The Last Precinct - Cornwell Patricia (читаем книги онлайн TXT) 📗

It gives me a Strange feeling to realize that I heard about this case when it happened. Suddenly, I am vaguely remembering details that were part of huge, sensational stories at the time. It is numbing to consider that when I heard about Susan Pless two years ago, I had no idea that eventually I would be involved in her case, especially like this.

"Unless he's not local or even from this country," Marino is suggesting.

Berger shrugs a question mark, hands palm up. I am trying to add up the evidence she has presented and am not getting an answer that even begins to make sense. "If she ate between seven and nine P.M., her food should have been largely digested by as early as eleven P.M.," I point out. "Assuming the medical examiner is correct in his estimated time of death, if she died several hours before her body was found_let's just say, by one or two A.M._then her food should have cleared her stomach before that."

"The explanation was stress. She was frightened and her digestion may have slowed down," Berger says.

"That makes sense when you talk about a stranger hiding in your closet and jumping out at you when you get home. But she was apparently comfortable enough with this man to invite him into her apartment," I offer. "And he was comfortable enough not to care if the doorman saw him come in and then leave much later. What about vaginal swabs?"

"Positive for seminal fluid."

"This guy"_I indicate Chandonne_"isn't into vaginal penetration and there's no evidence he ejaculates," I remind Berger. "Not in the Paris murders, certainly not in the ones here. The victims are always clothed from the waist down. They have no injuries from the waist down. He doesn't seem remotely interested in them from the waist down, except for their feet. I was under the impression Susan Pless was clothed from the waist down, too."

"She was, had pajama bottoms on. But she had seminal fluid_possibly suggesting consensual sex, at least at first. Certainly not after that, not when you see what he did to her," Berger replies. "The DNA from the seminal fluid matches up with Chandonne. Then we've got the weird long hairs that sure as hell look like his." She nods at the television. "And you guys tested brother Thomas, right? And his DNA isn't identical to Jean-Baptiste's, so it doesn't appear Thomas left the seminal fluid."

"Their DNA profiles are very close, but not identical," I agree. "And wouldn't be unless the brothers were identical twins, which clearly they aren't."

"How do you know that for sure?" Marino frowns.

"If Thomas and Jean-Baptiste were identical twins," I explain, "both of them would have congenital hypertrichosis. Not just one of them."

"So how do you explain it?" Berger asks me. "A genetic match in all cases, yet the descriptions of the killers seem to indicate they can't be the same person."

"If the DNA in Susan Pless's case matches Jean-Baptiste Chandonne's DNA, then I can only explain it by concluding that the man who left her apartment at three-thirty in the morning isn't the man who killed her," I reply. "Chandonne killed her. But the man people saw her with isn't Chandonne."

"So maybe Wolfman screws 'em now and then, after all," Marino adds. "Or tries to and we just don't know it because he usually don't leave any juice."

"And then what?" Berger challenges him. "Puts their pants back on? Dresses them from the waist down after the fact?"

"Hey, it ain't like we're talking about somebody who does things the normal way. Oh, almost forgot to tell you." He looks at me. "One of the nurses got a peek at what he's packing. Undipped." Marino's jargon for uncircumcised. "And smaller than a damn Vienna sausage." He shows us by holding his thumb and index finger about an inch apart. "No wonder the squirrel's in such a bad mood all the time."

Chapter 13

WITH A CLICK OF THE REMOTE CONTROL, 1 AM returned to the cinder block interview room inside the forensic ward of MCV. I am returned to Jean-Baptiste Chan-donne, who wants us to believe he is capable of somehow transforming his uniquely hideous appearance into elegant good looks when he is in the mood to dine out and pick up a woman. Impossible. His torso with its swirling coat of immature hair fills the television screen as he is helped back into his chair, and when his head enters the picture I am startled to discover that his bandages have been removed, his eyes now masked by dark plastic Solar Shield glasses, the flesh around them an irritated raw pink. His eyebrows are long and confluent, as if someone has taken a strip of downy fur and glued it on his brow. The same downy pale hair covers his forehead and temples.

Berger and I sit in my conference room. It is not quite seven-thirty and Marino has left for two reasons: He was paged about a possible identification of the body found dumped on the street in Mosby Court, and Berger encouraged him not to rejoin us. She said she needed to have some private time with me. I think she also was just plain sick of him, not that I blame her. Marino has made it abundantly clear that he is intensely critical of the way she interviewed Chandonne and that she did it in the first place. Part of this_no, all of this_is jealousy. There isn't an investigator on this planet who wouldn't want to interview such a notorious, freakish killer. It just so happens that the beast picked the beauty, and Marino is seething.

As I listen to Berger remind Chandonne on camera that he understands his rights and has agreed to talk to her further, I am gripped more convincingly by a certain reality. I am a small creature caught in a web, an evil web spun of threads that seem to wrap around the entire globe like lines of latitude and longitude. Chandonne's attempt to murder me was incidental to what he is all about. I was an amusement. If he figures I am watching his taped interview, then I am still an amusement. Nothing more. It occurs to me that if he had succeeded in ripping me to shreds, he would have already been focused on someone new and I would be nothing but a brief bloody moment, a past wet dream in his hateful, hellish life.

"And the detective got you something to eat and drink, sir, isn't that right?" Berger is asking Chandonne.

"Yes."

"And what was that?"

"A hamburger and a Pepsi."

"And fries?"

"Mais oui. Fries." He seems to think this is funny.

"So you've been given whatever you need, isn't that right?" she asks him.

"Yes."

"And the hospital staff removed your bandages and gave you special glasses to wear. You're comfortable?"

"I hurt a little bit."

"Were you given any pain medication?"

"Yes."

"Tylenol. Isn't that right?"

"Yes, I suppose. Two tablets"

"Nothing more than that. Nothing that might interfere with

your thinking."

"No, nothing." His black glasses are fixed on her.

"And nobody is forcing you to talk to me or made you any promises, isn't that right?" Her shoulders move as she flips a page in what I assume is a legal pad,

"Yes."

"Sir, have I made any threats or promises to get you to talk to me?"

This goes on and on as Berger runs through her checklist. She is making sure that Chandonne's eventual representation won't have any opportunity to say that Chandonne was intimidated, badgered, abused or treated unfairly in any way. He sits straight in his chair, his arms folded on top of each other in a tangle of hair that splays over the top of the table and hangs in repulsive clumps, like dirty cornsilk, from the short sleeves of his hospital-issue shirt. Nothing about the way his anatomy has been put together computes. He reminds me of old campy movies where silly boys on the beach bury each other in sand and paint eyes on their foreheads and make beards look like head hair or wear sunglasses on the backs of their heads or kneel with shoes on their knees to turn themselves into dwarfs_people turning themselves into freakish caricatures, because they think it is amusing. There is nothing amusing about Chandonne. I can't even find him pitiful. My anger stirs like a great shark deep beneath the surface of my stoical demeanor.