Of Fever and Blood by Cédric Sire

Author:Cédric Sire [Sire, Cédric]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cedric Sire
Published: 2020-04-14T22:00:00+00:00

42

Monday, 4:30 p.m.

Back at eadquarters, Leroy pushed open the door to Eva’s office, and Vauvert gave the tiny room a surprised look.

“She works in here?”

“Uh, yes,” Leroy said. “She actually likes it that there’s no light. It’s because of her eyes.”

For some stupid reason, Vauvert had expected to find a swanky FBI-style office. Certainly not this windowless closet. A green banker’s desk lamp gave the room a pseudo-library look. Of course, everything was perfectly lined up and ordered. Eva’s files were carefully stacked in piles of equal height. Two large maps, one of France and the other of Paris, were hanging on a wall. Red thumbtacks indicated the places where the victims had been found. To the right of those maps, on a cork bulletin board, were photos of Barbara Meyer and Audrey Desiderio. Vauvert recognized the Bathory coat of arms among photos of the esoteric inscriptions found at the crime scenes.

“All of Eva’s files are here,” Leroy told him. “Just try not to mess things up, okay?”

“Yeah,” Vauvert muttered.

He walked over to the desk and put down the books they had bought on the way over. Indo-European Mythology, Wolf Folklore in Europe, and From Zalmoxis to Genghis Khan.

On one corner of the desk was a stack of photos.

“That guy, I know him. It’s that pedophile.”

“Ugo Falgarde,” Leroy responded. “That’s him, all right. Eva, she, Well, she threw him out a window two months ago. It brought the case to a pretty brutal conclusion.”

“I heard about that. I didn’t know she was the one involved.”

“It was her, yes. She came very close to losing her job.”

Very close? It was a miracle she kept her job.

Vauvert turned to the officer to ask the question that had occupied his mind for so long: “What was done to her that was so bad, Erwan?”

“You don’t know?”

“That’s why I’m asking.”

Leroy hesitated. Then he sat on the edge of the desk.

“When she was a child, Eva was the victim of a serial killer. I figured you knew that.”

Vauvert frowned.

“I didn’t. What happened?”

“Well, remember that killer they called the Night Scourge?”

“Vaguely. That’s an old case.”

“It was twenty-four years ago,” Leroy said. “The Scourge killed fifteen people. All single women. And they were all platinum blondes. Eva’s mother fit the bill.”

“She was a victim of that killer?”

“Yes. He followed her home from work, just like he did with the others, and he slit her throat. Victoria Svärta was twenty-six. And she had twin daughters.”

“Eva has a sister?”

“She had one. She was the Scourge’s fifteenth and last victim, I don’t know the details, of course. Eva isn’t the type to confide in anyone, and you can imagine that it’s a topic she never brings up. All I know is that on the night Eva’s mother was killed, while the crime scene was crawling with cops, no one could have ever guessed that the killer would stay in the neighborhood.”

“You mean he came back to the scene?”

“Exactly. Or maybe he never left in the first place. No one knows why he stayed—or came back.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.