Heart Collector

by Jacques Vandroux

  “No, never. But as you know, there are a lot of tourists when summer comes. What if you had to remember everybody!”

  “Indeed, you’re right.”

  Pierre Mollard escorted René Pelloux and his mother to the door. Then he rushed to the telephone.

  Chapter 72: Contact

  It was midnight, but Sophie had no idea what time it might be. She was waiting. She hoped for deliverance, but feared death—a terrible death. Sartenas’s determination had terrified her. This wasn’t a man before her, but a beast.

  The reaction of the one named Ballat, who had tried to take advantage of her, disgusted her, but she understood his thought process. She knew she was rather pretty, and the situation must have excited the pervert within him. But Sartenas’s reaction was illogical. He wanted her death; he was willing to sacrifice everything for it. But why? When Nadia had told her about the torment Laure Déramaux had endured, she’d immediately imagined extreme sadistic practices. A group of madmen getting off on seeing a human being suffer, taking pleasure in dominating a woman.

  But here? He wanted her heart. He wanted to devour it! A demented travesty of communion. Why? Why her?

  Sophie refocused on more positive thoughts, or at least less negative ones. She had set a course of action. No wallowing in dark thoughts that could lead her to abandon all hope, or even succumb to madness. There was still a chance, however tiny, she could be found in time. She had to hang on to that, never let go. She remembered a hike she’d gone on several years ago in the Alps. She’d headed out at the end of the season with a group of friends. The weather was splendid, but by the next day, they’d been confronted with a snowstorm the weatherman hadn’t predicted. A series of events had separated her from her companions, and she’d found herself alone—alone in the snow and the cold. At first she’d walked aimlessly, gripped with fear. Then, conscious that her approach was futile, she’d taken control of the situation. She’d constructed a shelter out of the snow, protecting herself from the wind and cold. Curled up in a ball without moving, conserving the heat that kept her alive, she’d waited more than twelve hours for the snowfall and wind to calm. Then the storm had lifted as suddenly as it had descended, leaving in its place a limpid sky. Then she’d left her makeshift igloo, and the beauty of the immaculate mantle of snow reflecting the rays of the rising sun had awed her. How could death be this beautiful?

  The future! Only the future could save her. She shouldn’t turn to her past; she shouldn’t think about the last few days, her last conversations with Julien. She knew he was the love of her life. Attentive, intelligent, and funny, he made her laugh, and that was priceless. She decided to tell herself about the days and weeks that would follow her liberation. Sophie had always loved fairy tales. She would comfort herself with these now, even if she didn’t yet know whether her own Prince Charming would arrive in time.

  She stretched out in a corner of the room, and fatigue began to creep over her. Suddenly, it seemed as though someone was calling to her. The voice wasn’t coming from outside, but from within her. She sat listening. At first weak and distant, it grew more and more audible. Julien, it was Julien! Was she dreaming? She pinched herself, and the pain confirmed she was awake. Sophie, hang in there. We’re all looking for you. But you’re going to have to help us. Sophie couldn’t see anything. She heard only her friend’s voice. Magali is with me. Let yourself go . . . let yourself go . . . Overcome by a strange lethargy, Sophie lost awareness of the reality around her.

  Chapter 73: Action

  Captain Barka hung up, immensely excited. She ran back into the briefing room from the hallway, where she’d gone to use the phone quietly.

  “Boisregard has been located!” she announced.

  The background conversation noise miraculously ceased.

  “Villard-de-Lans. He was spotted in Villard-de-Lans this morning. That matches up with the dates and the photo that was taken yesterday on the road to Sassenage.”

  “How reliable is this information?” inquired Mazure.

  “According to de Valjoney, the witness is sure of himself, and the priest gives credence to it,” the young woman responded immediately.

  The discussions picked up where they left off. Finally, they had a strong clue, which would allow them to significantly advance the investigation.

  “Did you get a more precise location for Boisregard?” asked the commissioner.

