Bred to Kill (21 page)

It is while specializing in DNA and deepening his knowledge of preeclampsia that Terney begins developing his first theories about eugenics. He is often on the road at the time, meeting colleagues in immunology and shrewdly advancing his ideas, citing as his examples such social disorders and health hazards as tuberculosis, syphilis, and alcoholism; birth defects resulting from increasingly late pregnancies; and the overall weakening of humanity's gene pool. Social welfare programs for the poor, the sick, and the underprivileged become his primary target. He is openly hostile to Christian charity. In his obstetrics practice, where his excellence helps make up for his arrogance, he doesn't hesitate to recommend abortion to his patients when the pregnancy shows even the slightest risk of abnormality.
For the good of all.

Terney continues to speak in public, hammering away with his examples. In lectures before substantial audiences, he asks his listeners to raise their hands if they have a friend or family member who has been affected by cancer. He tries the same thing with diabetes, and then with sterility. More hands go up. Terney then asks everyone who has raised a hand at least once to do so again. Nearly every hand in the room goes up. Then he hits them with a shocking statement: “Our population is too old and its genetic resources are being depleted. For the first time in history, the health of the current generation—our children—is worse than the generation that preceded it.”

 • • • 

Lucie stopped reading again, struck by that last paragraph. She too would have raised her hand: one of her former colleagues at work was diabetic, and her uncle had died of throat cancer at the age of fifty-two. She also thought about Alzheimer's and allergies, increasingly common ailments that hadn't existed fifty years ago.

Disturbed, she went back to the article.

 • • • 

Terney's personal life: In 1980, at the age of thirty-three, he falls in love and marries. Six years later, he gets divorced. His wife, Gaëlle Lecoupet, a prominent attorney, does not accompany him to the provinces when he accepts the directorship of the Obstetrics Department in Colombe Hospital, a major maternity hospital about a hundred miles from the capital.

 • • • 

Suddenly, Lucie's throat tightened.

The city where Terney had practiced medicine, from 1986 to 1990, hit her like a thunderbolt.

Reims.

Where Grégory Carnot was born, in January 1987.

Dumbstruck, Lucie put a hand to her face. It was just too much of a coincidence. Reims . . . Could Terney have worked in the same hospital where Carnot was born? She snatched up her cell phone and called the public records office in Reims. After being shunted from one administrative office to another, she got the name of Grégory Carnot's birthplace.

Colombe Hospital.

Lucie hung up.

She realized that she was sitting in a corner of the room, forehead against the wall like a little girl in detention.

One certainty now drummed on her mind: strange as it seemed, Stéphane Terney must have brought Grégory Carnot into the world in 1987. And twenty-three years later, a criminal investigation was bringing the two men together again. This could not be mere chance. It couldn't.

And yet, as much as she puzzled over it, Lucie still couldn't figure it out. Had Terney been keeping tabs on Carnot all those years? Might he even have arranged to become his mother's obstetrician? And if so, why?

Lucie skimmed the rest of the article.

 • • • 

After Reims, Terney more or less fades from public view. He returns to Paris in 1990, marries and divorces several more times, burning through relationships like cigarettes without ever having a child of his own. He practices in a clinic in Neuilly, continues his research into preeclampsia, delves further into immunology, and leaves obstetrics on the back burner. In 2006, he writes his book
The Key and the Lock
, sending thousands of free copies to schools and targeted individuals, thus reviving for a moment his reputation and eugenicist positions. Then he fades back into anonymity and resumes a perfectly normal practice.

 • • • 

Lucie turned off the computer and looked at the keys to her car, which were on the living room table. She now had the name of a maternity hospital and a birth date. Even if Grégory Carnot's mother had given birth under seal of anonymity and put him up for adoption, there must have been files, people with whom Terney worked at the time, who might be able to tell her something about the obstetrician, his relationship with Carnot's mother, the infant, or even the birth itself. Perhaps that cursed child, or his parents, had left a trace in people's memories? Perhaps the biological mother had left her identity buried in a file?

She had to try, do everything she could to understand what might possibly connect Terney to her daughter's killer. She could be in Reims in less than two hours.

Before heading out, Lucie stopped to think. She knew she would run into roadblocks in a place as administratively cautious as a hospital. Merely claiming to be a cop wouldn't work anymore. She needed a fake police ID. Not a perfect one, just something she could flash at people—who generally didn't know what they really looked like anyway.

