Heart Collector

by Jacques Vandroux

  At the same moment, she heard a crash behind her. The door was open, and the man was there, five feet away. He’d left his flashlight in the hall, and she could only see his silhouette. She’d run out of time. No more time to get through the broken window, to open the shutter, to jump and flee. A sudden stillness chilled the room. She could barely make him out, but she knew he was studying her, like a beast studies its prey before devouring it.

  With the power of despair, she flung herself through the window, breaking it completely. Perhaps the shutter would give way under the weight of her body, but she heard only a small squeak—it barely moved. She turned around. The man was there, just behind her, scalpel in hand.

  Her drive abandoned her, and she crumpled. In an instant, all her dreams paraded before her—her marriage, her two children, her architecture career. Then, the film stopped, and night descended. She heard more than saw the man lean toward her. He took her by the arm, she stood up, following without resistance. Maybe he was taking her home? She’d see her mother again, who surely would have made chocolate pudding for her, since she loved it so much. She descended the main staircase to the foyer. The nice man was taking her home. She was eager to get there and see her teddy bear again. She was going to tell him everything.

  Chapter 21: Nightmare

  Julien had just turned off his computer. He’d been randomly surfing websites. He was afraid to go to sleep, afraid to be carried away by a nightmare again, afraid to see a woman murdered—the same woman whose identity he now knew.

  There was no indication something would happen that night. He tried to hold on to that idea, but there were too many troubling signs for him to take it seriously. He was bathed in sweat. The heat, fueled by the fear that oppressed him, was making him almost ill. He’d considered calling Sophie or Céline, but he’d felt ridiculous and hung up his phone twice. He regretted it now. A cool shower would do him good, a bath, even . . . he could relax in it. He started to run water in the bathtub and lit a candle, which he set on the edge. He went to turn off the lamp in his bedroom. The moonlight guided his return to the bathroom. He turned off the tap, got undressed, and slid into the tub. The water’s coolness salved him; he instantly felt his muscles unclench.

  Fatigue came down on him hard. He’d been challenged by the Chartreuse hike, the chase into the museum, Captain Barka’s rather forceful meeting, and the fear that had seized him when he’d recognized the young woman in the series of photos the policewoman showed him: Camille Saint-Forge. A pretty name, he thought to himself. He repeated it, then dozed off, lulled by the music it evoked within him: Camille Saint-Forge, Camille Saint-Forge, Camille . . .

  A sudden current of air woke him. The water had grown cold, and the sense of well-being flooding him earlier now had faded away. The candle flame flickered, then twisted in on itself and suddenly went out. Julien shivered and remembered having left the bedroom window open. He didn’t feel like leaving the comfortable refuge of his bath, but he was cold now. He stood up, feeling the water slide down his body. The air was icy. He grabbed a robe and wrapped it around himself. None of this was normal, not normal at all. Fear seized him again—no, not that! His legs started to give way. He had just enough energy to leave the bathroom before collapsing into bed. An iron fist gripped his chest. He sank into unconsciousness.

  Julien came to. He had the strange sensation of being in thick fog. He didn’t understand where he was. He felt a presence at his side. He turned around briskly, but he was alone. The place was dark and cold. In the distance, way in the distance, a light pierced the darkness of a room. Julien went closer to it—a voice was calling him! He looked around, saw he was in a cellar. But what was he doing here? And how had he gotten here? He’d figure it out later—the voice was still calling. He moved cautiously down a long, narrow hallway. Diffuse and muffled sounds reached his ears, overlaid by the voice talking to him, but he couldn’t understand what it was saying. It was a woman’s voice, he was sure of that, but his brain couldn’t discern words.

  The luminous halo suddenly widened. Julien pressed up against the wall. They mustn’t see him, they mustn’t! He wasn’t welcome, he could feel it. But no one paid any attention to him. He watched the scene with renewed focus: the image was getting clearer. A man, dressed in blue, was bent over a table. He looked like a surgeon. A surgeon at the end of a hallway, but that didn’t make sense. He was concentrating on his work. The lamp casting the light was positioned just above the man, whose back was all Julien could see.

