Cold Plague

by Daniel Kalla

  Fontaine grabbed her shoulders, but the numbness was so intense that he could barely feel the contact. Panic ripped through him and doused his arousal. He shoved her away with both hands.

  DeGroot stumbled back a step before catching her balance. Her eyes shot up and locked onto his. Her lips parted a fraction, her breathing heavier. Her smile widened, and she ran her fingers over one of her nipples. “Oh, I see. You want it a little rougher. Do we have time for that?”

  Fontaine stepped back and glanced from side to side, feeling suddenly caged in the aluminum hut. “Get away from me, Martine,” he whispered.

  DeGroot’s grin assumed a vicious quality, but she held her ground. “Hard to get, huh?” She blew into his face. “That is so unlike you, Claude.”

  Sweat broke out on his forehead, and Fontaine backpedaled until he bumped against the wall. With his frozen hand, he tried to steady himself against the narrow bookcase, but he knocked it over. “Get the fuck away, Martine!” he shouted.

  The lust drained from her face. Dropping her hands to her side, she stood with the jacket hanging loosely off her shoulders. “Claude, what the hell is wrong with you?” she demanded.

  “You!” Fontaine said, trembling now. “You and that other bitch. You’ve done this to me, haven’t you?”

  “Done what?” DeGroot asked impassively.

  “This.” He raised his shaky numb arm and pointed it at DeGroot. “You are poisoning me, aren’t you? You want all the money for yourself. And…and…” He scoured his brain for the name but drew a sudden blank. “And that woman. I will be dead before the ships even leave here.”

  A scowl darted across DeGroot’s lips, but then her expression softened. “Claude, you are hyperventilating. Slow down your breathing.”

  Fontaine tried to wipe his soaked brow, but his wooden hand knocked clumsily against his cheek before it found his forehead.

  DeGroot zipped her jacket closed and then broke into a loving smile. “No one is poisoning you, Claude. I am your partner—in business and in life. You remember?”

  Fontaine managed to slow his breathing and steady his balance. “All those things that Ukrainian woman said.” He was unclear of the exact threats, but he knew they were menacing. “She was going to kill me if we screwed up. And that day when you went onto the ice with her…” Fontaine’s voice trailed off, unsure whether the memory was real or imagined.

  “I told you, Claude,” DeGroot said. “Yulia was worried about our expenses. We cleared it all up. You have nothing to fear from her.”

  “And…and what about these?” Claude said, staring at his trembling hands.

  DeGroot came nearer, though there was nothing seductive in her approach. “You said it yourself. You need to get out of here. Everything will be better when we get back to Paris.”

  He wiped his brow again. His breathing slowed as he felt the anxiety seep away.

  DeGroot pressed against him again, but this time she wrapped her arms around him and hugged him maternally. “Everything will be okay, Claude,” she cooed. “I will take care of you now.”

  Fontaine wanted to cry with relief. He sank his fingers into the fabric of her jacket, but he might as well have pressed them against the ice outside. They were dead now.

  33

  Limoges, France. January 20

  Oblivious to the musty smell and the frequent clicks and bangs of the radiator on the far side of the room, Avril sat at her desk and distractedly scanned her backlog of e-mails. The memory of that last phone call with her son’s abductors occupied her thoughts. She wondered if she had jeopardized his life even further by placing demands on them. What choice did I have? she wanted to scream.

  She forced herself to think like a detective, not a mother. How did they know I could reach that phone booth within five minutes? Limoges is a relatively small city, but not every two points are within five minutes of each other. Either they already knew where I was or they are watching me, she decided, and the hair on the back of her neck stood.

  As she reached the page that showed the most recent e-mails, the subject line of one from near the top of the list caught her attention: FAMILY. She did not recognize the sender—Paris_Parent66. Overcome by fresh unease, she double-clicked the mouse and the screen filled with a photograph of Frédéric.

  Avril’s stomach plummeted. Ice flooded her veins and nausea overwhelmed her. My boy!

  In the photo, the barrel of a gun was nuzzled against Frédéric’s temple. In front of his chest, he held up a sign printed in red marker in his own handwriting that read DO NOT SCREW WITH US, AVRIL. More than anything else, his expression haunted her. His lips were set firm and his eyes stared directly into the camera. She did not recognize fear or even anger on her son’s face, only resignation. She reached out and touched his face on the screen.

  “Hey, you’re looking kind of white for a black woman,” a voice grumbled.

  Avril snapped back in her seat. She fumbled with the mouse to close the e-mail and then looked up to see Simon Valmont standing at her doorway. “Oh, Simon, hello.”

  He nodded to her. The lined skin around his eyes creased deeper. “I hear you closed those two missing-woman cases.”

  Though the computer screen now displayed only the Gendarmerie’s screen saver, the image of her son with a gun at his head burned in her mind. She willed herself to focus. “I found Yvette Pereau in Amsterdam,” she said.

