Spectacle

by Jodie Lynn Zdrok

  “First the jar, then his curious remark about your blood. I wonder if that’s what drives him, some sort of fixation on blood.”

  “He’s a lunatic,” Nathalie said. She touched the cut on her cheek. “That’s what drives him.”

  “I know, but maybe there’s a connection to what he’s doing and Henard’s blood transfusions.” Simone pressed back against the bricks and pulled her feet out of the sun.

  “I wish I’d asked him another dozen questions. Not that he’d have answered them, but…” Nathalie let her voice fall away. “I’m exhausted.”

  She rested her head on Simone’s shoulder. They sat like that, quietly, until an ant crawled up Nathalie’s leg. She stood up and brushed the ant away. “The sun is catching us anyway. Shall we head back downstairs?”

  When they entered the apartment, Maman was not alone.

  Christophe sat on the sofa, petting Stanley, and greeted her with a weak smile.

  “If it’s not too much to ask,” he began, “I’d like you to come to the morgue with me. Please. There’s another victim.”

  36

  Nathalie squeezed her nails into her palms. “Another one already.” And it could have been me.

  After introducing Christophe and Simone, she crossed over to Papa’s chair, where Maman sat tracing her scars. Nathalie stood beside the chair, fingertips grazing the leather.

  Christophe leaned forward. “I know it’s asking a lot, given everything that’s happened, but we’d be most grateful. And Madame Baudin, I assure you, she will be under protection the entire time.”

  Nathalie glanced down at Maman, who closed her eyes and nodded.

  “Of course. Whatever I can do,” Nathalie said, pressing her knuckles into the leather.

  “I’d go with you,” Simone said, “but my mother is leaving for the market in a little while and I need to look after Céleste.”

  Maman put up her hand. “I’ll watch her, Simone.”

  “Would you? Thank you, Madame Baudin.”

  Not since that fateful day at the wax museum had they been out together, and if there was ever a time Nathalie wanted Simone at her side, it was now.

  * * *

  A short while later, they arrived at the morgue. The queue was lengthy and Christophe escorted them inside through the morgue exit. A colleague whisked him away, but not before Christophe promised to meet them at Café Maxime afterward.

  Nathalie’s mouth was dry. “Last time I did this…”

  It had been for Agnès. She left it unsaid. Simone knew; there was no need to say it.

  “Do you want to go home?”

  Nathalie shook her head. I promised Agnès.

  Simone hooked her elbow around Nathalie’s and they shuffled toward the crowd. They couldn’t yet see the corpses, but as always, the cluster of people told them where the victim lay. They waited for an opening at the viewing pane, slipping in when some people stepped aside.

  The victim had pockmarked skin and a mess of caramel-colored ringlets that snaked across her breasts. Her swollen face was slashed so badly it was impossible to discern her features, and a deep, uneven gash stretched across her stomach. Nathalie pulled Simone closer.

  What did he mean that getting murdered was Agnès’s idea?

  Once again she was lured in by his games.

  “Each one is worse than the last,” whispered Simone.

  Sweat began to dot Nathalie’s neck and forehead. “I saw him yesterday, Simone. It doesn’t matter if I don’t remember much. It just happened. Yesterday.”

  Simone took her hand. “You really don’t have to, Nathalie.”

  “What don’t I remember? Maybe it’s worse than what I do, or what I told you.” Nathalie stepped back from the viewing pane. “I’m going to be ‘seeing’ through eyes that saw me. From the man who killed Agnès. Chased me. Pulled a knife on me. Killed Sébastien the policeman.”

  “Pardonnez-moi,” said a soft-spoken young woman behind them, “but might you two make room for others if you’re done?”

  “Are we?” Simone said, then turned toward Nathalie. “Christophe will understand. Everyone will understand.”

  Nathalie gazed at the sixth unfortunate girl, at what used to be her face, what used to be her stomach. “You’ve been right all along. I have this gift for a reason.” Before she could hesitate another moment, like plunging into cold water, she reached for the viewing pane.

  The victim was already dead.

