by Cara Black
It couldn’t, non, non, but there was so much blood . . . The air carried the copper smell of blood and rotting fruit. Aimée pushed closer. Was Noémi cradling her dead child, refusing to let go?
But over a shoulder Aimée saw the flushed face of Elodie, mouth open to empty her lungs. Alive—the baby was alive.
“Calmez-vous, madame,” a woman in a blue uniform was saying. “Your baby’s all right. Please let the doctors run some tests . . .”
A flic waved Aimée away. “What are you doing here? I’ll remove you physically if you don’t . . .”
The body, now a mound under a blue foil cover, had been lifted onto a gurney. A tech stepped on a pedal, and the gurney jerked up. The woman’s thin wrist flapped out over the railing. Her fingernails were broken, grimy and smudged with clotted blood.
Thursday Evening
Aimée stared at the photo of a woman’s gaunt, bleached-out face, her bony shoulders poking up and making triangle dimples in the sheet. The body had been cleaned up for the autopsy slab photo.
The photo sat on the coffee table in the “situation” room—what had been the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hosptial surgery staff lounge until an hour before, when the flics took over. The surgeons’ lounge, with its faded green walls and wooden benches, resembled a rural train station’s second-class waiting room.
A middle-aged flic conducted the questioning, sweat stains under the arms of his short-sleeve shirt. Did Aimée recognize this woman? Had Aimée seen her at the pool?
“Is she the kidnapper, the woman found in the impasse?” Aimée asked.
“I ask the questions. You answer. Simple. So again, do you recognize her, Mademoiselle Leduc?”
Even if he was doing his job, his condescending tone rankled her.
“Attendez un moment.” She pulled out her digital camera.
“Didn’t I ask if you recognize her? We’re trying to establish her identity.”
“Attendez.” She clicked through photos on her camera. Found one. “There. In the background. That looks like her, coming out of the bain-douche. I saw her for a quick minute.”
He studied the photo. Made a notation in his notebook. “We’ll compare the clothing. Anything else?”
Homeless used the public baths. But so did a lot of students who lived in chambres de bonne on the sixth floors of the surrounding apartment buildings, rooms once used for maids and with only a shared WC on the landing.
“So she stole Elodie?” Aimée asked.
He hesitated. “The body was next to the baby. We don’t know more.”
But you can add it up, she thought. Had she been a homeless woman using the baths? Aimée thought of her thin wrists, the ragged, dirty nails.
A pang hit her. Could she have gotten it wrong? She’d looked at the abduction only one way after seeing the photo of Chloé.
What if this had been random—a poor woman who desperately wanted a child to love grabbing an opportunity?
Had this woman slept in the park, in a doorway, a squat? How could she have cared for a baby?
What had she been thinking?
Or was it possible Noémi’s ex had engineered this after all?
Aimée took back her camera and looked at the photo again. “Have you checked with the hospital?”
“I’m asking the questions, mademoiselle.”
She pointed to the photo. Even at that distance, the band on the woman’s thin wrist was visible—a hospital bracelet.
“See that?” Aimée said. “It might identify her if you can find it. Is it still on the body?”
His lips pursed. His round face was unpleasant. She was guessing they had not noticed a bracelet.
She heard voices passing in the hallway. “. . . inquiries door to door, every building, canvassing the area, the parks, courtyards . . .”
The voices faded. She wished this flic would give her something. “She’s not Asian, so what was she doing in Chinatown? Hiding? Or does she have a connection? Was she working for someone? She was supposed to steal the baby and hand her off, maybe?”
He stared at his watch. “Anything else we should be aware of?”
She’d try one more time. “What if Elodie wasn’t the baby she was supposed to kidnap? What if that’s why she was killed, for taking the wrong baby?”
Concern filled his face. “I know it’s scary for a mother to hear about something like this. But don’t look for boogeymen around every corner.”
“But Elodie was wearing my daughter’s hoodie—what if my Chloé was the target?”
“Our investigation works on evidence, mademoiselle. Not suppositions.” The flic checked his watch again. “If that’s all?”
“Are you a parent?” she said. “What would you do?”
“Take vacances.”
He turned as a woman walked into the room, a cell phone to her ear, and slung a straw market bag onto the table. Parked her squeaking roller bag.
“Speaking of vacation,” he said, “shouldn’t you be halfway to . . . Barcelona?”
“Biarritz.” She shrugged with the phone still to her ear. Took one look at Aimée. The woman’s eyebrows rose and she hung up. An officer from brigade des mineurs, she wore a blue and white striped Breton marinière shirt, jeans, and the same espadrilles she’d worn the previous summer when she’d helped Aimée track down the man who’d abducted Zazie, the daughter of the owners of the café below Leduc Detective.
“We meet again, Mademoiselle Leduc.” Madame Pelletier opened the file on the table. “Last time you had a bun in the oven.”
“My daughter came out perfect,” said Aimée. “But I’m a little biased.”
Madame Pelletier turned to the round-faced flic. “She’s a handful. I’ll finish questioning her.”
