First Blood (13 page)

“She’s playing us, can’t you see that?”

Eva took a step back and gave the door another kick. This time, the chain snapped, and the links scattered across the hallway. Amina Constantin kept moving back, screaming as though they were going to cut her throat.

“My God, Eva!” Leroy shouted, trying to grab her arm.

She broke loose. Her jaw was tense, and her teeth were clenched. She looked like a terrifying, implacable machine.

“Stay here, and let me do this. Let me do this, do you understand?”

“Shit,” the young man said, the blood draining from his face.

He took a couple of steps into the hallway. His colleague ran after Amina Constantin. The house was small. The old lady would not get far.

With incredible energy for a person her age, Mrs. Constantin climbed the stairs to the second floor. Eva went up the stairs in turn, filled with cold determination and a feeling of urgency she could not explain. There was no time to think. She caught up with the woman in a small room lined with African wall hangings.

“Mrs. Constantin, calm down.”

The old woman rushed to a dresser and picked up a cell phone.

“Don’t hit me,” she said, her voice quaking. “Please.”

Eva grabbed the phone and turned it off.

“Stop the show. I don’t want to hurt you. I have some questions for you, and you know it. I won’t beat around the bush.”

The woman inspected her from head to toe. Various expressions came and went on her thin, hardened face. She was wearing a thick black turban and dress. Strings of pearls, other beads, and religious icons hung around her neck.

She held out a thin, emaciated finger.

“You’re albino, aren’t you?”

“I am. Do you have a problem with that?”

Amina Constantin snarled, and a darkness came into her eyes. At that instant, Eva knew that she was right. This person was not the defenseless old woman she pretended to be.

“In my country, we say children who are born without any color are coming back from the dead. They have ghosts in their eyes. They bring evil with them.”

Eva was familiar with these stories. They had mortified her when she was a teenager.

“You mean you kill those babies at birth, isn’t that right? I’ve heard about those superstitions. They’re stupid and cruel.”

“You call them superstitions,” the woman said, shaking her beads. “They are traditions for some. There are good reasons for these traditions.”

“Is that what Ismael did to his own son?” Eva asked, determined not to let the woman impress her. “That child wasn’t without any color, as you say. So why? What was the good reason for killing that innocent baby?”

“You are evil,” Amina Constantin whispered. “Badness is in your heart, in your blood.”

She moved her hands, as if she were spreading something out in front of her.

“What are you doing?” Eva said, on the defensive.

By instinct, her hand went to her gun.

“Protecting myself from your badness.”

“Listen to me, Mrs. Constantin. You had better answer my questions and not play around with me. Do you understand?”

Amina Constantin showed her teeth. She looked at the inspector’s weapon, and then she laughed.

“I just lost my only son, and here you are, you. Why? To inflict more pain. As if I haven’t suffered enough.”

Eva took a deep breath. This was not going as well as she had hoped.

“Mrs. Constantin, I need to know who the baby’s mother was.”

“I don’t know about any baby.”

“Of course you do. Your son Ismael kept it in his freezer. You know that.”

“Ismael was a saint,” she spit out. “You’re trying to dirty his memory, but he was a saint.”

“I need to know her name,” Eva said. “We have to find her.”

“I don’t know,” the old woman answered, although her calculating eyes said something different.

Getting nowhere, Eva tried another angle.

“Do you know what they did to your son? They ripped out his heart and his tongue.”

“My poor child,” Amina Constantin whispered.

Her voice was trembling, but her eyes were dry and guarded. She was looking the inspector up and down.

“Why did they do that to him?” Eva insisted. “Why his heart and his tongue? Does that mean something? Was it revenge?”

“Of course it was revenge, after all this time. Nobody escapes. Not even the saints. Not even my Ismael.”

There they were. Almost.

“Was it because of the baby? Because he had killed the baby?”

“Everything was always because of the baby,” the old woman murmured, the anger rising in her eyes.

“It was the mother, wasn’t it? She wanted to repay blood with blood? You must give me her name.”

