Bred to Kill (30 page)

S
harko hadn't said a word in the car. Lucie watched him drive, saw the muscles in his neck and jaws tense beneath the skin. She knew what he was thinking about: the answers he expected to get from the primatologist. The words that would send the two of them off on the trail of Eva Louts, so very far from here. To a place that Sharko dreaded.

Clémentine Jaspar lived only a few miles from the primate research center, in a house on the outskirts of Meudon-la-Forêt. While the house itself didn't look like much, the tree-lined property around it stretched for thousands of square yards. All around, small lamps spent the solar energy collected during the day, forming pleasant blue-tinted oases amid the trees. Clémentine Jaspar had apparently wanted to create an environment for herself that reminded her of a distant land.

Wearing an ample, brightly colored tunic, the primatologist greeted them on a large, dimly lit deck with teakwood furniture. As she sat down, Lucie was surprised to see a chimpanzee open the picture window and come up to her.

“Good lord!”

With her large, agile hands, Shery picked up a glass full of iced tea and noisily sucked down the liquid through a straw. Jaspar shot an embarrassed look at Sharko, who watched the scene in childlike amazement.

“I thought I'd closed the door, but . . . Listen, I'm counting on you not to tell anyone about Shery being here, in this house. I know it's against the rules, but ever since what happened, I don't feel comfortable leaving her alone in the center.”

“Nothing to worry about. We're also counting on you not to mention
our
presence here. Let's call this an unofficial visit. The official investigation is headed off in one direction, but the two of us are convinced the answers lie elsewhere.”

The scientist nodded with a knowing look. After emptying her glass in record time, Shery slowly loped toward the garden, near a solar lamp, and settled in, sitting like a meditating Buddha. She stared at the guests with a well of wisdom in her eyes.

“It's going to rain tomorrow,” observed Jaspar. “Shery always does that the night before it rains. She's the best barometer there is.”

“My daughter would love her,” Lucie confided, amused.

“Shery adores children. Come over sometime with your daughter and they can spend the day together, just the two of them.”

“Really?”

“Absolutely.”

Jaspar offered her guests some iced tea. Lucie watched her move around, picked up on the complicit glances she and the chimpanzee exchanged. She thought to herself that no one on this planet was meant to live alone; people always had to attach themselves to something, whether a friend, a dog, a monkey, or toy trains . . . She sipped her drink in silence, thinking of her little daughter, who must have been asking for her. Lucie tried to remember if she'd spoken to her even once on the phone since the day she'd left their apartment in Lille. She hated herself so much for that.

The temperature outside was still mild; the late summer breeze soothed their heavy eyelids. The primatologist asked how the investigation was coming along and Sharko hastened to answer.

“The vise is closing. But we're going to need some more of your help, or your expertise. And I didn't want to ask over the phone.”

He leaned forward a bit, his hands flat on the table in front of him.

“Here it is: we now know that Eva Louts was tracking down violence throughout the world and throughout history. She went to one of the most dangerous cities on the planet to look through criminal records and met with left-handed killers who had committed especially gruesome murders. She studied all those extreme cases with a single goal: to verify the correlation between hand dominance and violence.”

Jaspar nodded, intrigued. Sharko continued, surprised at how fluently he could speak of evolutionary biology, something he'd known nothing about only a few days before.

“You told me at the botanical gardens that, these days, there was no more advantage for violent individuals, or individuals who had come from violent backgrounds, to be left-handed, given the modern development of our weapons.”

“That was the explanation Eva had advanced, yes.”

“And you also said it was a great disappointment for her when she realized this in Mexico.”

“I suppose it was. Like any researcher, she must have wanted to confirm her findings by observing a high proportion of left-handers with her own eyes. To see the living proof of her theory, so that she could then reveal it to the world. Unfortunately, the Mexican criminals were no more left-handed than you or I.”

“But Eva never gave up. She struck out in Mexico, so she went looking somewhere else. In the virgin lands of the Amazon . . .”

He allowed a silence to sink in. The two women stared at him intently. Sharko turned toward Lucie:

“The minute I saw that film, I knew what she'd gone to find in the jungle was violence in its purest state. A violence cut off from any civilization, any human influence. An ancestral violence that had been perpetuated in the heart of a primitive tribe. Would she finally find her left-handers this time?”

