The Last Precinct

Chapter 4

BEHIND HIS BACK, THE CITY COMMONWEALTH'S AT -torney is called many things: Easy Righter (he is weak), Righter Wrong (wishy-washy), Fighter Righter (anything but), Booford (scared of his own shadow). Always proper, always appropriate, Righter is always the Virginia gentleman he was trained to be in the Caroline County horse country of his roots. No one loves him. No one hates him. He is neither feared nor respected. Righter has no fire. I can't recall ever seeing him emotional, no matter how cruel or heart-wrenching the case. Worse, he is squeamish when it comes to the details I bring to the forum, preferring to focus on points of law and not the appalling human messiness left by its violations.

His avoidance of the morgue has resulted in his not being as well versed in forensic science and medicine as he ought to be. In fact, he is the only seasoned prosecutor I know who doesn't seem to mind stipulating cause of death. In other words, he allows the paper record to speak for the medical examiner in the courtroom. This is a travesty. To me it constitutes malpractice. When the medical examiner isn't in the courtroom, then, in a sense, neither is the body, and jurors don't envision the victim or what he went through during the process of dying violently. Clinical words on protocols simply don't evoke the terror or the suffering, and for this reason, it is usually the defense, not the prosecution, who wants to stipulate cause of death.

"Buford, how are you?" I hold out my hand and he glances at my cast and my sling, and down at my untied shoelaces and my shirttail hanging out. He has never seen me in anything less than a suit and in a setting that befits my professional rank, and his brow knits into an expression that is supposed to evince genteel compassion and understanding, the humility and caring of those handpicked by God to rule the rest of us lesser creatures. His type abounds among the first families of Virginia, a privileged, dusty people who have refined the skill of disguising their elitism and arrogance beneath a heavy aura of burden, as if it is so damn hard to be them.

"The question is, how are you?" he says, sitting back down in Anna's handsome oval living room with its vaulted ceiling and view of the river.

"I really don't know how to answer that, Buford." I choose a rocking chair. "Every time someone asks, my mind reboots." Anna must have just gotten the fire going and has vanished, and I have the uneasy sensation that her absence is about more than her being politely unobtrusive.

"No small wonder. Don't even know how you're able to function after what you've been through." Righter speaks with a syrupy Virginia drawl. "Sure am sorry to barge in like this, Kay, but something's come up, something unexpected. Nice place, isn't it?" He continues to survey his surroundings. "She build or was it already here?"

I don't know or care.

"You two are pretty close, I gather," he adds.

I am not sure if he is making small talk or fishing. "She's been a good friend," I reply.

"I know she thinks the world of you. All of which is to say," he goes on, "that you couldn't be in better hands right now, in my opinion."

I resent his implying that I am in anybody's hands, as if I am a patient on a ward, and I say so.

"Oh, I see." He continues his scan of oil paintings on pale rose walls, of art glass and sculptures and European furniture. "Then you don't have a professional relationship? Never have?"

"Not literally," I reply testily. "I have never had an appointment."

"She ever prescribe medications for you?" he blandly goes on.

"Not that I recall."

"Well, can't believe it's almost Christmas." Righter sighs, his attention wandering back in from the river, back to me.

To use a Lucy term, he looks dorky in Bavarian button-up heavy green wool pants tucked into fleece-lined rubber boots with big tread. He wears a plaid Burberry-type wool sweater buttoned up to his chin, as if he can't decide whether he will climb a mountain or play golf in Scotland this day.

"Well," he says, "let me tell you why I'm here. Marino called a couple hours ago. There's been an unanticipated development in the Chandonne case."

The stab of betrayal is instant. Marino has told me nothing. He hasn't even bothered to see how I am doing this morning.

"I'll give you a summation as best I can." Righter crosses his legs and demurely places his hands in his lap, a thin wedding band and University of Virginia class ring glinting in lamplight. "Kay, I'm sure you're aware the news of what happened at your house and the subsequent apprehension of Chandonne has been broadcast all over. I mean all over. I'm sure you've followed it and can appreciate the magnitude of what I'm about to say."

Fear is a fascinating emotion. I have studied it endlessly and often tell people the best example of how it works is to recall the reaction of another driver you have pulled in front of and almost hit. Panic instantly turns to rage and the other person lays on the horn, makes obscene gestures or, these days, shoots you. I go through the progression completely, flawlessly, Shrill fear turning to fury. "I've not followed the news deliberately and certainly won't appreciate the magnitude of it," I reply. "I never appreciate having my privacy violated."