  “Unfortunately, we don’t have the exact location. The witness encountered him while Boisregard was out running. He was north of the village. But we don’t have more detailed information,” Nadia said regretfully.

  “We’ll make do,” concluded the commissioner. “Rivera, wake up the town hall in Villard for me. I want to know the names of all the property owners who could have a manor in that municipality. It’s twenty after midnight—I want the information within an hour at the latest. For my part, I’m going to contact the gendarmerie so they can move in on the Vercors plateau.”

  “The GIPN intervention group can be there very quickly as well,” added Rivera. “They’ve teamed up with the gendarmes. Normally it’s not in their jurisdiction, but they have carte blanche.”

  “So much the better. Just tell them to avoid landing a helicopter in Villard. Sartenas knows he’s being tracked, and that would put the Dupas girl’s life in immediate danger,” advised Mazure.

  “Understood, Commissioner. We’re also going to start heading up to the Vercors plateau. Fortin, take your usual group with you and get out of here. We’ll contact you en route to assign objectives. Delsol, same thing. Mourad, you gather up the response armament. Then you’ll take the group assigned to you and form the third patrol with Drancey. I’m staying here with Garancher and the others to continue to refine Boisregard’s location.”

  “Which car did you put me in?” asked Captain Barka.

  Commissioner Mazure answered for Rivera, “You are wounded and on sick leave, Captain Barka. You can stay here to lend a hand to the home team.”

  Stunned, Nadia looked at him. She didn’t understand the decision her superior had just made. “It’s all right, Commissioner. I’ll hold up. The doc gave me everything I need, and I can guarantee you I’ll do my job correctly.”

  “My decision is final, Captain.”

  “But, Commissioner, you’ve been working with me for six years. You know you can trust me, don’t you?”

  “I have every confidence in you, Captain Barka. But I’m afraid you’re overestimating your strength. You took a bullet in the shoulder blade five days ago, and you can’t be said to have rested. Your mission is to stay here with Rivera and keep Sophie Dupas’s family company.”

  “Bullshit!” shouted the young woman, overwhelmed with irritation. “I’m on sick leave? Then make do without me!” Furious, she left the room without a backward glance. Madeleine Dupas followed her and caught up to her in the hallway.

  “Captain Barka, we need you.”

  “You have a whole team looking for your daughter, Madame Dupas. They’re competent and will find every clue there is to find. You don’t need me.”

  “Listen, my daughter talked to me about you. I don’t know what you’ve told each other, because Sophie was always rather secret about her private relationships. But she really admires you.”

  “And that’s why I don’t want Captain Barka out there,” added Alain Mazure, who had just joined them in the hallway. “For that reason and because of the Déramaux case.”

  “Go on, then, explain all your thinking,” replied Nadia sarcastically.

  “There’s a strong suspicion Boisregard is Laure Déramaux’s killer. You’ve taken that case very much to heart, and you’ve always sworn to find the girl’s murderer. And there he is, maybe! So I want to avoid all risk of personal vendettas. If Sophie Dupas is close to you as well, that can only reinforce my decision.”

  The icy glare full of contempt that h
is colleague shot him worried the commissioner.

  “Because you think I’m an amateur, that I’m going to satisfy my thirst for vengeance ahead of my professional duty! You probably imagine that I’m going to compromise the mission just to get Boisregard at the end of my gun! I’ve been a cop for fifteen years, Mazure, and I’ve never screwed up an investigation. I’ve had some hard times with colleagues or superiors, but I’ve never been humiliated like this. So you can go fuck yourself!”

  She walked with long strides out of the police station. Angry tears blurred her vision.

  Chapter 74: Introductions

  The sound of an approaching engine caught Boisregard’s ear. He went over to the glass door and pulled aside the heavy velvet curtain. A luxury sedan was heading up the driveway that led to the manor entrance. The driver pulled up in front of the stairs, then turned off the engine, returning the thick night to its quietness.

