The Body Farm

  “Like our coroner system at its worst,” I said. “Whenever politics and votes are involved—”

  “Power,” Talley cut in. “Corruption. Politics and criminal investigation should never be in the same room.”

  “But they are. All the time, Agent Talley. Maybe even here, in your organization,” I said.

  “Interpol?” He seemed to find this very amusing. “There’s really no motivation for Interpol to do the wrong thing, as sanctimonious as that might sound. We don’t take credit. We don’t want publicity, cars, guns or uniforms; we don’t fight over jurisdictions. We have a surprisingly small budget for what we do. To most people we don’t even exist.”

  “You say this we shit like you’re one of them,” Marino commented. “I’m confused. One minute you’re ATF, the next minute you’re a secret squirrel.”

  Talley raised an eyebrow and blew out smoke. “Secret squirrel?” he asked.

  “How’d you end up over here anyway?” Marino wouldn’t relent.

  “My father’s French, my mother American. I spent most of my childhood in Paris, then my family moved to Los Angeles.”

  “Then what?”

  “Law school, didn’t like it, ended up with ATF.”

  “For how long?” Marino continued his interrogation.

  “I’ve been an agent about five years.”

  “Yeah? And how much of that’s been over here?” Marino was getting more belligerent with each question.

  “Two years.”

  “That’s kinda cushy. Three years on the street, then you end up over here drinking wine and hanging out in this big glass castle with all these hot-shit people.”

  “I’ve been extremely fortunate.” Talley’s graciousness carried a sting. “You’re absolutely right. I suppose it helps somewhat that I speak four languages and have traveled extensively. I also got into computers and international studies at Harvard.”

  “I’m hitting the john.” Marino abruptly got up.

  “It’s the Harvard part that really got him,” I said to Talley as Marino stalked off.

  “I didn’t mean to piss him off,” he said.

  “Of course you did.”

  “Oh. Such a bad impression you have of me so quickly.”

  “He’s usually not quite this bad,” I went on. “There’s a new deputy chief who’s thrown him back in uniform, suspended him and tried everything short of a bullet to destroy him.”

  “What’s his name?” Talley asked.

  “It’s a her,” I answered. “Sometimes the hers are worse than hims, it’s been my experience. More threatened, more insecure. Women tend to do each other in when we should be helping each other along.”

  “You don’t seem to be like that.” He studied me.

  “Sabotage takes too much time.”

  He wasn’t sure how to take that.

  “You’ll find I’m very direct, Agent Talley, because I have nothing to hide. I’m focused and I mean business. I’ll fight you or I won’t. I’ll confront you or I won’t, and I’ll do it strategically but mercifully because I have no interest in watching anybody suffer. Unlike Diane Bray. She poisons people and sits back and watches, enjoying the show as the person slowly and in agony wastes away.”

  “Diane Bray. Well, well,” Talley said, “toxic waste in tight clothes.”

  “You know her?” I asked, surprised.

  “She finally left D.C. so she could ruin some other police department. I was at headquarters briefly before getting assigned here. She was always trying to coordinate what her cops were doing with what the rest of us were doing. You know, FBI, Secret Service, us. Not that there’s anything wrong with people working together, but that wasn’t her agenda. She just wanted to get in thick with the power brokers, and damn if she didn’t.”

  “I don’t want to waste energy talking about her,” I said. “She’s taken far too much of my energy already.”

  “Would you like dessert?”

  “Why has no evidence been tested in the Paris cases?” I got back to that.

  “How about coffee?”

  “What I’d like is an answer, Agent Talley.”

  “Jay.”

  “Why am I here?”

  He hesitated, glancing toward the door as if worried that someone he didn’t want to see might walk in. I decided he was thinking about Marino.

  “If the killer is this Chandonne wacko, as we very much suspect, then his family would prefer that his nasty habit of slashing, beating and biting women isn’t made public. In fact”—he paused, his eyes digging into mine—“it would seem his family hasn’t wanted it known that he was ever on this planet. Their dirty little secret.”

  “Then how do you know he exists?”

  “His mother gave birth to two sons. There’s no record of one dying.”

  “Sounds like there’s no record of anything,” I said.

  “Not on paper. There are other ways of finding out things. Police have spent hundreds of hours interviewing people, especially those on Île Saint-Louis. In addition to what Thomas’s former classmates allege, it has also become rather much a legend that there is a man who’s sometimes seen walking along the shore of the island at night or in the early morning, when it’s dark.”

  “Does this mysterious character swim or just walk around?” I asked. I was thinking of the freshwater diatoms inside the dead man’s clothes.

  Talley gave me a surprised look.

  “It’s funny you should say that. Yes. There have been reports of a white male swimming nude in the Seine off the shore of Île Saint-Louis. Even in very cold weather. Always when it’s dark.”

  “And you believe these rumors?” I asked.

  “It’s not my job to believe or not believe.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Our role here is to facilitate and get all the troops thinking and working together, no matter where they are or who they are. We’re the only organization in the world able to do that. I’m not here to play detective.”

  He paused for a long moment, his eyes reaching into mine to find places I was afraid to share with him.

  “I don’t pretend to be a profiler, Kay,” he said.

