“But we don’t know for a fact that he locked the door behind him when he entered Bray’s house,” Berger reiterates.
“/ certainly don’t know it for a fact.”
“And he might not have locked up.” Berger is into it. “He might have shoved his way in and the chase begins. The door is unlocked the entire time he is mutilating her body in the bedroom.”
“That would suggest he was out of control and taking big risks,” I point out.
“Hmmm. I don’t want to go down the road of out of control.” Berger seems to talk to herself.
“Out of control isn’t at all the same thing as insane,” I remind her. “All people who murder, except out of self-defense, are out of control.”
“Ah. Touche.” She nods. “So Bray opens the door, and the light is out and there he is in the dark.”
“This is also what he did to Dr. Stvan in Paris,” I tell Berger. “Women were being murdered over there, same MO, and in several cases Chandonne left notes at the crime scenes.”
“That’s where the name Loup-Garou comes from,” Berger interjects.
“He also wrote that name on a box inside the cargo container where the body was foundthe body of his brother, Thomas. But yes,” I say, “he apparently began leaving notes, referring to himself as a werewolf when he began murdering over there, in Paris. One night, he showed up at Dr. Stvan’s door, not realizing that her husband was home sick. He works at night as a chef, but on this particular occasion, he was home unexpectedly, thank God. Dr. Stvan opens the door and when Chandonne hears her husband call out from another room, he flees.”
“She get a good look at him?”
“I don’t think so.” I conjure up what Dr. Stvan told me. “It was dark. It was her impression that he was dressed neatly in a long, dark coat, a scarf, his hands in his pockets. He spoke well, was gentlemanly, using the ruse that his car had broken down and he needed a phone. Then he realized she wasn’t alone and ran like hell.”
“Anything else she remembered about him?”
“His smell. He had a musky smell, like a wet dog.”
Berger makes a strange sound at that comment. I am becoming familiar with her subtle mannerisms, and when a detail is especially weird or disgusting, she sucks the inside of her cheek and emits a quiet rasping squeak like a bird. “So he goes after the chief medical examiner there, and then goes after the one here. You,” she adds for emphasis. “Why?” She has turned halfway around in her seat and is resting an elbow on the steering wheel, facing me.
“Why?” I repeat, as if it is a question I can’t possibly answeras if it is a question she shouldn’t ask me. “Maybe someone should tell me that.” Again, I feel the heat of anger rise.
“Premeditation,” she replies. “Insane people don’t plan their crimes with this sort of deliberation. Picking the chief medical examiner in Paris and then the one here. Both women. Both autopsied his victims and therefore in a perverse way are intimate with him. Perhaps more intimate with him than a lover, because you have, in a sense, watched. You see where he has touched and bitten. You put your hands on the same body he did. In a way, you have watched him make love with these women, for this is how Jean-Baptiste Chandonne makes love to a woman.”
“A revolting thought.” I find her psychological interpretation personally offensive.
“A pattern. A plan. Not the least bit random. So it’s important we understand his patterns, Kay. And do so without personal revulsion or reaction.” She draws out a pause. “You must look at him dispassionately. You can’t indulge in hate.”
“It’s hard not to hate someone like him,” I reply honestly.
“And when we truly resent and hate someone, it’s also hard to give them our time and attention, to be interested in them as if they are worth figuring out. We have to be interested in Chandonne. Intensely interested. I need you to be more interested in him than you have in anyone else in your life.”