The Crypt Thief

by Mark Pryor

  “Middle floor unoccupied?” Hugo asked.

  “No, that’s the one she went to, so there has to be someone living there informally, off the books. Just like you said. And you should see the building, it’s a crap hole, that ugly sixties architecture that needs tearing down. But from the side it looks like a damn pyramid.”

  “Seriously, a pyramid? That’s good work, Tom, it fits perfectly.”

  “Yeah, like a soggy mitten.”

  Claudia gunned the engine as the light turned green.

  “The local flics know?” Hugo asked.

  “Yeah, I used some of their resources,” Tom said. “And that’s another reason you need to hurry, they’re putting together an army to raid the place. I’m guessing you have about thirty minutes, less if I tell them he’s kidnapped the girl.”

  “Then don’t tell them,” Hugo said. “You know as well as I do what’ll happen if the cavalry charges in.”

  “They may not charge in, have you thought of that? They might try the negotiation route.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Hugo said. “Somehow this guy is going out in a blaze of glory and he wants to make Amelia Rousseau a part of that. Nothing would make him happier than to have a bunch of SWAT guys hanging around making small talk on his doorstep.”

  “You’re sure about the blaze-of-glory thing?”

  “Yes. And this missing call girl makes me even more sure. As careful and prepared as he’s been, he left his address with the call girl’s pimp. He’d have known someone would come knocking, but he doesn’t care. And there’s a reason for that.”

  “I’ll take your word for it. But be careful, will you? If he’s suicidal, just blow his head off the first chance you get.”

  “I plan to,” said Hugo.

  “And keep Claudia out of it, for fuck’s sake. Every time you meet this guy someone gets shot, and it’s about time it was you. So make her stay in the damn car.”

  “I know, I know.” Hugo glanced at her. “But that’s easier said than done.”

  They turned from the street into the parking lot, a patch of concrete with eight poorly marked spaces surrounded by a high wall. Hugo pointed out the Scarab’s apartment and she eased the car into a space that, he hoped, would not be visible should Villier look out his window. For a second, Hugo thought he saw movement on the second-floor landing, but they sat still for a minute, watching, and saw no one.

  Hugo opened his door and turned to Claudia. “I’m not sure what he has planned, and we have one gun between us.”

  “Did Tom tell you to make me stay?”

  “Yes. And he’s right.”

  “We’ll do what we did before, I’ll come in behind you, watch your back.”

  “We were in a hurry before, and this situation is very different,” Hugo said. “He’s either in the apartment or somewhere else altogether, so it’ll be my front that needs watching. And I sure as hell don’t want you doing that.”

  She raised an eyebrow, skeptical. “So I just sit here and wait for you to come back?”

  “No. If I’m not out in five minutes, call the cavalry. Tom said they’re already on their way, just make them hurry.”

  “And how do I do that?”

  “Tom or Raul should be able to help you there.”

  “You remember that Raul taught me to shoot, right? How about I come to the building with you, just stop there.”

  Hugo put a foot out of the car. “No. But thanks for the offer.” He reached over and took her hand, raising it to his lips. “Wish me luck,” he said.

  She nodded. “Be careful, Hugo. This one’s evil.”

  Hugo moved quickly across the parking lot, angling in, close to the building so there was less chance of being seen. On his right he noticed a trash dumpster and, wedged behind it next to the high wall, the blue Citroën. So he’s home.

  His gun in hand, Hugo darted into the stairway and moved up. He kept his weapon pointed at the door, formulating his plan as he crept forward. His best bet was to check out the interior by looking through the window by the door, at the head of the stairs. If Amelia Rousseau was in there, alive, he might just need to heed Tom’s advice and shoot to kill.

  A breeze drifted over him, bringing with it the scent of dirt and de­cay. He stopped as he heard a noise from the apartment, a woman crying out, but gently. Anger rose and Hugo fought it, knowing he couldn’t control this unfolding situation unless he was in control of himself.

