Floats the Dark Shadow (13 page)

Chapter Twelve

Just living life conjures dreams of revenge.

~ Paul Gauguin

MICHEL did not summon a Black Maria for Vipèrine. After the panic abated in the auditorium and a semblance of order had been restored, he and the other officers marched his prisoner through the streets. At first, Vipèrine tried to carry the public humiliation off with flair, but their discipline outlasted his theatrics. He was livid with rage and snarling curses by the time they reached the archways leading off the Quai de l’Horloge. To the right lay the detectives’ offices. Michel took Vipèrine through the left arch, into the courtyard of the Dépôt, then on to the anteroom. He gave the registrar the charges and waited while the man took down the basic information from his prisoner. The name Vipèrine earned a snicker. Age, twenty-nine. Michel took note of the residence, which was in Montparnasse. Vipèrine hesitated before giving Marseilles as his birthplace. A lie. He’d worked at a Parisian accent, but what lay beneath was something north, Dijon, perhaps, or Rouen. Profession he gave as “Sorcerer.” The registrar rolled his eyes, but duly wrote it down. Even standing several feet away, Michel could still smell Vipèrine. His clothing, his skin, reeked of cheap cologne mingling sharply with sweat. Michel could differentiate heavy odors of patchouli, frankincense, and the musk of civet. What woman would find this excess erotic?

Once the information was transcribed, they continued on past the infirmary to the lodge of the Dépôt itself. A commissary waited behind a glass window, and wardens stood by, ready to usher the prisoner on to the cells after the search. The commissary pointed Vipèrine to an embrasure where one of the wardens searched his clothes and body. Another warden took a brief set of preliminary measurements and a description that presaged the formal procedure tomorrow.

When Vipèrine emerged, the commissary looked him up and down, taking in the fancy cape and ruffled linen. “
Salle des Habits Noirs
?” he suggested to Michel. Although the cells were always crowded, “the black coats,” gentlemen with more money for amenities, were incarcerated in a separate hall and had their own exercise yard as well.

“
Salle des Blouses
,” Michel said.
But he felt petty as Vipèrine was led off to the lower cells.

In the end, it hardly mattered where you were put. The whole underground jail was a pit of stench and gloom.

~

Early the next morning, Michel came to the Palais de Justice to observe the
anthropométric
measuring. He had some small hope that Vipèrine might match a file on record. Michel knew of him only as an upstart magician in Paris, but Vipèrine had a pimp’s sort of sleazy arrogance. He might have a more vicious history elsewhere.

Michel followed the stone staircase to the Department of Judicial Identity, the domain of its creator, Alphonse Bertillon. He was now so famous that the cabaret canaries sang songs about
le bertillonnage
. In the prisoners’ waiting room Vipèrine sat on one of the narrow benches, stripped to shirt and trousers. His shoes sat beneath the bench, and his fancy cloak hung on a peg. Seeing Michel, his lips drew back in a snarl and skin tautened over the bone, turning his face into a mask of hatred. Michel nodded to the guards and went on into the processing room. Luckily, Bertillon was absent for the moment. When Michel requested to process his prisoner next, the clerk obliged.

The gathering of information began. Vipèrine refused to give any other name, so the registrar wrote that alias on the official index card. Next, he was photographed with a complex technique for synchronized full front and profile pictures. He preened for the camera. Then the registrar gestured him forward for the first step in the
anthropométric
ritual, Bertillon’s system of measuring hard bone in adult criminals. Vipèrine stood against the wall while the assistants measured his height against the template. “They say tomorrow will be warmer,” the older registrar remarked between notations. Michel murmured agreement. They were forbidden to speak of the case to the prisoner while measuring.

“Spread your arms,” Michel commanded. When Vipèrine complied, they assessed the length of his outstretched arms.

“Three-inch vertical scar on the inner forearm,” the young assistant said, pleased to add an identifying mark. Birthmarks and prominent moles would also be recorded. A special implement was brought forward to measure the length from the left elbow to middle finger, and another device to take the exact length of the middle finger.

Next they measured the length of his torso. One flaw of the system was the unavoidable variation in the way measurements were taken, despite Bertillon’s precise instruments. Yet however cumbersome,
anthropométrie
had made it possible to impose stiffer sentences on repeat offenders. Years, even months, could alter a man’s appearance. He might lose or gain weight. He might dye his hair, grow a beard or shave his skull. His visage could be scarred or simply hardened by despair or cruelty. None of these things changed mature bones. That was the evidence they were recording. The system had been adopted by police throughout the world.

