“What is it?” she says, her hands poised to open her fur coat.
“I need to make a quick phone call,” I tell her.
I DON’T TELL BERGER WHAT I AM THINKING. I DON’T let on what I fear. I don’t divulge that when I stepped back outside the house to use my cell phone in private, I called Marino and asked him to come here right now.
“Everything all right?” Berger asks when I return and shut the front door.
I don’t answer her. Of course, everything isn’t all right. “Where do you want me to start?” I remind her we have work to do.
She wants me to reconstruct exactly what happened the night Chandonne tried to murder me, and we wander into the great room. I begin with the white cotton sectional sofa in front of the fireplace. I was sitting there last Friday night, going through bills, the television turned down low. Periodically, a newsbreak would come on, warning the public about the serial killer who calls himself Le Loup-Garou. Information had been released about his supposed genetic disorder, his extreme deformity, and as I remember that evening it almost seems absurd to imagine a very serious anchor on a local channel talking about a man who is maybe six feet tall, has weird teeth and a body covered with long baby-fine hair. People were advised not to open the door if they weren’t sure who was there.
“At about eleven,” I tell Berger, “I switched over to NBC, I think, to watch the late news and moments later my burglar alarm went off. The zone for the garage had been violated, according to the display on the keypad, and when the service called, I told them they’d better dispatch the police because I had no idea why the thing had gone off.”
“So your garage has an alarm system,” Berger repeats. “Why the garage? Why do you think he tried to break into it?”
“To deliberately set off the alarm so the police would come,” I repeat my belief. “They show up. They leave. Then he shows up. He impersonates the police and I open my door. No matter what anybody says or what I heard on the video- tape when you interviewed him, he spoke English, perfect English. He had no accent at all.”
“Didn’t sound like the man in the videotape,” she agrees.
“No. Certainly not.”
“So you didn’t recognize his voice in that tape.”
“I didn’t,” I reply.
“You don’t think he was really trying to get inside your garage, then. That this was just for the purpose of setting off the alarm,” Berger probes, as usual writing nothing down.
“I doubt it. I think he was trying to do exactly what I said.”
“And how do you suppose he knew your garage had an alarm system?” Berger inquires. “Rather unusual. Most homes don’t have an alarm system in the garage.”
“I don’t know if he knew or how he knew.”
“He could have tried a back door instead, for example, and been assured that the alarm would go off, assuming you had it on. And I fully believe he knew you would have it on. We can assume he knows you are a very security-minded woman, especially in light of the murders going on around here.”
“I have no clue what would go through his mind,” I say-rather tersely.
Berger paces. She stops in front of the stone fireplace. It gapes empty and dark and makes my house seem unlived-in and neglected like Bray’s. Berger points a finger at me, “You do know what he thinks,” she confronts me. “Just as he was gathering intelligence on you and getting a feel for how you think and what your patterns are, you were doing the same thing to him. You read about him in the wounds of the bodies. You were communicating with him through his victims, through the crime scenes, through everything you learned in France.”[“_Toc37098930”]
CHAPTER 28
MY TRADITIONAL ITALIAN WHITE SOFA IS STAINED pink from formalin. There are footprints on a cushion, probably left by me when I jumped over the sofa to escape Chandonne. I will never sit on that sofa again and can’t wait to have it hauled away. I perch on the edge of a nearby matching chair.