Murder in the Marais (27 page)

"What's what?" Aimee asked.

"Beat your neighbors out of doors," he said.

"Care to elaborate?"

"The old card game," Rene said. "'Beat your neighbors out of doors'—popular during the war. Even in her eighties my grandmother could ace me every time."

"Am I missing something here?" Aimee asked. "What are you talking about?"

"Remember the Jigny case?" he said. "I used our software to pick the password lock and got the first couple of letters."

"Go on, Rene," she said.

"Well, after getting the first couple of letters I guessed that the key was in a fantasy game," he said. "The guy's kid loved Dungeons and Dragons, a real aficionado, so that made it easier. I got the password and opened the file. We bought a new computer system with our fees from that one."

She blew a noisy kiss through the phone. "Haven't I said you're a genius! I don't know if Soli played many card games in Treblinka. He'd have been fourteen or sixteen then. All I know is he was intense and methodical—that's from what I've seen of the office in his foundation."

"Let me sink my teeth into this," Rene said. "I'll call you on the cell phone."

She thought about what Rene had tried. Games. Did Soli play games in Treblinka? Survival would have taken up most of his time. What games could Soli play in a death camp. . .if he'd played any? Something that could only be played on the rare occasions when the guards didn't watch. Something that prisoners could make that could be hidden easily. Something that required thought, planning, and deliberate moves. Just like the way he'd finally assembled his case against Klaus Barbie.

Of course! Chess could be played in a concentration camp.
CHECKMATE
opened the file immediately. She pulled out a fresh disk from her bag and started copying the now open file.

While she did that she called Leah.

A perky-voiced Leah answered,
"Allô?"

"Did Sarah enjoy the souffle?"

"But she's with you," Leah said, suddenly awake. "Isn't she?"

"No!" Aimee panicked.

"She said she was going to meet you, something about the salamander," Leah said.

"What?" Aime trembled. Why would Sarah have left?

"That man picked her up," Leah said. "He said they would meet up with you."

"Who?"

Leah described someone who could only be Thierry. Aimee hit "Eject," grabbed the floppy, and ran down the stairs. By the door, she deactivated the security system in just the way Solange had described. On her way out, she tiptoed past the guard, who didn't even snort himself awake.

By the time she stood at the traffic light on the corner of rue de Rivoli, she knew she was being followed. She ducked into the Metro, remembering how she and Martine used to hide from their cronies after school. Latched to the tiled walls were hinges that held the swing doors of the Metro, and enough empty space for two giggling teenagers. Now it was a harder squeeze for her. But she just fit. A big rush of hot air, the screech of brakes, and the whoosh of pounding feet as passengers disgorged up the steps past Aimee. She counted to thirty, then ran back up the Metro steps and found a taxi by the western entrance of the Louvre.

Saturday Afternoon

"W
HERE IS
S
ARAH
?" A
IMÉE
asked into her cell phone.

"You haven't found her?" Hartmuth said.

From the second floor of her cousin Sebastian's cluttered antique poster store on rue St. Paul in the Marais, she surveyed the narrow alley wedged below her. Sarah, not realizing the danger from her son, had gone with Thierry. Or maybe he had forced her.

Aimee pushed that thought from her mind. She had to get to a computer with municipal on-line capability and find Sarah.

Sebastian, in black leather pants, jacket, and matching black bushy beard, was helping outfit Rene. She'd rescued Sebastian once, her cousin by marriage and a former junkie. As he often said, he owed her for at least one lifetime.

Rene emerged from the upstairs loft, his arm hanging in a sling, wearing a fisherman's vest customized with flashlights Velcroed in all the pockets. Sebastian gently lifted him up and down into thigh-high rubber fishing boots.

"What's the salamander?" Aimee said into the phone.

Hartmuth let out a ripple of breath. "The marble arms of Francois the First."

Loud rumbling noises from below reached her ears. Sounds of distant thunder came from the direction of Bastille.

"Skip the history lesson," she said, frustrated that she might be too late. "What does it mean?"

"The salamander is a sculpture, carved in the arch of the seventeenth century building she'd lived in, opposite the catacombs."