“Sit.” Michel indicated the free-standing stool. Vipèrine sneered, but did as he was told. Bertillon believed that being seated, and treated with a severe courtesy, helped defuse the prisoner’s anger. Michel saw no sign of it in Vipèrine. He followed their commands but answered their questions in monosyllables. All the while he fixed his malignant regard on Michel. When his view was blocked, he stared straight through the bodies of the men measuring his head. The assistant placed the calipers to take the dimensions of his right ear.

“Instrument steady!” Alphonse Bertillon barked as he entered the room. He paused, tall and perfectly erect, his beard trimmed to a thick spade. His gaze darted about his domain, possessive and critical.

“Monsieur Bertillon.” Michel greeted him formally, masking his annoyance. It was one thing to be meticulous, another to presume that no one else could perform a procedure.

Bertillon frowned, pointed a finger. It quivered with impatience like an insect’s wing. “Do the ear again. Note the contours.”

As the assistant repeated the ear measurements with scrupulous care, Michel eased out of his superior’s line of sight. He would no more squabble over territory than he would play eye-fencing games with Vipèrine.

“There is a mole by the left corner of his mouth,” Bertillon snapped, as if Michel had overlooked this important mark. Such disruptions had increased after Michel inquired if they were investigating the innovative science of fingerprinting. Clearly, Bertillon would not willingly adopt a program created—or even suggested—by someone else.

Another incident might account for Bertillon’s antagonism. Bertillon also studied handwriting. His testimony had helped send Dreyfus to rot on Devil’s Island. According to Bertillon, Dreyfus had forged a letter to barely resemble his own handwriting so he could claim it a forgery. Bertillon had bragged of his brilliant deductions. Michel had not disguised his skepticism.

“Stand on the stool. Raise your left foot,” Bertillon ordered Vipèrine, who posed with mocking grace. The registrar glanced nervously at Bertillon, then bent to take this last measurement. Ignoring Bertillon and the entire process, Vipèrine continued his ferocious scrutiny of Michel and that fixed gaze annoyed Bertillon. If he must glare, then surely he should glare at Bertillon, obviously the most important man in the room.

“Now the eyes,” Bertillon decreed.

Vipèrine managed to keep his focus locked on Michel as the registrar tilted his face to the light to ascertain the pigmentation of his eyes and the patterning of color. He possessed far more resolve than Michel had expected. He decided to forego his own questioning until the juge d’instruction had gone a round with Vipèrine and deflected some of his antagonism.

“No discernible difference in the inner and outer circles, dark opaque brown,” the assistant said.

“Tilt his head higher,” Bertillon demanded, and examined the eye color himself. “The aureole is actually medium maroon brown in a small circle surrounding the iris, the ground of the periphery is a deeper version of the same shade. Note it.”

“Yes sir,” the assistant mumbled.

“Such subtleties can determine identification.” Bertillon held out his hand for the finished card. Noting the alias at the top, he smirked. “Vipèrine?”

The prisoner refused to acknowledge him. Bertillon gave a snort of derision then stalked from the room, handing the index card to Michel in passing. He returned it to the registrar, who would file it by the measurements. Men with heads longer than average were placed in one set of files, average in a second, less than average in a third. Each file was then divided in three according to the length of the middle finger, and so on for the six primary measurements. There were five million cards now, and every new entry was cross-checked for the six signal quantities. An exact match meant that the criminal had been arrested before, no matter what name he gave.

Vipèrine was permitted to put on his shirt and shoes. Once dressed, he faced Michel and smiled. “You will waste away.” The stage whisper carried to every corner of the room. “When you look in the mirror, Death will smile from your skull.”

Vipèrine turned his back on Michel, refusing to glance over his shoulder as he was led back to his cell.

“If I die tomorrow, I’ll be sure to inform you,” Michel said to the recorders. They sniggered.

Chapter Thirteen

The sky was grey, there wept a breeze

Like a bassoon.

Far off, a tom-cat, stealthy, discreet,

Miaowed, oh, strangely out of tune.

~ Paul Verlaine

LILIAS smiled lazily and stretched. Her hair tumbled loose about her shoulders, charmingly disheveled. The night was unusually warm, and she’d laid a satin quilt beside the softly splashing fountain in her miniature back garden. The full moon was just waning, and she used the pearly luminescence to advantage. Her pale skin gleamed in its light. She wore a simple batiste nightgown, demure with no decoration but an edge of lace and a few rosebuds of pink ribbon. Of course, Lilias knew how to make demure wickedly seductive. Sated, Michel kissed the hollow of her throat, each nipple, then laid his head in her lap and pretended they were young and innocent.