  Julien stopped and crouched down. He had to understand where he was, what he was doing here in the middle of the night. But everything seemed so unreal, unreal and uncanny. The woman’s voice was making him more and more uneasy. She was afraid, he was sure of it. Now a masculine voice, aggressive, covered hers up. He had to know. He got up and continued to approach. He’d reached the room, the door of which was wide open. Should he enter? All his senses told him to flee, but the voice begged him, and it was stronger than his will, mesmerizing. His ears buzzed, and suddenly he saw the woman who had drawn him here. Her face appeared to him in a flash. Yes, he knew her, he’d already seen her recently. She gazed at him like a blind person—eyes staring into space, in endless distress. Her eyes were a desperate call for help, but she’d already left this world.

  Suddenly, a scream jolted him from his stupor. Camille, this was Camille he had in front of him! Camille who, all at once, writhed in pain, her face ravaged by unspeakable suffering. Tears shone in her absent eyes, her mouth trembled in rhythm with her death throes. Then everything stopped cold. Julien fell to his knees. No more noise, no more murmurs, the silence of the tomb. He heard only the sound of the blood flowing through his veins, laying waste to his exhausted mind, like a torrent jumping its banks . . . until that laugh. That laugh froze him.

  He looked up. The man in blue had just turned around. His forearms were glistening, glistening with the blood of his victim. He slowly lifted his arms while laughing dementedly. In his right hand, he was holding the still-beating heart of Camille Saint-Forge. With a bright smile, he brought it to his mouth and tore off a piece with his teeth.

  Julien screamed, thrashed, and regained consciousness in his bed. His heart was racing, and he was hyperventilating. Soaked in sweat, he sat on the edge of his bed and forced himself to breathe calmly. No doubt—what he’d feared had just come to pass. He’d witnessed the death of Camille Saint-Forge, more like her execution. And he’d been able to do nothing. But who had plunged him into this nightmare? He’d sensed a presence beside him for a moment, but he’d been too preoccupied by what he was seeing to pay attention to it.

  His heart rate had slowed down now, and he recovered his train of thought. First thing he had to do: call Captain Barka. If his assumptions were right, the killer would soon dispose of his victim near the archaeological museum.

  He turned on his bedroom light, naively hoping to chase away his demons of the night. Where had he put his phone when he got home? He found it in the pocket of his jeans and looked at the time. Three o’clock. He dialed Nadia Barka’s cell phone number immediately.

  Chapter 22: The Stakeout

  Nadia rejoined her two colleagues. They looked at her questioningly. She shook her head. “I just got a call from Lombard. According to him, Camille Saint-Forge was just killed ten minutes ago. At least that’s when he woke up from his nightmare. He claims to have formally recognized her.”

  “Do you think we can trust him?”

  “We’ve already been over this twenty times. Either we assume he’s a pathological liar or he has unexplained visions. We have proof he didn’t lie to us. So, we’re going to drop it for the moment.”

  “Was he able to identify the killer?” asked Étienne Fortin.

  “He was totally stressed out when he called me, but he glimpsed several features. His story was still incoherent. We’ll debrief him tomorrow.”

  “So if the killer is working wi
th the same modus operandi as last time, we might be able to apprehend him tonight,” Fortin finished.

  “It’s a possibility I’m counting on. I’m going to contact Commissioner Mazure for additional manpower. We can’t blow this chance.”

  “What should we do in the meantime?”

  “The killer could be here within minutes if he lives in Grenoble. We’re going to do like we planned. You two position yourselves at the trailhead, and I’m going to be in the fortifications, two switchbacks higher. That way we’ll have the entrance to the church in sight, whether he comes from the bottom or the top. We’ll stay in radio contact, the usual frequency. Get in place. I’ll call you with the results of my discussion with Mazure.”

