Murder in the Marais (28 page)

Early Saturday Evening

T
HIERRY PUSHED
S
ARAH PAST
the bushes bordering the Square Georges-Cain into the dark hole obscured by the decaying pillar. He shoved her forward, forcing her to climb down half-rotten timbers. Inside a bone-pocked cavern, smelling of mold and decay, he motioned for her to sit down.

"Remember this?" he said. He shone the flashlight beam over the crumbling catacomb walls. Cistern water dripped down into black, oily puddles.

Her body shook. "How do you know about this place?"

Thierry held the fax he'd stolen from Aimee's office with Sarah's picture: her tar swastika, her shaved skull, and him as a baby in her arms. Sarah's face fell.

"Nom de Dieu!"
she said. "Where did you find that?"

He remained silent, lit a candle, and pulled out a strip of silver duct tape.

"What's going on?" she asked uneasily. She started to get up, but he pushed her down in the wet dirt. "What do you want?"

"Your undivided attention," he said, binding her ankles with the tape. "Admit it," he said, sitting cross-legged across from her on a jagged marble slab. "Wasn't I a cute baby? Did you croon nursery rhymes to me here?" In a cloying falsetto he sang,
"Frère Jacques, dormez vous?"
He kicked at the dirt.

Sarah's black wig hung off her ear and the scar showed plainly in the candlelight. Damp air filled the cavern. "Why are you doing this?"

"You see, you should be proud of that." Thierry stood up and traced his finger over the raised swastika on her forehead.

Sarah trembled.

"You earned the Führer's seal, as few Jews could," Thierry said. "But you're still a kike. Tainted."

"Oui. Une Juive,"
she said. She stopped shaking. "But I don't live in fear because of it. Not anymore."

"But you have to pay," he said.

"Pay?" Her eyes widened. "I haven't paid already? My family taken by Gestapo, giving you up. . .isn't that more than enough?"

She shook her head. "As soon as I got back to Paris, I stood outside the Rambuteaus', watching you go in their door." She wiped her eyes with her dirty raincoat sleeve. "Right where I'd kissed you goodbye as a baby. You know what I did? I fell on my knees, in a puddle on the sidewalk, thanking the God I've despised for years that you were alive. Alive, walking, and breathing, a grown man." She struggled to continue. "I went to the temple, where I'd gone with my parents, and begged God's forgiveness for my hatred of him. You're healthy, you had loving parents."

Thierry snorted. "Loving parents? Nathalie Rambuteau loved the bottle."

"I'm sorry. So sorry."

"No matter how she promised," he said, "when I came home from school, she'd be drunk and passed out, stuck to the floor in her own vomit." He slammed his fist into the caked dirt wall. "That was on a good day. I thought it was because I was adopted."

"Adopted?" Sarah picked at the duct tape. "Did she tell you. . .?"

He interrupted, stooping down to bind her wrists with strips of duct tape, "To make my bed and clean behind my ears?" He grinned. "'Maternal' doesn't describe Nathalie."

"You survived!" she said.

He took her arm, peering at her as if she were a laboratory specimen.

"You show no pronounced Semitic features." His eyes narrowed. "Must be some ancestor raped by Aryan invaders back in the steppes and you carried the recessive genes."

"Killing me won't make you less Jewish." She raked her taped hand like a claw in the dirt. "Or change that I'm your mother."

"Proven inferiority." He pulled out a Gestapo dagger, which gleamed dully in the candlelight. "We've talked enough."

Saturday Evening

A
FTER TEN MINUTE S
, A
IMÉE
still hadn't picked the Zeitz lock on the medical examiner's office door. Her hand ached.

"This is taking too long," she said.

Rene crouched near her on the scuffed linoleum and pulled out a Glock automatic.

"Not a finesse approach," he said. "But it will save time."

She hesitated, but kept winching the tumbler. A minute later, the huge metal lock clicked, then dropped open with a metallic sigh. Aimee rubbed her wrist as Rene reached on tiptoes to remove the lock and open the door.

"After you," he said.

Settling into an alcove office desk, he quickly plugged his code breaker into a surge protector under the reception desk, then hooked it to his laptop.

Aimee knew she hadn't wasted her money as she pulled the yellow stop-smoking gum out of her mouth. Even though she'd kill for a cigarette. She stuck two wads on opposite sides of the inner door jamb, then affixed the cheap alarm sensor Sebastian had purchased at the hobby store. The medical examiner's office area, painted institutional green like the rest of the morgue, lay quiet except for the sound of Rene's fingers clicking on a keyboard.

"Spooky," Rene said, accessing Soli Hecht's disk. "I know the clientele won't bother us but I'd feel better with the door closed."

"Air needs to circulate." She nodded towards the broken air vent in the wall. "Otherwise the formaldehyde reeks. Besides, if anyone trips my alarm sensor, we'll hear."

Aimee tried to hide the doubt in her voice. She plopped into the ME's chair.

"Bingo!" Rene said.

