by S. Cedric
For the time being, only Ismael Constantin seemed to have disappeared.
Forming a security line around the perimeter were fifty or so riot police wearing bulletproof vests and carrying shields. They observed the chaos with closed faces. The project kids shot them angry looks.
“The calm before the storm,” Leroy said.
Hunched over the steering wheel, he hit the dash with his palm.
“I don’t like it,” he said. “One of those kids is going to go after a firefighter or a cop, or anyone in the way, and then we’ll have a riot.”
He contemplated his colleagues who were busy at work. Tense faces. He had not yet dared to get out of the car to talk to them.
Officially, neither he nor Eva was supposed to be here.
“Eva, you don’t have anything to say?”
She was sitting next to him and had put her dark glasses back on.
“What do you want me to say? This show is depressing me.”
“Do you want to talk about what happened?”
Eva watched her clenched fists turn white.
“No.”
“Shit,” Leroy said. “I don’t know what to say to get you to understand that I’m worried.”
It was no use. She looked away. People were screaming at each other, their arms crossed. The firefighters were rolling up their hoses, undoing their tanks, and removing their helmets.
“They’ve finished,” she announced.
As if that were a tacit signal, a group of newcomers showed up. These were men in suits who were very sure of themselves, the police higher-ups. Television cameras followed in their wake, microphones held out, flashes going off.
“Of course. The head honcho is here to talk big,” Leroy grumbled. “They must have pulled him out of bed. Do you think he’ll tell the media that everything is under control?”
Eva said nothing. She had seen Deputy Chief Adam from the drug squad in the herd of officials. The man looked pinched in a pinstripe suit that was too small for his broad shoulders. He had walked past their car without seeing them. Luckily. Leroy had had words with him two weeks earlier, when they had been taken off the Constantin case. Adam was someone you did not want to cross, not if you wanted to have a decent job in this outfit. Had he seen them, he would have had them forcibly removed from the scene.
But the group had already moved far away from them. Adam wanted to be in the limelight. The deputy chief stepped into the crowd—into the heart of chaos—his face filled with perfected compassion and determination. The cameras did not miss a thing.
Eva watched the burned building and the crowd.
“I’m sorry. I just thought...”
She started grinding her teeth. She could not explain to him what she thought she had seen. She knew it was idiotic.
“Yes?” Leroy said, attentive.
“I thought I recognized someone,” she said, in a thin voice. “I’m truly sorry.”
He shrugged.
“Well, nobody was there.”
“I’m sure someone was there. Even if I don’t understand what happened.”
Leroy shook his head. “Eva, I assure you. There is nothing to understand. Whatever you saw was in your imagination.”
She remained quiet for a while, then exhaled and said, “Maybe.”
“It’s like you’re seeing ghosts,” Leroy said. “It’s not right.”
If only you knew, she wanted to tell him. I saw my sister’s ghost for years. Believe me, it was very real. It saved my life.
Leroy added, sounding serious, “It’s making you crazy. It’s about time you talk to someone.”
“You’re the one who is obsessed with this dealer,” she said. “And I doubt that your friend Joseph Adam will ask for your help. If he dismantles this narcotics cartel, he’ll be promoted. He’d kill for that.”
“I wasn’t talking about the Constantin case.”
“What case, then?”
Leroy glared at her. “I’m talking about the case that fills your nights, Eva. Your private investigation that cuts you off from everyone else. It’s always the same. Your little secret.”
“You don’t know what you are talking about,” she said, trying to sound indifferent.
In reality, her pulse was galloping.
“Okay,” Leroy said calmly, choosing his words with care. “I’m talking about the murder of your mother and your twin sister.”
And there they were. It struck her like a jolt of electricity. Nobody had ever talked about it with her at work, much less in private. Her family’s death was taboo. It was her secret flaw, her bottomless pit. She wanted to scream, to slap him. But she remained perfectly still.
“You picked up the Night Scourge case again months ago,” Leroy insisted. “You really think I didn’t know?”
That was the case. Eva didn’t want to hear what he had to say. It wasn’t any of his business. But he kept going.
“You submitted requests for reports from every department. You even blackmailed Clementine at the Criminal Records Office to get the original neighborhood-canvas reports that had never been digitized. And you set up new alerts in the program. Do you have a lead after all these years?”
He glanced at her. This was slippery ground. Eva gave a sly smile.
“Did Clementine tell you that?”
“Yes, well, she...” He cleared his throat. “She talks in bed.”
“Obviously.”
“What I mean to say is...”
“What you mean,” Eva cut in, “is that you are spying on me. I thought I could trust you. Who else knows?”
“Everyone knows.”
Another jolt. But Eva remained inscrutable behind her dark glasses.
“Everyone?”
“The whole department. What did you think?”
“Are people talking about it?”
“Of course not. But you lock yourself in your office and obsess over this case. You’re losing it. I can’t lie and pretend it doesn’t matter.”
