Of Fever and Blood

“Actually, I do. That’s Audrey Desiderio. I recognize her very well. They made her editor in chief of Chick magazine last year. It was a big story in the tabloids.”

Eva’s perfectly white eyebrows arched.

“Chick? What’s that?”

“A rock fashion magazine, teen stuff. My daughter has a subscription. Desiderio is her idol, so to speak. She has a dead-on sense of what’s hot. Well, that is, according to my daughter.”

“Okay. We’ll need to question her.”

On the other side of the room, Deveraux’s cell phone played Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On.”

He picked up, remained silent for a moment, explained he’d pass it on, and hung up, his face ashen.

Eva knew that kind of look.

“A problem?”

“Audrey Desiderio is dead, too,” Deveraux announced. “The cleaning lady just found her gored to death in the Chick boardroom. She has no face anymore.”

He turned toward the tech.

“Your daughter’s going to have to find herself a new idol, buddy.”

19

The key fits just fine.

It turns effortlessly in the lock.

So far, everything is going as planned.

The door opens, revealing a magnificent hall no one has set foot in for a good long while.

Exactly as expected. Better, even.

One last glance outside to make sure no one is around. But no. The neighborhood is deserted. It is still raining, more timidly now. In the gardens, the wet trees are all glistening. Other houses are nearby. Luxury holiday homes, they are. Their owners must not get out here too often, though. Only now and then, for a vacation or to make love away from the eyes of the city.

A perfect place, really.

Slowly, the door is shut. And bolted.

20

7:30 a.m.

When Svarta, Leroy and Deveraux walked into the Chick editorial offices, they already had a pretty good idea of what to expect.

The boardroom was at the end of a long hallway. It was a large room with a long window that offered a good view of Avenue d’Italie eight floors down. From here they could also see Place d’Italie, swarming with umbrellas.

They stepped cautiously into the thickly carpeted boardroom.

The victim’s body lay stretched on the table. Audrey Desiderio, like Barbara Meyer, had been stripped bare and tied up. Her blood had gushed in torrents from her multiple wounds. It had splashed the floor and spattered the walls and even the ceiling.

“Shit. It’s exactly the same thing,” Leroy said.

“No, this is worse,” Eva answered, walking toward the table where the corpse lay.

Desiderio’s head was drooping off the edge of the table. Her throat was slit from one ear to the other. Above this monstrous gash, there was no face. Just a vermillion cutaway, and empty eye sockets gazing at eternity.

There was something else.

Something that Eva had already seen once, the previous year, when she had inspected the crime scene down south. She spotted it the very moment she entered the boardroom. The circle of blood on the floor.

It had been drawn very carefully all around the table, as though for some pagan ceremony.

On the window, there was a message in big capital letters:

Pauline Chadoutaud was already at the scene. The pathologist straightened up when she saw Eva and took off her latex gloves.

“The work of the same killer. But you didn’t need me to figure that out, right?”

“Was the same weapon used?”

“Without a doubt. The cuts here are identical to those on Meyer’s body. And since we haven’t found the weapon, I’d say the killer has taken it with him. It’s not uncommon for a serial killer to have his own murder tools.”

Eva lowered her eyes to the victim. She could see several perforations in her abdomen and legs. Between her thighs, the genitals were a mess of red meat.

She winced.

It has started again. You can deny it all you want, but you know it.

It’s more than a series of murders. It’s a ritual.

But what kind of ritual?

Why such brutality?

“When did she die?” Eva asked to get her mind off those thoughts.

“Probably early this morning, around one,” the pathologist said.

“Okay,” Deveraux said. “Our man lost his cool. He must have been on a high after what he did to the Meyer kid. He came over here to slaughter her lover. At least, we have a link between the two victims. He must have known them both.”

“I agree,” Eva said. “But it doesn’t explain his motive.”

She took a step back and studied the table and the armchairs around it.

Feast scarlet? What the hell could that mean?

And you, what were you doing in here, Audrey Desiderio, so long after business hours?

Were you waiting for someone?

Were you expecting Barbara Meyer to meet you here?

Of course you were.

She examined the armchairs with great care. Sat in the one at the far end. There was a glass on the floor, lost in the soft carpeting, as well as a bottle of whisky, lying on its side, against the wall.

She shut her eyes. The victim was sitting here, yes, before the killer showed up.

Why?

Who are you?

Opening her eyes, she gazed at the window on the wall in front of her and its mysterious inscription- now feast scarlet.

Did the killer sit in this place, too?

Oh yes, he did. To take a look at his work. So very peacefully.

Eva looked around the room. All the other walls were lined with magazine covers, every one featuring young, pouty models. A huge mirror, now broken, hung on the left wall. That was no surprise. Eva got up and walked over to the mirror. She studied her own reflection in the fragments. Multiple, repeating perspectives of a white-haired woman in dark glasses.

You don’t like the way you look? Is that it?

That’s the reason you rip their faces off? To take their beauty away? Or just their humanity?