Of Fever and Blood

by Cédric Sire

  Vauvert moved his mug from the table and started arranging the papers. The photos of the twenty-four victims streamed under his eyes.

  “We let one get away in the mountains last year, didn’t we,” he said.

  “Do you have any other explanation?”

  Vauvert took a long sip of coffee.

  “Remember that question I asked you? The one you never answered?”

  After a short silence, Svärta said, “Whether I thought it was all over?”

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t think it was.”

  “I figured that much. Actually, I have to tell you something. Something maybe meaningless, but that I could never fit into any of my reports.”

  “What’s that?”

  “When I shot Roman Salaville…” Vauvert concentrated on finding the right words. “When the son of a bitch was about to die, he said something. ‘Someone ain’t gonna be happy.’ Those were his last words. I can still hear his voice in my head.”

  “And you don’t think that he was talking about his brother?”

  “At the time, I thought it might be possible, except it doesn’t make sense. We did miss something. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I just don’t know what it could be.”

  “About that. I was wondering. In the files you’ve got or maybe even in your memory, did anyone make any mention of the killers actually bathing in their victims’ blood?”

  Vauvert frowned. He couldn’t’ see where she was going with this.”

  “Bathing? No, not in those terms.” He walked over to the window and pulled up the shades. Outside, a fine translucent rain was falling. “Okay, listen, I’m calling my boss right now to tell him I want this case back, right where I left it. And I’ll get back on track. I was supposed to be off duty this weekend, but since I actually have the file at home, I’ll take the opportunity to go over it with a clear head and see if there’s any lead we might have neglected. We’ll touch base on Monday morning, what about that?”

  “I expected no less of you,” she said. “Give me a call at eight. That’s when we have the daily debriefing with my team. We can all get on the same page then.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  “Thank you, Alexandre.”

  Vauvert hesitated for a moment before saying, “Eva.”

  He realized that she had hung up already.

  23

  Saturday, noon

  The rain started again. With wicked pleasure.

  The drops bombarded the asphalt on the Quai des Orfèvres, and the wind blew umbrellas inside out. Hunched-over pedestrians hurried to their destinations.

  Eva’s feet were getting cold and wet as her heels hit the puddles, which were quickly becoming a river. She finally reached the huge doors of No. 36, Central Police Headquarters, and paused before crossing the cobblestone inner courtyard. She could not help looking behind her.

  To make sure she was not there, spying on her.

  Eva knew this was ridiculous. She should not allow herself to give in to such bouts of anxiety. But she just couldn’t help it.

  A sick heart never heals.

  She stared at the people rushing by on the riverside road, one after the other. They were all adults. None of them was actually paid any attention to her.

  There was no little girl with white hair.

  Eva, her heart still racing, crossed the courtyard.

  Inside the building, she walked along the narrow and faded hallway that led to the stairs. She greeted her Forensics Identification colleagues with a quick wave of her hand as she passed by, and they did the same, though they looked quite surprised to see her back. She took in their sideway glances, their silent questioning, but she kept on walking. She had not set foot in here for two months, almost to the day. That had given them plenty of time to gossip.

  Gossip was nothing new to her. It had accompanied her all her life. She expected it.

  As she climbed the black linoleum steps, she realized how much she had been waiting for Rudy Ô’s call. Two months. She had even started to fear that her boss would never call her at all, that she had been sidelined for good.

  Of course, she was aware she had totally lost it. She had not been quite herself after the events down south. Ghosts had come back. Things she thought she had dealt with resurfaced. She had stepped over the line. She fully admitted it.

  She had spent three months hunting down one of these monsters. A predator, a vampire who was well known but still managed to systematically escape justice with the arrogance of a prince of darkness. One night she decided to risk everything and went into his house without waiting for a warrant. She broke into his study and found images of children in his laptop, pictures that he was in too. If she had followed procedure and reported this to her boss, the man would have gotten two or three years in jail, and then he would have been out again to act on his bloody fantasies. So she reported nothing. She just waited for him. And when he got back home, she grabbed him and threw him out a window. The man fell five stories before landing on a parking meter that broke his backbone in two.

  Her boss should have put her in custody. Any other chief would have done that, glad to be rid of a known troublemaker. Instead he put her on administrative leave while Internal Affairs completed its investigation. He saved her job. She knew full well he had done that for her.

  It did not keep her from being mad at him, though. Not for putting her aside, but for sticking that Deveraux dumbass on her back—and for that, she was really mad at him. With that decision, her boss’s message was loud and clear. He showed her—and everyone else in the unit—that she was still needed, that she was still an excellent cop they could not do without. But he also clearly showed her that he did not trust her enough to give her free rein.

  She had only herself to blame. What was done was done. It was not the first time. As long as she could remember, her life had been nothing but a roller coaster ride. She had gone down the hill before. And back up again, many times.

  All that truly mattered now was that she could get back to work.

  She was a cop. She felt like a cop. Deep inside. Catching killers, stopping the cancer that devoured humankind, that was the whole of her life. Piece by piece she’d given up on the rest of her existence.

  With only eight years on the force, she had become the best quite simply because her commitment to her job kept her from dwelling on anything else.

