Murder in the Latin Quarter (31 page)

Aimée remembered Severat’s damp hair, her dripping raincoat when they met in the ENS lobby not twenty minutes after she’d found Huby’s body. “So you shoved him from the window—”

“I couldn’t have him discovering Benoît’s results.”

“It would raise questions?” Aimée asked. “Eyes might focus on the lab. Or you.”

“I located these tubes myself,” she said as if Aimée hadn’t spoken. Another little sigh. “You know the saying: give a job to a busy person if you want it to get done.”

The muffled honk of a horn came from the back of the building. The lab workers, at last. Aimée hit the light switch, plunging the storeroom into darkness. Aimed for the door and kicked it open. And ran out.

The dim gallery shone in ghost-like light. Dissection instruments and bones littered the long tables. Sprinting forward, her heel caught in a wood slat. And she was falling.

Not now . . . she couldn’t . . . she had to reach the. . . .

She stumbled into the glass-fronted wooden cabinets, knocked down the mounted human skeleton. The cabinet crashed, shattering glass. Yellowed bones cracked and skittered across the floor. She reached to pull herself up, but she was wedged between the fallen cabinet and the wall. A rip-ping sound filled her ears. And then her ankles were grabbed and duct tape wrapped around them, tight.

Dr. Severat shook her head. Shrugged. “Whenever people agree with me, I feel I must be wrong.” Her voice sounded re-moved, vacant. “Oscar Wilde said that, but don’t you agree?”

Aimée had been caught and trussed like a pig. Her hands scrabbled over the floor. Her fingers came back bleeding, grip-ping shards of glass and bone slivers.

“What are you doing? The lab workers—”

“Never enter this area at night,” Dr. Severat interrupted. “Let’s see.” Dr. Severat tapped her finger on her chin, glancing over the long table as if checking out items in a store display. “I think I’ll use these surgical bone-cutting pliers first.” She pointed to a pair of long steel pliers glinting in the light. “I can render you unconscious later.”

“Stop . . . you’re crazy!”

“Shhh!” Dr. Severat knelt, holding the pliers mere centimeters from Aimée’s bound ankles.

So close, she could have spit in her face.

“Don’t move, please. Just cooperate. Otherwise, if I make a jagged cut through tendons, muscles, and bone, the pain will be excruciating.”

“Cooperate?”

Aimée jabbed the pointed glass shards she held straight into Severat’s palm. Severat gasped in pain, her grip loosened, and she fell sideways. Aimée sawed at the duct tape lacing her ankles, frantically trying to break free.

Then hands, sticky with blood, gripped her throat, choking her from behind. She couldn’t breathe.

Summoning her last bit of strength, she dropped the glass pieces and jabbed her elbows back as hard as she could.

Severat sprawled against the lab counter, moaning, clutching her ribs.

Aimée struggled to pull herself up with her ankles bound. She grabbed the wires of Severat’s hearing aid and knotted them around Severat’s wrists. For the moment it would do.

Severat struggled, her eyes wild. “I can’t hear!”

“You’re big on cooperation. Try it,” Aimée said. With the bone pliers she cut through the duct tape around her ankles. She bit her lip as she tore the tape from her skin. Ripping part of Dr. Severat’s apron into strips, she staunched the wound in Severat’s hand, then passed them around Severat’s ankles and tied them across her quivering mouth. That done, Aimée applied a strip to her own fingers to stop their bleeding.

She took the test tube and the cell phone from her pocket.

“What’s the matter with Dr. Severat?” A worker in a blue workcoat stood open-mouthed at the door. The sound of the van’s diesel engine came from outside.

Aimée’s legs shook. Blood trickled from her fingers.

“Didn’t you hear the intercom?”

The man ran to the prone woman. “Dr. Severat’s bleeding.”

“She’s probably broken a rib, maybe two.”

“I don’t understand.” The man’s breath stank of beer. He reached for the wall-mounted phone. “Who are you?”

Her hands shaking, she tried to punch in Morbier’s number on her cell phone. But her fingers didn’t work, her legs buck-led, and the floor kept sliding until it came up to meet her face.

THE QUAI’S STREETLAMPS were reflected by the dark Seine below. A lighted barge passed under the Pont Saint Michel. Aimée blinked, light-headed, as she looked out the ambulance window. The yawning entrance of the Hôtel Dieu’s emergency entrance appeared.

“Park at the elevator. Log this in for me, eh? I’ll take her to the sixth floor, the police medical facility,” said the attendant beside her.

Fluorescent light illuminated the barred windows, the scuffed metal benches, the worn linoleum. Stale air laced with antiseptic filled the long hallway. Like any medical facility, Aimée thought; the police wing was no better.

An hour later, after a medical examination, she sat in the
“dépôt”
by the holding cells. In the “temporary” prison, under-ground, she awaited interrogation, faced with a twenty-four-hour detention period while the magistrate assembled evidence, based on which he’d either charge her or release her.