“You’re not listening. You’re deaf.”

“I just want you to explain it to me. Don’t you want us to catch the person who did this? For your son?”

“Let the dead take care of the dead. That’s what needs to be done.”

Without letting Eva out of her sight, Amina Constantin fingered her beads, and it became terribly obvious to Eva that this woman knew. Everything. Perfectly. She knew who the murderer was, just as she had known that her son was going to be killed.

“Did he warn you that something was going to happen to him? Is that it?”

“This is bigger than us. You can’t change anything. It’s the law of the first blood. They know about you and the badness in your blood.”

Eva did not understand what she was saying but refused to be intimidated.

“What are you talking about, Mrs. Constantin?”

“The first blood,” the old woman said. “It has been spilled. It is too late. We can’t go back now.”

Eva knit her brow. She felt close to the truth. The woman had to know the meaning of the cut-out tongue and heart. It was part of her culture, part of her belief system. She had to get her to talk.

“What blood are you talking about?”

Amina Constantin’s expression turned to disgust.

“You know.”

“Of course I don’t.”

“So why are you hiding your eyes behind those glasses?” the old woman said. “Because there is evil and death in them, that’s why. You don’t want people to find out. But I know who you are.”

Eva shivered. Was she that transparent?”

Stay focused. Do your job. You’re a cop.

“Tell me who did this to your son. That is all I want to know.”

Amina Constantin sniffed and then moved closer and whispered, “The devil. It is the devil who killed my Ismael. Isn’t that what you want me to say? The black sorcerer’s punishment. The red flames of exorcism.”

Eva stiffened. Anger was running through her arms and legs like electricity. It was volatile and dangerous. Then she realized that it wasn’t really anger. It was fear. It came from deep inside.

“I’ve had enough, Mrs. Constantin.”

She was interrupted by a voice from outside.

“
Murderer
!”

Before she could understand what was happening, others joined in.

“The blood on your hands won’t wash off.”

“Murderer.”

“Killer.”

Eva stepped to the window. She saw a group of people in the yard. There were a few men and a lot of women, including one who was obviously very pregnant and the three old ladies in black. Black veils were covering their faces. Behind them stood a girl who was about twenty years old. She was wearing no top, despite the cold. The thin blue veins were standing out on her breasts. Everyone was staring at her.

The topless girl pointed at her.

“No child for you,”
she shouted.

The others joined the chorus,
“No child for you! Murderer! Accomplice!”

“Erwan!” Eva called out, growing increasingly uncomfortable. “Erwan, what’s going on down there?”

She could not tear herself away from the window. Nine. There were nine of them in all.

Why wasn’t that girl wearing a shirt in the snow?

She turned toward the stairs.

That was a mistake.

Amina Constantin jumped on her.

Eva saw her coming at the last second. The old woman took something sharp—a blade?—from a drawer in the dresser.
A pair of scissors,
she realized.

Eva lifted her arms to protect herself. She was too late. The tip of the scissors scraped across the collar of her jacket. It reached her neck and tore her skin.

Screaming in pain, she slapped Amina Constantin and pushed her away. It made no difference. The old woman had turned into a fury. She had raised the scissors as though they were a knife, and she was about to strike again. Eva’s survival instinct kicked in. She caught the woman’s arm and squeezed it. Her glasses had flown off her face. The light was blinding. She pushed the scissors away from her face, but Amina Constantin refused to give in.

“You’re the devil’s daughter,” she cried out, her face only inches away. “You thought that I wouldn’t recognize you under your mask? You can’t do anything to me! Nothing! I watched over him all my life. My soul will rise because it is pure. Pure.”

“Crazy bitch,” Eva shouted, finally disarming her.

“Devil’s daughter!” the woman screamed. “Devil’s daughter.”

Eva felt dizzy. She felt her throat. It was bloody, and the pain was sharp. She pressed on the wound as hard as she could, praying that the artery had not been nicked.

Amina Constant attacked again with a roar.