  He knew about Benton. Of course he would.

  “I don’t have those skills, and I certainly don’t have the experience,” he added. “So I won’t even begin to paint some sort of portrait of the guy who’s doing this. I have no feeling for what he looks like, walks like, talks like—except I know he speaks French and maybe other languages as well.

  “One of his victims was Italian,” he went on. “She spoke no English. One has to wonder if he may have spoken Italian to her to get inside her door.”

  Talley leaned back in his chair and reached for his water.

  “This guy’s had ample opportunity to be self-educated,” Talley said. “He may dress well, because certainly Thomas is reputed to have quite a penchant for fast cars, designer clothes, jewelry. Maybe the pitiful brother hidden in the basement got Thomas’s hand-me-downs.”

  “The jeans the unidentified man was wearing were a little big in the waist,” I recalled.

  “Thomas’s weight fluctuated, supposedly. He worked very hard to be slender, was very vain about the way he looked. So who knows?” Talley said, shrugging. “But one thing’s certain, if his alleged brother’s as weird as people are saying, I doubt he goes shopping.”

  “Do you really think this person comes home after one of his slaughters and his parents wash his bloody clothes and protect him?”

  “He’s being protected by someone,” Talley reiterated. “That’s why these cases in Paris have stopped at the morgue door. We don’t know what went on in there beyond what we’ve shown you.”

  “The magistrate?”

  “Someone with a lot of influence. That could be any number of people.”

  “How did you get hold of the autopsy reports?”

  “The normal route,” he replied. “We requested the records from the Paris police.
And what you see is what we got. No evidence going to the labs, Kay. No suspects. No trials. Nothing, except that the family has probably gotten a bit tired of shielding their psychopathic son. He’s not only an embarrassment, he’s a potential liability.”

  “How will proving Loup-Garou is the psychopathic son of the Chandonnes help you take down this One-Sixty-Fiver cartel?”

  “For one thing, we hope Loup-Garou will talk. He gets nailed for a string of murders, especially the one in Virginia . . . Well, we will have leverage. Not to mention”—he smiled—“we I.D. Monsieur Chandonne’s sons, we get probable cause to search their lovely three-hundred-year-old Île Saint-Louis home and offices and bills of lading and on and on and on.”

  “Assuming we catch Loup-Garou,” I said.

  “We have to.”

  His eyes met mine and held them for a long, tense moment.

  “Kay, we need you to prove the killer’s Thomas’s brother.”

  He held the pack of cigarettes out to me. I didn’t touch it.

  “You may be our only hope,” he added. “It’s the best chance we’ve had so far.”

  “Marino and I could be in serious danger if we get anywhere near this,” I said.

  “Police can’t go inside the Paris morgue and start asking questions,” he said. “Not even undercover cops. And it goes without saying that no one here at Interpol can.”

  “Why not? Why can’t Paris police go in there?”

  “Because the medical examiner who did the cases won’t talk to them. She trusts no one, and I can’t say I blame her. But it seems she trusts you.”

  I was silent.

  “You should be motivated by what happened to Lucy and Jo.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “It’s fair, Kay. That’s how bad these people are. They tried to blow your niece’s brains out. Then they tried to blow her up. It’s not an abstraction to you, now is it?”

  “Violence is never an abstraction to me.” Cold sweat was sliding down my sides.

  “But it’s different when it’s someone you love,” Talley said. “Right?”

  “Don’t tell me how I feel.”

  “Abstraction or not, you feel the cruel, cold jaws of it when it crushes someone you love.” Talley wouldn’t let it go. “Don’t let these assholes crush anyone else. You have a debt to pay. Lucy was spared.”

  “I should be home with her,” I said.

  “Your being here will help her more. It will help Jo more.”

  “I don’t need you to tell me what’s best for my niece or her friend. Or for me, for that matter.”

  “To us, Lucy is one of our finest agents. To us, she’s not your niece.”

  “I suppose I should feel good about that.”

  “You certainly should.”

  His attention drifted down my neck. I felt his eyes like a breeze that stirred nothing but me, and then he stared at my hands.

  “God, they’re strong,” he said, and he reached for one. “The body that turned up in the container. Kim Luong. They are your cases, Kay”—he studied my fingers, my palm. “You know all the details. You know the questions to ask, what to look for. It makes sense for you to drop by to see her.”

  “Her?” I pulled my hand away and wondered who was watching.

  “Madame Stvan. Ruth Stvan. The director of legal medicine and chief medical examiner of France. You two have met.”

  “Of course I know who she is, but we’ve never met.”

  “In Geneva in 1988. She’s Swiss. When you met she wasn’t married. Her maiden name is Dürenmatt.”

  He searched my face to see if I remembered. I didn’t.

  “You were on a panel together. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. SIDS.”

  “And how could you possibly know that?”

  “It’s in your vita,” he said, amused.

  “Well, there’s certainly no mention of her in my vita,” I defensively replied.

  His eyes wouldn’t let go of me. I couldn’t stop looking at him, and it was hard to think.

  “Will you go see her?” he asked. “It wouldn’t seem unusual for you to drop by to say hello to an old friend while you’re visiting Paris, and she’s agreed to talk to you. That’s really why you’re here.”

