Killer Critique

by Alexander Campion

  The trill of her cell phone cut off her reflections.

  She flipped it open, turned slightly sideways in her chair, offering a three-quarter profile, and flapped her hand over the table to indicate the two officers should begin.

  “Allô. Dechery here. I have some preliminary information for you on last night’s stiff. Is this a good time?”

  “What did you guys find out?”

  “The pathologist is just doing the autopsy now,” Dechery said loudly over the shrieking whine of an electric saw. “But we already have a bunch of news that’s going to interest you. We extracted the baster first thing this morning. First interesting fact, no prints, naturally, but we did find faint ridging on the surface that had been wiped.”

  “Ridging?”

  “The baster had been held by someone wearing loose-fitting plastic-film gloves. Most likely the kind they use in food stores.” He paused to see if she had a question.

  “Got it. What else?”

  “The needle on the baster was three and a half inches long and must have gone into the primary auditory cortex and probably into the cerebrum itself. That alone would have caused immediate death. There was also a residue of thick brown liquid that looked like it might have been injected. We’ll know about that when the autopsy is complete. The pathologist is just lifting off the parietal and frontal—”

  “Dechery, remember you’re talking to a layperson here.”

  “The front and back of the top of the skull. He saws it off and lifts out the brain. He’s doing it now.”

  Capucine pushed away her plate of lumpy white nuggets of fish in a liquid yellow sauce.

  “Then we’ll know how far in the needle went and be able to determine how much of the liquid was injected. But here’s the punch line. We analyzed the residue in the baster this morning. You’ll never guess what it was.”

  Capucine drummed her fingertips on the table, refusing to rise to the bait.

  “A solution of ground-up castor beans!” Dechery was delighted. “Not only did your perp kill the victim with a basting needle but he also injected a castor-bean solution. Two firsts for me in one go. It’s made my day.”

  “Castor beans? Is that some kind of poison?”

  “Oh my dear! You kids of today have missed out on so much. Thirty years ago every child in France was regularly dosed with castor oil. It’s a mild laxative.”

  “The murderer wanted to give the victim diarrhea?” Both Isabelle and David looked up at Capucine quizzically.

  “There’s an urban legend that castor beans are a deadly poison. You know, like the myth that eating rhubarb leaves will kill you instantly. I imagine the castor bean one comes from the fact that they contain ricin, which really is a lethal poison. They use it in biological weaponry. But you need a chromatographic protein laboratory to extract ricin from castor beans. This stuff was just crushed mush that had been boiled down. Nothing lethal about it at all.” He paused. “Unless, of course, you inject it into someone’s brain.”

  “But you’re guessing the murderer probably didn’t know that.”

  “Guessing’s your job, Commissaire, not mine. But there’s more.”

  “Oui, Ajudant.”

  “Before we started the autopsy we did a thorough examination of the body with hyperspectral light. There was latent bruising on the left side of the face. Four small circular bruises, which almost certainly came from fingertips. We were able to get a very tight estimate of the time of the bruising and put it within half an hour of the death. It looks like someone came up behind the victim, held his head, and shoved the needle in his ear.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure. The hand was very strong. That was why the pressure was on the fingertips and not the palm. Given the spacing between the bruises, it was probably a man’s hand. It must have been a sudden, violent gesture.”

  When Capucine flipped her phone shut, David looked up from his plate and asked, “Death by diarrhea? This case just keeps getting better and better.”

  CHAPTER 15

  They walked into the brigade at three fifteen. Capucine was sure that Sybille, if she came at all, would be at least half an hour late.

  But she was already there, sitting in utter dejection on the hard wooden bench by the door. A baggy hoodie, two sizes too large, reached halfway down her black-legginged thighs. Despite the fact that the look was marred by a discreetly embroidered gray-on-gray LV on the hoodie—announcing a Louis Vuitton product—she was still perfectly convincing as a waif from the banlieue projects, living from one-night stand to one-night stand and from fix to fix. It was definitely clear that she had a fondness for Anne Parillaud roles. Incongruously, a small, expensive-looking shopping bag labeled SERGIO ROSSI stood arrogantly upright on the seat next to her.

