Killer Critique

by Alexander Campion

  “Eh bien, voilà!” the commissaire had said with a broad grin. “Now, this is something you don’t see every day. Normally, we arrive at the crime scene and stand around for hours cooling our heels, doing fuck-all waiting for the PJ to turn up. But here you are first! This is something I’m going to have to tell my grandchildren, if either of my daughters ever have the wit to get married.”

  In a few minutes two vans of uniformed Police Judiciaire officers rolled up and took over the crime scene. Capucine dismissed the Paris police and got busy with her men.

  They taped off a wider perimeter using yellow tape marked POLICE JUDICIAIRE—ZONE INTERDITE and removed the tape from the buses, clucking at the sloppy application. Just as they finished taping, two TV vans and a dozen reporters appeared. Capucine delegated them to David, who was a past master with the press. Skillfully, he gathered them in a tight clutch, let the cameramen get set up, and made a statement so crisp and upbeat, he might have been a professional actor. Although he spoke for ten minutes, he revealed nothing at all, not even the victim’s name, and left the residual impression that the death was most likely from natural causes without actually having specifically made any such statement. Artfully, he fed them a story that wrote itself so easily none of the reporters felt the need to ask the obvious question of why the Police Judiciaire was present in such force at the scene of a humdrum food poisoning.

  Despite the commotion, the Dîner en Blanc continued merrily on from a point five hundred feet down from the Etoile. In the morning the diners would read that some poor reveler had collapsed under a bus and would mutter an only mildly interested, “Tiens! So that’s what that was all about,” to their spouses.

  A large van with double rear wheels, painted in police colors but marked only with the letters INPS, swept up majestically. Capucine smiled. The Institut National de Police Scientifique never seemed to be able to make up its mind if it was the police’s forensic department or an independent academic function.

  The van disgorged Ajudant Dechery and five of his agents spécialisés, who lost no time in cordoning off an even larger crime scene area using yellow tape marked POLICE TECHNIQUE ET SCIENTIFIQUE—ZONE INTERDITE.

  In less than five minutes Dechery came up to Capucine. “You know the drill, my dear. Can’t say anything with certainty until the autopsy is done, tests performed, etcetera, etcetera, but I can certainly point out the obvious. The victim was killed by strangulation. Someone slipped a cord around his neck, held both ends in his fist, and twisted. I can tell that from the mark of the cord and the bruising at the nape of the neck. It’s a good way to kill someone. Takes about ten seconds for the victim to lose consciousness—compressed carotids—and then the murderer has no trouble keeping the pressure on for five to ten minutes, while he waits for the victim to die.

  “From the look of it, the stitching was done after death. No blood from the wounds. The murderer must have crammed the mouth full of something that had leaves on it and then sewed it shut. Never seen that one before. Commissaire, you get some good ones, no doubt about that.”

  It took another two hours for Dechery’s team to complete their analysis of the crime scene; for the uniformed officers to scour the area around the buses, only to find nothing; and finally, for the buses to be released. Capucine was tempted to ask the disgruntled driver if he eventually managed to get something to eat, but thought better of it.

  Walking into her apartment later that night, Capucine had been sure that Alexandre would be pottering around in the kitchen or reading in his study. She was astonished to find him in the sitting room, immersed in a game of backgammon with Jacques on an antique ebony and ivory board that she had bought Alexandre on the rue Jacob as a Christmas present the year before.

  When she walked into the room, Alexandre tipped over his dice cup, declaring a forfeit. Both men stood up and greeted her warmly. There was a feeling that something was a little off. More than a little off.

  “I’m starving,” Capucine said with strained brightness. “I’ve been on my feet since seven, and other than two bites of foie gras at dinner, I haven’t had a thing to eat.”

  “But what a foie gras it was!” Alexandre said with genuine admiration. “That girl’s a genius.”

