Guilty Wives

by Patterson, James; Ellis, David

  The Lamarcke was showing four movies on six screens. I was a bit behind on pop culture of late, so I didn’t recognize the titles or most of the actors. I picked the movie that had the latest showing, a 2005 film called La Trahison. It was scheduled to begin at 10:45.

  The Lamarcke was an entire complex: it included a brasserie, whose patrons were still enjoying their meals; a women’s boutique; a store that sold children’s clothing; a travel store; and a small café, which was closed. You had to take an escalator down to the movie theaters.

  Downstairs, there were two theaters to the left and four to the right. One of the theaters on the left was the gigantic theater they called the Lamar. It was named after the man who founded this theater, Lamar Lamarcke, a French thespian of the late 1800s.

  I handed my movie ticket to the clerk and walked down the hallway to the two theaters on the left. I poked my head into the Lamar, though it wasn’t showing my movie. I walked up the ramp and looked around. On the screen, Cameron Diaz was kicking someone in the face and screaming. The theater was enormous—probably seven or eight hundred seats, including a giant balcony.

  I then walked down to the neighboring theater, which was showing my movie. It had the same setup, but the balcony was smaller and there were fewer and narrower rows on the main floor. It was dwarfed by its neighbor, the Lamar.

  I freshened up in the women’s bathroom. It had sleek, modern fixtures of stainless steel, a clean marble floor, and five stalls. When I walked back out into the hallway, I almost ran into a janitor, who was pushing an oversize garbage can with assorted cleaning products hanging from it.

  “Bonsoir,” he sang. He was a chipper elderly man.

  “Bonsoir,” I answered, but he was already past me. He reached the end of the hallway and opened a door, flipped on a light, and pushed the garbage can inside. From what I could tell, it was a pretty spacious room. I saw a ladder propped up against the wall, a snow shovel—did it ever snow in Paris?—and a whole rack of cleaning supplies on the wall.

  I sat on a bench and put my head against the soft wall. I was dreadfully tired. I’d already made a big blunder at the hotel and nearly been caught. And who knew what other mistakes I had made or would make?

  The janitor whistled a carefree song as he walked past me again, his duties for the evening presumably completed, his supplies stored away, and a time card ready to be punched. A simple life. How desperately I envied him.

  A sprinkling of moviegoers filtered into the smaller theater for the 10:45 showing. Probably fifty people, tops, doing the late-night movie thing. I envied them, too. Frivolous entertainment hadn’t been a priority for me for well over a year now.

  I stayed outside the theater on that bench until I could hear the sounds of the movie beginning, the melodramatic opening music.

  When I was alone, I walked over to the janitor’s closet and opened it up.

  CHAPTER 129

  THE JANITOR’S CLOSET wasn’t all that spacious and it wasn’t remotely comfortable, but it was a place to hide for the time being. I couldn’t be sure when, or if, someone would open this closet. So I parked myself behind the garbage can and lay completely flat. I threw some large, thick drop cloths over me and tried to calculate what someone opening the door would see.

  Presumably, no one would be expecting a person lying on the floor camouflaged by drop cloths and obscured by a garbage can. But I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t have a better idea. That janitor sure looked like he was done for the night, so I had to play the odds as best I could.

  I’d slept on worse floors, of course. I’d slept in cell 413, after all, where rodents regularly trolled and where the odor of fungus and decay was overpowering. I’d take the intense smell of cleaning chemicals any day over that prison.

  My mind started playing tricks on me as I drifted in and out of sleep. I lost track of time and didn’t even hear the movie end. Sleep deprivation was a powerful thing.

  My watch said it was almost three-thirty in the morning. Surely the last movie had long ago ended and the Lamarcke was in hibernation for the night.

  I tentatively pushed open the door into darkness and listened. I could not hear the faintest sound. The Lamarcke was definitely closed.

  I walked over to the movie theater that had been showing the 10:45 movie, the smaller one next to the Lamar. The door opened. If it had been locked, I don’t know what I would have done.

