The Killing Song, page 25
The cover showed a bare-chested teenage boy pointing a rifle. The subtitle was A Book of the Dead. The author was William S. Burroughs, the drug-addled icon of the Beat Generation writers. A lost memory floated back. I had left my copy of Naked Lunch on a train somewhere along my trek through Indonesia and was secretly glad to be rid of the burden of finishing it.
I thumbed through the book, noting that many passages had been underlined, some signposted with emphatic exclamation points and French phrases. I wondered if this was Demarais’s handwriting.
There was an old yellowed paper stuck in the middle. I unfolded it. It looked to be a map of some kind. It was hand-drawn and all in French, but I figured one abbreviation—bu du MONTPARN—might be the boulevard du Montparnasse, the street near Cameron’s apartment where the café Le Select was located.
I stuck the map back in the book, deciding I needed to show it to Eve later. I was slipping it into my coat when she emerged from the bathroom. She looked pale.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
She shook her head. “The bathtub,” she said. “I can’t be sure, but I think there are old bloodstains. And I found this.”
She was holding a cello end pin by its tip. Even from where I was I could tell it looked like it was coated with dried blood.
Eve shook out a plastic bag from her pocket and dropped the pin into it. “Look for others,” she said, heading to the kitchen.
I saw an alcove behind the shelf of CDs and, figuring it was a closet, went to it.
At first, I couldn’t make out what I was looking at. But then the spare light picked up the gleam of burnished wood. I reached in, grabbed the cello by the neck and pulled it out.
“Eve,” I called out.
She came to my side. “I don’t think he would leave without this,” she said.
I took the cello to the futon and laid it down. The only reference points for what I was looking at were the instruments I had seen in that music shop in Edinburgh. But even to my eyes, this was old and valuable. I had a vision of Laurent Demarais’s hands caressing this beautiful thing, bringing it to life. And a second image of his hands violating Mandy, bringing her to her death.
I felt my stomach turn. The smell of this place, the vibrations of evil here, it was all making me sick.
I heard a strange cry, like the mew of a cat. It took me a second to realize it was Eve. I looked to the kitchen. Her back was to me and she was bent over something on the counter. I went quickly to her.
“Eve? What’s—?”
She slapped something closed and then spun away from me, her hand covering her mouth. I watched her stumble into the other room, then I turned to the counter.
It was a long ebony box, like the kind pool players use to store cue pieces. It looked like the cello bow boxes I had seen at the music store in Edinburgh. I opened it.
“Oh God,” I whispered.
The color was faded, the luster long gone. But there was no doubt about what I was looking at. Hélène Molyneaux’s braid.
I closed the box and turned. Eve was standing at the window, looking down at the street. I went to her.
“Eve,” I said, touching her arm.
Suddenly she doubled over, clutching her stomach. I wrapped her in my arms and held her as she cried.
37
After Eve pulled herself together, she called the station. Her plan was to leave two officers in the shadows of the street and another one in the apartment for a stakeout, in the hopes that Demarais would return to what he thought was his only safe haven.
But she was overruled by her commandant. She told me that Boutin saw no purpose in staking out Demarais’s apartment and told her to arrange a thorough search of the apartment immediately.
Eve tried to hide her disappointment from me, but I could see the constant dismissals were taking their toll. After she got off her phone, she snapped at the uniformed officer to canvass neighbors for leads on Demarais. Then she told me I should go wait in the hall.
Two investigators showed up first, followed by the forensic team. After the techs swabbed the futon, they vanished into the bathroom with their kits and brushes. Another man soon followed with a screwdriver and a wrench.
They were taking apart the drain in the bathtub.
My eyes drifted back to the ebony box with the braid inside.
At least Eve now had confirmation that Hélène had been killed by Demarais. She probably had been killed right in this apartment. But where had he put her body? Where was his “backyard?”
I heard a flurry of French. It was a tech standing at the kitchen sink holding tweezers. Even from here I could guess what was probably in them—dried human tissue.
Then I heard a clanging sound and saw another tech pulling two pots from a cupboard. They were big, like the kind used to boil lobsters.
I turned away, trying to find a spot to focus on. I looked up at a bulb and stared at it until my vision had halos floating in it. What I was thinking was almost too grotesque to contemplate.
Demarais had cut up Hélène and boiled away her flesh.
I moved to the stairs and sat down in the corner to avoid the policemen taking bags of evidence down the five flights. I forced my mind to other things.
I thought about the copy of The Wild Boys in my jacket pocket and the map tucked inside of it. I was anxious to analyze the map and the book to see if either provided any hint as to where Demarais might go. But I couldn’t risk having it confiscated before I showed it to Eve.
My phone chirped with a text message from Juliette wanting to know how we were doing. I called her and assured her that Eve was fine. I was about to hang up when she told me the hospital had called. At first I was confused, then Juliette mentioned Paula Ridley.
“Oh God, did she die?” I whispered.
“No,” Juliette said. “Actually, the nurse who called said Mademoiselle Ridley might be up to speaking with someone tomorrow. Would you please share that with my aunt?”
“I will,” I said.