  “Nice of you to let me know now,” I said as my indignation rose.

  “You may not be able to do anything. Maybe she knows nothing. Maybe there’s not a single other detail she can offer to help us with our problem. But we don’t believe that. She’s a very intelligent, ethical woman who’s had to work very hard against a system that’s not always on the side of justice. Maybe you can relate to her?”

  “Just who the hell do you think you are?” I asked. “You think you can just pick up the phone and summon me here and ask me to just drop by the Paris morgue while some criminal cartel isn’t looking?”

  He said nothing, his gaze never wavering. Sunlight filled the window beside him and turned his eyes the amber of tiger-eye.

  “I don’t give a damn whether you’re Interpol or Scotland Yard or the queen of England,” I said. “You don’t get to put me or Dr. Stvan or Marino in jeopardy.”

  “Marino won’t be going to the morgue.”

  “I’ll let you tell him that.”

  “If he accompanied you, that would raise suspicions, especially since he’s such a model of decorum,” Talley remarked. “Besides, I don’t think Dr. Stvan would like him very much.”

  “And if there’s evidence, then what?”

  He didn’t answer me, and I knew why.

  “You’re asking me to tamper with the chain of evidence. You’re asking me to steal evidence, aren’t you? I don’t know what you call it here, but in the United States it’s called a felony.”

  “Impairment or falsification of evidence, according to the new penal code. That’s what it’s called here. Three hundred thousand francs, three years in prison. Possibly you could get charged with a breach of respect due the dead, I suppose, if one really wants to push the matter, and that’s another hundred thousand francs, another year in prison.”

  I shoved back my chair.

  “I must say,” I coldly told him, “it’s not been often in my profession that a federal agent begs me to break the law.”

  “I’m not asking. This is between you and Dr. Stvan.”

  I got up. I didn’t listen.

  “You may not have gone to law school, but I did,” I said. “Maybe you can recite a penal code, but I know what it means.”

  He didn’t move. Blood was pounding in my neck and sunlight was so bright in my face I couldn’t see.

  “I’ve been a servant to the law, to the principles of science and medicine, for half my life,” I went on. “The only thing you’ve done for half your life, Agent Talley, is make it through adolescence in that Ivy League world of yours.”

  “Nothing bad’s going to happen to you,” Talley calmly replied as if he hadn’t listened to an insulting word I’d said.

  “Tomorrow morning, Marino and I are flying home.”

  “Please sit down.”

  “So you know Diane Bray? Is this her grand finale? To get me thrown into a French prison?” I went on.

  “Please sit,” he said.

  Reluctantly, I did.

  “If you do something Dr. Stvan asks and should get caught, we’ll intercede,” he said. “Just as we did with what I was sure Marino would have packed in his suitcase.”

  “I’m supposed to believe that?” I asked, incredulous. “French police with their machine guns snatch me in the airport and I say, It’s all right. I’m on a secret mission for Interpol?”

  “All we’re doing is getting you and Dr. Stvan together.”

  “Bullshit. I know exactly what you’re doing. And if I get in trouble, you guys will be like every other agency in the goddamn world. You’ll say you don’t even know me.”

  “I would never say that.”

  He held my gaze, and the room was so hot I needed fresh air.

 
“Kay, we would never say that. Senator Lord would never say that. Please trust me.”

  “Well, I don’t.”

  “When would you like to return to Paris?”

  I had to stop to think. He had me so befuddled and furious.

  “You’re scheduled on the late afternoon train,” he reminded me. “But if you’d like to stay for the night, I know of a wonderful little hotel on the rue du Boeuf. It’s called La Tour Rose. You’d love it.”

  “No, thank you,” I said.

  He sighed, getting up from the table and collecting both our trays.

  “Where’s Marino?” It occurred to me that he had been gone for a long time.

  “I was beginning to wonder that myself,” Talley said as we walked through the cafeteria. “I don’t think he likes me very much.”

  “That’s the most brilliant deduction you’ve made all day,” I said.

  “I don’t think he likes it when another man pays attention to you.”

  I didn’t know how to answer that.

  He slid the trays into a rack.

  “Will you make the phone call?” Talley was relentless. “Please?”

  He stood perfectly still in the middle of the cafeteria and touched my shoulder, almost boyishly, as he asked me again.

  “I hope Dr. Stvan still speaks English,” I said.

  35

  When I got Dr. Stvan on the phone, she remembered me without hesitation, which reinforced what Talley had told me. She was expecting my call and wanted to see me.

  “I teach at the university tomorrow afternoon,” she told me in English that sounded as if it had not been practiced in a while. “But you can come by in the morning. I get in at eight.”

  “Will eight-fifteen give you enough time to get settled?”

  “Of course. Is there something I can help you with while you’re in Paris?” she asked in a tone that made me suspect others could hear.

  “I’m interested in how your medical examiner system works in France.” I followed her cue.

  “Not very well some of the time,” she replied. “We’re near the Gare de Lyon, off the Quai de la Rapée. If you drive yourself, you can park in back where the bodies are received. Otherwise, come in to the front.”