Central Park

by Guillaume Musso

  “Go start the car. I’ll settle up here and be there in a minute,” she said, hoping he would make a U-turn.

  “No need, I—”

  From behind the counter, the woman grabbed him by the arm. “Hey, darling, how about one for the road? Virgil makes this gin himself. Tastes like honey and juniper. You can tell me what you think of it.”

  Clearly surprised and annoyed by this familiarity, Gabriel pulled away. “No, thanks. We have to get going.”

  Alice used those few seconds to shove the fingerprint kit back in the satchel. Then she took three ten-dollar bills from her pocket and left them on the counter.

  “Ready to go?” Gabriel asked when he reached her.

  As casually as she could, she followed him to the front door. Outside, the rain was still pouring down.

  “Wait for me here under the awning,” Gabriel said. “I’ll go get the car.”

  While he ran to the Shelby, Alice turned her back on the parking lot and took the coaster from her bag. In the light from the neon sign above the general store, she compared the two fingerprints. To the naked eye, they looked identical. Most compelling, they both had the same arch of ridges interrupted by the tiny cross-shaped scar.

  In that moment, she understood that Gabriel had lied to her from the beginning.

  When she looked up, she sensed the sports car parked behind her. Gabriel leaned over and held the door open for her. She got inside and buckled her seat belt.

  “Everything okay? You look kind of pale.”

  “I’m fine,” she replied, suddenly aware that she had given him her Glock and was now unarmed.

  He pulled the door shut. Trembling, Alice turned toward the window, lashed relentlessly by rain.

  As the car sped off into the night, it took her several seconds to admit the truth to herself: Gabriel and Vaughn were one and the same.

  Part Four

  Come Undone

  23

  Do or Die

  THE RAIN FELL heavily and aggressively against the windows.

  Thunder rumbled almost incessantly. At regular intervals, lightning flashed through the sooty clouds, illuminating the line of pine trees on the horizon like a giant camera flash.

  Sebago Hospital was located at the end of a peninsula bordered by pines that stretched out ten miles into the center of the lake.

  Fully focused on his driving, Gabriel was going too fast. The road, strewn with torn-off branches and debris, was treacherous. The wind screamed through the trees, making them bow until they broke, shaking the car as if trying to slow its progress.

  Alice stole surreptitious glances at her cell phone. Unsurprisingly, service was spotty, but even so, she did have a signal at times. In some places, the bars showed perfect reception; in other places, there was no service at all.

  She tried not to tremble. She needed to buy time. As long as Gabriel didn’t suspect that she had guessed his identity, she was safe. There was no way she could try anything on this road without a weapon, but once they were in the hospital, she would be able to act.

  What I need is lots of people, activity, security cameras. This time, Vaughn won’t get away.

  Her hatred was stronger than her fear.

  It was unbearable, sitting next to her son’s killer like this. To know his body was only inches away. Unbearable, too, to have felt so close to him, told him some of her secrets, been moved by his lies, been deceived in this way.

  Alice breathed deeply. She tried to think rationally, to find answers to her questions: What was the point of this wild-goose chase? What was Vaughn’s plan? Why hadn’t he killed her when he had the chance?

  The Shelby rounded a tight bend before coming to a sudden halt. A tall white pine tree just off the road had been hit by lightning. The intensity of the rain must have put the fire out before it could spread, but the tree was still smoking, its trunk split in two. Bits of wood, bark, and burned branches were scattered across the pavement, blocking the road.

  “Damn it!” Gabriel exclaimed.

  He put the car into gear and accelerated, determined to force his way through. A large branch lay in the way. The Shelby veered to the side, to the edge of the ravine, and its wheels started skidding in the mud.

  “I’m going to try and clear the road,” Gabriel said, pulling over and putting on the emergency brake.

  He got out and closed the door, leaving the engine running.

  Too good to be true?

  She could try to escape as soon as he moved the branch, of course, but it wasn’t the desire to flee that drove her. It was the need to know. And to go all the way.