  A man, white shirt and jacket hanging carelessly from his shoulders, got out of his Audi A7 Sportback. He pushed back his sunglasses—of doubtful utility at that hour of the night—atop his impeccably coiffed hair. He checked his appearance in the side mirror, grabbed his overnight bag out of the trunk, and climbed the stairs to the residence at a leisurely pace. Boisregard left the sitting room to meet him. He returned with his guest thirty seconds later.

  “This is Thomas Simon-Renouard. We’re now all present for tonight’s ceremony.”

  Sartenas was surprised by the presence of this journalist who wrote features for magazine celebrity pages. He observed Lèguezeaux and Ballat, who went over to greet Simon-Renouard. They seemed to know each other. The surgeon wondered for a moment what reason Boisregard could have found to bring such a man into his confidence, but he quickly lost interest in the question. It wasn’t his problem. He wouldn’t see them again after he’d sacrificed Sophie Dupas and eaten his fill of her still warm and beating heart. His thinking had evolved over the course of the evening. Although the presence of the historian’s guests had at first irritated him profoundly, he’d changed his mind. In the end, the staging of himself in the role of high priest quite suited him. It reminded him of his younger days, when he’d officiated from the center of a court of admirers. He’d control the situation, which would avoid any potential blunder connected to one of the participants’ fantasies. He had a very cold, even surgical view of humanity and its defects. He didn’t deny himself his vices, but he knew them and knew how far he could take them. He had no illusions about the rottenness that lurked within him, and that gave him a certain advantage over those who possessed the same vices but couldn’t control the effects.

  He greeted the journalist in turn when the man extended his hand like a precious gift. Sartenas couldn’t stand this type of individual, but he decided to remain courteous.

  “You must be the famous Dr. Sartenas Arsène told me about. The butcher of Grenoble! You’re making the front page, old boy! I have colleagues who would sell their souls to interview you. Notably Daphné Fergusson, you know, the new bombshell anchor on channel 2. I’m the one who put her there,” added the journalist with a wink meant to be conspiratorial.

  The surgeon looked him up and down icily. “I don’t watch that sort of program, Monsieur Simon-Renouard, and I am totally uninterested in sexy stories about people who pretend to deliver the news. As for your Daphné, had I met her, channel 2 would have gained in notoriety. She doubtless would have joined the last two women I welcomed into my home who are no longer capable of witnessing anything.”

  His courtesy had its limits! In a few hours, he’d no longer have to rub elbows with the man. He left the four men to their conversation and moved off toward the window. He pushed lightly on a shutter. The moon was just clearing the mountains, dramatically lighting the Vercors plateau and foothills. The surgeon gazed at the heavenly body, fascinated. In thirty years of drifting around the world, he’d never seen the moon lavish such luminosity. He interpreted it as a sign of encouragement from the gods—or demons from hell. What did he care!

  Sartenas had spent the evening with Boisregard and his two disciples. First they’d had to get Ballat back on his feet, which had been quick. Then they’d had to convince him there’d been no danger when they’d abandoned him to the girl, a decidedly more complicated task. Sartenas had sincerely admired how Boisregard had managed to persuade Ballat in less than half an hour.

  The historian had then done an exegesis of a passage from The Book of the Sun, at which point the group had decided on the course of the ceremony. Ballat had become a ball of hate and proposed only painful torments—his sexual arousal had dropped to zero. But Sartenas distrusted the financier. The victim’s suffering wasn’t an end in itself, just the consequence of the sacrifice he had to carry out. And he’d already met guys like Ballat during his S&M sprees. Their sick excitement could quickly become a handicap for the group.

  These discussions about the next steps, however, had had a positive effect on Sartenas’s psyche. Magali hadn’t managed to penetrate his awareness nor disturb him just hours before his approaching liberation. He hadn’t left her a crack to slip through. They had to go on. He moved closer to the four disciples of Fra Bartolomeo so that he could join in the conversation.