  I walked in and took the stairs up to the balcony. I found a cozy space in the back and nestled in. No jammies for me. I still had my cocktail dress and heels. I would use my purse for a pillow.

  Durand would be searching every hotel in Paris tonight for Allison Larson, or anyone who fit my description and who managed to get around the passport requirement. He would probably be searching parking garages, expecting me to be sleeping in my car. He would probably have officers out on the streets and in the nightclubs and the train stations.

  But I was pretty sure he wouldn’t be looking for me in the Cinema Lamarcke.

  Still, Durand was close now. He knew I was in Paris and he knew he had missed me by no more than an hour or so at the hotel. I had rushed through a shower, changed, and run out of there down the back staircase. If I’d so much as caught a catnap—which I had seriously contemplated doing—I’d be in French custody right now.

  I shuddered at the thought. No way, I told myself again. No way was I going back to prison.

  I stretched my back. My shoulders ached from tension. The truth was, I didn’t know what Durand knew, or how close he was.

  I ran my hand over my purse for comfort. Inside it was a wad of my remaining cash and a bit of makeup.

  And, of course, the Glock I took off Lucy at the prison. I had no intention of shooting another human being. No matter what happened, I wasn’t a killer and I wasn’t going to let them turn me into one.

  But I did keep a single bullet in the chamber. It was reserved for one possible outcome—the outcome, if I were honest with myself, that was the most likely end to all this. And it was the worst outcome of all.

  The bullet was reserved for the possibility that Durand would catch me before I could prove my innocence.

  And in that event, the bullet would be for me.

  CHAPTER 130

  COLONEL DURAND’S BLACK sedan pulled in through the gates of the Palais de Justice at seven in the morning. He was with his top aide, Verose. He would spend the day in Paris; indeed, he would spend every day in Paris until he found Abbie Elliot.

  “They found his body last night, after he wouldn’t answer his front door or his phone,” Verose told him. “He was in his bedroom. A single bullet between his eyes. Not from close range, sir.”

  Not from close range. No chance of a suicide. Which meant that the warden, Boulez, had been murdered.

  Had Abbie killed the warden? Things were getting stranger by the day.

  “Tell me about today,” Durand said.

  “We’ll have more than two hundred agents and officers on the streets,” said Verose. “All of them in plain clothes. We have flashed a directive to every hotel, asking them to be on the lookout for her passport. Every transportation hub is covered. She won’t leave Paris, sir.”

  Durand nodded to a guard as he entered the building. “You’re assuming she wants to leave Paris,” he said.

  Another car was parked just down the street from the Palais de Justice. Christien Brookes sat at the wheel, watching Durand and his associate enter the Palais. On the seat beside him was today’s edition of Le Monde. The headline—ABBIE À ESPAGNE?—stared back at him. The front-page story described how French authorities believed that Abbie Elliot either was headed to Spain or had already made it across the border to Barcelona.

  He smirked at the headline. A nice plant by Durand, no doubt. A smart move, too. Durand obviously missed Abbie last night. But he was probably close. And why not make her feel safe while he inched ever closer?

  Speaking of which—how did Durand miss Abbie last night? Chr
istien didn’t know. He’d done all he could do, slipping that note to the French police and tipping them off about the name Allison Larson. Somehow, she had avoided capture. Maybe she hadn’t stayed in a hotel, and thus hadn’t used her passport.

  Or maybe Abbie wasn’t even in Paris. Christien didn’t know for certain. He lacked the resources to keep tabs on her. Sure, he had a friend waiting for her at Bordeaux-Mérignac, a former colleague at SIS who now lived in nearby Lyon and did Christien a favor. But he didn’t have anyone following her afterward. He didn’t know where she went after she scurried out of the airport.

  Still, he liked Paris as the most likely option. He was pretty sure she was here.

  And he was pretty sure he knew why.

  He removed the .45 from under his seat and fitted the suppressor on it. He wouldn’t need it for a while yet, but it never hurt to check the fitting.

  “Why didn’t you just get on that bloody plane?” he whispered.

