Bred to Kill Read Online Free PDF

reason. Eva Louts had probably just been careless; maybe she’d approached Shery at the wrong moment. One thing was sure: the future of this poor animal with its wide-set ears and sweet face didn’t look good.
    â€œYou’re practically the same age as a woman I loved, you realize that? Never too late to blow a fuse, I guess. Why don’t you just tell us what happened?”
    Jaspar returned with an object that looked oddly like a paint gun. Sharko stood up and glanced at the ceiling.
    â€œI see surveillance cams all over the place. Have you thought of . . .”
    â€œNo use. Eva was supposed to turn on the alarm system and put on the lights when she went out.”
    With a sigh, the director aimed her weapon at the monkey.
    â€œForgive me, my angel . . .”
    At that moment, Shery turned around and looked the woman in the eye. With clenched fists on the ground, she walked limply up to the front of the cage. Jaspar’s finger trembled on the trigger.
    â€œI’m sorry, I just can’t.”
    Sharko took the weapon from her.
    â€œLet go. I’ll do it.”
    Gripping the bars, the chimpanzee straightened up a bit more, put its hands together, palms outward, then brought them to its throat, moving slightly backward. Just as Sharko was aiming the gun at the animal, Jaspar blocked his arm.
    â€œWait! She’s talking.”
    Shery made other signs: hands on either side of her head, waving them palms downward, like a ghost trying to frighten children. Then her right hand on her lips, before dropping it sharply toward the ground. She repeated this series of gestures three or four times, then approached Eva’s body and gently caressed her shredded cheek. It seemed to Sharko he’d never seen so much emotion in a living creature’s eyes.
    â€œWhat’s she saying?”
    â€œShe keeps repeating the same thing: ‘Fear, monster, wicked . . . fear, monster, wicked . . .’”
    Jaspar regained hope.
    â€œI told you, Shery is innocent. Someone came here. Someone else hurt Eva.”
    â€œAsk Shery if she knows this ‘wicked monster.’”
    With her hands and lips, the woman executed a series of signs that the chimpanzee watched attentively.
    â€œHer vocabulary contains more than four hundred fifty words. She’ll understand, as long as we express ourselves clearly.”
    After a moment, Shery shook her head no. Sharko couldn’t get over it: the woman standing next to him was talking with a chimp, our great cousin on the evolutionary scale.
    â€œAsk her why the monster came here.”
    More signs, to which Shery responded. Index and ring fingers of the right hand forming a V, rapidly crossed by the wide-open left. Then a sharp movement of the arm toward the corpse.
    â€œâ€˜Kill. Kill Eva.’”
    Sharko rubbed his chin, skeptical and stupefied.
    â€œIn your opinion, what does ‘monster’ mean to her?”
    â€œA violent, destructive creature, intent on causing harm. What’s certain is that it can’t refer to a man, because she would have used the term for that. It’s . . . it’s the part I’m having trouble understanding.”
    â€œCan monkeys make things up or lie?”
    â€œWhen it’s a survival reflex, they might occasionally ‘mislead.’ If a group of monkeys is in mortal combat, the sentinel might give a cry signaling an attack from the sky, just to make the others flee. But if Shery says she saw a monster, she really did see one. Maybe another chimpanzee, larger and more aggressive, that she interpreted as a monster.”
    Sharko no longer knew what to think. Fatigue weighed on him; his mind was bogging down. A monkey, a cage, a body with its face bitten, and even the blunt instrument typical of so many crime stories: it all seemed so simple. Almost too perfect, in fact. But a “monster” might have been here. And in that