The cops greeted the employees with a nod, the latter visibly shaken by the tragedy. There were five or six of them, mostly young, squeezing plastic coffee cups in their hands and talking animatedly among themselves. Sharko took note of each face, then turned back to Jaspar.
“What exactly do you do here?”
“Mainly ethology. We try to understand how the social organization of primates and their cognitive faculties were shaped over the course of biological evolution. We study their movements, their way of using tools, how they reproduce. We have about a hundred primates on these twenty acres, spread over six different species. Most of them come from Africa.”
Neither Sharko nor his partner took notes. Why bother, since the case was practically open-and-shut? In the tops of the trees, like a synchronized ballet, balls of reddish fur swung languidly from branch to branch: a family of orangutans, with the baby in front of its mother.
“And the victim? What was her job?”
“Eva Louts was a grad student at Jussieu. Her specialty was evolutionary biology, and she’d been working here for three weeks, doing research for her thesis.”
“Evolutionary biology, what’s that?”
“Before I explain, do you know what the genome is?”
“Not exactly.”
“It means putting end to end the DNA that composes our twenty-three pairs of chromosomes. It gives a sequence of more than three billion bits of data, which you might call the assembly instructions for our organism. Well, with this genome, we’re reconstructing the history of life itself. Evolutionary biology aims to understand why and how new species appear, or new viruses like AIDS or SARS, while others die out. And also to answer questions about the evolution of life—such as why we grow old and die. You’ve surely heard of natural selection, mutations, and genetic heritage?”
“Darwin and those guys? A bit.”
“Well, that’s the heart of what we do.”
They entered the animal housing facility. After passing a small desk with only basic computer equipment, they reached a large room where cages of different sizes were lined up one after another, most of them empty. A few lemurs were gesticulating to each other. On the shelves sat a huge quantity of plastic toys: colored geometric shapes, puzzles with large pieces, containers. The place smelled unpleasantly of old leather and excrement. Visibly overcome, Jaspar stopped short and pointed.
“Over there is where it happened. You can go see. Forgive me for staying back, but I’m feeling a bit sick.”
“We understand.”
Sharko and his colleague went closer. The two men shook hands with a third, a cop from Emergency Services with a mustache, who was guarding the crime scene. In the last cage, a large cube three yards on each side and made of bars, the victim was casually sprawled in the straw and woodchips, her arms raised above her head as if she were taking a sunbath. Blood had flowed from the back of her skull. A large wound—apparently a bite mark—ran from her right cheek down to her chin. The girl must have been twenty-three or twenty-four. Her blouse was ripped and her shoes had been thrown several yards away, toward the center of the cage. In the middle of the blood pool lay a fat metal paperweight, perhaps made of copper or bronze.
In the right-hand corner, in the back of the same cage, a chimpanzee was huddled, its fur gleaming with blood around the forearms, hands, and feet. It was tall and black, with a powerful back and long, thin, hirsute arms. It turned its eyes toward the new intruders. In its pupils, Sharko could read, in a fraction of a second, an expression of deep distress. Shery, the great ape, resumed its prostrate position, turning its back to the observers.
The Emergency cop with the mustache twiddled an unlit cigarette between his fingers.
“Nothing we can do. That filthy baboon hasn’t budged an inch. Our orders are to wait for you before putting it to sleep.”
Sharko turned to Jaspar, who had kept her distance.
“Who discovered the body?”
The primatologist ignored the question. She walked up quickly and stared at the mustached cop with a dark look on her face.
“Shery has nothing in common with a baboon! She’s a female chimpanzee who I’ve been taking care of for almost thirty years!”
The cop shrugged.
“Baboon or not, they all end up turning against us sooner or later. Case in point.”
Lieutenant Levallois suggested that the other man go outside for a breath of air. The tension was palpable, the atmosphere charged. Sharko calmly repeated his question.
“Who discovered the body?”
Jaspar was now standing next to him. Short and stocky, she nervously twisted her fingers and tried to keep her eyes from meeting the empty gaze of the victim. Sharko knew that, once the initial curiosity had passed, it became impossible for most people to look death in the face. The sight of the partially undressed young woman made it especially unbearable.
“Hervé Beck, our animal keeper. He comes by every day at six to clean the cages. When he got here this morning, he immediately called the police.”
“So the door to the cage was closed when he arrived?”
“No, it was wide open. It was Hervé who pushed it shut when he saw the body, to keep Shery from escaping.”
“Where is this Hervé?”
“Outside, with the others.”
“Fine. That paperweight next to the body . . . any idea where it came from?”
“The desk where Eva worked.”
“Your thoughts on what might have led her to open the cage and go inside holding a paperweight?”
“Shery’s our center’s mascot. Unlike the other animals, she uses her cage only for sleeping and walks around freely the rest of the time. Now and then she spirits away an object, especially if it’s shiny. Eva must have been bringing her back inside her cage once she’d finished her observations. As she was often gone during the day, she came in to work fairly late and was the last to leave. We trusted her.”
The primatologist gazed at the distressed chimpanzee.
