The Hanged Man's Tale, page 29
“Jacques Vachère!” came a shout. Another crash, followed by a maniacal laugh. And then another shout—“Vachère—the devil marches with you!”
Jeannot managed to mumble, “I told you.”
Vachère peeked between the boards covering the front window of the cabin. It was Mazarelle, alone. Vachère smirked. Still alive. Still a fool. This idiot was taking all the fun out of the hunt. He would deal with him quickly.
Vachère moved back toward Jeannot and gave him a pinch on the cheek.
“Don’t worry, Jean. It’s the cavalry!” With that, he grabbed the SIG Sauer he had found on the young cop and strode outside. Out beyond the cabin, the woods were dark and silent. A tiny breeze rustled the leaves. He knew Mazarelle was out there somewhere. He just had to lure him out.
“It’s time, Mazarelle.”
His eyes scanned the tree line. No sign of him.
“Time for you and your boy Jean.”
He was listening hard. But there was nothing.
“Aren’t you worried about Jean? He’s not looking good.”
There on the edge of the clearing, a mere thirty feet away, Mazarelle appeared. A slow smile spread across Vachère’s lips.
He put his finger on the SIG’s hammer and cocked the gun. Before he could fire, Mazarelle had stepped back into the shadows.
Vachère didn’t hesitate. This was his game. Closing the distance with alarming speed, he flung himself toward the woods.
Sprinting toward the tree line, he spotted Mazarelle again. The detective wasn’t moving. That was strange. Leaping forward, Vachère suddenly felt the earth softening underfoot, the ground giving way, his ankle twisting, then blinding pain shooting through his foot as his body weight shifted and pushed him farther down, rooting him to the spot. The gun went flying. Vachère’s gaze shot downward to find six inches of bloody wood protruding from the top of his boot. That crafty bastard. His own trap, used on him.
The pain was excruciating. He reached around. He couldn’t see the SIG Sauer anywhere. Just mud and leaves, and the throbbing in his foot.
And now, there was Mazarelle, lumbering forward with a self-satisfied smirk, a small weapon in one hand, cuffs in the other.
“We’re bringing you in, Vachère.”
Vachère’s hands fumbled in the darkness, searching frantically for the gun. It was gone. His fingers closed around something else. A rock. It would have to do.
The rock clipped Mazarelle in the cheek before he could sidestep it, sending him reeling backward, his vision blurred, his small gun slipping from his grasp.
Straining to get to his feet, Vachère calculated the odds. Mazarelle was doubled over on his knees trying to stand. Maybe if he was quick enough he could use the spike itself against him. A dazed animal was almost as easy to kill as a maimed one.
No, not enough time—he would have to go deeper in the woods and hope for another encounter. Or maybe luck would be on his side and Mazarelle would fall into one of his traps first. Either way, escape was the best scenario for survival.
Vachère quickly took two deep breaths, then grabbed the wooden spike at the base beneath his boot, and yanked his foot up hard. Grunting with pain, he appraised the wound. A euro-size hole in his boot began pooling with blood.
Mazarelle, unsteadily scrambling to his feet, was trying to regain his balance. A thin line of blood trickled down the side of his face, but it didn’t feel important. In the light from the cabin, he could make out Vachère, freeing himself from the wooden spike and frantically limping away into the woods. So the plan had worked. Now to take him down!
He’d started off after Vachère, when he heard a low groan. Jeannot! How could he have forgotten? Mazarelle rushed inside the cabin and knelt by the young man’s side. Jeannot was alive, but barely. Mazarelle went to work on him, ripping away chunks of cloth and quickly tying tourniquets around his bleeding appendages. He then pulled out his cell and called Maurice.
“Jeannot needs help, Maurice. Track my cell, I’m leaving it with him. Contact the nearest medical center and get Jeannot to a doctor. Stay with him overnight wherever they can treat him.”
“But, boss, where are you going?”
“I’m heading after Vachère.”