Lucie raised a hand to her mouth, as if the obviousness of it had suddenly struck her in the face. Jaspar drank her tea thoughtfully, then nodded with conviction. Her eyes were shining.

“What you're saying makes sense, even though I don't care much for the term ‘primitive tribe,' since they're just as evolved as we are. The aboriginal tribes have not been contaminated by the modern world, with its factories, wars, and technology. Any ethnologist will tell you: studying these tribes is like a time machine, because the genomes evolved differently—they're closer to the first
Homo sapiens
than they are to us. They've probably preserved prehistoric genes and haven't acquired others.”

Lucie and Sharko looked at each other: the elements fell together logically in their minds. The investigation rested on three pillars: first, the Cro-Magnon; second, Carnot and Lambert. And between them, as an obvious link, the lost tribes, the true connection between prehistory and the modern world.

Unhesitatingly, the inspector took out the DVD and put it on the table.

“This is precisely what we're looking for: an Amazon tribe that was discovered in the 1960s. Some of the population was wiped out by an epidemic of measles. This is a tribe that almost certainly fights, or fought, its neighbors by hand or with knives to survive and conquer territory. A tribe that, in the past and maybe still today, was reputed to be the most violent, the most bloodthirsty in the Amazon, or even in the world. They're the ones Eva Louts went to find in Latin America, looking for her left-handers.”

He handed Jaspar the DVD and described its sordid content, before concluding:

“Louts knew about the existence of this community, she knew where to find them. So there has to be a record of this population somewhere. Can you help us find their name, as fast as possible?”

The scientist got up to fetch a sheet of paper and wrote down the information the inspector had given her.

“This isn't really my field and I wouldn't know where to begin, but I have a friend who's an anthropologist. I'll call him first thing in the morning and get this disc to him. I'll let you know as soon as I've found out anything.”

“Perfect.”

The two ex-detectives finished their drinks, talking briefly about the case and about what Eva Louts might have become in a world without crime.

But that world wasn't exactly around the corner.

As they left the garden, Lucie took a long look at the great ape, who was staring at the stars as if looking for traces of her kin. Lucie thought to herself that humans were unique, in that we possessed positive characteristics that no other creature, not even that chimpanzee, could boast; but also in that we were capable of behaviors such as genocide, torture, and the extermination of other species. Could the good we were capable of make up for all that evil?

Before they got to the car, she laid her hand on Sharko's shoulder.

“Thank you for everything you're doing.”

He turned to face her and gave her a smile that faded all too quickly.

“I didn't want to come here. I didn't want to let you in on what I'd discovered. Now the Pandora's box is open. I know that your body and your mind are going to drive you to go there, no matter what. But if you have to go, then I want to go with you. I'll come with you to Brazil. I'll come with you to the ends of the earth.”

She hugged him.

He closed his eyes when she kissed him on the lips.

Their shadows stretched along the trees. The shadows of two doomed lovers.

T
hey had run to keep up with the landscape.

Because they both wanted to survive. And live.

Live through the death that had separated them.

Closely entwined in the bed, Lucie and Franck savored every second after their lovemaking, because soon time would speed up again. Like Alice through the looking-glass, they would have to get up and start running, run without catching their breath or looking back. Run, perhaps, so that they never had to stop.

And so they enjoyed the tender motions, lost themselves in each other's gaze, smiled at each other constantly, as if trying to reclaim everything they had lost.

Finally, the first words came from Lucie's mouth. Her breath was warm, her naked body burning.

“I want us to stay together this time, no matter what happens. I never want us to be apart.”

Sharko had kept his eyes glued to the numbers on the alarm clock. It was 3:06. He finally turned the appliance around so that he'd never again have to see the cursed numbers that haunted him every night. No more 3:10 a.m.

“I want that, too. It's what I've wanted more than anything in the world, but how could I have believed it possible?”

“You've never stopped believing. That's why you kept my clothes in your closet, with two little mothballs.”

Lucie rested her ear on Sharko's chest, at the level of his fractured heart.

