The Faces of God

by Mallock;

  “But it’s still a significant number. We need to pursue this further.”

  “What should I do?”

  “Routine investigation on Line One with photos of the victims in one hand and your notebook in the other. One of our vics might have spoken to a transit agent; they might remember.”

  “It’s a needle in a haystack, boss. And Line One—Jesus! I’ve got no chance in that crowd! Don’t get your hopes up.”

  “I didn’t say it would be easy. It would take a stroke of luck. But we have to try. Get two or three guys to help you—and stop by grand central video and . . . motivate them a little. Work it out for yourself. Now, put Francis back on, please.”

  The sound of a crashing chair heralded Francis’s arrival back on the line.

  “Did you fall?”

  “It’s okay; I’ve got a hard head. We’re working on the address books and mobile phones. Nothing to report yet. Ken and Bob are helping me between calls. We should have four more operators around eight o’clock.”

  “And the composite sketch of the target victim?”

  “It’s done, but I don’t think it’s going to be very useful. The victims don’t look like each other, and the morpho-biometric average I came up with doesn’t correspond to anything; it doesn’t show an archetype.”

  “Come on, try harder. Nothing at all?”

  Francis hesitated for a moment. Then: “Just an impression . . . ”

  “Well?”

  “A kind of . . . regularity.”

  “Meaning? What have you got?”

  “Well, okay. At the end, since you told me to compare absolutely everything, I had the weird idea of cutting them in half vertically. The photos, I mean.”

  “And?”

  “And, the two sides looked like one another. I don’t know what it could mean.”

  “That’s called beauty, Francis. No charm or seductiveness; just simple beauty. If you look at Greek statues, or painted portraits, that’s what you see.”

  “Like in Picasso’s Weeping Woman?” Francis, smiling at his own joke, waited for the explosion from the other end of the line.

  “The exception that proves the rule. Well done, Chief Inspector. Now, while we wait for the listings, my dear exegete, I want you to send me a printout of what you’ve done. I want one of the two copies of Grimaud’s files—you’ll see that there are three binders. As long as I’m stuck here I wouldn’t mind some reading material to pass the time.”

  “That stuff’s going to weigh a ton. I’ll call one of the motorcycle cops; it should be over there in twenty minutes. Then I’ll keep going with the data entry.”

  “Perfect, thanks. I’ll let you get back to work. I’ll be back tomorrow morning. Oh—don’t forget to make sure my safe is closed again after you get the three binders out.”

  Mallock hung up on Francis, who was wondering if being called an “exegete” by his boss was positive or negative. First order of business: look the definition of the word up online.

  Now for the chore of the day: Mallock returned Judge Humbert’s call. Whew; he wasn’t there. Amédée left his message—a few sentences recapping what had been done so far—and promised to contact the judge again when there was any news. Then he lay back down to wait for Amélie. Soon she would be there, just a few centimeters away from him. He imagined her. Her perfume and her smile. Amélie Maurel, and all the delightful things associated with her.

  Waiting for her was a pleasure both strong and hazy; heavy and smooth.

  After so much pain, grieving Tom.

  This lightness after a weight heavy as lead had a name: joy.

  He studied his hands. He looked at them often. They were as thick as Amélie’s neck was long and fragile. For a millisecond, he thought of strangling her. Just like that. One of those terrifying, interfering ideas that impose themselves on men’s minds when a bubble of hell floats up and breaks the surface. In truth, he would give his life to protect her. Only his son had ever inspired a feeling like this before.

  Ten minutes later, the sound of the electric doorbell made him jump. Grimacing horribly, he dragged himself to the door. It wasn’t Amélie, and Mallock felt ridiculous with the silly grin he wore in preparation for greeting her. A huge, helmeted motorcycle cop respectfully saluted the large man with the twisted body who was smiling at him so tenderly.

  “Have a good day, Superintendent!”

  Back in his room, Amédée opened the voluminous packet. Besides Grimaud’s files, it contained the book of images assembled so carefully by Francis. His young chief inspector had done a beautiful job. The portraits of the victims had been retouched and cropped for a homogenous look. On the back of each photo was a brief biography printed in small letters. Mallock stretched out so he could think better. What element, what fact, what particular detail might link all these people, other than their terrible deaths?

  He opened the leather portfolio RG had given him at their lunch as if it were a time bomb. At the end of the file there were photos pertaining to cases one through seven: two children, one man, and four women, all added to the list thanks to the work RG and Mordome had done.

  Amédée sat up, wincing, and pulled out some of the photos. After a brief hesitation, he folded them in half vertically. A hint of a smile appeared on his pain-filled face. When pressed against the window of his room so that they became transparent, the faces showed almost perfect symmetry.

  Francis’s work hadn’t been for nothing. Without even knowing it, the Makeup Artist—or Artists—was attracted by ancient ideals of beauty. For some reason yet to be determined, he—they—was sensitive to the harmony of a face. Was that the only criterion? And what had they wanted to do with that beauty, when they killed the victims?