She had an ID photo in her wallet, and Sharko had an excellent color printer.

Lucie went back online. There was no shortage of sites for making fake ID's, “for entertainment purposes only.” Driver's licenses, diplomas, birth and marriage certificates . . . Fifteen minutes later, the printer spat out the false document on a sheet of white card stock. She had decided to stick with the name Amélie Courtois: better to stay anonymous. Lucie carefully cut out the card, rumpled it slightly to make it look older, glued on the identity photo from her library card, and slipped it behind one of the small, slightly opaque squares of plastic inside her wallet.

That should see her through the first 10 percent of it. Nerve and experience would handle the other 90.

Fake ID or no, she had become a cop again, working a parallel space where no one would think to look, not even Sharko. Because no one knew Grégory Carnot as well as she did, it would take them a while to find the link between him and the clinic where Stéphane Terney had practiced more than twenty years ago.

She picked up the Terney crime scene photos and her jacket and went out, slamming the door behind her.

She didn't notice the man sitting at the wheel of his car, parked in front of the building.

T
he official Peugeot 407 with Levallois at the wheel had just veered onto Highway A6a, heading toward Fontainebleau. The late-morning traffic was moving easily—a relative notion on the roads around Paris—and the cops didn't have to turn on the siren to open a passage.

Before that, Sharko had stopped by number 36 to pass along his discoveries and fob off the day's assignment—questioning Terney's friends and coworkers—onto a colleague.

At present, the two cops were speeding toward La Chapelle-la-Reine, a small town just south of the Fontainebleau forest. They had an appointment with the captain of the local gendarmerie, Claude Lignac, who had briefly held the bag on a rather sordid case: a double murder in the woods, committed by a killer whose DNA figured in the book Terney had written in 2006. Given the unusual and particularly grisly nature of the crime, the gendarme had been forced to hand over the investigation to the Major Case squad in Versailles.

Obviously, apart from the officers at 36, no one knew that the genetic code of the man who had committed this double homicide six days ago figured in the pages of a scientific textbook that had come out four years earlier. In order to prevent leaks, especially to the press, the cops were keeping that information strictly confidential. Officially, they were looking into the murder because it might be related to an ongoing case about which, for the moment, they couldn't give out any details.

Sharko switched the radio station, landing on “Zombie” by The Cranberries. Levallois smiled at him.

“You've been sprucing yourself up a bit these past few days. New suit, new haircut . . . and you don't look quite as sad. You got a girl?”

“Why is everybody asking me that, for Christ's sake?”

“They say you've had something of a dry patch since your wife died. So I just figured . . .”

“How about you keep your figuring to yourself.”

Levallois shrugged.

“We're partners. Partners tell each other things. With you, it's like talking to the lamppost. Nobody really knows what you were up to at Violent Crimes. And why don't we ever talk about anything but the case? Why don't you ever ask about . . . about
my
life, for instance?”

“Because it's better that way. The job seeps into your life enough as it is; don't let your life get into the job. Leave your wife and kids, if you've got any, at the door to number thirty-six. You're better off.”

“I don't have any kids yet but . . .” he hesitated, “but my wife is pregnant. We're having a little girl.”

“Good for you.”

A cold, toneless reply. Levallois shook his head and concentrated on the road, the investigation. The case was sucking him in more and more each day, and each day he got home a bit later. He caught himself feeling a growing excitement the deeper he sank into the shadows. Would he, too, end up like Sharko? Sticking with the cut-and-dried, he aired aloud his thoughts about the case:

“Terney wrote his book in 2006. He already had Carnot's genetic code, and also the killer's from Chapelle-la-Reine, when they weren't even in the database. Our genetic fingerprints aren't readily accessible, so he has to have met those two at some point and taken samples of their blood, hair, or saliva. And he had to have access to the kind of machines they've got at CSI, in order to extract their DNA profiles.”

Sharko nodded.

“There are seven genetic profiles in the book. Two of them are already in FNAEG, and we know they're violent killers. That means there are potentially six psychos somewhere out there. The bodies in Fontainebleau show that one of them is now active. As for the others, they're ticking time bombs, and at this rate it won't be long before they go off, too.”

