“I know this has been quite an ordeal and I’m sure you must be exhausted;” he said in precise English. “I can’t thank you enough for coming. Especially on such short notice.”
His inscrutable face and military bearing revealed nothing, and his presence seemed to make everything around him smaller. He settled into a wing chair and crossed his legs. Marino and I chose the couch and Talley sat across from me, setting the file on the rug.
“Agent Talley,” Mirot said, “I’ll let you start. You’ll excuse me if I get right to the point?” He directed this at us. “We have very little time.”
“First, I want to explain why ATF’s involved in your unidentified case,” Talley said to Marino and me. “You’re familiar with HIDTA. Because of your niece Lucy, perhaps?”
“This has nothing to do with her,” I assumed uneasily.
“As you probably know, HIDTA has violent crimesfugitive task forces;” he said instead of answering my question. “FBI, DEA, local law enforcement, and of course ATF, combining resources in high priority, especially difficult cases.”
He pulled up a chair and sat across from me.
“About a year ago,” he went on, “we formed a squad to work murders in Paris we believed are being committed by the same individual:’
“I’m not aware of any serial murders in Paris,” I said.
“In France, we control the media better than you do,” the secretary-general commented. “You must understand, the murders have been in the news, Dr. Scarpetta, but in very little detail, no sensationalizing. Parisians know there’s a murderer out there, and women have been warned not to open their doors to strangers, and so on. But that’s all. We believe it serves no good purpose to reveal the gore, the shattered bones, torn clothes, bite marks, sexual deviations.”
“Where did the name Loup-Garou come from?” I asked.
“From him,” Talley said as his eyes almost touched my body and flew off like a bird.
“From the killer?” I asked. “You mean, he calls himself a werewolf?”
Yes.
“How the hell can you know something like that?” Marino elbowed his way in, and I knew by his body language that he was about to cause trouble.
Talley hesitated and glanced at Mirot.
“What’s the son of a bitch been doing?” Marino continued. “Leaving his nickname on little notes at the scenes? Maybe he pins them to the bodies like in the movies, huh? That’s what I hate about big organizations getting involved in crap like this.
“The best people to work crimes is the schmucks like me out.there walking around getting our boots muddy. Once you get these big-shot task forces and computer systems involved, the whole thing gets off in the ozone. It gets too smart, when what started the whole ball rolling ain’t smart in the college sense of the word.”
“That’s where you’re quite mistaken,” Mirot cut him off. “Loup-Garou is very smart. He had his self-serving reasons to let us know his name in a letter.”
“A letter to who?” Marino wanted to know.
“To me,” Talley said.
“When was this?” I asked.
“About a year ago. After his fourth murder.”
He untied the file and pulled out a letter protected by plastic. He handed it to me, his fingers brushing against mine. The letter was in French. I recognized the handwriting as the same strange boxlike style I’d found on the carton inside the container. The stationery was engraved with a woman’s name, the paper smeared with blood.
“It says;” Talley translated, “For the sins of one shall they all die. The werewolf. The stationery belonged to the victim and it’s her blood. But what mystified me at the time was how he knew I was involved in the investigation. And this all moves us closer to a theory that’s the root of why you’re here. We have ample reason to believe the killer is from a powerful family, the son of people who know exactly what he’s doing and have made certain he doesn’t get caught. Not necessarily because they give a damn about him, but because they must do whatever’s necessary to protect themselves.”
“Including shipping him off in a container?” I asked. “Dead and unidentified, thousands of miles from Paris because they’ve had enough?”