  Her mouth was open, mid-scream, and blood ran from her mouth. One eye was open; the other was shut. She was a bloody, shattered doll.

  The Dark Artist, gloves soaked and scarlet, caressed the victim’s cheek. One singular, angry cut traveled from her ear to her throat.

  “Too late,” he said.

  Blackness fell like a drape over a birdcage.

  But Nathalie didn’t find herself standing in the viewing room next to Simone. Instead the vision continued. She no longer saw a room; she was outside.

  Everything was white, in every direction.

  Fog.

  The Dark Artist opened the rear door of a covered cart and pulled out the girl’s body. Nathalie felt the weight, heavier than anything she’d ever lifted before.

  He carried the corpse a few steps and laid it down.

  The river.

  The Dark Artist knelt down, kissed the dead girl on the forehead, and slid her into the water gently, like a father bathing a child.

  He arranged her, face up, hands lightly clasped. With a firm push he sent her down the Seine.

  When he stood up, he took off his gloves. “Enough already.”

  Then he started choking.

  His fingers flew to his neck—rope. It grew tighter. He gasped and stood up, pulling at the rope. It loosened slightly, then completely.

  He turned in time to see a wrought-iron bar come toward his head.

  Blackness fell again.

  Nathalie still wasn’t in the viewing room.

  She was reclined and saw an enormous pane of glass in front of her. A dense crowd stood behind it. Simone was there.

  And Nathalie’s own self, next to Simone.

  In the viewing room.

  Nathalie came out of the vision with a start, hands jerking. Her eyes locked on the viewing pane.

  Simone put her arm around Nathalie and hugged her close. “You’re with me now. You’re safe.”

  “Mon Dieu.” Nathalie tried to stop shaking. Simone pulled her closer and motioned for someone to go away.

  “What happened?” Simone whispered.

  The words were hard to form; she coughed on the first attempt to speak. When she did, she whispered so quietly Simone had to lean in. “Simone—the Dark Artist…”

  Nathalie wriggled from Simone’s embrace, struggling to get some air, and pointed to a corpse off to the side in the second row. “He’s right there.”

  37

  Simone looked at the man on the slab and then back at Nathalie. “Are you sure?”

  “Very.” She relayed her vision to Simone and stared at the Dark Artist, his slender physique repulsive in its newfound familiarity. She focused on his hands. The same hands that had held a knife to her cheek yesterday. The same hands that had killed Agnès and five other young women.

  How strange to reconcile this pathetic corpse of today with the frightening killer who’d chased her in the Catacombs. He was nothing anymore. Nothing at all.

  A purple stripe crossed his neck. His temple was gouged, leaving a blackish-red canyon on his skull. Even bloated, he had strong, precise features, as though he himself had been carved from something. Short, side-swept brown hair. Neatly kept beard. Even the clothes displayed behind him were well-cut and fashionable.

  He was a most handsome man.

  Nathalie had wanted him to be ugly.

  As she glared at his corpse, a slow, uncomfortable realization spread across her like lava. “I’ve seen his face before. I don’t know where, but I have. Not in a vision.”

  “He
did follow you that time; you said he admitted it. Perhaps you caught a glimpse of him then?”

  “I remember that night very well, and that doesn’t seem to fit what I’m thinking. I feel as though it were more direct than that,” Nathalie said, rubbing her temples.

  “The blood jar?” offered Simone.

  “That either happened while I was asleep in the park or is a lost memory. It doesn’t match the pattern of the other memory gaps, though. That can’t be it.” Nathalie shook her head. Could she be so sure? “I don’t know. What difference does it make now, anyway? He’s taken his last memory from me.”

  She looked back and forth between the sixth victim and the Dark Artist. She’d wanted to help stop him before he killed again. And she hadn’t. This girl with dreams and sadness and hope and sorrow, like Agnès and Odette and Mirabelle and the others, was gone. “I’m sorry,” she said, fingertips grazing the glass.

  “You didn’t fail her,” said Simone, her voice both tender and adamant. “They’ll know the body on that slab back there is the killer. Because of you, they’ll know. And he’s gone.”

