Bred to Kill by Franck Thilliez Page B

the police inspector had told him: Eva Louts, found murdered in a primate research center near Paris. The bite mark on her face, the theft of files from her apartment. The fact that she’d requested meetings with violent criminals in different parts of France. Lucie tried to store away as much information as possible, to link various facts. In spite of her, her ex-cop’s brain had started working at top speed, and certain reflexes were already returning.
    â€œWhy? Why did Eva Louts want to meet these criminals?”
    â€œBecause they were all left-handed.”
    He noticed how deeply his answer had troubled the woman, and explained further:
    â€œNot to say that all criminals are left-handed, obviously, just that Louts had chosen only left-handers. And the most violent ones, who had killed under murky circumstances that they themselves usually couldn’t explain.”
    â€œBut . . . but why? What was the point?”
    â€œFor her thesis, I presume. When she came here, she wanted to question Carnot in detail, but he wasn’t really up for it, so I acted as intermediary. She wanted to know if his parents were left-handed. If they had made him use his left or right hand when he was a child. And a bunch of other questions that were only meant to establish statistics and form hypotheses. Did you know that most of the time Carnot was right-handed?”
    â€œI couldn’t care less.”
    â€œHe ate and drew with his right hand, because his adoptive parents had forced him to be a right-hander, from what Louts told me. Since the dawn of time, being left-handed has always been considered a flaw, a curse or a mark of the devil, especially in the Middle Ages. Carnot was a false righty, made to become one by the education his Catholic parents had given him.”
    Lucie was silent a moment, lost in thought.
    â€œAnd yet . . . he stabbed my daughter with his left hand. Sixteen stab wounds and not a trace of hesitation.”
    Duvette stood up and poured them both some coffee in tiny cups. Lucie thought aloud:
    â€œAs if the fact of being left-handed was buried deep within him and had never left.”
    â€œPrecisely. That was the sort of detail that interested Eva Louts. It’s possible that left-handedness is ultimately genetic, and in certain circumstances there’s nothing education can do about it. I think that’s what the student was looking for when she came here.”
    Lucie shook her head, eyes staring into the void.
    â€œNone of that sounds like a reason for her murder.”
    â€œNo, probably not. But there are two more things I can tell you. The first is that Louts wanted very badly to take away photos of Carnot’s face, supposedly to ‘remember him by’ when it came time to write her thesis. I gave her the mug shots from his file—they weren’t restricted. The second thing—and I don’t know if this has anything to do with left-handedness—but when Louts discovered the upside-down drawing on the wall of his cell, her behavior changed. She started asking me tons of questions about the genesis of the drawing. When had Carnot done it? Why? Was there some explanation? The fresco seemed to excite her.”
    â€œDo you know why?”
    â€œI don’t. But from then on, her attitude toward Grégory Carnot changed. After seeing the drawing, she looked at him with a kind of . . . fascination.”
    Lucie shivered. How could anyone be fascinated by such a monster?
    â€œShe left without telling me much, and I never saw her again. Today I learned she’s dead. The whole thing is very strange.”
    Lucie finished her coffee in silence, floored by these revelations. There was nothing more for her to say or do. She asked a few more routine questions, then thanked Duvette and left the prison. Outside, she collapsed onto the seat of her car and fished out the little semiautomatic pistol that she’d stashed in the