  Alice glanced at her phone and saw the signal was weak, just two bars. But who could she call—911? This story was too long to explain. Her father? Seymour? She no longer knew if she could trust them. One of her other Criminal Division colleagues? Yes, that was a good idea. Castelli? Savignon? She tried to remember their numbers, but nothing came to mind; she was too used to speed-dialing them from her own phone.

  She closed her eyes to concentrate; the only number she could come up with was that of Olivier Cruchy, the youngest member of her team. Well, it was better than nothing. She quickly dialed his number, holding the phone below her seat. Gabriel kept looking over at the car, but the curtain of rain was thick enough to protect Alice from his prying eyes. She turned on the speaker. It rang once. Twice. Three times. And then went straight to voice mail.

  Shit.

  She left a brief message asking him to call her back at that number and hung up. Another idea came to her. She rummaged in the satchel at her feet and found the knife she had stolen from the café in the Bowery. The blade wasn’t as sharp as a steak knife, but the point would still go through flesh. She slid it inside her right sleeve just as Gabriel walked back toward the car.

  “All right, it’s clear,” he said, satisfied. “We can go!”

  sebago hospital

  secure zone

  slow down

  Illuminated by a white light, the wooden sentry box manned by hospital security could be seen from a distance. A luminous halo shone in the night, as if a flying saucer had landed in the middle of New England’s cranberry fields. Gabriel drove the Shelby up the ramp to the security post, but when they reached it, they discovered that it was empty.

  Gabriel stopped in front of the metal barrier and lowered his window. “Hey! Hello? Anyone there?” he shouted over the noise of the storm.

  He turned off the car, got out, and moved toward the shelter. The door was open and banging in the wind. He poked his head in and decided to enter. No security guard. He looked at the wall of security-camera monitors and then at the electronic dashboard covered with a vast number of buttons and switches. He touched the one that lifted the barrier and got back in the car with Alice.

  “No security guard—that’s not a good sign,” he said, restarting the engine. “I guess he must have gone inside somewhere.”

  As he accelerated, Gabriel lit another cigarette. His hands were trembling slightly. The Shelby moved along a driveway edged with pine trees and came out on a wide gravel square that served as the hospital’s parking lot.

  Constructed on the edge of the lake, the hospital building was both unusual and impressive. Under the hammering rain, its lit façade, punctuated with Gothic windows, stood out from the backdrop of black clouds. The ocher-brick manor retained its old character, but on either side of the original building rose two huge modern towers with bluish, transparent façades and geometric multilevel roofs. An audacious glass walkway linked the structures, a hanging hyphen between past and future, the two harmoniously bonded. In front of the main entrance, attached to an aluminum pole, an LCD screen provided real-time information.

  Hello, today is Tuesday, October 15, 2013

  It’s 11:57 p.m.

  Visiting hours: 10 a.m.—6 p.m.

  Visitor parking: P1–P2

  Staff parking: P3

  The Shelby slowed down. Alice slid the knife from her sleeve into her ha
nd and gripped it as tightly as she could. Now or never.

  She could feel her pulse pounding. A wave of adrenaline made her shiver. Her mind was a riot of contradictory feelings—fear, aggression, pain. Yes, pain most of all. She would not be content with merely arresting Vaughn. She was going to kill him. That was the only way she could purge the world of this evil, the only reparation possible to avenge the deaths of Paul and her son. Her throat constricted and tears rolled down her cheeks.

  Now or never.

  With all her strength, she stabbed Gabriel in the upper chest with the knife, driving the blade in hard. She felt the muscle in his shoulder tear. Caught by surprise, he screamed and let go of the steering wheel. The car veered off the gravel path and collided with a low wall, blowing out one of the tires. It stopped dead. Taking advantage of the confusion, Alice grabbed the Glock from Gabriel’s belt.

  “Don’t move!” she yelled, pointing the gun at him.

  She leaped out of the vehicle, checked the magazine, and wrapped her hands around the butt, arms tensed, ready to fire. “Get out of the car!”

