The City of Blood

by Frédérique Molay

  “How did you pick that portion?” Nico asked.

  “The Society for the Disinterment of the Tableau-Piège stipulated in writing that the work should begin on the side where Samuel Cassian and fellow artist Niki de Saint Phalle were seated.”

  “I imagine you have a seating chart.”

  “No, we have only the menu: an appetizer buffet followed by giblets and exotic dishes such as tripe sausage and pig’s breast, ears, tails, and feet; python ragout; and elephant-trunk steak.”

  “And everybody could stomach that?” Kriven asked.

  “It suited some people’s taste more than others,” Gazani said with a smile that looked half amused and half blasé. “The seating chart was reconstructed, based on testimony. Of course, it’s not definitively accurate. But we have pictures.”

  “We’ll need to see them,” Nico said.

  “The park archivist has a complete set,” said Clavel.

  “Please have that person come to headquarters tomorrow morning with printouts for Commander Kriven.”

  “This… this incident is a terrible blow for the park.”

  “I’m sure it will attract even more visitors to La Villette,” Kriven replied.

  The woman glared at him.

  “Okay, I think we’re done for today,” Nico said, trying to nip any confrontation before it could escalate. “I have no doubt that we’ll be meeting again soon.”

  He got up, as did Kriven and everyone else. Clavel escorted them back to the front of the Pavillon Janvier. Outside, multicolored lights gave the grounds and buildings a festive look. It was almost like being on an immense futuristic vessel—perhaps the USS Enterprise—about to embark on an intergalactic voyage.

  Nico’s cell phone rang, interrupting his Star Trek fantasy. It was Deputy Chief Claire Le Marec, his right hand. “You’re on the eight o’clock news.”

  “Wonderful. I can’t wait to hear what they’re saying now.”

  “They’re all over the City of Blood. Is that what they really called those old slaughterhouses?” Le Marec asked.

  “Indeed, that’s what they were called,” Nico said.

  It hadn’t escaped his notice that Samuel Cassian had decided to bury his banquet north of the Canal de l’Ourcq. Homage, no doubt, to the animals sacrificed and then consumed and to the butchers who had slit the animals’ throats with their razor-sharp knives before stripping them of their hides. Homage to hell.

  Cassian had played with fire and awakened the devil.

  5

  The night was relentless. An army of furious skeletons brandishing knives and forks pursued him across the Parc de la Villette, which had become a labyrinth of dead ends. Nico woke up in a cold sweat, curled in Caroline’s arms. A kiss was somehow enough to ease his fears.

  It was the morning of a new day, but it was starting as unpleasantly as his nightmares had ended. The morgue, in an austere redbrick structure on the Quai de la Rapée, was wedged between the Seine and the aboveground métro tracks. Nico climbed the neoclassical steps to the building that housed the medical examiner’s office. More than three thousand autopsies were performed every year in this twenty-thousand-square-foot building. Professor Armelle Vilars ruled here with equanimity. As the chief medical examiner, she was frequently an expert witness at trials and was renowned both in France and abroad. She had even been called to Rwanda and Kosovo. Vilars intimidated a lot of people, but not Nico. On the contrary, this singular woman astonished him, and not just because she knew how to hold her own in a man’s world.

  The guard saluted Nico with a respectful “sir.” Pierre Vidal was waiting for him, and the two men went into the locker room.

  “You’re looking good,” Nico said as he took off his vest and tie. It was always too warm in the autopsy rooms.

  “I stopped smoking.”

  They put on smocks and went to the washroom to scrub their hands.

  “This is going to be a piece of cake,” Vidal said. “No incisions, no cut-up organs, no blood. There won’t be any smell. What could be more pleasant?”

  A morgue attendant told them that Professor Vilars was ready. His French title, agent d’amphithéâtre, was an amusing one for someone whose job was preparing bodies for autopsy. The term was a reference to the rooms in old medical schools that had labs all around.