“Maybe they already have . . . Maybe the other anonymous cases have already killed but didn't leave their DNA at the crime scene. Or maybe it was in another country? What do we really know about it?”

A reflective silence followed these words. Who were these shadow warriors? What unleashed this violence in them and pushed them to commit such heinous crimes? Sharko rested his forehead on the passenger-side window and stifled a yawn. Even in circumstances like these, sleep returned like an acid and gnawed at him from inside.

While Sharko dozed, jerking awake every time his head lolled forward, the car exited the highway, arriving at La Chapelle-la-Reine barely ten minutes later. Population three thousand, fields on all sides, the forest edge barely a mile away. The police station looked like any other administrative building: monotonous and depressing. A concrete block sporting the tricolored flag and the word “Gendarmerie.” On the parking lot sat two shabby blue police cars.

Levallois parked at an angle, wrenching Sharko from his torpor.

“Honestly, I don't get it,” the younger man said. “What the hell are we doing out here? Major Case is in charge of the investigation and they've got all the files. Why don't we just go straight there and save time?”

“The guy we're here to meet, Claude Lignac, must be pretty bitter about having this one taken away. I'll bet you he's better informed than anybody else around here. And besides, he won't ask too many questions. I like it when people don't ask too many questions.”

“The boss wanted us to go see Major Case. We're circumventing correct procedure here, and I'm not really comfortable with that.”

“Major Case would have given us a few scraps of information at most. Despite what you think, rivalry between state and local police isn't just an urban myth. You have to know how to let go of procedure and trust your instincts.”

They got out of the car and walked into the building. A young man, wearing the regulation navy blue sweater with epaulettes indicating the rank of sergeant, saluted and ushered them into the office of Captain Claude Lignac. The captain, about thirty-five years old, had small round glasses, a fine, elegant mustache, and particularly jovial features: he looked like the stereotypical English inspector. After introductions and some routine questions about why Homicide was interested, he picked up his car keys and a file.

“You'd like to see the crime scene right away, I presume?”

“If you could take us there, we'd appreciate it. We'll talk at the scene. Have you been keeping up with Major Case's findings?”

The local policeman shrugged.

“Of course. Those guys from Versailles might have kicked us off the case, but this is my turf, and what goes on here is my business.”

He walked ahead of them to the door. Sharko winked at his colleague. Claude Lignac got into his car and headed off, with Levallois following behind. In barely five minutes, the forest swallowed them up. Leaving the local highway, the gendarme took a crazily twisting shortcut, drove for another five minutes, and finally parked at the edge of a hiking path. Slamming of doors, soles crunching the earth. Sharko pulled his jacket closed; the temperature had dropped noticeably, as if in testament to the magnitude of the tragedy the trees had witnessed. Around them, a few bird cheeps and crackings of old wood were lost in the vast space.

Claude Lignac motioned for them to follow. In single file, they walked over the slightly damp earth, amid the undergrowth, the beeches, and the chestnut trees. The captain veered off into a slightly denser area and pointed to a carpet of vegetation, made of lichen and rotten leaves.

“This is where a rider found them. Carole Bonnier and Eric Morel, two kids who lived in Malesherbes, about twelve miles from here. According to their parents, they'd come to spend a few days in the woods, camping and rock climbing.”

Sharko squatted down. Traces of dried blood still stained the leaves and the base of a tree. Thick, strong spatters that attested to the frenzied nature of the crime. Lignac took some photos from his pocket and handed them to Levallois.

“I got these from Major Case. Look what the bastard did to them.”

The sudden bitterness of those words surprised Sharko. Levallois's face darkened while Lignac continued filling them in:

“They're pretty sure he first hit them in the face and stomach, almost hard enough to knock them out. The autopsy revealed subcutaneous hematomas and a number of broken blood vessels, which shows how violent the blows were.”

“Did he use a weapon of some kind, maybe a stick?”

“No, he went at it barehanded at first. Only afterward did he use one of the rock axes he'd taken from their backpack, to finish the job, so to speak. We'd never seen anything like it around here.”

Lips pressed tight, Levallois handed the photos to the inspector. Sharko looked at them carefully, one after the other. Wide views of the crime scene, close-ups of the victims' wounds, faces, and mutilated limbs. A slaughter.

