Killer Critique

by Alexander Campion

  When she had worked upstairs in La Crim’, the basement interrogation rooms had dismayed her—tangible proof of the brutality for which the Police Judiciaire was infamous. The rooms were in the third level basement, well below the level of the Seine, which flowed on the far side of the walls. Imagining the water pressure added to the sense of oppression. The rooms were so damp the green paint on the walls flaked and peeled no matter how frequently repainted. The furniture consisted of old, dented and stained oak tables and gray metal chairs with bent legs. Aluminum dome lamps hung from the ceiling, lighting only the table and whoever was unlucky enough to be sitting at it.

  Béatrice was in Room C. Capucine knocked quietly on the ice-cold, ancient, iron door. The judas window in the door opened a crack was closed immediately. The door swung open slowly, screeching on hinges that remained rusty even though they were oiled constantly.

  The scene was one Capucine had witnessed far too often while at La Crim’. The table had been pushed aside. An unknowable number of people lurked almost invisibly in the shadows. Béatrice sat in a chair directly under the harsh light of the lamp, her forearms duct taped to the arms of her chair, as was done when the suspect’s violence threatened wounds from handcuffs.

  Only two men were visible in the glow from the cone of light. Capucine had seen them at work many times but had never learned their names. A portly older detective, who—save for the old-style Manurhin three fifty seven in a sweat-darkened leather holster under his left armpit—could have passed for the sort of financial adviser who went to people’s homes to sit around the dining table to advise them on their mutual funds—and a young, viperous man, so pallid and rangy he could have been a heroin addict. These were the good and bad cops de service.

  As Capucine approached the tableau, Béatrice raised her head and spat at her.

  “You filthy bitch!” she hissed.

  The viperous man slapped her. She hissed at him but then let her head fall on her chest again.

  Tallon emerged from the shadows.

  “I’m wasting my time down here. These two are getting nowhere. I’m counting on you to produce something. I’m using the conference room upstairs. Call me when you have something to tell me,” he said as curtly as if he were still running the La Crim’. The door screamed open and clanged shut behind Tallon.

  At the sound, Béatrice stood up, arms attached to the chair, and ran at Capucine, attempting to head-butt her in the stomach. Two uniformed officers, of considerably beefier morphology than the average on the force, grabbed the back of the chair and slammed it back in its original position.

  The viperous man approached to administer another slap. Capucine stopped him with two raised fingers.

  With monosyllables and hand gestures Capucine ordered the two uniformed officers to stand at a distance behind Béatrice and to have a chair brought for herself. She placed the chair so she was diagonally opposite Béatrice, left leg inches away from left leg.

  Capucine attempted to recreate the tone of their intimacy.

  “You must be exhausted. Would you like some tea? I used to have a selection of tea bags from Mariage Frères in the closet of my old office upstairs and I’ll bet they’re still there. I can have someone make you a cup of a first-blush Darjeeling.”

  “Pute,” Béatrice spat at her.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” Capucine said, maintaining her girl-to-girl cheerfulness.

  “There’s nothing to talk about. My father will be here soon to take me away. That’s what he always does.”

  “Why were you so angry with Alexandre?”

  “Because he’s one of them. In fact, I think he may even be their leader.”

  “Them?”

  “Them. Those who judge. Those who command. Those who suck the life out of you.”

  “Oh, them. And they had to be ... removed? Is that it?”

  “Obviously.” Béatrice relaxed in her chair. Her breathing slowed. Some color came back into her face.

  Capucine inched her chair closer to Béatrice.

  “And killing them was the only way of removing them,” Capucine said in a whisper.

  “I never killed anyone. What the hell are you talking about? You’re trying to put words in my mouth. But it’s not going to work,” Béatrice said loudly.

  Capucine needed a long silence. No one in the room moved or even seemed to breathe. They might be brutal but they were definitely very good at the nuances of interrogations.

  Just as the silence became unbearable, Capucine said, “I was at your apartment. I saw the pens.”

  “The pens,” Béatrice said wistfully.