Two uniformed
flics
had ushered Dr. Severat between them and turned her over to a nun, recognizable by the short blue veil pinned on her head and her blue smock and thick support hose. Since the nineteenth century,
les religeuses
had staffed the women’s section of
“le dépôt.”
Aimée waited a long while before the intake officer, a fortyish woman with short black hair under her blue cap, called her.

“ID?”

Aimée set Severat’s hearing aid down in the revolving glass window.

“Some kind of joke?”

“That’s all I have. My bag was stolen. But if you call Com-missaire Morbier—”

“What’s this?”

“Dr. Severat’s deaf. It’s her hearing aid.”

“I can’t accept personal property before she’s processed,” the officer said.

“She reads lips, but—”

“I’ll request the sign language officer,” she interrupted. “Regulations, Mademoiselle. You’re to proceed to interrogation at Quai des Orfévres.”

A sinking feeling hit Aimée in the pit of her stomach.

“It’s your lucky night,” said the
flic
who escorted her. “We’re taking the shortcut.” The shortcut consisted of a long dank tunnel running under the Tribunal, a private passage reserved for the Préfecture de Police.

After being interrogated and giving a statement, Aimée still sat on a metal bench, waiting. It was an hour before the door of an interrogation room opened and Morbier emerged, rubbing his neck.

“Severat’s pleading that Benoît’s murder was a crime of pas-sion,” he said.

Alarmed, she shook her head. “Three murders—?”

“Steal one egg and you end up robbing the henhouse, eh?” Morbier interrupted. “A unit’s searching her apartment and office and the lab. You left a messy trail, Leduc.”

“I tried to be neat, Morbier,” she said, “but I forgot my gloves.” She stood, glad of the painkillers she’d been given. “Then I can go?”

“I need to question Mireille,” he said once more.

She’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this. She tried to control the shaking of her bandaged hands, couldn’t, and stuck them in her jean pockets.

“Dr. Severat confessed. What more do you need?”

“My Immigration contact is persistent, Leduc.”

“He wants a feather in his cap, right?” she said. “Two traffickers were rounded up at the rue Saint Victor false fire alarm last night. The traffickers kept a nice collection of false passports, papers, the lot. They’re the kind who talk to save their hide. Squeeze them and they’ll give you info on the trafficking ring.”

She couldn’t save the illegals, but she could save Mireille.

“And you’re just telling me now, Leduc?”

“Haven’t had time, Morbier. It’s simple; I’ll explain it. But first may I use the fax in that office?”

“Why?”

“René’s ready to send over the links to Hydrolis’s system,” she said. “Expect some interesting and incriminating reports.”

“You don’t give up, do you?”

“Just read the reports. Then decide.”

Inside the nearest office, she jotted down the number, then punched in René’s line.

“Okay, René. 01 44 76 09 39.” She glanced at the over-flowing ashtray, half-full cup of coffee, and the nameplate on the desk. Roloff. The Commandant who’d headed the inquiry into her father’s police corruption case. For a moment her heart thudded.

“Mark it ‘Attention Commissaire Morbier’ and do a cover sheet,” she said.
“Merci.”

She hung up.

“It won’t work, Leduc.”

She sat in the brown leather swivel chair behind the desk, exhausted.

“What won’t work?”

“Mireille.”

“Morbier, there’s no proof of Mireille’s arrival in France, no stamp on a passport, no entry logged in the Immigration com-puter. She’s not here.” Aimée rubbed her head. “She’ll evaporate. Like smoke. Belgium has room in their quotas for Haitian asylum-seekers. I checked.”

Morbier loosened his tie. “Do you count on help from Edouard Brasseur?”

“A fellow Haitian employed in a large human-rights organization? He’ll find her a job. She’s a trained accountant.”

“That’s your deal, Leduc?”

“It works for everyone, Morbier,” she said. “Think about it.”

Morbier stared at her with a look she couldn’t fathom. Then a grin erupted on his tired face.

“You look at home in that chair, Leduc,” Morbier said. “Like you belong here.”

She stiffened. The memory of her father’s hearing that had taken place on the second floor had never gone away. The false stink of corruption still assailed her nostrils, the odor that had tainted his career and forced him to resign from the Force he loved.

“Not me,” Aimée said, standing. “You know I don’t like taking orders, Morbier.”

She paused at the door. Sheets of paper had begun to emerge from the fax machine. “You’ll see that those go to the right person, won’t you? And this.”

She placed Benoît’s test tubes on the desk. “Don’t worry. Others were messengered to the IMF
charge d’affaires
and to Léonie Obin at the Haiti Trade Delegation.”

“You think this will do any good? I want to help, but word came down from the top.”

“And let Benoît’s work count for nothing?” she said. “Read tomorrow’s
Libération.
A half-page exposé of Hydrolis and its World Bank funding application, with facts and figures. I don’t bet, but I’ll wager you a franc it opens eyes.”

