The Killing Song, page 23
“I don’t think she’s here,” I said.
Eve looked back at me. “But the lyrics said, ‘She’s buried in my backyard.’”
“I know that, but the rest doesn’t fit. This woman is brunette. She doesn’t fit the physical profile of the other victims. And did you find any musical clues up there, any lyrics?”
She shook her head slowly as she stared at the uniformed officers.
“Hélène isn’t here, Eve,” I said softly.
“How can you be so sure?” she asked without looking at me.
“Because he didn’t bury any of the others,” I said.
“He didn’t hide them. This murder is different, and when we find out why, maybe we find him.”
In the distance, I could hear sirens. I looked to the gate and saw another police car pulling in. I guessed the search teams would arrive soon.
Eve’s deep sigh pulled my attention back to her.
“You are right,” she said. “He has broken his pattern. There is something happening with him now, something he can no longer control. Have you ever heard the term ‘devolving’?”
“Yes,” I said. “It refers to a serial killer who is losing control, spiraling downward.”
She nodded slowly. “And he knows we are looking for him. That will make him even more desperate.”
“Think about this for a second,” I said. “Tricia Downey’s body was almost drained of her blood. There wasn’t one drop found in that windmill. She was killed somewhere else. It wasn’t here. And it sure as hell wasn’t in that beautiful apartment back in Paris.”
Eve was looking at me now.
“We need to find his backyard,” I said.
33
The sun was coming up. He had to hurry. But he had to be careful, too. He knew that they were looking for him now, but he doubted they would be looking for him in this part of Paris. Still, he couldn’t take any chances, so he left the locked rental car in a crowded parking garage. He started away but stopped cold.
Red smears on the door.
He slowly brought up his hands. Blood. He looked down at his clothes. He was covered in blood.
How had he not noticed this on the drive back to Paris?
He used his sleeve to wipe the blood off the car and left the garage. Out on the street, he walked fast, head lowered, passing the shuttered shops. As he approached the boulangerie at the corner, he saw lights on inside and crossed to the other side of the street.
The feeling of invisibility was gone now. Everything had changed. Now he felt exposed and vulnerable, like an animal without its shell.
He turned onto rue Myrha and sprinted the rest of the way to number forty-four. He was out of breath by the time he got to the top of the stairs. A fumbling of the key and he was inside. He locked the door and leaned back against it, closing his eyes.
Screaming. He heard someone screaming.
He went to the table and switched on the lamp.
The screaming stopped.
There was no one here. He was imagining things.
He looked down at his bloody hands.
No, this was real. This was her blood, and it was her screams he had heard still echoing in his head.
He went to the futon and dropped down onto it, trying to clear his mind, trying to remember where he had been, what he had done. Why was it so hard? What was happening to him? He could not remember the last time he had slept.
He shut his eyes.
Lights on the screen of his eyelids. Sparks of blue, like he could almost see the synapses firing in his brain.
Things were coming back.
The apartment on Île Saint-Louis. He could remember suddenly the flash of blue lights on his window and looking down and seeing the police cars below. He could remember running and a long ride in the night and the manor house in the mist.
He could remember watching the dark-haired woman as she left the café in the village, following her, pulling her into the car and hitting her to make her stay quiet, dragging her up to the tower and…
Screaming. It was her screams he had heard, the screams of this faceless woman he did not know. And now he could remember it clearly, even remember what he was thinking as he stabbed her.
I know you are not her. But you will do.
In the cold, his clothes had stiffened with her blood. He felt a jumping in his arms, like insects scurrying inside his veins.
He needed something to calm him. He needed his GHB. But all his drugs were at the other apartment and there was no way he could risk going back there now that they were looking for him.
There was no choice. He would have to go down to the streets and buy something. He would have to buy other things, too. Some clothes, and something to eat.
But first, he had to get rid of the blood.
He staggered to the bathroom, peeled off his sticky clothes and turned on the tap. The water was cold, as it always was in this place, and he drew in a sharp breath as it stung his face and bare chest.
The stink of his body repulsed him. He longed for the warmth of his bath on Île Saint-Louis. For clean sheets and hot coffee, for the smell of flowers and the sound of a Brahms sonata. But that was gone now. All of that life was gone. Everything of comfort, pleasure and beauty was gone forever now.
The water ran red between his fingers.
Blood… too much blood.
There had been so much of it. Not the faceless woman’s blood. Hélène’s blood.
His eyes drifted to the bathtub.
He had buried it, he thought, buried all the memories. But now they were back, as clear as the night it happened.
It had begun at Le Coupe-Chou, near the Sorbonne. He picked Hélène up after her classes and took her to his favorite restaurant. There, watching her face in the glow of the fireplace, he asked her to marry him.
She had said nothing, then…
I don’t think this can work, Laurent.
I love you, Hélène.
I need time. Please don’t press me. You know I hate that.
Will you stay with me tonight?
But it hasn’t worked before, Laurent.
Please, Hélène. Just for tonight.
