“Why has no evidence been tested in the Paris cases?” I got back to that.
“How about coffee?’
“What I’d liked 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 Ile 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 Ile. 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.”