Once back home, Sharko rushed over to his cell phone and listened to his messages. There were six of them. Lucie, at Charles de Gaulle. Lucie, in Manaus. Lucie, in São Gabriel. Each more panicky, desperate, and distant than the last. At the sixth, he switched out of voice mail and immediately dialed the number of the hotel she had last called from, the King Lodge. Operators, interminable wait. Five minutes later, they were finally connected. Sharko felt his heart contract. Her voice was so faint, so far away.
“I had some problems, Lucie. Problems with Manien. They wouldn’t let me call because I was in custody.”
“In custody? But . . .”
“Manien’s been trying to screw me over since the beginning, I’ll explain everything. Please forgive me. I’m taking the first flight out. I want to be with you. I want to be near you—we should be looking for the answers together. Please, Lucie, tell me you’ll wait until I get there.”
In the hotel lobby, Lucie stood alone against the phone booth. She had put a bandage on her left temple. Everything was still a big jumble in her head.
“They tried to kill me, Franck.”
“What?”
“Someone snuck into my room and put a black widow in my bed. If I’d been asleep, I wouldn’t have stood a chance.”
Sharko’s fingers gripped the phone. He paced back and forth, feeling like he wanted to bang his head against the wall.
“You have to go to the police! You have to . . .”
“The police? The guy was a cop, or a soldier. I don’t know anything about this town, this world. I think if I talk to someone, it’ll only make things worse. We’re in the middle of nowhere here. I told the hotel staff I’d left my window open, which you’re never supposed to do. And that I’d panicked and banged my head when I saw the spider. Nobody suspects a thing.”
Lucie noticed the receptionist staring at her. She turned away and lowered her voice.
“That goddamn murdering scientist knows why I’m here, I’m sure of it. I circulated Louts’s photo at the airport, that’s how he must have found out. All I know is they tried to make my death look like an accident.”
Sharko had already gone to his computer and entered a search for a flight to Manaus.
“The first flight is two days from now—shit!”
A silence.
“Two days? That’s too long, Franck.”
“No, no, listen to me: you stay quietly at the hotel and surround yourself with people until I get there. Change rooms, try not to spend time alone, eat at the hotel restaurant, and especially don’t go into town.”
Lucie gave a sad little smile.
“Two days is too long. If . . . if I stay here, where I am, I’m done for. The killer won’t give up. He’s going to keep at it. I don’t have a weapon or any way to defend myself. I don’t know what my enemies look like. Listen, I’ve already found a guide. I leave at five in the morning for the jungle. Finding Chimaux is my only hope.”
Sharko put his hand to his head.
“Please, wait for me.”
“Franck, I . . .”
“I love you.”
Lucie felt tears welling up.
“I love you too. I . . . I’ll call again soon.”
And she hung up.
Sharko rammed his fist into the wall. He was here, thousands of miles away from her. And there was nothing he could do. In his rage and his powerlessness, he went to open a beer, which he downed in several gulps. Then a second one. The liquid ran down his chin.
Then he started in on whiskey. Not in moderation.
Lurching across the room, he saw his Smith & Wesson on the table. He picked it up and threw it at the television.
An hour later, he collapsed, dead drunk.
• • •
Sharko struggled to get up off the couch when he heard the knocking at his door. He squinted at his watch through bleary eyes: five in the afternoon.
Almost twelve hours of heavy alcoholic sleep.
Coated tongue, breath like a sewer. Disoriented, he dragged himself upright and shuffled to the door. When he opened, Nicolas Bellanger was standing there, a dark look on his face. He came straight to the point:
“What are you playing at with Chénaix and Lemoine?”
Sharko didn’t answer. Bellanger walked in without being invited, noticed the empty bottles on the coffee table, the gun on the floor, the smashed TV.
“Shit, Franck, did you think you could keep at it on the sly and no one’d be the wiser? You’re still investigating this case on your own, aren’t you?”
Sharko rubbed his temples, eyes half closed.
“What is it you want?”
“I’m trying to understand why you were so anxious to get a decoded DNA sequence. I’m trying to find out what you’ve learned, and how and where. Who wrote that sequence?”
Limply, Sharko headed into the kitchen and glanced at his phone. No messages from Lucie. She must now have been somewhere in the middle of the river. He chucked two effervescent aspirin tablets into a glass of water and threw the window open wide. The fresh air felt good. He turned back to his chief.
“First tell me what you’ve found out.”
Bellanger nodded his chin toward the inspector’s chest.
“Go get dressed, swallow a tube of toothpaste, and fix yourself up. We’re running over to the lab. Did you tell anybody about this sequence? Who knows about it?”
There was urgency and gravity in his words.
“What do you think?”
“Good. We’re locking down everything. Nobody is to know about this, nothing can leak out. This lousy case is threatening to become an affair of state.”
The inspector downed his aspirin with a grimace.
“Why’s that?”
Bellanger took a deep breath.
“The three sheets of paper you handed in—those letters are the genetic code of an absolute monster.”
The young chief looked Sharko straight in the eyes and added:
“A prehistoric virus.”