"The Last Precinct" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cornwell Patricia)

Chapter 13

WITH A CLICK OF THE REMOTE CONTROL, 1 AM returned to the cinder block interview room inside the forensic ward of MCV. I am returned to Jean-Baptiste Chan-donne, who wants us to believe he is capable of somehow transforming his uniquely hideous appearance into elegant good looks when he is in the mood to dine out and pick up a woman. Impossible. His torso with its swirling coat of immature hair fills the television screen as he is helped back into his chair, and when his head enters the picture I am startled to discover that his bandages have been removed, his eyes now masked by dark plastic Solar Shield glasses, the flesh around them an irritated raw pink. His eyebrows are long and confluent, as if someone has taken a strip of downy fur and glued it on his brow. The same downy pale hair covers his forehead and temples.

Berger and I sit in my conference room. It is not quite seven-thirty and Marino has left for two reasons: He was paged about a possible identification of the body found dumped on the street in Mosby Court, and Berger encouraged him not to rejoin us. She said she needed to have some private time with me. I think she also was just plain sick of him, not that I blame her. Marino has made it abundantly clear that he is intensely critical of the way she interviewed Chandonne and that she did it in the first place. Part of this_no, all of this_is jealousy. There isn't an investigator on this planet who wouldn't want to interview such a notorious, freakish killer. It just so happens that the beast picked the beauty, and Marino is seething.

As I listen to Berger remind Chandonne on camera that he understands his rights and has agreed to talk to her further, I am gripped more convincingly by a certain reality. I am a small creature caught in a web, an evil web spun of threads that seem to wrap around the entire globe like lines of latitude and longitude. Chandonne's attempt to murder me was incidental to what he is all about. I was an amusement. If he figures I am watching his taped interview, then I am still an amusement. Nothing more. It occurs to me that if he had succeeded in ripping me to shreds, he would have already been focused on someone new and I would be nothing but a brief bloody moment, a past wet dream in his hateful, hellish life.

"And the detective got you something to eat and drink, sir, isn't that right?" Berger is asking Chandonne.

"Yes."

"And what was that?"

"A hamburger and a Pepsi."

"And fries?"

"Mais oui. Fries." He seems to think this is funny.

"So you've been given whatever you need, isn't that right?" she asks him.

"Yes."

"And the hospital staff removed your bandages and gave you special glasses to wear. You're comfortable?"

"I hurt a little bit."

"Were you given any pain medication?"

"Yes."

"Tylenol. Isn't that right?"

"Yes, I suppose. Two tablets"

"Nothing more than that. Nothing that might interfere with

your thinking."

"No, nothing." His black glasses are fixed on her.

"And nobody is forcing you to talk to me or made you any promises, isn't that right?" Her shoulders move as she flips a page in what I assume is a legal pad,

"Yes."

"Sir, have I made any threats or promises to get you to talk to me?"

This goes on and on as Berger runs through her checklist. She is making sure that Chandonne's eventual representation won't have any opportunity to say that Chandonne was intimidated, badgered, abused or treated unfairly in any way. He sits straight in his chair, his arms folded on top of each other in a tangle of hair that splays over the top of the table and hangs in repulsive clumps, like dirty cornsilk, from the short sleeves of his hospital-issue shirt. Nothing about the way his anatomy has been put together computes. He reminds me of old campy movies where silly boys on the beach bury each other in sand and paint eyes on their foreheads and make beards look like head hair or wear sunglasses on the backs of their heads or kneel with shoes on their knees to turn themselves into dwarfs_people turning themselves into freakish caricatures, because they think it is amusing. There is nothing amusing about Chandonne. I can't even find him pitiful. My anger stirs like a great shark deep beneath the surface of my stoical demeanor.

"Let's get back to the night you say you met Susan Pless," Berger says to him on the tape. "In Lumi. That's on the corner of Seventieth and Lexington?"

"Yes, yes."

"You were saying you had dinner together and then you asked her if she would like to drink champagne with you somewhere. Sir, are you aware that the description of the gentleman Susan met and dined with that night doesn't fit yours in the least?"

"I have no way to know."

"But you must be aware that you have a serious medical condition that causes you to look very different from other people, and it's hard to imagine, therefore, that you could be confused with someone who absolutely doesn't have your condition. Hypertrichosis. Isn't that what you have?"

I catch the barely perceptible flicker of Chandonne blinking behind the dark glasses. Berger has touched a nerve. The muscles in his face tense. He begins flexing his fingers again.

"Is that the name of your medical condition? Or do you know what it's called?" Berger says to him.

"I know what it is," Chandonne replies in a tone that is tighter.

"And you have lived with it all your life?"

He stares at her.

"Please answer the question, sir."

"Of course. That is a stupid question. What do you think? You come down with it like a cold?"

"My point is, you don't look like other people, and therefore I'm having a hard time imagining you might be mistaken for a man described as clean-cut and handsome with no facial hair." She pauses. She is picking at him. She wants him to lose control. "Someone well groomed in an expensive suit." Another pause. "Didn't you just finish telling me you've virtually lived like a homeless person? How could that man in Lumi have been you, sir?"

"I had on a black suit, a shirt and tie." Hate. Chandonne's true nature has begun to shine through his mantle of dark deceit like a distant cold star. I expect him to dive over the table any moment and crush Berger's throat or bash her head against the wall before Marino or anyone else can stop him. I have almost quit breathing. I remind myself that Berger is alive and well, sitting at the table with me inside my conference room. It is Thursday night. In four hours, it will have been exactly five days since Chandonne kicked his way into my house and tried to beat me to death with a chipping hammer.

"I have gone through periods where my condition isn't as bad as it is now." Chandonne has steadied himself. His politeness returns. "Stress makes it worse. I've been under so much stress. Because of them."

"And who is them?'"The American agents who've set me up. When I began to realize what was happening, that they were setting me up to look like a murderer, I became a fugitive. My health deteriorated to the worst it has ever been, and the worse I got, the more I had to hide. I haven't always looked like this." His dark glasses point slightly away from the camera as he stares at Berger. "When I met Susan, 1 was nothing like this. I could shave. I could get odd jobs and manage and even look good. And I had clothes and money sometimes because my brother would help me."

Berger stops the tape and says to me, "Possible the bit about stress could be true?"

"Stress tends to make everything worse," I reply. "But this man has never looked good. I don't care what he says."

"You're talking about Thomas," Berger's voice resumes on the videotape. "Thomas would give you clothes, money, maybe other things?"

"Yes."

"You say you were wearing a black suit in Lumi that night. Did Thomas give you the suit?"

"Yes. He liked very fine clothes. We were about the same size."

"And you dined with Susan. Then what? What happened when you were finished eating? You paid the check?"

"Of course. I'm a gentleman."

"How much was the bill?"

"Two hundred and twenty-one dollars, not including the gratuity."

Berger corroborates what he says as she stares straight ahead at the TV screen, "And that's exactly what the bill was. The man paid in cash and left two twenty-dollar bills on the table."

I quiz Berger closely on how much about the restaurant, the bill, the tip was publicly disclosed. "Was any of this ever in the news?" I ask her.

"No. So if it wasn't him, how the hell did he know what the damn bill was?" Frustration seeps into her voice.

On the videotape she asks Chandonne about the tip. He claims he left forty dollars. 'Two twenties, I believe" he says. "And then what? You left the restaurant?" "We decided to have a drink at her apartment," he says.