To Butterfly: Right on one, not quite on the other. Lynchpin does have a connection to Mind-Wipe, but they aren't working together; if they were, Killer Bee and Gymnaste wouldn't have been searching for Sarah.
"Physically, all of the girls are doing about as well as we have any right to expect under the circumstances," Élodie reported. It was close to lunchtime, and she had been up for nine hours already. One of those hours had been spent just with Sarah Confiant making sure they had every piece of information she could give them. Then after completing all of the interviews – including a second round with about half the girls, and another half-hour with Sarah – she and de Gouges had stopped at the front desk to find that Prefect Raincomprix had finally left the hospital and returned to the office. Officers Wilson and Roux had been in the waiting room, talking with a parent. De Gouges had taken Wilson aside and told him to keep a close eye on Sarah's room – no one in or out without verifying their identity. Once that had been taken care of, Élodie and de Gouges had stopped for egg- and bacon-filled croissants and coffee at a café between the hospital and city hall.
At some point she was going to need to sleep, but standing in Prefect Raincomprix's office with de Gouges, Vernant, and Lieutenant Ramus, she was beyond worrying about sleep.
"No physical or sexual assault, then?" asked Raincomprix.
De Gouges shook her head. "Not that we can confirm," she answered. "They are dehydrated and malnourished. Physical examination showed chafing on their wrists from the chains, but for the majority that was the only physical injury."
Ramus frowned. "'For the majority'… what about the exceptions?"
Élodie frowned. "One of the girls said she tried fighting back – Marie Calment. She had an old bruise on her forearm from where one of them had grabbed her. They put her in a cast – the doctor called it a greenstick fracture."
"The bastard squeezed her arm so hard it broke," interjected de Gouges, folding her arms, a dark look in her eyes.
Vernant shook his head, pursing his lips. "Terrible."
"If I get my hands on him…" de Gouges muttered.
"Easy there, Sergeant," Raincomprix told her. "Not that I disagree. But what's important is the victims' wellbeing – physical and emotional. Physically they are receiving proper care. But what about their emotional state? Do I need to bring in a special counselor to meet with them?"
"Well, all of the girls will need counseling," Élodie answered, nodding. "I don't think that's much of a surprise, considering everything that they've been through. The first one taken had been in that container since September! It's going to take them a long time to work through all of this, even with regular counseling. But I don't think we need to worry about consequences if they talk to a civilian counselor – at least not with the others. They don't know anything compromising about our department, and there's nothing in this… 'Mind-Wipe's' story that won't come out in trial. I would recommend ensuring that their counselor doesn't divulge anything, but they're not supposed to talk about patients anyways. But this Sarah Confiant…"
"What's her story?" asked Raincomprix, leaning forward in his chair.
"She was working for Andretti when she was abducted," de Gouges explained, her mouth set in a thin line, swiping through the pages of notes on her tablet. "She gave us the route she normally takes, along with the names of another couple runners that Andretti uses to make deliveries. He had been housing her, along with the other girls, in an apartment building a couple blocks from his own residence."
"What do we know about the other girls?" asked Ramus, brows furrowing in thought.
"Ghosts," de Gouges answered. "We didn't have time to run their names yet, but from her information they were in about the same situation as her: running away from abusive families and living on the streets until Andretti picked them up."
Élodie shook her head, sighing sadly. How this man could manipulate young children and force them into a life for which they weren't prepared, force them to break the law just to survive… "We have to remember that Sarah is still the victim here," she pointed out.
Ramus raised an eyebrow. "She was breaking the law."
Élodie pursed her lips. "She was only trying to stay alive."
"There are legal ways to do something like this," he argued. "If she had come to us, we could have done something about the abuse at home. Then she wouldn't have been on the streets."
"Regardless, she gave us a lot of information," de Gouges interjected. "She's terrified of Andretti, and we promised to protect her. We can't do that if we throw her in prison like a common criminal."
Raincomprix raised his hand to cut them off. "I'm not interested in throwing a sixteen-year-old in prison when she just escaped something like this, even if she was a drug runner," he announced. "Especially when she is cooperating with us. What else did she give you?"
De Gouges consulted her tablet again. "She identified a dozen dealers she has delivered to, as well as another warehouse where they have been processing drug shipments. A couple of the dealers are ones we were already watching for a suspected Lynchpin connection, and another one was arrested by regular police three weeks ago. But this warehouse might be the missing link."
