Heart Collector

by Jacques Vandroux

  “You’re quite right, Gilles!” replied Boisregard. “Her heart will save Dominique from his demons, and her blood will give us the energy we sometimes cruelly lack. Youth should indeed serve the old! I believe that’s in the Civil Code, isn’t it?”

  Hearty laughs answered his monologue. Sophie remained motionless.

  Gilles Ballat approached the young woman. “Your blood will serve the representatives of France. And a lovely liquid surely flows through your body,” he added, laying a hand on Sophie’s bare thigh.

  The slap that slammed into him took his breath away. He staggered, taken aback by their prisoner’s reaction. “If my blood ever runs because of you, it’ll be your curse.”

  Sophie was aware of the grandiloquence of her phrasing as she said it. But she got carried away by the anger boiling inside her.

  “Who do you think you are? Descendants of the great Inca? Servants of the Feathered Serpent? You’re nothing but perverted, sex-starved sickos who abuse girls you’ve abducted. So maybe you’re going to rape me, torture me, and kill me? Be sure of one thing: neither my blood nor my heart will ever bring you the slightest comfort! I will be avenged by those who love me.”

  Sophie’s discourse surprised the four men. Even Boisregard was caught off guard. He turned toward his guests and immediately noticed the effect of Sophie Dupas’s words on the two men. The short man, outraged at having been humiliated, threw himself at the young woman. Anger made him misjudge his strength. Sophie dodged his fist, grabbed his arm, and pulled him toward her. Off balance, Ballat collapsed on top of her. In one second, she seized the razor blade in her skirt pocket and pressed it against her prisoner’s throat. A thread of blood trickled from the man’s throat as he screamed in terror.

  “She’s crazy, save me!”

  “Let me leave, or I kill him!”

  Boisregard had lost control of the situation. He looked at Sophie Dupas and read such determination in her eyes that he knew she wasn’t bluffing. For the first time in years, he was no longer in charge of events.

  “Listen to her, do as she says!” begged the financier.

  Sophie had tightened her grip on the man, who was starting to have difficulty breathing. She dug the blade into the soft flesh of his neck.

  “Let me go, now!”

  Boisregard didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t let her leave—that would sign their death warrant. Neither could he let Ballat get his throat cut, because she would do it, he was certain. He had to buy some time.

  “We’re going to step aside and let you leave the room,” he said calmly to Sophie. “Then we’ll be able to talk calmly.”

  “There will be no discussion!” Sartenas cut in.

  Everyone’s gaze turned toward him. “The situation is clear, Arsène. These two assholes are not going to compromise my cure. So if she wants to kill him, let her kill him. But she’s not getting out of here!”

  Sartenas’s gaze fell on Sophie’s unblinking one. She’d instantly sized up the doctor’s resolve. With him alive, she wouldn’t leave this room. Gilles Ballat had begun to sob. She felt in her own body the convulsions of her human shield. No one was moving anymore. A tragic act was playing out, an act whose end was known. Boisregard broke the silence.

  “The ways of Quetzalcoatl are sometimes mysterious. But perhaps he wants more blood than we imagined? Gilles, your sacrifice will please the Feathered Serpent.”

  “No, you can’t do this to me!”

  “I am not in control of events, Gilles. I’m just the toy of powers from the great beyond, like you.”

  Then he addressed Sophie. “Mademoiselle, he’s yours. You’re already on the sacrificial table. You have only to plunge your blade into his carotid artery.”

  Sophie looked at them, one after the other. Sartenas wasn’t moving. He was in front of the exit and blocking it. The young woman noticed the scalpel he was holding in his hand. Boisregard had turned the tables—he’d unhesitatingly condemned one of his guests. As for Lèguezeaux, he seemed to find the scene amusing. Discouragement crept over her. She had to think, and quickly. With simple pressure, she could kill the man she was holding against her. And then? The element of surprise had vanished, and her weapon was paltry. In close combat, she could just claw her adversaries.

