Murder in Pigalle (10 page)

But now she had to rush home. She felt like she flew through the quiet streets, the bright waves of colorful music in her head lifting her like wings. Everyone was at home glued to the
télé
or crowding the bars to watch the World Cup quarterfinals. Not her papa. Tonight, as every night, he worked at l’Opéra as a stagehand. He would be home after the ballet performance and stage-set adjustment.

Dinner … that’s right, she’d almost forgotten. So much had filled her with color tonight. After the lesson running so late and the excitement, she mustn’t forget to stop at the corner Arab shop. Scramble up dinner for them,
comme toujours.
And spring her good news.

A few blocks away, the sky opened. Dark blue then a wash
of pewter. Stupid—she’d forgotten her umbrella. Just like that, a torrential downpour flooded the hot pavement. Nelié took refuge in a doorway. She couldn’t let her violin case get wet. But the Opéra’s employee lodging, where they’d lived as long as she could remember, was several blocks away.

Footsteps splattered behind her. A figure darted into a doorway.

Suddenly uneasy, she pulled the messenger bag over her violin case and made a run for it.

The footsteps started again, splashing behind her in the puddles on the dark, deserted street. The silver pings of raindrops on the dark cobbles and the splashing pewter footsteps blended into a charcoal haze. She grew increasingly aware of a metallic-hued vapor, fought panic as she realized the footsteps stopped when she did to seek shelters in doorways.

Her heart jumped. That’s when she knew she was being followed. The figure from the courtyard. He was following her.

B
ACK AT THE
Leduc Detective office, Aimée tacked up the Brigade des Mineurs reports René had downloaded from her camera, blown up and printed. Disappointed, she noted the preliminary and cursory details of the crime scene. Sketchy at best.

The first twenty-four hours meant everything in an investigation. Just this afternoon Zazie had stood in this office, only hours before her friend had been raped and murdered. Aimée glanced at the time. Nine hours and counting.

She switched on the green glass desk lamp, which sent an oval of light over Zazie’s scribbled notes. Seething with frustration, she took a gulp of Badoit, hoping the carbonation would quell her rising nausea. “Why don’t they have more information on the other rape victims?”

“Kind of obvious the
flics
didn’t connect the cases,” René said from his ergonomic chair. “They didn’t see the pattern. Your tax francs at work.”

He’d enlarged and printed a map of the ninth arrondissement, highlighted the
lycées
and
collèges
in blue.

“Nice work, René.”

She X’d the Olivets’ cheese shop on rue de Rochechouart, the Vasseurs’ home on rue Ballu. Studied Madame Pelletier’s reports again. “Score one for the Brigade, who pinged Zazie’s cell phone. We’ve got a location.”

René rolled up his sleeves, determination in his green eyes.
“I think the Wallace fountain photo was taken overlooking Place Gustave Toudouze.” He pointed to her map. “Here.”

“That’s where the call to Zazie came from. It was … hold on.” She consulted the phone log. “One thirty.” Her heart skipped. “That was when she was right here, talking to me. The little minx knew all the time.”

“Knew that her friend Sylvaine would be attacked?”

Tired, Aimée rubbed her eyes. Her fingers came back covered with mascara clumps. She must look a sweaty mess.

“That she’d keep investigating, René,” she said. “Even though she promised to wait until this evening and talk with me. She was hiding something even then.” She passed him the police report. “From this we know Madame de Langlet gave violin lessons to Sylvaine as well as Mélanie. That’s the connection.”

“Even so, we don’t know if these two other girls were Madame de Langlet’s pupils.”

“True. We’ll follow up with her tomorrow,” said Aimée. “Meanwhile, let’s prioritize.”

“Figuring out his profile—that’s key.”

Profile? René read too many true-crime books.

“Okay, René, let’s put things together,” she said. “Say he’s a music aficionado or a musician picking girls because he’s fixated on their talent. The rapes take place in the
quartier
and stretch back six months—he’s local, knows the girls’ movements, the families’ schedules. And he’s free in the evenings.”

René pulled his goatee. “Aimée, these attacks concern power. Power over a child, the only person he can dominate.”

Let René psychoanalyze. “
Bon
 … but that doesn’t rule many people out. What else do we know about him, specifically?”