  Gabriel shifted down in his seat to protect himself but remained inside the Shelby. The rain was falling so hard that Alice couldn’t tell what he was doing.

  “Get out now!” she repeated. “Hands up!”

  Finally the door slowly opened and Gabriel put a foot on the ground. He had removed the knife from his shoulder and blood was trickling over his shirt.

  “It’s over, Vaughn.”

  Despite the rain and the darkness, Gabriel’s crystal-clear gaze pierced the gloom.

  Alice felt an emptiness in the pit of her stomach. In all these years, she’d had only one desire: to kill Vaughn with her own hands.

  But there was no way she was going to eliminate him before she’d gotten answers to all her questions.

  Just then, she felt her phone vibrate in her jacket pocket. Keeping her eyes trained on Vaughn and the gun aimed at him, she took out her cell phone. Olivier Cruchy’s number appeared on the screen.

  “Cruchy?” she said.

  “You called me, boss?” said a sleepy voice. “Um, you know what time it is, right?”

  “I need you, Olivier. Do you know where Seymour is?”

  “No idea. I’ve been on vacation with my in-laws for the last week.”

  “What are you talking about? I saw you in the office yesterday.”

  “Boss…you know that’s impossible.”

  “Why?”

  “Come on, boss, this is—”

  “Why?” Alice yelled.

  A silence, then a saddened voice: “Because you’ve been on medical leave for the past three months. You haven’t even set foot in the office for three months…”

  This answer chilled her blood. Alice dropped her phone on the wet ground.

  What the hell is he talking about?

  Through the rain, behind Vaughn, her gaze fell on the hospital’s electronic sign.

  Hello, today is Tuesday, October 15, 2013

  It’s 11:59 p.m.

  There was a mistake on this sign. Today was Tuesday, but it was the eighth, not the fifteenth. She wiped the rain from her face. Her ears were buzzing. The red flame of a distress flare burst in her mind like a warning. From the beginning, she had been hunting down not only Vaughn but a more insidious and tenacious enemy: herself.

  A succession of moments flashed through her mind, like a montage from a movie.

  First she saw the young pawnbroker from Chinatown, fiddling with the push button on Paul’s watch. “I’m adjusting the time and date,” he’d explained.

  Then the front page of the newspaper she’d seen by Caleb Dunn’s door. That, too, had been dated October 15. As had Franck Maréchal’s e-mail. All these details she’d paid no attention to…

  But how was it possible?

  Suddenly, she understood. The gap in her memory was not just one night long, as she’d thought. It stretched over at least a week.

  Tears of sadness and anger mingled with the rain on Alice’s face. She was still pointing the gun at Vaughn, but her whole body was trembling. She swayed, then struggled fiercely against the possibility of collapsing, gripping her gun with all her might.

  Again, the iridescent veil appeared in her mind, but this time her arm was long enough for her to seize it. Finally, she could tear it away, allowing the memories to resurface. Fragments began slowly reforming.

  Lightning split the darkness. Alice turned away for a fraction of a second. That instant of inattention was fatal. Gabriel rushed at her and shoved her violently onto the hood of the Shelby. Alice pulled the trigger, but the shot missed.

  Her enemy pressed down on her with all his weight, immobilizing her with his left hand. Again, lightning flashed in the sky and set the horizon ablaze. Alice looked up and saw the syringe that the man was holding in his right hand. Her vision blurred. A taste of iron in her mouth. She watched, powerless, as the shining needle came down as if in slow motion and stabbed her neck. She could do nothing to stop it.

  Gabriel pressed down on the plunger to inject the liquid. The serum burned inside her body like an electric shock. Pain seared through her, abruptly unlocking the gates of her memory. She had the impression that her entire being was on fire and that her heart had been replaced by a grenade with its pin removed.

  There was a blinding flash of white light, and she caught a glimpse of something.

  It terrified her.

  Then she lost consciousness.

