Bred to Kill (3 page)

A
fter passing the Meudon Observatory, Sharko sped down a narrow road in the middle of the forest; he was seated next to his new partner on Bellanger's team, a thirty-year-old named Jacques Levallois. Face like a teacher's pet, muscular build, Levallois had joined Homicide the previous year, benefiting from excellent scores on his lieutenant's exam and a boost from his uncle, the deputy chief of Narcotics.

That morning, the chief inspector wasn't feeling especially talkative. The two men had never worked together, and Levallois, like everyone else, was well aware of his partner's turbulent past. The endless manhunts for violent killers, the plunge into the most twisted cases, wife and daughter killed in tragic circumstances several years earlier . . . and that weird illness that had gone off in his head, then just disappeared without saying boo. Levallois looked on him as a real survivor, one of those fallen heroes that you either admire or despise. For the moment, the young lieutenant wasn't sure which attitude to adopt. One thing for certain, Sharko had been a great investigator.

Though very near Paris, the place the two cops were driving through seemed cut off from the rest of the world: trees ad infinitum, muted light, overgrown vegetation. A discreet sign read
PRIMATE
RESEARCH
CENTER
,
UMR
6552
EEE
.

“EEE, that's Ethology-Evolution-Ecology,” Levallois explained to break the ice.

“And what's that supposed to mean?”

“To tell the truth, I have no idea.”

Sharko turned off at a recess and parked in the lot, where there were already a dozen cars belonging to staff and a police Emergency Services vehicle. Located in the middle of the forest, the center looked like a small entrenched camp, protected by tall, solid wood fences squeezed into a circular enclosure. The entrance was through a gate that at the moment stood wide open. Without a word, the two officers headed into the enclave, toward a group of men and women in mid-conversation at the end of a dirt path.

There was nothing especially remarkable about the center. All around them, huge man-made environments made it look as if the animals roamed freely, but in reality they were held captive by thin wire mesh, and the tall branches of the trees were covered in green netting. Monkeys of all sizes played or hung by their tails and screeched; clusters of lemurs stared at the two intruders with wide jade-colored eyes. A pale copy of the Amazon rain forest, refitted Parisian-style.

A woman with brown hair and drawn features came away from the group and approached them. She must have been around fifty, looking vaguely like Sigourney Weaver in
Gorillas in the Mist
. Levallois proudly held out his police ID.

“Paris police, Homicide. I'm Lieutenant Levallois, and this is . . .”

“Chief Inspector Sharko,” said Sharko.

They exchanged handshakes. The woman's was surprisingly firm.

“Clémentine Jaspar. I run this center. It's terrible what happened.”

“One of your monkeys attacked an employee?”

Jaspar shook her head sadly. A woman in touch with nature, thought Sharko, noticing the cracks on her fingers, her skin tanned by a different sun from the one over France. A wide scar ran along her forearm, the kind a machete might have left.

“I don't understand what happened. Shery would never hurt a fly. It's just not like her to commit such an atrocity.”

“Shery is . . .”

“My West African chimpanzee. She's been with me for years.”

“Can you show me where it happened?”

She pointed to a long one-story building, white and modern looking.

“The animal housing facility and the laboratories are in there. Two men from Emergency Services have already arrived. One is inside and the other . . . I don't know, he must be walking around the pathways on his phone. Come with me.”

The cops greeted the employees with a nod, the latter visibly shaken by the tragedy. There were five or six of them, mostly young, squeezing plastic coffee cups in their hands and talking animatedly among themselves. Sharko took note of each face, then turned back to Jaspar.

“What exactly do you do here?”

“Mainly ethology. We try to understand how the social organization of primates and their cognitive faculties were shaped over the course of biological evolution. We study their movements, their way of using tools, how they reproduce. We have about a hundred primates on these twenty acres, spread over six different species. Most of them come from Africa.”

