Not long ago, Tanya had been just as tired and anxious as the people she observed now. A heart condition had almost killed Anya, and she had spent a great deal of time in the hospital. Nico and Tanya had already lost their father. She would always remember the sadness in their father’s eyes—a deep sorrow, because he knew he was leaving them, and the sorrow was greater than his physical pain.
Tanya felt lucky to have a brother like Nico. They had been close since childhood. When they were kids, he was her champion, but then, when he began having troubles with Sylvie, she became his protector. She had watched over him during Sylvie’s crazy ups and downs, the separation, the divorce, and his transition to single parenthood. Nico didn’t deserve what had happened to him. He was a good man. And she was ecstatic when Nico and Caroline clicked.
Caroline and Tanya’s husband, Alexis, had gone to medical school together. He’d sent Nico to her for an ulcer that had reappeared. Caroline was why she was here today. Nico was literally scared sick that he had done something to alienate her, and Tanya was hoping that a lunch date would enable her to allay her brother’s fears.
She climbed the stairs to the gastroenterology department that Caroline headed up. Right away, she spotted Caroline in her white lab coat, talking with a nurse at the end of the hallway. Nico had chosen a woman who looked very different from the Sirskys. Tanya’s hair was long and blond; Caroline’s was brown and she wore it in a stylish short cut. Tanya and Nico had clear blue eyes; Caroline’s were dark and deep.
Caroline waved to Tanya and gave the nurse a nod, indicating they were done. As she started down the hallway, Tanya once again admired Caroline’s bearing, which was as straight as a ballerina’s.
“Let me get rid of this lab coat, and I’ll be right with you. I reserved a table at L’Abribus.”
The quiet bistro with Mediterranean décor was a short walk from the hospital and a popular lunch spot for hospital staff. Their table was on the veranda, with a view of the busy street. Once they were seated, and Tanya could get a better look at Caroline, she couldn’t help but pick up the change in her face. Caroline was paler than usual, and her features were tense.
“You seem fatigued,” Tanya said. “Are you getting enough sleep?”
“Yes, I’m fine . . . There’s just a lot going on at the hospital. Potential doctors to interview, tough cases. You know.”
This wasn’t going to be easy. Caroline was too smart to be tricked into revealing something she wasn’t ready to divulge.
“Nico told me you were looking tired.”
Caroline gave Tanya a weak smile. The waiter arrived with their bruschettas au saumon fumé.
Tanya would have to try a new tactic.
“Has Dimitri started getting ready for his finals? It won’t be long before school’s out.”
“A bit. He started studying last weekend.”
“He’s really come to rely on you.”
“It’s not a problem. And Nico is always there for him.”
“He’s found a mother in you who’s much more involved in his life than his own mother. But it couldn’t have been easy—becoming an instant parent to a teenage boy.”
“Dimitri isn’t the problem!”
Caroline’s tone startled Tanya. Her friend had never been sharp like that with her before.
“That’s good to hear,” Tanya said, smiling to ease the tension. “I’m glad to hear that. You know he loves you.”
“How are Lana and Bogdan?”
Caroline was trying to shift the attention off her. She saw Tanya’s children often enough to know how they were doing.
“They’re fine. Keeping their grades up.”
“Dimitri said Bogdan got Anya’s computer set up in no time. He knew exactly what he was doing. They would have been lost without him.”
Tanya’s heart warmed, and she nodded. She was proud of her son. Tanya was sure that Caroline watched over Dimitri, too. Did she feel the same kind of maternal pride, though? Tanya couldn’t say.
“They would have gotten it set up eventually,” Tanya said. “Bogdan is just a natural-born geek. He wants to be a pilot, but I’m wondering if he would make a better software architect or security engineer. Who knows?”
“He certainly is smart enough. And Lana—there’s another bright one. She wants to be a doctor.”
“Like her father and you. Now that she knows you, she wants it even more. You’re her role model.” That was another way of telling Caroline how important she was to their family. “And of course, Dimitri is aiming to join the police, much to Nico’s dismay.”
