S. Cedric - Of Fever and Blood

In the photos, the girl had the round face of a child, enhanced by retro-looking bangs. And in one of them, she even wore an extremely tight vinyl corset that accentuated the curves of her slender body. A tattoo was visible on her right hip. It was a flock of bats taking flight.

“We know that Barbara enjoyed the Goth style,” Eva said. “You don’t find many parties of that sort in town. If her attacker spotted her in a club, we need to get a list of the places where she was hanging out lately.”

“I’ll take care of that,” Leroy said with a nod.

Eva looked at the incense burner where the sticks of Spiritual Guide had burned. Above it, on the wall, was the Dita Von Teese poster, as well as a poster for a Marilyn Manson concert, faded and partly torn, obviously ripped off a billboard on the street.

The remote control was on the stereo. She grabbed it and pressed play. Clear notes, synthetic and repetitive, punctuated by a minimalist bass, rose from the speakers. A looping, clinical beat. Then came the voice, sepulchral and distorted, almost incomprehensible.

“See you in hell.”

The three forensic scientists stopped what they were doing. They stared at Eva.

“See you in hell. I’m sure we’ll meet again. In hell.”

Eva ignored the eyes on her. Nothing existed but her inner world.

“See you…”

Barbara Meyer’s world.

“…in Hell.”

Carefully following the plastic strip on the floor, she went into the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed-much to the dismay of the female tech who tried to make her understand that she might be tampering with evidence-and she absorbed herself in the piles of clothing. Bustiers, fishnets, stockings as thin as a second skin and shiny as sin. She leaned forward and grabbed a black vinyl high-heeled boot with laces running up to the knee.

“See you…”

Bringing the boot to her face, pressing it against her skin, she slipped deeper into the victim’s mind.

…in hell.”

She glanced at the trashcan, already knowing that she would find empty bottles of alcohol there. In fact, no fewer than three bottles of Smirnoff.

That’s how she liked to get ready. Listening to music, sipping vodka while deciding what to wear. She must have tried on that one corset, lying on the floor now and covered with blood. Thrown a miniskirt that she’d decided against on the chair over there.

She’d meticulously gotten dressed.

But it wasn’t to go out.

“Hey, can’t someone turn that noise off?” Deveraux yelled. “Sounds like a fucking horror movie.”

When no one responded, he crossed the room and turned off the stereo himself.

“There!” he sneered. “Seriously, what a fucking racket! I could do better with the saucepans in my kitchen!”

Eva stood up, her eyes elsewhere.

“The victim was waiting for someone. She had a date.”

“What makes you say that?” Leroy asked.

The inspector turned toward him, her white locks falling in front of her sunglasses.

“She’s a girl, Erwan. A very pretty girl attentive to her looks. She spent hours getting dressed and putting on makeup.”

“For her attacker?”

“Or for someone else. But she was definitely waiting for someone. We need to find out if she had a boyfriend.” She spun around and addressed everyone in the room, “Excuse me, has her phone turned up?”

The techs shook their heads.

“Not yet, detective,” one of them said.

“But we’ve got a computer,” another said.

“Can I see it?”

“Of course.” The man picked up a slim gray laptop. “It was under the bed. We haven’t examined it yet.”

“Well then, that’s what we’re going to do right now,” Eva told him as he handed it over.

She set the computer on her lap and opened it with care. Then she turned it on.

As Leroy, Deveraux and the tech gathered around her, the laptop’s screen lit up.

On the desktop’s background was a black-and-white photo that seemed to have been taken in a bar or maybe a nightclub. There was Barbara Meyer, clad in vinyl, kissing another woman on the mouth. The woman seemed a bit older than Barbara. She was dressed in an evening gown with a low neckline that revealed her curvaceous cleavage.

“All right. Little Barbara was into women,” Eva said.

“And she had pretty good taste,” Leroy remarked.

Deveraux was about to add a comment of his own, but he changed his mind when Leroy shot him an icy look. He walked away.

As soon as he was gone, the tech who had found the computer stepped forward and leaned toward the screen. He pointed tentatively at the woman.

“If I may, that woman’s not just anybody.”

Eva looked up at him.

“You know who she is?”

The man nodded, a bit uneasy with the profiler’s dark glasses.

“Actually, I do. That’s Audrey Desiderio. I recognize her very well. They made her editor in chief of Chick magazine last year. It was a big story in the tabloids.”

Eva’s perfectly white eyebrows arched.

“ Chick? What’s that?”

“A rock fashion magazine, teen stuff. My daughter has a subscription. Desiderio is her idol, so to speak. She has a dead-on sense of what’s hot. Well, that is, according to my daughter.”

“Okay. We’ll need to question her.”

On the other side of the room, Deveraux’s cell phone played Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On.”

He picked up, remained silent for a moment, explained he’d pass it on, and hung up, his face ashen.

Eva knew that kind of look.

“A problem?”

“Audrey Desiderio is dead, too,” Deveraux announced. “The cleaning lady just found her gored to death in the Chick boardroom. She has no face anymore.”

He turned toward the tech.

“Your daughter’s going to have to find herself a new idol, buddy.”

The key fits just fine.

It turns effortlessly in the lock.

So far, everything is going as planned.

The door opens, revealing a magnificent hall no one has set foot in for a good long while.

Exactly as expected. Better, even.

One last glance outside to make sure no one is around. But no. The neighborhood is deserted. It is still raining, more timidly now. In the gardens, the wet trees are all glistening. Other houses are nearby. Luxury holiday homes, they are. Their owners must not get out here too often, though. Only now and then, for a vacation or to make love away from the eyes of the city.

A perfect place, really.

Slowly, the door is shut. And bolted.

7:30 a.m.

When Svarta, Leroy and Deveraux walked into the Chick editorial offices, they already had a pretty good idea of what to expect.

The boardroom was at the end of a long hallway. It was a large room with a long window that offered a good view of Avenue d’Italie eight floors down. From here they could also see Place d’Italie, swarming with umbrellas.

They stepped cautiously into the thickly carpeted boardroom.

The victim’s body lay stretched on the table. Audrey Desiderio, like Barbara Meyer, had been stripped bare and tied up. Her blood had gushed in torrents from her multiple wounds. It had splashed the floor and spattered the walls and even the ceiling.

“Shit. It’s exactly the same thing,” Leroy said.

“No, this is worse,” Eva answered, walking toward the table where the corpse lay.

Desiderio’s head was drooping off the edge of the table. Her throat was slit from one ear to the other. Above this monstrous gash, there was no face. Just a vermillion cutaway, and empty eye sockets gazing at eternity.

There was something else.