  It kept her from remembering.

  Third floor. Homicide’s maze of offices. And hers, around the corner of a narrow hallway at the very back of the building. She absentmindedly nodded at two officers drinking coffee, their elbows resting on the guardrail.

  “Eva, it’s been awhile,” Florian Benavente said.

  “Not pretty, that carver thing, huh?” Chris Mangin added.

  Eva went over to them. “No, it wasn’t. By the way, Chris, shouldn’t both of you be putting together the neighborhood interviews so we can get on this right away.

  “We’re on it right now,” Benavente grumbled, crushing his empty cup.

  “You’d better be. I’ll come see you guys later to pick up the report.”

  She felt them staring at her as she turned her back and started walking back down the hallway.

  When she reached her office, Eva didn’t know what to expect. She had been away for two months. Forever. But when she opened the door, she found that nothing had changed. Everything was just as she had left it, meticulously tidy, files where they belonged. Nobody had used the space in her absence. It seemed that nobody had even opened the door.

  Pictures from her last case—the one that had caused her downfall—were still pinned to the wall, quietly waiting for her. Pedophile Ugo Falgarde was in half of those photographs. The others showed children he had abused. Now that his backbone was in pieces, the man would never abuse anyone again.

  The office returned to its usual darkness when she shut the door. The room had no windows or skylights, just a few rays of light seeping thr
ough an air duct. There was just a lamp on the desk, which she used only when she had to. Her colleagues rarely spent time with her there. They found the darkness unnerving. Eva, on the other hand, found it delightful. She settled in her chair, removed her shades and closed her eyes, taking in the old musty smell and enjoying the return to her cocoon, where she had spent so many nights, as well as days.

  Then she opened her eyes and cracked her knuckles.

  Enough daydreaming. Let’s get to work, big girl.

  She signed onto her computer and took down the Falgarde pictures. She replaced them with the pictures taken that morning. The faceless bodies of Barbara Meyer and Audrey Desiderio. On top of those photos she pinned photos of the inscriptions found at the scenes.

  “THE DARK SONS HAVE RETURNED

  NOW FEAST SCARLET”

  Like something out of Nostradamus.

  A grim prophecy, really.

  Then she pinned up the photo of the circle.

  It was the same circle with bars that the Salaville brothers had painted in their living room.

  She had worked on those murders for months, trying to understand the meaning of the torn faces. She had completely missed the point. The Aztecs practices this kind of thing hundreds of years ago. They sacrificed victims to their gods, removing their hearts and cutting off their heads. But that was not the case here. There was no connection with the Celts either, though they had a tradition of peeling off the skin of their enemies, and leaving them nailed to wooden walls. There was no correlation whatsoever with what the Black Mountain Vampires had committed.

  Maybe she had not looked into what was essential.

  The folklore of the blood.

  Opening her handbag, she took out the book that she had retrieved from her place, The Blood Countess.

  One of the first pages featured the coat of arms of Hungarian Countess Erszébet Bathory. It was a dragon biting its own tail. And in the middle of its circle, three wolf’s teeth.

  She tore the page out of the book and pinned it to the wall.

  A circle around three horizontal lines. A dragon wrapped around three wolf’s teeth.

  She returned to her chair and stared at the images. So similar. So obvious. The meaning so terrifying, if what she thought turned out to be true.

  She wondered how she could explain it to her boss.

  24

  “Autopsies?”

  Like his last name, Chief Rudy Ô was a man who liked to keep things simple and get straight to the point. He knew precisely what he wanted, and if there was one thing he hated above all else, it was the waste of even one second of his time. In his position, this was an asset.

  Sitting across from him in the office that also served as conference room once a day, Inspector Jean-Luc Deveraux leaned over the table and handed him a stack of paper.

  “First victim: Barbara Meyer. Nineteen years old, student. She was tied to her bed and stabbed sixty-two times. Most of the wounds were superficial. It was quite clear that her attacker was careful to keep her alive as long as possible while he tortured her.”

  “How long?”

  “Three days,” Deveraux said. “We think she was conscious until the end. The killer had the entire building to himself, since the only other tenant was away visiting her parents. He took his sweet time. He used a very sharp blade, possibly a surgical tool. Not a single messy blow, except the ones in the genital area. There, he seems to have lost it. The blade was driven with such brutality, the blow broke the pelvis. The skin on the face was peeled off at the very end, but while the victim was still alive. It was just before her carotid artery was cut. She lost a great deal of blood, more than a gallon, but less than two pints were found at the scene. We think that the killer took the rest away with him. That, and, uh, the girl’s face, of course.”

  Rudy Ô was listening carefully.

  “Just like in the Salaville case, last year.”

  “Exactly.”

  Eva Svärta listened intently, her face impassive behind the dark glasses.

  “Raped?”

  “Possibly, but the vagina was so mutilated, it’s impossible to establish with certainty. What’s certain, though, is that no semen was found on the victim, nor any trace of DNA. The killer took a shower and carefully cleaned everything. All we were able to pick up were a few partial fingerprints on the kitchen knife stuck down the girl’s throat. Unfortunately, none of them were good enough to be of any use. Just so you know, the knife belonged to Barbara Meyer, but it isn’t the weapon that was used to torture her.”