“You know, when I followed that biologist in Lyon, and I found myself facing that kid with a broken bottle, I . . . I nearly killed him because he'd snickered at my daughters' picture. I shoved the barrel of a gun into his temple and I was this close to squeezing the trigger. This close to abandoning Juliette just so I could put a bullet in his brain.”

Sharko didn't move and let her speak.

“I think I projected on him all the violence I was never able to take out on Carnot. The poor kid was like a catalyst, a lightning rod. That violence was buried in me, in that miserable reptilian brain the ME told us about. We all have it in us, because we were all hunters like Cro-Magnon. That episode made me understand that . . . that deep down I still harbored the remains of . . . of something ancestral, probably animal, maybe even more than other mothers.”

“Lucie . . .”

“I gave birth to my daughters, I raised them the best I could. But I never loved them as I should have, as human beings are supposed to. I should have been with them all the time. We're not here just to wage war, or hate one another, or hunt down killers. We're also here to love . . . And now I want to love Juliette. I want to take my child in my arms and think about the future, not the past.”

Sharko gritted his teeth. He had to dominate the emotions that were threatening to drown him. Lucie saw the little bones rolling in his temples. He tried to speak, but his lips remained paralyzed. Lucie felt his unease and asked:

“Is it what I just said that's bothering you? Am I frightening you?”

A long silence. Sharko finally shook his head.

“I'd like to talk to you about something, but I can't. Please don't ask me any more than that. Just tell me if you can live with someone who harbors secrets. Someone who'd like to put everything he's lived through behind him, who'd finally like to see a little ray of sunlight. I need to know. It's important for me to know, for the future.”

“We all have our secrets. I have no problem with that. Franck, I want to tell you, about our sudden breakup last year . . . I wasn't in a right frame of mind. My daughters had disappeared and . . . I'm so sorry for driving you away like that.”

“Shhh . . .”

He kissed her on the lips. Then he rolled over on his side and turned out the light.

When he turned the radio-alarm back the right way, the digital display read 3:19.

He closed his eyes but, even though he felt good, calm, he couldn't fall asleep.

He could already feel the fetid breath of the jungle pressing down on him.

L
ucie woke to a smell of warm milk and croissants. She stretched languorously, put something on, and walked out into the kitchen, where Sharko was waiting for her. He had on a nice white shirt under his suit and he smelled good. Lucie kissed him on the lips before sitting down to the breakfast he'd prepared for her.

“It's been a long time since I've had croissants,” she admitted.

“It's been a long time since I've gone out to get any . . .”

She loved rediscovering these simple, shared habits, things she'd almost forgotten. She dipped the pastry into the milk, to which she'd added a bit of cocoa. She tried to check her cell phone, but the battery was flat dead. She noticed that Sharko, who was standing opposite her, was nervously fiddling with his own cell. His breakfast had just been some coffee and dry biscuits.

“What's the matter?”

“I reached out to a colleague in Narc to get the addresses of Lambert's family.”

“And?”

“And I have the address of his sister. She lives in the fourth arrondissement. I called and got the grandfather. They're all a wreck and he didn't want to talk to me. He said he didn't understand why we were persecuting them, the cops had already been by yesterday, and the Lamberts needed to be left in peace. Then he hung up.”

Lucie took a healthy bite of her croissant.

“Okay. Let me just finish breakfast, hop in the shower, and off we go.”

 • • • 

About a dozen persons with drawn faces were gathered in a large apartment on the fifth floor of a Haussmann-style building, located near Île de la Cité. An upscale home, and no doubt an outsized rent. Lucie and Sharko had remained at the entrance, facing a man of about sixty-five or seventy, well-trimmed gray mustache, black suit, and hard face. Behind him, the family was in mourning, under the shock of recent events, struggling to understand the carnage that had taken place in Fontainebleau. Puffy, red-rimmed eyes turned toward them.

The man with the mustache, who had already spoken to Sharko on the phone, immediately went on the attack.

“Leave us the hell alone! I don't care if you're with the police, can't you see you're not welcome here?”

He was about to slam the door, but Lucie stepped forward.

“Listen, sir. We understand what a painful time this is, but we'll only be a moment. We believe your grandson was not entirely responsible for what he did, and we need to talk to you.”

