The Paris Murders - 4 ª Season

A beautiful woman in her forties is found dead at the back of a jazz club, where she had been singing for the last few weeks. The club manager only knows her stage name: Julie Garland. A magnificent voice and incredible talent who apparently had no career ambition at all. The only thing that seemed to matter to her was her pianist, a young genius with wild ways who has gone missing since the singer's death. In their search to find the victim's true identity, Chloe and Rocher discover that "Julie Garland" had been singing all over France for the last ten years, always gigs in small venues, and never more than a month in the same city. She had been accompanied on the piano by her shady young genius for the past two years. Could it have been a fusional relationship that ended in murder? What sort of danger could have forced this woman with such a pure voice to run away and wander about for so long?

A crazy sniper terrorizes all of Paris by opening fire on crowds. The city is on red alert. After two murderous gunnings, Chloe and Rocher succeed in identifying the killer: Adrien Fontel, a former military agent of the Special Forces destroyed by what he lived through in Afghanistan. Chloe diagnoses him as suffering from Capgras Syndrome, a psychiatric condition in which the patient believes that people around him are gradually being replaced by villainous doubles preparing to enact evil plans. Convinced he is on a mission to fight these invaders, Fontel kidnaps his own daughter, thinking he is protecting her. With the help of Colonel Amelie Davout, Chloe succeeds in identifying the root of evil beneath his paranoia, and is able to predict the next attack. Operation arrest: high tension.

The lifeless body of Antoine Garrel is found on display in a shop window in the neighborhood, hands and feet bound, with a gagged mouth. A psychologist specialized in couple therapy, he had no lack of enemies among his clientele of cheating husbands and crabby wives. Among his patients, one couple had just suddenly stopped therapy - and with good reason. Showing up a bit early for their session, they found Garrel in his office, in an compromising situation with his mistress. An affair the dead therapist's wife knew nothing about. While her team works to identify this woman, Chloe asks Hyppolite to look into the crime methods of the murder and discovers two other men had been assassinated under similar circumstances in Belgium. To the amazement of all, the investigators find evidence that the serial killer is none other than a woman suffering from postpartum depression; but Chloe has a hard time subscribing to that theory.

Chloe makes a guest appearance on a series of late-night radio shows about psychology in daily life. Among the callers, on a range between eccentric and totally nuts, is one woman who introduces herself as Caroline; in a trembling voice, she explains that she is afraid of her husband, who is becoming more and more violent. As Chloe encourages her to go to the police and talk to social services, we suddenly hear a man's voice behind her. Caroline screams and lets the telephone fall. We hear the noise of blows and screams, then silence. The media seize this live public crime and brandish it as a flag symbolic of the fight against domestic violence. Chloe convinces the Attorney General to open up an investigation, and the team scrambles to make best use of the scant evidence they have to find Caroline, hoping she is still alive. But when a series of strange roadblocks stunt the investigation, they can't help but ask themselves the uncomfortable question: does this woman really exist?

Tension is at an all-time high on Skela and Chloe's team. Two kids named Quentin (10 years) and Manon (5 years) have disappeared from their parents' hotel room. Claire and Bastien Laffont, on vacation with their children in Paris, had left them unsupervised in the room for a few hours, to go out for a romantic lunch together. The kidnapping alert is sent out with urgency, especially considering that sleeping pills for children are found in the room of another client of the hotel who had checked in under a false identity and left in great haste at the time when the kids disappeared. Could it have been a premeditated capture for a pedophilia ring of human trafficking? Though that hypothesis remains credible, Chloe tries to find out more about the parents' habits; for statistics show that in this type of case, the parents themselves are often linked to the crime. And, in fact, the Laffonts have lied. Their supposed romantic lunch was actually a consultation for Bastien with one of the best addictologists in Paris. A drug dependency that led to debts for which their children have paid the price? A pathology likely to have put their children in harm's way? Is Bastien the only one in the relationship who has unmentionable secrets to hide?