  He moved forward again, his eyes darting between the door and the window. He heard footsteps this time, heavy, moving toward him as if the Scarab was preparing to open the window and look out.

  Hugo froze. He heard the heavy clunk as the door to the apartment was unlocked from the inside, and he watched as it swung slowly open. He gripped the gun in both hands and aimed.

  “Monsieur Marston.” The Scarab’s voice, harsh and guttural. “Come inside. You may bring your weapon, si vous voulez.”

  It was fleeting, but a feeling passed through Hugo, one that told him to run, to turn and go, to wait for the French police. He knew he’d never come across a man like this before, someone so indifferent to human life, one so driven to kill. Not one-on-one, face-to-face. And most certainly not on the killer’s own turf.

  He let the feeling go, knowing there was no possibility he would leave Amelia Rousseau alone with a man like that.

  “How about you let her go, and then I come in?” Hugo called.

  “We don’t have much time. If you want to be a part of this, I suggest you come in now.”

  “A part of what?”

  “Let me put it another way,” the Scarab said. “If you don’t come in, then I’ll kill the dancer. You have five seconds and my word that you won’t be shot when you walk in the door.”

  “The word of a serial killer isn’t worth much to me, Villier.”

  “It’s all I can offer. And I want you to see this, so please, come in.”

  It was given as an order, but under the harsh tone Hugo heard a plea. He stepped past the window to the open door. With his gun raised, he peered into the apartment.

  The living room was dark, lit only by red candles that Villier had fixed to every wall, twenty at least. He’d cleared the place of furniture, too, except for a trestle that bore a wooden coffin. The legs looked unstable, wooden boards nailed in the shape of an A, and under one end of the trestle sat an antique mining plunger, its handle extended. Wires led from the top of the device, disappearing toward the back wall. Behind the coffin, Amelia Rousseau sat on the floor, her eyes red from crying but now open and staring at Hugo, hope flickering.

  The Scarab stood at the end of the trestle, one hand on the coffin. His gun lay on the trestle, and Hugo’s stomach turned when he saw beside it several large knives and what looked like a folded sheet of plastic. The Scarab had attached a length of rope to the trestle legs nearest him.

  “You can shoot me,” Villier said. “And then I’ll fall down, taking the legs away. Can you guess what happens after that?”

  Hugo’s eyes went to the plunger.

  “And that,” Villier said, “is nailed down, so don’t bother trying to shoot it out of the way. You might hit it a couple of times, but you won’t destroy it before I can get to it.”

  “What are you doing?” Hugo asked.

  Villier picked up the scarab amulet. “Haven’t you figured it out yet?”

  Hugo had, of course, but he wasn’t going to say it out loud, to tell Amelia Rousseau that her heart was destined for the box. Instead, he said, “It won’t work, you know.”

  The Scarab laughed. “You don’t know the first thing about what works and what doesn’t.”

  “Your mother is dead. Nothing can change that. This,” he waved a hand at the coffin, “this collection of bones and skin. That’s all they are. Killing her, killing me. Even killing yourself, nothing will change the fact that your mother is dead.”

  “Is that what they teach you in America?” Villier sneered. “How do they know what happe
ns, how can anyone know?” His fingertips brushed the top of the plunger. “No one can know until it’s done. I feel the power of these bones every time I touch them. And do you really think I’m the only one? Why would we preserve them if they were worthless? No, these aren’t just bones, as you say. Why would we have hundreds of acres in this city alone, filled with the bones of the worthy if we didn’t believe that something lies within them?”

  “That’s why we have cremation,” Hugo said. “Most people have figured out that whatever makes us human, call it a spirit or soul, whatever you want, disappears forever when we die. There is no resurrection for us, Villier. Not for me, not for you. And not for your mother.”

  “Cremation?” Villier laughed. “Even when people cremate their loved ones, they take the ashes somewhere special to scatter them, or they bury them in family plots beside the bones of their ancestors.”

