Adele raised a hand while he spoke, waiting for him to finish. He noticed this, and nodded for her to speak.
“How long between the murders?” she said.
The executive replied without hesitation. “Three days. The killer is quick. It’s worth noting there’s no physical evidence at the scene.”
Adele shifted in her seat, realizing this chair didn’t make as much noise as the one back in her kitchen. “What do you mean?”
“I mean there’s no physical evidence.”
“None?”
Foucault’s frown deepened, his bushy eyebrows pressing together. “None at all. No fingerprints, no traces of hair or saliva. No sexual assault that we could find. The cuts alone, according to the coroner’s initial report, were strange. Whoever did this slit their necks, but did so without a quavering hand—a practiced motion.”
“And what does that mean?” Adele asked.
“If I may,” said Agent Grant, speaking for the first time from behind her standing desk, “cuts and slicing wounds carry a sort of signature. Whether the attack was left-handed, or how strong they were, or how tall…”
Foucault nodded with each passing word and cleared his throat. “Exactly. But these particular attacks were done by someone without much signature at all. There’s no physical evidence. No sign of a struggle. No forced entry. Nothing suggesting any foul play, except, of course, two corpses in downtown Paris.”
“Well,” said Ms. Jayne, peering through the screen now. Her eyes seemed to have readjusted for a moment, now fixating firmly on Adele. “Are you ready for your flight?”
Adele flicked her eyes to Agent Grant and raised her eyebrows.
Grant hesitated. “You sure you don’t want to spend another couple of weeks with Agent Masse?” she said, her tone betraying no emotion whatsoever.
Adele scowled.
Grant’s eyes twinkled in a morbid sort of humor. “I’ll take that as a no. Already signed for your leave and reassigned Masse. You’re good to go.”
Adele tried to suppress the sudden jolt of emotion—she was a professional, after all—but as she pushed from her chair, she couldn’t help but feel excitement at the thought of returning to France.
“Is there anything else I should know?” she asked, glancing at Foucault.
“I’ll send you the reports,” he said with a shrug. “But they’re short. As I told you, not much evidence. There is one thing. A strange detail, but certainly important…”
“What?”
“The first victim’s kidney was missing.”
A strange silence fell over the room for a moment, and the two crackling screens and the two agents in the San Francisco office waited, all of them frowning.
“Her kidney?” said Adele.
“Just so,” said Foucault.
“Is the killer taking trophies?”
The executive shrugged, his thick brow narrowing over his sharp nose. “Well, that’s what you’re here for, isn’t it? You provide the answers. It’s my job to provide the questions. I’m told Ms. Jayne has already purchased your ticket. First class. Your flight departs within the hour.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Adele frowned at her laptop, leaning back in the first-class seat provided to her by Interpol. The plane shuddered as it cut through the sky, but Adele had closed the adjacent blind, allowing the glow from the computer screen to illuminate the cramped portion of airplane cabin.
She found herself twisting the strap to her laptop bag nervously where it rested in the empty seat next to her, surveying the information on the screen again. Once she read a case file, she rarely forgot the details.
She settled in, leaning against the curving white wall of plastic, her eyes flicking from paragraph to photo.
Two dead so far. Three days apart. A rapid pace, even for a serial killer. No physical evidence of any sort. A missing kidney in the first victim and a pending coroner’s report for the second. Would she also be missing a kidney?
Young women, both. Expats—Americans now living in France. Recent arrivals, too. Both killed so quickly they hadn’t even reacted. That was the only explanation for the clean nature of the cuts. No jagged slices, no signs of a struggle. One moment, the young women had been alive, in their own apartments, the next, seemingly as if by a ghost, they had been snuffed out.
Adele doubted the women had even seen it coming. Not much to go on—not yet anyway. Still, she kept the window blind low, listening to the churn of the engines as they hurtled through the air. Her eyes narrowed as she scanned the case file again and again… and again.
***
She’d been able to connect to the Charles De Gaulle Airport Wi-Fi, and her eyebrows twisted down as she looked at the most recent message from Robert Henry, her old mentor and friend. It said: Sorry, dear, I won’t be picking you up. They sent another agent. Then he’d included a series of emojis and smiley faces.
She paused, then typed: No problem. I’ll see you at the office. Who did they send?
No response. Adele shook her head as she exited the walkway and entered the main terminal, greeted by the odor of overpriced coffee and stale pastries from the airport restaurants. Her eyes flicked along a series of shops; one for curio items, and another a bookstore. Adele pushed her phone back into her pocket, moving quickly through the airport toward baggage claim. Last time, she’d been paired with John—likely it would happen again. But they’d left things awkward after the last visit. While she and Robert had messaged each other every few days in the month since she’d been in France, John hadn’t reached out once.
Neither did you, a small voice reminded her.
But she pushed it away with a slight shrug. She reached the baggage claim and watched as the luggage circled the metal slatted conveyor belt; she waited patiently, but still never fully managed to shake the anticipation clotting her chest.
At last, she managed to retrieve her bag, waiting for a space to clear around the claim.
She found herself brushing her hair behind her ears and straightening her outfit even while she approached customs and waited for the border agent to survey her special detail passport and papers. Get a grip, she thought scathingly. Why was she so concerned about her appearance all of a sudden? John or not, why did it matter? Adele was taller than most woman, but not unusually so—her long, dirty-blonde hair framed features that hinted of her French-American heritage. Exotic, some said. A single mole stippled the top of her lip, a source of insecurity as a teenager, but no longer.
Adele thought of the last night she’d seen John, swimming in Robert’s private pool on his estate. The way John had been at the start of the evening, followed by how he’d behaved toward the end. He had tried to kiss her, hadn’t he? Had she misinterpreted the gesture? Whatever the case, when she’d pulled back, he’d been offended. He’d left shortly after.
In defiance to her burbling emotions, Adele messed her hair, intentionally disheveling her bangs. Then, setting her jaw, she wheeled her suitcase through customs and out into the receiving area of the airport.
Her eyes scanned the crowd, looking for the tall, lanky form of her previous French partner. But as her gaze looked over the waiting crowd, there was no sign of John. Her smile—which she hadn’t realized was displayed—became rather fixed as her gaze settled on a suited woman standing against the tinted glass of the window facing the streets outside the airport.