by Jeremy Bates
Apparently his curiosity trumped his obedience to Zolan, and he left the room.
The rest of the mob barked and groaned and bumped one another in what was either confusion or fear or both. Then one worked up the courage and left as well. Then another, and another, until Danièle was by herself.
She scrambled quickly to the fallen soldier and found the handcuff key in a belt keeper between the holster and baton. She stuck the key in the handcuff’s keyhole and fiddled with it until the shackle jaw slid open. She brought her hands in front of her and unlocked the second cuff. Then she tore the rag from her mouth and sucked back air—just as a gunshot rang out.
Katja and I dashed back into the museum proper, but there was no place to hide, no place to run. I heard the door bang open behind us and knew Zolan would be right on our heels. We turned one corner after another and ended up in the church Danièle had mentioned. The nave was capped by a sculpted ceiling and a cupola decorated with a fresco. A giant baldachin with distinctive twisted columns rose above the altar and a nativity scene.
“There!” I said, pointing down the left transept to a pair of giant doors.
We ran toward them, our feet slapping on the marble floor.
For a moment Zolan had feared Will and Katja would escape into the gardens to the east of the museum and reach the military hospital, but instead they fled toward the adjoining church, the main doors of which would undoubtedly be locked at this hour.
He slowed to a fast walk with the SIG Pro held out in front of him and told himself this was all going to work out after all. In a few minutes he would be back in the catacombs with Will, Danièle, Katja, and the dead military guard in the custodial closet. Investigators would find the two men he’d shot, but that would be all. Suspicion would shift to the missing guard, yet there would be little to go on, and the case would go cold.
Safely underground once more, Zolan would not make the same mistake twice. He would kill Will immediately and then Danièle after he had his way with her, then he would finish what was long overdue. He would kill the rest of them: Jörg, Karl, Odo…Katja. It would break his heart to do so, but the time had come to end the insanity he had become a party to.
After discovering that the doors of the church were locked, Katja and I had no option but to return to the nave—where Zolan was waiting for us. He aimed the pistol at me.
I froze, adrenaline roaring through my veins as I waited for him to squeeze the trigger.
“Papa!” Katja cried, stepping in front of me protectively. “Don’t kill him! He’s my friend!”
“Your friend?” Zolan chuffed. “He only used you to escape.”
“He told me the truth about Paris! Something you’ve kept hidden from me my entire life.”
“I did that for your protection, my mouse. This world is not for you.”
She touched her face. “Did you do this to me?”
“No, of course not.” He shook his head, and he genuinely looked pained. “Of course not.”
“Then who did?”
“Your grandfather. He was a sick man. He did that to all your uncles and aunts. I was too late to save you, but I did everything I could for you. I raised you like my daughter.”
“Like? I’m not your daughter?”
“This isn’t the place for such a discussion, Katja,” he said curtly. “Now, if you want Will to live, you will do as I say. Do you understand me?”
She looked at me for guidance.
“We should do as he says,” I told her.
“Smart decision, Will.” Zolan waved the pistol. “I want you both ahead of me, get going, that way.”
He directed us back to the museum. My mind was racing to figure out what he had planned. The best I could surmise: he was either taking us to the catacombs again, where he would kill me, or he was taking us to the dead guards, where he would kill me. Neither option, of course, was acceptable, but there was little I could do. I was sure if I tried anything he wouldn’t hesitate to put a bullet in my back. I said, “You’re not going to get away with this.”
“With what?” Zolan replied.
“You killed two guards.”
“Three.”
I swallowed. That had been my last hope—that the third security guard and Danièle were still alive. Nevertheless, I hadn’t put much faith in this, for if they were, they would have heard the gunshots and returned by now. “And Danièle?” I asked, needing to know for certain what happened to her.
“Keep walking.”
“Is she dead?”
He didn’t answer me.
Katja glanced over her shoulder. “Are we returning to the homestead, Papa?”
“That’s correct, my love.”
“But I haven’t seen Paris yet!”
“I will still show it to you.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
“Do you promise?”
“Cross my heart.”
Katja faced forward again, and I thought she might be smiling. Her innocence, her blind trust, her forgiveness, were nearly incomprehensible to witness.
Suddenly a person darted from the shadows thirty feet ahead of us. I couldn’t make out who it was in the dim lighting.
Zolan shouted and fired the pistol. The round shattered the glass of a display case.
I didn’t think, I acted on instinct, spinning around and charging him, my shoulders lowered, trying to make the smallest target possible.
He fired at me. I felt the bullet whizz past my left arm. A second later I drove a shoulder into his gut. We crashed to the floor together. I lunged at him, trying to bite his face. He rammed the butt of the pistol against my skull.
Everything went hazy as I slid to the floor.
Chapter 84
ZOLAN
Jörg! Zolan thought. It was only Jörg! And who was that who followed him? Karl? And Lorenz and Leo and Odo and Franz and Erich… They were all there now, in the distance, all of them running around like headless chickens, wailing in excitement and fright.