  CHAPTER 131

  SIX P.M. THE limousine pulled up and two men, Simon Schofield and Colton Gordon, stepped out. Crowds of spectators flanked each side of the entrance. Flashbulbs went off, but only a few. Though they were men of wealth and power and immaculate in their tuxedos, Simon and Colton were relative unknowns under these circumstances.

  They walked along the red carpet into the entrance. They were stopped by a man holding a list on a clipboard. They gave their names. They passed an area where others had stopped to have their photographs taken against a backdrop of black and red. But nobody was itching to take photos of Colton or Simon. They weren’t famous and they weren’t much to look at. They had money. That was their ticket tonight. That was always their ticket.

  They took the escalator downstairs, where a healthy crowd had already gathered. Hors d’oeuvres were passed by waiters in white jackets. The themed appetizers were elaborate—matjeshering-and-apple canapés, made with salted herring; onion tarts; kartoffel kloesse, plump potato dumplings; brunede kartofler, delectable sugar-browned potatoes—and the Champagne and liquor flowed freely.

  Colton and Simon looked around in amusement. This wasn’t really their scene. They usually hobnobbed with traders and speculators and financiers. But they belonged here—they’d earned a spot here tonight—and they might as well enjoy it.

  Colton took a bite of an onion tart and washed it down with a swallow of Champagne. “So she’s in Barcelona,” he said.

  “If you believe Le Monde. And the authorities.” Simon shrugged. “Never know with Abbie, do you? I have to admit, I underestimated her.”

  Colton watched Simon a moment. He wasn’t used to hearing Simon concede anything. “You think we should be worried, brah? Our gats are hanging out in the wind, are they?”

  Simon looked about, ensuring that nobody was listening to this conversation. They weren’t. Most of them were tipsy, if not drunk, and had less weighty issues on their minds. “I think all the bases are covered, Colt. Don’t go getting excited.”

  Colton didn’t appreciate the admonishment. He patted his jacket, the inside pocket that held his firearm. “No need to get excited when I have my lady with me.”

  “Great, Colt.” Simon rolled his eyes. “If we’d left things up to you, you’d have walked over to our wives at that hotel pool and gunned them down. You almost ruined everything by going to Monte Carlo as it was.”

  “Did I? Maybe if you’d told me you had yourself a fokken plan, I wouldn’t have. But you kept all that to yourself, brah.” Colt guzzled his Champagne and pointed the glass at Simon. “Besides, by yourself, what did you have? A key card? A bit of Serena’s hair and blood? You didn’t have any plan for carrying it out.” He shook his head. “You were just a jealous husband who wanted to pay back his wife. I’d wager that, left to your own devices, you couldn’t have pulled it off, when it came down to it.”

  Simon had to acknowledge the point. All those months after discovering Serena’s affair, as Simon stewed and plotted revenge, he’d always wondered exactly how he’d do it, or if he even could. When Serena had mentioned her planned ladies’ weekend in Monte Carlo, Simon thought he had an opportunity. He figured the trip was a ruse to cover Serena’s scheme to spend the weekend with her lover. He played the doting husband, insisting on personally traveling to Monte Carlo weeks in advance to scout out the perfect hotel—which allowed him the chance, when the manager of the Hôtel Métropole stepped out of his office, for Simon to slip the master key card—one that opened every hotel room—off the manager’s key ring. Getting DNA evidence from Serena over the following weeks was easy: a plucked eyebrow from the bathroom sink; a fingerprint on a wineglass; a spot of blood on a cutting board when Serena nicked her finger while slicing a tomato.

  He had planned it well. But he hadn’t planned on Colton making his own trip to Monte Carlo to keep a jealous eye on Bryah. He hadn’t counted on Colton summoning the other husbands down, either—including Simon, who, unbeknownst to Colton, was already in Monte Carlo.

  And he hadn’t planned for anything that came afterward.

  From the front of the reception area, they heard the clank and squeak of a microphone as someone removed it from its stand and spoke into it.

  “Everyone,” said the man in French-accented English. “If I could have everyone’s attention, s’il vous plaît.”

  After a moment the roomful of guests had settled down and turned toward the front.