Neither Sharko nor his partner took notes. Why bother, since the case was practically open-and-shut? In the tops of the trees, like a synchronized ballet, balls of reddish fur swung languidly from branch to branch: a family of orangutans, with the baby in front of its mother.

“And the victim? What was her job?”

“Eva Louts was a grad student at Jussieu. Her specialty was evolutionary biology, and she'd been working here for three weeks, doing research for her thesis.”

“Evolutionary biology, what's that?”

“Before I explain, do you know what the genome is?”

“Not exactly.”

“It means putting end to end the DNA that composes our twenty-three pairs of chromosomes. It gives a sequence of more than three billion bits of data, which you might call the assembly instructions for our organism. Well, with this genome, we're reconstructing the history of life itself. Evolutionary biology aims to understand why and how new species appear, or new viruses like AIDS or SARS, while others die out. And also to answer questions about the evolution of life—such as why we grow old and die. You've surely heard of natural selection, mutations, and genetic heritage?”

“Darwin and those guys? A bit.”

“Well, that's the heart of what we do.”

They entered the animal housing facility. After passing a small desk with only basic computer equipment, they reached a large room where cages of different sizes were lined up one after another, most of them empty. A few lemurs were gesticulating to each other. On the shelves sat a huge quantity of plastic toys: colored geometric shapes, puzzles with large pieces, containers. The place smelled unpleasantly of old leather and excrement. Visibly overcome, Jaspar stopped short and pointed.

“Over there is where it happened. You can go see. Forgive me for staying back, but I'm feeling a bit sick.”

“We understand.”

Sharko and his colleague went closer. The two men shook hands with a third, a cop from Emergency Services with a mustache, who was guarding the crime scene. In the last cage, a large cube three yards on each side and made of bars, the victim was casually sprawled in the straw and woodchips, her arms raised above her head as if she were taking a sunbath. Blood had flowed from the back of her skull. A large wound—apparently a bite mark—ran from her right cheek down to her chin. The girl must have been twenty-three or twenty-four. Her blouse was ripped and her shoes had been thrown several yards away, toward the center of the cage. In the middle of the blood pool lay a fat metal paperweight, perhaps made of copper or bronze.

In the right-hand corner, in the back of the same cage, a chimpanzee was huddled, its fur gleaming with blood around the forearms, hands, and feet. It was tall and black, with a powerful back and long, thin, hirsute arms. It turned its eyes toward the new intruders. In its pupils, Sharko could read, in a fraction of a second, an expression of deep distress. Shery, the great ape, resumed its prostrate position, turning its back to the observers.

The Emergency cop with the mustache twiddled an unlit cigarette between his fingers.

“Nothing we can do. That filthy baboon hasn't budged an inch. Our orders are to wait for you before putting it to sleep.”

Sharko turned to Jaspar, who had kept her distance.

“Who discovered the body?”

The primatologist ignored the question. She walked up quickly and stared at the mustached cop with a dark look on her face.

“Shery has nothing in common with a baboon! She's a female chimpanzee who I've been taking care of for almost thirty years!”

The cop shrugged.

“Baboon or not, they all end up turning against us sooner or later. Case in point.”

Lieutenant Levallois suggested that the other man go outside for a breath of air. The tension was palpable, the atmosphere charged. Sharko calmly repeated his question.

“Who discovered the body?”

Jaspar was now standing next to him. Short and stocky, she nervously twisted her fingers and tried to keep her eyes from meeting the empty gaze of the victim. Sharko knew that, once the initial curiosity had passed, it became impossible for most people to look death in the face. The sight of the partially undressed young woman made it especially unbearable.

“Hervé Beck, our animal keeper. He comes by every day at six to clean the cages. When he got here this morning, he immediately called the police.”

“So the door to the cage was closed when he arrived?”

“No, it was wide open. It was Hervé who pushed it shut when he saw the body, to keep Shery from escaping.”

“Where is this Hervé?”

“Outside, with the others.”