Lucie had weighed her words carefully. She imagined herself in the man's place, the reaction she'd have had if someone had come to tell her Clara's killer wasn't responsible. She probably would have gutted him then and there. But then, this was a different situation: his son's killer was his own grandson.

“Not completely responsible? What are you talking about?”

The voice had come not from the grandfather but from behind him. A young woman appeared in the doorway. She must have been about twenty and seemed very weak. Lucie noted her round, swollen belly: she was pregnant and clearly due to deliver soon.

“Pay no attention, Coralie,” said the older man. “The lady and gentleman were just leaving.”

“I want to know what they have to say. Can you give us a few minutes, Grandpa?”

Grinding his jaws, the man freed the way. The young woman had to lean against the door, stumbling slightly. Her grandfather held her up and glared at the cops.

“Her child is due in less than two weeks, for God's sake! And you want to interrogate her? Fine, but I'm staying within earshot. And don't you dare get her more upset with your questions.”

The young woman wore a gold chain with a crucifix over her dark clothes. She wiped her nose with a handkerchief and spoke in a weak, almost imperceptible voice.

“Félix is . . . Félix was my brother.”

Lucie put a hand on her shoulder and led her into a larger area, near the stairwell, where several chairs were scattered about. Sharko and the grandfather remained behind. The man with the mustache leaned against the railing and heaved a long sigh. Sharko realized he would soon be a great-grandfather, though he was barely seventy. Had it not been for the tragedy, he would have left a large, beautiful family behind him.

Coralie Lambert let herself drop slowly into a chair. Unconsciously, she fingered the pendant on her chain.

“How . . . how can you say Félix wasn't responsible for what he did? He killed my father and two strangers in cold blood.”

Sharko kept to the background. He sensed that Coralie Lambert would speak more freely to another woman, who could better understand her suffering. Lucie, for her part, was aware that she must not talk about the autopsy or their findings; she had gone over this with Sharko before arriving. Saying too much risked ruining the whole thing. The old man, who was watching over his granddaughter like a hawk, would be quite capable of calling the police to complain, and she and Sharko would immediately be blown. She had to remain neutral, invisible.

“It's just a theory for the moment,” said Lucie, trying not to commit herself. “Your brother seemed perfectly normal. No previous history of violence. To suddenly commit acts of such cruelty, for no reason, can sometimes have long-standing psychiatric or neurological causes.”

“We've never had anything like that in our . . .”

Sharko cut off the grandfather, who was moving to intervene.

“Let my colleague do her job and please stay out of it.”

The man glared at him. Lucie continued:

“We have to explore every trail. To your knowledge, did your brother show any particular signs of health problems?”

Lucie was feeling her way forward. She knew nothing of Félix Lambert's life but hoped this would provoke a reaction from the sister.

“No. I always got along well with Félix, we grew up together until we were eighteen. I'm a year older than he is, and I can assure you we had a wonderful childhood, very happy.”

Her words were intercut by brief sobs.

“Félix was always . . . very even-tempered. What happened—I just don't understand it. He was finishing up his architecture studies. He . . . he had so many plans for the future.”

“Did you see each other often?”

“Oh, maybe once a month. It's true that I hadn't seen him as much lately. He . . . said he wasn't feeling so well, he complained about being tired, getting headaches.”

Lucie recalled the state of his brain, like a sponge. How could it have been otherwise?

“Was he living with your parents?”

“The house belonged to my . . . father. He's . . . he was a businessman and wasn't home much. He'd just come back from China, where he'd been for almost a year.”

“What about your mother?”

Coralie Lambert suddenly caressed her belly, with small, precise, unconscious movements. The belly, the crucifix . . . the crucifix, the belly . . . Lucie knew that the future baby and God would help her get through this. Coralie would talk to them when she felt low, and one would listen more than the other.

After a long silence, she looked over at her grandfather, at a loss. Despite Sharko's exhortations, the man couldn't help coming to her aid.

“Her mother, my daughter, died in childbirth.”

Lucie stood up and approached the man, a feverish look in her eye.

“When she gave birth to your grandson Félix, is that right?”