  Just like that, this threat, this menace, was gone. So were his secrets. Frustration needled her as she thought about the Catacombs, how he’d asked the questions when it was she who had so many. Had she asked him anything at all? Anything that might cast the smallest glint of understanding as to his motives? No, she would have told Christophe. The Dark Artist manipulated her, scared her, found her secrets while protecting his own.

  She detested him even more.

  Nathalie suddenly felt crowded. She turned to see that three or four people had gathered around her and Simone; the moment she made eye contact they retreated as if commanded.

  She wanted to scream at them. Your killer is right there. Right there!

  “If they only knew,” she muttered. “Instead they stare at me.”

  “Never mind the corpse-gazers. Let’s go.” Simone took her by the hand and led the way toward the exit.

  Nathalie stopped at the Medusa door, the one that had hissed at her that first day in the morgue. Or so her confused mind had thought. “We should tell Christophe.”

  “We’ll see him in a few minutes.”

  She stared at the Greek monster and her unruly snakes. “He shouldn’t have left us.”

  “Nathalie.” Simone touched her shoulder. “He’s doing what he has to do. Now let’s go get a table. He’ll join us soon.”

  As soon as they left the morgue, Nathalie looked behind them. A man with a walking stick came into sight just as they crossed onto Quai de la Tournelle. “Wait until Mathieu finds out. The Dark Artist is a corpse, not a threat.”

  “And isn’t that a splendid sentence?” Simone said, nudging her ribs.

  They took a secluded outdoor table at Café Maxime, with Christophe joining just as a waiter filling in for Jean was taking their orders.

  “Pain au chocolat for you, Nathalie?”

  “Non.” She couldn’t. Not yet. “An éclair.”

  Christophe asked for a coffee and, once the waiter left, managed little more than a greeting before Nathalie spilled every detail of her vision. Clearly struggling to stay silent, he erupted with fiery satisfaction when she was finished. “This is it! You confirmed what I suspected. Better yet: He’s already been identified.”

  Simone flattened her palms on the table. “Wait. What?”

  “Not as the Dark Artist, but as Damien Salvage.”

  Nathalie’s skin prickled. Knowing his name made him real, made him human.

  Gone was his mystery, away went the countless other identities he might have had. There was no need to imagine who he might be anymore. And as monstrous and depraved as he was, he was also just a man.

  This made him both more and less terrifying, even in death.

  “That was the business I had to tend to when we returned.”

  Nathalie blushed, embarrassed that she’d taken offense when he couldn’t be at her side during the vision. She felt Simone’s gaze but didn’t acknowledge it.

  “The sixth victim’s body floated up the Seine. So did his, almost at the same time. The coincidence got my attention. I left word with my colleagues to let me know immediately if anyone identified the man.” Christophe tapped the table with his finger, a tap for every word. “A well-to-do industrialist recognized him. The man had commissioned Monsieur Salvage to make an armoire a few months ago. He even had Salvage’s calling card on him.”

  “Imagine having furniture carved by the Dark Artist?” Nathalie made a face. And then she remembered something. “Oh goodness. The ornate wooden table in the Mirabelle vision. Finely made, medium-dark wood, decorative work on the corners. He—he must have created it himself.”

  She felt guilty for having thought the details unimportant at the time.

  “Practice for what he did to those young women,” said Simone, knitting her brow. “But not anymore.”

  How delightful it was going to be to walk the streets again, Nathalie thought, and not wonder if there was malice in nearby footsteps or ill intent in the heart of every man who passed by.

  The waiter came with their “celebratory meal,” as Simone put it. Nathalie broke off a piece of her éclair and offered it to Christophe. She tried to ignore the tingle her limbs felt as he took it from her. “So whoever killed him dispatched of him in the river the same way. On purpose. Who? Why?”

  Christophe finished chewing and then spoke. “He wants credit for it, which makes me think he—the Dark Artist’s killer—knew about the murders. Or at the very least, observed him disposing of the victim and executed some justice of his own. Rope isn’t hard to find near a river.”

