by John Farrow
He tried to explain. “In every case, the cops on the scene believed the murders were gruesome. Odds are, some, if not all, of them were jaded cops. Such as the guys in New Orleans. Louisiana is the least safe state in the union.”
“What’s the safest? My New Hampshire, I bet.”
“Sorry. Maine beats you out again.”
“We always lose out to Maine. I hate that.”
“You have better horses.”
“True. Good. Otherwise, I’d have to move to Maine.”
That was probably a slip, and Émile was careful not to slide off his gym ball as he stretched for his Highland Park. He let the comment go, as any reply might lead to trouble. He didn’t want to think that she was considering moving.
“The point is,” he analysed, “the first cops on the scene always considered the murders particularly violent, but the facts of the case don’t really bear that out. Violence is a relative term when it comes to murder. What I’m feeling is, they were meant to look pretty bad. But in truth they weren’t, not really.”
“Okay. Maybe I’m following you. The gruesome aspects were for effect?”
“Yes. Because there was never a rampage. Only the hint of a rampage. The murders were actually methodical and precise. Calculated, actually. Professional, in other words. At least … maybe. It’s only a theory.”
“Go on,” she encouraged him. She knew that her husband was good at this sort of thing, yet she rarely had an opportunity to see him in action. “What’s the theory?”
“First off, the victims seem to have died early in the rampage. So they were spared any prolonged physical and psychological agony. That suggests to me that the killer wasn’t necessarily in it for his jollies. Rather, he had a job to do, but he wanted to make it look otherwise. Sick aspects show up, as I said, but the scenes were not prolonged, which is odd if the killer was driven by a desire for violent or warped sex, for example. Each victim loses his or her ring finger, and the rings on it, but in Alabama the medical examiner declared positively that the fingers were removed postmortem. So the victims didn’t suffer that torture when they were alive. In Louisiana, the ME suggested that that might have been the case, but she seemed to lack confidence in her findings. I think she was just incompetent. In Connecticut, the ME raised the matter as a likely possibility. Here, for our murders, the coroner neglected to even ask the question. Most people have assumed the man’s finger was snipped off when he was alive, but that’s not necessarily true. And the killer might not have known the woman wasn’t dead yet.”
“Émile.”
“Mmm?”
“Don’t say snipped.”
He pondered why she was strung out on the word, and concluded that it suggested that the act was somehow more gruesome.
“It just sounds so banal when, really, it’s horrible,” she explained.
“I won’t say snipped,” he conceded. “Digging further,” he went on, “theft as a common link is also odd. None of the victims were rich or likely to be carrying large amounts of cash, and the killer clearly left each house traveling light. Why rob these people? To risk a murder charge to steal trinkets is out of whack. It could happen once, maybe the thief expected more, but multiple times? As well, are the women of a certain type? No. Are the men? No. So why were the victims handpicked to be victims when nothing links them? Nothing fits a predetermined pattern or criteria for a calculating, methodical killer. The only real similarity, and it’s intriguing, is that the murders followed in the wake of natural disasters, although in our case, it was only a big storm.”
With that puzzle afloat in the air awhile, Émile chose to reload his Scotch.
He remained standing when he returned.
“And how did anyone link these crimes together?” he asked. “The ring finger removal? That’s a clue, for sure. But so easily missed given how these crimes are spread out across the continent. What was it that turned the FBI’s crank on this?”
“Ask them.”
“They’re not talking. That’s the other intriguing factor. The missing link, as it were. The FBI doesn’t want me to know what they know. They want me to investigate in the dark. As if there’s a way that that can ever work.”
“But I know you, Émile. You never trust policemen. Except maybe Bill.”
“Bill’s naïve. Always will be.”
“See what I mean?”
He smiled, and balanced on his exercise ball again.
“Sandra, here’s the thing. If I’m to do this job properly, because I’ve got nothing to shake a stick at locally, I need to visit at least a few of the crime scenes in the United States and interview the local authorities there.”
