Black notice (42 page)

"I wouldn't be so quick to assume that," I said.

"As if he needs a friend. The lonely beast needs a friend. I suppose in his fantasies he matters to me because I saw him and didn't die. But who can know a mind like that?"

She got up from her desk and unlocked another drawer in another filing cabinet. She lifted out an ordinary shoe box, peeled off tape and removed the lid. Inside were eight small, ventilated paper boxes and just as many small manila envelopes, each labeled with case numbers and dates.

"It's unfortunate no impressions were made of the bite marks," she said. "But to do that I would have to call in a dentist, and I knew that wouldn't be permitted. But I did swab them, and maybe that will help. Maybe it won't"

"He tried to eradicate the bite marks in Kim Luong's murder," I told her. "We can't cast them. Even photographs would do no good."

"I'm not surprised. He knows there's no one to protect him now. He's-how do you say-on your turf? And I'll tell you, it wouldn't be hard to identify him by his dentition. He has very strange pointed teeth, widely spaced. Like some sort of animal."

I began to get a strange sensation.

"I recovered hair from all of the bodies," she was saying. "Catlike hair. I've wondered if he breeds angora cats, something like that."

I leaned forward in my chair.

"Catlike?" I said. "Did you save it?"

She peeled tape off a flap and retrieved a pair of forceps from a.drawer in her desk. She dipped into an envelope, withdrawing several hairs. They were so fine they floated like down as she lowered them to the ink blotter.

"All the same, you see? Nine or ten centimeters long, pale blond. Very fine, baby-fine."

"Dr. Stvan, this isn't cat hair. It's human hair. It was on the clothing of the unidentified man We found in the cargo container. It was on the body of Kim Luong."

Her eyes widened.

"When you submitted evidence in the first case, did you submit some of these hairs?" I asked.

"Yes."

"And you heard nothing back?"

"To my knowledge the labs never analyzed what I sent:'

"Oh, I bet they analyzed it, all right," I said. "I bet they know damn well these hairs are human and are too long for baby hair. They know what the bite marks mean and may even have recovered DNA from them."

"Then we should get DNA, too, from the swabs I'm giving you," she said, getting increasingly unsettled.

I didn't care. It no longer mattered.

"Of course, you can't do much with the hairs," she rambled. "Hirsute, no pigmentation. They would simply be consistent with each other, wouldn't they . . . ?"

I wasn't listening. I was thinking of Kaspar Hauser. He spent the first sixteen years of his life in a dungeon because Prince Charles of Baden wanted to make sure Kaspar didn't have any claims to the crown:

". . . no DNA without roots, I suppose . . ." Dr. Stvan went on. '

At age sixteen he was found by a gate, a note pinned to him. He was pale like a cave fish, nonverbal like an animal. A freak. He couldn't even write his name without someone's guiding his hand.

"The mechanical, block letters of a beginner," I thought out loud. "Someone shielded, never exposed to others, never schooled except at home. Maybe even self-taught.".

Dr. Stvan stopped talking.

"Only a family could shield someone from the time he was born. Only a very powerful family could circumvent the legal system, allowing this anomaly to keep on killing without being caught. Without embarrassing them, drawing unwanted attention to them."

Dr. Stvan was silent as every word I said torqued what she believed and aroused a new, more pervasive fear.

"The Chandonne family knows exactly what these hairs, the abnormal teeth, all of it means," I said. "And he knows. Of course he does, and he would have to suspect you know, even if the labs tell you nothing, Dr. Stvan. I think he came to your house because you saw his reflection in what he did to the bodies. You saw his shame, or he thought you did."

"Shame.. . ?"

"I don't think the purpose of that note was to assure you he wouldn't try again," I continued. "I think it was mocking you, telling you he could do what he wanted with sovereign immunity. That he would be back and wouldn't fail next time."

"But it would appear he's not here anymore," Dr. Stvan answered me.

"Obviously, something changed his plans."

"And the shame he thinks I saw? I never got a good look at him."

"What he did to his victims is the only look at him we need. The hair isn't coming from his head," I said. "He's shedding it from his body."

I had seen only one case of hypertrichosis in my life, when I was a resident physician in Miami and rotating through pediatrics. A Mexican woman gave birth to a girl, and two days later the infant was covered with a fine lightgray hair almost two inches long. Thick tufts protruded from her nostrils and ears, and she was photophobic, her eyes overly sensitive to light.

In most hypertrichotic .people, hairiness progressively increases until the only areas spared are mucous membranes and palms and soles, and in some extreme cases, unless the person frequently shaves, the hair on,the face and brow can become so long it has to be curled so the person can see. Other symptoms can be anomalies of the teeth, stunted genitalia, more than the normal number of fingers and toes and nipples, and an asymmetrical face.

In earlier centuries, some of these wretched souls were sold to carnivals or royal courts for amusement. Some were thought to be werewolves.

"Wet, dirty hair. Like a wet, dirty animal," Dr. Ruth Stvan supposed. "I wonder if the reason I saw only his eyes when he appeared at my door is because his entire face was covered with hair? And maybe he had his hands in his pockets because they were covered with hair, too?"

"Certainly, he couldn't go out in normal society looking like that," I replied. "Unless he goes out only after dark. Shame, sensitivity to light and now murder. He might limit his activities to darkness, anyway."

"I suppose he could shave," Stvan pondered. "At least those areas people might see. Face, forehead, neck, tops of the hands."

"Some of the hair we found appeared to have been shaved," I said. "If he were on a ship, he had to do something. "He must undress, at least partially, when he kills," she said.

"All this long hair he leaves."