71
Dawn was just breaking as Mazarelle made his way through the trees that lined the rugged limestone of the Alpilles preserve. He was no tracker like Vachère, but this was a trail even he could follow—a trail of blood and trampled brush. It had taken him hours, but he knew he was close.
Emerging out of the woods, he stopped to catch his breath. His leg was really throbbing now. And his head still woozy. But the vista demanded attention. A remarkable sight—harsh, craggy, white stone, uneven and jagged, all framing a massive brown waterway.
It was the Rhône, a powerful river, churning five hundred miles from the Swiss Alps toward the Mediterranean. And even in the late Provençal summer, the river was rolling along at a flood volume—four hundred thousand cubic feet a second. The glacial snow, melting up at the riverhead, was releasing new torrents. Green and brown, the water surged past, strong enough to power electrical plants and carve through the craggy limestone that surrounded it.
In the overwhelming roar of the river, Mazarelle almost missed him.
There, coming out of the tree line, a lean, steely figure making his way south, silhouetted in the early morning light. It was Vachère—wounded, limping a little, his foot bleeding. But even at that distance, Mazarelle could tell that he was still a raw force, a coiled menace.
* * *
—
When Vachère heard Mazarelle’s voice, he jumped and turned.
“Vous?!” Vachère snarled at his pursuer. “You want more?”
To Mazarelle, his fury didn’t merit an answer. Instead the detective started forward, closing the distance between them.
Vachère watched him come. He stood tall on an embankment, a half dozen feet over the river, an ominous drop below. He was trapped now, between Mazarelle and the Rhône. But in his mind, it was Mazarelle who was trapped with him.
Mazarelle stopped just out of range. In the first orange rays of the morning, he could see there was no one else around but the two of them. Eyeball to eyeball, hunter and hunted. Although which was which, Mazarelle couldn’t say at the moment. What he knew was that this wouldn’t be easy. Facing a lethal adversary, Mazarelle’s first attack wasn’t physical. He went for the weak spot—his opponent’s mind.
“Ready to swim, Vachère?”
Mazarelle jabbed his finger toward the banks of the Rhône.
In spite of himself, Vachère cast a quick jittery look over his shoulder. Reliving the trauma of his youth. And then steeled himself. By the time he looked back, there was no expression in his eyes at all.
Waiting, watching, he sized Mazarelle up—picking his moment.
But Mazarelle was taking his time as well. There was no need to rush. Time was on his side.
“So tell me,” he said. “Why did you do it?”
Vachère just stared at him.
“Those murders in Paris. Why kill those men?”
Still no answer.
“What was the point?”
A small flicker of amusement twisted the corner of Vachère’s lips. The question provoked him.
“There’s no point. There’s just orders.”
Mazarelle nodded encouragingly. “So who sent you?”
Vachère shrugged. His mouth closed.
It wasn’t much of a confession. For Vachère, it was all the same. One more coffin. And now, he seemed to be measuring Mazarelle again.
“C’mon,” said Mazarelle. “This is your chance. Think about a lighter sentence. You’ll never get away.”
“Get away?” said Vachère. “I don’t need to get away. This is my home.”
For the briefest moment, something about Vachère’s expression froze Mazarelle. Like a basilisk, rooting him to the spot. It wasn’t the ferocity, the animal snarl. It was what came next—the odd smile.
What was this maniac grinning about? As if these were the moments that Vachère loved most. When the hunt reached its end. Well, this hunt was about to end, one way or the other.
Mazarelle swiftly moved forward to grab the killer.
But even injured as he was, Vachère was still more dangerous than Mazarelle. A slip of the hand, a flip of the wrist, and Vachère had his pursuer in a painful wristlock. Mazarelle was strong, an ox of a man. But he couldn’t match the paramilitary experience of a trained special ops warrior. Inch by inch, Mazarelle was bent down by an unbearable pain in his elbow and shoulder.
Shifting his weight, he tried to wriggle his way out, to reposition his arm and shoulder in some way. Vachère gave a small chuckle, and tightened his grip. It seemed there was no way out of this one. Except—when he was engaged in hand-to-hand combat, Mazarelle did have one thing going for him. He fought dirty. Even as the pain forced him down toward the ground, he summoned one small burst of energy and drove the heel of his shoe into his opponent’s bleeding foot.
