Bred to Kill (29 page)

Chénaix leaned on the table.

“What's remarkable about Félix Lambert's brain is that, at first glance, the spongiform areas seem to have developed only in the neocortex and the limbic system. The reptilian brain, which roughly corresponds to the brainstem located near the back of the neck, was completely unaffected. Gage's iron bar hadn't touched that area either.”

“Reptilian brain, limbic system—what's all that mean in real-people language?”

“What we call triune brain theory is pretty commonly accepted these days. It's based on the fact that, over the millennia, the evolution of the brain occurred in three phases. In other words, three successive brain structures were superimposed, so to speak, like layers of sediment, to form our big, high-performance brain of today. It would also explain why our skulls are bigger than the first primates'. The first brain, then, the oldest one, is this reptile brain, which is shared by most living species. It's well protected, buried way down beneath the skull, and it's the brain structure that's most resistant to trauma, for example. It's the one that ensures our survival and responds to primary needs: eating, sleeping, and reproducing. It's also responsible for certain primitive behaviors, such as hate, fear, and violence. The second brain, the limbic, mainly regulates memory and emotions. And the third, the neocortex, is the most recent; it's located at the outer layers and deals with intellectual faculties, like language, art, and culture. It's where thought and consciousness reside.”

Sharko looked closely at the diseased brain, flabbergasted. Concepts related to evolution had come back yet again, even here in the morgue, inside the most fascinating organ of the human system. Could this be just chance, a strange quirk of circumstance?

“So . . . what you're saying is that this illness eats away at part of the brain, but it leaves our survival faculties intact? And because of this, it unleashes primitive, violent instincts, which normally the other two parts of the brain keep under control?”

“Theoretically speaking, yes. From a pathological and anatomical standpoint, it's a lot more complicated than that. We know the three brains are interconnected, and that even a tiny lesion in the wrong place, even in the limbic system or the neocortex, can kill you or make you insane. Félix Lambert, sadly for him, might have been lucky to live so long. As for the fact that the affliction—or infection, if you prefer—didn't touch the reptilian brain, you shouldn't see that as some kind of indication that the disease is intelligent. I think it was only a matter of time. In any case, given how rapidly the illness was progressing, the man had no chance.”

Lucie and Sharko looked at each other in silence, aware that they were closing in on something monstrous. Eva Louts and Stéphane Terney had been brutally murdered to prevent anyone from retracing this to its source. What was this disease? Had it been injected, transmitted genetically, released into the air?

“You didn't find anything similar in the father's brain?” asked Sharko.

“Not a trace. Perfectly healthy specimen. Well, except for the obvious.”

“And could the disease have caused visual disturbances? Like a tendency to draw upside down?”

“Sure. It looks like certain areas around the optic chiasma were also affected. The individual would first have experienced problems with his vision, loss of balance . . . warning signs, before the pain and violence kicked in. If Lambert and Carnot ended up committing suicide, it's because they couldn't stand the excruciating pain in their heads. It must have felt like Hiroshima in there.”

Firmly, the ME shoved the two drawers closed. The bodies disappeared, swallowed by the cold shadows. When the metal door slammed, Lucie started and leaned against Sharko. Paul Chénaix finally removed his latex gloves, tossed them in the wastebasket, and rubbed his hands together, before taking a pipe and pouch of tobacco from his pocket.

“The two halves of the brain are going off for a thorough workup, with the various samples. The case has raised a lot of questions, and I hope the lab guys will be able to tell us what we're dealing with pretty quickly.”

He headed toward the light switch to turn it off, but Sharko intercepted him, a DVD in hand.

“Enjoy your smoke, take your time. But afterward, I'll need to get your thoughts for just another minute, on a movie. Your medical opinion.”

“A movie? What kind of movie?”

Sharko shot a final glance at the brain slowly rotating in the fluid, barely lit by the neon lights in the hallway. He thought to himself that five other individuals, somewhere in these streets or in the country, alone or in families, were harboring the same time bomb in their skulls, which had probably already begun counting down. Monsters capable of killing their children, their parents, or anyone else they happened to meet.

