by S. Cedric
More questions.
Vauvert needed to start finding some answers.
He had two key pieces of the puzzle right under his nose. He could feel it.
He dried himself off and shaved in front of the fogged-up mirror. He looked at his neck, his shoulder muscles, and the old tattoo that snaked its way around his right bicep. He ran his finger along the thick skin on his chest up to his Adam’s apple, to the place where he had felt his blood flow the day before. Scars crisscrossed his skin, each with its own story. Some were very old; others dated to just a few months before and were still white and shiny. They all brought back memories of tough arrests, bullet wounds, fractures, and dislocations. He knew them by heart. There was nothing to explain the lost blood of the day before. A shiver ran down his spine.
“How did you do that, Madeleine Reich?”
Deep down, he knew what else was bothering him.
He had already encountered this kind of situation. He could deny it all he wanted and hide under a thick shell of skepticism, but he had already peered into the sulfurous zones that the human eye is not meant to see. He had seen, and he had been burned inside. And burned a little more each time.
He had already crossed through the looking glass. He knew what it cost.
He clenched his jaw as he remembered a hunt in abandoned quarries outside the city. It was nearly five years ago. He remembered that he thought he saw a woman’s ghost. He remembered that he thought he had died.
No, that was not entirely accurate. He had died for a few minutes, and he had come back from the other world. He had no recollection, but he knew that it had happened. He was not fooling himself.
He looked into his black eyes, with their iridescent gold flecks, blurred by the fog on the mirror.
He had cut himself shaving, and a small drop of blood shone at the corner of his mouth.
Blood, he thought. It seemed to be part of his life, his job, and all the incredible events that kept coming into his life. The blood of innocents. And sometimes, that of monsters.
“So? Are you going to admit it or not?” he asked his reflection, like a challenge.
The truth was, he felt he was once again finding himself in a place he hated—the place where his own life was getting away from him.
The last time that he had been there, confronting this kind of phenomenon, looking into the other side of the mirror, he had not been alone. He had been with Eva.
Deep down, a new feeling of anxiety was awakening.
His last encounter with the impossible had nearly killed her.
He realized that it was that, and nothing else, that made him so uncomfortable.
He had an unexplainable certainly in his gut that she was also connected to these forces and that the result would not necessarily be a happy one, for him or for her.
He got dressed and returned to the living room. He sat cross-legged on the couch and drank his coffee in front of the television, watching new images of the burned-out house.
The reporters did not tell him anything he did not know already.
29
It was eight when he arrived at police headquarters. Inspector Damien Mira was waiting for him in his office. Behind his thick glasses, there were bags under his eyes from the night spent on duty.
“There you are! I suppose you heard about the Reich house fire?”
“Yeah,” Vauvert said, setting his coffee down on his desk. “I thought you would make the connection.”
“And how. That’s the name the rental company gave me when I called about their Chevrolet. So the missing woman is none other than yesterday’s infamous suspect.”
Vauvert nodded and asked, “So now what? Did you tell Kiowski?”
“Of course not. It’s your case. I never know with you whether to spread the word or not.”
Vauvert smiled. Mira had always understood him.
“Thanks, Damien. It’s looking like a strange case.”
“No kidding.”
Mira looked worried, which was unusual.
“Is there something else?” Vauvert asked.
“This,” he said, handing him an envelope.
He saw the stationary and knew what it was.
“The lab results? So?”
“It was your blood on the clothes.”
“Like I told you.”
“But there’s no way to explain it. I mean, you weren’t hurt.”
Vauvert shrugged. “I know, Damien. I know.”
“So, once again, all the lab rats are talking about you,” Mira said, lowering his voice. “I heard someone even told the chief.”
“That’s okay,” Vauvert said. “I’m used to it.”
He was not that convincing, but his colleague let it go.
“If I were you, Alex, I wouldn’t wait too long. With the fire, the dude that got bumped off, and the missing woman you saw yesterday—well, I’d talk to Kiowski before he realizes that you are withholding information. Do you copy?”
“Loud and clear.”
His relationship with Chief Boud Kiowski had always been highly charged. In a case like this one, when the whole force was involved, it was better not to give the chief a stick to beat him with, particularly because that was what he was looking for.
“I’m off. It was a long night,” Mira said as he headed to the door. “Hey, I heard you got assigned a rape case. That’s a little unusual isn’t it?”
Vauvert clenched his jaw. It was Arnaud Levy’s accuser, whom his ex-wife had thrown at him. Of course there was nothing very usual about that, and he was the sucker.
“Who knows,” he said.
Alone, he did not lose any time. He checked the messages on his cell phone and his landline. Nothing from Inspector Svärta.
“Shit, Eva, what are you doing?”
He filed his reports, checked his emails, found a pack of cigarettes in the bottom of a drawer, and went to the window at the end of the hall to smoke. On the way, he greeted his team and gleaned the news. Nothing new. Everyone was still mobilized in the search for Loisel, but so far, no trace.
At eight thirty, he could not wait any longer. He returned to his office and called Inspector Svärta.
30
Paris
Eva Svärta was climbing the stairs at headquarters when her phone vibrated. She dug it out of the pocket in her jacket.