This time, Eva was not caught by surprise. She pushed the woman away with all her strength, sending her flying into a sofa. She saw her trip over the armrest and collapse on the floor. But she did not stay there long. Tangled in her black dress, the old woman got onto her knees. She was foaming at the mouth. Her eyes were rolled upward. The wrinkles on her face looked deep and thin, like cuts from a scalpel or grooves in a witch’s mask. She was shaking, as though she were in a trance. And she was murmuring incomprehensible words in a foreign language Eva did not understand. Her voice was broken, dull, evil, and each syllable penetrated Eva. Deep down, she thought she heard wings flapping.

Leroy burst into the room, pointing his weapon.

“Christ, what is going on?”

Ismael Constantin’s mother rushed to the neighboring room, hitting a coffee table on the way and knocking over a vase. The vase shattered on the floor, and the flowers it contained—dead flowers—fell out, crumbling.

“Don’t move,” Leroy said, taking aim.

But Amina Constantin had already slammed the door and turned the key.

Eva was shaking. She hurried across the room to find her glasses.

“Quick,” she screamed.

“Let me,” Leroy said, going on ahead of her.

He rammed a shoulder into the door and then hit it again.

On the third try, the door gave way.

A shot rang out.

Leroy jumped back.

“Erwan!” Eva screamed.

Her colleague rolled on the floor. He was shaken but not hurt.

“Oh, shit, no,” Eva murmured and ran to the door.

It was too late.

Eva saw the drawer, literally ripped out of the bureau when the old woman had grabbed the gun. She saw Amina Constantin’s distorted body at the corner of the bed, her neck against the wall, the gun in her hand. There were red smears on the wallpaper above her still-warm body, like an impossible halo, a surrealistic painting. Eva took in the woman’s empty eyes. They glared at her from beyond, as if she were still calling her the devil’s daughter. As if she were still seeing the badness in her heart.

“No way. It can’t be.”

The smell of gunpowder and blood made her feel woozy.

She felt Leroy’s arm around her shoulder and held onto him.

A noise that sounded like flapping fabric rose outside.

They turned to the window and looked in disbelief, as dozens and dozens of black birds flew from the trees.

Eva felt like she was reliving her dream of the park and the crows with chunks of flesh in their beaks.

She had a really bad feeling about this.

She remembered stories of souls passing into the next world, about crows ferrying the spirits of dead people into the beyond.

“
My soul will rise because it is pure,
” Amina Constantin had said.

Eva pulled away from Leroy’s arm and bolted to the window. The yard was empty. The people had vanished.

“Erwan, there were people in front of the house.”

“What?”

“They were screaming, like they were accusing me.”

She turned around and stared at him, looking lost.

“Men, women, and old ladies in black veils. Didn’t you hear them? They were right there, in the yard.”

“What are you talking about?” he asked.

She shook her head. She didn’t understand. She didn’t understand anything.

She turned back to examine the yard. Something was wrong with the picture.

She quickly realized what it was. There were no footprints in the snow, other than hers and Leroy’s. Nothing. Not a trace.

It is too late. We can’t go back now.

Toulouse

Alexandre Vauvert felt it the minute he went through the door.

Searing, blinding danger.

He stopped in his tracks, his hand stiff on the door handle. He was trying to understand where this feeling was coming from. He thought he could hear wings beating.

Eva? Is it Eva?
Why was he suddenly so afraid for her?

He had already felt this intense distress in the morning, when he had had that strange dream about her. The nightmare had stayed with him, leaving the bitter taste of urgency in his mouth, as if something—something beyond his control—were happening. An invisible and inexorable something.

Eva.
He envisioned her in his mind. Her white hair and her red, forever-feverish eyes. Her silences and sidestepping. Her hidden survivor’s strength. The woman he did not understand, who did not understand him, and whom he could not forget. Two years earlier, when they had been through hell together, he had sworn that he would always be there for her. But what could he do for her if she were in danger now, and she did not want his help? He felt like a helpless and angry idiot.

He had parked his Harley in the courtyard, next to two bikes belonging to other tenants.