  Nathalie crossed her arms. “I wish I saw more. Stupid fog.”

  “What you saw is enough to pull everything together,” said Christophe in a kind voice. “Speaking of which, I’ll relieve Mathieu of his duties on my way out. Nathalie, I’m very happy to say that you no longer need protection.”

  “‘Mathieu,’” Nathalie began, imitating Christophe, “‘you needn’t follow Mademoiselle Baudin any longer. While she thanks you for your service, I’m pleased to inform you that she doesn’t need you anymore. Because the Dark Artist is dead.’ Oh, I like the way that set of words feels on my tongue.”

  Christophe bit into a cube of bleu cheese. “As soon as I get back, I’ll dispatch a team to the residence of one Damien Salvage to verify. Paris will know who the Dark Artist is in no time.”

  “I’ll be buying a few copies of Le Petit Journal tomorrow,” said Simone with a wicked grin. “I look forward to that headline. The Dark Artist, Unmasked and Killed! Or DEAD: The Dark Artist, Damien Salvage!”

  “Well…” said Christophe, holding up his hand, “there’s a good chance this won’t make it into the papers yet.”

  Nathalie stared at him. “You’re going to let people continue to think the Dark Artist is alive, even once you confirm that it’s him?”

  “The chief investigator will make that decision, but possibly. He may want to withhold that from the public until they investigate the matter of who killed him. Several days at most, I’m sure.”

  Nathalie glanced at Simone, whose horrified expression no doubt mirrored her own. Another day of fear in the city, another day of selling newspapers, another day of morgue visitors. And another, and another, as long as the police deemed necessary.

  “It’s … an unfortunate truth of the business,” said Christophe. They spoke for a few more minutes as he drank the rest of his coffee. Then he excused himself, putting enough money on the table for all of them. He said a warm good-bye and departed.

  Nathalie sat back a moment watching her fellow Parisians. At the café, on the street, going by in an omnibus, walking in and out of shops. When she’d learned about the Insightfuls, she’d thought there were two kinds of people in the world: those who had magic and those who didn’t. But it was really two other kinds of people: those who knew what was really going on and those who didn’t.


  As to which were the lucky ones, she couldn’t say.

  38

  Nathalie wrote a descriptive journal entry that night. The vision. The bodies at the morgue. The conversations with Simone, Christophe, and her mother. Maman was so relieved about the Dark Artist news that she held Nathalie a good long time and wept.

  Some element of the day, or possibly the next day, would be forgotten. It was like flipping over a tarot card and wondering what it would be, or going to a hypnotist and wondering what she’d say. Some piece of reality would be extracted, removed by a clumsy, invisible surgeon. Eventually some part of this, something she wrote down with such a clear head, would seem foreign.

  Indeed, the next morning she discovered which passages might well have been written in Chinese or Russian or Greek.

  The memory loss this time was the vision itself.

  Bitterness burned through her as the realization sank in. Why couldn’t it be the vision of Agnès that she forgot? No, no. That one stayed with her. Fragments of the vision passing through her head whenever they pleased, day or night. That was the one she needed to forget most of all. Instead she would carry it for the rest of her life, a sack of bricks tethered to her soul.

  Nevertheless.

  Nathalie ran her finger along the journal’s spine. She was grateful to be spared at least one distressing memory, even if it wasn’t the one that haunted her most.

  Did it mean something more?

  To forget the very thing that the gift bestowed … was this a sign that her gift might be ending?

  Several hours later she shared these thoughts with M. Patenaude. She went to tell him that, with the Dark Artist gone, she was eager to do the morgue column again. (She was also eager to see how Maurice Kirouac, unaware that was the Dark Artist when he’d done today’s report, described him.) He was pleased to hear it and said she could resume the following day.

  “I can only speak of my own experience and those I know,” he offered, steepling his fingers, “but I don’t think your ability is fading. Sometimes our power shifts slightly as we grow into it, like how your visions aren’t taking place in reverse anymore.”