Bones of Paris (9780345531773) by Laurie R. King Page A

photo on the table. “I’d planned on returning it to its frame tomorrow, when I go back.”
    The detective picked it up by the corner. “Man Ray’s work.”
    “You know him?”
    “My district includes Montparnasse, Monsieur. I know all the troublemakers.”
    “What kind of trouble does he make?”
    “None that I know of. But M. Ray moves among the radical outskirts of the artist community. Surrealists live to shock. They are infatuated with crime, the more bizarre and offensive, the better. Dismembered bodies, toilet humor, perverted sex. They have made a hero of the Marquis de Sade—as if the abuse of servants and the poor is a noble calling.”
    “Lots of people find the idea of murder entertaining,” Stuyvesant commented. “Hell, they’ll even put down good money for it, and the more outrageous, the better. The guy who writes those Fantômas stories must be making a fortune, and those’ll raise a man’s hair.”
    “Which is why we do not arrest M. Ray and his Surrealist friends. However, we do keep an eye on their activities. Because sooner or later, I believe one of them will decide to make the fantasy real.”
    Stuyvesant eyed the cop: hadn’t they got a little off-track, here? “What’s that got to do with Pip Crosby?”
    The shells had grown empty, the glass also; before Doucet could respond, the waiter came to clear the table and bring them coffee. When he had gone, Doucet accepted a cigarette, and a light. He twirled the burning end against the tin tray. “Do you know the name Henri Landru, Monsieur?”
    Stuyvesant’s jerk scattered sugar over the table. “Hey, you’re not suggesting …? Jesus, just because she’s moving with a fast crowd doesn’t mean someone has slit her throat.”
    “So you know the name.”
    “Sure. You guys sent him to the guillotine six or seven years ago for murdering a bunch of women.”
    “Ten women and the seventeen-year-old son of his first victim. Landru was a—how do you say?—‘most unprepossessing’ figure, who took advantage of the state of widows during the War. He wooed them, stole what he could from them, and disposed of their bodies in his kitchen stove. A cold-blooded monster of a man. I worked on the investigation, soon after I was demobilized. Nothing was found of his victims but fragments of bone and the buttons and hooks of their clothing. I attended his trial. The Surrealists made it a cause célèbre, sitting in the court and reveling in every word, making Landru a hero of the unprivileged. I came away from the trial determined that no man would again get away with killing a series of women. Comprenez?”
    “I understand.” Stuyvesant was glad he hadn’t gorged on the oysters: this rapid escalation from drug parties to bodies in a furnace was making him queasy.
    “I am not suggesting this is the fate of your young friend, Monsieur.”
    “I’m really glad to hear that.”
    “What I am saying is that I have become a believer in the small details of an investigation, and in patterns. Whether a man intends to kill a woman or to take possession of her through the use of drugs, there is a system to his behavior. An interest in those patterns is a large reason why I work in the department of missing persons, that I might be the first to see the traces of a monster.
    “Monsieur, a predatory man does not in general snatch his victim off the street. You know this. It is the reason you have been asking in the bars. Once a girl has begun to flirt with that type of person, she is vulnerable.”
    “Do you have any reason to believe—”
    “No. I have seen no such pattern. I have found a marginally higher number of unsolved cases than in previous years, but there can be many explanations for that.”
    “But if there is a pattern, you think … what? It has to do with Surrealism?”
    “Monsieur, men kill for many reasons. Anger, fear, even pleasure. I believe that sooner or later, some … creature who thinks himself an artist will step