  Edmond About, a nineteenth-century academic and satirist, had made light of autopsies. He explained them this way: “You will be thrown on a stone table, your body will be cut in pieces. One saw-bones will cleave off your great stupid head with a hatchet.” Unlike Edmond About, Armelle Vilars had a reverence for the dead and their families.

  The attendant accompanied them to the autopsy room, with its stainless-steel tables edged with drains and its sinks and faucets along the wall. An old man was waiting, stretched out for eternity. His legs were covered with livor mortis, purple splotches where blood had accumulated. His eyes were taped shut. Nico knew this was done to keep the corneas from drying out. Perhaps the man’s would be harvested for transplanting. Corneas could be donated as much as seventy-two hours after death. A box was next to the cadaver. On the plastic cover, someone had written “autopsy room” in felt marker. The box contained the examiner’s sterilized tools: round-tip scissors for cutting the aorta and ligaments; dissection scissors; a thick scalpel for cutting through cartilage; a large knife for amputations; tongs; a ladle for emptying the belly’s contents; a hammer to break the skull; and needles to stitch everything back up. It was best to forget about eating before watching an autopsy and to remember that this was a human being. Deceased, perhaps, but still human.

  The bones that had been numbered and arranged on another table were less unnerving than this unfortunate old man. Lormes, the public prosecutor, had turned them over. The medical examiner’s office—“Professor Vilars and her orchestra,” as Magistrate Alexandre Becker liked to joke—never got involved unless the public prosecutor’s office asked. But the majority of the prosecutors asked to be excused from the autopsies they ordered, claiming lack of time. They relied on the police officers, who were required to attend. Nico didn’t harbor any resentment in this regard. Dealing with the dead was no easy matter, and he knew the morgue inspired disgust and fear.

  For strength, Nico summoned up the mental image of Caroline’s face, her dark eyes and deep gaze and her charming smile. Dr. Caroline Dalry, head of gastroenterology at the Saint-Antoine Hospital, was the woman in his life. He’d known it at first sight. As much as he loved his job, he couldn’t stand it when his work kept them apart for a night. And his son, Dimitri, had also taken to her immediately.

  “I’ve allowed two medical students to watch this autopsy,” Professor Vilars said. She was already concentrating. “Forensic anthropology is not a very large field, and this specific case will benefit them.”

  Nico nodded at the students, who looked tense and scared.

  “I told them that the police chief would be here. They’re undoubtedly impressed,” Vilars said calmly. “That said, they’re bound by confidentiality, and I’m very firm about that.”

  Everything was ready for the chief medical examiner. She put on a waterproof green apron over her scrubs, slipped her hair under a cap, and pulled on surgical gloves. She tied on her mask and turned on the digital recorder.

  “First off, we have human bones on the table. Our goal is to determine the age, sex, height, and ethnicity of the subject. We will attempt to figure out the person’s medical history and establish the date and cause of death and whether the deceased was linked to a crime. Bones have much to tell us. We just have to listen. Let’s first try to determine the age. For that, we need to examine the development and aging of specific bones. Any ideas?”

  “There aren’t any signs of arthritis,” said one of the students. “No vertebral osteophytes.”

  “That’s correct. There are no signs of the musculoskeletal degeneration we’d see in an older person. Anything else?”

  “Conversely, the bones are dense and
thick, so ossification is complete,” the young woman said.

  “That’s right. And look here. The inferior epiphysis of the radius has fused with the radial shaft.”

  “The epi-what?” asked Captain Vidal.

  The students gave the police officer a worried look. Nico held back a smile. They were probably wondering if Vidal was trying to trick them.

  “The ends of a long bone develop separately from the main part when a human is growing and fuse in adulthood,” said the chief medical examiner. “In terms of the radius, fusion happens at age seventeen for men and at age twenty for women.”

  She took a fragment of the humerus and began to slice it. A few steps away, coroners had set out their instruments at the old man’s table. One of them opened the thorax and the abdomen with a vertical incision from the xyphoid process to the pubis. It was an unappetizing spectacle. The other one took the tape off the cadaver’s right eye, sprayed it with antiseptic, stretched a surgical drape with a hole over the eye, and reached for a scalpel. So the man’s corneas would, in fact, be transplanted.