  “And Monsieur Meunier’s poularde was not only sublime but also seemed to be engaged in a deliciously complicated maneuver with a crustacean. You know, Alexandre, that makes me think there are really twelve sexes, not just ten.”

  Neither Alexandre nor Capucine responded. They both had worried eyes only for each other.

  “So, cousine, I understand the victim was that poor man Peroché you were chatting with. Did you find out what kind of leaves were in his mouth?”

  Capucine looked at him levelly. “How do you know about that? Do your little slips of paper flit by even when you’re not at your desk?”

  “Of course.” He reached out in a pantomime of grabbing a passing butterfly.

  “It was Peroché!” Alexandre exclaimed, visibly upset. “Merde, double merde, triple merde! He was the most gentle person I’d ever met. Capucine, this really has to stop.”

  No one said anything for a very long moment.

  Alexandre put his arm around his wife’s waist.

  “Chérie, forgive me. It’s just that I always had such regard for Peroché. Let’s go in the kitchen. I’ll make you an omelet with dried cèpes and confit duck gésiers, and you can tell us what happened.”

  They settled in the large kitchen. With its long table topped with Provençal tiles, its huge La Cornue professional range, and its walls festooned with utensils and strands of hanging peppers, sausages, and garlic, the room was normally a temple of calm for Capucine. But tonight even the very core of her hearth seemed threatened.

  While Alexandre beat eggs in a bowl, Capucine shared the meager findings from the crime scene.

  “Peroché must have gone back to his bus to retrieve his camera bag. When he left our table he mentioned he’d forgotten it. We found the bag in the overhead rack, so it looks like he never made it onto the bus. The murderer garroted him with a cord and, when he was dead, stuffed something in his mouth and sewed it shut with kitchen twine.”

  Alexandre put the bowl down and stared at the wall.

  “And that’s it?” Jacques asked.

  “I thought you knew everything.”

  “Just checking to see if you’d understood all the nuances.”

  “I had a long cell phone chat with Tallon. He’s far from pleased. This is going to be classified as a serial killing. The technical definition is three or more deaths, presumably by the same hand, with at least a three-day interval between each.”

  “So what does that change?” Alexandre asked from his stove.

  Jacques leaned back, smirking his all-knowing smirk.

  “What changes is that serial killers are viewed as deranged. Or at least they are driven by something abnormal, and not by the usual motives of revenge, sex, money, or what have you,” Capucine said.

  “So, can’t Tallon do what he did the last time and just delay in reporting the case to the magistrates?” Alexandre asked.

  “No, this time he can’t,” Capucine said. “The case will require psychological profilers and under French law only a juge d’instruction can assign people who aren’t members of the police to a case. So Martinière will have full charge of whatever experts he chooses, and he doesn’t even have to report their findings to us.”

  “Good for you, petite cousine, you do understand,” Jacques said, lazily running a finger up and down Capucine’s thigh under the table, well out of the range of Alexandre’s vision.

  Lifting his hand away from her leg, Capucine said, “I can’t even guess who Martinière will pick. The man who lectured us on profiling at the academy was an American. I think there are some professors at the Sorbonne the PJ has consulted in the past, but I have no idea who they are.”

  “Ah, the Americans,” Alexandre murmured, serving Capucine her omelet. “They’
ve created the McDonald’s of the crime world. They really do understand how to do things on a broad scale. We poor French know nothing about serial killing.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Jacques said, mimicking the drawling tone of a Saint-Germain intellectual argument. “What about Gilles de Rais? What about the unforgettable Eusebius Pieydagnelle? What about Henri-Désiré Landru, killer of ten women but who is recognized as the precursor of feminism by that great philosopher Jean-Baptiste Botul?”

  Capucine tucked into her omelet with relish. Things were finally getting back to normal. “Alexandre is absolutely right,” she said. “Legendary historical figures don’t count. It’s true we’ve had a small handful of multiple killers in this century, but serial killing really is an American thing. Something we know next to nothing about in this country.”