Caroline’s face softened, and Tanya caught a look in her eyes. Yes, she did love the boy like a mother.
“Nico vacillates between being afraid something will happen to him and being proud,” Caroline said. “But nothing is set in stone, and Dimitri has plenty of time to change his mind.”
“Like my two kids.”
As Tanya finished her salmon, she noticed that Caroline had barely touched hers. She had just fiddled with it, pushing the fish from one side of her plate to the other. The waiter cleared the dishes.
“Aren’t you hungry?”
“No . . . not really . . . It’s hot.”
The waiter brought over two servings of the famous house tiramisu.
“You don’t seem to be feeling well, Caroline. I understand why Nico’s worried.”
“Is that why we’re having lunch?”
Now it was Tanya’s tone that was sharp. “Nico’s never arranged our lunches.”
“Sure, but he did ask you to get together with me and find out what you could.” It wasn’t a question.
“It wasn’t like that,” Tanya said, ignoring Caroline’s not-so-subtle rebuke. “I want to tell you a little story. Has Nico ever told you what he said to Alexis the day we got married?”
“No.”
“Nico pulled Alexis aside and told him that he expected him to be 100 percent committed. If Alexis didn’t pour everything he had into our marriage, he’d be dealing with a very angry brother-in-law—one with a gun.”
Tanya shook her head and wiped her lips. Caroline said nothing.
“That’s my Nico,” Tanya continued. “Loyal to the bone. He wasn’t joking.”
She paused, noting the surprise on Caroline’s face. Just what she wanted. She swooped in for the kill.
“Thing is, Caroline, I’m just as loyal to my brother. He’s a good man who happens to be crazy about you. I’d do anything to protect him. I may not have a weapon, but in the end, that’s just a detail.”
17
Deputy Commissioner Cohen nodded, and Nico called everyone into his office.
Judge Becker was the first to arrive, followed by Dominique Kreiss, Deputy Chief Rost, and his three squad leaders: Kriven, Maurin, and Théron. They all took seats at Nico’s table, where there were enough bottles of water and plastic glasses for the eight of them. It was unusually hot for May, and they would have gladly exchanged their professional attire for shorts, if the dress policy had permitted it.
Cohen looked at Becker. “Judge, why don’t you start.”
“We have four victims now, and a killer somewhere out there,” Becker said. “Let’s not forget that the nursery rhyme in the anonymous letter suggests that other victims will follow.”
“We don’t have anything more on the letter sent to the commissioner, other than the fact that the burner used by the writer pinged off a cell tower near Square de Montholon in the eleventh arrondissement,” Commander Théron said. “None of the neighbors saw anything.”
“We know who the two teddy bears and the little piglet are,” Nico said. “Our copycat’s fourth victim, whose leg was found at the Bois de Vincennes, was a homeless young man known to the police. Commander Maurin?”
“Noë Valles, age twenty, picked up several times for public solicitation. He was dismembered with a handsaw, and his body parts were left in the Bois de Vincennes and the suite at the hotel. The reservation was made over the pho
ne, and the person who took the suite paid in cash.”
Nico stood up and walked over to the wall maps. He added pins for the two new crime scenes.
“The autopsy is underway,” Kriven said. “They’ve already run DNA tests to make sure all the body parts, except the second right hand, belonged to Noë Valles. The DNA tests also concluded that that hand belonged to Kevin Longin. The killer left a message in red ink: ‘All for three round coins,’ along with a small dish containing three euro coins.”
“I’m meeting with the prefect this afternoon,” Cohen said. “What am I supposed to tell him? That this killer is taking us for a ride?”
“We’re looking for witnesses around Montparnasse who may have seen Valles with the killer,” Nico said.
“So you think the copycat could have approached him there?” Becker asked.
“Why not? It seems his objective is to stick as close as possible to his famous role models.”
“Yes, I want to talk about the killers he’s imitating,” Cohen said.