"You mean this might be the facility where Andretti receives the drugs in Paris?" asked Vernant, a thoughtful look in his eyes.
She nodded. "From what she said, she was only brought there once to make a pickup, but there were stacks and stacks of containers with drugs in them, along with a small fleet of panel vans."
Raincomprix nodded slowly. "If this is where he's taking the drugs before sending them to his other warehouses, to be cut, it would be a major coup and a huge break in this case."
"Her information is from before her abduction," de Gouges warned.
"Send me the information," Vernant requested. De Gouges tapped a button. "Even if it is a few months out-of-date, we may still be able to glean something from it. I will work this into the modeling program and see if we can't identify anything more."
Raincomprix nodded to him. "Let me know what you find," he ordered. "But for now do you have anything more on this 'Mind Wipe'?"
"Marius Mallarmé, dubbed 'Mind-Wipe' by Rena Rouge," Vernant began, his brows furrowed in thought. "His ability seems to be tied to a chemical secreted by a new gland I discovered on his wrists. It will require testing to be certain, but this chemical appears to have some effect on the victim's nervous system. I think it hijacks their muscle functions."
"Is this condition permanent?"
He shook his head. "Based on my modeling software and the blood samples I took, it appears to break down relatively quickly."
"The victims all confirmed that he returned to touch them again every few days," Élodie supplied.
"I suspect that was in order to reapply this chemical to them," noted Vernant, nodding contemplatively. "Did they give you any estimate of how often it was?"
De Gouges shrugged. "They were all over the place. Some said daily, others said weekly."
"They were all really confused about the time," Élodie explained. "They could hardly see enough outside light to tell the passage of time in that container. But one of the girls thought he only came with every third meal."
Ramus hummed. "That's possibly a day, maybe every three days depending on how often they fed them."
"With how malnourished they are, they can't have been eating that regularly…" de Gouges observed, her mouth twisting in distaste.
"That is in line with the computer model," Vernant commented. "I recommend keeping all of the victims under observation for a full week, however, to make sure it has worked its way out of their system in its entirety. I will transmit my findings to Turing and recommend that the Heroes of Paris do the same with Anansi."
Élodie let out a breath. "That's good. It would be terrible if this control were a permanent condition."
Ramus nodded slowly. "Can you detect this substance on a person?" he asked Vernant.
Vernant shrugged. "I am running tests right now to determine that. Potentially, with the correct test and a reasonable margin of error, yes."
"Stay on that," Raincomprix instructed him. "And try to track down where this could have come from. Is it a genetic mutation? Is it an implant? Is it a biological modification?"
"I will do what I can," Vernant assured him, "but I am not a miracle worker."
"Do your best," Raincomprix ordered, dismissing him before turning back to Élodie and de Gouges. "Were you able to get anything more on Andretti from this courier?"
Élodie shook her head. "She was still pretty out of it when we left the hospital," she explained. "She might remember something else in a few days, but I didn't want to push her too much. Or any of them, for that matter."
De Gouges cleared her throat. "There was one other thing," she interjected. "She said that when she was brought to the warehouse, Andretti was there for an inspection."
Ramus raised his eyebrows. "When did this happen?"
"She was there when the last shipment of the month arrived."
He nodded. "We can work with that."
Élodie stumbled through the apartment door around two in the afternoon, almost asleep on her feet. She had been awake for over eleven hours, after only a couple hours of sleep that night. The day was hardly over, but she already felt as though she had put in a full day. At least Prefect Raincomprix had given her the rest of the day off, instead of expecting her to work a full shift of dispatch on top of the interviews; as draining as the interviews had been, she didn't know if she had the mental capacity for anything else! Julien glanced up at her as the door shut and set aside his computer, eyes wide in surprise. She stifled a yawn and kicked off her shoes before collapsing onto the couch.
"Everything okay, hon?" he asked, kneeling next to her and placing his hand on hers.
She nodded, covering her mouth and letting out another yawn. "We… sorted it out," she replied, closing her eyes. "The girls are all safe, we made a break in a case… everything's just fine…"
He squeezed her hand gently. "I'm glad."
She yawned. "Me, too."
"So what can I do?"
She shrugged noncommittally. "I could use a nap," she finally answered. "Then? If you can make something for dinner once it's time, that would be amazing."
He nodded and pressed a kiss to her forehead before covering her with a blanket. "As you wish."