"The murders of Kim Luong and Diane Bray created a lot of attention, but nothing like this_the murder attempt on you," he continues. "I'm supposing, then, you didn't see The Washington Post this morning?"

I just stare at him, seething.

"Front-page photo of Chandonne in the stretcher being carried into the E.R., his hairy shoulders sticking out of the sheets like some sort of long-haired dog. Of course, his face was covered by bandages, but you certainly could get the sense of how grotesque he is. And the tabloids. You can imagine. Werewolf in Richmond, Beauty and the Beast, that sort of thing." Disdain creeps around the edges of his voice, as if sensationalism is obscene, and I am subjected to an unwanted image of him making love to his wife. I can envision him fucking with his socks on. I suspect he would consider sex an indignity, the primitive judge of biology overruling his higher self. I have heard rumors. In the men's room, he won't use the urinals or toilets in front of anybody. He is a compulsive hand-washer. All of this is buzzing through my mind as he continues to sit so properly and disclose the wilting public exposure Chandonne has caused me.

"Do you know if photographs of my house have shown up anywhere?" I have to ask. "There were photographers when I came out of my driveway last night."

"Well, I do know there have been some helicopters flying over this morning. Someone told me that," he replies, making me instantly suspicious that he has been back at my house again and witnessed this for himself. "Taking aerial shots." He stares out at snow drifting down. "I guess the weather's put a stop to it. The guard gate's been turning away quite a few cars. The press, the curious. In an unexpected way, a damn good thing you're staying with Dr. Zenner. Funny how things work out." He pauses, staring off toward the river again. A flock of Canada geese circles, as if waiting for instructions from the tower. "Normally, what I'd recommend is you don't return to your house until after the trial…"

"Until after the trial?" I interrupt.

"That would be if the trial were here," he leads up to his next revelation, which I automatically assume is a reference to a change of venue.

"You're saying, the trial will probably be moved out of Richmond," I interpolate. "And what do you mean by normally?"

"That's what I'm getting to. Marino got a call from the Manhattan D.A.'s office."

"This morning? This is the new development?" I am baffled. "What does New York have to do with anything?"

"This was a few hours ago," he goes on. "The head of the sex crimes division, a woman named Jaime Berger_a weird name, spelled J-A-I-M-E but pronounced Jamie. You may have heard of her. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if you two know each other."

"We've never met," I reply. "But I've heard of her."

"Friday, December fifth, two years ago," Righter goes on, "the body of a twenty-eight-year-old black female was found in New York, an apartment in the area of Second Avenue and Seventy-seventh Street, Upper East Side. Apparently a woman who was a television meteorologist, uh, did the weather, on CNBC. Don't know if you heard about the case?"

I begin to make connections against my will.

"When she didn't show up at the studio early that morning, the morning of the fifth, and didn't answer the phone, someone checked on her. The victim"_Righter pulls a tiny leather notebook out of his back pants pocket and flips through pages_"name of Susan Pless. Well, her body's back in her bedroom on the rug by the bed. Clothes ripped off from the waist up, face and head so badly beaten it looks like she was in a plane crash." He glances up at me. "And that's a quote, the plane crash part_supposedly how Berger described it to Marino. What was the word you used to use? Remember that case where the drunk teenagers were racing in a pickup truck

and one of them decides to hang halfway out his window and

has the misfortune of encountering a tree?"

"Bogging," I dully reply as I take in what he is saying. "Face caved in from severe impact, such as you might find in plane crashes or in cases where people have jumped or fallen from high places and hit face first. Two years ago?" My thoughts spin. "How can that be?"

"I won't go into all the gory detail." He is flipping more pages in his notebook. "But there were bite marks, including on the hands and feet, and a lot of strange, long pale hairs adhering to blood that at first were presumed to be animal hairs. Maybe a long-haired Angora cat or something." He looks up at me. "You're getting the drift."

All along we have assumed Chandonne's trip to Richmond was his first to the United States. We have no logical reason for this assumption beyond our painting him as a Quasimodo of sorts who spent his life hidden in the basement of his powerful family's Paris home. We also assumed he sailed to Richmond from Antwerp at the same time his brother's dead body was headed our way. Are we wrong about that, too? I toss this out to Righter.