  “Now I’m going to soak the bony structure with Nile blue. The older the subject is, the more vivid the blue will be.”

  All eyes were on Professor Vilars.

  “We can conclude that the subject was between sixteen and thirty at the time of death. Let’s turn to gender now. How can we tell the difference?”

  “With the skull and the pelvis,” said the female student.

  “Do explain.”

  “Two regions should be taken into consideration with the skull: the brow bone and the occipital protuberance. Both are more prominent in men. The pelvis is lower and larger in women.”

  “Which is the more definitive of the two: the skull or the pelvis?”

  “The pelvis.”

  “It’s also possible to see if a woman has given birth,” the student said.

  “In our case, what do you see?”

  “The sacrum and the aperture are both typical of a man, I would say.”

  “Correct. The skeleton, normally composed of 206 bones, is incomplete here, but we can use a femur, which will help us estimate the height of the individual. Which equation should we use?

  “People are about 2.6 times taller than the length of their femurs,” exclaimed the student. She looked ready to press the buzzer on a game show.

  Vilars took out a measuring tape and unrolled it along the thigh bone.

  “Twenty-six inches, so approximately five and a half feet. Let’s recap. Here we have a man between seventeen and thirty years old and about five and a half feet tall. Now let’s look at the question of his ethnicity, although we can’t be precise on that matter.”

  “The shape of his skull suggests that the subject is Caucasian,” said the student.

  “That was a term introduced by the anthropologist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, who considered Georgians the world’s most beautiful humans and the Caucasus, where they came from, the cradle of humanity,” Vilars said.

  Nico’s thoughts turned to Georgia, bordered by Ukraine and Russia: three states touching the Black Sea. The video of his family’s trip to what was once called the tsar’s attic filled his mind: Kiev, the Carpathians, the Dniester Canyon, Odessa, and the coast of the Black Sea. They had flown home from Moscow a few weeks earlier. For the rest of their lives, they would have memories of the land of their ancestors. Walking up the Potemkin Stairs, his mother, Anya, had declared: “I’ve seen Odessa. Now I can die!” That was Anya: a drama queen in the true Slavic tradition. She was an indomitable woman who loved caviar and iced vodka and was fascinated by Griboyedov, Pushkin, Lermontov, and Gogol.

  “Caucasian skulls are usually high and large. The cheekbones and jaw are prominent, and the chin often curves back,” Vilars continued. “That’s what we’re seeing here, without any question. We’ll still have to proceed with complementary analyses.”

  “We recovered a metal rod and several screws, about as long as a leg bone,” Nico said.

  Vilars opened the evidence bag and took out the items, which she set on the table.

  “It’s part of a surgical brace that keeps a broken bone in place while it knits. Considering the length and diameter of this stainless-steel rod, I’d lean toward a tibia fracture.”

  “Can it be traced?” Vidal asked.

  Vilars examined the rod. “I only see the manufacturer’s name. Nothing else. That was typical at the time of the banquet.”

  “And can you tell us when this person died?” Nico asked.

  Vidal had filled several pages in his notebook. The victim’s description was taking shape.

  “Determining the date of death is key to many investigations,” Vilars told her students.

  “At the crime scene, I’m the one who figures that out,” said Vidal. “I use an electronic thermocouple thermometer that’s much more precise than a medical thermometer. It has soft and rigid probes that penetrate four to six inches into the rectum. But we’re counting on you, because Skeletor here doesn’t have an anus.”

  The students burst out laughing, while Professor Vilars glared at him.

  “When it comes to bones, several physical, chemical, and histological methods allow us to determine their age,” the medical examiner said. “Under ultraviolet light, the bone’s fluorescence diminishes from the edges to the center, depending on the age. After a century, this fluorescence is no longer present.”

