Deja Dead Page 0,169
He pulls it off, gets away, but it’s rushed. He’s not in control.”
The statue. The severed breast.
Ryan nodded.
“Makes sense. The kill is just the final act in his fantasy of control. I can kill you or let you live. I can hide your body or display it. I can deprive you of your gender by mutilating your breasts or vagina. I can render you powerless by cutting off your hands. But then the husband calls and threatens his whole fantasy satisfaction.”
“Spoiled the rush.” Ryan.
“He never used stolen items before Adkins. Maybe he used her bank card afterward to reassert control.”
“Or maybe he had a cash flow problem, needed to blow something up his nose and had no purchasing power.” Claudel.
“It’s weird. Can’t shut him up on the others, but he turns into a potted palm on Adkins.” Ryan.
For a while no one said anything.
“Pitre and Gautier?” I asked, avoiding what I really had to know.
“Claims they’re not his.”
Ryan and Claudel exchanged words. I didn’t hear them. A chill spread and filled my rib cage, a question taking form. It coalesced, hung there, then slithered up and forced itself into language.
“Gabby?”
Claudel dropped his eyes.
Ryan cleared his throat.
“You’ve had a—”
“Gabby?” I repeated. Tears burned the insides of my eyelids.
Ryan nodded.
“Why?”
No one spoke.
“It’s because of me, isn’t it?” I fought to keep my voice even.
“This fuckhead’s a nutcase,” said Ryan. “He’s crazy for control. He won’t open up much about his childhood, but he’s got so much rage against the grandmother you have to scrape it off your teeth when you leave the room. Blames all of his problems on her. Keeps saying she ruined him. From what we’ve learned, she was a very domineering woman, and fanatically religious. His feelings of powerlessness probably stem from whatever went on between them.”
“Meaning the guy’s a real loser with women and blames it on the old lady,” added Claudel.
“What does this have to do with Gabby?”
Ryan seemed reluctant to continue.
“At first Fortier gets a sense of control through peeping. He can watch his victims, track them, learn all about them, and they aren’t even aware of him. He keeps his notebooks and clippings and runs a fantasy show in his head. An added bonus is that there’s no risk of rejection. But eventually, that’s not enough. He kills Damas, finds he likes it, and decides on a career move. He starts kidnapping and killing his victims. The ultimate control. Life and death. He’s in charge and unstoppable.”
I stared into the flame blue irises.
“Then you come along and dig up Isabelle Gagnon.”
“I’m a threat,” I said, anticipating where he was going.
“His perfect MO is jeopardized, he feels a threat. And Dr. Brennan is the cause. You may topple the whole fantasy in which he’s the supreme player.”
I ran over the events of the past six weeks.
“I dig up and identify Isabelle Gagnon in early June. Three weeks later Fortier kills Margaret Adkins, and the next day we show up on Rue Berger. Three days after that I find Grace Damas’s skeleton.”
“You’ve got it.”
“He’s furious.”
“Exactly. The hunt is his way of acting out his contempt for women—”
“Or his anger at Granny.” Claudel.
“Maybe. Anyway, he sees you as blocking him.”
“And I’m a woman.”
Ryan reached for a cigarette, remembered where he was.
“Also, he made a mistake. Adkins was sloppy. Using the bank card almost cost him.”
“So he needs someone to blame.”
“This guy can’t admit he’s screwed up. And he definitely can’t deal with a woman catching him out.”
“But why Gabby? Why not me?”
“Who knows? Chance? Timing? Maybe she walked out before you did.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “It’s obvious he’d been stalking me for some time. He put the skull in my yard?”
Nods.
“He could have waited, then grabbed me like he did the others.”
“This is one sick fucker.” Claudel.
“Gabby wasn’t like the others, she wasn’t a random-stranger killing. Fortier knew where I lived. He knew she was staying with me.”
I was talking more to myself than to Ryan and Claudel. An emotional aneurysm, formed over the past six weeks and held in check by force of will, was threatening to burst.
“He did it on purpose. The psycho prick wanted me to know. It was a message, like the skull.”
My voice was rising but I couldn’t hold it back. I pictured an envelope on my door. An oval of bricks. Gabby’s bloated face with its tiny silver gods. A picture of my daughter.
The thin wall of my emotional balloon ruptured, and weeks of pent-up grief and tension rushed through