“It’s a theory that he arrived at the same time his brother’s body showed up,” I reply.
“So Jean-Baptiste, caring guy that he is, probably hung around in the ship and watched all you people scurrying around when the body was found. Greatest show on earth. These assholes love to watch us work their crimes.”
“How could he have followed me?” I get back to that outrageous thought. “How? He had a car?”
“Maybe he did,” she says. “I’m getting around to enter- taining the possibility that Chandonne wasn’t the lone, wretched creature who just happened upon your city because it was convenient or even random. I’m no longer sure what his connections are, and I’m beginning to wonder if perhaps he might have been part of a grander scheme that has to do with the family business. Perhaps even with Bray herself, since she clearly was involved in an underworld of crime. And now we have other murders, one of the victims clearly involved in organized crime. An assassin. And an undercover FBI agent working a gun-smuggling case. And the hairs at the campground that might be Chandonne’s. This is all adding up to something more than a man who killed his brother, took his place on a ship bound for Richmondall to get out of Paris because his nasty little habit of murdering and mutilating women was becoming increasingly inconvenient to his powerful criminal family. Then he starts killing here because he can’t control himself? Well.” Berger leans against the kitchen counter. “There are just too many coincidences. And how did he get to the campground if he didn’t have a car? Assuming those hairs turn out to be his,” she repeats.
I sit down at the table. There are no windows inside my garage, but there are small windows in the garage door. I consider the possibility that Chandonne did follow me home and peeped through the garage door at me while I was cleaning up and undressing. Maybe he had help finding the abandoned house on the river, too. Maybe Berger is right. Maybe he isn’t alone and never has been. It is almost midnight, almost Christmas, and Marino still isn’t here and Berger’s demeanor tells me she could keep going until dawn.
“Alarm goes off,” she resumes. “Cops come and go. You return to the great room.” She motions me to follow her there. “You’re sitting where?”
“On the sofa.”
“Right. TV on, going through bills, and around midnight what?”
“There’s a knock on the front door,” I reply.
“Describe the knock.”
“A rapping with something hard.” I try to remember every detail. “Like a flashlight or tactical baton. The way police knock. I get up and ask who’s there. Or I think I ask. I’m not sure, but a male voice identifies himself as police. He says a prowler has been spotted on my property and asks if everything’s okay.”
“And that makes sense because we know a prowler was there about an hour earlier, when someone tried to force open your garage door.”
“Exactly.” I nod. “I turn off the alarm and open the door, and he is there,” I add as if I am talking about nothing more threatening than trick-or-treaters.
“Show me,” Berger says.
1 WALK THROUGH THE GREAT ROOM, PAST THE DINING
room and to the entrance hall. I open the door, and just the act of re-creating a scenario that almost cost me my life causes a visceral reaction. I feel sick. My hands begin to tremble. My front porch light is still out because the police removed the bulb and fixture and submitted them to the labs to be processed for fingerprints. No one has replaced them. Exposed wires dangle from the porch ceiling. Berger is waiting patiently for me to continue. “He rushes inside,” I say. “And back-kicks the door shut behind him.” I shut the door. “He has this black coat and he tries to put it over my head.”
“Coat on or off when he came in?”
“On. He was grabbing it off as he came through the door.” I am standing still. “And he tried to touch me.”
“Tried to touch you?” Berger frowns. “With the chipping hammer?”