“About to go on holiday, like last time?” said Aimée.
Madame Pelletier nodded, pointed to the train ticket poking out of her straw bag. “Life gets in the way in my business.” She sat on the edge of the staff coffee table and ran her fingers through her short blonde hair. She was attractive, blonder than before, with diamond studs in her ears and new lines parenthesizing her mouth. “How are you involved?”
“It’s in my statement. There.”
“Please tell me in your own words. Start at the beginning.” She smiled. “Je vous écoute.”
I’m listening. The standard professional line.
Well, she’d go through it for the fifth time.
So Aimée recounted the sequence of events. Again.
“I vaguely recall this woman,” she said, showing the photo on her digital camera. “Look, in this photo, there’s a tag on her wrist. You didn’t find it on the body, right? Otherwise you’d know her identity.”
“Who says we don’t?”
“I’m not dense. Why did she take the baby to Chinatown?”
Madame Pelletier thumbed through the file on the desk. “Any number of reasons. Prearrangement to sell the baby—there’s a market. This could link to one of our ongoing investigations.”
A baby market?
“Or another common reason for abduction: a mentally unstable woman loses a baby—has a miscarriage or a stillbirth—and abducts someone else’s as a replacement. The autopsy will tell us more.”
At least Madame Pelletier knew her stuff. But things slipped through the cracks, especially with corrupt police.
“When they found the body, there was a woman watching from a window,” Aimée said. “I know it doesn’t mean she saw what happened—”
“Mais oui, someone called this in,” said Madame Pelletier. Now Aimée had her attention. “We’re working on tracing the caller.” She pulled out a map. “Show me where you saw her.”
Thursday Evening
“My first crème brûlée,” said Milo, a rookie flic.
The burned-out car reeked of burnt rubber an
d melted plastic upholstery. Fine pale soot, like confectioners’ sugar, dusted the blackened interior. The doors had been blown open.
“Call it in,” said Milo.
“A VIN number would help,” said his partner.
Milo felt the hood. Warm, and the catch was fused shut. The techs at the garage would find the engine serial number. “Report a Renault Twingo, two door. Older model, from ’92 or ’93.”
His uncle used to own one like this.
“You’re professional, eh?” his partner said.
Was it joy-riding kids from the banlieue, a carjacking? Why go to the trouble? This quartier was a wasteland, his new chief said, a dumping ground for mistakes.
“There’s a child’s car seat in the back,” Milo said.
His partner looked up, his expression blank. But Milo had caught his apprehension. “Anything in it?”
Milo donned latex gloves. Climbed in and over the chassis’s protruding ribs. Ran his hands over and around the car seat. Its charred corners split like blackened banana peels.
The stink permeated his nostrils.
“Nothing,” he said.
Sneezed. Sneezed again. Backing out, he ducked his head, and that’s when he saw it.
“Just this.” A plastic wrist tag from Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital. He could read part of the lettering . . . a woman’s name.
“Dumb luck that didn’t fry,” said his partner, furnishing an evidence bag.
Thursday Evening
The hospital “situation” room was stifling. A fan recycled hot air. Aimée felt a stream of perspiration between her shoulder blades. Madame Pelletier looked up from the notes in front of her as an officer knocked on the open door.
“Madame le Commandant, a moment, s’il vous plaît,” the officer said.
“J’arrive,” Madame Pelletier said, stepping out before Aimée could ask if they were done. Great. She had to get back to Chloé.
And René, where had he disappeared to?
Not even a call. So unlike him. She tried his number. His voice mail box was full.
She’d last seen him in the narrow street, as she’d been bundled off by the police . . .
She thought of that face in the window.
Thursday Evening
René had seen the young woman’s face watching the scene below.
He’d overheard Aimée’s altercation with the police, heard with relief that Elodie was alive, watched Aimée accompany Noémi in the ambulance.
While all the flics were distracted, he’d sneaked past the personnel barrier and ducked into a doorway overflowing with pots of ivy. He watched officers going building to building on rue Nationale. Would they find any witnesses?
There was a scraping noise as an anonymous-looking door opened across the passage. It was a shop’s back door; René could see stacks of boxes within.
A young woman came out—petite but more than a head taller than him. The face in the window.
She looked both ways.
Took off down the street, away from the police.
“Excusez-moi,” he said from the doorway.
She kept walking.
He followed. “Please, tell me what you saw.” His short legs struggled to keep up. “Look, I’m not with the police. My friend’s the baby’s mother.”
He’d met Noémi only once, but that counted.
The woman hesitated, her step faltering, then continued toward the main artery of rue de Tolbiac. “Not here.” He could just make out her low words.
“Where?”
She didn’t pause again until she was by a bus shelter. She bent to whisper a meeting spot and then quickly boarded the arriving number 83 bus.
René reached in his linen jacket pocket, mindful of the stares of the Asians around him. Busied himself with his cell phone, which was dotted with bits of one of Chloé’s stale teething biscuits. There must have been one in his pocket.