“Clearly, he wants to copy the best,” Nico said. “First, the Ukrainian, Andrei Chikatilo, the Butcher of Rostov, with fifty-two victims including fourteen girls around Juliette Bisot’s age. His specialties—knifing, mutilation, and cannibalism. Segundo: the Swede Thomas Quick, who claimed to dismember his victims’ bodies and keep their body parts as trophies. Third, Lucian Staniak, the Red Spider, who wrote letters to the cops. He targeted young women, had sadosexual relations with them, and eviscerated them. He also committed some of his crimes on a holiday, and Eva Keller was killed on Ascension Day. What can you add, Maurin?”
“Noë Valles’s murder was patterned after those of Fritz Haarmann, the Butcher of Hanover. Haarmann murdered twenty-four young men between 1918 and 1924. He was a cannibal and a vampire—he liked to bite his victims on the neck. He cut up the bodies and threw some of the parts into the Leine River. The rest he cooked up and ate. Haarmann was executed—beheaded on a guillotine—in 1925.”
“Russia, Sweden, Poland, and Germany,” Nico said. “He’s mapped it all out.”
“He must have made some small mistake!” Cohen said, his face turning red.
“I think we should be looking at how he met his victims,” Nico said. “And we should go in order. Who got close to the Bisot family before their daughter was kidnapped? We need to find Kevin Longin’s mysterious friend, along with Eva Keller’s Wilde. And we should investigate Montparnasse, where Noë Valles hung out.”
“Fine,” Cohen said, turning to Dominique Kreiss. “Can you give us a profile?”
“Our killer is, indeed, fascinated with his idols, but not everyone who’s fascinated with serial killers becomes a murderer. If that were the case, we’d be in real trouble. A person who’d do this sort of thing has irrepressible drives and fantasies. Our man is a psychopath who looks stable and healthy. He’s especially intelligent, and he inspires trust. Of course, he’s a sadist, and his sadism goes hand in hand with highly ritualized behavior. Eviscerating and dismembering his victims reinforces his supremacy. He needs more than the kill to heal his lack of recognition, his narcissistic wound.”
“Why the imitation?” Maurin asked.
“He wants to prove he’s equal to the masters. His attitude demonstrates pathological narcissism, a feeling of omnipotence. Malignant narcissists have an exaggerated sense of their own importance. He is arrogant, has a thirst for power, and feels an excessive need to be admired, most notably by people with status. He has no empathy.”
“Thus Oscar Wilde,” Théron said.
“Certainly. Oscar Wilde symbolizes a cynical and elegant dandy. He developed the theme of duplicity in his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. In it, Wilde describes the moral decline of a young man who’s pursuing a life of self-indulgent sensuality, and he winds up murdering a friend who has learned just how corrupt he is. Here’s a quote: ‘To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.’ That’s pure narcissism.”
“So, our man is a narcissist who looks perfectly rational, but underneath it all has a pathological need to kill in a way that proves his intelligence and superiority,” Cohen said. “What else do we know about him?”
“Like most sadistic killers, he knows how to recruit and charm his victims and how to remove the evidence once he’s killed them. He’s methodical and calculating. But that won’t keep him from making a mistake.”
“He’s narcissistic, sadistic, and methodical,” Becker said. “He’s also right-handed and wears a size 44 shoe. Now all we need is his address.”
Kreiss ignored the crack. Becker was as frustrated as the rest of them. “Serial killers usually live near their first crime scene.”
“Louviers, in Normandy,” Nico said. “But Paris is the theater for his crimes, so he has some connection to this city.”
“There’s the theory of the flight of the bumblebee,” Kreiss said.
Nico raised an eyebrow. “You can’t possibly mean Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Flight of the Bumblebee.”
Nico was intimately familiar with the orchestral interlude written for the opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan, which was based on Alexander Pushkin’s poem of adventure and love. Anya had often recited the poem to him when he was a child. He would always snuggle closer to her when the kite circled over the swan: “Talons spread, and bloodstained beak.” Then he would cheer when the tsar’s arrow struck it down.
“No, I’m referring to a study at Queen Mary University of London on bumblebee behavior. The researchers found that bees don’t forage close to their hives, because they want to keep predators and parasites away from their nest. The rational-choice theory of geographic profiling integrates this idea of a buffer zone. It serves to protect the killer’s home or place of work.”
