They left for Bordeaux from the Gare Montparnasse at 6:50 a.m. No sooner were Molly and Dwight Bennett settled side by side than the doors closed and the high-speed train, sleek as a snake, glided away from the station. It flew down the tracks. Molly felt amazingly cushioned, insulated, and glad to have Bennett beside her as the landscape rocketed by outside. This was the breathtaking way her world had been moving ever since she’d gotten his shocking news. Molly wondered if anything would ever be the same again.
She asked about his life in Paris and how he liked living there.
“Very much. But it’s pricey.”
The economist, she thought. A mind like a cash register. “Where in the city do you live?”
Bennett described his apartment on the rue de l’Odéon with a sigh. “A good location but it’s small and, of course, overpriced.” Molly’s lips parted in a paper-thin smile.
By 10:24 a.m. their train was already pulling into Bordeaux’s Gare Saint-Jean and, after renting a car, they were off to Bergerac. On the way, he mentioned that yesterday he’d called the commissaire de police in Bergerac to inform him they were coming and learned that the inspector in charge of the case might be someone he once knew in Paris.
“If it’s the same Mazarelle, he’s a first-rate investigator with a solid reputation. Not a bad guy either.”
When later Bennett met Commissaire Rivet for the first time, they got along as if they were old friends. Molly noted that both men had clearly mastered the social skills for advancement in a government bureaucracy. And as to her painful loss, the commissaire couldn’t have been more considerate. He promised to leave no stone unturned in finding who was responsible for the death of her parents and described the detective he’d placed in charge of the manhunt as “subtil et tenace”—in fact, one of his best.
Having been alerted by Rivet that they were coming, Mazarelle could hardly claim ignorance when they found him at his desk with his shoes off, his feet up—a hole in the toe of one of his socks—munching on a cold croque monsieur. He’d simply forgotten. It had been a busy morning for the inspector. He’d been questioning Ali Sedak, who appeared to be seriously shaken by the constant light burning in the cinder block shoebox into which they had squeezed him as well as by not being able to sleep or wash or scratch his itching nose because of the handcuffs. But he was still holding out on them. Nevertheless, Mazarelle thought it only a matter of time before he cracked.
The inspector quickly wolfed down what was left of his grilled cheese; wiped off his fingers; and, getting to his feet, shook hands with Bennett, whom he remembered very well from the American embassy in Paris. He turned to Bennett’s radiantly redheaded companion and Bennett introduced them.
The striking beauty of the tall young American woman with the steady gaze was not lost on the inspector. “Mademoiselle Reece …” Taking her hand, he glanced at her sympathetically and said, “I’m truly sorry.”
Molly thanked him. It was hard for her not to be struck by the size of his hands, the softness of his sad brown eyes peering out from under his bushy eyebrows. She tried not to smile or stare at the crumbs littering his mustache, his shoeless feet. He seemed more like someone’s favorite uncle—a teddy bear—than any of the cops she knew.
Bennett could tell that Mazarelle was genuinely touched by her loss. The inspector, he recalled, had always had a soft spot for women. Apparently, quite a ladies’ man. There had been all sorts of stories he’d heard about him: that one of his girlfriends had committed suicide when they split up, that his wife was a knockout—much younger than he was with an active social life—and that his marriage was in serious trouble. Bennett wondered if Mazarelle was still married and how he’d ended up here in the sticks.
Mazarelle announced that the medical examiner had been notified that they were coming. Then he looked at Molly and appeared to have second thoughts. “I’m afraid it’s not very pretty over there. You understand, mademoiselle: it’s a morgue, not a funeral home. The sights and smells can be difficult at times even for trained professionals like me. Are you sure you want to go ahead with this? You don’t have to. We have photographs,” he revealed, and was pleased to see that pictures seemed to appeal to her. “Yes, that’s it. We could do it with photographs, n’est-ce pas?”
Molly shook her head firmly. “I didn’t come all the way here to see pictures. Let’s go.”
In the hospital morgue, which smelled oppressively of chemicals, Dr. Langlais had taken the two bodies out for viewing. They’d been placed on tables behind a faded green curtain. He cautioned Molly not to disturb the sheets that covered them up to their chins. Then without ceremony, he drew back the curtain, and there side by side under the cold fluorescent light lay her parents as motionless as if their heads—her father’s swathed in a towel—were chiseled in stone on top of a sepulchre. The last time she’d seen them alive was when they were preboarding their plane at JFK. Then she’d watched the wing and taillights twinkling festively as the plane took off and was sucked up into the darkening sky. The vacation from hell, she thought.
Molly stepped closer, terribly moved by her father’s stillness, his scruffy cheeks, his five-o’clock shadow. Her dad, who prided himself on his immaculate grooming—always freshly shaved, even on weekends. She asked herself, When does the hair finally stop growing, when does the body notify the follicles that it’s all over? The one present she’d ever given him that he actually loved was the gold soap bowl and badger brush from Jagger’s in England.
She wondered if her mother was wearing the silver necklace that Molly had bought her for her last birthday. Her very last. Her mom, who had sworn that she’d never take it off. Whenever they got together, she’d worn it, even at the airport when they were saying their final good-byes. The sudden realization that she was an orphan now was a cold chill that pierced her heart. Leaning forward toward her mother, Molly reached for the sheet and drew it down.
“No, no!” called Dr. Langlais.