He sipped. Sandra nodded.
“Where, exactly?”
“First stop, New Orleans. Then I’ll nip off to Alabama.”
“Nip,” she repeated. Sandra sighed. “If you have to go,” she determined, “then you have to go. You’re just interviewing people, right? Nothing dangerous.”
“I’m not aware of any danger. So, do you think you can get your usual guy to look after the horses?”
She shrugged. “I can manage on my own.”
“You’re not taking my meaning.”
She looked up at him. Saw a twinkle in his eyes.
“It’s New Orleans, Sandra. You’re on the case, right? So come with me.”
She did a tiny double-take and saw that he was serious. “Oh, yes, I can get my usual guy. If not, I’ll get some other guy. Émile! Isn’t Mardi Gras coming up?”
“I believe so.”
“Holy shit! New Orleans!”
She forgot for a moment that her husband was a religious man, that some swear words were more offensive to him than others, such as holy annexed to shit. She wanted to apologize, but their eyes locked then, for more than a few seconds, and both new what the other was thinking. This was a chance, of sorts. To rediscover themselves. Or to fall apart. This was more than just a simple holiday. And certainly, not a simple investigation. They had a lot more riding on this case than the identity of a killer.
PART 2
TEN
Not knowing where to stay, they imagined a cool place on Canal Street, a converted brothel above a jazz bar where fragrant breezes wafted in off Lake Pontchartrain to mingle with a mournful, sexy, late-night sax, but neither Émile nor Sandra knew if a hotel on Canal Street really was the place to be, if it would be hip or merely a dive, or a place to get mugged in, or if jazz clubs were even located there at all, or hotels, or if opening a balcony door invited in the warm, humid air of the south or the muskiness of sour urine, or if the ambiance of a hastily booked room promised romance or might possibly instigate a near-death experience. So they booked the Hilton. From there, they could figure out the lay of the land and freely explore, and anyway, didn’t it sound perfectly safe?
They so rarely traveled. Care for the horses took precedence, and usually if they managed a week away Sandra opted for the New Hampshire farmhouse where her mother resided on her own, now that her dad was deceased. Most of their travels were to horse fairs and competitions within a day or two’s drive, trips that were pleasant enough and productive enough that they did not feel deprived of travel. And over the past two winters they had finally found their way south. Once for a week in Florida, then ten days in Barbados the following year. They appreciated the break from the cold and their bodies felt regenerated, but neither trip had been memorable and left them oddly dissatisfied, so that in considering a southern excursion this year they had been unable to sufficiently rouse themselves to make a decision.
But now. By some miracle. New Orleans.
They hoped to find the city in revival mode after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, but as they had not kept abreast of developments they really didn’t know what to expect. Cinq-Mars was governed by a single titbit of knowledge—serious crime abounded there—and knew also that Mardi Gras was on the horizon. He assumed that at such a legendary festival, bacchanalian and remotely quasi-religious at the same
moment, he could find a niche and enjoy himself.
They’d have downtime with one another. Which created its own expectations and tension. Émile and Sandra aspired to connect again, to undertake a revival of some sort—quasi-romantic, perhaps, or even, who knows, bacchanalian. Rather than place their expectations at the risk of a crummy hotel room, they made peace with the likely dull security of the Hilton.
All that decision-making resulted in Sandra receiving a solid, undignified bump from a man in the lobby upon their arrival. A pair of men in their thirties were crossing each other’s path as the couple entered. In sidestepping that collision, one tripped right into Sandra, giving her a jolt, then the other, stumbling himself, reached out to break her fall as well as his own. Émile reached for her also, flinging out his arms, but in that instinctive reaction he also caught the scene in his mind’s eye and detected a foreign hand at his hip. Whether it was his police training, observations over a long career, or simply an impulsive intuitive notion, his right hand jumped to his rear pocket and his wallet there, and fell upon an uninvited paw. In the ensuing jumble, apologies were uttered by the men for their clumsiness and Sandra assured them to never mind and laughed the moment off. Émile Cinq-Mars, though, stood still and silent, arms crossed, certain that he had thwarted a carefully choreographed picking of his pocket.