Vachère’s yowl of agony was deeply satisfying; his release of the armlock even more so. Mazarelle didn’t hesitate. He drove forward, using his bulk to press home his advantage. But Vachère stepped back, retreating, covering. Mazarelle was frustrated at each blow. He couldn’t get a punch inside. Stepping forward again, he feinted at Vachère’s face, as he drove his knee into the soft flesh on the outside of the soldier’s leg, right below the hip. A straight shot at the sciatic nerve. Deadening, crippling almost any leg.
Vachère seemed to buckle for a moment. But only a moment. And in almost the same instant, he reached out and grabbed at Mazarelle’s shirtfront. Yanking him forward, he lined the big man up for a kill shot to the neck.
But Mazarelle didn’t pull away as expected. Instead, he kept right on coming. He used the force of Vachère’s tug to propel himself onward. Mazarelle’s head seemed to launch forward, his forehead smashing into Vachère’s face. BAM! The headbutt exploded, crashing right across the bridge of Vachère’s nose. A panoply of stars detonated into a brilliant palette.
Mazarelle, unbalanced now, slipped and toppled over onto the slick stone of the embankment. Vachère, also losing his balance, reeled in the opposite direction. He spun, staggering, stumbling on the edge of the riverbank, and fell headfirst into the Rhône.
For a moment, Mazarelle lay flat on his back, stunned.
But he was back on his feet in an instant. He saw Vachère pop up like a cork, bouncing on the water’s surface. The soldier struggled to reach a branch that extended over the river. It was just beyond his grasp.
“Mazarelle! I need—HELP me!” Vachère shouted. “I can’t…! I can’t…!”
In the water, all Vachère’s old phobias were awakened. Tormented him. Filled his mind. He sank back into the water, then popped up for a huge gasp of air.
“Help, you son of a…!”
It wasn’t that he couldn’t swim. Vachère’s foot seemed to be caught. The force of the current was pushing him downstream, but his foot had gotten jammed behind him, wedged between a couple of rocks. His head would pop up to the surface, then be pushed under the current again. And with the force of the water flowing over his body, there was no way for him to work his way back upstream to free his foot. He was caught, snared in nature’s own trap.
It took Mazarelle a moment to understand what was happening. Vachère would never be able to get himself loose. He saw the realization dawn in the killer’s eyes. The fear. His old nemesis, this mighty river, about to claim him at last.
Mazarelle’s instinct was to jump in and save the drowning swimmer. He kicked off his shoes, pulled his shirt over his head. He grabbed at his belt…And stopped.
Mazarelle watched Vachère’s head pop up in the water again, taking a great gasping breath. He watched the bobbing head, the flowing water. He had made a career out of saving people. But not this one. Not this salaud. He could still see the knife marks on the arms of young Jeannot.
As if she were right behind him, he heard Angelique’s warning: “Don’t be a hero.”
“Help!” Vachère continued to shout, as the river pounded onward. But now his voice was weaker, paler, fading.
Then all Mazarelle saw were the bubbles as Vachère disappeared beneath the Rhône’s surface, the river sucking him down like a whirlpool.
72
Early the next morning, a superfast TGV from the Rhône and a very slow cab ride from the Gare de Lyon deposited the commandant back at police headquarters. He’d just sat down at his desk when the call came in. Coudert wanted him in his office to discuss the resolution of the tarot card murder.
Mazarelle wasn’t sure what to expect. On the train ride back, he’d initially felt a wave of contentment. One less monster walking the earth. But the closer he got to home, the more his original satisfaction with Jacques Vachère’s demise had given way to another emotion—one that felt much more like guilt. Not so much over what had happened to the murderer—who deserved every bit of his gruesome drowning—but rather that he had failed to bring him back. No arrest meant no trial. And no trial meant no evidence. No way to track down the men lurking in the background behind these murders. Because that’s how Mazarelle had read Vachère’s enigmatic answer. A confirmation of his own sense that, of course, there were others who gave the orders—the ones really responsible for the deaths.