“You couldn’t understand,” she said.
“That is certainly true. Your mother and your sister were murdered. That is the most horrible thing that could happen to anyone.”
He hesitated, unsure of his position. But he clearly wanted to get things out in the open, once and for all.
“I know you were there. Everyone knows you were there for this horrible crime. You were only six years old, Eva. You couldn’t do anything. You were lucky to get out alive. You have no reason to feel guilty.”
“You think I feel guilty about what happened to my family? Is that your damned psychological analysis?” she asked.
“So that’s not it?”
Eva slowly opened her clenched fist. Her nails had dug into her palm, leaving four red marks on her skin. She closed her fist again.
“Enough,” she said.
“No,” Leroy insisted. “We’ll have to talk about it one day or another. You’re always high. You don’t sleep anymore. Alexandre called me again. He’s worried about you.”
“What’s Alexandre got to do with it?”
“He’s crazy in love with you. You know that. And you’ve been playing him for months.”
“I’m not playing anyone.”
“That’s what you think. Your problems are not going to go away just because you dig a moat around yourself.”
She stared at the cracked windshield for a while. Her throat was dry, her thoughts confused. She wanted this conversation to stop. She wanted it all to stop.
“We have other things to worry about,” she said, teeth clenched.
“I went over the Scourge file,” Leroy said, ignoring her.
Once again, a fist in her gut.
She looked at her partner. He was young and was obviously tired, but Erwan Leroy had exceptional strength of character.
“Why did you do that?” she asked.
“To understand. To try to understand. The case is closed, Eva. The guy has disappeared. He stopped killing after your family. The
re were no more victims. That was twenty-five years ago. The monster who did that has to be dead now. You have to accept that.”
Eva shook her head. Her face, illuminated in the flashing lights outside, was as hard as a statue. She was a white marble goddess.
“He is still alive,” she whispered.
“No,” Leroy said. “You have no way of knowing that.”
Eva did not answer. He was right. She had no way of knowing that. Yet it was a truth she carried inside her, in every drop of her blood.
Because there was something she had never told anyone.
Something that could have changed the course of this case—and its resolution—if she had revealed it when she was six. If she had not been traumatized by what had happened in that basement, when the man with white hair had slit her sister’s throat in front of her eyes. If she had not repressed that horror deep inside, forgetting it for years.
But the truth was coming back. She dreamed about it every night. She woke up in a cold sweat, her heart nearly bursting. The image of the killer was imprinted in her soul. His smile. His red albino eyes, just like hers.
Yes, she knew who murdered her mother and her sister.
She alone.
She knew that one day, he would return for her.
“I’m sorry to have drawn attention to us,” she said.
Leroy shook his head. “You’re not going to do that to me. You’re not going to change the subject.”
But that was exactly what she intended to do.
“Earlier, the kids’ leader, the one the gang members called Sammy—he seemed to think we were responsible for the fire.”
“That’s right. He let that slip. There’s nothing astonishing about that. These kids were raised hating everything that resembles an institution.
“I agree, but it seemed to me that he had been warned that this could happen. And you heard rumors, too, Erwan. That’s why you asked me to come with you, isn’t it?”
“No, I didn’t hear anything about Constantin dying.”
“Maybe you misinterpreted what you heard. What I think is that the entire neighborhood thought something bad would happen to him.”
She was regaining control already. Be a cop. Forget that insidious bite of fear. She adjusted her glasses.
“Have you seen his gang leaders?” she asked.
“No,” Leroy said. “It looks like they were not here tonight.”
“Don’t you find it strange that Constantin ordered his underlings to be scarce on this specific night?”
“What are you suggesting?” Leroy asked.
She pointed to the crowd. She had been observing it for a while now, attentive to the slightest detail. These people were terrified, yes. But there was no real sense of surprise.
“I think you are right. One way or another, these people were warned. Nobody’s television seemed to be on just before the fire started. They were all dressed when they came out. A lot of them even thought to grab blankets, even though it doesn’t look like any of them were sleeping. They all evacuated the building at the same time. And look, even the youngest ones seem to have been briefed. Do you find it unusual that nobody has thrown a stone at the firefighters?”
On the other side of the parking lot, the last firefighters were coming out of the building and were signaling to each other.
“There,” Eva said. “They found something.”
“You think?”
She put on a red police armband.
“Trust me. Do you want back on this case?”
“You know I do,” Leroy said.
“So we need to get over there before Adam and his troops make it up to Constantin’s place. We have a few minutes before the firefighters pass along the information.”
“But we’re not allowed,” Leroy said.
“I don’t agree. Technically, our narcotics guys are supposed to be investigating the cocaine ring. If they’ve found a body up there, they have to call the assistant public attorney, who will then assign the case. Nobody will make any moves before that. And nobody can get us in trouble for doing our job.”