  The additional forensic report signed by Mordome had been added after the discovery of these seven previous murders and was fairly straightforward. All of the crimes seemed to have been perpetrated by a single individual. The first victims had been found quite literally bathing in their own blood, while the later ones had been left drained of it. But the result was the same—only the fashion had changed, whether it be called “ceremonial evolution” or “amplified perversion.” These exsanguinations, for reasons that might be fetishist or cannibalistic, certainly corresponded to the morbid and murderous development of one and the same psychopathic individual.

  Mallock decided to look back over the thirteen murders as a whole. He included the Saint-Mandé case, which he had had the sad privilege of observing up close. If they were no longer looking at this as the work of a satanic cult, as his first impression had suggested, what other possibilities might there be? When Mallock opened up the floodgates of his imagination, it meant letting in every single possibility—and also the impossibilities, which were his favorites. He even went so far as to envision, briefly and privately, the existence of a series of copycats, like father-to-son vampires, before going back to something more reasonable: a man of extraordinary intelligence and self-control, perhaps aided by one or two accomplices, whom he surprised himself by thinking of as female. Why? He didn’t yet have the slightest idea.

  He was mulling that over when the doorbell finally announced Amélie’s arrival.

  She was so damn pretty. So sweet in her full, pleated skirt, boots, and oversized gray sweater from some thrift shop. As she talked to him, she massaged and manipulated his back gently. An hour after her arrival, he was no longer in pain. It was 8:30, and the two of them went out to grab some breakfast.

  “I’ve only got twenty minutes,” she had warned him. And yet they spent an hour together, eating croissants and bread and butter. She talked, and he watched her. When he looked at her he felt as if he were tasting her; savoring her ears and her small breasts, caressing her forehead and her shoulders, sucking her lips and sliding his tongue over her little teeth. With his eyes, he was already making love to her.

 
She left at a run. Mallock, watching her recede in the distance, felt his throat tighten. Amélie and Amédée. To him, it already sounded like a fairy tale.

  He spent the rest of Wednesday studying Grimaud’s documents. He realized that he was excited; more excited than he had ever been before. The contents of the three files were spread out on every surface in the living room; Francis’s images and the stuff from RG’s leather portfolio were laid out in the bedroom. He went from room to room. Rearranged the piles. Went into the office to copy passages and do side-by-side comparisons. Racked his brain for every scrap of deductive reasoning skill. Chewed his fingernails and the skin on his fingertips. Quivered with irritation and blew out his breath like a seal to relieve his stress.

  What was he so afraid of? It was only an investigation, nothing more. Was he in the habit of screwing up? No, but that was just it—this might be the time he got it wrong.

  His worst fear: failure.

  With every case, the same doubt, the same fear of being wrong, of missing something, filled him with anxiety. Mallock paid for his certainties with painful and permanent uncertainty.

  This time, he felt he had a new reason justifying the profoundness of his worry. Never before had he dealt with so many unknowns in the equation of an investigation involving a serial killer. Normally, every murder came with a puzzle piece stuck loosely to the bottom of its boots. The police officer’s job often consisted of being patient, waiting for the next murder with its crop of clues and the possibility of narrowing the field; waiting for the piece that would make it possible to see the whole picture—the image of the killer. Here, there was nothing—at least, nothing convincing. The lists were sparse, the timetables approximate, the fingerprints ghostly, the motives nonexistent, the victims dissimilar. And there was no alibi to verify because there were no suspects, or almost none. Grimaud’s files were stuffed, and yet horribly empty.

  There was nothing for Mallock to chew on, and he was starving.

  The amount of time separating each murder had dwindled from a year to a week. If the killer was still shortening the intervals between his periods of madness, the next killing would happen on the first of January.

  He had only three days to keep that from happening.

  10.

  Thursday, December 30th. Morning

  Now that his back wasn’t hurting so much, the stroll from Mallock’s apartment to Number 36 was actually a pleasure; even now, after thirty years of living in Paris. It was a nice day, which allowed for a leisurely stroll to the office, reflecting on orders to be given and new strategies to be implemented. He always took the same route lately, and every morning he told himself that this probably wasn’t very smart. He was not without enemies. What better moving target could there be for some crook out of prison on good behavior than Mallock on foot? For this reason, and so he wouldn’t find himself staring defenselessly down the barrel of a gun, he was always armed with a weapon of his own.

  He carried a 9 mm Glock 34 IPSC, loaded with 17 hollow-point FMJ bullets—except when he felt the atmosphere was more relaxed, and he traded those 700 grams of polymer for a 300-gram 340PD Smith and Wesson protected by a Cordura holster attached to his belt, loaded with five high-precision .38 special bullets.

  During an assault or a period of great stress, he carried both weapons on him at all times. Mallock was a big, gentle bear of a man, but with claws and teeth befitting a beast.

  Outside, the Paris that met Mallock’s gaze was light grey and pearly, dry and cold. The inner edges of the gutters were still frozen, with white slashes and sheets of silver.

  Amédée cut through the Place Baudoyer, beneath which was the parking space he had just bought for his car. Turning left at the Pont d’Arcole, he walked along the Quai de Gesvres. Steam puffed from his mouth with each breath. He had a meeting with the Seine. When he reached it he gave it a quick, loving glance, as he did every day. He walked along the length of the iron-railed barrier, stopping to watch the barges and tourist boats as they passed. The noise of the water lapping against the piles. Seagulls crying above the river. Ordinary city noises. Pigeons cooing beneath the bridge.

