Bred to Kill by Franck Thilliez

brain where the optic nerves cross. Neurologists have already come across problems like hemianopsia, where the patient sees only half an image, for instance, but never anything like this.”
    â€œDid they do an autopsy?”
    â€œI’m sorry to say they didn’t. There was no question about the suicide. And you know, the rules are a bit different in prison. Carnot had been sentenced to thirty years, twenty-five of them in solitary. He didn’t exist anymore. And his adoptive parents . . . they didn’t request an investigation.”
    He took a sheet of paper and sketched a diagram.
    â€œThe eye functions like a lens. The image of the outside world as it hits the retina is upside down. Then it’s the brain, in particular the visual cortex, that turns it right side up, in the direction of gravity. It’s quite possible that Carnot’s brain presented a real neurological dysfunction in that regard, which would have begun imperceptibly a little more than a year ago.”
    â€œSo before he kidnapped my children.”
    â€œIndeed. He claimed he’d already made upside-down drawings on paper before he committed his acts. But as you know, a sheet of paper can be turned in any direction, so it’s hard to say if he was telling the truth. The fact remains that his headaches were growing worse exponentially over the past weeks.”
    â€œAnd could the . . . the fact that these images were upside down, could that somehow have been related to his acts of violence? His brutality?”
    Duvette seemed to be weighing every word.
    â€œYou know as much about Carnot’s past as I do, I imagine. Loving adoptive parents, both Catholic. A childhood as normal as any other kid’s. Mediocre student but generally well behaved. No psychiatric history, not many fights. In any case, given his size, no one bothered him much. At thirteen, he was already five foot eleven, a real force of nature. As his birth records are sealed, I wasn’t able to check his biological family’s medical history. That’s the only gap in the file. All we know is that Carnot was lactose intolerant: he couldn’t drink a drop of milk without experiencing intense vomiting and diarrhea. Often other inmates would slip a bit of milk into his food, just for the fun of seeing him suffer.”
    â€œHis suffering is the least of my concerns.”
    Lucie couldn’t unwind. Her hands kneaded her thighs. Surely because of this prison, the atmosphere of madness and death floating over everything. She, too, had checked the past of the man who had killed her daughter. Born in Reims on January 4, 1987, and given up for adoption; taken in by a local couple, devoutly religious, around thirty years old at the time, who had later moved to the Poitou region because of a job transfer. When he was old enough, Carnot had taken a job in a factory in Poitiers that made ice cream cartons. A regular guy, always on time for work, everybody liked him. Until he committed his atrocity.
    Lucie returned to the present, biting the insides of her cheeks. Every time she thought about the killer’s squeaky-clean past, she flew into a rage. She did not want Carnot’s responsibility for his crimes to be reduced in any way. Even dead, she wanted him to bear the weight of his actions, to carry it with him to the shores of hell.
    â€œEven individuals with the nicest childhoods can become sick perverts,” she said sharply. “We’ve seen that enough times. You don’t need any anomalies in the brain or family history. You don’t need to have tortured little furry animals when you were young. Some of those murderers were ideal neighbors, the picture of innocence.”
    â€œI’m well aware of that. But given the situation, I can only tell you what I know. Carnot had episodes of extreme aggressiveness, as well as visual disturbances and loss of balance, accompanied by severe head pain. Recently