"That's his access word?"

"Take a guess what the ME's code is." Rene rolled his eyes.

Aimee looked at the framed photo on the desk: a paunchy, middle-aged man, tufts of gray hair poking out from a beret, cocked a hunting rifle under one arm and held a limp-necked goose in the other.

"1Stud," Rene said.

"He's a legend-in-his-own-eyes type." Aimee shook her head. "After opening bodies all day, how could he want to kill any living thing?"

Working in a morgue would make her want to celebrate life—not hunt it down and shoot it. France's obsession with
la chasse
had always offended her. But was she doing that? Doubt nagged briefly. No, hunting down a killer and bringing a murderer to justice wasn't sport, like bagging an innocent creature.

She refocused and typed in 1Stud, which immediately accessed the system. Once inside, she tapped into EDF, Électricite de France, which connected to Greater Paris municipal branches. She navigated on-line to the 4th arrondissement.

Once inside the utility system, she pulled up the listing for the meters of number 23 rue du Plâtre, Laurent's old address. Extra energy points had been awarded to the building due to moderate use and conservation of energy. Nothing more. Another dead end. Disappointed, she logged into FRAPOL 1 and requested the bloody fingerprint found with the Luminol at rue des Rosiers.

As the fingerprint came up, she typed in "de Saux," then ran the standard search program.

"Rene, this high-speed modem is like power steering after driving a tractor!" she purred.

"Don't get ideas, Aimee," he said. "They're too expensive and you're spoiled as it is."

Ten seconds later, a single phrase popped on to the screen:
Unknown, no records found.

Of course, she thought. He's too smart to have left any trace. That's why he killed Lili. She'd recognized him and he thinks Sarah will, too. Is it just because Lili identified him or is something happening now, she wondered. He must have more at stake.

All collaborators had good enough reason to hide. Especially from the families of victims whom they'd informed on and sent to the ovens. How could she trace him? Little if any information from the forties had been entered into the government database.

"I've got it!
La Double Morte,
" Aimee said to Rene. "Someone had to pay tax on that building, either inheritance or capital gains. It always comes down to that, eh? Death and taxes, the only two sure things in life."

The screen blipped while Aimee accessed the tax records of number 23 rue du Plâtre. Records stated that the property stood free and clear of lien, was zoned for three units, and that ownership resided with Bank d'Agricole real estate division. OK, she thought to herself, let's scroll back in time. The Bank d'Agricole had paid all taxes since 1983, when they'd purchased it in lieu of payment in a bankruptcy proceeding of a Jean Rigoulot of Dijon. This Rigoulot of Dijon had faithfully paid taxes on the property since 1971. A 1945 probate tax had been billed and never paid. She skipped back to 1940 when the property tax had been paid by a Lisette de Saux. Must be Laurent's mother, she reasoned. However, the next owner, a Paul LeClerc, had paid the lien and probate tax in 1946 as part of the purchase agreement. She scrolled back into 1940 again and discovered an addendum. Lisette de Saux had changed the title into her husband's name. That's when she saw Laurent's new name and Soli Hecht's dying syllables made sense. "Lo. . ."

Lo. . .! Laurent Cazaux. She almost fell off her chair. If she didn't hurry up, the collaborator, Lili's murderer, was about to become the next prime minister.

T
HE FLUORESCENT
lights fizzled and the warning light on the surge protector blinked. Rene frowned. "Not enough juice. Let me fiddle with the fuses, this ancient wiring can be amped up with a little work."

"We don't have time, Rene," Aimee said, joining him in the alcove.

"If the power goes, the computers crash. We lose everything," he said.

She knew it was true. He waddled past the sensor that obligingly beeped an alarm. She punched the hallway light switch for him, since he barely reached it.

"I do this all the time," he said and grinned. "Everyone loves me in my building."

She reset the alarm and phoned Martine at home. After ten rings, a sleepy voice croaked,
"Âllo?"

"Martine, I'm going to send you a file at your office," Aimee said. "Download it and make copies right away."

"Aimee, I just got to sleep after being up two days with the riots," Martine said.

"What time do you go to press for the Sunday edition?"

"Er, in a few hours, but I'm off," Martine said. "Give it to CNN."

"So you've been leading me on for years?" Aimee said. "I thought you wanted to be the boss! This info has your new job description on it as first female editor of
Le Figaro
."

Martine sounded awake now. "I need two sources to confirm. Impeccable ones."

"You'll have the third within twenty minutes," Aimee said, glad that Martine couldn't see her cross her fingers.

"This better be good," she said. "Gilles's shift is over in half an hour. I'll meet you down there."

"Does
mademoiselle le editeur
have a nice sound to it?" Aimee said. "Hold on to your chair when you read this or you might fall off like I almost did."

Aimee pulled up the bloody fingerprint from rue des Rosiers, then requested a match search on FRAPOL 1 with Cazaux's name. At the corner of the screen, the progress box blinked "Searching records." She drummed her chipped red fingernails on the ME's wood desk.