"You know what Interpol conjectured, at any rate," he comments.

"That he was aboard the Sirius under an alias," I recall, "a man named Pascal who was immediately taken to the airport when the ship came to port here in Richmond in early December. Supposedly a family emergency required him to fly back to Europe." I repeat information Jay Talley presented while I was in Lyon at Interpol last week. "But no one ever actually saw him board the plane, so it's been assumed Pascal was really Chandonne and he never flew anywhere but stayed here and started killing. But if this guy readily travels in and out of the U.S., no telling how long he's been in the States or when he got here or anything. So much for theories."

"Well, I suppose a lot of them may end up revised before it's all over. No disrespect to Interpol or anyone else intended." Righter recrosses his legs and seems strangely pleased.

"Has he been located? This Pascal person?"

Righter doesn't know, but he speculates that whoever the real Pascal is_assuming he exists_he is probably just one more rotten apple involved with the Chandonne family's criminal cartel. "Another guy with an alias, possibly even an associate of the dead guy in the cargo container," Righter speculates. "The brother, I guess. Thomas Chandonne, who we certainly know was involved in the family business."

"I'm assuming Berger heard the news about Chandonne's being caught, heard about his murders and called us," I say.

"Recognized the MO, that's right. Says the case of Susan Pless has always haunted her. Berger's in a hellfire hurry to compare DNA. Apparently got seminal fluid and they've got a profile on it, have had it for two years now."

"So the seminal fluid in Susan's case was analyzed." I ponder this, somewhat surprised because typically overworked, financially stressed labs do not analyze DNA evidence until there is a suspect for comparison_especially if there isn't an extensive databank to run the profile through in hopes of a cold hit. In 1997, New York's databank wasn't even in existence yet. "Does this mean they had a suspect originally?" I ask.

"I think they had one guy in mind who didn't pan out," Righter replies. "All I know is they did get a profile and we're getting Chandonne's DNA up there to the M.E.'s office immediately_in fact, the sample's on its way, even as we speak. To state the obvious, we've got to know if it's a match before Chandonne's arraigned here in Richmond. Got to cut that off at the pass, and the good news is we're given the gift of at least a few extra days because of his medical condition, because of the chemical burns to his eyes." He says this as if I had nothing to do with it. "Kind of like the golden hour you always talk about, that brief period of time you've got to save someone who's been in an awful accident or whatever. This is our golden hour. We'll get the DNA compared and see if Chandonne is in fact the person who killed the woman in New York two years ago."

Righter has an annoying habit of repeating things I have said, as if being anecdotal somehow lets him off the hook for remaining ignorant about matters that count. "What about bite marks?" I ask. "Was there any information on those? Chandonne has very unusual dentition."

"You know, Kay," he says, "I really didn't get into those sorts of details."

Of course, he would not have. I push for the truth, for the real reason he has come to see me this morning. "And what if the DNA points to Chandonne? You want to know before the arraignment here? Why?" It is a rhetorical question. I think I know why. "You don't want him arraigned here. You intend to turn him over to New York and let him be tried up there first."

He avoids my eyes.

"Why in the world would you do that, Buford?" I go on as I become convinced that this is exactly what he has decided. "So you can wash your hands of him? Ship him up to Riker's Island and be rid of him? And bring no justice to the cases here? Let's just be honest, Buford, if they get a first-degree murder conviction in Manhattan, you won't bother to try him here, now will you?"

He gives me one of his sincere looks. "Everyone in the community has always respected you so much," he startles me by saying.

"Has always?" Alarm shoots through me like cold water. "As in not anymore?"

"I'm just telling you I understand how you feel_that you and these other poor women deserve him punished to the full extent of the…"

"So I guess the bastard just gets away with what he tried to do to me," I hotly cut him off. Beneath all this is pain. The pain of rejection. The pain of abandonment. "I guess he just gets away with what he did to these other poor women, as you put it. Am I right?"

"They have the death penalty in New York," he replies.

"Oh for God's sake," I exclaim in disgust. I fix on him intensely, hotly, like the focus of the magnifying glass I used in childhood experiments to burn holes in paper and dead leaves. "And when have they ever imposed it?" He knows the answer is never. No one ever gets the needle in Manhattan.

"And there's no guarantee it would be imposed in Virginia, either," Righter reasonably answers. "The defendant isn't an American citizen. He has a bizarre disease or deformity or whatever it is. We're not even certain he speaks English."

