“So I go into the house, through the tape and everything. With the plastic boots on because I needed, really needed, to see. But Tom, there were only pieces left. There wasn’t a whole person. It was disgusting and it smelled terrible by then. And I was walking through it, getting my feet bloody, messing up the scene; at that point I was beyond caring or knowing. Because I was confused. There were too many arms, too many legs, too many pieces. I didn’t get it, didn’t understand. All of the limbs and pieces had been piled onto the living room carpet, a Persian carpet. Which I remembered well, because I was there when Clotilde bought it.” She looked at me again. “But then I realized and understood that it wasn’t just Alain piled up there, but the whole family. Clotilde, little Anne, Benny, and the chief. Together.” Nazari stared out the front of the car into the nothingness. She blinked, as if she’d forgotten anything that had happened before the call. “I’m sorry I had to leave you, it was an emergency. A cop thing.”

“I understand completely. The phone was off, I had the battery out. You did what you could to alert me.”

Nazari lowered her chin and put her hands over her eyes. She leaned against the steering wheel. I put a hand on the back of her neck, to comfort her. Then she suddenly swept her hair back with two hands, fingers raking the wayward curls. She tied it all together with a hairband from her wrist. She looked at me hard. “They were murdered with an axe. All of them mixed up and lying there in pieces on the floor.” She stared out at the darkness through the windshield, shaking her head. “We’ve got to get this bastard and make him pay.” She looked at me. “Make him pay, Keeler, make him pay.”

I said, “An axe killing, like Benoit Houdin.”

“An axe, or multiple. Unclear at the moment. Yes. The same signature as the Houdin family. Whoever did that is back, never went away in fact.”

“Why do they think it’s an axe?”

“Force of the blows. Trauma of entry wounds. Secondary marks on the walls and furniture. Dents and cleave marks that conform to the shape and size of an axe blade.”

“The follow through, from the blows.”

“Correct. The murderer strapped them to the dining room table and hacked their limbs. One by one. While the other family members must have been watching. I can’t imagine what that was like.”

“Strapped how?”

“The kind of strap you use to tie things down to a car roof rack. That’s the preliminary opinion, based upon marks found on the body parts. The kind of straps that you tighten with a ratchet.”

I nodded. “Ratchet straps. I imagine they would have been incapacitated first, before being tied down. Particularly a strong guy like Rigalle.”