Nico turned his attention to the map of Paris. “If we connect the crime scenes—Montmartre in the north, Square de Montholon and the La Grange aux Belles Middle School to the east, the Bois de Vincennes to the southeast, and the Montparnasse station and the hotel to the south and southwest—then we can deduce that the copycat spends the better part of his time in this sector.” Nico pointed to the central zone. “It’s not much to go on, but let’s keep that in mind.”
“Anything else?” Cohen asked, looking around the table before turning to Nico. “You’ve got that look, Nico.”
“I’m just wondering if the room number at the hotel means anything.”
Dominique Kreiss gasped. “Room 245—four for the fourth crime, Noë Valles.”
“Two for Kevin Longin,” Nico said. “The second murder.”
“And five to announce another one,” Kreiss said.
“Do you think he left a clue?” Cohen asked.
“A clue that we missed,” Nico murmured.
18
One piglet fair, two teddy bears, three round balloons in tow, four planes a pretty lemon yellow, and five yummy candies—oh!
Nico was worried about a fifth and then a sixth murder. And then what? Could they stop the killer in time? Or would he just disappear as suddenly as he had appeared? He was the gamemaster. But as smart and passionate as their man was, as much as he wanted to emulate his idols down to their exact choice of prey, Nico sensed that his need to kill was becoming frenetic. Were the copycat’s own demons beginning to govern him?
His phone buzzed. It was Tanya. He didn’t bother with any pleasantries.
“Did you talk to Caroline?”
“Well, you’re on edge, aren’t you. To answer your question, yes, we talked.”
“So?”
“Listen, she didn’t tell me anything, but I got the feeling that something has happened. She seems vulnerable and scared.”
“Scared? Of what?”
“I don’t know what it is, Nico. But I wouldn’t be worried about her feelings for you. She’s obviously still in love with you.”
“But she’s been pushing me away. What if there’s someone else? I’m losing it, Tanya. What would I do without her?”
“Quit w
orrying about that. She adores you and Dimitri and wants to be with you two.”
“I just can’t be sure, Tanya. The other day she told me she wasn’t Dimitri’s mother. What was that about?”
“I don’t know, Nico. You’ve just got to talk to her. I can’t believe you haven’t already. You face every other issue in your life head-on. So sit down with her. That’s the only way you’ll find out what’s going on. She’s too loyal to you to tell anyone else what she’s feeling.”
Nico sighed. She was right.
“A little more sisterly advice: don’t put it off. Caroline’s not in great shape. She’s lost all her color, and she didn’t eat a bite of her food.”
What was she hiding? Nico’s hand trembled as he opened a desk drawer and pulled out his ulcer medication. Just as Caroline hadn’t told him what was eating at her, he hadn’t said anything about the gnawing in his gut.
“Keep me posted, Nico. Promise?”
“Yes, Tanya. Thanks.”
Nico heard her blow him a kiss, a good-bye ritual they had followed since childhood. He swallowed a pill and looked at his watch. Maurin and Noumen were on their way to Normandy to check into the Bisot family connection. He called Kriven into his office.
“Chief, Captain Plassard’s hitting the restrooms at the Montparnasse train station to see if he can turn up anything on Valles.” The restrooms were a hot spot for exhibitionists and general riffraff.
“Good. You’re going back to the hotel?”
“That’s right . . . Um, I was thinking of taking Ms. Kreiss along.”
Nico sized up his commander and didn’t say anything. He’d seen that Kriven and Kreiss were attracted to each other. So now that Kriven was divorcing Clara, would he be getting it on with Kreiss?
“I believe she’s busy elsewhere,” Nico finally said. “Sorry about that.”
The body parts in room 245 had been removed and sent to the morgue, but otherwise, everything remained untouched. The room had been sealed off, and an officer was guarding the door. Kriven, Vidal, and Almeida snapped on their gloves and began searching the room, carefully avoiding the puddles of blood. They hadn’t found anything before, but they had to try again.
Looking to the Woods Page 11