Time was of the essence.

He felt a shiver run up his spine, and answered:

“The kind that will keep you awake at night.”

L
ocated one floor up, Chénaix's office looked like your typical doctor's examining room. A skeleton mounted on metal wire hung in a corner, while two bookshelves buckled under specialized tomes and articles about pathology, forensic anthropology, and general medicine. Old posters showing the human body papered the walls. The only thing missing was the examination table. For a human touch, the ME had hung photos of his family here and there: a wife and two daughters under the age of ten. It was his reminder that life consisted of more than just death.

Giving off a smell of stale tobacco smoke mixed with the more rancid odor of corpses, the ME sat at his computer and slid the DVD into the drive. Lucie and Sharko had sat down facing him, in silence. No one felt like talking. They were still haunted by the image of that ravaged brain, which had driven its owner to commit the most heinous acts imaginable. Lucie was also thinking about the implications of these findings: the possibility that Grégory Carnot had been merely an unfortunate guinea pig, and that the people truly responsible for her daughter's death were still at large. They, too, would have to answer for their crimes.

The doctor watched the ten-minute film attentively. Like any normal human being, he recoiled at the scene in the hut; but overall, his face registered no particular disgust or emotion, and the two cops were unable to gauge what he was feeling. Death in all its forms was his trade; he had learned how to tame it, and he looked upon it the way a mason looks at a half-built wall.

It was only after the viewing that he showed a clear interest.

“This is an exceptional document. Do you know where it comes from?”

Sharko shook his head.

“No, it's just a copy. We know it was shot in the Amazon.”

“The Amazon . . . Your tribe was decimated by an epidemic of measles.”

Lucie knit her brow. She had been expecting something a hundred times worse, on a par with the horrors she had discovered up until then. Some hideous plague, like Ebola or cholera. Or even—why not?—the same thing that had affected Lambert. For her, the measles was just one of those illnesses you got as a kid, like rubella or the mumps . . .

“Only measles? Are you sure?”

“Don't say ‘only measles.' It's a very aggressive virus that used to ravage populations and, when it's fatal, it can cause incredible pain and suffering. As for whether I'm sure . . . I'd say about ninety-five percent, yes. The symptoms are textbook. There's the obvious presence of Koplik spots, even though the eruptions on the skin aren't that pronounced, plus weepy eyes, which are very dark because they're probably red. But one characteristic of the illness is that in the most severe cases it results in internal hemorrhaging, which causes the patient to ooze blood through the nose, mouth, and anus. Like here. And given the incredible virulence of the disease, I can guarantee that this population had never experienced it before this. Their immune system was totally unprepared for the virus—it simply didn't recognize it.”

He gave Sharko a somber look that, in conjunction with his dark eyes, seemed baleful.

“Remember what I said about cows and milk drinkers. It's the same thing here, and it's still the same principle. Viruses like measles, smallpox, mumps, or diphtheria first incubated in domestic animals. Then they mutated and acquired the ability to infect humans. This ability proved to be very advantageous for them, so it was favored by natural selection. High population densities in both the Old and New Worlds sustained them and helped them spread, and at the same time humans developed immune defenses so that they wouldn't be wiped out completely. Viruses and humans cohabitated in another arms race. I'd even be tempted to say they nourished each other, and they went through the centuries hand in hand.”

“So the virus that decimated that village came from a ‘civilized' individual, if I can use the word?”

“No doubt about it. Today, man is the only possible carrier of measles. The virus was in this fellow, in his organism, as it might be in yours at this very moment. Except you don't know it, because your immune system and the vaccines you got as a kid have made it harmless.”

Chénaix slid the DVD out of the computer and handed it back to the inspector.