  “They’re important?”

  “They’re the whole thing. They’re what it’s about. The distillate of the power. The elixir. The key to the door.”

  “And you had to kill to get them, didn’t you?”

  “You bitch! I keep telling you. I never killed anyone. I’m just sitting here waiting for my father to come get me. And he will!”

  Another very long silence.

  “Tell me about Jean Monteil.”

  “That fat old buffoon. He knew less about food than my mother, and that’s saying a whole lot. I’m talking about a woman who thinks that heating up a few trays of frozen hors d’œuvres for cocktail guests is the culinary achievement of the century. That guy was a serious menace.”

  “And that’s why you had to kill him?”

  “Bitch! Shut your fucking mouth. I told you. I haven’t killed anybody. I’m just sitting here waiting for my father. So get off my fucking case, pute!”

  Another very long pause.

  “One of the pens had the initials ‘A. P.’ engraved in the cap,” Capucine said.

  “Arsène Peroché. What a fucker that guy was. He had taste and he knew what he was talking about. That’s true. But he was like all the others. He didn’t know how to control his power. He would diss brilliant chefs who were cooking from their hearts. He would suck the life out of them and leave only a hot, sweaty, stinking shell.”

  “So he had to go.”

  “Of course he had to go.”

  “And you needed to kill him.”

  “You stupid bitch! Will you fucking listen to me? I’ve never killed anyone in my life. I’m not going to talk to you anymore. So there! Happy now?” She pouted like a child.

  “You never killed anyone? Not even your little dog?”

  “Who told you about that!!!” Béatrice yelled, attempting to rise from the chair. “It’s so not true.”

  “A man who lives under a bridge told me about it.”

  “What? What man? You’re making this up. That’s bullshit. No one knows about Ratafia. No one at all! And it wasn’t even me. He fell into the barbecue all by himself. It was an accident. And anyway he deserved it. He never stopped yapping all day long.”

  “Are you telling me you put your puppy on the barbecue ?”

  “Not at all. Why would you think that? I’ve never even had a puppy. You know, for a supposedly hot flic, you have a very hard time understanding people.”

  “Tell me about Gautier du Fesnay.”

  “Gautier? Another one from the evil empire. He had taste but he was vicious. Another wicked judge.”

  “And he had to die because he judged?”

  Béatrice stared at the floor as if she had not heard.

  “You had to kill him?”

  Béatrice looked unblinkingly into Capucine’s eyes as if she had been woken in the middle of the night and was trying to understand where she was.

  “I’ve never killed anyone, ever,” she said with chilling sincerity.

  After an hour Capucine gave up. She had gone around the track three more times and had got absolutely nowhere. She left the interrogation room with the orders that Béatrice was not to be questioned. She trudged up the famous staircase A to the third floor and went to the conference room. Tallon sat as erect as if on parade reading Le Monde. When Capucine walked in, he raised an index finger instructing her t
o remain silent. After a long wait, he closed the tabloid-size newspaper, smoothed it flat with the palm of his hand, folded it in half, pushed it away on the table.

  “Your husband has quite a way with words. He’s very amusing. I never go to the places he writes about, but I love his reviews. Was he shaken up by the events this evening?”

  “Shaken up? When last seen he was getting sloshed in our infirmary with one of my brigadiers and threatening to spend the rest of the night at the Pied de Cochon. I gave instructions to the uniforms who were going to drive him that they were to take him home, even if they had to use force.”

  “Too bad. I would gladly have joined them. I know it’s not the done thing to eat onion soup in the middle of the summer, but I would have made an exception. How did you make out with Mademoiselle Renaud?”

  “She’s a smart cookie. She’s playing a role to set herself up for a plea of insanity and enjoying herself immensely. She talks openly about the murders and why it was oh so necessary for the victims to die, but denies ever having killed anyone. She has a talent for acting.”

  “So we have a difficult choice, don’t we?”

  “Yes, sir, we do.”

  “Sit down. Let’s talk. You first.”

