First Blood (16 page)

“Aleister Crowley,” Madeleine says, always the good student. “I read the book you gave me. But I can’t say that I understood everything.”

He smiles, wiping the sweat off his brow and tossing his long braids over his shoulder.

“If the answers were easy, why would we look for them?”

She laughs and kisses his solid chest. She fills herself with his scent and drinks in his words.

“In every person, there are traces of the fire from the primordial stars. That is our divine part. But this fire is stronger in some people. In me, for example, and in you. It’s a light that comes through your eyes. It shines on the world and frees us from blindness.”

Madeleine doesn’t understand a word he is saying but nods, subjugated.

“It frees us from blindness,” she whispers, repeating his words like a spell, ready to believe everything he says if that means she can stay in his arms a little longer..

“Like stars, we move forward, and each of our actions changes the destiny of the entire universe. The question is whether we are ready to poke out the eyes of the gods and rip the fabric of the world, Madeleine.”

“What do we have to do?”

Ismael’s voice becomes honey-like. “We have to learn. Would you like to learn with me?”

“Learn what?”

“To be equal to the gods.”

Madeleine smiles.

“Yes, I’d like that. Who wouldn’t?”

On the edge of her senses, the black sun seems to shine brighter.

In Toulouse, Vauvert was walking down a long hallway at police headquarters, a cup of coffee in his hand. He spotted Detective Benjamin Blanca coming out of the elevator.

“Alex, I was just looking for you.”

He had a steaming cup of coffee too. His round young face looked foreboding.

“Some news?” Vauvert said.

“I just went by the lab for the test results concerning the transsexual.”

“What’s the verdict?”

“There was only his DNA on the rope. He tied the knot and slipped it around his neck. Looks like suicide, barring any last-minute revelation.”

“Just what we thought,” Vauvert said.

He had found the body three days earlier. The boy—he called himself Sabine—was twenty-four years old. From what Vauvert knew of him, his parents had kicked him out when he was eighteen, and he was selling himself to pay for an operation. Now he would never have that operation. The world is getting crazier. More and more quickly.

And what about you in all of this?

What are you becoming?

He chased away the dark thoughts and made his way to the open-space area.

“Nothing else?”

“About the dozen vehicles vandalized last weekend. Prints showed it was the same poor mentally disturbed guy. He’s under treatment, but every six months he stops taking his meds and starts hammering on the cars parked on his street. I sent the report to the insurance companies. It’s out of our hands now.”

Vauvert had already heard about that nutcase. He did not think the insurance companies would cover anything, because the vandal was not legally responsible for his actions. He shrugged.

“Routine.”

He took a last swig of coffee and tossed his cup into the garbage. Detectives Brodin and Majax were nearby, deep in conversation.

“Oh,” Blanca said suddenly, “I forgot the most important thing. Someone gave us a case. I had the state attorney on the phone not more than ten minutes ago. She asked that you handle it personally.”

Vauvert stiffened.

Virginie,
he thought.
You didn’t really dare, did you?

He tried to convince himself that he was wrong, that she really would not have done that.

“What are you talking about?”

Blanca motioned to Vauvert to step over to his computer. He sat down at his desk and moved the mouse. The screen lit up.

“I put it on your schedule,” he said. “Attempted rape. For God knows what reason, you got the case. The girl’s name is Jeanne Bonnet. She’s twenty-four. She’s accusing her doctor.”

He had been right.

“The doctor is Arnaud Levy, isn’t it?”

“Do you know him?”

“No,” he said.

He was furious. Virginie had not wasted any time. And her damned boyfriend had an arm as long as his reputation suggested. This was not the first time the state attorney had smoothed things over for important people.”

“Can’t anyone else handle it?”

Benjamin Blanca looked surprised. He had not expected this response from Vauvert.

“Well, our squad is on duty this week, so one of us has to take it, and since the state attorney mentioned you, I thought you should have it. I could take it if you’d like.”