“We know he tapes and binds them,” said René. “Calls the shots. He needs to be in control. He probably attacks little girls because it’s the only time he feels he is.”

“But what does that have to do with music, René?”

“What if their talent threatens him?” said René. “Forget him being a connoisseur—he hears them play and feels inadequate. Resents such talented young prodigies. Say one rebuffed him. He sees them as little snobs needing to be taken down a notch. Only a twelve-year-old satisfies him. That’s key.”

She nodded. René’s profile sounded all too believable. But without any suspects, she had no one to apply it to.

Make a timeline, that’s what her father used to do. She remembered those charts in his office at the Commissariat.

“The first thing we have to do is use what we know to track her movements,” she said.

On the map below, she wrote in
Leduc Detective, 1:30 P.M.

“When I got to the café at about seven, Virginie said Zazie was already almost an hour late.” Below that on the map, Aimée wrote
Due home 6 P.M.
“Figure Sylvaine’s father discovered her close to seven, since the ambulance arrived when I did.”

“What about Zazie’s phone?” René loosened his tie.

“Her uncle’s phone.” She checked the police report. “Discovered by the driver on the number sixty-seven bus a few hours ago, according to this. The number sixty-seven stops out front on rue du Louvre.”

René nodded and drew a red line of the bus route on his map of the ninth. “So we have her going toward Pigalle. The bus stops at rue de Navarin—that’s above Place Gustave Toudouze, where we pinpointed the call. And where there is a Wallace fountain that matches her picture.”

She pulled out her bus map. “Rue de Navarin’s more than midway to Pigalle,” she said. “Zazie could have gone a block down to Place Gustave Toudouze, where the call came from and where she’d taken this picture, or two blocks in the other direction, to Sylvaine’s on rue de Rochechouart.”

“Her photo of men in this square is all we’ve got right now. Think, Aimée.”

She sat up. “That’s right. Zazie said she’d borrow her friend’s
camera again. What if her friend lived there? We have to talk to Virginie.”

“Hasn’t Virginie already called all Zazie’s friends, talked to the parents? No one saw Zazie.” René had checked in with a distraught Virginie in the café while Aimée sat in the Commissariat.

“What if Virginie overlooked someone? Look at this call log from the police report. Here’s the number that called Zazie at one thirty.”

“If Zazie kept secrets from you, she’d keep them from her mother,
non
?”

She tried the number. Out of service.

Her shoulders knotted. Teenager or not, the Zazie Aimée knew would have called home by now. Aimée could only imagine the worst. But to keep the horrific thoughts at bay she had to keep moving.

“Any other ideas, René?”

R
UE DU
L
OUVRE
’
S
streetlamps blurred pale vanilla over the glistening black pavement. The freshness in the air after the thunderstorms eased the headache building in her temple. But it did nothing to ease her mind.

In the café she and René sat across from Virginie. Pierre stood behind the counter serving late-night customers with his cell phone to his ear.

“See, Aimée?” Virginie said. “I listed everyone. René faxed the list to the
flics.
They’ll follow up in the morning.”

Virginie kept rubbing a towel over the spotted marble-topped table, her eyelids red-rimmed and her gaze distracted.

“That didn’t stop me from calling every single parent myself,
mais non.
”

Aimée looked at the checkmarks Virginie had made next to all the names but two. “What about those two girls?”

“Didn’t answer but I left their parents messages.”

“That’s good, Virginie.”

But who wasn’t on the list? Who did Zazie hide from Virginie?

“Can you think of a friend with this cell number who lives near Place Gustave Toudouze?”

Virginie stared, then shook her head.

“What about your husband?”

While Virginie showed Pierre, Aimée checked her own phone. No message from Morbier. Uneasy, she rang his number. Disconnected. She didn’t know what to make of it. She had to put Morbier out of her mind. Concentrate on Zazie. “Morbier’s phone’s disconnected, René.”

“Haven’t you’ve got another connection in Vice?” René said. “You know people,
n’est-ce pas
?”

She racked her brains. A lot of them had retired. But apart from Morbier, she knew someone who would know someone. Suzanne, Melac’s team member, formerly in Vice. Transferred to his elite unit that was so hush-hush he couldn’t tell her what he did.

