"Do you know if photographs of my house have shown up anywhere?" I have to ask. "There were photographers when I came out of my driveway last night."
"Well, I do know there have been some helicopters flying over this morning. Someone told me that," he replies, making me instantly suspicious that he has been back at my house again and witnessed this for himself. "Taking aerial shots." He stares out at snow drifting down. "I guess the weather's put a stop to it. The guard gate's been turning away quite a few cars. The press, the curious. In an unexpected way, a damn good thing you're staying with Dr. Zenner. Funny how things work out." He pauses, staring off toward the river again. A flock of Canada geese circles, as if waiting for instructions from the tower. "Normally, what I'd recommend is you don't return to your house until after the trial…"
"Until after the trial?" I interrupt.
"That would be if the trial were here," he leads up to his next revelation, which I automatically assume is a reference to a change of venue.
"You're saying, the trial will probably be moved out of Richmond," I interpolate. "And what do you mean by normally?"
"That's what I'm getting to. Marino got a call from the Manhattan D.A.'s office."
"This morning? This is the new development?" I am baffled. "What does New York have to do with anything?"
"This was a few hours ago," he goes on. "The head of the sex crimes division, a woman named Jaime Berger_a weird name, spelled J-A-I-M-E but pronounced Jamie. You may have heard of her. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if you two know each other."
"We've never met," I reply. "But I've heard of her."
"Friday, December fifth, two years ago," Righter goes on, "the body of a twenty-eight-year-old black female was found in New York, an apartment in the area of Second Avenue and Seventy-seventh Street, Upper East Side. Apparently a woman who was a television meteorologist, uh, did the weather, on CNBC. Don't know if you heard about the case?"
I begin to make connections against my will.
"When she didn't show up at the studio early that morning, the morning of the fifth, and didn't answer the phone, someone checked on her. The victim"_Righter pulls a tiny leather notebook out of his back pants pocket and flips through pages_"name of Susan Pless. Well, her body's back in her bedroom on the rug by the bed. Clothes ripped off from the waist up, face and head so badly beaten it looks like she was in a plane crash." He glances up at me. "And that's a quote, the plane crash part_supposedly how Berger described it to Marino. What was the word you used to use? Remember that case where the drunk teenagers were racing in a pickup truck
and one of them decides to hang halfway out his window and
has the misfortune of encountering a tree?"
"Bogging," I dully reply as I take in what he is saying. "Face caved in from severe impact, such as you might find in plane crashes or in cases where people have jumped or fallen from high places and hit face first. Two years ago?" My thoughts spin. "How can that be?"
"I won't go into all the gory detail." He is flipping more pages in his notebook. "But there were bite marks, including on the hands and feet, and a lot of strange, long pale hairs adhering to blood that at first were presumed to be animal hairs. Maybe a long-haired Angora cat or something." He looks up at me. "You're getting the drift."
All along we have assumed Chandonne's trip to Richmond was his first to the United States. We have no logical reason for this assumption beyond our painting him as a Quasimodo of sorts who spent his life hidden in the basement of his powerful family's Paris home. We also assumed he sailed to Richmond from Antwerp at the same time his brother's dead body was headed our way. Are we wrong about that, too? I toss this out to Righter.
"You know what Interpol conjectured, at any rate," he comments.
"That he was aboard the Sirius under an alias," I recall, "a man named Pascal who was immediately taken to the airport when the ship came to port here in Richmond in early December. Supposedly a family emergency required him to fly back to Europe." I repeat information Jay Talley presented while I was in Lyon at Interpol last week. "But no one ever actually saw him board the plane, so it's been assumed Pascal was really Chandonne and he never flew anywhere but stayed here and started killing. But if this guy readily travels in and out of the U.S., no telling how long he's been in the States or when he got here or anything. So much for theories."
"Well, I suppose a lot of them may end up revised before it's all over. No disrespect to Interpol or anyone else intended." Righter recrosses his legs and seems strangely pleased.
"Has he been located? This Pascal person?"
Righter doesn't know, but he speculates that whoever the real Pascal is_assuming he exists_he is probably just one more rotten apple involved with the Chandonne family's criminal cartel. "Another guy with an alias, possibly even an associate of the dead guy in the cargo container," Righter speculates. "The brother, I guess. Thomas Chandonne, who we certainly know was involved in the family business."
"I'm assuming Berger heard the news about Chandonne's being caught, heard about his murders and called us," I say.
"Recognized the MO, that's right. Says the case of Susan Pless has always haunted her. Berger's in a hellfire hurry to compare DNA. Apparently got seminal fluid and they've got a profile on it, have had it for two years now."
"So the seminal fluid in Susan's case was analyzed." I ponder this, somewhat surprised because typically overworked, financially stressed labs do not analyze DNA evidence until there is a suspect for comparison_especially if there isn't an extensive databank to run the profile through in hopes of a cold hit. In 1997, New York's databank wasn't even in existence yet. "Does this mean they had a suspect originally?" I ask.
"I think they had one guy in mind who didn't pan out," Righter replies. "All I know is they did get a profile and we're getting Chandonne's DNA up there to the M.E.'s office immediately_in fact, the sample's on its way, even as we speak. To state the obvious, we've got to know if it's a match before Chandonne's arraigned here in Richmond. Got to cut that off at the pass, and the good news is we're given the gift of at least a few extra days because of his medical condition, because of the chemical burns to his eyes." He says this as if I had nothing to do with it. "Kind of like the golden hour you always talk about, that brief period of time you've got to save someone who's been in an awful accident or whatever. This is our golden hour. We'll get the DNA compared and see if Chandonne is in fact the person who killed the woman in New York two years ago."
Righter has an annoying habit of repeating things I have said, as if being anecdotal somehow lets him off the hook for remaining ignorant about matters that count. "What about bite marks?" I ask. "Was there any information on those? Chandonne has very unusual dentition."
"You know, Kay," he says, "I really didn't get into those sorts of details."
Of course, he would not have. I push for the truth, for the real reason he has come to see me this morning. "And what if the DNA points to Chandonne? You want to know before the arraignment here? Why?" It is a rhetorical question. I think I know why. "You don't want him arraigned here. You intend to turn him over to New York and let him be tried up there first."
He avoids my eyes.