  I remember…

  Three months ago

  July 12, 2013

  An atmosphere of fear reigns in the capital.

  One week earlier, just as people were going home from work, there was a terrorist attack that left Paris dazed and bloodied. A suicide bomber with explosives attached to his belt blew himself up on a bus on Rue Saint-Lazare. The effect was devastating: eight dead, eleven injured.

  The same day, a backpack containing a propane cylinder filled with nails was found on line 4 at the Montparnasse-Bienvenue Métro station. Thankfully, the bomb-disposal team managed to defuse it before it could do any damage, but the discovery caused mass panic.

  The specter of the 1995 attacks is on everyone’s mind. More and more tourist sites are evacuated every day. “The return of terrorism” is all over the papers and headline news on TV every evening. The SAT, the Criminal Division’s anti-terrorism unit, is under pressure and constantly swooping down on enclaves of Islamists, anarchists, and extreme-left activists to check ID papers and make arrests.

  In principle, their investigations have nothing to do with me. Not until Antoine de Foucaud, the deputy head of the SAT, asks me to take part in interrogating suspects who have already been in custody for the maximum period allowed and are about to be released. In the 1970s, at the start of his career, Foucaud worked for several years with my father before their paths diverged. He was also one of my instructors at the police academy. He has a high opinion of me and of my abilities as an interrogator—maybe too high.

  “We need you on this, Alice.”

  “What do you want me to do, exactly?”

  “We’ve been trying to make this guy talk for more than three days, but he’s not saying a word. I think you can break him.”

  “Why? Because I’m a woman?”

  “No, because you have a talent for it.”

  I would normally be excited by such an offer. This time, though, to my amazement, I feel no rush of adrenaline, only an immense fatigue and the desire to go home. My head has been screaming with a violent migraine since this morning. Now it’s evening—a heavy, oppressive summer evening. The air in Paris is thick with pollution and it has been a mercilessly hot day. With the air-conditioning not working, the Criminal Division’s headquarters has been transformed into a furnace. My blouse is sticky with sweat, and I would kill for a cold can of Diet Coke, but the vending machine is out of order.

  “Listen, if your guys haven’t gotten anything out of him, I don’t see what I’ll be able t
o do.”

  “Please just give it a try,” Foucaud begs. “I’ve seen you do it before.”

  “I’m just going to waste your time. I don’t know anything about the case.”

  “We’ll bring you up to speed on that. Taillandier’s already agreed to let you do it. Just get in there and make him give us a name. After that, we’ll take over again.”

  I hesitate, but do I really have a choice in the matter?

  We sit in an upper-floor room with two fans blowing warm air at us, and for an hour I am briefed about the suspect by two SAT officers. The man, Brahim Rahmani—aka the “cannon dealer” and the “powder monkey”—has been under close surveillance by the anti-terrorist unit for a long time. He is suspected of having supplied explosives to the group that blew up the Rue Saint-Lazare bus. Small quantities of C-4 and PEP 500 were found in his home during a search, along with plastic charges, cell phones converted into detonators, and a huge arsenal: guns of every caliber, steel rebars, bulletproof vests. After three days in custody, the man has not admitted anything to his interrogators, and the analysis of his hard drive and electronic communications during recent months is not enough to prove his participation, even indirectly, in the terrorist attacks.

  It is a fascinating case, but a complicated one. The heat makes it hard for me to concentrate. My two colleagues speak quickly, overloading me with so many details that I struggle to retain them. My memory is usually excellent, but tonight I grab a notebook to write down what they tell me.

  When the briefing is over, they take me downstairs to the interrogation room. Foucaud, Taillandier…all the big bosses are there, behind a one-way mirror, eager to see me at work. And now I, too, feel eager to enter the arena.

  I open the door and walk into the room.

  Inside, the heat is stifling, almost unbearable. Handcuffed to a chair, Rahmani is sitting behind a wooden table not much bigger than a school desk. His head is lowered and he is sweating. He barely even notices my presence.