She got out of the car.
“I’m right behind you,” Leroy said.
They dived into the crowd, elbowing their way through.
The most perilous part was slipping past the group of officials, where their colleagues from the drug squad and homicide could have recognized them. But the officers guarding Adam were having too hard a time managing the media to notice the two people wearing police armbands.
Once past that obstacle, they walked as confidently as they could, pushing past the people standing in front of the entrance. The group of firefighters looked at them, ready to turn them away.
“Hey, you over there, what are you doing?”
“Homicide,” Eva said in an authoritative voice. “We’re here to see the body.”
She pointed up.
“The one you found on the twelfth floor.”
A firefighter nodded.
“Okay, but there’s still a lot of smoke. You should wait awhile.”
“We need to be up there,” Leroy said. “Thanks for the heads up.”
When they got into the hallway, they pulled out their latex gloves. Leroy dug in his pocket for two paper face masks. Eva took one. They covered their noses. It wouldn’t be miraculous, but it was better than nothing.
Behind them, a concert of protests rose again from the mass of tenants blocked outside.
11
They climbed the stairs to the twelfth floor. The higher they went, the blacker the walls got. Water was streaming down the steps. By the time they reached the landing on the top floor, they were wading through massive puddles. They made sure their masks were tight against their faces.
“Watch your feet,” Leroy said.
He pointed his flashlight at the apartment door. The scene was a burned-out ruins. Everything had been reduced to an indistinguishable, smoking magma. The walls were mottled and cracked like a molting snake. That is, where there were still walls, because part of the building had collapsed.
The smoke burned their throats, despite the masks. Eva coughed uncontrollably as she carefully stepped over the carpet of black ashes. Leroy, looking pallid, walked next to her, lighting up the corners with his flashlight as they searched for the victim.
“Hey, you,” a voice rang out. “Who let you through?”
A firefighter, still wearing his oxygen equipment, burst from one of the rooms. He looked furious.
“You’re going to get smoke poisoning, idiots.”
Eva turned so he could see their red armbands.
“We’re with homicide. I’m Inspector Svärta.”
“I’m Detective Leroy.”
“Are you the one who found the body?” Eva asked, trying not to give him time to think.
The firefighter lifted up his visor. He had an honest face and a perfectly shaven square chin. He was also tall and seemed to be well built under his gear. He was the iconic teddy bear in uniform of many women’s fantasies.
“Um, okay. I’m Deputy Chief N’Guyen. You guys were awfully quick. I found it just five minutes ago.”
“Your colleagues told us,” Eva said. “It’s a priority case.”
That was a huge lie. There wasn’t any “case” yet. But the deputy chief had no way of knowing that.
“Is the district attorney here?” he asked. “You usually all come together.”
“The others should be here soon.”
Unfortunately, that was the truth. They only had a few minutes before the officials would arrive and chase them away. There was no time to waste.
“We wanted to see the body before the apartment was overrun. You understand, don’t you?”
The firefighter did not look convinced. “I don’t know if I can let you. Rules are rules.”
Leroy stepped in and played it straight, saying, “Of course you can. A crime has occurred here, and the victim is a drug dealer we were investigating.”
“Yes, well, I suppose.”
The firefighter stared at them, focusing on Eva, with her white hair and dark sunglasses. He swore under his breath.
“So it’s Constantin?”
It was the two police officers’ turn to be surprised.
“You know him?”
“Rather well, yes. I used to live in the projects, in the building on the other side of the street, to be exact. That was a long time ago, before Constantin got here. Since then, I’ve watched the neighborhood change,” he said.
His voice turned bitter as he continued, “It only took him a few years to reorganize everything. You must know that every family here took cash from him to cover for him, to transport his merchandise, or to store it. Constantin’s money pays the rent for the poorest people here. That’s how he buys their services when he needs them. Well, that’s how he bought them.”
He pointed his light into an adjoining room and then added, “Come on, take a look, if you’re in a hurry.”
They followed him, happy to have made it through so easily. The smell was thicker here. And it was not just smoke. There was another, more compelling odor, one that could never be forgotten once it had been smelled. The odor of human flesh.
“There you go. I warn you, it’s not a pretty sight. The hot spots suggest that the fire started in this room.”
He led them into the living room. The body was in the middle, but it was hard to make out a human shape in the black form on the floor. It looked like it had melted into the linoleum.
Where was the head? Where were the legs?
Eva knelt down next to the sooty remains. She moved her flashlight around and finally recognized the skull. From there, she could imagine where his chest was and then his arms and legs. He was in a fetal position. The black flesh was waterlogged. It looked like it had expanded and then burst, like a roasted chicken. She breathed slowly, trying to understand what was wrong with this picture.
She lit up the black lines on the body. It was wire.
“His luck ran out,” N’Guyen said. “He was tied up and couldn’t get away.”