“I made some soup. I will have some ready for you when you get here,” Juliette said. “If you want to sleep on the sofa, I can prepare it.”
“I might do that,” I said. “Thank you.”
As I was hanging up, I saw a man trudge up the stairs carrying a kit and something the size of a bleach bottle. The label read CHEMILUMINESCENCE. They were going to luminol the room.
I went back to the door. Most of the techs were packing up. Boxes and bags were being hauled out by the armfuls. The luminol man was bent on one knee, mixing a solution. He said something and people started huddling near me at the door. Eve took a place a few feet ahead of me and we watched as the man sprayed the room.
Someone closed the door behind me. Then the lights went off and the blue-black glow of the lamp came on.
The futon was covered in a bluish-green glow. Low-light cameras starting clicking. The luminol man sprayed the wall above it. It lit up like the backdrop in a house of horrors.
Eve had told me Tricia Downey’s neck had almost been severed. This spray of blood across the wall—was this the result?
The door bumped open behind me and I heard a deep voice speaking French. I recognized it as the commandant’s and took the opportunity to slip out of the apartment. I made it to the street without anyone questioning me.
The night was cold and crisp. As tired as I was, I wanted to wait for Eve, so I withdrew The Wild Boys from my coat, moved into a slant of fluorescent light coming from the cafeteria and started to read chapter one.
I heard the commandant’s voice and turned to see him and Eve in the foyer of the apartment building. I didn’t need to understand a word of French to know he was furious with her.
As Eve came out, the wind blew open her leather coat. She seemed oblivious to the cold, and to me.
“Eve!”
She had started down the street and she spun back and waited for me.
“I’ve been taken off this case,” she said. “I am to have no more involvement in anything to do with Hélène Molyneaux or any of the others.”
“What?”
She was silent.
“God, Eve, I’m so sorry.”
She looked back toward the apartment building. Her car keys were in her hand and I gently took them from her so I could drive her home—to Juliette, a good glass of wine and a warm bed. Anything else, like my pilfering of the book, could wait until tomorrow.
38
It was past midnight by the time we got back to Eve’s place. Juliette came out from the kitchen as we entered. Her eyes went from Eve’s haggard face to mine and back to her aunt’s. Eve didn’t say a word, just tossed her leather jacket toward a chair and went to her bedroom, closing the door.
The jacket had landed on the floor. Juliette picked it up and hung it on a hook by the door. Then she turned to me.
“What happened?” she asked.
I let out a tired sigh and went to the sofa. It was made up with sheets and a pillow. I perched on the edge, arms resting on my knees, and looked up at Juliette.
“We found a second apartment owned by Demarais,” I said. “It was where he killed …”
My voice trailed off. Not because I was trying to spare Juliette. Five years of watching her aunt hunt this monster had earned her the right to know everything. I didn’t finish my thought because I didn’t know who had died in that hellhole. No one knew for sure, at least not until DNA matching came back. And I suspected someone would soon be calling Beauvais to talk to Hélène Molyneaux’s parents about that.
Juliette was still waiting for my answer.
“We found some … evidence that might show he took Hélène Molyneaux there,” I said.
Thank God Juliette let it go at that. I didn’t want to tell her about the braid. She was looking at the closed bedroom door.
“Is she okay?” she asked.
“She’s very tired, she—”
Screw this. Juliette had a right to know about Eve, too.
“She got taken off the case tonight,” I said.
Juliette murmured something in French. It sounded angry, hurt and deeply protective all at the same time.
She looked again toward the bedroom, then back at me. “There’s some soup,” she said. “I will get—”
“I can help myself,” I said. “You go help your aunt.”
She whispered a quick “merci” and was gone. I sat for a moment, then forced myself to get up and go to the kitchen. I ladled out a big bowl of what looked like vegetable stew and took it to the table and sat down. My eyes went to the bottle of wine on the counter but I was too damn tired to get up again, so I just ate the soup in greedy gulps.
After rinsing the bowl and pouring a glass of red wine, I went back to the sofa. I pulled off my shoes, sank back into the cushions and closed my eyes. The apartment was quiet, but I could hear voices and laughter drifting up from the Moroccan coffee shop downstairs. I was too tired to take off my clothes so I slumped down and started to pull the blanket up over me. But something was jabbing me in the hip.
I reached into my jeans pocket and pulled out The Wild Boys.
The copyright page said it was published by Calder Press, 1972. I flipped it over and read the back copy. It was about a tribe of renegade teenage boys who reject society and women and create a secret world underground where they indulge in violence and homoerotic sex.
I was certain it was no accident that this was the only book in Demarais’s apartment; it had to have meaning for him. But as I leafed through the yellowed pages, my brain was too fuzzy to make sense of the passages that had been underlined or the French handwritten notes in the margins. I came to the paper that had been stuck inside and unfolded it.
I stared at the crudely drawn map for a long time, again focusing in on “bu du MONTPARN.” Then I noticed a second street, one that before tonight I would not have recognized.
“MYRHA.” That was the name of the street where Demarais’s apartment was located.