  “Thank you, all. Thank you for joining us tonight,” the man said. “I’d like to welcome each and every one of you to the Cinema Lamarcke.”

  CHAPTER 132

  “NOTHING, SIR. NO REPORTS,” said Verose. She looks tired, Durand thought. They were all tired.

  Durand, through his headset, had received many of the updates himself as he paced the spacious office he was given in the Palais de Justice throughout the day. Nothing at the airports. Nothing at the bus stations. Zero at the train stations. No positive identifications from the tollbooths.

  “She’s lying low,” Verose said to him.

  “Maybe.” Durand wasn’t convinced. “But when has Abbie Elliot ever lain low?”

  Outside the Cinema Lamarcke, another limousine stopped at the curb. The photographers lining the red carpet crept forward and started snapping their pictures before the door had even opened, before the supermodel—the occupant’s date—had first stepped out of the car. Television reporters from the French media and correspondents from American network television stations teased their hair and cleared their throats as they prepared for short interviews on the red carpet.

  One of them, an anorexic reporter wearing too much hair spray, posed before the camera and flashed her best smile. “This is Tabby Hudson from Entertainment Tonight,” she said. “We are live at Paris’s historic Cinema Lamarcke on the Champs-Élysées for the French premiere of the controversial box-office sensation Der Führer. And the star, Damon Kodiak, has just arrived!”

  CHAPTER 133

  DAMON KODIAK STOOD on the stage inside the Lamar, the complex’s gigantic theater, microphone in hand. The supporting cast of Der Führer, having just been introduced, lined the stage behind him. Damon had made a few remarks and now choked up. He paused for dramatic effect, looking over the eight hundred people in attendance. “If we don’t challenge ourselves,” he said softly, “then we are not artists. And more important than that—more important than anything else, my friends—we are not artists if we don’t challenge our audience. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Der Führer.”

  The crowd erupted in applause. The cast walked off the stage and took their seats. Damon was last, soaking in the adoration before bowing once and walking down the steps.

  The lights dimmed until it was pitch-black in the theater. The audience settled into a hush of quiet anticipation.

  But, unlike the rest of the cast, Damon Kodiak did not take a seat in the front row of the theater. He did not take a seat at all.

  Instead, in the darkness, he pivoted and turned toward a corner of the theater whe
re a member of the Lamarcke staff stood like a sentry. As Damon neared him, the man pushed on the wall—a door, actually.

  Damon disappeared through it.

  Moments later, the movie began with grainy, black-and-white footage of Adolf Hitler addressing a crowd from a balcony. This movie was Damon’s crowning achievement. But he wouldn’t be watching.

  The audience, brimming with anticipation, hadn’t noticed Damon’s covert exit. Why would they? Their eyes were on the screen, not the corner of the theater. They were eager for the start of this controversial movie.

  Except, of course, for two members of the audience, seated in the fourth row on the aisle, who were much more concerned with Damon himself than with his movie.

  “Did he just slip out?” Colton whispered to Simon.

  CHAPTER 134

  DAMON KODIAK CLOSED the door behind him and looked up to the projectionist’s booth in the empty theater connected to the Lamar. He waved and smiled to Sam, who had been with the Lamarcke ever since Damon’s first movie premiere here, eleven years ago. Der Führer was Damon’s seventh premiere in this theater and they knew his secret well. And kept it, all these years.

  Damon found a seat in the tenth row, square in the middle. The room went black, the curtain parted, and the movie began. Damon’s heart fluttered as he watched the two boxing gloves, one bearing the American flag and the other the hammer and sickle of the Soviet Union. They smashed together in an explosion and the scene cut to Rocky Balboa on the verge of knocking out Clubber Lang in their rematch, one of the final scenes of Rocky III.

  And then there was the opening scene of Rocky IV. It had been Damon’s acting debut, twenty-six years back, a lifetime ago, when it was all about the art, all about the dream. Damon was a skinny college dropout who wrote poetry and went to the movies every night of the week that he wasn’t working one of his two jobs, delivering flowers and painting elementary school classrooms in the local school district.