Then he noticed that a clasp on Sandra’s purse had been tripped.
He smiled at the fellow who had fallen into his wife, stretched out his hand ostensibly to thank him, then took the fellow’s hand in his own and squeezed quite hard. He leaned into him, squeezing harder. He whispered in the man’s ear, “Return my wife’s wallet or I’ll break your fingers in five, four, three seconds.”
The man was small, casually well-dressed, with a smooth olive complexion and dark eyes. Under the pressure on his hand, his face was distorting rapidly and he involuntarily exhaled.
“Two,” Cinq-Mars said, and squeezed even harder. He gave him another friendly, encouraging pat as the man’s mouth stretched open in pain.
The other man among them appeared confused. He and Sandra were united in wondering what Émile had whispered.
“Oh! Look what fell,” said the man in the ex-policeman’s grip and knelt down even though Cinq-Mars still held his right hand. No one saw anything on the floor, but when the suave fellow popped back up again he held Sandra’s wallet out to her.
Suddenly she understood. Her wallet had appeared out of thin air. She did a rapid check, then said, “It’s okay. You can let him go, Émile.”
“I’ll be here for several days,” Émile let the man know. “You won’t be.” He patted the fellow’s wrist, then released him.
Supposedly, the two men were strangers passing in the lobby, but the jig was up and one gave an indication to the other with his chin. The pair departed out the front door together. One wore a pink sports shirt, elegant gray slacks, and kept his hair spot-on with gel. The other, tricked out in a spiffy lemony suit, used less gel. They could be brothers.
“Welcome to the safe Hilton,” Cinq-Mars murmured as he watched them go.
“Welcome to New Orleans,” Sandra tacked on.
They smiled at one another and carried on arm in arm. What might have been a huge annoyance at the outset of their time away had been thwarted. Perhaps good fortune shone on their side.
Émile was glad that the situation had stayed calm. Any altercation at that moment might have found him deficient. In the Big Easy, apparently, men with slippery fingers knew how to keep their cool. After the cramped flight—for him, most flights were cramped—he was sore, stiff, and needed to exercise, so after checking in they went up to their room on the seventeenth floor where he performed his diabolical stretches. Sandra partially unpacked before busying herself in the washroom. She emerged wearing a black sports bra and panties and headed across the room to pull the drapes together and darken the room.
“We’re staying in?” Cinq-Mars asked, now in shadow on the carpet.
“It’s a night town, Émile.” She pulled the bedcovers down. “I’m resting up for the action.” Tongue-in-cheek, perhaps, but serious, too, she grinned.
Émile was just as happy to strip down and crawl into bed himself, ready for a snooze, and yet, after about ten minutes, they turned, and slid a little closer to each other, and that soon evolved into a snuggle. They tried napping in the spoons position but before sleep overtook them they both grew rowdy. Cinq-Mars honestly believed that he had not expected this, and yet he’d made an allowance for the possibility. To be on the safe side he took the time to ingest a Cialis while freshening up in the terminal after disembarking—in anticipation of the weekend, really, not this nap. Soon both were glad for his foresight.
Later they stirred. Somehow it seemed the right time to dip their toes, at least, into their mutual puddle. Émile was the first to wade in.
“We haven’t seen much of this lately.”
“Twice in the past week. I call that a major escalation. Or did you forget about that time at home already?”
“I meant further back than a week.” He seemed petulant to her.
“No one’s to blame, buddy. We’ve been at odds. I threw you for a loop.”
“I’m not too old to have my heart broken, I found that out. I’m not saying it broke, but that’s only because you haven’t left yet. But it cracked some. It’s getting ready to shatter.”
“Oh God. The melodrama! You’re holding up okay. For Pete’s sake, here you are, out fighting crime for the FBI on the blue bayou.”
“Leather-skinned on the outside. It’s all for show.”
