Patricia Cornwell - Black Notice

I hurried like a fugitive evading apprehension, and yet I lingered at street corners because I wanted to be caught. Talley did not come after me. When I reached my hotel, breathless and upset, I couldn't bear the thought of seeing Marino or returning to my room.

I got a taxi because I had one more thing to do. I would do it alone and at night because I felt reckless and desperate.

"Yes?" the driver said, turning around to look at me. "Madame?"

I felt pieces of me had been rearranged and I didn't know where to put them because I couldn't remember where they'd been before.

"Do you speak English?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Do you know much about the city? Could you tell me about what I'm seeing?"

"Seeing? You mean now?"

"Seeing as we drive," I said.

"Am I tour guide?" He thought I was very funny. "No, but I live here. Where would you like to go?"

"Do you know where the morgue is? On the Seine near the Gare de Lyon?"

"You want to go there?" He turned around again and frowned at me as he waited to insert himself in traffic.

"I will want to go there. But first I want to go to the Ile Saint-Louis," I said, scanning, looking.for Talley as hope got dark like the street.

"What?" My driver laughed as if I were the premier crazy. "You want to go to the morgue and he Saint-Louis? What connection is that? Someone rich die?"

I was getting annoyed with him.

"Please," I said. "Let's go."

"Okay, sure. If that's what you want."

Tires over cobblestone sounded like kettle drums, and lamplight flashing off the Seine looked like schools of silver fish. I rubbed fog off my window and opened it enough so I could see better as we crossed the Pont Louis-Philippe and entered the island. I instantly recognized the seventeenth-century homes that once had been the private hotels of the noblesse. I had been here before with Benton.

We had walked these narrow cobblestone streets and browsed the historic plaques on some of the walls that told who once had lived here. We had stopped in outdoor cafйs, and across the way bought ice cream at Berthillon. I told my driver to circle the island.

It was solid with gorgeous homes of limestone pitted by the years, and balconies were black wrought iron. Windows were lit up, and through them were glimpses of exposed beams, bookcases and fine paintings, but I saw no one. It was as if the elitist people who lived here were invisible to the rest of us.

"Have you ever heard of the Chandonne family?" I asked my driver.

"But of course," he said. "Would you like to see where they live?"

"Please," I said with great misgivings.

He drove -to the Quai d'Orlйans, past the residence where Pompidou died on the second floor, the blinds still drawn, and onto the Quai de Bйthune toward the eastern tip of the island. I dug in my satchel and got out a bottle of Advil.

The taxi stopped. I sensed my driver didn't care to get any closer to the Chandonne home.

"Turn the corner there," he pointed, "and walk to Quai d'Anjou. You will see doors carved with chamois. That is the Chandonne crest, I guess you would call it. Even the drainpipes are chamois. It is really something. You can't miss it. And stay away from the bridge over there on the right bank," he said. "Underneath it, that is where the homeless and homosexuals are. It is dangerous."

The hotel particulier where the Chandonne family had lived for hundreds of years was a four-story town house with multiple dormer windows, chimneys and an 0eil de Boeuf, or beef's eye, which was a round window at the roof. The front doors were dark wood ornately carved with chamois, and fleet-footed goats held on tooth and tail to form gilded drainpipes:

The hair pricked up on my flesh. I tucked myself in shadows and stared across the street at the lair that had spawned this monster who called himself the Loup-Garou. Through windows, chandeliers sparkled and bookcases were crowded with hundreds of books. I was startled when a woman suddenly appeared in the glass. She was enormously fat. She wore a dark red robe with deep sleeves, the material rich like satin or silk. I stared, transfixed.

Her face was impatient, her lips moving fast as she talked to someone, and almost instantly a maid appeared with a small silver tray bearing a liqueur glass. Madame Chandonne, ~ if that's who the woman was, sipped.her drink. She lit a cigarette with a silver lighter and walked out of view.

I walked fast to the tip of the island, less than a block away, and from a small park there I could barely make out the silhouette of the morgue. I guessed it was but several miles upriver, on the other side of the Pont Sully. I scanned the Seine and fantasized that the killer was'the son of the obese woman I just saw, that for years he had bathed nude here without her knowing, moonlight shining on his long, pale hair.

I imagined him emerging from his noble home and wandering to this park after dark to dip into what he hoped would heal him. How many years had he waded in that frigid, dirty water? I wondered if he ranged about the right bank, where he watched people who were as estranged from society as he was. Maybe he even mingled with them.

Stairs led down from the street to the quai, and the river was so high it lapped over cobblestones in murky ruffles that smelled faintly of sewage. The Seine was swollen from unrelenting rain, the current very strong, and an occasional duck flowed past even though ducks weren't supposed to swim at night. Iron gas lamps glowed and dashed flakes 'of gold in patterns over the water.

I took the cap off the bottle of Advil and poured the pills on the ground. I carefully ventured down slick stone stairs to the quai. Water lapped around my feet as I swished the plastic bottle clean and filled it with frigid water. I snapped the cap back on and returned to the taxi, glancing back several times at the Chandonne home, halfway expecting cartel criminals to suddenly spring out after me.

"Take me to the morgue, please," I said to my driver.

It was dark, and razor wire not noticeable during the day reflected light from cars speeding past.

"Pull into the back parking lot," I said.

He turned off the Quai de la Rapйe into the small area behind the building where vans had been parked and the sad couple had waited on a bench earlier in the day. I got out.

"Stay right here," I said to my driver. "I'm just going to walk around for a minute."

His face was wan, and when I got a better look at him, I realized he was very wrinkled and missing several teeth. He looked uneasy, his eyes darting about as if maybe he was thinking about speeding away.

"It's all right," I said to him as I got a notebook out of my satchel.

"Oh, you're a journalist," he said with relief. "You're here working on a story."

"Yes, a story."

He grinned, hanging halfway out his openwindow.

"You had me worried, madame! I thought maybe you were some sort of ghoul!"

"Give me just a minute," I said.

I wandered around, feeling the damp cold of old stone and air blowing off the river as I moved around in the darkness of deep shadows and took interest in every detail, as if I were he. He would have been fascinated by this place. It was the hall of dishonor that displayed his trophies after his kills and reminded him of his sovereign immunity. He could do whatever he wanted, whenever he pleased and leave all the evidence in the world and he wouldn't be touched.

He probably could have walked from his house to the morgue in twenty or thirty minutes, and I envisioned him sitting in the park, staring at the old brick building and imagining what was going on inside, what work he had created for Dr. Stvan. I wondered if the odor of death excited him.

A faint breeze stirred acacia trees and touched my skin as I replayed what Dr. Stvan had said about the man who had come to her door. He had come to murder her and had failed. He returned to this very spot and left her a note the next day.