  “Superstition, that’s all. Those acts are done for the living, not for the dead, which means you gain nothing by killing that girl. Or even yourself.”

  “Ah, because that’s your job. To kill me.”

  “I’d rather not,” Hugo said.

  “I don’t believe you. After I killed your friend, the policeman, I’m sure you would like your revenge. You come from the only civilized country in the world with the death penalty, what is that but revenge? It’s an American specialty.”

  Hugo allowed a small smile. “Except that Capitaine Garcia isn’t dead.”

  Villier’s face was stone. “You expect me to believe that? I shot him in the heart.”

  “You shot him in the bulletproof vest.”

  “You lie.”

  “You want to call him and see?”

  Uncertainty swept over the Scarab’s eyes, like a rainsquall that suddenly disappears. “It doesn’t matter. None of that matters.”

  Hugo recognized a tone of finality in Villier’s voice, but he needed to keep the man talking. “Where do I fit into this?”

  “You have some qualities I admire. At first, I wanted you to tell everyone why I did this. That’s why I didn’t kill you in Castet. Now that you have figured it out, I’m guessing you’ve already told people. So you can merge with me.”

  “Merge?”

  “When we go up, we go up together and stay that way forever.” A smile, like rock cracking, spread over Villier’s lips. “Are you ready?”

  Chapter Forty-four

  Amelia Rousseau screeched as the Scarab picked up his gun. He swung it slowly toward her, his eyes never leaving Hugo.

  “Non, please, please,” she begged, the metal handcuffs rattling against the pipe as she tugged frantically.

  “Wait,” Hugo said. His gun was aimed at Villier’s chest but he didn’t want to shoot, didn’t dare shoot. He needed to buy more time. “You said you wanted me to understand, you said I’d figured it all out. But I haven’t.”

  Villier’s finger twitched over the trigger but he held Hugo’s eye. “What?”

  “You’re telling me there are explosives attached to those wires.”

  “Oui.”

  “I don’t understand. Why go to all that trouble?”

  The Scarab cocked his head a fraction, as if he couldn’t understand why Hugo was asking, as if the answer were obvious. “I need fire,” he said. “I need fire to do it. If I have explosives in here, that’s how I die, blown to pieces. I can’t have it be that way because there can be no fusion, no re-creation in an explosion. I need the magic of fire.”

  “So the explosives are downstairs, they create your magical fire.”

  “If I have done everything right, this place will be an inferno in about seven seconds. There is a lot of gasoline downstairs.” He paused. “That’s how she died, so it’s how I have to die for us to be together again.”

  “Why not just set a fire? Use gasoline or fire starters, for heaven’s sake, like you did in Castet.”

  “In Castet I was destroying. Here, I just told you, I have to do it the same way.”

  “The same way as what? How exactly do you see this ending?”

  “It’s simple,” Villier said. “You will swap places with her. Then I can put the coffin on the ground and,” he looked at Amelia Rousseau, “take her heart.”

  “And who pushes the plunger?”

  “You do,” Villier said matter-of-factly.

  “Why the hell would I do that?”

  “Because you will be chained up and if you don’t, I will shoot you.” The merest of shrugs. “If you do, there is a chance you will survive the explosion and fire. C’est possible.”

  “And if I hadn’t come?”

  “Then the trestle would have worked. I pull the rope and it happens automatically.”

  “Carefully planned,” Hugo said. “But I still don’t believe that you killed your mother. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “I told you I did.” Villier’s voice hardened. “I don’t lie.”

  “Somehow he made you, your father. Tell me what happened.”

  “I just told you. The same way we’re doing this today.” Villier licked his lips, his eyes flicking over Hugo’s shoulder as if checking they were still alone. “It took time, years, but he found her and brought her back. Told her I was in trouble. He took her up to the barn said I was there and wouldn’t come down.”

  “He was telling the truth,” Hugo said. “You were there,” Hugo said.