  The three men were starting to move. They were backing up slowly toward the door: she immediately realized their strategy. They were going to leave her alone in the dark with Ballat. They were letting her decide the financier’s fate. For them, he was already dead!

  Useless! He was useless to her now. For a moment, she’d believed she’d get out. But nothing was negotiable. She was seized by a furious desire to bleed out the swine she held prisoner. She could still see his lecherous gaze when he’d put his hand on the top of her thigh. Her right hand, which was holding the razor blade, trembled, again pressing on the carotid artery. The man screamed and fainted from fear.

  Sophie pushed the inert body into the middle of the room. She might have killed him if it would have saved her life. But at that moment, the death of this man brought her nothing. She wasn’t like them. She wasn’t going to kill to satisfy her urges.

  Boisregard had left the room. He came back, weapon in hand.

  “We’re going to take our friend back. I’d privately wagered you would kill Gilles in the heat of anger. In the end, only your blood will save us tonight, my dear Sophie.”

  Sartenas pulled Ballat’s still-unconscious body toward the exit. “We’ll leave you to think about your actions. We’ll come back in a few hours. You’ll be the heroine of the evening.”

  Chapter 70: Nothing to Report

  8:30 p.m. The tension was at its peak in the briefing room. All the information that came in was checked with the utmost speed. Sartenas had been seen by witnesses throughout the département, and even as far away as Gex and Alpes-de-Haute-Provence. The calls they received led nowhere, but the policemen continued their systematic verification. They knew the passing hours were bringing Sophie Dupas closer to death, and they couldn’t neglect any clue.

  Father de Valjoney still didn’t have reliable information to give them. All the testimony he’d received had already passed through two filters: the individual parishes and the diocese. He didn’t want to give useless leads to the policemen.

  Antoine and Madeleine Dupas had stayed on site. Their defeated expressions fed the growing anxiety that gnawed at Julien. He was convinced they’d find her trail, but when? The passing time was distilling the poison of failure within him. A few lines of Baudelaire he’d learned in high school came to mind, a gloomy premonition:

  Three thousand six hundred times an hour, Second

  Whispers: Remember! — Immediately

  With his insect voice, Now says: I am the Past,

  And I have sucked out your life with my filthy trunk!

  His phone rang. He answered it in an instant, full of hope. It was Denise Lombard, his adoptive mother . . . no, not his adoptive mother, his real mother, the one who had always been at his side from the first hours of his life. He’d neglected his parents these last few days. Julien decided to accept his mother’s invitation to dinner. The wait was stressing him out, and seeing his parents might allow him to recover some minimal calm. They’d probably know how to instill in him the courage he was starting to lack. And Captain Barka had promised to call him if something happened.

  He pulled himself together, said good-bye to Sophie’s parents and the policemen, then left the premises. Nadia caught him before he could exit the building.

  “Stay hopeful, Julien. I know from experience anything is still possible. I’ll contact you as soon as we get a lead on Sophie. I’m just asking you to do the same.”

  “What do you want me to bring you?”

  “I’m sure Magali Dupré hasn’t had her last word.”

  “I thought so, too. But not a single sign.”

/>   “We still have a little time. She’ll know what to do. Just be available. Sophie needs you!”

  Nadia Barka took his hand and squeezed it. The warmth of the handshake transmitted the extra energy he needed.

  “Thanks, Nadia. You can count on me.”

  Nadia watched Julien leave. She understood his distress. Nothing was worse than being condemned to inaction. She consulted her phone’s messages. She still hadn’t gotten the confirmation she’d been waiting for since her discussion with Aurélien Costel. She called again but heard only rings, then voice mail. She left another message, hoping he had the information she was looking for and could call her back that evening. It was a whole lot of if, but she needed to check on what the restaurant owner had told her.

  10:30 p.m. Silence reigned in the room, just barely disturbed by the clinking of the dessert plates Emmanuel Lombard placed on the table.