They were ruining everything.
“Go back!” Zolan ordered them in German. “Jörg! Go back right now!”
He glanced Zolan’s way but didn’t obey him. Instead he shook his femur in the air, either in triumph or rebellion, then he was gone, around a corner, howling and smashing display cases.
Zolan fought his panic and thought: There’s still time. He would have to skip his tryst with Danièle, and he would not be able to give Katja a proper goodbye and a painless death, but there was still time to burn the homestead and be gone by the time it was discovered.
He leveled the pistol at Will, who was folded into a crumpled heap at his feet.
“No!” Katja screamed, coming toward him.
Clenching his jaw tight, saying a silent prayer for her soul and his own, Zolan swung the gun at his adopted daughter and squeezed the trigger. The round struck her in the stomach, stopping her as surely as if she had hit an invisible wall. She fell to her side.
“I’m sorry, my mouse,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry—”
His knees disappeared beneath him.
Chapter 85
The gunshot cleared the darkness from my vision, and for a split second I waited for the pain that would surely follow. When it didn’t come, I realized I hadn’t been shot. Then I noticed Katja, a few yards away, motionless on her side, like a wilted rose.
I brought my knees to my chest and kicked my legs out. My feet smashed into Zolan’s kneecaps. He cried out and fell on top of me. The pistol struck the tiles and clattered away from us.
Zolan tried to reach for it. I locked my legs around his torso, but I could do little else with my hands secured behind my back. He swiveled toward me and kicked me in the groin. I groaned and released him.
He lumbered to his feet, took two lurching steps, swiped up the pistol.
Scowling, he aimed the barrel at my chest.
Chapter 86
DANIÈLE
Danièle burst from the stair
well and saw Zolan twenty feet away, about to shoot Will. She raised the gun and squeezed the trigger three times. One of the rounds clipped Zolan in the shoulder, spinning him around so he faced her. She squeezed the trigger three more times. A bullet smashed through his teeth, blowing away half his face in the process, and he collapsed lifelessly to the floor. She ran to Will. Katja was next to him, on her side.
Had Zolan killed her? The monster!
“Will!” Danièle said, rolling him over so she could access the handcuffs. Her hands were shaking so badly it took her several goes before she could get the cuffs unlocked.
“Katja…” Will said, crawling toward Katja. He held the girl’s head in his hands. “Katja?” he repeated. “Katja!”
Her eyes fluttered open.
Chapter 87
I don’t know how I managed it, I’d never felt so weak in my life, but I scooped Katja up in my arms and sprinted through the museum, searching frantically for an exit. After several wrong turns and dead ends I discovered a door that led outside.
Dawn was breaking, the sky an otherworldly red streaked with orange and lighting to pink in places. Across a sprawling, landscaped garden rose a large concrete building that had to be the hospital.
“Sky…” Katja mumbled.
I looked at her. “What?”
Her brilliant eyes were lidded but intense, staring past me. “Sky…”
“Hold on, Katja,” I said. “We’re going to get you help.”
“Sky…” she said a final time.
Her eyes glassed over.
“No!” I said, and ran toward the hospital.
Chapter 88
EXTRACT FROM THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH, May 5, 2014
Five Dead in France in Val-de-Grâce Murder Mystery (LIVE UPDATES)
Officials in France are scratching their heads after five people were killed at the Val-de-Grâce complex in central Paris, which includes a modern military hospital, a baroque church, and a former Benedictine convent that has since been converted into a museum dedicated to the history of military medicine.
The killings occurred in the museum.
Nine suspects have been arrested, but no charges have been made at this point. Speaking to reporters, a military spokeswoman said that all suspects are being held at the hospital to receive medical treatment for unspecified injuries.
According to one witness at the hospital, the suspects were “horribly disfigured” and “acted like mindless animals,” stoking wild speculation on social media sites that the French military may have been conducting covert human genetic engineering experiments at the hospital.
This was immediately dismissed by a leading military official, who told French media outlets that it was “absolutely not true” and “ridiculous.” He also dismissed claims that the killings were an act of terrorism. However, he refused to comment on a possible motive.
At the moment museum officials do not believe anything was stolen from the collection. The museum and church, which are popular tourist attractions, will be closed to the public until further notice.
1:54 PM – 05/05/2014
At an afternoon press conference, Interior Minister Alain Villechaize confirmed that the three soldiers killed were members of the National Gendarmerie, a branch of the French armed forces in charge of public safety with police duties among the civilian population.
Law enforcement officials say they are focusing their attention on a French national named Zolan Roux, one of two civilians who were killed at the museum. Mr. Roux, a welfare recipient, was unemployed at the time of his death. He had previously been convicted twice on first-degree murder charges and had served more than twenty years in state prison.
