Nevertheless, he’s pondering how to rid himself of the pasty mortician, who, having served his purpose, begins to grow tiresome. Dubois needs to shed Fran?ois without angering him—that is, without sending him running to the police—but it’s a tricky business. He has to think the breakup is his idea, Dubois realizes.
A nearby sunbather coughs, and the germ of an idea begins to incubate in Dubois’s mind. Perhaps if I came down with an illness, some malady, he muses. Something debasing and repellent, yet not so grave as to inspire nobility and self-sacrifice. Lip cancer? Irritable bowel syndrome? Cadaverous breath? Finally, in a flash of inspiration, it comes to Dubois: Warts—genital warts! Molded of silicone, they can be glued on, their ranks and size growing day by disgusting day. Best of all, Dubois can lay the blame at Fran?ois’s own ... door, since Fran?ois—in a moment of drunken remorse—has confessed to three recent infidelities. (Dubois could have consoled Fran?ois by making a similar confession, but instead he wept, a study in wronged innocence.) Yes, warts will do nicely; in a week—two, at most—Fran?ois will scurry back to Marseilles, brimming with guilt and compassion. After a day or so of public melancholy, Dubois will set up an easel on the beach, sketch beautiful young men, and swap art for idyllic interludes with one Adonis after another.
Dubois will soon need a more meaningful outlet for his prodigious energies. But he has a plan for that, too. Only yesterday, on a stroll through town, he spotted an ad in a realtor’s window: “Private villa for lease.” The property—perched on a rocky bluff, with stunning Mediterranean views—includes a gardener’s cottage that would make a charming studio. Already, in a Barcelona warehouse an hour away, Dubois’s materials—sheaves of ancient paper and parchment, handmade pigments and brushes, musty frames and panels, even a few dreadful, sacrificial old paintings—await their metamorphoses into masterpieces.
He wishes he’d had the nerve to bring the Puccinelli, too, but the risk seemed too great. Astonishing, to think that a policeman—a provincial dolt!—possesses an authentic medieval masterpiece. For the moment, Dubois can appreciate the mirror-image ironies: the blissful ignorance of the museum in Avignon, proudly displaying its “original” Botticelli, and the ignorant bliss of the policeman, adoring his free “copy” of Mary Magdalene and John the Baptist. Someday soon—perhaps with the help of some lithe, lock-picking Spaniard—Dubois will retrieve the original from the policeman, replacing it with an undetectable copy. The swap will be his third time to deceive the inspector, he realizes: first, with the pair of faked Botticellis; second, with the faked suicide (he smiles, recalling the daring ambiguity of the phrase “this sort of death”); soon, with the theft of a priceless painting from the policeman’s own home. All in all, a delightful hat trick.
Chapter 9
Descartes
Descartes was still savoring his lunch and his painting when his mobile jangled. He glanced at the display and frowned; the call was from his boss, the chief inspector. “What’s up?” he asked, trying not to let his annoyance show.
“A new case for you. A homicide.”
Shit, not a homicide, Descartes groaned inwardly. Homicides are such a pain in the ass. “Me?” he said, feigning surprise. “Isn’t Pierre next in the rotation?”
“Pierre is sick. Jean-Paul leaves tomorrow for antiterrorist training. And Etienne is still on paternity leave. Besides, you have the best English, and the case involves two Americans. One ...”—a pause, and Descartes heard papers rattling—“named William Brockton. The other, probably his girlfriend, Miranda Lovelady.”
Hmm, Descartes thought, a homicide involving foreign lovebirds. That might be interesting after all. “Okay,” he said, as if he actually had a choice. To guilt the boss, he added, “But you owe me. Don’t forget, I put in a shitload of overtime on the Dubois case. A weird one, eh?”
“Ha,” the chief inspector scoffed. “This one is much more bizarre.”
“Bullshit. What could be more bizarre?”
There was a silence—Descartes thought he’d lost the call, but it was just his boss letting him twist in the wind briefly. Then, with a mixture of smugness and horror, the chief inspector uttered a single word before hanging up: “Crucifixion.”
The Inquisitor’s Key
A Body Farm Novel
Available Wherever Books Are Sold May 8, 2012
Prologue
Knoxville, Tennessee
The Present