S. Cedric - Of Fever and Blood

He took another sip of his coffee. A film of sweat had appeared on his forehead and temples.

“Let me tell you, you see the entire spectrum of weirdness in that kind of institution. We did all we could to settle everyone down. The nurses upped the sedatives at night. Injections in the ass for the younger ones to keep them quiet. It worked, at least for a while.” He took a deep breath. “What is done is done, isn’t it? What happened in that hospital, nobody could have done a thing about it. Not I, not anyone. It just happened. Even now, I can’t explain it. No one could. And for the record, all the strangeness started well before the Salavilles were admitted.”

“We know that already,” Leroy said.

He rose from the pink couch and poured himself some coffee. Then he sat in the armchair next to Vauvert’s.

“I read the files, doctor. What we’re talking about is much more than just hallucinations or strangeness, as you call it. It is four of your patients disappearing over the course of three months. Those disappearances are similar to the abductions carried out by the Salavilles.”

Fabre-Renault winced.

“You read the files, and so what? You think you’re an expert? You weren’t there. To be blunt, gentlemen, I doubt either of you could even begin to understand what is really happening.”

Fabre-Renault’s eyes looked weary behind his enormous yellow glasses, and a vein pulsed in his forehead.

“You can tell me now,” he whispered in a voice that made his exhaustion clear. “It has started again, right? The Salavilles are dead, and yet there have been more disappearances? Is that it?”

“Yes,” Vauvert said. “That’s it, exactly. Except we’re not just talking about disappearances. Two women are already dead, and a third one has been abducted. Her time is running out. Please understand that anything you can offer us will be extremely helpful. We know there’s a connection between the Salavilles’ stay at your hospital and what they did afterward. We need to understand what that connection is. It’s extremely important. We need to find out who we are dealing with, doctor.”

“I see. And yet, I want you to know that I personally alerted the police after every one of those disappearances. I sent very specific reports to them, stressing just how serious the matter was. But-and I do hope you’ll pardon any disrespect for your fellow officers-I had to deal with a bunch of idiots. For them, it was a case of runaways. The missing girls were all nearing the end of their treatment. At that stage, patients were allowed to go home for the weekend. Usually it wasn’t a problem, except in the case of those girls. Monday morning came, and they never showed up. We tried to contact them immediately, as you can imagine, but their telephones were turned off. Their families were out of their minds with worry. They, too, filed police reports. And still, the police did nothing to investigate, do you hear me? The idiots claimed that since there were no signs of break-ins at the girls’ houses, there was no reason to worry. But do you want to know what the real reason was? It was simply that these girls were addicts, social outcasts, and the cops couldn’t have cared less. That’s why they did nothing. Not a damn thing…”

He drank more coffee. His hands were trembling.

“They were kids. They had their entire lives ahead of them. As much as I try to forget, their faces haunt me. I can remember their names as if they were still my patients. Not one of them was over twenty, can you imagine? First, there was Anne Rouquier. It happened in December, and nobody was really alarmed, because she’d already run away a few times. Then, in January, Marine Lafont and Sophie Lieber went missing, and neither of them had ever given us any trouble. The last one was in March. Her name was Christine Garnier. We did find her, as you know. She was murdered. An extraordinarily violent slaying. We had never seen anything like it.”

“Her boyfriend was accused of the murder,” Leroy said. “Mario Dupuy.”

“That poor boy had a serious drug problem. His treatment was an abysmal failure. But if you want my professional opinion, he had nothing to do with it.”

“How can you be so sure?” Vauvert asked.

“I can’t be. But that boy, he was convinced that Christine was in danger, that someone was going to hurt her. He told me so.”

“He talked to you about it? Before it happened?”

Fabre-Renault sighed and then began to explain, slowly. “I was his doctor. Our last appointment was the day before his girlfriend’s murder. Until then, Mario had always been an extremely withdrawn young man with paranoid tendencies. That’s the reason I didn’t believe a word of his story.” The old man kept folding and unfolding his hands, obviously ill at ease. “Until then, I’d never been able to get ten words out of him, which is quite understandable. It’s not easy opening up to a shrink, and this kid’s life, let me tell you, had been no picnic. His parents kicked him out of the house when he was fifteen, and he had to fend for himself. And yet, during that one session, he talked. He poured his heart out. He admitted that he’d never abided by the rules of his treatment and that he’d continued dealing dope. He admitted all of this, as if he’d been desperate to confess. That boy was absolutely terrified. He said that the devil lived at Raynal and that Christine had been chosen as a sacrifice.”

There were a few moments of uneasy silence.

“A sacrifice?” Vauvert repeated.

“Those were his words precisely,” Fabre-Renault said. “To some sort of god that demanded a bloody meal. No, scarlet. A scarlet feast. That’s all I really understood from his story. But it makes no sense, does it?”

Vauvert exchanged a quick glance with Leroy. Then he turned to Fabre-Renault again.

“On the contrary, it makes a lot of sense. Believe me, doctor, all this is extremely important. What else did Mario Dupuy tell you?”

“Well, just that. He thought that his girlfriend was in danger and… You do know that normally I’m bound by professional confidentiality, don’t you?”

“The two people we’re talking about died three years ago,” Leroy said sharply. “This is a homicide investigation.”

“Yes, I know.”

Fabre-Renault took off his glasses and started cleaning them clumsily. He seemed to want to say certain things but hesitated. Raising his eyes to the police officers, he whispered, “You know, I’ve made my share of mistakes over the course of my career. Wrong diagnoses, poor judgment. Patients I couldn’t help who wound up swallowing a handful of sleeping pills with a fifth of whisky. It’s horrible to say, but we all make mistakes because we’re human, and we all forgive ourselves eventually, right? But what happened at Raynal, the death of that poor girl, I just can’t come up with any excuses. Mario Dupuy told me all about his fears. He cried out for help, and I didn’t believe what he was telling me. None of it made sense. I concealed my shortcomings behind that fucking professional confidentiality excuse. I told no one. The very next day, Christine Garnier died in a dreadful way, exactly the way Mario had told me it would happen. And that very night, it was his turn to end his life. He hanged himself in his holding cell. It would have been easy to believe that he was the guilty one”

“But?”

“I knew better.”

“Doctor, we’re running out of time,” Vauvert said. “Did Mario Dupuy tell you who was planning to sacrifice his girlfriend?”

“Of course he did. He was obsessed with one of my female patients. A very odd case. Mario was convinced that the woman was some sort of witch, that she had pledged Christine’s soul to the infernal forces.”