  “Gentlemen, I suggest a light dinner before carrying out the sacrifice that will give us all the surplus energy we anticipate,” Boisregard said. “Let’s move to the dining room. A cold buffet is waiting for us.”

  After the guests were seated around a richly stocked table, Boisregard spoke again. “Tonight we are celebrating the summer solstice. Thus we will invoke two spirits and not just one—Quetzalcoatl as well as Huitzilopochtli, the god of sun and war. We will feed them on a young woman’s vigorous blood so that they will then provide us with their regenerative energy. Tonight, Quetzalcoatl will also chase from Dominique’s soul a spirit that has tormented him for years. This will be a resurrection for him.”

  Their eyes turned, questioningly, toward Sartenas, who remained silent.

  “Dominique, I think you can offer some explanation to our friends. They’ll only better understand the sacrificial ceremony you will be conducting.”

  Sartenas reflected for a few seconds. The risk he ran in telling his story was limited—he’d already made an appointment at an Italian clinic to have his face modified a second time, then change his identity. So he was going to tell them his truth, the only one that existed for him. In the end, bringing his partners for this night into the secret of his quest would render them only more receptive to the ceremony he was going to lead in less than an hour.

  The doctor recounted his adventure, the suffering his wife was inflicting on him, how he’d found his friend Boisregard. He knew how to hold his audience spellbound. The tale of the abductions and murders of his victims greatly impressed the three guests. When he’d finished his story, Simon-Renouard asked him a question.

  “Your story is fascinating, Doctor Sartenas. Just one question: Why did you leave the bodies in those places with religious connotations? Why not abandon them in the forest, or some more accessible place?”

  The doctor took several seconds before answering. “As you might have guessed, I didn’t choose those places randomly. My wife was a believer, and she tried to convert me. It amused me at the beginning, but she had no idea what she’d yoked herself to,” he added with a grin.

  “So it’s a sort of vengeance?” proffered Lèguezeaux.

  “Let’s call it a provocation. She comes to torture me in my most private spaces. I return to her the fruit of her labor, where her God has taken possession of men’s souls. She’d turned into a sort of mystic during the last months of her pregnancy. As if my presence had become unbearable to her!” he added, slamming his fist on the table.

  Boisregard stared anxiously at the doctor. Sartenas couldn’t have an attack now. But then he calmed down.

  “You must know the cathedral’s baptistery and the Church
of Saint-Laurent are the two most ancient religious places in the city,” he continued. “So I wanted to strike at the root of her faith. It also made a big impression on the public.”

  “And what do you plan to do with Sophie Dupas?” interjected Ballat.

  “She’ll have a magnificent sepulchre: the Church of Saint-André, built in the thirteenth century. I’ll leave her body under the portico, and the circle will be closed. Magali will have left me for good and will have eternity to meditate on the consequences of her betrayal.”

  Chapter 75: In Nomine Patris

  Nadia took a fresh cigarette out of her pack and lit it nervously. She was walking along the boulevard to try to calm her anger. But she knew she wouldn’t manage to do it. She was one of the best cops in Grenoble, and Mazure’s lack of confidence disgusted her. Yes, she dreamed about coming face-to-face with the murderer, but she wouldn’t have let personal vengeance take the upper hand. The only things that counted were finding Sophie alive and collaring Boisregard and Sartenas. And here she was on a sidewalk like an idiot!

  No, he wouldn’t get away from her again! She set off toward the police station once more. She greeted the guard with a smile, then went discreetly to her office. The response teams had already left, and Mazure was in the briefing room. She gathered up her sidearm and ammunition and vacated the premises. Her vehicle was three blocks away. She was going to head up to Villard-de-Lans, too.

  Her phone rang as she was opening her car door. She looked at the number but couldn’t remember seeing it before.

  “Nadia Barka here.”

  “Nadia, this is Julien Lombard!” answered a voice she could hear quavering with agitation.

  “Julien, what’s going on?”