  “Yes, after she was already inside.” Villier’s lip curled as he remembered. “He told me the barn was dangerous and needed to come down. He’d set dynamite, but I didn’t know she was in there.” His voice caught, and then softened. “He let me push the plunger.”

  “She died in the fire, not the explosion?”

  “I heard her screams. I saw her consumed by the flames.” Villier’s body seemed to hum with the memory. “I killed her, all right. I should have known.”

  Hugo kept his own voice low, gentle. “How old were you?”

  “Thirteen.”

  “I’m sorry, Claude. I really am.” He lowered his gun slowly, wanting to give Villier reassurance. “But this isn’t the answer. Doing to Amelia what you did to your mother, that won’t bring her back. All you’re doing is causing someone else the same pain that you had to endure. No matter what you want to believe.”

  “What I believe?” Villier smiled. “I know what I believe and I know that I have one chance to do it right.” He held up the amulet. “This. For thousands of years this was used to ensure life after death. You think they don’t know what power it has?”

  “I think a lot of people believed in a lot of things that aren’t true. They did, and they still do.”

  “Well,” Villier said. “Let’s find out.”

  The Scarab smiled once, then turned his head to look toward Rousseau, sighting along the barrel, aiming for her head. Hugo swung his gun up, knowing that he couldn’t let Villier shoot her, hoping that somehow the man had made a mistake, that they could escape the inferno he’d planned for this apartment.

  Hugo fired once, hitting the Scarab center mass, in his chest. The power of the slug drove him backward, his arms flying up as his legs buckled. His heart pounding, Hugo watched as the cord tightened and then pulled the rickety wood legs from under the trestle. He started forward but, before he could dive at the plunger, the coffin tipped and drove itself onto the handle.

  The plunger held for a second and then began to disappear into the box, and Hugo knew he couldn’t stop it. Still moving, but in slow motion, he watched, mesmerized, as it clicked downward and he stopped, bracing himself for the explosion, as if something was holding him in place until the fire started.

  Then the spell broke and he ran to Amelia Rousseau, leaping over the tumble of bones and skin that had bunched at the end of the coffin. Rousseau’s head was buried against the wall, the farthest she could get from Villier’s gun and Hugo thought she might have passed out. He grabbed her shoulders and shook her.

  “Amelia, we have to get out of here. Now.”


  She turned her head, amazed to still be alive. “I don’t understand.”

  “Lie back.” But he didn’t wait for her to do it, he pulled her away from the radiator with one hand and put the barrel of the gun against the chain of the handcuffs. He fired and the metal broke. “Come on.”

  He hauled her to her feet and they started toward the door. When they got to the coffin she looked down and her legs gave way, almost taking her into the casket. “Oh my God.”

  “Don’t look,” Hugo said, dragging her to the door. He said seven seconds, but there’s no fire. Why is there no fire?

  Hugo pulled the door open and they staggered onto the landing together, heading for the stairs. As they started down, Hugo looked up and saw Claudia waiting by the bottom step.

  “What’s happening?” Claudia asked. “I heard a gunshot.”

  “We need to get out of here, he’s down but he put explosives under the building.”

  “I know,” Claudia said. “I found them.”

  They had reached the bottom of the stairs, and Claudia reached out to help with the sobbing Amelia Rousseau.

  “Found them?” Hugo asked. “What do you mean?”

  “Just that, I found them and disarmed them.”

  Hugo had been propelling the three of them forward, but this made him stop. “You disarmed the explosives?”

  “Yes.” She explained quickly. “I didn’t want to just sit there, so I wandered over to the building. Obviously I plan to write a story about all this, so I wanted to get a good description of the place. I saw wires coming down from the side of his apartment, so I followed them and found the basement. When I got there I called Tom and he talked me through it.”

  “He talked you through . . .”

  “Cutting the wires.”

  “You’re kidding me. He let you do that?”

  “Yes. It’s OK, Hugo, it was simple.”

  He shook his head. “OK, sure. Look, can you take her to the car? If there’s no danger of an explosion, I want to keep an eye on our friend.”