Pressures even above the minister of justice. I don’t know where all of it comes from, but there was no lab work done in these cases, which is why you were sent.”
“Sent? I thought it was you who asked for me.”
“How do you take your coffee?” Dr. Stvan asked.
“Who told you I was sent?”
“Certainly, you’ve been sent in to relieve me of my secrets, and I’ll give them up to you gladly. Do you take sugar and cream?”
“Black.”
“When the woman was murdered in Richmond, I was told you’d be sent here if I’d talk to you.”
“So you didn’t request that I come?”
“I would never have asked such a thing, because I would never imagine such a request would be granted.”
I thought of the private jet, the Concorde and all the rest of it.
“Could you spare a cigarette?” I said.
“I’m so sorry I didn’t ask. I didn’t know you smoke.”
“I don’t. This is just a detour. One that’s lasted about a year. Do you know who sent me, Dr. Stvan?”
“Someone with enough influence to get you here almost instantly. Beyond that, I don’t know.”
I thought of Senator Lord.
“I’m worn down by what Loup-Garou brings to me. Eight women now,” she said, staring off, a glazed, pained look in her eyes.
“What can I do, Dr. Stvan?”
“There’s no evidence they were raped vaginally,” she said. “Or sodomized. I took swabs of the bite marks, very strange bite marks with missing molars, occlusion and tiny teeth widely spaced. I collected hairs and all the rest of it. But let’s go back to the first case, when everything got strange.
“As you might expect, the magistrate instructed me to submit all evidence to the lab. Weeks went by, months went by, no results ever came back. From then on, I learned. With subsequent cases believed to be LoupGarou, I didn’t ask to submit anything.”
She was silent for a moment, her thoughts elsewhere.
Then she said, “He’s a strange one, this Loup-Garou. Biting the palms, the soles of the feet. It must mean something to him. I’ve never seen anything like it. And now you must contend with him as I have.”
She paused, as if what she had to say next was very hard.
“Please be very careful, Dr. Scarpetta. He will came after you as he did me. You see, I’m the one who survived.”
I was too stunned to speak.
“My husband is a chef at Le Dome. He is almost never home at tight, but as God would have it, he was sick in bed when this creature came to my door several weeks ago. It was raining. He said his car had just been in an accident and needed to call the police. Of course, my first thought was to help. I wanted to make certain he wasn’t injured. I was very concerned.
“That was my vulnerability,” she went on. “I think physicians have a savior complex, you know? We can take care of problems, no matter what they are, and that’s the impulse he counted on, in retrospect, where I was concerned. There was nothing suspicious about him in the least, and he knew I would let him in, and I would have. But Paul lard voices and wanted to know who was there. The man ran off. I never got a good look at him. My house light was out, you see, because he’d unscrewed it, I found out later.”
“Did you call the police?”
“Only a detective I trust.”
“Why?”
“One has to be careful.”
“How did you know it was the killer?”
She sipped her coffee. By now, it was cold, and she added a little to both of ours to warm them up:
“I could feel it. I remember smelling a wet animal smell, but I think now I must have imagined it. I could feel the evil, the lust in his eyes. And he wouldn’t show himself. I never saw his face, just the glint of his eyes as light spilled out the open door.”
“Wet animal smell?” I asked.
“Different from a body odor. A dirty odor, like a dog that needs to be bathed. That’s what I remember. But all of it happened so fast, and I can’t be sure. Then the next day I received a note from him. Here. Let me show you.”