  Vilars leaned over the skeleton with the lamp.

  “Can one of you tell me about the principle of ultraviolet fluorescence?”

  The male student wiped his forehead. He clearly could not remember the specifics.

  “And you?” Professor Vilars asked, looking at the other student.

  “When there’s been electromagnetic excitation—ultraviolet light being what we use the most—specific molecules emit photons during their de-excitation.”

  “There’s still some activity, so we can deduce that the subject is contemporary. From there, we’ll look for other indicators. Fat disappears in the spongy bone about ten years after death; proteins don’t last for more than five years; the quantity of nitrogen and amino acids declines. All this, of course, depends entirely on where the body lay.”

  In a whirl of activity, Vilars took bone samples and set them on slides, handled mysterious liquids, and invited the students to look through the microscope.

  “Anthropology has one last method,” the chief medical examiner said. “Carbon-14 dating. Carbon-14 is radioactive and has a specific half-life. This allows us to determine the length of time since death. The method is particularly interesting, because carbon content is not dependent on environmental conditions. The only problem is that the preparation takes a long time, so I will have to take care of that later. Still, the initial findings suggest that this subject has been dead for twenty-five to thirty-five years. I will confirm it in my final report.”

  Vilars gave Nico an emphatic nod. He understood what she was saying: if this was a homicide, the statute of limitations could be an issue. In principle, prosecutions were discouraged ten years after a crime, as it was believed that the risk of judicial error increased over time. Nonetheless, magistrates used all sorts of legal tricks to get around this time limit. Moreover, the statute of limitations did not affect the opening of an investigation, which, if it focused on finding the truth rather than pursuing the suspect, could provide answers for the victim’s family. Sometimes this type of investigation could even yield an arrest. So the machine had been set in motion. Nico returned the professor’s nod with one of his own.

  “Now we have to look for bone characteristics that are normal, pathological, or taphonomic,” the professor said. “Do either of you know what taphonomic means?”

  “The totality of factors that alter the morphology of bones after a subject’s death,” said the male student.

  “Exactly right. To be specific, this subject, who was rather young, was clearly in good health. No signs of malnutrition, arthritis,
or cancer—which would damage the bone structure. The lesions we see here correspond to taphonomic degradation of skeletal tissue by scavenging insects. Now let’s examine the skull.”

  Nico looked at the skull resting on the stainless-steel table. Its sockets seemed to be staring at him. The curve of its jaw suggested perpetual laughter. If Skeletor were auditioning for a horror film, he’d get a role.

  “There aren’t any cranial sutures. The alveolar bone is in good shape, and the teeth are relatively undamaged. These indicators bring the likely age down to twenty to twenty-five years.”

  Vilars closed the jaw, and the skull was sniggering again.

  “Once you think you know who this skeleton belongs to, we’ll compare it with his dental records and medical history to confirm the identity. The tibia fracture helps. In the meantime, I’ll send the skull to the police forensics lab, which will reconstruct his face on the computer.”

  The room fell silent. The medical examiner examined the skull gently and attentively.

  “There’s a fracture around the right parietal and temporal areas, just as Captain Vidal noted in his preliminary observations,” she said.

  “The body has been buried for more than twenty-five years and not in a cemetery. It appears to be a criminal act.”

  “The fracture was caused by blunt-force trauma,” Vilars confirmed.

  “A blow that could have killed him?” Nico asked.

  The students watched wordlessly. It was a scene out of the movies: a summit between Paris’s foremost medical examiner and the chief of the famous Criminal Investigative Division at 36 Quai des Orfévres.

  “The nature of the impact, the diameter of the fracture, and its shape all correspond with a blow from a hammer. The force alone would be enough to cause cranial trauma, with loss of consciousness or an immediate coma, followed by a cerebral edema and an intracranial hemorrhage. He died within an hour.”

  Nico imagined the scene in slow motion, the body collapsing, the man dying.

  “Life is a difficult exercise that always ends badly,” Vilars told her students. “I see the proof every day.”