  “Salut, Commissaire,” Sybille said in a little voice.

  “Mademoiselle has been here for nearly half an hour,” the uniformed receptionist whined. He was so starstruck, he was unable to divert his eyes from Sybille even when addressing his commissaire.

  Capucine led Sybille to her office, nodding at Isabelle to follow and dismissing David with an almost imperceptible flick of her fingers.

  Before they sat down, Sybille was transformed by one of her kaleidoscopic mood shifts. Bubbling with excitement, she pulled a shoe box from her shopping bag, extracting a pair of pumps for Capucine’s approval. They were bright red sling-backs with outrageously high stiletto heels, a tiny opening in front for a big toe to peep out coyly, and inch-high platform soles. Capucine picked up one of the shoes admiringly.

  “What do you think?” Sybille asked breathlessly. “They’re Sergio Rossis, and they make me look six feet tall.”

  Isabelle was ostentatiously bored.

  “I could never pull these off,” Capucine said. “But they’re going to be fabulous on you.”

  The two women giggled and embarked on a discussion of the dress that was to accompany the shoes. Both women called each other “tu” in flagrant violation of the police protocol that officers were to be addressed as “vous” and potential miscreants by the condescending “tu.” Isabelle fidgeted and looked uncomfortable.

  Like a skipper coaxing a very refined but capricious yacht into a jibe, Capucine nudged the conversation in a new direction.

  “Sybille,” she said, “it seems that the murder last night is probably connected to the one at Chez Béatrice.”

  Sybille looked at her blankly, as if she didn’t quite understand what this had to do with her.

  “And the curare that killed the victim at Chez Béatrice came from a Brazilian reception that you attended with Monsieur Voisin.”

  “And since I was there last night too, I’m a hot suspect. I love it! Totally.” Sybille shrieked with joy.

  “Wise up, kid,” Isabelle said, outraged. “With your arrest record, the commissaire is being very kind interviewing you in her office and letting you go out shopping for ugly shoes. You should be in a detention cell right now.”

  “My arrest record?” Sybille said with a childish pout. “I’ve never been arrested in my life,” she added, as if fighting back tears.

  “Our records show that you’ve been charged with shoplifting sixteen times.”

  “Charges, smarges. They were all dropped.”

  “You paid the store owners off. Without your money you’d be in a juvenile center right now. You don’t get what a serious position you’re in.”

  “Officer, you’re the one who doesn’t get it. You shoplift because you’re bored,” Sybille said. “Why else would you bother? It’s a kick. You walk by a counter, grab something, and stick it in your pocket. You get a mild rush. I always throw that stuff in the trash the minute I get out of the store. Like I really need another pair of sunglasses.” She rolled her eyes. “If I weren’t such a fucking celebrity with all the bullshit that goes with it, I wouldn’t be shoplifting and getting bleeding noses from snorting coke, now would I?”

  Isabelle checked, momenta
rily speechless.

  “And I’ll tell you another fucking thing. If you ‘steal’ a two-hundred-euro pair of Armani sunglasses and throw them in a Dumpster and then tell your lawyer to pay the store owner a thousand euros so he’ll go away, do you really think that counts as a crime?”

  Even though she knew it must be flawed, Isabelle was defeated by the logic.

  “But, Commissaire,” Sybille continued, flashing Capucine a smile that she pulled out of an acting drawer labeled EARNEST LOOKS, “I really, truly didn’t see anything at either restaurant. The first time I was just eating my dinner, which was actually pretty good, and I looked up and there was this old guy taking a nosedive into his grunts. Guy and I thought it was hysterical. We thought he’d zoned himself out on hooch or blow. But it turned out he was dead. Bummer for him.

  “And the second one, as fifty Web sites will now tell you in glowing detail, I was fooling around under the table, and even if I hadn’t been, I couldn’t have seen anything in that goddamn place anyway.”

  “Aren’t you ashamed of what you were doing? And with that phallocratic old man?” Isabelle asked.