Molly jerked back, turning away from her mother’s slashed neck and, as her eyes darted about the room looking for a safe place to rest, she uttered a cry so heartfelt, her voice cracked into a dozen pieces. Perhaps it was the pungent smell of formaldehyde in the air mixed with the aroma of pine-scented disinfectant that made her feel so dizzy, so nauseous.
Mazarelle, who hadn’t taken his eyes off the spunky young woman since the viewing of the bodies began, saw the color drain from her face and, with a move surprisingly nimble for a man his size, caught her just as her knees began to buckle. The young woman felt like a healthy armful. Carrying Molly out into the hall, he sat her down and told the others to get her some water.
He stroked Molly’s hands, rubbed the back of her lovely neck. Mazarelle wondered what another woman would be like after so many years—a different smell, a different shampoo, a different sweat—but there was only one smell in his nose now.
“Ça va?” he asked, taking the glass of water from Langlais and holding it to Molly’s lips. As she sipped, the pink seeped back into her cheeks.
“Better?”
Molly nodded.
“Good. Have some more.”
“Sorry,” she apologized. “Yes … it’s them.”
She got up, hating the fuss she’d caused. “I just wasn’t expecting …”
“Naturally, of course.”
Male condescension infuriated Molly. But how could a human being have done such a thing? She couldn’t believe that anyone could have been so cruel, so depraved, so consumed by evil to pitilessly chop away at her mother as if she were firewood, a good woman who’d never harmed a soul. Such monsters were beyond help, incapable of redemption. Though she’d always hated the idea of capital punishment, perhaps she was wrong. The world would be better off without them.
Molly asked, “Does France still have the death penalty?”
“La guillotine?” The inspector rolled his eyes. “Not since 1981. Ancient history. I was happy to see it go. I’d much prefer to put such animals away in cages for life. However, in a case like this,” he sympathized, “I can understand how you feel.”
The families of victims were always the hardest for the inspector to deal with. He was relieved that she hadn’t pulled the sheet off her father too and seen the gruesome way he’d been carved up. The cruelty was incomprehensible. Mazarelle made a silent vow to get the son of a bitch, remove that cancer from society. He’d already come to the bleak conclusion that the murderer in trying to learn Monsieur Reece’s PIN had turned him into a flesh and blood cutting board. The man, whoever he was, had a diabolical sense of humor. A sadistic bastard, for sure, even possibly a madman. What an odd coincidence, he thought, reminded of Simenon’s The Madman of Bergerac. Algeria played a role in those murders also. He was mildly amused, and not for the first time, to find life mirroring art.
“Where are you going?” he called out, trying to stop her from returning to the viewing room, but Molly was determined.
“I’m fine,” she insisted. Approaching her mother’s body, she asked the doctor if she might see her left hand. Langlais carefully lifted the sheet and held up Judy Reece’s rigid fingers. Molly noticed the black-and-blue bruises around her mother’s wrist. If they upset her, she gave no indication.
“Where’s her wedding band?” she icily demanded of the medical examiner. “Did they take that too? Is that what they were after?”
“Doucement, mademoiselle. We have it, I’m sure.”
“And my dad’s?”
Dr. Langlais did not like being questioned in such a tone about trivialities. He assured the overwrought young woman that her father’s keys, his ring, his watch, and all of the jewelry her parents were wearing was safely put aside for her. He promised to return everything before she left. As Mazarelle had concluded already, the killer had not been after jewelry.
Bennett asked the doctor, “Could we see the body you think is Schuyler Phillips? Mademoiselle Reece may be able to help with the identification.”
Langlais looked as if he didn’t understand him or, perhaps closer to the point, didn’t want to. “That won’t be necessary.”
Molly didn’t know what to think. She glanced at the inspector.
“You don’t want to see it. Besides there’s hardly anything left of his face to identify.”
“I don’t need his face.”
What could you do with a young woman like that? Expecting that in the end he’d have to scrape her up off the floor with a teaspoon, Mazarelle shrugged and turned to the doctor. “As you like,” he said, with a careless wave of his hand.
When the body was brought out, it was shrouded from head to toe like a mummy. They all watched expectantly as Molly approached. “Just show me his legs,” she said. Dr. Langlais pulled back the sheet to reveal the dead man’s muscular, ivory-colored limbs.
“There!” She pointed to the long, lightning-bolt scar just under his right kneecap, a legendary wound from the blade of a hurtling Harvard skater. Just as Odysseus could always be identified by the scar on his thigh from the tusks of a great boar, Schuyler—according to her dad—had his telltale hockey scar. “It’s him,” she said, biting her lip to keep back the tears. Everyone in her family loved Schuyler.
After quickly agreeing to show Molly and Bennett the house where the murders had occurred in order to get rid of them, Mazarelle ran into the bathroom, feeling a major allergy attack coming on. Leaning over the sink, he spit out one of the two cloves that he’d stuffed into his nostrils. As the other clove shot out of his nose, he began to sneeze violently. The aromatic dried buds had made bearable what had promised to be a difficult task for him. A little trick of the trade he often used in Paris. As he blew his nose and washed up, the inspector wondered why an attaché from the American embassy had come down here together with the young woman. Most unusual. Perhaps these people were even more important than he imagined. Mazarelle wondered if he could have been right years ago about the clean-cut, callow-looking American. He’d always suspected Bennett was the CIA station chief in Paris.