“Arson and animal cruelty,” Hugo said. “Who is he?”
“They’re digging into his background right now, but I assume you weren’t asking a philosophical question.”
“No, I wasn’t.” Hugo didn’t disguise his impatience. “His name, Tom. Give me the bastard’s name.”
Hugo met Capitaine Garcia at a café halfway between their respective offices, on the Rue Saint-Honoré. The little Frenchman beamed when Hugo walked through the door and rose to shake his hand.
“Salut, mon ami,” Hugo said. “They told me you’re back in charge. I’m very happy about that.”
“Moi aussi. And I’m glad that other business is out of the way, though I’m sorry it ended the way it did. I’m hearing, unofficially, that he was more of an asylum seeker than a terrorist.”
“I think that’s right. And yes, a great shame.”
Hugo ordered a grand crème from the waiter, and Garcia asked for a second one.
“Alors, to work.” Garcia reached into a briefcase by his side and pulled out a manila file. “We know a little about him, and we’re searching high and low.”
Hugo picked up the file. It read Claude Villier in block letters on the front. “Tell me,” Hugo said.
“He’s twenty-six years old,” Garcia began. “Born and raised in the southwest, a little village called Castet.”
“Believe it or not,” Hugo said, “I know the place.”
Garcia raised an eyebrow, then remembered. “Ah yes, the case last year, your friend Max. You interviewed a witness down there.”
“Right. Nice part of the world.”
“Beautiful,” said Garcia. “If you like all that nature stuff. Anyway, you’ll remember that a night watchman at the cemetery down there was shot.”
“While our hero was stealing bones from a grave.”
“Exactement. The ballistics reports matched that shooting with the two kids at Père Lachaise, and the girl last night. But I don’t see what they all have in common. Who exactly are we looking for? What kind of killer is he?”
“Let’s look at what those have in common.” Hugo sat back as the waiter arrived with their coffees. When the waiter had left, he continued. “For a start, he’s taken a trophy from every one.”
“Skin and bones,” Garcia said.
“Oui. And yet I don’t think they are just trophies.”
“Why not?”
“Too much trouble. A trophy is almost like an afterthought. A killer may know what he’s taking as his trophy, I’ve seen everything from rings to eyeballs, but it’s not usually as intricate as something like skin.”
“Eyeballs?”
“Delightful, I know.” Hugo grimaced at the memory. Six jam jars, each containing two pairs of eyeballs. Color coded. “Anyway, it’s like we have two distinct crimes, the bone-stealing and the killing. But I’d bet anything that’s not true. The murders and the bone gathering, they are for the same reason.”
“And what is that?” Garcia watched Hugo for a second. “You’re not saying he’s Dr. Frankenstein?”
“I’d have said he’s putting together a woman, except the bones in Castet were male, right?”
“Oh yes, most definitely.” A smile tugged at the corners of Garcia’s mouth. “And now we know the Scarab’s name, we can say that they weren’t any old male bones.”
“No? There’s a connection?” And then Hugo remembered his phone call with the ambassador while Tom was in surgery, a conversation all but forgotten in the stress of the moment. “Villier. That’s the name of the man who was dug up.”
“Exactement.” Garcia held Hugo’s eye for a second. “His father. He dug up his own father.”
Chapter Thirty
Capitaine Garcia looked at Hugo over the top of his coffee cup. “Why is he doing this?”
“It’s an act of recreation. He’s bringing someone back to life, either his mother, a sister, his girlfriend.” He shrugged. “Like I said, the father … that’s something else.”
“That’s bizarre, is what it is.”
Hugo took a sip of his coffee and thought back to the first report of the Castet cemetery break-in. “Am I right in thinking some of the bones were crushed?”
“Oui. A lot, actually.”
“You know, it’s possible he didn’t steal any at all.”
Garcia’s expression was blank. “Then why …?”
“We assumed, because of Père Lachaise maybe, that a raided grave automatically means stolen bones. But that doesn’t have to be true. Maybe he broke into his father’s grave to do the opposite of what he was doing at Père Lachaise.”
“You mean, to destroy?”
“Yes. The grave has a hold on him, it possesses great power in his mind. Think about it that way. If he can steal bones from a grave to recreate something, then it makes sense for him to rob a grave and crush bones to destroy something.”
“He was destroying his father?”
“That was part of his plan yes, and the rest involves recreating a woman. It’s weird, but it fits.”
Garcia grinned. “His mug shot is in the file. An ugly little bastard, so I’m guessing he’s not recreating a girlfriend.”
Hugo opened the folder and stared at the color printout of Claude Villier. He recognized the high forehead and curly hair, the carelessly hewn features that were his nose and mouth. And the eyes, deep gashes chiseled into his face that said nothing, showed nothing. Neither anger nor remorse, and certainly not fear.
“We need to talk to people who know him,” Hugo said. “Family, friends, anyone. Does he have family?”
“Not that we could find. Father’s dead, obviously. The neighbors say the mother disappeared almost fifteen years ago.”
“When and how did the father die?”
“Drank himself to death. Apparently he was a piece of work, too. Used to beat the mother and the boy, control everything they did. The neighbors told us that eventually the mother just took off, left them both.”
“Claude would have been about twelve. Being abandoned like that would have been traumatic for any young boy, even more so for one left behind with an abusive father.” Hugo drank more coffee while he thought. “You have people looking for the mother?”
“Yes, but it’s been so long, if she’s still alive she probably changed her name and has been living under a different identity for a decade. Do you think she’d come out of the woodwork if we published his picture?”
Hugo hesitated. “She might, but I doubt it. She’s probably already ashamed to have left him behind, she’ll be even more ashamed if she finds out he’s a serial killer. She’ll blame herself for that.” He shook his head. “No. I doubt she’ll come forward, and even if she does it doesn’t get us that far. It’s him we need.”
“You think he’ll kill again?”
“Oh yes,” Hugo said. “They always kill again. Which means we need to catch him before he has the chance.”
“And how do we do that? Do we issue his picture and ask for help?” Garcia spread his hands. “I’m afraid I don’t have much experience with serial killers.”
“I do.” Hugo drained his coffee cup. “No, letting the world know we have a serial killer out there will cause panic. And this guy can hide, either by disguising himself or disappearing through the underground tunnels.”
“Then what do we do?”
“We figure out who his next victim is, and when he plans to kill her.”
Garcia left, his agreed task to try and find the Scarab’s mother. In Hugo’s mind she was key, despite what he’d told Garcia and even though he couldn’t articulate a reason why. Years of experience chasing killers with mommy issues, maybe. Somehow, as Freud figured out, it always came back to the parents, be they good, bad, or indifferent. And here, Hugo thought, there seemed to be a pretty good mix of all three.