  “Yes, sir.” Capucine paused. “This is the first time on this case that I’d have valued the advice of a competent juge d’instruction.” She laughed.

  “We have two choices,” Capucine said. “We apprehended Renaud attempting a homicide. We could take her to the tribunal correctionnel and the judge would automatically convict her and she’d begin her sentence immediately. There would be no possibility of appeal. The problem with that is that since no one died in the attempt, she’d get ten years at the outside and be out on parole on in six or less.”

  Tallon scratched his chin and searched in vain for a window to stare through. “My guess would be an eight-year sentence, with her out on parole in four years. Go on.”

  “The other thing we could do is prepare a case for all the murders to take to the cour d’assises. We have a fair amount of evidence. Some of it very damning.”

  Tallon frowned.

  “The problem, of course, is that Renaud’s father would pull out all the stops in hiring a legal team. Even if she’s convicted the first time, they would definitely appeal.”

  “But she’d be in the clink.”

  “She could be out in a year if we went that route.”

  “Commissaire, you’re not thinking like a flic.”

  “A confession? Please. Of course, you could go down there and whack her into submission and she’d sign anything you wanted. But she’d repudiate it in court and start yelling about police brutality. She’d probably get off scot-free. And can you imagine the press we’d get with her father’s money behind it?”

  Tallon scowled at her and tapped the table with his middle finger.

  “So?”

  “So? I just don’t know.”

  They discussed pens, night-vision glasses, turkey trussing needles, and DNA until the small hours of the morning, as Béatrice remained taped to her chair below the level of the Seine. In the end, taking the risk, faute de mieux, Tallon remanded Béatrice to La Santé prison, where she would wait until she was transported in a dark cage in a police van to spend her day being scrutinized by a row of men in long black robes with flowing white bibs, to return to La Santé, if the gods of justice were so disposed, to spend the rest of her life behind dark gray walls.

  Leaving the Quai, Capucine had a clear vision of Béatrice enclosed in her glass dock, listening to witnesses accusing her from the podium facing the semicircular bench, recoiling from the forbidding, evaluating scowls of the judges. It would be the embodiment of her worst nightmare. Capucine rejoiced at the thought of Béatrice’s suffering and hated herself for her pleasure.

  CHAPTER 41

  Capucine didn’t get home until after three. Alexandre was flat on his back on their bed. He snored deeply, rattling from the base of his throat, emitting an almost visible miasma of morning-after beer at each eructation. Nevertheless, Capucine experienced the flood of love she always felt when she saw him asleep. And with the rush came the guilt. There was no getting around it. She had pitted the entirety of what she loved most in life against a single arrest. It was merely one among scores of arrests that were certain to happen in coming years. What kind of person would do that to her husband? What was that telling her about her marriage? What did that tell her about her life?

  She walked down the long hall to the guest bedroom. No Momo. She hadn’t really expected he would stay the night. Aimlessly, she walked back up the hall and wandered into the living room, far too keyed up to even think of sleep. She poured herself a double measure of vodka and took it into the kitchen, opened the freezer door, and twisted a pink rubber ice-cube tray, hoping to extract two cubes while leaving the others in place. The ice shattered with a noise like a short string of Chinese firecrackers. She stood stock still for a moment listening intently to see if she had woken Alexandre. Silence. She dumped three cubes into the glass and rooted through the lower compartment of the refrigerator for a lemon. She found one, squeezed it in her hand to loosen the juice, and then tossed it back irritably. This was no time for niceties.

  She dug into her trousers for her cell phone and pressed in Isabelle’s speed dial. Despite the hour Isabelle seemed wide awake. Capucine could hear the murmur of a television in the background.

  They spoke for twenty minutes, during which Capucine poured herself another vodka.

  “And so how do we know when to make the arrest?”

  “I’ll be there with you by then.”

  “What if you’re late?”

  Capucine snorted a laugh. “That’s the one thing you don’t have to worry about. Get some sleep. We have a big day tomorrow.”