The alarm bleeped and she sat up, gripping the Beretta inside her leather backpack. Her fingers found the safety and flicked it off. She'd taken the handgun from the man in the police uniform outside Soli Hecht's hospital room. The office lights blacked out; only the red light on the surge protector wavered. Stay calm, she told herself, hugging the bag close to her.

From the hallway, a shadow moved, then a flashlight shone on the walls. The citrus scent gave him away before she heard him speak.

"Maybe you'd like to tell me what you're doing," he said.

A smoldering Rothmans orange cigarette butt landed on her keyboard, briefly illuminating it.

"I've got a gun," she said. "If I get upset I'll use it."

"Don't play with me, you don't have a permit," he chuckled. "This is France."

The fluorescent lights buzzed then flickered on. She looked straight into the green-gold eyes of Herve Vitold. Behind him in the hallway, Rene hung by his suspenders to a large circuit-breaker panel, plastic gloves stuffed in his mouth.

"Ms. Leduc, we meet again," Vitold said. He slid next to her in one fluid movement, his eyes never leaving hers.

"I knew you were too good-looking to be internal security," she said.

He moved so close she could see each hair on his upper lip. Almost intimate. His chest heaved rhythmically, which was the only way she could tell he was laughing. The Luger in his hand didn't move, though; it rested coldly against her temple.

"I've been waiting for you to break into FRAPOL 1 again," he said as he scanned the screen intently. "Your technique is good, I'll use it myself next time."

"You're the tidy-up man, eh?" she said. She knew that as soon as she got a match, he'd erase it, eradicate all traces.

He looked bored. "Tell me something new."

"You want to crash the whole system," she said. "Destroy all law enforcement files and the internal network of fingerprint and DNA identification, Interpol interfaces," she said. "Just to erase his fingerprints. But it won't work."

"Pity," he said. "You've got talent. Wasted talent."

"Each system has its own safeguard network. You'll never get past them." She wanted to keep him talking. "Any break-in attempt trips the system alarms. Freezes all access," she said. "You can't do it."

"But I can," Herve Vitold said. He smiled. "I designed the alarm alert for FRAPOL 1 and the defense ministry." Expertly, he snapped the cartridge in and out of the Luger with one hand. "Disarming them will be easy."

"Cazaux is finished," she said.

"Quit playing games," he said.

"Untie my partner," she said, glancing at Rene. "I'm getting upset."

Vitold ignored her. Rene flipped uselessly like a caught fish, his feet dangling above the scuffed floor, trying to bang the metal circuit breaker with his shoulders. Vitold backed up and pointed his gun at Rene's head. Rene's eyes blinked nonstop in panic.

"Be still, little man," Vitold said. With his other hand he opened a cell phone and pressed memory. "Sir, I've begun," he said.

"Didn't you hear me?" Aimee said.

Vitold sneered as he cocked the trigger by Rene's ear.

"Now I'm upset," Aimee shot through her leather bag, drilling him three times in his crotch. Disbelief painted Vitold's face before he doubled over, thrashing wildly. He yelped, dropped his cell phone, and collapsed in a bloody sprawl on the linoleum.

"See what happens when I get upset?" she said. She straddled Herve Vitold, his still surprised eyes focused upward. But his frozen stare told her he'd checked out.

She pulled the gloves out of Rene's mouth, then gently lifted him down.

Rene spit talcum powder out of his mouth and flexed his fingers. "And I thought Vitold liked you for your looks," he said.

"They never do," she said and pointed to the screen.

"Match Verified" had come up. She typed in Martine's E-mail address at
Le Figaro
and hit "Send." She picked up Vitold's Luger and his cell phone and brushed off her shirt. Before she could copy everything on a backup disk, the amplified clanging buzzer alarm sounded. Startled, Rene dropped his laptop. From the hallway, red lights flashed on and off. She picked up the laptop, slipped it inside her backpack, and slung that over her shoulder.

"Hurry!" she said, and canceled the command. She grabbed her backpack. "Go, Rene."

Now the only documentation with Cazaux's photo and fingerprint identification awaited downloading on Martine's computer at
Le Figaro
. But would that be enough?

Right now it would have to be. She'd copy and make a backup disk at Martine's office, but would be nervous until she could download the evidence on Cazaux. Their faces alternately blood red and splashed in blackness, Aimee and Rene jumped over Vitold's lifeless figure and sprinted down the hall.

In the vestibule, she grabbed two paramedics' vests and helmets with red crosses on them that hung from hooks. She threw one to Rene.

"This will get us through the crowd and past police lines," she said.

"From sewer rat to paramedic all in one day," he said. "Who said life wasn't an adventure? Now if I could just get some stilts, we wouldn't stick out so much."

A wheelchair was parked in the vestibule. "Get in," Aimee said.

"You've got it the wrong way round," he said. "Paramedics don't ride in these, patients do."

She pushed him down. "You're wounded in the line of duty, I'll do the talking."