  In the Place Louis Lépine he was greeted by the scent of the flower market. He walked along the Quai de la Corse before taking a left on the Boulevard du Palais. Bridges stretched between the trees on the two banks, heavy with Christmas decorations and lights, blinking “joy” above the trees.

  He decided to make a stop at the Deux Palais bar-tabac for three reasons: his aching back; a major craving for a croissant and a café crème; and—strangely—to gaze upon Justice. The famous court building had impressed him so much when he first came to Paris, burning to join the police force. Since then he had stopped so many times in this café to look at the great edifice that he had become friends with the owner, a taciturn man from Brittany.

  It was the owner who brought him his breakfast. “Here,” he said shortly, thumping the metal cups down on the round table.

  “Thanks,” returned Mallock with a smile and an equal economy of phrase.

  Across from him the court of cassation, the assizes, the court of first instance, and the small claims court overlooked the Cour du Mai. As if to protect and ennoble all of these, an impressive gilded gate rose up in front of them, adorned with the royal arms.

  Mallock surprised himself by imagining being seated at this same spot in a few days, watching as the Makeup Artist walked through those gates handcuffed between two policemen. Of course it wouldn’t happen quite like that; the building adjoined Number 36 and convicted prisoners didn’t use these gates anymore. But he needed to visualize the monster, to give him back a sense of reality that the violence of his crimes had taken away from him along with his humanity. Mallock needed something concrete, needed to imagine a flesh-and-blood man with a haggard face, mounting the grand staircase of justice, surrounded by the blue of uniforms, the black of ravens, the ermine rampant, and the usual army of scavengers rushing in for the kill.

  Everything he had just read—theories and deductions, trails, horrors and hesitations—had turned the Makeup Artist into an abstraction, a hypothetical monster. This often happened when it took a long time to identify and arrest a culprit. You ended up even doubting his existence, as if trying to come up with some sort of excuse—that is, when you weren’t imagining that he was dead, or on the other side of the world in the tropics, having a relaxed dinner with some retired dictator or a bunch of Nazi torturers in hiding. You could imagine him doing anything except having breakfast peacefully somewhere nearby, planning his next murder.

  Mallock thought about ordering another croissant, but knew he should talk himself out of it. The more weight he gained, the more his back would hurt. And besides, there was Amélie now, he thought, before paying the check and getting up. He visualized the scene across the street one last time: a procession of police cars, and the infamous demon emerging with his ankles chained together, looking like an idiot. A crazy, cruel, common criminal, he thought to himself, enjoying the alliteration.

  “Later, Mallock,” called the owner.

  Turning back to return the farewell, Mallock noticed the waiter serving a glass of tomato juice to a young woman in a fur coat. A question occurred to him. What in the world could the Makeup Artist be doing with all that blood?

  A scarlet question that would dog him until the end.

  Outside, Amédée saw Bob emerging, rumpled, from the Guimard exit of the Saint-Michel metro stop, a hundred meters away. He waited for him on the other side of the bridge.

  “Fucking metro!” Amédée could hear Bob swearing once he was within earshot. To be fair, he smelled like a mixture of nicotine, rancid oil, and sickly farts, a combination that Mallock silently dubbed Metropolitan Fragrance of Paris.

  “Hello to you too. How was the fishing; catch anything?”

  “I went back down there at eleven o’clock last night, and didn’t leave u
ntil just now. I’m totally bushed. This case really is a shit-covered stick.”

  Seeing that his boss didn’t seem too sympathetic to his unhappiness, he continued: “In three hours, my guys and I questioned a good fifty transit agents on Line One routes. No luck, except one granny who saw one of the victims with . . . I’ll give you three guesses.”

  “Spit it out. It’s cold out here.”

  “With a priest. In a cassock.”

  “The media’s going to love that.”

  “What should I do now?”

  It was a question Mallock always answered the same way: “Keep at it. Oh—what about the videos?”

  “The transit authority is about to connect all its cameras to a central surveillance hub in the near future, a security command post, which will be at their headquarters in the Gare de Lyon. Transit agents will be able to use fiber optics to directly access images from 8,000 cameras that’ll be mounted on platforms and in corridors all over the transit network.”

  “I don’t give a shit about the near future. I’m talking about today.”

  “I went to the new Multimodal Video Surveillance Center at Châtelet-les-Halles; it’s brand-new. They’re in the process of testing image analysis software and various intelligent cameras . . . ”

  “I don’t care! Tell me about something that exists right now, dammit!”

  Bob stammered: “For the mounted cameras, video is backed up for the fifteen minutes before and after an alarm is set off.”

  “I don’t care. Third and last warning.”

  “Well, what do you want me to tell you? It would be great if we got something on film. Most of the cameras on the platforms and in the corridors take high-resolution images. The platforms are one hundred percent covered from two angles at all times. If we had someone specific to look for, we should be able to find him. For the corridors it varies a lot from station to station.”