  “I made Far Breton, Julien,” murmured his mother. “It’s what you wanted me to make when you were sad. Eating it always helped lift your spirits.”

  Julien smiled weakly at this evocation. As a small child, he’d always considered Far with prunes to be a magic potion. He didn’t really want any, but took some to please his mother. They’d had a long talk during the meal, but Julien hadn’t been able to tear his eyes away from the wall clock. He’d called Nadia four times: no new leads. The police and the gendarmes had teamed up to launch neighborhood inquiries, but the territory to cover was so vast!

  “I’m convinced we’ll be able to decipher Magali Dupré’s message,” his father said again.

  “But I’ve already pondered it, Papa. I didn’t find anything.”

  “So start again. Magali isn’t contacting you so that you can count the corpses. You may not know what to do, but she will. Put yourself at her disposal.”

  “That’s what Father de Valjoney and Nadia told me.”

  “Nadia?”

  “Captain Barka, who’s in charge of the search. You’re probably right. But I don’t believe in it enough anymore.”

  “Listen, you told us the other girls were killed around three in the morning. If you count one hour for the police to get there, that still leaves us more than three hours to locate Sophie.”

  “That’s true. Will you lend me your armchair?”

  “It’s yours,” replied his father, tenderly mussing his hair.

  Julien settled into an old worn leather lounge chair. When he was younger, he’d only been allowed to sit there while watching soccer matches or James Bond movies with his father. He no longer knew where that tradition had come from, but he loved this chair, where his father often sat in the evening to read detective novels, which he then recounted for his family.

  His parents surrounded him, providing the calm he needed. Julien closed his eyes, delving into the depths of his memories, determined to find the clues Magali Dupré had undoubtedly planted.

  Chapter 71: René Pelloux

  Midnight. A man whose features were marked by life in the great outdoors knocked several times on the heavy wooden door. He looked at the old woman standing by his side. She had a black scarf over her hair despite the mildness on this first night of summer.

  Typically at that late hour, these two visitors would already have been in bed a long time. But this evening was unusual. The man knocked again. He heard steps inside the house, then light appeared when the occupant opened up. The full moon cast a soft glow on the village and the mountains, creating a crispness to the landscape.

  “Is the priest in?” asked the man standing on the doorstep.

  “No, he’s not here right now. But I can reach him at any time,” replied Pierre Mollard, looking at the couple before him. “Come in, please.”

  The man hesitated a moment, but the woman pushed him into the parish house.

  “Ah, hello, Monsieur Pelloux, I hadn’t recognized you in the dark. And you have your mother with you. Please come sit down and have something to drink.”

  The man no longer hesitated and headed toward the table covered in oilcloth. He took a wooden chair and sat down heavily. The old woman remained standing beside her son.

  “I can make herbal tea, and there’s a bottle of genepy. Please sit down, Madame Pelloux.”

  The woman refused with a movement of her chin. Pierre Mollard took out three glasses. He filled them with liqueur and served his guests. No words were exchanged before the drinks had been smelled, tasted, and savored.

  “It’s good!” concluded René Pelloux.

  Pierre Mollard, member of the Villard-de-Lans parish and active support to the priest who officiated on the plateau, waited for his guest to speak first. He’d known René Pelloux for twenty years. He appreciated the man, even if their personal convictions diverged. He knew why he was there that night with his mother instead of resting in his bed. He also knew he had to let Pelloux broach the subject.

  “Are you the one making it?” asked the farmer.

  “No, the priest,” replied the retiree, still holding the bottle in his hand. “Another little drop?”

  “I wouldn’t say no!” accepted Pelloux, holding out his glass. “Your priest knows how to do good things!”

  “He was born here, like you. He knows our mountain plants,” concluded Pierre Mollard as he filled the glass anew.

  A minute ticked by. Each swallow of liqueur was calibrated, then appreciated. The farmer clicked his tongue, then put his glass down on the table. He looked at his mother, who nodded her head to encourage him to speak.