“No, that’s okay,” Vauvert said. “Someone is trying to pull one over on us here, and I shouldn’t get you involved. It’s got nothing to do with you. Knowing those pencil pushers, I suppose they’ve already scheduled her for questioning without asking us, right?”

“Eleven tomorrow morning,” Blanca said. “Unless you want to change that.”

“That’s fine.”

He pulled out his cell phone and added the appointment, swearing that Virginie would get an earful, as would her rotten boyfriend.

“Give me some good news, at least. Is there any progress on the Loisel case?”

“A team is still out combing the area, but with all the recent snow, it’s slow going. In any case, none of the hospitals in the region have admitted any unidentified victims. And the call for witnesses hasn’t come up with anything. The only thing we know is that the guy spent his day visiting a factory in Saint-Gaudens, and he never arrived back home. We went over his whole itinerary, stopping at every house and questioning people for miles around. Nobody saw anything that day.”

“How was his business doing?” Vauvert asked. “Did someone check on that?”

“The guys in finance didn’t find anything suspicious. Loisel has five factories, and his business is booming. His disappearance won’t affect his employees. The revenues are still coming in, and the board of directors has taken over until he shows up. Well, if he shows up.”

The detective set his empty coffee cup on his desk and then added, “We’re monitoring his accounts, but nothing’s happened in the last two weeks. There hasn’t been any ransom demand, either. I think something bad happened to him.”

“Does his disappearance benefit anyone?”

“No one. If he’s dead, most of his money will go to charity. Loisel has no known enemies and no close family. Well, in a way.”

Vauvert raised an eyebrow.

“What do you mean, in a way?”

“Well, I don’t really know. When I was typing up the reports, I came across some interesting information. Did you know that he had been married and that he had a baby boy about ten years ago?”

That was something new.

It was even very important.

“And in the last two weeks, nobody has talked to his ex-wife?” Vauvert asked, raising his voice. “How’s that possible? Where’s she live?”

Blanca shook his head.

“Now? It’ll be hard to question them. She’s in the Terre-Cabade Cemetery with his son. They’re both dead.”

“What happened?”

“A simple story. Ten years ago, Pierre Loisel’s wife insisted on driving home from a party after a few too many drinks. She had their kid with her. He was just a few months old. It looks like he was sleeping in the car seat in the back. She drove off the road, and they ended up in the canal. The car went down. Neither of them survived.”

Vauvert remembered hearing the news. He had not made the connection with the missing man. He scratched his chin.

“What was his wife’s name?”

“Amandine Beaumont. They had been married for less than two years.”

“Did she have any family? Are her parents still alive?”

“Let’s see. The Beaumonts live in a small town fifteen miles away,” the detective said, reading the information on his screen. “They are both retired. Amandine was their only daughter.”

He looked up at the inspector and added, “I don’t know if that will help. In any case, nobody has questioned them about their son-in-law yet. I don’t think they stayed in touch with him, but perhaps they did.”

“It has to be done,” Vauvert said. “You never know. I’ll go see them in person.”

He stopped. He had almost added, “And then I’ll know.”

He thought about Virginie. He thought about his dreams. He kept seeing the flames, like a song he could not get out of his head.

“Is something bothering you?” Blanca asked.

“No. I was wondering what time it is,” the giant lied, returning to the hallway. “Send their address to my cell phone. I’ll take a car.”

“Are you going alone?”

“Yep. I think it’s best that way.”

Paris

“I’ve got something,” Detective Alazard sang out when she saw Eva go by.

Eva stopped in the doorway. The brightness in the room dazzled her. Her own workspace was always half-lit, but Perrine’s office had a big window and several ceiling lights that sent down a constant flow of white.

“Already?”

“Yes. The wood painting.”

The young woman stood up, looking like an excited teenager. On the wall behind her, a giant Hello Kitty poster contrasted with the frightening image on the computer screen. It was a red-and-black devil with horns and flames.