  After they finished their omelets, they each had a tiny thimbleful of Armagnac.

  Alexandre looked at his watch. “Good Lord, it’s nearly three in the morning.”

  “Time for me to hop into my pumpkin and leave you lovebirds twittering in your feathered nest,” Jacques said with a loud cackle. “Cousine, walk me to the door and I’ll give you some tips on how to tickle some life into geriatrics with one of those cute pink feathers.”

  At the door, in an unusually serious voice, he said, “Two things. If I were you, I wouldn’t let Alexandre go to restaurants at night without a ... ah ... professional escort.”

  “I’d already figured that one out myself. And the other?”

  “A couple of weeks ago, when you were pedaling away in choucroute, you begged me to tug on some of my moldy little strings and extract you.” He cackled loudly enough to wake the neighbors. “And now you’re going to get your wish. I’m going to pull you out well before your adorable little dabtoes start stinking of cabbage.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m going to introduce you to someone. A very special expert who’s going to solve your case for you.”

  Capucine deflated. “An expert? A profiler? I’m sure Martinière will find enough of those.” She smiled tiredly at Jacques. “You’re sweet. But I’m sure I’m going to be up to my eyeballs all week. Why don’t I call you next weekend and we can set up a date for me to meet your friend?”

  “No need for that. You know me. You can never tell when I’m going to pop up. Don’t bother to call me a cab. I have one or two members of my fan club waiting downstairs. I’m sure they’ll be delighted to give me a lift home.”

  CHAPTER 20

  As Capucine tried to busy herself at her brigade the next morning, she was on tenterhooks waiting for Tallon’s secretary to call with the time of their meeting. The hours oozed by as sluggishly as an overcooked sauce brune. At eleven Dechery phoned.

  “Commissaire, we’ve finished our analysis. As I expected, the victim died from asphyxiation several minutes after he lost consciousness from the garrote compressing his carotid arteries. The suturing was definitely done after death. The substance in the buccal cavity—”

  “In the what?”

  “Mouth. It was stuffed with the leaves of a cassava plant.”

  “What kind of plant?”

  “Cassava. Manioc. Yuca. It’s a staple in Latin America and Africa.”

  “Is it a poison?”

  “Yes and no. Cassava contains two different cyanogenetic glucosides, which can be result in serious food poisoning or even death if eaten in sufficient quantities. The concentration is highest in the leaves. All the cultures that eat it regularly know the importance of removing the glucosides, and their recipes invariably involve some form of soaking, cooking, or fermentation, all of which will purify the plant effectively.”

  “So the leaves could have been poisonous.”

  “I’m sure those leaves would have given the victim quite a tummy ache if he’d swallowed them. Maybe even killed him. Who knows? But that doesn’t make any difference. The leaves were put in his mouth after he was already dead.”

  At eleven fifteen a very testy Tallon called.

  “Commissaire,” he said through gritted teeth, “you and I have been convoked to the offices of Monsieur le Juge d’Instruction August-Marie Parmentier de La Martinière.” He rolled the syllables of the name off his tongue with a satirical snarl. “This afternoon at two thirty. Note that I did not say ‘invited.’ I said ‘convoked’ because that was the word monsieur le juge used with me.”

  “Does he have the power to convoke a contrôleur général?”

  “Of course not. He can only request specific investigations from the police officers directly assigned to him. But the constraints of the law are insignificant when compared to the ambition of our good juge.”

  “And you’re going, sir?”

  “Certainement, Commissaire. We’re both going. This case is going to be difficult enough without a loose cannon rolling through the middle of it, and I intend to put chocks under the wheels of that cannon. Don’t be late.”

  Capucine arrived at Martinière’s office punctually at two thirty, patting herself on the back for her diligence. She wondered if Tallon would be on time. He had been famous at the Quai for his love of dramatic appearances well into the process of whatever was going on.