Below her on narrow, medieval rue St. Paul, the street slowly filled with a line of khaki light utility tanks. Sleek and streamlined Humvees rolled over the cobblestones, straddling the stone
bouches d'egout
that led to the sewers. Aimee hadn't seen tanks in Paris since the riots of 1968 by the Sorbonne. Parked cars stymied the tanks' progress and they emitted clouds of diesel exhaust in the chill November afternoon.

"Has there been a bombing?" Aimee said.

"Radicals versus rightists," Hartmuth said. "I'm afraid I have something to do with it."

"What do you mean?"

Hartmuth's voice sounded tired. "My failure to vote. The EU was unable to ratify the trade agreement with its exclusionary policies."

"Thierry took Sarah to the catacombs," she said. "How does he know about them?"

"I showed him the old exit," Hartmuth sighed. "Hidden in the Square Georges-Cain."

"Meet me there," Aime said. She clicked off.

"We won't get through on any surface route, Aimee," Rene said as he walked over to her. "Checkpoints all over, armed militia is sealing the Marais."

She kissed him on both cheeks. "I cracked Soli Hecht's locked file with 'Checkmate.'"

Rene smiled. "Ditto."

"Great minds think alike, eh?" she said. "That's why we're going underground."

"The catacombs don't extend this side of the rue St. Antoine," he said.

"But the sewers do, Rene."

He rolled his eyes. "You know I don't do well with. . ."

"Rodents, me neither, but Sebastian's got something to help us with that," she said. "Did you bring the laptop?"

"Talk about addicted to computers!" he said. "Making a wounded man just out of the hospital borrow pirated software from friends!" He growled but his eyes shone. "I love it! What is the plan?"

"Hook the laptop to the municipal system and access FRAPOL 1 incognito," she said.

"Why?" Rene winced as he slung the backpack over his good shoulder.

"So I can identify that bloody fingerprint and find out who owns the building in the Marais," she said. "I'll nail the killer in dot matrix or laser gray scale." She quickly changed behind a 1930s poster that proclaimed "Ski the Alpes Maritimes" with parka-clad figures cavorting stiffly among old-fashioned ski lifts.

"Unload here or outside?" Sebastian asked, his beard muffling his voice. He had arranged everything she asked for.

She nodded to the rear door, which opened on a rain-soaked alley. He bundled up the bulky materials, then crouched under the eaves of his shop, his black leather pants glistening with raindrops.

"Thanks." She sidled near him in her dark vinyl hooded jumpsuit.

She gripped the handle of a small gray box, while Sebastian lugged a large backpack. They trudged in the light rain along the cobbled alley to the Quai des Celestins, a block away. Rene kept up the rear.

"What about the inhabitants below?" Rene said. "The ones with long greasy tails?"

She pointed to the box. "Sonic disturbance. They hate it. At least that's what the advertisement promised."

"It's high tech all the way with you, Aimee," Rene puffed.

"You're the one who's bothered by the rats, remember? Didn't you mention the epidemic proportions of rabies among the rodent population as recently as last week?" She tried not to sound out of breath. "This is the best I can do on such short notice."

Sebastian smiled out of his beard and Rene just glared.

"The back door to my place is always open, Aimee; just jiggle the hinges and slip in the bolt," he said.

"Sounds obscene," Rene muttered.

Sebastian grinned and was gone.

Aimee slid a thin metal rod out of her sleeve and hooked it under a sewer lid. Using a quick twist and thrust, she hauled the lid up and onto the pavement with a loud scrape. As inconspicuously as possible—on a quai overlooking the Seine with a dwarf at twilight—she gestured elegantly.

"After you," she said.

She hefted the backpack, then gripped the box as she climbed down the slippery rungs. Finally, she pulled the heavy, scraping lid back on top of them and it clanged shut.

A rotten mix of vegetables, feces, and clay and the smell of the sewers wafted through the damp tunnel. Dripping concrete arches oozed shiny patterns as if a giant snail had slimed over them.

Whenever Rene moved, the flashlight beams bobbed and bounced off the subterranean sewer walls. Splashes came from down the passage, and when he turned, pairs of beady red eyes were locked into the flashlight beams. It was no time to be squeamish but hordes of squealing rats were hard to ignore. She opened the box and switched the sonic meter on. The arrow wavered, dipped to zero, then shot up to five hundred decibels. Flat buzzing was emitted from the box, echoing off the dripping sewer walls.

"It's a good thing this frequency is only audible to animal ears," she said.