“Shery is completely harmless. She’s known to every primatologist in France for her gentleness, intelligence, and especially her ability to express herself.”
“Express herself?”
“She speaks ASL, the American sign language system. She learned it decades ago, at the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute in Ellensburg, Washington. For years I’ve been in awe of the progress she’s made in sharing her emotions. I’m telling you, she couldn’t have . . .”
Jaspar suddenly fell silent, crushed by the overwhelming evidence: the chimpanzee covered in blood, a victim at her feet, struck repeatedly with a paperweight and bitten in the face. What could possibly have happened? How could Shery have committed such an abomination? Clémentine tried to communicate with the animal, but despite her urgings, her appeals through the bars, Shery would not respond.
“She refuses to say anything. I think she’s really been traumatized.”
Sharko and Levallois exchanged a knowing glance. The young lieutenant took his cell phone and went out.
“Ma’am, an investigation will be launched and the case referred to a judge. My partner just left to call in a team of technicians who will collect samples, and some colleagues who will take statements.”
The prospect appeared to set the primatologist’s mind at ease. But it was purely routine. Even a guy hanging from a rope in the middle of a locked room required opening a case file. They had to determine whether it was a suicide, an accident, or a staged crime. Sharko stared at the primate. For a few seconds, he wondered if these animals had fingerprints.
“You understand they’ll have to enter the cage, and also take samples from your . . . companion, especially from her gums and nails, so they can tell if the blood belongs to the victim, which might prove the attack thesis. They’re going to have to put her to sleep.”
After not moving for an instant, facing the solid bars, Clémentine Jaspar nodded without great conviction.
“I understand. But promise me you won’t harm her as long as you don’t know the facts. This chimpanzee is much more human than most of the people we see around us. I found her dying in the jungle, wounded by poachers. Her mother had been killed right in front of her. She’s like my own child. She’s my entire life.”
Sharko knew better than anyone what it meant to have a loved one torn away, whether animal or human. He labored to find the most neutral response possible.
“I can’t promise you, but I’ll do everything in my power.”
Clémentine Jaspar sighed sadly.
“Very well. I’ll go get the hypodermic gun.”
She had spoken in a murmur. Sharko moved nearer the cage and squatted, being careful not to touch the bars. There could be no doubt about it: the outline of animal jaws on the victim’s face was clear. The chimp was guilty; the situation was cut and dried. The animal had bashed her with the paperweight, bitten her face, and there would probably never be an explanation for why she did it. The inspector had already heard about sudden outbreaks of violence in these primates, who become capable of massacring their own offspring for no apparent reason. Eva Louts had probably just been careless; maybe she’d approached Shery at the wrong moment. One thing was sure: the future of this poor animal with its wide-set ears and sweet face didn’t look good.
“You’re practically the same age as a woman I loved, you realize that? Never too late to blow a fuse, I guess. Why don’t you just tell us what happened?”
Jaspar returned with an object that looked oddly like a paint gun. Sharko stood up and glanced at the ceiling.
“I see surveillance cams all over the place. Have you thought of . . .”
“No use. Eva was supposed to turn on the alarm system and put on the lights when she went out.”
With a sigh, the director aimed her weapon at the monkey.
“Forgive me, my angel . . .”
At that moment, Shery turned around and looked the woman in the eye. With clenched fists on the ground, she walked limply up to the front of the cage. Jaspar’s finger trembled on the trigger.
“I’m sorry, I just can’t.”
Sharko took the weapon from her.
“Let go. I’ll do it.”
Gripping the bars, the chimpanzee straightened up a bit more, put its hands together, palms outward, then brought them to its throat, moving slightly backward. Just as Sharko was aiming the gun at the animal, Jaspar blocked his arm.
“Wait! She’s talking.”
Shery made other signs: hands on either side of her head, waving them palms downward, like a ghost trying to frighten children. Then her right hand on her lips, before dropping it sharply toward the ground. She repeated this series of gestures three or four times, then approached Eva’s body and gently caressed her shredded cheek. It seemed to Sharko he’d never seen so much emotion in a living creature’s eyes.
“What’s she saying?”
“She keeps repeating the same thing: ‘Fear, monster, wicked . . . fear, monster, wicked . . .’”
Jaspar regained hope.
“I told you, Shery is innocent. Someone came here. Someone else hurt Eva.”
“Ask Shery if she knows this ‘wicked monster.’”
With her hands and lips, the woman executed a series of signs that the chimpanzee watched attentively.
“Her vocabulary contains more than four hundred fifty words. She’ll understand, as long as we express ourselves clearly.”
After a moment, Shery shook her head no. Sharko couldn’t get over it: the woman standing next to him was talking with a chimp, our great cousin on the evolutionary scale.
“Ask her why the monster came here.”
More signs, to which Shery responded. Index and ring fingers of the right hand forming a V, rapidly crossed by the wide-open left. Then a sharp movement of the arm toward the corpse.
“‘Kill. Kill Eva.’”
Sharko rubbed his chin, skeptical and stupefied.
“In your opinion, what does ‘monster’ mean to her?”
