Spectacle(79)

37


Simone looked at the man on the slab and then back at Nathalie. “Are you sure?”

“Very.” She relayed her vision to Simone and stared at the Dark Artist, his slender physique repulsive in its newfound familiarity. She focused on his hands. The same hands that had held a knife to her cheek yesterday. The same hands that had killed Agnès and five other young women.

How strange to reconcile this pathetic corpse of today with the frightening killer who’d chased her in the Catacombs. He was nothing anymore. Nothing at all.

A purple stripe crossed his neck. His temple was gouged, leaving a blackish-red canyon on his skull. Even bloated, he had strong, precise features, as though he himself had been carved from something. Short, side-swept brown hair. Neatly kept beard. Even the clothes displayed behind him were well-cut and fashionable.

He was a most handsome man.

Nathalie had wanted him to be ugly.

As she glared at his corpse, a slow, uncomfortable realization spread across her like lava. “I’ve seen his face before. I don’t know where, but I have. Not in a vision.”

“He did follow you that time; you said he admitted it. Perhaps you caught a glimpse of him then?”

“I remember that night very well, and that doesn’t seem to fit what I’m thinking. I feel as though it were more direct than that,” Nathalie said, rubbing her temples.

“The blood jar?” offered Simone.

“That either happened while I was asleep in the park or is a lost memory. It doesn’t match the pattern of the other memory gaps, though. That can’t be it.” Nathalie shook her head. Could she be so sure? “I don’t know. What difference does it make now, anyway? He’s taken his last memory from me.”

She looked back and forth between the sixth victim and the Dark Artist. She’d wanted to help stop him before he killed again. And she hadn’t. This girl with dreams and sadness and hope and sorrow, like Agnès and Odette and Mirabelle and the others, was gone. “I’m sorry,” she said, fingertips grazing the glass.

“You didn’t fail her,” said Simone, her voice both tender and adamant. “They’ll know the body on that slab back there is the killer. Because of you, they’ll know. And he’s gone.”

Just like that, this threat, this menace, was gone. So were his secrets. Frustration needled her as she thought about the Catacombs, how he’d asked the questions when it was she who had so many. Had she asked him anything at all? Anything that might cast the smallest glint of understanding as to his motives? No, she would have told Christophe. The Dark Artist manipulated her, scared her, found her secrets while protecting his own.

She detested him even more.

Nathalie suddenly felt crowded. She turned to see that three or four people had gathered around her and Simone; the moment she made eye contact they retreated as if commanded.

She wanted to scream at them. Your killer is right there. Right there!

“If they only knew,” she muttered. “Instead they stare at me.”

“Never mind the corpse-gazers. Let’s go.” Simone took her by the hand and led the way toward the exit.

Nathalie stopped at the Medusa door, the one that had hissed at her that first day in the morgue. Or so her confused mind had thought. “We should tell Christophe.”

“We’ll see him in a few minutes.”

She stared at the Greek monster and her unruly snakes. “He shouldn’t have left us.”

“Nathalie.” Simone touched her shoulder. “He’s doing what he has to do. Now let’s go get a table. He’ll join us soon.”

As soon as they left the morgue, Nathalie looked behind them. A man with a walking stick came into sight just as they crossed onto Quai de la Tournelle. “Wait until Mathieu finds out. The Dark Artist is a corpse, not a threat.”

“And isn’t that a splendid sentence?” Simone said, nudging her ribs.

They took a secluded outdoor table at Café Maxime, with Christophe joining just as a waiter filling in for Jean was taking their orders.

“Pain au chocolat for you, Nathalie?”

“Non.” She couldn’t. Not yet. “An éclair.”

Christophe asked for a coffee and, once the waiter left, managed little more than a greeting before Nathalie spilled every detail of her vision. Clearly struggling to stay silent, he erupted with fiery satisfaction when she was finished. “This is it! You confirmed what I suspected. Better yet: He’s already been identified.”

Simone flattened her palms on the table. “Wait. What?”

“Not as the Dark Artist, but as Damien Salvage.”

Nathalie’s skin prickled. Knowing his name made him real, made him human.

Gone was his mystery, away went the countless other identities he might have had. There was no need to imagine who he might be anymore. And as monstrous and depraved as he was, he was also just a man.

This made him both more and less terrifying, even in death.

“That was the business I had to tend to when we returned.”

Nathalie blushed, embarrassed that she’d taken offense when he couldn’t be at her side during the vision. She felt Simone’s gaze but didn’t acknowledge it.

“The sixth victim’s body floated up the Seine. So did his, almost at the same time. The coincidence got my attention. I left word with my colleagues to let me know immediately if anyone identified the man.” Christophe tapped the table with his finger, a tap for every word. “A well-to-do industrialist recognized him. The man had commissioned Monsieur Salvage to make an armoire a few months ago. He even had Salvage’s calling card on him.”