Why had he brought her to this ugly place instead of the Île Saint-Louis apartment? Was it because he knew what he was going to do? He saw her repulsion when he opened the door. He felt her stiffening as he led her to the futon. He heard her protests as he started to unbutton her blouse. It was like all the other times he had tried to make love to her and failed. Except…
This time when he looked down at her white skin, this time when he wound her long braid between his fingers, this time when he couldn’t get hard, couldn’t do anything, this time something deep inside him broke.
He hit her. She screamed.
He hit her harder to make her stop. She clawed at his face, drawing blood.
Who would have thought a small girl would have so much blood in her?
Even now, he couldn’t remember stabbing her. He could only remember waking up, like emerging from a trance, and seeing the blood. And Hélène’s body curled on the floor.
He had cried.
And now, standing at the mirror, he cried again. Cried as he remembered what he did next. How he picked up her body and put it in the bathtub. Found the knife and began cutting off her arms. Hours later, when the knife broke, he stopped and fell into an exhausted sleep. The next morning, he went to the Arab store on rue de Suez and bought a saw and two large pots. By sunset, he had finished.
He carefully wrapped her bleached bones in a blanket and carried them out in a duffel bag. He put her in a dark place, close by so he could visit her whenever he wanted.
He had loved her, after all.
The sound of running water drew him back. He shut it off.
What’s done cannot be undone. What’s done cannot be. What’s done cannot. What’s done. What’s done… what?
It was like a slap to his face.
He had forgotten about it until this very moment.
Where had he put it?
He hurried from the bathroom and returned to the other room. He stood, naked, his eyes searching the shadows as he struggled to remember. Five years had passed, and his mind was not clear right now.
Then his eyes went to the far corner. He walked slowly to the metal shelf lined with compact discs. He reached into the alcove behind the rack and pulled out the Goffriller Rosette cello.
He set it tenderly on the floor. He knelt and stretched his arm deep into the shadows of the alcove, pulled out the rectangular box and laid it next to the cello. With trembling fingers he wiped the dust from the ebony surface before opening it.
His eyes filled with tears as he stared at what lay inside. He wanted to touch it but he was afraid if he did he would leave a trace of the blood that he was sure still clung to his hands.
Instead, he rose slowly, retrieved a chair and placed it in front of the open box.
He sat down and picked up the cello and bow. The burnished maple of the Rosette, touched by the hands of the greats for hundreds of years, glowed in the dim light.
He began to play, for himself and for her.
34
Once again, we set up operations around Eve’s kitchen table. Cameron and I were on our laptops, trolling Nexis for anything we could find on Laurent Demarais—which was limited to reviews of his cello performances.
Why was there so little on this man’s personal background?
The answer came when Eve accessed her database at work and discovered that Demarais had legally changed his name in 1996. His birth name was Lawrence David Gilchrist.
From there, she got his birth certificate and his parents’ names: Camille Demarais and Charles Gilchrist. Eve found a death certificate for Camille, who had died in 1985. Charles Gilchrist had died in 2004, when Lawrence was twenty-nine.
The small apartment grew quiet except for the tapping of computer keys, the occasional chirp of cell phones and our murmured exchanges. At some point, my nose was pricked with the smell of strong coffee.
Someone set a cup by my elbow. I looked up into Juliette’s face, still flushed from the cold outside. I hadn’t even heard her come in from school.
“I got a hit,” Cameron said.
He swung his laptop toward me. I was looking at an article from a 1983 issue of French Vogue.
“It says they—Gilchrist, wife and son, Lawrence—divide their time between a London town house and a restored French manor house named Villa Euterpe that has been in Camille Demarais’s family for four generations,” Cameron translated for me with a smile. “Euterpe was the muse of music.”
I couldn’t read the article but the pictures said it all. It was a home design spread, photographed at the Saint-Aubin manor house, clearly in better days. Gardens in full bloom, the rooms filled with gilt antiques. There was a photograph of “le chef d’orchestre éminent” Charles Gilchrist. He was tall and thin with a high forehead, a receding dark hairline and a sour expression on a long face. He was standing over someone sitting in a chair. For a second, the other person didn’t register. Then I realized I was looking at Lawrence, at age seven or eight. He was a scrawny kid, with serious dark eyes, his small hands holding a cello.
I scrolled through more photos of rooms. Then I stopped cold.
A woman in a blue gown sitting in a chair holding a violin. Heart-shaped face, blue eyes and a long braid that draped over her shoulder. The caption identified her as Camille Demarais but I could have been staring at an older version of Hélène Molyneaux.
“Eve!”
She came over to the table. Cameron was already staring at the screen over my shoulder. Finally, Eve let out a sigh and moved away.
I looked over to see her heading out onto the tiny balcony and Juliette watching her. Eve closed the door behind her and lit up a cigarette. I watched her, thinking that I should go out there, take her a coat or try to talk to her. But Cameron’s voice pulled me back.
“I think I just found Lawrence’s first review,” he said. “It’s from the London Times. It’s dated 1987. Lawrence would have been… ?”
“Twelve,” I said as I moved my chair next to Cameron’s and started reading.
By Nigel Adams Arts Critic
We are all amazed when we witness a child prodigy. But when is the line between encouragement and child abuse crossed? Yes, prodigy Arthur Rubinstein performed almost to age 90. But for every Rubinstein, there is a Ruth Slenczynska, who made her debut as a pianist at age 6 and was driven so furiously that she suffered a breakdown at 15 that ended her career.