French news agencies, quoting sources close to the investigation, reported that Mr. Roux and his accomplices gained access to the facility via the catacombs. The network of ancient quarries beneath Paris have been closed off to the public for decades, but police have been locked in a game of cat-and mouse with underground urban explorers, who enter the tunnels illegally. Although once commonplace, most access points connecting the tunnels and public buildings have been sealed off, and it is unusual that one would go unnoticed in the basement of what is classified as a military facility. A French intelligence service has called for a complete security review of all of their military facilities.
According to the French newspaper Le Monde, the intruders were armed with human femurs, presumably obtained in the catacombs, which is home to more than six million dead, and not firearms like some media channels have reported. “There is no evidence that they had their own pistols in their possessions,” a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Defense said. “Instead, it is believed that Mr. Roux gained access to a guard’s handgun…and after that he began shooting.”
Despite the identification of alleged gunman Zolan Roux, many questions still remain, namely what prompted him and his accomplices to break into the museum in the first place.
11:45 AM – 06/05/2014
More details have emerged in the investigation into the killings at Val-de-Grâce early Wednesday morning.
Authorities have now confirmed that Zolan Roux and the other intruders accessed the former-abbey-turned-medical-museum through an underground tunnel that connected to the catacombs.
After a preliminary exploration into the tunnel, investigators believe that Mr. Roux and his accomplices lived permanently in the catacombs for what Paris public prosecutor François Duris says might have be a “substantial amount of time.” He added that investigators are working around the clock to learn more about the suspects’ motivations, backgrounds, and family environments. He also hinted that the death toll in this ongoing mystery could be higher than the five initially reported.
These revelations have led some news pundits to make comparisons to the “mole people” said to inhabit the abandoned subway tunnels and sewer systems below New York City. French police are downplaying this comparison amidst fear the sensationalism of the evolving story could encourage more people to illegally visit the catacombs.
On the French television channel i-Télé, police captain Vincent Reno warned potential adventurers to “think twice about entering the underground” and that “they did so at their own risk.”
Epilogue
I was seated at a table in Manhattan’s Chinatown McDonald’s, sipping the dregs of my large cappuccino and thinking about Paris.
My mind drifted to those days often. I could be doing anything—standing in line at the bank, sitting in front of my computer at work, taking a shower—and then I would find myself in an imaginary conversation with Danièle, or running through the dark from Zolan, or listening to Katja tell me about the characters in her books.
It was crazy that those two days I spent in the catacombs could consume my thoughts so completely as to reduce the previous twenty-five years of my life to a footnote.
Time wasn’t helping much. It’d been six months since I left Paris, and I wasn’t sure I was any better now than I was then. I still had nightmares. I couldn’t sleep without nightlights. And I was talking to myself more and more. I wasn’t one of those guys you saw shuffling down the street cackling to themselves one moment and screaming obscenities the next. But when I was alone I’d occasionally find myself mumbling something that sometimes made sense and sometimes didn’t. It would usually only be a word or three, such as “stupid” or “why the fuck,” but it was occurring with enough regularity to start concerning me.
Although I had killed Hanns and two of the women I had attacked, and Danièle had killed Zolan, French authorities never charged us with any crimes. We cooperated with them fully, and they concluded the killings were justifiable homicides. We were released from custody after the statutory limit of seventy-two hours. I returned to my flat, but when the media began camping out front of it, I packed up most of my stuff, slipped out the back, and checked into a low-key motel, where I remained largely under the radar.
Rob and Pascal’s funerals were held within two da
ys of one another. Both were closed casket services for obvious reasons. I exchanged a few words with Danièle at the chapel where Rob’s memorial was held, but that was all, as she spent the rest of her time with her sister, Dev, and Rob’s brother and parents, who had flown to Paris from Quebec City. His two girls were gorgeous, both with blonde hair and blue eyes and dressed in frilly black dresses. They didn’t leave their mother’s side the entire time.
At Pascal’s memorial, his brother broke down during his eulogy, and his sister and mother were a total mess, especially during the burial as the casket, covered in a spray of flowers, was lowered into the ground. I felt like an imposter being there to witness these intimate emotions, given that Pascal had never liked me, but Danièle had asked me to go with her, and so I went.
The city cremated Katja. I didn’t want her remains to end up in storage somewhere, or a potter’s field, so I purchased them from the coroner’s office, and Danièle and I scattered her ashes in Pere Lachaise’s Garden of Remembrance.
I returned to the United States the following week. It was hard to say goodbye to Danièle, but I couldn’t remain in France any longer; I needed to get home. Danièle and I promised we would see each other again, but I don’t think either of us really believed that. I flew to Seattle and stayed with my parents. I was immediately bombarded with media requests. Every national news network and major book publisher wanted the exclusive rights to my story. I don’t know how people who’ve been involved in sensational murder sagas give tell-all interviews or write tell-all books. How could you cheapen what you had been through like that? How could you allow it to be turned into entertainment? Rob was dead. Pascal was dead. Katja was dead. I would never exploit their deaths for profit, not now, and not ten years from now.