  Deveraux placed a second pile of papers in front of him. “Second victim: Audrey Desiderio, journalist, thirty-nine years old, presumably the first victim’s lover. Same MO, same weapon. The killer tied her up before stabbing her forty times. Several organs punctured. There, too, the skin on the face was completely peeled off while she was still alive, and then her throat was slit. Death occurred faster in that case, but the murderer very carefully collected a certain amount of blood, approximately two pints, that couldn’t be found at the scene. In both cases, it’s the victim’s blood that was used to write the inscriptions.”

  “The inscriptions. Yes.”

  The chief studied the photos that Deveraux had just given him.

  He turned to Eva.

  “So?”

  Eva cleared her throat.

  “So, the similarities with the Salaville brothers’ MO are glaring.”

  “That’s not what I’m asking you.”

  “I know,” Eva said.

  “A copycat?”

  Eva hesitated, then answered, “No. I wish that were the case, but I don’t think so. And that’s precisely what worries me.”

  Jean-Luc Deveraux let out an exasperated sigh.

  “Come on, Eva. The media went on and on about the Black Mountain Vampires. All you need is five minutes surfing the Internet, and you’ve got all the details. You can even buy fucking T-shirts with a picture of the Salavilles on them. Any admirers of the perverts could have set out to imitate them.”

  “It’s not that simple, unfortunately. Those inscriptions were part of the evidence that was never disclosed to the media, and I made sure of that myself. Reporters had access to only a few carefully selected pictures. The same for the broken mirrors. That detail was never made public.”

  “You know full well that cops will talk if the price is right,” Deveraux shot back.

  “Maybe you would. But don’t presume your lack of ethics is the norm.”

  “Eva, cut it out,” the chief ordered before Deveraux could respond.

  A tense silence fell around the table. Ô, his face grave, turned to Deveraux.

  “Jean-Luc, you can investigate the copycat angle if you want. The Salavilles probably have quite a few fans.”

  Eva’s cheekbones reddened, but the rest of her face remained perfectly impassive.

  Ô turned to Eva. “I’m listening,” he said.

  Eva took a deep breath. “What I’m certain of is that we’re dealing with a true sadist. He’s smart and much more organized than the Salavilles. With him, nothing is left to chance. Everything is carefully planned. He didn’t kill these women with the first weapon he came across. He brings his own equipment. He also makes sure his victims are defenseless. He’s capable of hacking a girl to pieces for hours, spreading blood all over a room, and then taking a shower so as not to leave any clues. I don’t know if you actually realize how composed you’ve got to be to do such things. This is an advanced stage of psychosis. It doesn’t get to that point overnight. It takes time to develop, ten years or so. He may have killed other women, as well. We need to look into unsolved missing-persons cases for the past year, starting with the Ariège Department.”

  Eva paused to give her colleagues a chance to ask questions. Deveraux shot her a dirty look. Silly as it was, it amused her.

  “There’s actually one point that Deveraux and I agree on,” she continued. “That’s the fact that these two murders have a link to the Sal
avilles. The MO isn’t just similar. It’s exactly the same. And I can assure you that I’ve spent hundreds of hours on the Salaville case.

  “Who were they? Two ordinary madmen who happened to be brothers. They’re not the first of their type, and unfortunately, they won’t be the last we encounter over the course of our careers. But at the end of the day, I’ve always felt that all the pieces weren’t there. Something crucial was missing. Of course, we know everything about their MO. We know exactly how they kidnapped their victims. But what remains unexplained is why they cut off the faces of their victims. And what did they do with these trophies? Personally, I always thought that they were meticulously following a ritual. I haven’t changed my mind about that.”

  “Like some sort of cult?” Leroy asked.

  “Right. This type of ritual can have a diabolic motive, like stealing the souls of these girls, for example. Remember the case of the Skid Row Stabbers, Maxwell and Greenwood? They thought they were harvesting souls for the devil by killing homeless people, and Maxwell left messages with the word “Satan” written everywhere. As for Greenwood, he drank his victims’ blood right from their slit throats. Sometimes he collected some of the blood in small cups, and he traced circles of salt around the corpses.”

  Rudy Ô spread the photos of the circle of blood.

  “You think that’s what our killer is doing?” Rudy Ô asked. “That he’s collecting souls?”

  “I think it’s not impossible,” Eva answered. “Psychopaths who kill in a ritualistic manner often aim at pleasing some sort of god. In this case, all we know is that our killer is obsessed with blood. And, on that subject, I think it’s time to show you what I’ve found.”

  She opened a folder and pulled out the book with the white cover bearing the title The Blood Countess. Next to the book, she set the picture of the dragon biting its own tail.

  “What do you think of this symbol?”

  Leroy turned the sheet of paper toward him.

  “Looks like the drawings found in the Salaville house. No doubt about it.”

  “It’s the coat of arms of the Countess Erszébet Bathory. Or Elizabeth Bathory, if you prefer the modern form of her first name.”