“A violent, destructive creature, intent on causing harm. What’s certain is that it can’t refer to a man, because she would have used the term for that. It’s . . . it’s the part I’m having trouble understanding.”
“Can monkeys make things up or lie?”
“When it’s a survival reflex, they might occasionally ‘mislead.’ If a group of monkeys is in mortal combat, the sentinel might give a cry signaling an attack from the sky, just to make the others flee. But if Shery says she saw a monster, she really did see one. Maybe another chimpanzee, larger and more aggressive, that she interpreted as a monster.”
Sharko no longer knew what to think. Fatigue weighed on him; his mind was bogging down. A monkey, a cage, a body with its face bitten, and even the blunt instrument typical of so many crime stories: it all seemed so simple. Almost too perfect, in fact. But a “monster” might have been here. And in that case, the talking chimpanzee had been witness to a murder.
He needed more coffee, something in his gut. As he pondered the situation, the chimpanzee went back to her corner, turning her back on them again. The cop aimed his pistol once more.
“I’d like to believe you, Shery, but for the moment I have no choice.”
He fired. A small dart with a red tip sank into the primate’s back; she tried to pull it out, then tottered to the side and fell over, just a few inches from Eva Louts’s corpse. Jaspar’s lips tightened.
“We didn’t have any choice. I’m so sorry, my sweet . . .”
Sharko handed her back the hypodermic gun and asked, “In your opinion, why would a ‘wicked monster’ have hurt Eva Louts?”
“I don’t know. But I discovered something very strange about Eva the day before yesterday. It might be related . . .”
“What was it?”
Jaspar looked one last time at the corpse, then at Shery’s inert form. She gave a long sigh.
“Let’s go get some coffee, you can’t stop yawning. Then I’ll tell you. In the meantime, I . . . I should go notify her parents.”
Sharko touched her wrist.
“No, leave it. Their lives are going to be shattered. You don’t announce the death of someone’s child like that, on the phone. Our people will take care of it. This is just one of the sadder aspects of our job.”
3
The first day of school is a happy time for most children. After two months apart, everyone is reunited with his or her friends, tells what happened over the holidays, shows off the new Spider-Man backpack or Dora the Explorer lunch box. Gleaming sneakers, brand-new pens and erasers . . . The kids greet one another, tease one another, size one another up. The world of childhood explodes in a thousand colors and pieces.
When Lucie arrived at the schoolyard fence that Monday morning, the pupils were assembling in the courtyard. Shrieks, shouts, a few tears. In several minutes, roll would be called; girls and boys would find themselves mixed together in their new classes for another year of apprenticeship. Some parents accompanied their offspring, especially the youngest ones just out of kindergarten.
The Sainte-Hélène private school was not the one where Lucie used to bring Juliette before the tragedy. She had learned from a child psychiatrist that there were no set rules on how to survive the loss of a sister, and it was even more complicated in the case of twins. Because of this, Lucie had preferred to make a clean break with the old school. The little girl would have new friends, new teachers, new habits. And for Lucie, too, severing the umbilical cord with the past was for the best. She didn’t want to be the one they looked at strangely, the one they didn’t dare approach without dragging out the hackneyed sentiment, “I’m so sorry for what happened.” Here, no one knew her, no one
looked at her . . . She was just another mother among many.
Pressed against the fence, Lucie watched the children in the courtyard and spotted Juliette in the colorful jumble. The little girl was smiling, stamping her feet impatiently. She showed a real eagerness to return to school. She remained alone for a few seconds in the midst of the indifferent crowd, then joined the line, pulling her spanking new wheeled backpack. No one paid any special attention to her; the other children already knew each other, were talking and laughing. The teacher raised her eyes toward the fence and the parents, her expression suggesting that everything was under control, and went back to her job. The earth did not stop turning; everywhere life went on, come what may.
At the end of the roll call, as most of the parents headed off, Lucie rushed into the courtyard and toward the classrooms. She called after the teacher once all the children had disappeared into the hallway.
“Excuse me, Miss, there’s something very important I forgot to ask. It’s about recess. Do the teachers come out to watch the children? Do you keep that gate locked?”
“The minute the last parents have left the courtyard. Please don’t be concerned for your child. If there’s one place he’ll be safe, it’s here. You are Ms. . . . ?”
“Henebelle. Juliette’s mom.”
The teacher appeared to think.
“Juliette Henebelle . . . Sorry, I don’t recognize the name, but I haven’t learned them all yet. It takes a little time. And now, if you’ll excuse me . . .”
She walked up the stairs and vanished into the hallway.
Lucie left the courtyard, feeling reassured. The teacher was right, there was no reason to worry. The establishment had one of the best reputations in Lille for safety and the care it took of the children.
Alone, her head sunk into her shoulders, hands in her pockets, Lucie slowly walked back up Boulevard Vauban, a part of the city filled with students from several nearby universities. The sidewalks were crowded with young people, business executives in suits, assorted deliverymen. After two months of summer doldrums, the capital of French Flanders was perking up. Lucie thought it was about time.
Bred to Kill Page 3