“They got the full treatment,” said the policeman in disgust. “The ME up in Paris counted forty-seven axe wounds for him, and . . . and fifty-four for her. He hit them wherever he could, with remarkable strength and determination. Apparently the impact of the metal on their bones was hard enough to cause fractures.”

Sharko handed back the photos and stared for a while at the stained earth. Two different monsters, Carnot and this one, had acted one year apart, but with almost exactly the same, extremely violent m.o. Two savages that Terney had already listed in his book in 2006.

Two out of seven . . . Seven profiles that, in all likelihood, would belong to the same race of killers. Hence Sharko's odd question:

“Do you know if the killer was left-handed?”

A question that, as Sharko expected, took the other man by surprise.

“Left-handed? Uh . . . You'd have to ask Major Case, but as I recall they didn't say in the autopsy report. The weapon used in the crime had symmetrical double edges, so there's no way of knowing from the wounds. Why do you ask?”

“Because your killer probably
is
left-handed. He'll also be tall and stocky, age between twenty and thirty. Are those footprints in the ground his?”

“Yes, he wears a size eleven. But how did you . . . ?”

“Powerful build, no doubt taller than six feet. Were you able to reconstruct the exact circumstances of the crime?”

Sharko carefully scanned the surrounding area, especially the tree trunks. He was looking for carvings in the wood. Could it be that, like Carnot and the Cro-Magnon, the killer had made an upside-down drawing? But despite his sharp eye, he didn't spot anything of note.

“More or less,” said the gendarme. “Time of death is estimated at about eight a.m., six days ago. We arrived fifteen minutes after the rider called, around nine-thirty. There was a pot on the lit gas burner, all the water had evaporated. We think the victims were making breakfast. They were in sports clothes, shorts and T-shirts. The tent was still up and the quilts folded down. There were a couple of ATVs chained to a tree.”

The captain stepped forward and brushed a few leaves aside with his toe.

“The victims were lying right here, near the tent. They hadn't had time to run, or hadn't tried to. The killer almost certainly came up by the path we've just taken—it's fairly popular with hikers, cyclists, and riders. Then he left the path, cut through the ferns, and approached the campsite. Major Case isn't sure whether he tried to chat them up first or just attacked head-on.”

Sharko thought to himself that this cop had the right instincts: he was keeping close tabs on the investigation. A way for him to show he still ruled his little roost, and especially to get a break from the daily routine.

“Any witnesses?”

“None. It was a bit too early for hikers, and anyway they would have kept to the path. The circumstances of the murder were reported in all the local papers, I made sure of that—I've got a few connections. We put out a call for eyewitnesses.”

“Good. Did you get any results?”

“No, no one came forward. The killer was lucky.”

“They often are. Until they get caught.”

Sharko stepped over some branches and returned to the path. He called back:

“You couldn't see the tent from this path, is that right?”

The gendarme adjusted his small round glasses.

“Correct. Those kids must have known they weren't supposed to camp in the woods, so they chose a hidden spot. How did the killer find them if he was just passing by? Probably from the sound of their voices. And if the water was boiling, he might have spotted the steam in the cool morning air. At that point, it would have been easy to track them.”

The man was detail-oriented. Sharko rubbed his chin, again squinting at the surroundings. The vegetation was dense, and you couldn't see more than ten yards. Levallois rubbed his hands together as if he were cold.

“Any ideas about the killer's profile?” he asked.

Lignac nodded, eager to relay the details and show off his skills.

“Physically, we know the bastard wears a size eleven and that he had hiking boots. The presence of a Y chromosome in the DNA confirms he's male—and a hefty one, at that, given how deep the shoeprints go. Like you said, easily six feet. He didn't steal or disturb anything. The victims weren't sexually assaulted, the bodies weren't moved postmortem. Everything was left as is, with no attempt to conceal the crime. As if it were all in a murderous frenzy . . .”

The same as with Carnot, thought Sharko.

“Major Case has got molds of the shoeprints, fingerprints, DNA up the wazoo, on the bodies, the weapon, and in the backpack where he got the ax. The whole thing happened like lightning, nobody saw a thing. According to the ME, some of the stab wounds were sloppy, careless. He came along, killed them haphazardly, driven by what looks like a mad rage. The couple was just unlucky enough to be in his path.”

Sharko and Levallois exchanged a glance. As with Carnot, this tended to disprove the hypothesis of a killer stalking his victims, studying their habits and movements. The two kids had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.