She says all this as if it is routine. My indignation rises and spills over in words. "You know, I do have feelings," I say. "Maybe murder indictments are everyday matters to you, but they aren't to me. My integrity is the one thing I've got that I can't afford to lose. It's everything to me, and of all people to accuse of such a crime. Of all people! To even consider that I would do the very thing I fight against every waking minute of my life? Never. I don't abuse power. Never. I don't deliberately hurt people. Never. And I don't take this bullshit in stride, Ms. Berger. Nothing worse could happen to me. Nothing."
"Do you want my recommendation?" She looks at me.
"I'm always open for suggestions."
"First, the media's going to find out. You know that. I'd beat them to the draw and have a press conference. Right away. The good news is, you haven't been fired. You haven't lost the support of the people who have power over your professional life. A fucking miracle. Politicians are usually quick to run for cover, but the governor has a very high opinion of you. He doesn't believe you killed Diane Bray. If he makes a statement to that effect, then you should be all right, providing the special grand jury doesn't come back with a true bill, an indictment."
"Have you discussed any of this with Governor Mitchell?" I ask her.
"We've had contact in the past. We're acquainted. We worked a case together when he was AG."
"Yes, I know that." It also isn't what I asked.
Silence. She stares out at Bray's house. There are no lights on inside, and I point out that it was Chandonne's MO to unscrew the lightbulb over the porch or pull out the wires, and when his victim opened the door, he was hidden by darkness.
"I would like your opinion," she then says. "I'm confident you have one. You're a very observant, seasoned investigator." She says this firmly and with an edge. "You also know what Chandonne did to you_you are intimately familiar with his MO in a way no one else is."
Her reference to Chandonne's attack on me is jarring. Even though Berger is simply doing her job, I am offended by her blunt objectivity. I am also put off by her evasiveness. I resent that she decides what we will discuss and when and for how long. I can't help it. I am human. I want her to show at least a hint of compassion toward me and what I have endured. "Someone called the morgue this morning and identified himself as Benton Wesley." I drop that one on her. "You heard from Rocky Marino Caggiano yet? What's he up to?" Anger and fear sharpen my voice.
"We won't hear from him for a while," she says as if she knows. "Not his style. But it sure wouldn't surprise me if he's up to his old tricks. Harassment. Hurting. Terrorizing. Going for the sensitive spots as a warning, if nothing else. My guess is you'll have no direct contact with him or even catch a whiff of him until closer to the trial. If you ever see him at all. He's like that, the son of a bitch. Behind the scenes all the way."
Neither of us speaks for a moment. She is waiting for me to lower the gate. "My opinion or speculation, all right," I finally say. "That's what you want? Fine."
"That's what I want. You'd make a pretty good second seat." A reference to a second D.A. who would be her co-counsel, her partner during a trial. Either she has just paid me a compliment or she is being ironical.
"Diane Bray had a friend who came over quite often." I take my first step out of bounds. I begin deducing. "Detective Anderson. She was obsessed with Bray. Bray seriously teased her, so it appears. I think it's possible Chandonne watched Bray and gathered intelligence. He observed Anderson come and go. On the night of the murder, he waited until Anderson left Bray's house"_I stare out at it_"and immediately went up to it, unscrewed the porch light, then knocked on the door. Bray assumed it was Anderson returning to resume their argument or make up or whatever."
"Because they'd been fighting. They fought a lot," Berger carries along the narrative.
"By all appearances, it was a tempestuous relationship." I keep heading deeper into restricted airspace. I am not supposed to enter this part of an investigation, but I keep going. "Anderson had stormed off and come back in the past," I add.
"You sat in on the interview with Anderson after the body was found." Berger knows this. Someone has told her. Marino, probably.
"Yes, I did."
"And the story of what happened that night while Anderson was eating pizza and drinking beer at Bray's house?"
"They got into an argument_this is according to Anderson. So Anderson left angry and soon after there is a knock on the door. The same pattern of knocking that Anderson always did. He imitated the way she knocked just as he imitated the police when he came to my house."
"Show me." Berger looks at me.
I knock on the console between the front seats. Three times, hard.
"This is how Anderson always knocked on the door? She didn't use the doorbell?" Berger asks.
"You've been around cops enough to know that they hardly ever ring doorbells. They're used to neighborhoods where doorbells don't work, if they exist."
"Interesting that Anderson didn't come back," she observes. "What if she had? Do you think Chandonne somehow knew she wasn't going to come back that night?"
"I've wondered that, too."
"Maybe just something he sensed about her demeanor when she left? Or maybe he was so out of control he couldn't stop," Berger ponders. "Or maybe his lust was stronger than his fear that he might be interrupted."
"He may have observed one other important thing," I say. "Anderson didn't have a key to Bray's house. Bray always let her in."
"Yes, but the door wasn't locked when Anderson came back the next morning and found the body, right?"
"Doesn't mean it wasn't locked when he was inside attacking Bray. He hung out a closed sign and locked the convenience store while he was killing Kim Luong."
"But we don't know for a fact that he locked the door behind him when he entered Bray's house," Berger reiterates.
"/ certainly don't know it for a fact."
"And he might not have locked up." Berger is into it. "He might have shoved his way in and the chase begins. The door is unlocked the entire time he is mutilating her body in the bedroom."
"That would suggest he was out of control and taking big risks," I point out.
"Hmmm. I don't want to go down the road of out of control." Berger seems to talk to herself.
"Out of control isn't at all the same thing as insane," I remind her. "All people who murder, except out of self-defense, are out of control."
"Ah. Touche." She nods. "So Bray opens the door, and the light is out and there he is in the dark."
"This is also what he did to Dr. Stvan in Paris," I tell Berger. "Women were being murdered over there, same MO, and in several cases Chandonne left notes at the crime scenes."
"That's where the name Loup-Garou comes from," Berger interjects.
"He also wrote that name on a box inside the cargo container where the body was found_the body of his brother, Thomas. But yes," I say, "he apparently began leaving notes, referring to himself as a werewolf when he began murdering over there, in Paris. One night, he showed up at Dr. Stvan's door, not realizing that her husband was home sick. He works at night as a chef, but on this particular occasion, he was home unexpectedly, thank God. Dr. Stvan opens the door and when Chandonne hears her husband call out from another room, he flees."
"She get a good look at him?"
"I don't think so." I conjure up what Dr. Stvan told me. "It was dark. It was her impression that he was dressed neatly in a long, dark coat, a scarf, his hands in his pockets. He spoke well, was gentlemanly, using the ruse that his car had broken down and he needed a phone. Then he realized she wasn't alone and ran like hell."
"Anything else she remembered about him?"