I wondered if his genitalia were stunted, and if this might have something to do with why he undressed his victims only from the waist up. Perhaps to see normal adult female genitalia was'to remind him of his own inadequacy as a male. I could only imagine his humiliation, his rage. It was typical for parents to shun a hypertrichotic infant at birth, especially if they were like the powerful, proud Chandonnes on the rich, exclusive he Saint-Louis.

I imagined this tormented son, this espece de sale gorille, living in a dark space inside his family's centuriesold home and going out only at night. Criminal cartel or not, a wealthy family with a respected name might not want the world to know he was their son.

"There's always the hope record checks can be run in France to see if there have been any babies born with this condition," I said. "That shouldn't be hard to track, since hypertrichosis is so rare. Only one in a billion people, or something like that."

"There will be no records," Stvan matter-of-factly stated.

I believed her. His family would have made certain of that. Close to noon, I left Dr. Stvan with fear in my heart and ill-gotten-evidence in my briefcase. I went out through the back of the building, where vans with curtains in the windows waited for their next sad journey. A man and a woman in the drab clothing of sparrows waited on a black bench against the old brick wall. He held his hat in his hand, staring down at the ground. She looked up at me, her face pinched by grief.

I walked very fast on cobblestones along the Seine as terrible images came to me. I imagined his hideous face flashing out of the dark when a woman opened her door to him. I imagined him wandering like a nocturnal beast, selecting and stalking until he struck and savaged again and again. His revenge in life was to make his victims look at him. His power was their terror.

I stopped and scanned. Cars were relentless and fast. I felt dazed as traffic roared and kicked grit in my face, and I had no idea how I was going to get a taxi. There was no place for one to pull over. Side streets I passed were empty of traffic and I saw no hope of a taxi along any of them, either.

I began to get a panic attack. I fled back up stone steps, back into the park, and sat on a bench, catching my breath while the scent of death continued to drift through flowers and trees. I closed my eyes and turned my face up to the winter sun, waiting for my heart to run a little slower while beads of cold sweat slid under my clothes. My hands and feet were numb, my aluminum briefcase hard between my knees.

"You look like you could use a friend." Jay Talley's voice suddenly sounded above me.

I jumped and gasped.

"I'm sorry," he softly said as he sat next to me. "I didn't mean to startle you."

"What are you doing here?" I asked as thoughts madly clashed, muddy and bloody and slamming into one another like foot soldiers on a battlefield.

"Didn't I tell you we'd look after you?"

He unbuttoned his tobacco-colored cashmere overcoat and slipped out a pack of cigarettes from an inside pocket. He lit one for each of us.

"You also said it was too dangerous for any of you to show up here," I said accusatorially. "So I go in and do my dirty work, and here you are, sitting in the damn park right at the Institut's damn front door."

I angrily blew out smoke and got to my feet. I grabbed my briefcase.

"Just what kind of game are you playing with me?" I asked him.

He dipped into another pocket and pulled out a cellular phone.

"I thought you might need a ride," he said. "I'm not playing a game. Let's go."

He pressed numbers on his phone and said something in French to whoever was at the other end.

"Now what? Is the Man from U. N. C. L. E. coming to pick us up?" I bitterly said.

"I just called a taxi. I believe the Man from U. N. C. L. E. retired a few years ago."

We walked out to one of the quiet side streets, and minutes later a taxi pulled over. We climbed in and Talley stared at the briefcase in my lap.

"Yes," I answered his unspoken question.

When we reached my hotel, I took him up to my room, because there was no other place we could talk without the risk of being overheard. I tried Marino, and he didn't answer.

"I need to get back to Virginia," I said.

"That's easy enough to arrange," he said. "Whenever you want."

He hung the do not disturb sign outside the door and fastened the burglar chain.

"First thing in the morning."

We settled in the sitting area by the window, a small table between us.

"I take it Madame Stvan opened up to you," he said. "That was the harder nut to crack, if you must know. By now the poor woman's so paranoid-and for good reason-we didn't think she'd tell the truth to anyone. I'm glad my instincts were right."

"Your instincts?" I asked.

"Yes." His eyes stayed on mine. "I knew, if anyone could get through to her, it would be you. Your reputation precedes you and she can't have anything but the utmost respect for you. But it helps just a little that I have personal insight about you, too." He paused. "Because of Lucy."

"You know my niece?" I didn't believe him.

"We were in various training programs at the same time in Glynco," he replied, referring to the national academy in Glynco, Georgia, where ATF, Customs, Secret Service, Border Patrol and some sixty other law enforcement agencies did their basic training. "I used to feel kind of song for her, in a way. Her presence always managed to generate a lot of talk about you, as if she didn't have any talents on her own."

"I can't do a tenth of what she can," I said.

"Most people can't."

"What does any of this have to do with her?" I wanted to know.

"I think she has to be Icarus and fly too close to the sun because of you. I hope she doesn't push that myth too far and fall from the sky,"

The comment shot fear through me. I had no idea what Lucy was doing right now. Talley was right about what he said, too. My niece always had to do everything bigger, better, faster and riskier than I did, as if competing against me would finally win the love she didn't believe she deserved.

"Hair transferred from the killer to his victims in the Paris cases is definitely not the hair of the unidentified man in my cooler," I said, and I explained the rest to him.

"But this weird hair was on his clothes?" Talley tried to understand.

"On the inside of them. Just think of this as a hypothetical. Let's say the clothing was worn by the killer and his body is covered with this dense, long baby-fine hair. So it transfers to the inside of his clothing, which he takes off and makes his victim put on before he drowns him."