Although I have no idea why, the little woman continues to give me a disapproving look. Out of nowhere, the question suddenly crosses my mind.

  “Monsieur Dalmasso, I forgot to ask you: Do any of your employees own a three-wheel scooter?”

  “Not that I’m aware of. That’s more a guy thing, isn’t it? And, as you can see, most of our employees are women.”

  “Erik drives one of those machines,” his secretary interjects.

  I look Dalmasso in the eyes. “Who is Erik?”

  “Erik Vaughn is a temp. He fills in here during holidays and busy periods or when one of our employees is out sick for a while.”

  “Is he here today?”

  “No, but we’ll probably hire him again for the Christmas season.”

  Through the office’s fluted glass wall, I see the taxi waiting for me in the rain. “Do you have his address?”

  “We’ll find it for you,” he says, handing a blank Post-It note to his secretary, who leaves the room.

  This new revelation has rekindled the fire inside me. I don’t want to waste time. Hastily, I scrawl my phone number and e-mail address in Dalmasso’s desk diary. “Check the periods when Vaughn worked for you over the past two years and send them to me by e-mail or text them to my cell phone, please.”

  Claudette returns and I grab the note that she is holding out for me, walk outside, and dive into the taxi.