“To my knowledge, no one has ever filmed an epidemic of measles as violent and deadly as this. In the early sixties, it was impossible to find societies, even primitive ones, in which the adults were so lacking in antibodies that it could cause such a holocaust. So there's only one conclusion: before the time this film was made, this civilization had never met a modern man, since the measles, even from thousands of years earlier, had never reached it. It's probable that the person who shot this documentary was the first outsider that tribe had ever seen, going back centuries. This was an extremely isolated community.”

Finally, the medical examiner stood up, prompting the two detectives to do the same. He turned off his screen.

“For now, that's all I can tell you about it.”

“That's a lot. Tell me, do you know Jean-Paul Lemoine, the molecular biologist at the crime lab?”

“Pretty well, yes—he and his team handle most of the biological analyses we send out. And they'll be the ones studying Lambert's brain. How come?”

Sharko opened his shoulder bag and handed over the three sheets of data that Daniel had written.

“Can you ask him to give this a once-over as soon as possible?”

“A DNA sequence? What's it from?”

“That's the big question.”

The doctor heaved a sigh.

“You
are
aware you're taking advantage, at least?”

Sharko held out his hand with a smile.

“Thanks again. And don't forget . . .”

“I know—you were never here.”

O
nce back outside, the detectives took a deep breath, as if resurfacing after an underwater plunge. Never had the sound of a car zipping by been so reassuring. Everything, even the air itself, seemed to weigh on their shoulders. Sharko walked to the edge of the Seine and, hands in his pockets, watched the amber-colored glints winking at him. Around them, Paris nestled into its heavy blanket of lights. Deep down, he loved this city as much as he hated it.

Lucie came up quietly beside him and asked, “What are you thinking about?”

“A ton of things. But especially all this business about evolution and survival. About those genes that will do anything to propagate, even if it means killing their host.”

“Like praying mantises?”

“Praying mantises, bumblebees, salmon. Even parasites and viruses follow that logic; they colonize us to preserve their existence, and are very smart about it. You know, I was thinking about the notion of an arms race. It reminds me of a passage in
Through the Looking-Glass
. Did you ever read Lewis Carroll?”

“Never did. I'm afraid my tastes in literature tended to be a bit darker.”

Lucie moved closer. Their shoulders were almost touching. Sharko stared at the horizon with dilated pupils. His voice was gentle, limpid, belying the violence that pressed down on them harder with each passing minute.

“At a certain point, Alice and the Red Queen are in this race, and Alice suddenly realizes that no matter how fast they run, the scenery never changes. And the Queen says, ‘It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.'”

He let the silence drift for a moment, then looked Lucie deep in the eyes.

“We're like any other species, any other organism. We do whatever we have to to survive. You and I, the antelope in the savannah, the fish in the sea, the poor man, the rich man, black, white . . . we all keep running to survive, and we have been since day one. Whatever tragedies knock us down, we always get up again, and we run harder and harder. If we can't manage it, if our brain doesn't come up with the defenses to keep us going, the arms race is over and we die, eliminated by natural selection. It's as simple as that.”

His voice vibrated with such emotion that Lucie felt tears welling in her eyes. Without second-guessing herself this time, she finally squeezed against him.

“We've been through the same suffering, Franck, and we've both kept running, each on our own. But today we're running together. That's the most important thing.”

She moved slightly away. Sharko gathered on his fingertip the tear she couldn't help shedding and looked carefully at that little diamond of water and salt. He took a deep breath, then blurted out simply:

“I know what Eva was looking for in Brazil, Lucie . . . I understood the moment I saw that film.”

Lucie stared at him in surprise.

“But why didn't you . . . ?”

“Because I'm afraid! I'm afraid of what's waiting for us at the end of this road, do you understand?”

He turned away from her and walked as close as he could to the edge of the embankment, as if he were about to jump in. He stared at the opposite side for a long time, in silence. Then, with a painful breath, he said:

“And yet . . . out there is where your spirit is pushing you. So that you'll finally know.”

He pulled out his cell phone and punched in a number. At the other end, someone picked up. Sharko cleared his throat before talking:

“Clémentine Jaspar? Inspector Franck Sharko here. I know it's late, but you said I could call at any time, and I need to talk to you.”