A fantasy quickly dispelled when she said, “The rumors of the Black Mass grow ever wilder. A virgin sacrifice is to be offered. Assuming they can find a virgin….”

“When?”

“Perhaps a month? They will want to build anticipation.” She gave him a mocking kiss.

“In Paris?”

“Yes. The most demented whisper they will bribe the priests at Notre Dame.” The corners of her lips curled with mirth. “Most simply repeat what I first heard, that it will happen in a private chapel. Where that chapel is will be the last thing I learn.”

“Vipèrine is to play the priest?”

“Yes, the same nasty snake that slithered free of the cage you put him in.” She drew a fingertip across the healing razor slash on his cheek.

Vipèrine had been released before Michel ever questioned him. The charges were not that serious, but Michel felt a cold ire that some influential idiot had gotten them dismissed. “You’re sure? A Satanic ritual?”

“Yes. And I believe that the man who arranged his freedom is the same to whom he’s promised the virgin sacrifice.” When he started to ask who, she laid her fingertips across his lips. “I know he is a cabinet minister, but his identity is better hidden than your elusive kidnapper’s.”

“No one with the power to open Vipèrine’s cell door would want his name associated with such scum,” Michel said scornfully.

“There is a scent of evil about Vipèrine,” Lilias said. “Some find that intoxicating.”

“It is only cheap cologne.” Then he paused. “He and the kidnapper could be one and the same.”

“Do not build your hopes,” Lilias said. “There is little chance this tawdry orgy is connected to your missing children. The fake virgin will squeal with fake pain and fake pleasure while everyone rolls about in crumbled hosts and sacramental wine.”

“I am grateful nonetheless.” While Michel could imagine any number of fools yearning to mix sex and sacrilege, he doubted many could stomach a child sacrifice. “Such rites are still illegal. I can arrest Vipèrine.”

“And the minister?” She smiled tauntingly.

“Oh yes, I will arrest him, but I imagine he will escape even more easily than Vipèrine.”

“A pity,” she said.

Even if there were plans to rape or murder some young girl, the minister could plead ignorance. Unless there was direct proof, Cochefert would buckle to pressure. “The press might hear about it,” Michel suggested. “Saul Balsam could do wonders with the story.”

“Ah…scandal.” She smiled dreamily, guiding his hand between her thighs. “The very thought of the high and mighty taking such a tumble makes me wet.”

~

Michel left Lilias sleeping and walked home at dawn, pleasantly weary. The wind scuttled newspapers and debris about the streets and dissipated the cool grey mist as he went. Belatedly, he remembered his plan to bring his guitar. Another time. He did not have the peace of mind to play well for an audience, even of one. The missing children haunted him.

He welcomed the distraction of the vibrant sunrise as he approached the Pont Louis Philippe. Rose, crimson, and vermillion framed the silhouettes of the buildings and blossomed in the rippling waters of the Seine. He crossed the bridge to the Île St. Louis. Walking past his building, Michel went to the far point of the Quai de Bourbon, relishing the glory of the light. The sparkle of red in the water evoked not blood but petals tossed out in a parade. When the colors finally paled, he walked back and climbed the stairs to his apartment.

Michel unlocked the door and stopped on the threshold. Someone had been here. He wasn’t sure how he knew at first, but his next breath picked up a residue of scent. Breathing deeper, he identified a cologne reeking of patchouli, civet, and the acrid smoke of incense.

Vipèrine—the snake with important enough connections to be released without trial.

A scent of evil, Lilias had said. Perhaps, after all, that was what polluted his home. But that fading scent would prove nothing to anyone else. Would there be evidence? He saw no marks on the lock. Had Vipèrine climbed down the air shaft to the open bedroom window? And what exactly had he done? A bomb was Michel’s first thought, but as he began to explore the hallway for trip wires or loose boards, memory exhumed Vipèrine’s sibilant hiss.

“You will waste away.”

Poison, most likely. Yet he could not discount explosives. Michel moved slowly from the hall into the salon, then the bedroom, and study, searching for hidden wires, a book misplaced, a package planted beneath the couch or between the slats of the bed. He opened his guitar case gingerly, examined the instrument, but nothing had been disturbed. Nothing. Michel went last to the tiny kitchen, and found the odor strongest. Furious, exasperated, he washed everything with which he cooked, everything from which he ate or drank. He checked what foods might have been opened, injected, tampered with in any way and threw away anything the least suspicious. Wine. Cheese. Flour. Sugar. Salt. He paused. Should he have them tested? Extravagant and pointless. Patchouli was not proof. But he would tell Cochefert.

He had imagined Vipèrine nothing but a demonic peacock, flaunting his colors and shrieking loudly. He had been wrong.