“There’s a different MO with the sailor, though,” Rosière pointed out as she slid a cushion behind her back.
“That was the first murder—he hadn’t developed a strategy. Or maybe the two crimes are linked, but we’re dealing with different killers.”
“Your boy who’s shown up both times . . . Do we think he might fit the profile of the killer who returns to the crime scene?”
“He would have been two or three years old at the time of the first murder,” Capestan replied with a wry smile.
“What’s that Corneille quote? ‘For souls nobly born, valor does not await the passing of years,’” Rosière recited, tapping her nose knowingly.
“By the way, did you take the cat hair in for analysis?” Capestan asked Lebreton.
“Yes. We’ll get the results in six or seven months . . . ,” he said with a grim smile.
“Well, that’s perfect.”
Capestan frowned irritably. She looked at the boards, shifting her attention from one to the next before adjusting her position on the sofa, as if trying to recalibrate her brain in its cranial cavity.
“Right, let’s recap: three connected cases; three premeditated murders. The first, the sailor, happens twenty years ago with minimal staging. The second, the old lady, happens eight years ago. The third happens today. Why the big gaps? An anniversary? An impulse? A deadline?”
“The sailor and the old lady were both killed in virtually the same month,” Lebreton said. “Not the widow, though. Maybe the first two were genuinely linked, whereas Maëlle was more like a repercussion?”
“Yes. Maëlle, like the Squirrel, binds the case to the present. The murderer is still around; he still has a reason to act. I’m positive the kid can lead us to him. We haven’t gotten any further on that front, have we? Any friends or suspects recognize the description? Maëlle’s son?”
“So far his description hasn’t triggered anything, not even with Cédric Guénan,” Lebreton said. “But Naulin did remember an extra detail: the boy wanted to see Marie Sauzelle ‘about a boat that sank.’”
“Back to that again.”
A log spat in the fire, causing Pilote to lift a vigilant ear, then resumed its soft crackle. Capestan gazed into the phosphorescent, gray-edged embers, her cheeks reddening in the heat of the flames. She was trying to gather her thoughts.
“The boat. The boat is what all the cases have in common . . .”
“And us!” Rosière exclaimed, staring at her two colleagues in turn, her green eyes still piercing despite her tipsiness.
“Us?”
“The sailor and the old lady,” Rosière said, sitting bolt upright and making her saint medallions jangle. “It’s weird, isn’t it? We stumble on two cases in two different boxes, and they’re linked. That’s one heck of a coincidence.”
“You’re right,” Lebreton said. “Did anyone else in the squad find a murder in the files?”
“No,” Capestan said. “We went through all the boxes and these were the only murders.”
“So there was a very good chance that these would be the cases we’d end up investigating.”
“They really were put there for us,” Capestan murmured.
“They must have been burned by the same guy—he ditched them there thinking he was trashing them,” Rosière said, hammering the table with her podgy fist. “I’m getting a whiff of something crooked . . . I’m telling you, there’s something crooked here . . .”
A nasty shiver ran down Capestan’s spine. Rosière was right. A police officer was involved—corrupt at best, criminal at worst. A second later, Capestan’s mind was racing through all the various probabilities, like the flicking letters on a departures board at the airport. One by one they stopped and spelled out a name. No. No, that had to be wrong; it couldn’t be him. He couldn’t have trapped her like that, not after all these years. He wouldn’t have dared. Her eyes met Lebreton’s, and he was intrigued to see how pale she had gone. Capestan stood up and went to gather the files from the various desks, trying desperately to restore her calm. She sat back down on the sofa and opened the folders on the coffee table. Her eyes darted across the different sheets, and just as easily as picking out a red marble in the middle of some gravel, she pinpointed the same name one, two, three times: Buron.
Buron. Her mentor, her sponsor, her chief. Her friend. So, this was the aim of the squad. But why entrust them, and more to the point her, with these cases? Was he testing her intelligence? Her dedication? Or was he playing a game of Russian roulette to assuage his remorse? Suddenly the questions were banking up on all sides, overwhelming the commissaire with so many thoughts she feared she might suffocate. Buron. She needed to dunk her head in cold water; she needed to concentrate. Lebreton and Rosière waited. They had read the name, too.
“Right,” Capestan said abruptly. “Buron features in each file. He was section commissaire at criminelle in ’93—he led the first Guénan inquiry. In 2005, before joining the antigang squad, he became head of crim. It was his group who took care of the Sauzelle case. He stayed put for Maëlle yesterday but sent Valincourt, his second-in-command.”
“Buron has been an officer at 36, quai des Orfèvres for thirty years. It’s perfectly normal for his name to appear on all the files,” Lebreton pointed out.
True, Capestan thought, relieved to feel a slight return to sanity after the emotional shock.
“No, it’s not normal at all,” Rosière stated, draining her glass with a resolute swig. “Given his reputation as an officer, inquiries like these shouldn’t come up short. Crim’s usual way of doing things is to close each and every door. Here you get the impression they haven’t opened a single one.”
Rosière hauled herself up from the sofa to stretch her limbs. She was concentrating hard on keeping her balance, managing to stay upright through sheer force of will. She skirted around the table and, using her scarlet fingernail as a tool, started pushing out the air bubbles from the only sheet of wallpaper that Merlot had deigned to paste. The walls were all