"He certainly spoke English when he came to my house."

"He might get off on insanity, for all we know."

"I guess that depends on the skill of the prosecutor, Bu-ford."

Righter blinks. His jaw muscles bunch. He looks like a Hollywood parody of an accountant_all buttoned up tight and in tiny glasses_who has just been subjected to an offensive smell.

"Have you talked to Berger?" I ask him. "You must have. You couldn't have come up with this on your own. You two have made a deal."

"We've conferred. There's pressure, Kay. Certainly you've got to appreciate that. For one thing, he's French. You got any idea how the French would react if we tried to execute one of their native sons here in Virginia?"

"Good God," I blurt out. "This isn't about capital punishment. This is about punishment, period. You know how I feel about capital punishment, Buford. I'm against it. I'm more against it the older I get. But he should be held responsible for what he did here in Virginia, damn it."

Righter says nothing, looking out the window again.

"So you and Berger agreed if the DNA matches, Manhattan can have Chandonne," I offer my summation.

"Think about it. This is the best we could hope for in terms of change of venue, so to speak." Righter gives me his eyes again. "And you know damn well the case could never be tried here in Richmond with all the publicity and whatnot. We'd probably all get sent out to some rural courthouse a million miles from here, and how would you like to be put through that for weeks, possibly months, on end?"

"That's right." I get up and jab logs with the poker, heat pressing against my face, sparks exploding up the chimney like a flock of spooked starlings. "God forbid that we should be inconvenienced." I jab hard with my good arm, as if I am trying to kill the fire. I sit back down, flushed and suddenly on the verge of tears. I know all about post-traumatic stress syndrome and accept that I am suffering from it. I am anxious and startle easily. A little while ago I turned on a local classical music station and Pachelbel overwhelmed me with grief and I began to sob. I know the symptoms. I swallow hard and steady myself. Righter watches me in silence, with a tired look of sad nobility, as if he is Robert E. Lee remembering a painful battle.

"What will happen to me?" I ask. "Or do I just go on with my life now as if I never worked these God-awful murders_ as if I never autopsied his victims or escaped with my life when he forced his way into my house? What will my role in this be, Buford, supposing he's tried in New York?"

"That will be up to Ms. Berger," he replies.

"Free lunches." It is a term I use when referring to victims who never see justice. In the scenario Righter is suggesting, I, for example, would be a free lunch because Chandonne will never go to trial in New York for what he intended to do to me in Richmond. More unconscionably, he will not be given so much as a slap on the hand for the murders he committed here, either. "You've just thrown this entire city to the wolves," I tell him.

He realizes the double entendre the same moment I do. I see it in his eyes. Richmond has already been thrown to one wolf, Chandonne, whose modus operand! when he began killing in France was to leave notes signed Le Loup-Garou, the werewolf. Now justice for this city's victims will be in the hands of strangers, or more to the point, there will be no justice. Anything can happen. Anything will.

"What if France wants to extradite him?" I challenge Righter. "What if New York allows it?"

"We could cite what ifs until the moon turns blue," he says.

I stare at him with open disdain.

"Don't take this personally, Kay." Righter gives me that pi-ous, sad look again. "Don't turn this into your personal war. We just want the bastard out of commission. Doesn't matter who accomplishes that."

I get up from my chair. "Well, it does matter. It sure as hell does," I tell him. "You're a coward, Buford." I turn my back on him and walk out of the room.

Minutes later, from behind the shut door in my wing of the house, I hear Anna showing Righter out. Obviously, he lingered long enough to talk to her, and I wonder what he might have said about me. I sit on the edge of my bed, utterly lost. I can't remember ever feeling this lonely, this frightened, and am relieved when I hear Anna coming down the hall. She knocks lightly on my door.

"Come in," I say in an unsteady voice.

She stands in the doorway looking at me. I feel like a child, powerless, hopeless, foolish. "I insulted Righter," I tell her. "Doesn't matter if what I said was true. I called him a coward."

"He thinks you are unstable right now," she replies. "He is concerned. He is also ein Mann ohne Ruckgrat. A man without backbone, as we say where I come from." She smiles a little.

"Anna, I'm not unstable."

"Why are we in here when we can be enjoying the fire?" she says.

She intends to talk to me. "Okay," I concede, "you win."