  “You know, ‘Officer,’ ” Sybille said, the last word in heavy ironic quotes, “you just don’t get much at all, do you? ‘Phallocratic.’ Phallo-fucking-cratic! Christ. Phallo-fuck you!”

  There was a long three-beat pause. Isabelle didn’t know what to say and Capucine was waiting for the rest of it.

  “Do you have any idea at all where my big fucking success came from?” Sybille asked with a tone clearly implying that no one over the age of eighteen was capable of understanding anything. “It came from that awful movie. The movie where they raped me.”

  Capucine raised an eyebrow a quarter of an inch in interrogation.

  “The Black Horror of the Catacombs of Paris. Remember? That’s the one where champagne is squirted on my face after a big, heavy music buildup, implying that I was supposed to have—what’s that neato word you like to use in the police?—’fellated’ the forty-year-old star. Do you know how that was done? Wanna hear about it? I was fourteen at the time. I was told to get on my knees and read a prayer to the fucking world-famous lead actor. It was supposed to be a black-magic initiation rite. Then, two weeks later, we shot a party scene, and I was told that someone was going to open a bottle of champagne. I had no idea it was warm and they’d shook it up and it was going to go all over my face. When I went to the premiere and saw the cut with all those awful people there in those fat-cat clothes just loving it, I cried. I just sat there bawling. It was worse than having been raped. Way worse.”

  Despite the obvious antagonism toward her, Isabelle looked at Sybille in tender empathy, another defenseless victim abused by the phallocratic society all women are subjected to.

  “How did you wind up in the movies?” Capucine asked.

  “It was my father. He always told me I was very beautiful. More beautiful than anyone he had ever seen in the cinema. Ever since I was a small child, he made sure I was in all the school plays. By the time I was ten, I was famous in our village as an actress. When I was twelve, he took me to Paris. A friend of his had a cousin who worked at Gaumont and the man was going to give me a screen test. Gaumont put me on contract, and the rest is history,” she said with heavy cynicism.

  “Doesn’t your father deserve some credit for recognizing your talent?” Capucine said.

  “My talent? Right. You know what my fucking talent was? My dear old dad left me with this fat old boozehound at Gaumont and told me to be ‘real nice to him.’ Do you have any idea what that means?”

  Capucine was so taken aback, she spoke without thinking.

  “Are you sure your father really suggested that?”

  “Jeez, Commissaire, you must have the best plastic surgeon in the world. What are you? Eighty? How do you think he came to suggest something like that?”

  Capucine was utterly nonplussed.

  “Look. When I was a really little kid, like three or four or five, my father spent more time with me than my mom. He’d wash me in my bath and then dress me and all that stuff. Getting the picture?”

  “How can you possibly remember that?”

  “Easy. My mother told me. And he got ‘closer’ and ‘closer’ to me right up until she left him.” The word closer was said with heavy irony.

  “Your mother left your father? And you didn’t go with her?”

  “She left with some guy who didn’t like kids, so I was stuck with dear old Dad.”

  “That must have been very difficult for you.”

  “No. I was under contract and the euros were cascading in. He was all lovey-dovey.”

  “And are you estranged from him now?”

  “Estranged? Does that mean, do I still see him? You better believe I do. He’s my goddamn manager. In fact, he’s the only guy in the world I really trust. He’s my man. I don’t go to the toilet unless he okays it.”

  “I see. Can we talk about your relationship to Guy Voisin?”

  “Guy? What’s there to say? He’s fabulous. Or do you want hot pictures? I have a bunch I could give you. You could post them on your bulletin board. How cool would that be?”

  “Where did you meet him?”

  “ ‘Where did you meet him?’ Sure, Mommy. If you really want to know, I met him three or four months ago at Les Bains.”

  “Where?” Isabelle asked.

  “Oh, God. Les Bains Douches. You know, like, the club. Duh.”

  “And he was there dancing the night away?” Capucine asked.

  “Guy? Not even close. I was downstairs with a bunch of assholes who were making me want to barf, they were so boring. On top of it all they’d run out of blow. I really needed to get out of there, but I didn’t have any money.”

  “No money? How could you not have money?” Isabelle asked.