With showy nonchalance, he pretended to talk on his phone. By the time he’d reached his car, he knew where he had to go.
Thursday Evening
The atmosphere in the situation room had changed. Aimée could feel an increased sense of urgency among the flics who were bustling in and out, charging up and down the hallway.
Madame Pelletier was studying another file she’d brought in. “I’ll need your camera’s memory card.”
“As long as I get it back and you tell me what’s happening.”
“I remember your determination.” Madame Pelletier regarded her. “Are you always like this?”
“A character trait.” Aimée grinned. “I’ve been called a pain in the derriere. Look, Noémi and I are friends, and I want to support her. Please, just tell me you don’t think it’s her ex or his family.”
“That’s under investigation now that we’ve tracked down her ex. Finally.” Madame Pelletier’s mouth pursed in anger. “Now, may I have the memory card?”
“If you fill me in on the latest.”
“There’s a tentative ID on the victim; that’s all I can share. That’s why I need to compare with your photo.”
Aimée depressed the lever on the digital camera, slid the memory card out, and handed it to Madame Pelletier. “So you’ve found the hospital ID bracelet. Where?”
“Never give up, do you?”
“Wouldn’t be good at my job if I did.”
“But this isn’t your job. It’s mine. Now go home to your bébé.”
Aimée wanted to shout in frustration. But acting pliant would get her further. “Look, I understand your process, but the crime feels so close . . . My child was the target.”
“I’ve attached the photo to your statement, noted your opinion. For what it’s worth . . . it looks like the kidnapper was a distraught homeless woman.”
Aimée had caught a glimpse of the file Madame Pelletier was reading. Even looking at it upside down, Aimée had been able to make out the name of the shelter and the brief list of the victim’s belongings.
“How does a homeless woman have two thousand francs stashed in a woman’s shelter?” Aimée asked.
Madame Pelletier slapped the file shut. Her eyes were angry. “How do you think?”
“A bribe to abduct my baby,” said Aimée, controlling a shiver with effort. “Between you and me, there’s some kind of cover-up going on. Look at the park photo, read the threat on the back, put it together with the fact that Elodie was wearing my baby’s hoodie when she was abducted . . . It’s obvious. Stares you in the face.” She caught her breath. “When they discovered it was the wrong baby, maybe got interrupted—I don’t know—the woman was killed to prevent her from talking.”
Madame Pelletier grimaced. Nodded. “I can understand your concern.”
Trying to placate her? Condescending? Mais non, Aimée heard the truth in Madame Pelletier’s voice.
“So what will you do about it?” Aimée asked.
“Call for you, Madame le Commandant, line three,” said a voice from the hallway.
Businesslike now, Madame Pelletier indicated the door. “Mademoiselle Leduc, I suggest you let me do my job.”
Aimée took a taxi back. Her mind was unable to let the case go. This seemed sloppy for the Hand. A rush job? Interrupted?
She thought of Vauban dead under a bus. Shivered. Cyril Cromach snooping around. Didn’t want to think of how the Hand would threaten her next.
She couldn’t expect the flics who hated her to protect her. Nor would she want them to.
Her phone rang. Noémi. The guilt rose up again.
“Elodie’s all right. She’s asleep. Aimée, we’re home finally . . .”
Relief filled her. “Thank God. You okay, Noémi?”
“Taking it minute by minute,” she said.
“I’m so sorry. It’s all my fault—”
“Stop
it, Aimée. This is between me and my ex. The flics know. They always look at the family for a reason.”
“But, Noémi—”
“Just listen, Aimée. I did ask them if Chloé could have been the target. Unlikely, they said. Almost all abductions are family. Not one flic had ever dealt with a random kidnapping by a woman who’d lost a child or a kidnapping for money.”
Voices rose in the background. There was a high metallic scraping, like fingernails on a blackboard, the signature sound of Noémi’s atelier’s wrought iron gate.
“Merde, the flics came back.” Noémi sucked in a breath. “More later.”
Thursday Evening
René wedged into a parking space behind the gargantuan Italianate-style mairie of the thirteenth on Place d’Italie. He’d circled the horrendous roundabout several times.
The meeting place was a café in the arcade leading to a 1930s art house cinema. Covert and quiet. René found her at the last table at the far end of the black-tiled café.
He pulled himself up onto the seat. His short legs dangled.
“Merci for meeting me,” he said.
“No trouble, promittez?” A soft accent hung on her French syllables.
“Bien sûr. Tell me what you saw.”
She crossed her arms in front of her chest—defensive, René thought. And the nervous type, he noted from her bitten fingernails and ragged cuticles.
“Desolé, where have my manners gone? Would you like to order something?”
“I’m not hungry.” She hesitated. “Look, monsieur, I heard screams; that’s all. I don’t know what else I can tell you.”
“Just think back. Maybe there’s a small detail, like a noise or someone you saw nearby,” said René. The woman’s expression was unsure. He was certain she had something to say and was just afraid to say it. He rummaged through his brain to find the right words. Something Aimée would say. “Please, if there’s anything you remember, it will help to catch who did this.”