  When she hung up, Capucine’s exhaustion fell on her all at once like an impossibly heavy coat of chain mail. Making it to the bedroom was an accomplishment. She shrugged off her clothes, leaving them in a pile by the bed, slid under the sheet, and—oblivious to his snores and the stench of beer—pulled Alexandre’s outstretched arm over her as if it were an expiating blanket, capable on its own of granting absolution.

  It seemed like her cell phone started buzzing the minute her head hit the pillow. She leaned over the side of the bed and groped through the pile of clothes searching for her tan twill trousers. Inexplicably, the yellow light of an advanced morning was visible around the edges of the blind. She extracted the phone from the pocket of her trousers, glanced at the screen, and was astonished that it was noon. The caller was marked “private.” She pushed the green TALK button and was greeted with the near-hysterical voice of Martinière.

  “Yet another outrage, Commissaire. This time I’m definitely going to have to take disciplinary action.”

  Capucine sighed audibly and contemplated hanging up. There was a long pause.

  “Allô, Commissaire. Were you asleep? It’s after twelve. Are you derelict in your duty as well as insubordinate?”

  “All right, monsieur le juge, what’s the problem this morning?” Capucine sat up, her bare legs dangling over the side of the bed. She made patterns in the rug with her big toes. She bent over and examined her feet closely. No matter what happened, she was going to have a pedicure on Saturday.

  “Morning? It’s hardly the morning. And the problem? I think it goes far beyond being a mere problem. I just finished reading the magistrates’ morning circular, and I see that you have arrested a suspect and remanded her for trial. If I understand the situation, there was the opportunity to have her convicted on the spot in flagrante delicto but you—without consulting me—have chosen a full court prosecution for three murders.”

  “That’s exactly right, monsieur le juge.”

  “It is my role to determine judicial procedure, not the police’s. As it happens, you did make the correct choice. An on-the-spot delicto conviction would have been a mistake.”

  Capucine sighed
and wrote Alexandre’s name in the carpet with her big toe. How could anyone be so long-winded?

  “The most serious offense is that I see that Contrôleur Général Tallon has requested a mandate of arrest for someone he seems to believe is the suspected perpetrator of one of the restaurant murders.”

  “That is also correct.”

  “That arrest simply must not happen. I will not allow it.”

  Capucine was amazed. She would never understand the man.

  “Why ever not? We arrest guilty people. That’s our job.”

  “Think about it, Commissaire. What happens if this person confesses to having committed more than one of the murders?”

  “Monsieur le juge, I’m just not following you here.”

  “Don’t you see, in that case Béatrice Renaud would no longer be a serial killer? She needs to have committed three murders to be deemed a serial killer.”

  Without putting on any clothes, Capucine had walked into the kitchen and started making coffee on the Pasquini. She stifled her laughter.

  “I think I understand. If she’s not officially a serial killer, you couldn’t claim you’d apprehended the first serial killer arrested in France in decades.”

  “Exactly. Do you understand now?”

  Her coffee made, Capucine poured some milk into a small metal jug.

  “You and the contrôleur général have been precipitate. You made your arrest far too soon. If you’d waited, Renaud would have killed two or three more people. Since you went off half-cocked, it’s imperative you don’t further jeopardize the situation by making this other arrest. In any event the matter is closed. I’ve rescinded your arrest warrant and you will be sanctioned if you proceed. Is that clear?”

  “Perfectly.” Capucine laughed as she fitted the little jug under the steam jet and turned it on. A violent burst of steam blew through the milk, frothing it. She knew an empty threat when she heard one.

  “What is that irritating noise?”

  “Probably something in the street, monsieur le juge. There’s no need to be alarmed. The arrest is not planned until next week at the earliest. Why don’t I ask monsieur le contrôleur général to give you a call later today? I’m sure he will be very interested in hearing your position.” Capucine poured the foaming milk into her coffee, rooted through a small bowl of irregularly shaped Le Perroquet lumps of cane sugar, found one of exactly the right size, dropped it in her coffee. “Will that do, monsieur le juge?”