Mr. Ballin

Around 11 a.m.

on July 17th, so three and a half weeks after Patrick Izoard disappeared, Detective Boris Ferriere parked along the shoulder of a winding roadside in the French town of Sète.

He got out of his car, he stooped beneath a strip of yellow police tape, and he headed across the long strip of dry grass leading up to a sheer cliff wall.

A dozen yards ahead of him, barely visible in the rock face, was the dark, round opening of a cave.

A few hours earlier, a group of teenagers had shown up at the police station, seeming very frazzled, saying they had found a human body inside of that cave.

And as soon as Verriere had heard about this, he had rushed to the scene because the cave was less than a half a mile away from where Patrick's scooter had been abandoned.

And so now, Verriere turned on his flashlight and he stepped into the cave.

And as soon as he did, a forensics team fell into step right behind him.

And together, they began making their way into the darkness.

Thanks to his flashlight, Verriere could see that the walls were covered in graffiti and that there were empty bottles and other garbage everywhere.

So it seemed like this was probably a popular party spot for young people.

As they moved deeper, the cave split off into a maze of all these different narrow tunnels.

And just as Verrier was about to direct his team to spread out and begin searching all of them, he passed by one of these tunnels that absolutely reeked.

And so Verrier stopped what he was doing and just aimed his flashlight down this particular tunnel.

And he saw there was a shallow pit dug into the floor.

And lying at the bottom of this pit was what looked like a ragged lump of black fabric.

until Verrier stepped closer.

The smell was overpowering now, and Verrier knew he was standing over the charred remains of a human body.

Verrier bent down to examine it, and he saw right away there was what appeared to be a bullet hole in the skull and a bullet hole to the torso.

And those details, one to the head, one to the stomach, and then, you know, the body being burnt afterwards, likely to get rid of evidence, felt very familiar to Verrier.