  Nadia hung up, incandescent with rage. It had been impossible for her to obtain the reinforcements she needed. The commissioner’s response had blown her away: “The minister of the interior is coming tomorrow to monitor the progress of the investigation, and I need every man to prepare for his security.” But what risk was the minister running? Would the crazed killer jump him in the middle of the street? If his arrival meant nothing but depriving the investigation of its manpower, then he could very well stay at the Place Beauvau in Paris, safe inside his ministry! What had affected her the most was the doubt she sensed in Mazure about the merits of her night maneuver. However, she’d proved to him over the years that she was a cop he could trust. Unless the Déramaux case caused ghosts of the past to resurface. She dismissed her dark thoughts. She was convinced Julien Lombard was telling the truth—her feminine intuition, which had served her well more than once, wasn’t leading her astray. She grabbed her radio.

  “Leader to team, do you copy?”

  She found this code rather ridiculous, but Rodolphe Drancey had insisted they use it among themselves. His Top Gun side? She’d made him very happy by agreeing.

  “Team here, yes, we copy.”

  “We’ll have to sort this shit out ourselves.”

  “Don’t worry, Captain. If he comes, we’ll nail him. I promise you.”

  “I’m counting on it. We’ll check in with each other every fifteen minutes or if there’s anything new to report. It’s three fifteen. Next check-in at three thirty.”

  “Roger,” concluded Lieutenant Drancey.

  Church bells struck four o’clock, pacing the night’s advance from a distance. Nadia’s nerves were set further on edge with each passing minute. He’d come, she knew it. What she wondered was how he’d manage to leave his victim inside the museum, and especially why he’d chosen this place. Her eyes peered at the access road. The killer could come either from the top, directly from the Bastille, or from the bottom, from the street. This latter hypothesis was by far the most plausible. The full moon was their ally. Nadia leaned back between two walls and radioed her colleagues.

  “Still nothing up top, what about your side?”

  “A few lone pedestrians in the street, but no one suspicious for the moment.”

  “Keep your eyes peeled. It’ll be dawn within the next hour. If he’s coming, it’s only a matter of minutes now.”

  A noise came from above her. Shouts in the distance. She listened intently. A group was descending from up by the Bastille. But what were they doing here at this hour of the night? She hid so as not to be caught. The sound grew louder. About a dozen people surged down the path. She would see them better in a few seconds, when they passed a gap in the trees. The moon illuminated them. Nadia cursed inwardly. She’d just recognized a guy, just over six feet tall, wearing a baseball cap: Nikita Bogossian, known as the Chechen. She’d frequently encountered him at the Grenoble courthouse and had even arrested him once right in the middle of a drug deal. Bogossian had been born in Sassenage, a Grenoble suburb, and the only Chechen thing about him was his nickname, which had to do with the violence he used to rule his gang. He’d gotten his start with a little hashish peddling, then had begun dealing hard drugs and likely gotten mixed up in arms trafficking. But the police had never managed to prove it. He had an excellent lawyer who always quickly got him off the hook.

  The screams of his gang broadcasted that they were blind drunk. Bogossian didn’t drink alcohol; he always wanted to be capable of controlling the situation. He was particularly intelligent and vicious, and Nadia would have preferred to see him elsewhere tonight.

  She heard her radio vibrate and picked up.

  “What’s that racket up there?” asked Drancey.

  “The Chechen and his gang.”

  “What the fuck are they doing there?”

  “No idea, but with the noise they’re making, I’m afraid they’ll wake up the whole neighborhood.”

  “What assholes! They’re going to wreck this for us. You can’t calm them down?”

  “There’s a dozen of them, some probably armed. So we sit tight and hope they move on fast.”

  Nadia hung up. The gang had stopped in front of the church portico. A glass door protected access to the museum. She saw a flash, followed by a clear gunshot. In the next second, the sound of exploding glass and coarse alcoholic laughter.