“Eva!” Detective Leroy called out from the top of the stairs. “There you are! The meeting has started. Didn’t you listen to your messages?”
She put the phone back in her pocket without looking at it. Too bad for the person who wanted to talk to her. It was not the right time.
She turned off the phone without looking.
“What did I miss?” she asked.
“Another fire. Another victim. Larusso had no choice but to put us on the case. Anyway, he’ll be handing it over to an investigating magistrate soon. It seems like the Constantin case is taking on another dimension.”
Leroy seemed particularly animated. He had shaved and once again looked like himself: a bright-eyed ladies man, barely thirty, with blond hair neatly combed back. He was wearing faded jeans that fit perfectly and a polo shirt. He looked more like a well-off student than a cop.
“Neuilly-sur-Seine,” he added. “So you didn’t see the news?”
“Not really,” she said.
She had listened to the news on the radio in the morning, like most of her colleagues, and she remembered that the fire had been mentioned, but she had not made the connection.
“The husband of the businesswoman, right?”
“Jonathan Reich. He was shot in the head in the middle of the night, before the house was set on fire. They used gas. The house was entirely destroyed. The same MO as in Les Russeaux. More worrisome, the wife has gone missing.”
“A kidnapping?”
“It’s too early to tell, but that is one possibility. She ran a big company, with a lot at stake. Even her husband worked for her. The house is more an estate surroun
ded by outrageous grounds. Their neighbor is an emir. You get the picture, the ritzy kind.”
Eva got it quite clearly. She had investigated a classy prostitution ring in Neuilly-sur-Seine once. The town was filled with high-income residents and had all the vices that went with fabulous wealth.
“What’s the link to Constantin? A drug lord from the projects and a loaded business woman don’t cross paths very often.”
“That is curious,” Leroy said, “We haven’t found any real connection between the two, but you’ll see, there are troubling similarities.”
They walked into the meeting room. Everyone was whispering as they waited for Chief Ô. She recognized those who had been on duty the previous night from the bags under their eyes and the stubble on their cheeks. They had not gone home this morning. Everyone looked serious and nervous. She smelled the pungent sweat and felt the spark of anticipation.
“I’m listening,” she said as they sat down. “Were there mutilations? Was the heart ripped out?”
Leroy had a gleam in his eye.
“No, not the heart. His lips weren’t sewn together, either. But his tongue had been cut out. And there was salt on the body.”
Eva nodded.
“I see. The chief is going to turn up the heat again.”
31
The meeting unfolded the way Eva thought it would. The chief did not beat around the bush.
Ô was not the talkative kind. He summed up the case and mentioned the various technical and legal issues involved—there were many. He went through each one and then reminded them that they needed a good lead quickly. Madeleine Reich was a powerful woman. They could not botch this case.
Unlike the Constantin case, Eva thought, feeling bitter. She kept her opinion to herself.
“Mr. Reich’s autopsy will take place this afternoon,” the chief said. “He was killed with a nine millimeter. We are waiting for ballistics. Our priority is to find his wife. Right now, there are only two theories: either she did it, which is hard to fathom right now but not out of the question, or she is also a victim. In either case, we have an MO that is similar to the Constantin murder.”
Detective Chris Mangin raised a hand.
“I may have something, chief. I think Constantin and Mrs. Reich knew each other.”
“I’m listening.”
“I was going through the phone records.” Mangin explained, “Reich called Constantin from her cell phone last week. The call lasted a good five minutes. That’s a little long for it to be a mistake. And neither of their numbers are listed anywhere.”
“Okay, so they knew each other,” Ô said. “Had they called each other before?”
“I was only able to go back three years, but it seems to be the only time they were in contact over the phone.”
“Good, we have something to work with. I want to know why she called him, where they met, and what kind of relationship they had.”
Leroy spoke next.
“I compared their backgrounds, but the two don’t seem to have crossed paths anywhere. Ismael Constantin arrived in the Paris area twenty-five years ago. He lived in Villiers-le-Bel before settling in Les Ruisseaux fifteen years ago. We know the rest. Madeleine got here fifteen years ago.
“Did she settle in Neuilly-sur-Seine right away?”
“Yes. She had just founded the company, which was an immediate success. That allowed her to buy the house. Shortly thereafter, she married Jonathan, who had never left Marseille before.”
“They were married fifteen years ago?” Perrine Alazard said.
“That’s right,” Leroy responded.
“Wasn’t that when Constantin’s son was born? Am I the only one thinking what I’m thinking? Could Madeleine Reich be the mother of the frozen baby?”
Some in the room nodded. Most had already thought of this possibility.
“We have Mrs. Reich’s DNA,” Ô said. “It’s being compared with the baby’s. In the meantime, let’s not jump to conclusions.”
Eva Svärta was deep in thought. If Mrs. Reich was the mother, she certainly knew Constantin fifteen years ago, when she moved to the Paris area. Yet she settled in Neuilly-sur-Seine, and he was still in Villiers-le-Bel, one of the worst places to live. That did not fit. And she married someone else a few months after giving birth?