“And knocks Diana off the front page?”

“It’s only third page. Plus an editorial.”

Morbier sat on the edge of the desk. He scraped a wooden match on the desk leg, lit an unfiltered Gitane, and blew a plume of smoke. “I’m getting too old for this, Leduc.”

“Me too,” she said. Taking the cigarette from him, she took a long drag.

Morbier stared at her hands. “You okay, Leduc?”

“My head hurts and I miss my dog.” She handed him back the cigarette. “And I hate wearing tank tops.”

Morbier stared at her. His red-lidded eyes drooped.

“Are you going to tell her?”

“You mean tell Mireille who her father was?” Tired, she paused at the doorframe in thought, then shrugged.

Saturday Noon

AIMÉE READ THE DNA result from the Laboratoires Sytel, DNA
specialistes
. Then she read it again. Light slanted over the mail piled on her office desk. The smell of sawdust and fresh-cut lumber hovered in the air.

“We framed the wall and installed support beams,” Cloutier said, shouldering his tool bag. “On Monday we’ll sheetrock and paint. Then we’re all finished.”

He seemed to be in a hurry.

“Have a good rest of the weekend, Cloutier,” she said. “And thanks for coming in on Saturday.”

“You, too,” Cloutier replied. Then he suddenly halted his progress through the doorway. “Pardon, Mademoiselle. I mean ‘Sister.’ I didn’t see you.”

Aimée looked up. A tall nun stood in the doorway, a canvas travel bag in her hand.

“I wanted to say good-bye, Aimée,” Mireille said.

Aimée’s heart skipped. Mireille walked into the office. Her long black habit trailed on the floor, the stiff white wimple framing her honey-colored face. “Edouard’s waiting in the car. Impossible to park—the traffic, you know—but if you’ll come down. . . .”

“
Non,
it’s all right,” she said. “Please tell him thank you for me.”

“Cloutier’s done marvels here in the back room—
Merde!
” René, just coming through the door, stopped in his tracks. “Oh!
Excusez-moi.
” His face reddened. “Sister, I didn’t know. . . .”

Mireille smiled. “I’m only dressed this way.”

“Aren’t you going to introduce us, Aimée?”

“Mireille, meet René, my partner.”

René blinked and stared.

Mireille took a step forward. “I think you were right, Aimée.”

“What do you mean?”

Mireille set down a copy of L
ibération
on Aimée’s desk opened to an article headlined “Hydrolis CEO Jérôme Castaing implicated in World Bank funding proposal scandal.”

“That maybe I was in the wrong place.” She gripped Aimée’s hand in her warm ones. “Family takes time,
non?
This Castaing contacted me, but I don’t feel ready. He says we’re related.”

Aimée looked down. And when she looked up Mireille had gone. Her footsteps echoed on the staircase.

“So that’s . . . your half-sister?” René asked.

She stared at the DNA results. “Not according to this.”

René rocked back on his heels. “Are you all right?”

“Fine.” But she didn’t feel fine.

René closed the folder on his desk, glancing at his watch. “I’ve got an appointment. We’ll talk later. Dinner?”

And burden him more? “Go celebrate landing the Aèrospa-tiale contract with Saj.”

He smiled. “You mean, order in and then put our feet up?”

She saw him rubbing his hip.

“Don’t tell me, René!”

“Eh?”

“You’re finally going to see that doctor,” she said.

“You could say that,” René answered, his eyes evading hers.

”About time, René.”

She noticed what looked like a package half-covered by plastic sheeting under René’s desk.

“Did Cloutier forget something?”

René was taking his linen jacket from the coat rack. “What?”

“I’ll call him and check.” She bent and lifted the plastic, revealing a brown metal box. “What’s this?”

“That?” René fingered his goatee. “Something he found in the wall.”

“You mean from before my grandfather’s time?” She shook her head. “Open up a wall in Paris and who knows what you’ll find.”

She looked closer.

“But it’s not very old,” she said. “It’s a safe, looks like from the seventies.”

“Forget it for now, Aimée.” René leaned down. “I meant to store it in the back. We can go through this clutter later.”

Curious, she leaned closer. “René, the door to this safe is broken.”

“Cloutier said he didn’t mean to damage it,” René told her. “He had no idea it was there until his sledgehammer cracked it open.”

A breeze ruffled the papers on her desk.

“Then why didn’t he tell me himself?”

Inside the safe she saw a bundle of envelopes rubber-banded together.

“You’re a bad liar, René. You read them, didn’t you?” Angry, she took them out.

“Aimée, I meant to tell you, but with all that’s happened. . . .”

“If they concern Mireille, you should have!”

“Not Mireille,” René said.

She saw a canceled American stamp on an envelope addressed to Mademoiselle Aimée Leduc in a childish scrawl.

A frisson raced through her. “From my mother?”

René stared at her. “Your brother.”

*November 10, 1802.