Berger looks at me. "Possible?"
"Fetal alcohol syndrome?" I consider. "Not likely. Gener- ally severe mental and physical retardation would result if the mother were a chronic alcoholic, and cutaneous changes such as hypertrichosis would be the least of the child's problems."
"Doesn't mean he doesn't believe she caused his condition."
"He certainly might believe it," I agree with her.
"Helping to explain his extreme hatred of women."
"As much as anything can explain his kind of hate," I reply.
On tape, Berger has returned Chandonne to the subject of his allegedly calling the morgue here in Richmond. "So you tried to get through to Dr. Scarpetta on the phone but couldn't. Then what?"
"Then the next day, Friday, I hear on the TV in my motel room that another woman has been murdered. This time a policewoman. They do a newsbreak, you know, and I'm watching it as it is happening and next thing the cameras focus on a big black car pulling up to the scene and they say it is the medical examiner. It is her, Scarpetta. So I get the idea to go there immediately. I will wait until she is leaving the scene and then I will approach her. I will tell her I must talk to her. So I get a taxi."
His remarkable memory fails him here. He recalls nothing about the taxi company, not even the color of the car, only that the driver was a "black man." Probably eighty percent of the taxi drivers in Richmond are black. Chandonne claims that while he is being driven to the scene_and he knows the address because it was on the news_he hears another news-break. This time, the public is being warned about the killer, that he may have a strange medical condition which causes him to have a very unusual appearance. The hypertrichotic description fits Chandonne. "I know now, for sure," he goes on. "They have set the trap and the world thinks I have killed these women in Richmond. So I panic in the back of the taxi, trying to figure out what to do. I say to the taxi driver, 'Do you know this lady they speak of? Scarpetta?' He says that everyone in the city knows her. I ask where she lives and say I'm a tourist. He takes me to her neighborhood but we don't go in because there are guards and a gate. But I know enough to find her. I get out of the taxi several blocks from there. I'm determined 1 will find her before it's too late."
"Too late for what?" Berger asks.
"Before anybody else is killed. I must come back later that night and somehow get her to open the door so I can talk to her. You know, of course, I'm worried they will kill her next. It's their pattern, you see. They did that in Paris, you know. They tried to murder the medical examiner there, a woman. She was very lucky."
"Sir, let's keep on the subject of what happened here in Richmond. Tell me what happened next. It's what, midmorn-ing on Friday, December seventeenth, last Friday? What did you do after the taxi dropped you off? What did you do the rest of the day?"
"Wandered. Found an abandoned house on the river and went in it just to get out of the weather."
"Do you know where that house is?"
"I can't tell you, but not far from her neighborhood."
"From Dr. Scarpetta's neighborhood?"
"Yes."
"You could find that house again, the one you stayed in, couldn't you, sir?"
"It's under construction. Very big. A mansion no one lives in right now. I know where it is."
Berger says to me, "The one where they think he was staying the entire time he was here?"
I nod. I am familiar with the house. I think of the poor people it belongs to and can't imagine them ever wanting to live there again. Chandonne says he hid in the abandoned mansion until dark. Several times that night he ventured out, avoiding the guard gate in my neighborhood by simply following the river and railroad tracks that run behind it. He claims to have knocked on my door early evening and got no answer. At this point, Berger asks me when I got home that night. I tell her it was after eight. I had stopped off at Pleasants Hardware store after leaving the office. I wanted to look at tools because I was perplexed by the strange wounds I had found on Diane Bray's body and by bloody transfers made to the mattress when the killer had set down the bloody tool he had beaten her with. It was during this foraging at Pleasants Hardware that I came across a chipping hammer, and I purchased one and went on home, I tell Berger.
Chandonne goes on to claim he began to get fearful about coming to see me. He claims there were a lot of police cars cruising the neighborhood, and that at one point when he came to my house late, there were two police cruisers parked in front. This was because my alarm had gone off_when Chandonne forced open my garage door so the police would come. Of course, he tells Berger that it wasn't him who set off the alarm. It was them_it must have been them, he says. By now, it is getting close to midnight. It is snowing hard. He hides behind trees near my house and waits until the police leave. He says it is his last chance, he has to see me. He believes they are in the area and will kill me. So he goes to my front door and knocks.
"What did you knock with?" Berger asks him.
"I recall there was a door knocker. I believe I used that." He drains the last of his Pepsi and Marino on tape asks him if he wants another one. Chandonne shakes his head and yawns. He is talking about coming into my house to bash my brains out and the bastard is yawning.
"Why didn't you ring the bell?" Berger wants to know. This is important. My doorbell activates the camera system. Had Chandonne rung the bell, I would have been able to see him on a video screen inside the house.
"I don't know," he replies. "I saw the knocker and used it."
"Did you say anything?"
"Not at first. Then I heard a woman ask, 'Who is it?' "
"And what did you say?"
"I told her my name. I said I have information about the body she's trying to identify, and to please let me talk to her."
"You told her your name? You identified yourself as Jean-Bap tiste Chandonne?"
"Yes. I said I was here from Paris and had been trying to get her at her office." He yawns again. "The most amazing thing happens," he goes on. "The door suddenly opens and
she is there. She tells me to come in, and the minute I do, she slams the door shut behind me and I can't believe it. She suddenly has this hammer and is trying to hit me."
"Suddenly has a hammer? Where did she get it? Did it just appear out of thin air?"
"I believe she grabbed it off a table just inside the doorway. I don't know. It happened so fast. And I try to get away from her. I run into the living room, yelling for her to stop, and that's when the terrible thing happened. It was fast. I only remember I was on the other side of the sofa, and then something was flying in my face. It felt like liquid fire in my eyes. I have never felt anything so, so…" He sniffs again. "The pain. I was screaming and trying to get it out of my eyes. I was trying to get out of the house. I knew she was going to kill me and suddenly it went into my mind that she is one of them. Them. They have got me at last. I walked right into their trap! It was planned all along that she would get my brother's body because she is them. Now I would be arrested and they would finally get the opportunity they want, finally, finally."
"And they want what?" Berger asks him. "Tell me again, because I'm having a very hard time understanding, much less believing, this part."
"They want my father!" he says with the first emotion I have seen. "To get Papa! To find a reason to go after him and bring him down, destroy him. To make it look like my father has a son who is a killer so they can get to my family. All this for years! And I am Chandonne and look at me! Look at me!!"