“These two people don’t come from the same world. If Mrs. Reich knew Constantin, she probably met him long before coming to Paris. Furthermore, we’ve got some crazy on the loose who has decided to purify with fire. That person must have crossed their paths in the past, as well. Maybe in a sect, which we talked about earlier.
There was some activity in the back of the room, where Inspector Deveraux was sitting down.
“Let’s not get carried away with those crazy theories,” he said. “We know you like to complicate everything and see psychopaths everywhere. But Constantin was probably just a gang score. There’s no need to make it more complex than it is.”
“Jean-Luc is right,” added Bernard Forest, who was sitting next to him. “The Reichs were probably scoring some designer drugs from Constantin. Some new thug made examples of them. It’s as simple as that.”
Eva was furious. There they were, patting each other on the back.
“Okay,” she challenged them. “But when was the last time you solved a case?”
“Bite me, Mrs. Dracula,” Deveraux said.
“Jean-Luc, that’s enough,” Ô said, raising his voice just enough to quiet everyone.
He gave Deveraux and Forest a hard look and then turned to Leroy.
“Erwan, look into their pasts. We know that Constantin lived in Niger until he was seventeen and that Reich grew up in Aveyron, but there’s a hole in the time line at that point. List the cities they lived in, where they went to school, where they went on vacation. I want to know if they belonged to any group or cult of any kind, when and where.”
The two inspectors in the back of the room crossed their arms without a word.
Detective Alazard cleared her throat and fidgeted in her chair. She blushed when everyone turned to look at her. She crossed and uncrossed her ample legs.
“I looked into the missing heart thing, like we talked about.”
Deveraux sighed.
“Yes, Perrine,” Ô said.
“It was widespread in ancient rituals. Hunters ate the hearts of their prey to absorb their power. This rite has persisted for a long time, until very recently, as a matter of fact, in some parts of the world. The Aztecs in Latin America practiced human sacrifice, and some Native American tribes are believed to have eaten the hearts of the warriors they killed in combat. The same is true of groups in Africa and elsewhere. It’s a practice that is charged with primordial symbolism. If Mr. Reich was not the person the killer was looking for, that would explain why nobody touched his heart.”
Ô nodded.
“If that’s the case, then his wife Madeleine was the target.”
Ismael, why does it hurt so much?
32
Toulouse
When Christophe Girodon knocked on his office door, all smiles, Vauvert realized that Mira had been telling the truth. The fuss from the day before had risen up the ranks. And now the psychologist was paying him a visit.
“Hi Christophe,” he managed to say.
“Hello Alex,” Girodon said, wearing his familiar smile as he came into Vauvert’s office. “Hey, it’s been awhile since we had an appointment, don’t you think? I know you’re busy with the Loisel case, but if you can, try to free yourself up for an hour.”
Vauvert felt defensive. He did not have anything against Girodon. Quite the contrary. Girodon was a jovial fellow. He was witty and could laugh at everything. He would often join the handful of officers who met at a bar downtown to drink beer and watch rugby on a wide-screen television.
But the Girodon in his office was the company shrink. For the last six years, his job had been to make sure nobody lost it, which could happen quickly in this line of work. Every
one was supposed to see him regularly. He was competent and understanding and did not hassle anyone. He readily signed the papers that allowed the officers to stay on active duty. Yet Vauvert had taken advantage of recent holidays and vacation time to avoid his last appointments. He was not proud of it, and he had run out of excuses.
“Go on, spill the beans. Kiowski asked you to stop by, right?”
“It’s just routine,” Girodon said. “I’m seeing everyone who was involved at the Beaumonts yesterday. Death is never a pretty sight. It helps to talk about it. And you know you were the most exposed.”
Exposed? No kidding. The decaying bodies came back to him—those bodies and all the others he had deep inside him, along with the suffering and the loneliness he kept so well hidden.
“If I needed to talk, I’d be the first to call you, believe me.”
His lie lacked conviction, and he saw in Girodon’s eyes that it had not worked.
“Okay, let’s say it’s by order of the chief,” the shrink said.
“You see. He hates me.”
“You’re exaggerating, Alex. He’s worried.”
Vauvert shrugged. He knew he was not exaggerating at all. He and Chief Boud Kiowski had a stormy past. They were both proud as bulls and had been butting heads for years. Kiowsky did not like the inspector’s unorthodox methods, and Vauvert loathed his chief’s drive for power.
He had to admit, though, that Kiowski was not a bad chief, even if he ran the division with an iron fist. He was given to rages, but they were always honest and man-to-man. He never knowingly undermined one of his officers—even Vauvert, who had certainly given him a rough time. If Kiowsky had bothered to call Girodon, he really thought it was necessary.
“Alex, I know you’re strong,” the psychologist said. “I have never seen you waver. But what happened at that house yesterday is not nothing. You were attacked. You don’t remember what happened. Am I correct?”
“I see that everyone is talking behind my back,” Vauvert said, brooding.
“Promise me you’ll stop by today. I’m in all day until late. Come whenever you want, and we’ll talk. Then I’ll sign the papers so Kiowski will leave you alone for the next six months. Deal?”