Virginie sat down, gripping her dishrag. “Pierre’s on the phone with the
flics
again. He can’t file a missing persons report until tomorrow.”

Aimée reached out and held Virginie’s damp fingers. “But they put out an alert for her as a potential witness, Virginie,” she said.

“Thanks to you, I know that.” She squeezed Aimée’s hand.

“When did you last see Zazie?”

“She made herself a coppa tartine, then stood at the bus stop outside. I watched her until the bus came—like usual …” Virginie’s lip quivered. “Say two
P
.
M
.”

“
Bon
, she’d come to my office just before and mentioned her friend who had a camera. Any idea who that could be on your list?”

“Camera?”

“High-end with a fancy telescopic lens?” René said.

“I’m trying to think. Besides her school report, that research she had to do for it, all she talked about was Mélanie.”

“Was she still in contact with her old friends from
l’école maternelle
?” said René.

“I wrote down everyone I could think of.”

“But she was friends with Mélanie and Sylvaine, who were both attacked,” said Aimée. Coincidence? “If Zazie didn’t take violin lessons … did she know them from some club at school?”

Virginie gave a quick nod. “
Tout à fait.
The girls worked together on a
quartier
-wide science-fair project in spring. Became friends. But look at my list, Aimée, I spoke to all the parents except those two.”

Aimée thought back. Tried another angle.

“Didn’t Pierre ground Zazie about a month ago after she stayed out late with a friend?”

“That girl’s out of the picture,” Pierre said, joining them. “That actress’s daughter. Screwed-up family.”

“You’re sure?”

“Screwed up as in a father in prison, mother’s a druggie actress with a younger live-in lover,” said Pierre. “A younger lover with a title, according to
Le Parisien
the other day.”

René shot her a look.

“But I called them already. The housekeeper hadn’t seen Zazie.”

René nudged her under the marble-topped table.

“Have her address, Pierre?” asked Aimée.

“Somewhere on rue Chaptal. I wrote it down, think it’s in the back.”

She had to pee. Again. “While you look, Pierre, I’ll hit the WC.”

She’d forgotten about the old, cracked Turkish squat toilet. Each day it got harder to bend down. She pulled the chain and stepped back before the water gushed over her peep-toes.
Research … Zazie’s words about research kept coming back to her.

“Found it, Pierre?”

But he’d gone out front to serve a customer. Aimée scanned the kitchen counter, sink at one end and cluttered paperwork space on the other. Virginie tabulated their accounts and Zazie did homework here. There was Zazie’s report, labeled “Madame Toullier: Resistance Agent in Corrèze.”

Why hadn’t she taken that report to Sylvaine’s? Feeling naïve, Aimée realized Zazie had had no intention of studying. How could she have been so stupid?

Aimée riffled through the papers for more. She found a postcard for Le Bus Palladium. She and Martine had clubbed there in the ’80s.

A worn, leather-bound book,
Resistance and Espionage in 1942.
Colored Post-its on different chapters highlighting dead letter boxes, invisible ink, surveillance techniques, evasion, chalk markings.

For her class project?

Aimée shook the book and a paper came out. Written in Zazie’s hand she saw:

Zazie had some plan and a backup for when it failed. But what it could be Aimée had no clue.

“May I borrow this tonight?” she asked Virginie. She’d picked up Zazie’s report, the book.

Virginie nodded.

R
ENÉ HAD THE
Citroën idling in front of Leduc Detective. Thunder rumbled. She ran to the passenger door and climbed in before the rain started.

“Pierre gave me that bad girl’s address on rue Chaptal,” he
said. His wipers slashed the fat raindrops pelting the windshield. “But first I’m taking you home. Got to think of the baby, Aimée.”

“As if I don’t?” she said. But she had little energy to argue. Her time would be better spent going over Zazie’s report and rereading her notes. “You’re okay, René?” Although he never let on that he was suffering, she knew dampness and rising air pressure aggravated his hip dysplasia, common in dwarves his size.

“I can handle this. Tomorrow we’ll see how creative Saj got on the taxes.”

She rubbed her stomach and felt an answering flutter. “It moved, René.”

René’s face broke into a smile. “
Voilà
, the Bump has spoken. It wants to go home.”