The old man nodded, lips pinched. Lucie gave Sharko a deadly serious look, then said slowly and clearly:

“It is very important that you tell us everything you know about that birth.”

“Why?” the man answered harshly. “What does that have to do with anything? My daughter died twenty-two years ago and . . .”

“Please. We can't afford to leave any stone unturned. The roots of your grandson's actions might stretch back to his birth.”

“What do you want me to say? There's nothing to tell. It's too personal, and . . . Do you have any idea what we're going through right now?”

He held out his hand to his granddaughter.

“Come, Coralie, let's go in now.”

Coralie didn't move. Everything was so shaken up in her head that she couldn't think straight.

“My father used to talk about my mother a lot . . .” she finally murmured. “He loved her very much.”

Lucie turned toward her.

“Please, go on.”

“He wanted her to stay alive in our minds. He wanted us to . . . to understand her death . . . From what he told me, the doctors concluded it was severe preeclampsia, which caused massive internal bleeding. My mother . . . my mother bled to death in the delivery room, and the doctors couldn't do anything to stop it.”

Lucie could barely swallow. Amanda Potier had died in exactly the same way.

“Does the name Stéphane Terney mean anything to you?”

“No.”

“Are you sure? He was an obstetrician.”

“Absolutely certain. I've never heard that name.”

“What about you?” Lucie asked the grandfather.

The man shook his head. Lucie turned back to Coralie.

“Where did your mother give birth?”

“In a clinic in Sydney.”

“Sydney . . . Australia?”

“Yes. My brother and I were both born there. My father worked there for three years, and my mother went with him. After the tragedy, Poppa came back to live in France, in the family house in Fontainebleau.”

Lucie straightened up, nervously putting her hand in front of her mouth.

“And . . . did your father tell you about any problems your mother might have had during her pregnancy? Was she seeing a doctor?”

The expectant mother shook her head.

“My father always said my mother never took so much as an aspirin. She had a remarkably strong constitution, Grandpa could tell you. She didn't believe in medicines or in anything that had been synthesized or manipulated by science. She wanted to give birth the natural way, in water, and she refused to be treated during her pregnancy. It was how she chose to live her life. For both pregnancies, she didn't know if she was carrying a girl or a boy. All the advances of science were of no interest to her. She believed in the magic of procreation, of birth, and she knew it would all turn out well because she was devout and put her faith in God . . .”

Her eyes drifted off into space for a long time. Lucie had no further questions to ask; her theories had crumbled. If Terney had ever gotten to know Félix Lambert, it was after his birth, perhaps during a regular exam, a routine blood test, or any number of other ways. But certainly not beforehand.

Coralie finally reacted when she felt a little kick in her womb. She tried to stand, and her grandfather rushed forward to help her.

“Don't you see how you need rest? Let's go in now.”

“Just one last thing,” Sharko interrupted. “Does anyone in your family have Amerindian roots or come from South America? Perhaps Venezuela, Brazil, or the Amazon?”

The grandfather gave the cop a scathing look.

“Do we look like Indians to you? We've been pure-blooded French for generations and generations! I promise you, you haven't heard the last of this.”

Lucie quickly jotted down her cell phone number on a card and slipped it into the man's breast pocket.

“We can't wait.”

Without answering, the two Lamberts disappeared into the apartment. The door slowly closed behind them.

“People are born and they die,” Lucie said sadly, “and God's got nothing to do with it. God's got a big strip of packing tape over his mouth and his hands tied behind his back.”

Sharko chose not to answer. Lucie's nerves were on edge. He pulled out his cell phone, which had started vibrating.

“Terney didn't manipulate the birth of Félix Lambert, the way he did with Carnot. He didn't create this particular monster.”

“Apparently, the monster created himself. And Terney might simply have been content to find out and add him to the list.”

Sharko showed Lucie the display screen.

“It's Clémentine Jaspar.”

The inspector moved away down the hall, answered, and returned a few minutes later. Lucie gave him a questioning look, and Sharko nodded.

“Yes . . . Her anthropologist friend came through.”

Lucie closed her eyes in relief. Sharko continued:

“He wants to meet us in Vémars, some backwater a few miles from De Gaulle Airport, at around eleven. Let's get going.”