Rene looked dubious. "Do they get hypnotized like deer?" he asked as the rats remained staring at them.

"I doubt it," she said and shivered. These rats were the size of rabbits.

She wedged the sonic box into a pocket in the backpack, then secured it with Velcro holding straps. She had neglected to mention that the range had been shown effective at about two meters to repel penned canines. No studies had been done in wet underground conditions with rodents.

She also pushed aside the thought that they could be rabid. Rene turned slowly, his beams illuminating clumps of glistening brown fur and hairless tails, littered down the long sewer.

She consulted her sewer map. The brown stained concrete wall had a white indicator number with an arrow painted on it. "Let's go," she said.

As they trudged along in the continuous sludgy stream, Aimee pulled her ventilation mask over her mouth and adjusted Rene's for him. The smell wasn't so bad if they did that. Their footfalls echoed with the continuous drip from the clay pipes draining from the streets above. Behind them scurried an army of rats, their tails slapping the walls, maybe two meters behind them. They covered three blocks in five minutes, but the rats were gaining on them.

"Even with you driving, Rene," she said. "We couldn't get this far so fast."

Up ahead, the wet brown walls dripped with rivulets of rusty slime from a ten-foot-diameter netted pipe.

Aimee pulled out her wire cutters from inside her jumpsuit and started cutting. Loud squealing sounded nearby.

"No way am I going to crawl in there," Rene protested. "I go through enough shit in a day as it is."

"It's not exactly what you think it is, Rene," she said, cutting through the thick wire. "It's not a toilet drain."

"Well, the smell could fool me," he said. "What is it?"

"The waste-station chute and the only way into the morgue," she said, helping him slide into the gaping hole she'd cut.

"Oddest break-in I've ever done," he muttered.

"Maybe a little blood or fluids that have been hosed down from the embalming tables might find their way down here," she said. "But it's all diluted."

"Makes me glad I haven't eaten today," Rene said, slowly climbing up the wet steel rungs, using his good arm.

Aimee pressed a button and the waste chute's hinged metal cover swung open. She pulled Rene up and realized they had climbed into a large storage closet. Mops, vacuums, and industrial cleansers took up most of the space. Several blue lab coats, worn by maintenance, were hanging from hooks along with plastic hair nets and rubber gloves. She stripped to her black leotard, donned the lab attire, and put her jumpsuit in the trash. She pulled Rene's boots off. He slipped on sneakers.

"We'll leave out the back door after I do a fingerprint match, OK?" Aimee whispered and looked at her watch. "With your help, it should take fifteen minutes."

"Why couldn't we have come in the back?" Rene said.

"Police guard," she said. "I wanted to time it for a shift change but that got complicated. We're in and out and no one knows the difference."

"Why the morgue?" he said.

"After we finish, I count on finding Sarah in the catacombs right behind the morgue wall."

Inside the morgue, only one of the fluorescent strips of light flickered in the hallway, the rest had burned out. The abattoir green tiled walls echoed with their footsteps. She pulled open a stainless-steel-handled door labeled
PERSONNEL ONLY
.

The vaulted room reeked of formaldehyde and was frosty cold. Gray-sheeted bodies were laid on wooden plank platforms, only their toes visible, each with a numbered yellow plastic tag. The scene reminded her of some fifteenth century medical print. The only things missing were the leeches and incisions permitting evil vapors to leave the body.

Aimee pushed open another swing door. The scales used to weigh organs hung suspended from the ceiling on metal chains. A corpse lay on a stainless-steel table, angled over the floor drain: a female, young, with long brown hair and discolored needle tracks along her hands and arms. She'd been slit from chest to pubic bone and sewed back together with black thread, harshly outlined against her chalk white skin. The top flap of her skull had been sewn back on but her hairline was too close to her temples. Sad, Aimee thought, and a pretty bad job. They usually tried for the parents. Maybe there weren't any.

She made her tone businesslike. "The medical examiner's computer should be through there." She popped Nicorette gum into her mouth and pointed down the dim hallway.

"Breaking and entering used to be more fun than this," Rene said and stopped. The hallway plunged into darkness.

"Where's the light timer?" She groped along the rough wall for the switch. Finally she found it and flipped it on. Ahead of her on the medical examiner's door was the biggest lock she'd ever seen.