  “You’re not going to take a bag or anything to a club, are you? Normally, I stick a hundred euro note into my panties in case something comes up except I wasn’t wearing any that night. So I went upstairs to the restaurant to see if there was anyone I knew. And there was my sweet little Guy, having snackies with some geriatrics. He looked at me and I looked at him and he knew right off what I wanted.”

  “What you wanted?” Isabelle asked. “It was love at first sight?”

  Sybille gave Isabelle another withering look and examined the ceiling carefully from end to end.

  “So we did a bunch of lines on top of the toilet seat in the ladies’ room—that’s a great way to get to know people in a hurry. You ought to try it sometime. And that was that.”

  “Meaning?” Capucine asked.

  “Meaning he said he had some stuff called Bolshoi Grand Battements back at his place and asked me if I wanted to try it. Obviously I did.”

  “Ballet moves?”

  “Hey, Commissaire, you know, it’s like you look kind of a little hip, but when you start talking, wow! BGB is like blow, but way, way better. Maybe someday I’ll bring you some and you can see what it does. It might change the way you see things, like in a very good way.”

  “Sybille,” Capucine said, “Monsieur Voisin is sixty-two and you’re eighteen—”

  “Christ, don’t tell anyone that! My agent wants the world to think I’m sixteen. I’ll be sweet sixteen forever. He thinks that makes me sexier.”

  “How can you have a sexual relationship with a man old enough to be your grandfather?” Isabelle asked. “Don’t you find it disgusting that he preys on you like that?”

  Sybille produced her withering look again. “You two really do sound just like everybody’s mother and grandmother rolled into one. You know what? Just because I didn’t finish the lycée and don’t have my bac doesn’t make me an ignoramus. It just so happens I’ve read Freud and know exactly what you’re getting at.”

  Capucine looked at her with just the hint of a sympathetic smile and said nothing.

  “You think I’m with Guy because he’s some sort of father figure and I need an old fart to prot
ect me because I’m some sort of retard, don’t you?”

  Capucine increased the sympathy in her smile by half a notch.

  “That’s because you don’t understand anything. If anyone’s doing any protecting in our thing, it’s me. That’s the whole point. Guy’s flat broke. I pay for the dinners. I score the blow. Merde, I even paid to have his fat-cat, humongous Mercedes overhauled last week. What do you think about that?” She leaned back with the self-satisfied smile of someone who has scored a major point.

  “But isn’t he chairman and part owner of a large vignoble?” Capucine asked.

  “Maybe he is, but he still doesn’t have two euro coins to rub together in his jeans. And I’ll tell you why. You think I’m a complete retard, but I’m so not. I asked my lawyer to check him out. It seems Guy’s shares, as well as the rest of the family’s, are in some sort of trust. The way it works is that the family votes on everything and they decide how the money gets doled out. He’s got lots of shares but not even close to a majority. So he doesn’t ever get any gelt from the company. Got that, Commissaire, or is this too complicated for you?”

  “But he still gets a salary,” Capucine said. “So why do you have to pay for his dinners?”

  “Who the hell cares? I dunno where his shekels go. And I don’t give a rusty fuck. Maybe Guy has another little honey on the side. Hey, there’s an idea. We could do a threesome. How cool would that be? But he hasn’t come clean on that one yet.” She rooted around in her oversized handbag, pulled out a pack of Marlboro Reds, lit one, and blew a thick stream of smoke through her smile.

  “Okay if I smoke?” she asked rhetorically. Capucine pushed an ashtray toward her.

  “So what do you see in him?” Isabelle asked.

  “What do I see in him? What don’t I see in him? Guy’s my little puppy dog. He’s pleased as shit to follow me around all day. He never asks for anything. Well, yeah, a little small change maybe, but so fucking what? Sometimes he’s like, ‘Let’s go to such and such three-star restaurant tonight’ or ‘I need a new suit. Let’s go get one at Chaumet,’ but that’s nothing. It doesn’t even count as money. And the best part is he doesn’t even like sex. Guys my own age are all over me all the time. You can’t even get a decent night’s sleep. Guy, man, his head hits the pillow and he’s gonzo. It’s great!”