“I can’t say I liked the way he died—” began Mazarelle, eager to explain why and how the “accidental” death occurred.
“Listen, Mazarelle,” interrupted the patron. “I don’t need to hear the details. Neither the directeur nor I have any regrets. Nor should you. On the contrary, we’re enormously relieved. You did well. Much better than many of us thought you’d do. Two ugly murders off the books. The tarot card murderer is gone. The newspapers are happy. The tourists are happy. And our case clearance rate is on the rise. You’ve saved us a ton of trouble.” As Coudert spoke, he snapped shut the Berthaud-Danglars folder on his desk, as if to emphasize the end of the case.
“What happened to Babo?”
“Oh, he’s been released. Had nothing to do with the case. Why was he in prison in the first place?”
Why indeed? Mazarelle gave a muffled snort. Probably because some people found it easier to look for Romani scapegoats than do the work.
“Do you think we owe him an apology?”
The patron’s expression was incredulous. “He’s a street thug. And a Gypsy. Give him an apology, he’ll want money next. Caviar. Not to mention a lawsuit.”
Coudert leaned back contentedly at his desk.
“And now you can—you should—forget about the whole messy business. Take a few days off and get a little rest.”
Mazarelle was astonished. He didn’t mind the warm welcome, but he didn’t understand what Coudert was talking about. Especially since, as far as Mazarelle was concerned, the case was far from over.
“But, patron,” he stuttered, “that’s only the killer. We don’t have the people who sent him. The people behind it all.”
Coudert pushed the case file to the corner of his desk and started to organize his pens and pencils, lining them up with the edge of the folder. For a while, he seemed to be ignoring Mazarelle. Finally, he sighed.
“Commandant. You caught the killer. And more than that, you avenged a cop’s murder. Take the win. Wrap it up, go home.”
Mazarelle reached into his pocket. And pulled out his pipe. He had no tobacco in it. It didn’t matter. He was stalling for time.
“How can we call the case cleared when we don’t know who was behind it? That’s only half cleared. See—I have a theory.”
He was surprised that Coudert had not mentioned the latest news—the arrest of Luc Fournel that morning by the boeuf-carottes. With a little help behind the scenes from Maurice, they had tracked the evidence, the flow of money that linked him and his Agence AB to the dirty cops. Was Coudert really unaware of the connection between the ripoux scandal and the murders? Or did he simply want to ignore the obvious?
Luc deserved jail time for his payoffs. But, to Mazarelle, Luc’s buying and selling of salacious information, his use of bribery, his illegal offshore account in Andorra, his hacking of cops’ phones—those were the least of the guy’s crimes.
Mazarelle knew that Luc was also intimately tied to the murders committed by Vachère, his friend, his surrogate. Even more than that, Mazarelle was convinced that there was someone higher up, someone even more responsible for conceiving and orchestrating the tarot murders.
He cleared his throat.
“What if Luc Fournel gave the order to Vachère? And what if someone above Luc…”
Coudert looked up suddenly, and held up his hand. He gave Mazarelle his biggest smile, a full one hundred watts.
“Very interesting. Very interesting indeed. Did I mention, you might be in line for a commendation? Even the Médaille d’honneur.”
That startled Mazarelle. It was the highest honor the police bestowed.
“I’ve been talking with your friends at the Ministry of the Interior,” Coudert went on. “They agree with me.” The head of the Brigade Criminelle nodded his head sagely. “So take a rest. Take it easy. Let a few of your theories go. Come back recharged and ready for your next case.”
Mazarelle was amazed. Never had a medal felt more ominous.
Tucking his pipe away, Mazarelle thanked his boss for the kind words, and left.
73
Later that afternoon, in the recovery ward of the Hôtel-Dieu hospital, Maurice had the latest issue of L’Equipe open. Sitting by Jeannot’s bed, he was reading to the young lieutenant about the results from the most recent round of Ligue 1 action.