“The Last Judgment. The chief was right. The fragment found with the baby did come from a religious object. I examined it, and I did some digging. I bet it’s from a panel.”

Eva smiled. The new recruit took her job seriously.

Eva tried to ignore the poster. She asked, “What kind of panel, Perrine?”

“Well, in medieval churches, there were Bible illustrations above the altar. They were called altarpieces. The church’s protective saint was placed in the center, and on either side there were sacred scenes.”

“Like a history book?”

“Exactly. These paintings helped worshippers understand the passages in the Bible, because hardly anyone knew how to read. They served more or less the same educational role as stained-glass windows.

“So it’s an altarpiece.”

Eva looked at the image on the screen. The devil’s pitchfork had impaled the bodies of the damned.

“This one is particularly frightening.”

Alazard nodded, still excited by her finding, bouncing a little in her varnished shoes.

“During the Middle Ages, religion could be terrifying. The Church thought it had to frighten people into believing in God. The Revelation of Saint John was a common motif. At the time, the idea of purgatory had not yet been introduced. So on the day of the Last Judgment, you went to either heaven or hell. There was nothing between good and evil.”

“The good would be saved, and those with evil souls would be devoured by the beast,” Eva said. “That’s enough to keep anyone in line. And do babies figure in any of that?”

“Innocent souls,” Alazard said. “Perhaps Constantin killed his baby so he would not be tarnished by sin? That’s just a guess. Some psychotics use that reasoning. But, really, I don’t know.”

“Let’s not get lost in conjecture, okay?”

“Sorry,” Alazard answered, blushing.

Eva gave her a maternal smile.

“All we know is that the baby was killed, perhaps in some religious rite, and that the father was punished like a witch in the Middle Ages.”

“An exorcism. I would bet my life on it.”

The red flames of exorcism.

“An exorcism,” Eva repeated, feeling uncomfortable. “Was that kind of ritual only done on witches?”

“Witches, sorcerers, heretics, and basically anyone accused of renouncing God and being bound to the devil,” Alazard said.

She twisted a strand of her short, dark hair.

“You know, the list of crimes they were accused of is as long as my arm. People really thought they ate human flesh and did sacrifices.”

Human sacrifices,
Eva thought.

The unbearable image of that tiny body on the autopsy table came to mind, and she closed her eyes behind her glasses.

“What else did these witches do?”

“Anything that people at that time feared. They were accused of spreading the plague, destroying crops, and killing livestock. It was said that they derived some of their power from supernatural incantations and that the devil used their tongues to speak through them.”

Eva opened her eyes.

“Their tongues?”

Alazard nodded.

“Yep. That’s why their tongues were cut out, and their lips were sewn together—so they couldn’t open their mouths, even when they were dead, to recite their spells. Reducing them to silence would neutralize their diabolical power.”

“We are looking for an exorcist, then,” Eva said.

She focused on Alazard’s computer screen zooming in on the image of the Last Judgment, a dark red grimacing devil with black teeth spewing out eternal flames.

So, who were they up against? Devil-worshipping child killers? Or God-loving fanatics? Was there that much difference between the two?

That look. The look you have when you’re having those dreams.

Nobody was home at the Beaumonts.

They had a large fenced-in property just outside the town. All around, there were snow-covered fields under a dark-gray sky. The road was a straight asphalt line heading toward Toulouse in one direction and Paris in the other. A road to Eva, who was so close, yet unattainable.

Vauvert rang the bell again.

There was still no sign of life in the house.

He stuck his head between the bars of the gate. The warm air from his nose vaporized in the air with each breath. Something was off here. He had a strange sensation running down his back. It felt like a warning.

There was the road, dusk approaching, and a sensation of déjà-vu.

I dreamed about this place,
he realized.
I’m sure of that.

But why?

The house was square, rising up at the end of a snow-covered driveway. There were tire tracks. A vehicle had been here recently. It probably belonged to the Beaumonts. In any case, the shutters were closed. He also observed that there was no smoke coming from the chimney.