“Fine. That paperweight next to the body . . . any idea where it came from?”

“The desk where Eva worked.”

“Your thoughts on what might have led her to open the cage and go inside holding a paperweight?”

“Shery's our center's mascot. Unlike the other animals, she uses her cage only for sleeping and walks around freely the rest of the time. Now and then she spirits away an object, especially if it's shiny. Eva must have been bringing her back inside her cage once she'd finished her observations. As she was often gone during the day, she came in to work fairly late and was the last to leave. We trusted her.”

The primatologist gazed at the distressed chimpanzee.

“Shery is completely harmless. She's known to every primatologist in France for her gentleness, intelligence, and especially her ability to express herself.”

“Express herself?”

“She speaks ASL, the American sign language system. She learned it decades ago, at the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute in Ellensburg, Washington. For years I've been in awe of the progress she's made in sharing her emotions. I'm telling you, she couldn't have . . .”

Jaspar suddenly fell silent, crushed by the overwhelming evidence: the chimpanzee covered in blood, a victim at her feet, struck repeatedly with a paperweight and bitten in the face. What could possibly have happened? How could Shery have committed such an abomination? Clémentine tried to communicate with the animal, but despite her urgings, her appeals through the bars, Shery would not respond.

“She refuses to say anything. I think she's really been traumatized.”

Sharko and Levallois exchanged a knowing glance. The young lieutenant took his cell phone and went out.

“Ma'am, an investigation will be launched and the case referred to a judge. My partner just left to call in a team of technicians who will collect samples, and some colleagues who will take statements.”

The prospect appeared to set the primatologist's mind at ease. But it was purely routine. Even a guy hanging from a rope in the middle of a locked room required opening a case file. They had to determine whether it was a suicide, an accident, or a staged crime. Sharko stared at the primate. For a few seconds, he wondered if these animals had fingerprints.

“You understand they'll have to enter the cage, and also take samples from your . . . companion, especially from her gums and nails, so they can tell if the blood belongs to the victim, which might prove the attack thesis. They're going to have to put her to sleep.”

After not moving for an instant, facing the solid bars, Clémentine Jaspar nodded without great conviction.

“I understand. But promise me you won't harm her as long as you don't know the facts. This chimpanzee is much more human than most of the people we see around us. I found her dying in the jungle, wounded by poachers. Her mother had been killed right in front of her. She's like my own child. She's my entire life.”

Sharko knew better than anyone what it meant to have a loved one torn away, whether animal or human. He labored to find the most neutral response possible.

“I can't promise you, but I'll do everything in my power.”

Clémentine Jaspar sighed sadly.

“Very well. I'll go get the hypodermic gun.”

She had spoken in a murmur. Sharko moved nearer the cage and squatted, being careful not to touch the bars. There could be no doubt about it: the outline of animal jaws on the victim's face was clear. The chimp was guilty; the situation was cut and dried. The animal had bashed her with the paperweight, bitten her face, and there would probably never be an explanation for why she did it. The inspector had already heard about sudden outbreaks of violence in these primates, who become capable of massacring their own offspring for no apparent reason. Eva Louts had probably just been careless; maybe she'd approached Shery at the wrong moment. One thing was sure: the future of this poor animal with its wide-set ears and sweet face didn't look good.

“You're practically the same age as a woman I loved, you realize that? Never too late to blow a fuse, I guess. Why don't you just tell us what happened?”

Jaspar returned with an object that looked oddly like a paint gun. Sharko stood up and glanced at the ceiling.

“I see surveillance cams all over the place. Have you thought of . . .”

“No use. Eva was supposed to turn on the alarm system and put on the lights when she went out.”

With a sigh, the director aimed her weapon at the monkey.

“Forgive me, my angel . . .”

At that moment, Shery turned around and looked the woman in the eye. With clenched fists on the ground, she walked limply up to the front of the cage. Jaspar's finger trembled on the trigger.