  “Look, I wanted to see the priest about the photos going around the village tonight.”

  “The priest charged me with gathering all the witness statements in his absence. I’m very interested to hear what you have to say.”

  “Fine. I was in the middle of finishing dinner and watching TV with Mother. It’s not that I have too much time to watch, but we like the game show that comes on in the evening,” he commented, a bit embarrassed.

  “I watch it, too, when I have the chance,” Mollard encouraged him.

  “Ah, very good . . . it was around nine thirty when the Guillaudin girl knocked on the door. Mother went to answer it and brought her into the dining room.”

  “A good kid! She’s Sandrine’s daughter,” added Mathilde Pelloux, as if to vouch for the veracity of the facts to come.

  Pierre Mollard nodded. He knew he had to respect his guests’ rhythm. René Pelloux was a fine man—taciturn and rough, but ready to be of service when the need arose. Pelloux inherited from his father an anticlericalism that the years and the decline of the Church in the towns and villages hadn’t attenuated. Pierre Mollard imagined how much effort it must have taken the farmer to come to such a place and understood the reason for his mother’s presence.

  Pelloux continued. “She came with two photos, and she put them on the table and asked us if we knew them. I looked at them for a long time. One of their faces rang a bell. So I thought about it.” The farmer fell silent, as if thinking about it all over again. “I looked at it some more. I was sure I’d seen his mug recently, but dammit, where? I asked Mother to turn down the volume on the set so I could think in peace. Sandrine’s little girl left me one photo so that I could take my time. And she left after asking us to come see the priest if we had a lead.”

  “So is this murderer story true?” asked Mathilde Pelloux, already knowing the answer.

  “Unfortunately, very much so. One of those two men, or both of them, has already killed two young girls and is holding a third. Everyone who could help was asked to assist the police in apprehending them before the worst could happen.”

  Then Mollard refocused the discussion on the farmer’s testimony. “So, Monsieur Pelloux, what did your thinking turn up?”

  “After a few minutes, I remembered.” He took out the photo of Boisregard and put it on the tablecloth. “The brown-haired one, there. I saw him
this morning.”

  Pierre Mollard shifted in his chair, but he forced himself not to interrupt his guest.

  “I was taking a little walk with Milou, my dog. And I saw this guy go running by, jogging, as they say. Well, personally, I find life is tiring enough as it is without adding to it. But it’s something city boys do, and I’m not one to judge! I was in a good mood this morning. I had a sick cow that had recovered overnight. So I waved at him. Well, believe it or not, he ignored me, as if I didn’t exist. I saw his eyes turn toward me, but nothing! Rotten bastard. So I stared at him, and that’s how I kept his face in my head. That’s him, no doubt!”

  “If he had responded to your greeting, you wouldn’t have memorized him?”

  “Probably not! I’ve come across impolite people before, but he shouldn’t have been.”

  “His impoliteness might be fatal to him.”

  “I hope so. Your priest would say it’s God’s justice. But it’s only that I still have good eyes, and no one should disrespect me.”

  “I don’t know if it’s God’s justice, Monsieur Pelloux, but I know your testimony is truly a benediction. Where did you run across him this morning?”

  “I was over by the Marcel woods, you know, the one where they got the huge boar this winter. But I don’t know how many miles a jerk like that could cover.”

  Mathilde Pelloux interjected, “But he didn’t want to say anything at first, this stubborn mule!”

  “I’ve never sold anyone out, Mother, least of all to priests!”

  The old woman didn’t listen to her son’s commentary. “It took me two hours to change his mind. When this ass finally understood the poor kidnapped girl could have been his daughter Valérie, he came to his senses. I know he’s a good boy, my René.”

  “His testimony can help save a life. From the bottom of my heart, I thank both of you.”

  “What’s going to happen now?” asked Pelloux.

  “I’m going to inform the diocese, who will immediately contact the police. All the searches are going to be concentrated on Villard. One last question: have you seen this man before?”