She admitted quietly, “Yeah, I know. Mine cracked some just telling you that I might leave. More than I expected, I guess.”
He tilted his head further toward her. “In that case, shouldn’t we be trying to stay together?”
“We should. That’s what we’re doing, no?”
True, but it felt good to hear her say so. This was genuine encouragement. Rowing together in the same direction was so much easier than haphazardly flailing their oars. “Are you any closer,” Émile started in, knowing that he had to be careful how he phrased this or he could pitch himself into hot water, “to identifying what the core problem is? For you, I mean?”
Sandra fluffed a pair of pillows and arranged them against the headboard. She then lay back, partially upright with the sheet pulled high up. The air-conditioning cycled on again and, naked, she felt a chill. Reaching around to the back of her neck, she pulled her hair forward to let it fall along her right shoulder. Cinq-Mars noticed that strands of gray he detected previously were no longer visible. She must be tinting. A vacation tint. He propped himself up higher as well.
“It’s everything,” she decided. A single hair strayed over an eye and she inhaled and blew out two big puffs to send it back into place. “You mentioned sex, so okay, put it on the list. But you and I both know that sex is an extension of other things.”
“Including that I’m getting older.”
She looked at him then. They didn’t talk about this usually. “You take pills.”
“And I’m grateful to live in an era when that’s an option. But, also, you know, the libido. It’s diminished. That makes everything different.”
“How so?”
He really hadn’t wanted the conversation to come around to this. Now the matter was on him when she had seemed on the verge of opening up herself. He continued to speak cautiously. “When you remove the need, and, you know, the indiscriminate want, from sex—lust, essentially—the equation is different. You have what’s left, which is pleasure, intimacy, good things both.” He studied the ceiling awhile before daring to carry on. “But it’s not driven. That’s what’s hard to get used to. It’s no longer hard-wired. Perhaps I shouldn’t use the word hard.” That got her to grin a little. “It’s as if I have to arouse myself by visiting old memories, knowing that I used to feel a certain way, or maybe project myself into old responses or somebody else’s responses,
but it’s … an adjustment, let’s say … it’s an adjustment to make love to the woman you love when sex is no longer urgent or a necessity or a response to need or even desire. So it’s—as it just was—fun. But the passion is on a different plane. I can’t pretend to be in the same place I was years ago or even—and this is telling, because you’re younger—even where you may still be.”
“So you don’t need sex anymore,” Sandra summarized. “The passion is gone.”
“Not gone. Transformed. And diminished. But I’m not going to lie.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
“It’s like the joke I heard this older comedian say once. ‘At my age, if a woman says yes, that’s great! If she says no, that’s okay, too!’”
Sandra laughed. Then she did more than laugh. She leaned across and kissed her husband. In their postcoital ease he found it as natural as breathing to cup her breast, then to run a thumb over and around the lovely large brown nipple. She pulled back, but not away. And looked at him. She placed a hand over his, as if to assist him in caressing her breast.
Then she fell away again and covered up against the cool temperature.
“So I’m younger than you,” Sandra said. “This is not news. I’m not at that stage yet when desire is … diminished, or gone, whatever … and maybe it’s different for women anyway. But if you’re saying, as I think you’re saying—are you saying that even if you’re no longer driven by urge or desire or some rampant horniness you can, with pharmaceutical assistance, perhaps, still enjoy yourself? And enjoy me?”
“And appreciate the whole shebang more than ever,” he added.
“Shebang—no pun intended, I suppose.”
This time he was the one who laughed. “Okay, so, the pun was not intended, but it is appreciated, if you follow my drift. Like sex, it may no longer be intended as it once was, but it is enjoyed just as much. Same pattern.”
She loved it when they could playfully joust with each other’s intelligences. In the old days the sessions often proved preliminary, a kind of foreplay before foreplay, and now, were such times to be post-postcoital instead? A shift, but, in the overall scheme of things, a minor repositioning. One she could live with, in any case.