This is what was running through my mind as I watched Lawrence Gilchrist make his debut at the Wig-more Hall Tuesday evening. I will say little of the performance itself. I prefer to speak of the young man as a sad example of exploitation. Why are we enthralled with these organ-grinder-monkey displays? I posit that we attend to hear how well the child can pretend to be an adult. Or worse, as in the case of Gilchrist’s father, Maestro Charles Gilchrist, we might be looking for some sad miniature ideal of ourselves.
I have seen many poised prodigies. But I fear that some are permanently damaged by the ambitions of those pulling the strings. Lawrence Gilchrist may mature into an artist, but at what price?
“That’s cold, man,” Cameron said.
Eve came back, bringing with her the smell of smoke. She went to the stove and poured herself some coffee. She and Juliette spoke softly in French. Eve seemed to be trying to reassure Juliette about something.
“I found some dirt in the London Sun,” Cameron said.
Eve came over to stand next to me. Juliette perched on the barstool, watching us as she sipped her coffee.
“‘Are those notes of discord we’re hearing from the Continent?’” Cameron read. “‘French sources tell us Lon- Phil baton boy Charles Gilchrist’s marriage may finally be over. Wife Camille has suddenly decamped from Villa Euterpe and is nowhere to be found. And who was that lovely brunette on Gilchrist’s arm at The Ivy last month? The family au pair Simone Renard, bien sûr.’”
“Aw, gee, the poor kid,” I said. “First a bad review and then his dad starts boffing the help. It’s enough to drive you to—”
I caught Juliette’s eye and knew I had gone too far with the sarcasm. But a part of me didn’t care. I didn’t want to know how tough Lawrence or Laurent had it as a kid. I just wanted to find the fucker who had killed my sister.
“Maybe we should concentrate on Britain,” I said. “He knew about the Palais de Danse and the festivals there. He lived in London. Maybe that’s where he’s gone.”
“He can’t. He’d need to show his passport,” Cameron said.
I rubbed my stiff neck. I noticed the sun had painted the wall deep yellow and glanced at my watch. Somewhere, I could hear a church bell tolling. I got up to get a coffee refill but decided instead to uncork the bottle of red wine sitting on the counter.
I had just sat back down in front of my laptop when Eve snapped her cell shut.
“I found out something about his time in England,” she said. “He has a juvenile record. In France, these records are sealed, but a friend gave me some information I am not supposed to have. So this goes nowhere else, understood?”
We nodded, but I wondered who she thought Cameron or I would tell.
“Charles Gilchrist and his son, Lawrence, moved from the manor house and relocated to London when Lawrence was fifteen,” Eve said.
“What about his mother?”
“There is nothing about her anywhere.”
“And Simone?”
“She moved to Lyon, took a position at a girls’ school and as far as anyone could tell, never had contact with Charles again.”
“Sounds like someone was kicked to the curb,” Cameron said.
“So what about this criminal record?” I said.
“Lawrence began running with punks and doing the club scene. His juvenile record in Britain is for possession of a false ID, possession of cocaine and ecstasy, along with several arrests for receiving stolen property.”
“Maybe that’s how he knew about the old Hammersmith,” Cameron said.
“Maybe it was also his way of rebelling against his father pushing him to be a cellist,” I said.
Eve gave me a long look before she went on, reading from her notes. “When he was seventeen, he was arrested for stabbing his father.”
“Jesus,” Cameron said.
“He could have been tried for attempted murder, but it seems Charles Gilchrist had second thoughts about his only son going to prison. He used his influence to convince the magistrate that his son should receive psychiatric treatment instead.”
“And the court agreed.”
“Yes,” Eve said. “We are lucky in that his father sent him back to France, to L’Hôpital Esquirol, right here in Paris.”
“Please tell me that you don’t have confidentiality laws for hospital records,” I said.
“We do, but not for mandatory psychiatric incarcerations,” Eve said. “Since he was a prisoner of the state, he has no right to privacy.”
“Who do we talk to?” I said.
Eve looked down at her notes. “Dr. Agnès Faucheux. She still works at the hospital.”
I was halfway out of the chair when Eve put up her hand. “Matt, sit down,” she said. “My friend has a phone call in to her asking her to meet us later.”
I sank into my chair. Eve was right; I needed to slow down. We had been moving nonstop ever since we left Paris for the Hammersmith club. I needed some scotch in my veins and some warm food in my belly.
Eve had moved to the kitchen and was getting out some bread and cheese. I was considering going out to buy a bottle of scotch when Cameron spoke up.
“I found her,” he said.
“Who?” I asked.
He turned his laptop toward me and I found myself staring at a photo of a woman with wavy black hair. I was immediately struck with the sense that I knew her, or at least had seen her somewhere before.
Then I saw the date on the edge of the photo—1993—and realized I hadn’t seen this woman but one who only resembled her. I had seen her this morning in the tower room of the Saint-Aubin manor house, propped up against the wall like a bloody rag doll.
