Patricia Cornwell – Scarpetta11 – The Last Precinct

“Their DNA profiles are very close, but not identical,” I agree. “And wouldn’t be unless the brothers were identical twins, which clearly they aren’t.”

“How do you know that for sure?” Marino frowns.

“If Thomas and Jean-Baptiste were identical twins,” I ex­plain, “both of them would have congenital hypertrichosis. Not just one of them.”

“So how do you explain it?” Berger asks me. “A genetic match in all cases, yet the descriptions of the killers seem to indicate they can’t be the same person.”

“If the DNA in Susan Pless’s case matches Jean-Baptiste Chandonne’s DNA, then I can only explain it by concluding that the man who left her apartment at three-thirty in the morning isn’t the man who killed her,” I reply. “Chandonne killed her. But the man people saw her with isn’t Chandonne.”

“So maybe Wolfman screws ’em now and then, after all,” Marino adds. “Or tries to and we just don’t know it because he usually don’t leave any juice.”

“And then what?” Berger challenges him. “Puts their pants back on? Dresses them from the waist down after the fact?”

“Hey, it ain’t like we’re talking about somebody who does things the normal way. Oh, almost forgot to tell you.” He looks at me. “One of the nurses got a peek at what he’s pack­ing. Undipped.” Marino’s jargon for uncircumcised. “And smaller than a damn Vienna sausage.” He shows us by holding his thumb and index finger about an inch apart. “No wonder the squirrel’s in such a bad mood all the time.”[“_Toc37098915”]

CHAPTER 13

WITH A CLICK OF THE REMOTE CONTROL, 1 AM returned to the cinder block interview room inside the forensic ward of MCV. I am returned to Jean-Baptiste Chan-donne, who wants us to believe he is capable of somehow transforming his uniquely hideous appearance into elegant good looks when he is in the mood to dine out and pick up a woman. Impossible. His torso with its swirling coat of imma­ture hair fills the television screen as he is helped back into his chair, and when his head enters the picture I am startled to dis­cover that his bandages have been removed, his eyes now masked by dark plastic Solar Shield glasses, the flesh around them an irritated raw pink. His eyebrows are long and conflu­ent, as if someone has taken a strip of downy fur and glued it on his brow. The same downy pale hair covers his forehead and temples.

Berger and I sit in my conference room. It is not quite seven-thirty and Marino has left for two reasons: He was paged about a possible identification of the body found dumped on the street in Mosby Court, and Berger encouraged him not to rejoin us. She said she needed to have some private time with me. I think she also was just plain sick of him, not that I blame her. Marino has made it abundantly clear that he is intensely critical of the way she interviewed Chandonne and that she did it in the first place. Part of thisno, all of thisis jealousy. There isn’t an investigator on this planet who wouldn’t want to interview such a notorious, freakish killer. It just so happens that the beast picked the beauty, and Marino is seething.

As I listen to Berger remind Chandonne on camera that he understands his rights and has agreed to talk to her further, I am gripped more convincingly by a certain reality. I am a small creature caught in a web, an evil web spun of threads that seem to wrap around the entire globe like lines of latitude and longitude. Chandonne’s attempt to murder me was inci­dental to what he is all about. I was an amusement. If he fig­ures I am watching his taped interview, then I am still an amusement. Nothing more. It occurs to me that if he had suc­ceeded in ripping me to shreds, he would have already been focused on someone new and I would be nothing but a brief bloody moment, a past wet dream in his hateful, hellish life.

“And the detective got you something to eat and drink, sir, isn’t that right?” Berger is asking Chandonne.

“Yes.”

“And what was that?”

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