  Martinière sat, even more puffed up than usual with self-importance, with his back to his ministerially ornate desk. He was in his glory, listening intently to two men who resembled each other so closely they must have been twins.

  “Ah, Commissaire,” Martinière said, consulting his watch. “You’re on time for once. Let me introduce Professor Barnabé Caillot and Professor Dieudonné Caillaud. They’re renowned worldwide as criminal profilers.”

  “It must be very pleasant for brothers to work together,” Capucine said.

  “Commissaire, you have a foreigner’s ear for our glorious language. Their names are completely different, CA-YO and CA-YOo,” Martinière said, lingering the merest hemidemisemiquaver on the final imagined phoneme of the second “YO.” “They’re obviously not related.”

  Professor Caillot bestowed a closed-lipped smile on Capucine. “People often make that mistake. I can’t imagine why. Professor Caillaud and I both lecture on criminology at the Université Panthéon-Assas. We have published a number of books together, most recently a scholarly biography, accompanied by a critical bibliography, of the well known historical sociopath Eusebius Pieydagnelle.”

  “And we are currently working on a reevaluation of Botul’s famous work on Landru,” said Caillaud.

  “Oh yes, Landru, the Precursor of Feminism. My husband was discussing it with me just the other night. He’s a great reader of Botul.”

  “A seminal work,” said Caillaud.

  “I’d say even more, pioneering,” said Caillot.

  Capucine, who had looked up the Botul in question, began to enjoy herself. Irritating as Martinière was, the sessions with him definitely didn’t lack in entertainment value.

  “These gentlemen have spent the last two hours sharing their insights with me, and our plan of action is now clear. Let me summarize,” Martinière said.

  He turned to face the two professors, completely ignoring Capucine.

  “You confirm that the perpetrator meets the formal definition of a serial killer. At least three murders at least three days apart. You have explained that there are two types of serial killers. One is uneducated and of less than average intelligence and kills haphazardly in what you have termed ‘unstructured’ crimes. The other type is well educated and of above average intelligence and kills with premeditation in carefully structured crimes. You believe our killer is of the second type. Strongly driven by a delusion of some sort. The crimes are ‘ordered’ and the deaths have been carefully planned out and are carefully executed.”

  That much was obvious, Capucine told herself.

  “You also confirm that this type of killer cannot be apprehended by conventional police methods.”

  “Why is that?” Capucine asked sweetly.

  “Ah,
” said Martinière, as if he had just scored a decisive point. “Because his motive will stem from a deranged perception of reality, which will be unintelligible to a normal person. He will also certainly be geographically unstable and will begin to hunt in a broader and broader territory, moving around France and possibly even abroad. This is why this type of serial killer often takes years to catch. Am I correct, gentlemen?”

  “Perfectly,” said Caillaud.

  “Absolutely,” said Caillot.

  “So how do you propose to apprehend him?” Capucine asked.

  “The technique is straightforward,” Caillaud said.

  “Completely straightforward,” added Caillot.

  “We develop a profile.”

  “A detailed profile.”

  “To publish in the media.”

  “To alert the general public.”

  “Who will inform the police if he is seen.”

  “So he can be arrested.”

  “This is how this type of murderer is apprehended.”

  “Invariably.”

  “And how do you develop the profile?” Capucine asked.

  “Much of the work is already done,” Caillaud said.

  “The killer is male, almost certainly with homosexual tendencies. Possibly effeminate, so he will dress outlandishly in bright colors,” said Caillot.

  “How can you possibly know that?”

  “Oh, it’s really quite simple. Serial killers are almost invariably male. It’s true there have been a few females but they always kill for money—you know, owners of boardinghouses who have an eye on their boarders’ possessions, that sort of thing. This is obviously a male,” Caillaud said.

  “But he has a low masculinity coefficient. Males generally have a strong component of violence in their killings. There has been an element of poison—a purely feminine choice—in all of the three killings. That gives us a masculinity coefficient of about zero-point-six-five,” said Caillot.