  “If you gotta puke, Marvin, you can do it in one of this fucking museum’s sarcophagi!”

  “Naw, I’m saving it for a cop car as soon as I see one.”

  The policewoman balled her hands into fists. To think assholes like this were now serving as role models for directionless young people. They started moving again. In a few seconds, they would pass within ten yards of her. Not a chance they’d spot her. In five minutes, they’d have disappeared.

  “Fuck, Chechen, I gotta piss, like Niagara Falls if you know what I mean.”

  “I’ll come with you,” added one of his companions. “Between the two of us we’ll repaint the building.”

  Nadia felt alarm as she watched them approach. Another few yards and they’d find her. She took out her radio. “I might need you guys. Stay on the lookout.”

  “No problem. With the noise they’re making . . .”

  The two men stopped short, surprised to see the policewoman’s silhouette ahead of them. She’d quietly taken hold of her Sig Sauer SP 2022, loaded with 9 mm bullets. She was an elite markswoman among the French police.

  “Hey, guys, there’s a chick!” shouted one of the two men.

  “Bitch looks good, too.”

  The gang surrounded her.

  Nadia stared at the one who’d called her bitch and said coldly, “You take your piss and clear out.”

  The man was startled by her composure.

  “Who does this chick think she is, bossing us around!” interjected a boy who came toward her. He was barely seventeen years old, but she could tell he wanted to prove to the others he was a tough guy, too. “All you’re gonna do is shut your mouth and suck us off, bitch,” he announced.

  Nadia realized things were going to turn bad. He’d spoken loudly enough for her colleagues to hear his remark. Nikita Bogossian came over, stared at her, then recognized her. “Hey, boys, it’s a cop. She already tried to lock me up!”

  An ominous roar burst from the gang. A cop. They were going to have some fun with her, and not much of her would be left afterward. She might just regret meeting them for the rest of her life.

  Nadia grabbed the one nearest to her by the wrists, put him in an armlock, and held him tight against her as she pressed her gun barrel into his ribs. “I’m telling you for the last time, clear out.”

  She saw three firearms slide into the hands of her adversaries.

  “Come on, let our buddy go or you’re getting a bullet in the gut, you little bitch.”

  Nadia was calm and determined. She kept her eyes on Bogossian, because he was the one she feared most among the gang. If he was armed, he hadn’t taken out his piece. They all had to leave as quickly as possible. They might cause her team to miss the killer, who would turn around if he saw the skirmish.

 
Bogossian approached her. She pressed the barrel more firmly into the belly of her human shield.

  “Hold it, guys, cut the crap. I think she’s nuts.”

  “Oh, no,” said the Chechen softly. “A cop isn’t going to shoot a minor. Max and Ibra, you’re gonna calm this little bitch down for me. Don’t kill her. You can have what’s left of her when I’m done.”

  She watched the two men grinning with desire encircle her. They were going to have themselves a cop and blow her away. Nadia still had a few seconds to react. Only one solution—take out the gang leader.

  A bullet whistled over the gang’s heads, inciting disorder.

  “Drop your weapons or the next one goes down your fucking throats!”

  Nadia suddenly recognized Drancey’s colorful style. For once, she appreciated it. She knew she could count on the accuracy of his shots. She had a few seconds to react and take advantage of this reprieve. Their alcohol-addled brains didn’t understand what was happening. Nadia threw herself at the man on her left and sent his pistol flying. In the next second, a roundhouse kick to the throat sent him down. Her second attacker raised his arm toward her. Wielding an automatic pistol, he let fly a spray of shots. Luckily, he hadn’t taken the time to learn how to use it. Nadia sprang up quickly, but found herself face-to-face with Bogossian’s weapon.

  “You’re going to cop heaven!”

  No, she couldn’t die like this. She threw herself to the side and heard two bangs. A burning sensation tore through her shoulder. She slid to her knees and felt a body fall on top of her. A hot liquid trickled onto her neck.