The Last Precinct

Chapter 12

BERGER RESUMES THE VIDEOTAPE. SHE IS ASKING Chandonne, "Are you employed or have you ever been?"

"This and that," he mildly replies. "Whatever I can find."

"Yet you could afford to stay in a nice hotel and eat at an expensive New York restaurant? And buy a good bottle of Italian wine? Where did you get the money for all that, sir?"

At this, Chandonne hesitates. He yawns, giving us a startling view of his grotesque teeth. Small and pointed, they are widely spaced and gray. "Sorry. I am very tired. I don't have much strength." He touches his bandages again.

At this, Berger reminds him that he is talking of his own volition. No one is forcing him. She offers to stop but he says he will continue a little longer, maybe just a few minutes longer. "I've been on the street much of my life when I can find no work," he tells her. "Sometimes I beg, but most times I find any job I can. Washing dishes, sweeping. Once I even drove a moto-crottes."

"And what is that?"

"A trottin 'net. One of those green motorcycles in Paris that cleans sidewalks, you know, with the vacuum that picks up dog shit."

"Do you have a driver's license?"

"No."

"Then how did you drive a trottin 'net?'

"If it's under one hundred and twenty-five CCs you don't need a driver's license, and the moto-crottes only go maybe twenty kilometers an hour."

This is all bullshit. Again, he is mocking us. Marino shifts in his chair inside my conference room. "The asshole's got an answer to everything, don't he?"

"Any other ways you get money?" Berger is asking Chan-donne.

"Well, from women sometimes."

"And how do you get money from women?"

"If they give money to me. I admit women are my weakness. I love women_the way they look, smell, feel, taste." He who sinks his teeth into women he brutalizes and murders says all this in a gentle tone. He feigns perfect innocence. He has begun flexing his fingers on the table as if they are stiff, splaying his fingers in and out, slowly, hair shining.

"You like the way they taste?" Berger is getting more aggressive. "Is that why you bite them?"

"I don't bite them."

"You didn't bite Susan Pless?"

"No."

"Sir, she was covered with bite marks."

"I didn't do that. They did it. I'm followed and it's they who kill. They kill my lovers."

"They?"

"I told you. Government agents. FBI, Interpol. So they can get to my family."

"If your family has been so careful to hide you from the world, then how do these people_FBI, Interpol, whatever_ know you are a Chandonne?"

"They must have seen me come out of the house at times, followed me. Or maybe someone told them."

"And you think it's been at least two years since you were in your family home?" She tries again.

"At least."

"How long do you believe you have been followed?"

"Many years. Maybe five years. It's hard to know. They're very clever."

"And how might you help these people, quote, get to your family?" Berger asks him.

"If they can frame me as if I'm a terrible killer, then the police might get into my family's house. They would find nothing. My family is innocent. It's all politics. My father is very powerful politically. Beyond that, I don't know. I only can say what has been happening to me, to my life, and it's all a conspiracy to get me into this country and be arrested and then put to death. Because you Americans kill people even when they are innocent. It is well known." His claim seems to make him weary, as if he is tired of pointing it out.

"Sir, where did you learn to speak English?" Berger then asks.

"I picked it up myself. And when I was younger, my father would give me books when I would show up at the house. I read a lot of books."

"In English?"

"Yes. I wanted to learn English very well. My father speaks many languages because he is in international shipping and deals with many foreign countries."

"Including this country? The United States?"

"Yes."

Talley's arm enters the picture again as he sets down another Pepsi. Chandonne greedily plunges the straw between his lips and makes loud sucking sounds.

"What kind of books did you read?" Berger continues.

"A lot of histories and other books to educate myself, because I had to teach myself, you see. I never went to school."

"Where are these books now?"

"Oh, I wouldn't know. Gone. Because I am homeless sometimes or move around a lot. Always on the move, looking over my shoulder because of these people after me."

"Do you know any other languages besides French and English?" Berger asks.

"Italian. A little German." He belches quietly.

"And you picked those up yourself, too?"

"I find newspapers in many languages in Paris and have learned that way, also. Sometimes I have slept on newspapers, you see. When I have no shelter."

"He's breaking my heart." Marino can't restrain himself as Berger says to Chandonne on tape, "Let's get back to Susan, to her death on December fifth, two years ago in New York. Tell me about that night, the night you say you met her in Lumi. What exactly happened?"

Chandonne sighs as if he is getting more tired by the second. He touches his bandages frequently and I notice that his hands tremble. "I need something to eat," he says. "I'm feeling faint, very weak."