I was far from an expert on Paris geography but even to my eye—except for Myrha and Montparnasse—none of the other markings on the map seemed to be streets. They had strange names like Petite Niche, Le Bunker Allemand, Bar des Rats and La Crypte. I knew I wasn’t looking at a map of Paris. So what the hell was I looking at?
I heard a sound and looked up. Juliette had come out of the bedroom. She looked over at me.
“You’re still awake?”
I nodded. “Thanks for the soup.”
She gave me a small smile and pushed back her curly hair, a gesture that exactly mirrored Eve’s.
“How’s Eve?” I asked.
“Asleep,” Juliette said.
She poured herself a glass of wine and sat down. The lamplight brought her pretty face into high relief. She looked so very young and so very old, all at the same time.
“I know this sounds selfish,” she said, “but a part of me is glad she is not on the case anymore.”
I nodded in sympathy, but something that had been gnawing at the back of my brain was pushing to the front now. It was the realization that with Eve now off the case, my conduit to this investigation was gone. Even if Demarais was found, I would not be a part of it. And if Dr. Faucheux’s notion that he might kill himself turned out to be true, then I would never have the satisfaction of seeing Mandy’s murderer brought to justice. I felt a sudden and crushing depression.
I glanced at my watch. Almost two. I began to fold up the map.
“What is that?” Juliette asked.
“I wish I knew,” I said. I held it out to her. “Want to take a look?”
She took the map, studied it for a moment, then looked up at me. “Where did you get this?” she asked.
I showed her the Burroughs paperback. “Stuffed inside this book in Demarais’s apartment. It has his street written on it—rue Myrha—but even I can tell it’s not a map of Paris.”
“It is Paris, but not any Paris you can see.”
I just stared at her dumbly.
“It is underground Paris,” she said.
“Underground?”
She held the map out to me. “It is a map of the catacombs.”
“The what?” I looked down at the map, then back up at her. “What kind of catacombs?”
“Paris was once a big limestone mining place,” she said. “It was shut down centuries ago, but all the old tunnels and catacombs are still there. It is all closed off now.”
“How big?”
“Hundreds of kilometers. They run under almost the whole city. No one really knows how far.”
I glanced at the map, at the intricate web of intersecting arteries and all the strange names. “Do you know what these names are?” I asked, holding out the map.
She didn’t take it. “Places down there,” she said softly.
“What kind of places?”
She rose abruptly, picked up her wineglass and went to the kitchen. She poured out her wine and began rinsing glasses. I followed her.
“Juliette, this might be important. What do you know about this?”
She shut off the faucet and turned to me. “Kids go down there to explore, to have parties. Sometimes they stay there for days, camping out.”
“I thought you said it was closed off.”
“There are secret ways to get in,” she said.
The Burroughs book was about a bunch of violent teenagers who live underground. It was no coincidence that Demarais had this map.
“Have you been down there?” I asked.
She nodded. “I only went down once and I did not go very far. I was terrified. I will never go back there.” Her eyes held mine. “Please don’t tell my aunt. She would kill me if she knew.”
“Juliette, you’ve got to show me these catacombs,” I said.
“No, no,” she said quickly.
“Please, Juliette,” I said. “This could be where Demarais is hiding. You have to help me with this.”
Juliette was quiet, head bowed.
“Juliette,” I said softly. “This isn’t like you just stayed out late or something. You need to step up and tell Eve what you know.”
“She has always trusted me,” Juliette said.
I nodded. “I understand that you don’t want to disappoint her, but if you have a good relationship with someone, like you do with Eve, you should be honest with them.”
She bit her lip. I resisted the urge to press her harder.
“All right,” she said finally. “I know someone who goes down there. He is un kata.”
“A what?”
“Un kata,” she said. “A cataphile. An urban explorer. I will call him tomorrow.”
“Thanks.” I hesitated, then gave her a hug. She stiffened slightly in surprise but when she pulled back, she gave me a small smile.
“I will tell my aunt in the morning,” she said. “Good night, Matt.”
I said good night and Juliette went to bed. I went back to the sofa and collapsed into the cushions. The apartment was quiet. Even the coffee shop below was finally quiet. I had visions of Demarais holing up in some cave, crawling around in a tunnel somewhere below my feet, laughing at me. I had to get a grip.
The apartment was getting cold. I turned off the light, lay back and pulled the blanket up over my chest.
I was just drifting off when I heard a chirping noise. It took me a couple seconds to realize it was my cell. I jumped up and hurried to my jacket draped across the back of a chair. I pulled out the cell and flipped it open.
“Yeah?”
“Matt?”
“Who’s this?”
“Nora.”
“Nora? What—?”
“Oh God, I just realized … what time is it there?”
“I don’t know, around two A.M.”
Some fumbling sounds four thousand miles away. And then came the telltale soft beep in the background, the warning that my cell was losing its charge.
“Nora? Are you there?”
“Yeah, I can hear you. Matt, I’m sorry to call you so late. It’s early here, and I didn’t—”
“No, no, it’s okay.” I went back to the sofa and sat down. Nora’s voice was like a balm.