Berger points the remote control and the picture freezes and blurs. "We broke for about an hour," she tells me. "Long enough for him to eat something and rest."

"Yeah, the guy sure as hell knows the system," Marino tells me, as if I haven't yet figured that out. "And the stuff about this couple who raised him is bullshit. He's just protecting his Mafia family."

Berger says to me, "I'm wondering if you're familiar with the restaurant Lumi?"

"Not off the top of my head," I reply.

"Well, it's interesting. When we began investigating Susan Pless's murder two years ago, we knew then that she had eaten at Lumi the night she was killed because the person who waited on her called the police the minute he heard the news. The medical examiner even found traces of the meal in her stomach contents, indicating she had probably eaten several hours, at most, before death."

"Was she alone at the restaurant?" I inquire.

"Came in alone and joined a man who was also alone, only he wasn't a freak_not hardly. Was described as tall, broad-Shouldered, well dressed, good-looking. Clearly someone for whom money wasn't a problem, or at least he gave that impression."

"Do you know what he ordered?" I ask.

Berger runs her fingers through her hair. It is the first time I have seen her uncertain. In fact, the word spooked comes to mind. "He paid cash, but the waiter remembered what he served her and her companion. He got the polenta and mushrooms and a bottle of Barolo, exactly what Chandonne described on the tape. Susan had an antipasto of grilled vegetables and olive oil, and lamb, which is, by the way, consistent with her stomach contents."

"Jesus," Marino says. Clearly, this part is news to him. "How the hell can that be? It would take Holly-fuckin'-wood special effects to turn that ugly hairball into some good-looking ladies' man."

"Unless it wasn't him," I say. "Might it have been his brother, Thomas? And Jean-Baptiste was following him?" I catch myself by surprise. I called the monster by name.

"A very logical first thought," Berger says. "But there's another monkey wrench thrown into the scenario. The doorman of Susan's apartment remembers her coming in with a man who fits the description of the one in Lumi. This was around nine o'clock that night. The doorman was on duty until seven the next morning, so he was there when the man left around three-thirty A.M., the time Susan would normally be up and on her way to work. She was due at the television station around four or four-thirty because the broadcast begins at five. Her body was found around seven A.M., and according to the medical examiner, Susan had been dead for several hours. The main suspect has always been the stranger she met in the restaurant. In fact, I just can't see how it could have been anybody but this guy. He kills her. Spends some time mutilating the body. Leaves at three-thirty, and no trace of him ever again. And if he's not guilty, why didn't he contact the police when he heard about her murder? God knows the news was blasted all the hell over the place."

It gives me a Strange feeling to realize that I heard about this case when it happened. Suddenly, I am vaguely remembering details that were part of huge, sensational stories at the time. It is numbing to consider that when I heard about Susan Pless two years ago, I had no idea that eventually I would be involved in her case, especially like this.

"Unless he's not local or even from this country," Marino is suggesting.

Berger shrugs a question mark, hands palm up. I am trying to add up the evidence she has presented and am not getting an answer that even begins to make sense. "If she ate between seven and nine P.M., her food should have been largely digested by as early as eleven P.M.," I point out. "Assuming the medical examiner is correct in his estimated time of death, if she died several hours before her body was found_let's just say, by one or two A.M._then her food should have cleared her stomach before that."

"The explanation was stress. She was frightened and her digestion may have slowed down," Berger says.

"That makes sense when you talk about a stranger hiding in your closet and jumping out at you when you get home. But she was apparently comfortable enough with this man to invite him into her apartment," I offer. "And he was comfortable enough not to care if the doorman saw him come in and then leave much later. What about vaginal swabs?"

"Positive for seminal fluid."

"This guy"_I indicate Chandonne_"isn't into vaginal penetration and there's no evidence he ejaculates," I remind Berger. "Not in the Paris murders, certainly not in the ones here. The victims are always clothed from the waist down. They have no injuries from the waist down. He doesn't seem remotely interested in them from the waist down, except for their feet. I was under the impression Susan Pless was clothed from the waist down, too."

"She was, had pajama bottoms on. But she had seminal fluid_possibly suggesting consensual sex, at least at first. Certainly not after that, not when you see what he did to her," Berger replies. "The DNA from the seminal fluid matches up with Chandonne. Then we've got the weird long hairs that sure as hell look like his." She nods at the television. "And you guys tested brother Thomas, right? And his DNA isn't identical to Jean-Baptiste's, so it doesn't appear Thomas left the seminal fluid."

"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."