  He hacked one of his habitual throat clearings. “Yet another bored housewife who found true love, huh?” Valmont rolled his eyes. “And what about the other one?”

  “Pauline Lamaire? She was very confused from her medications. I think she wandered off, maybe into a gulley or the forest. Some hiker will probably stumble across her remains one day.” She sighed. “Regardless, it’s a matter for Search and Rescue, not the police.”

  Valmont trudged the few steps to the chair across from her desk and plunked down noisily. “Still, Avril, knowing you, I imagined we would have to pry the files from your cold dead hands before you would ever give up on either of them.”

  She conjured a smile. “I’m learning.”

  “Are you?” He toyed with the end of his dirty tie and then looked up accusingly at her. “What is going on, Avril?”

  Her toes tightened below her desk. “Nothing.”

  “Is that so?” Valmont let go of his tie and it fell crooked over his paunch. “Ever since you returned from Amsterdam, you are different. I have never seen you so distracted.”

  She wanted desperately to share the news about Frédéric, but she had already risked too much by antagonizing her son’s abductors. She did not know who was watching her or from where. She still suspected the original leak came from within the Gendarmerie itself. And she decided the walls were too thin to risk telling her friend.

  “I suppose I am a little sad the way things turned out,” Avril said as nonchalantly as her voice would allow. “With Pauline possibly dead, and Yvette having run off on her poor husband—”

  “That’s better than dead, is it not?”

  “On balance, I suppose.” She feigned a laugh. “I am just a hopeless romantic.”

  Valmont viewed her for several long seconds. “You are not a particularly good liar, Avril.”

  “It’s Frédéric,” she said in a whisper.

  “Frédéric! What about him?”

  She hesitated. “He is having trouble at school. I am not sure he is going to survive the term.”

  “Ah, he’s a smart boy.” Valmont waved her worry away with a big palm. “He probably needs to get out in the world for a bit. He has always been too serious for his age. Trust me, this may well turn out to be the best thing to happen to him.”

  If only, she thought miserably.

  Another figure appeared at her door, but unlike Valmont, Inspector Esmond Cabot came nowhere near to filling the space. Dressed impeccably in another one of his tailored navy suits with expensive-looking black brogues, Cabot stepped into the room. “I need one of you for a
case,” he said by way of greeting. “It’s a politically sensitive one.”

  Valmont looked over his shoulder at his boss. “Politics? Isn’t that your specialty?”

  Cabot ignored the barb. “I have an American from the WHO and an E.U. official down in my office.”

  A cold rush swept through Avril. “Regarding what?” she asked.

  “They’re concerned people are meddling with their investigation into this mad cow crisis. Frankly, I doubt there is much to the complaint, but I’ll need one of you to check it out.”

  Valmont uttered a noise that sounded like an engine trying to catch. “Aside from placing a couple of bets on football matches, all I have in my calendar this afternoon is an appointment to rough up a drug dealer. This sounds more interesting.”

  “No,” Avril snapped, and then immediately shrugged it off, trying to mask her eagerness. “I just closed my last case.”

  “Don’t worry, Avril.” Valmont laughed deeply. “I have a whole stack of new ones I can share. You could even beat up my drug dealer. It would be good exercise.”

  Cabot tapped his fingers together, wavering. “Simon did ask first…”

  Her mind raced. “Does the American speak French?”

  “Not much, as best I can tell,” Cabot said.

  She turned to Valmont. “Have you learned English in the last week?”

  “Yeah, that and Portuguese and Vietnamese,” he grumbled. “It’s been a slow week.”

  “Esmond, I spent a year in London,” she said.

  Cabot looked from Valmont to Avril. “She has a point. Besides, Simon, I cannot afford an international incident on my desk. Avril might be a better fit.”

  “It’s decided, then.” Avril rose from her seat and walked past the two men. Valmont flashed her a glance but said nothing.

  Almost light-headed with anxiety, Avril followed Cabot into his spacious corner office, which did not smell of the same mold problem that plagued the rest of the building. The large windows had a street view with a glimpse of the cathedral in the background, and the walls were plastered with photos of Cabot posing obsequiously with numerous dignitaries.

  Avril walked around the desk, and the man and woman both rose to meet her. The woman was tall and strikingly pretty with voluptuous lips and a model’s cheekbones, but Avril sensed a withdrawn quality to her. The man was more welcoming. With tousled brown hair, warm gray-blue eyes, and a slightly crooked smile, he was handsome without effort.

  Cabot beamed his public smile. “Detective Avril Avars, allow me to introduce Dr. Noah Haldane with the World Health Organization, and Ms. Elise Renard with the European Union,” he said in English. He moved his hand from Avril’s direction to the other two. “Detective Avars is one of our best detectives.”

  Avril smiled politely. “A pleasure to meet you.” She shook both their hands.

  Cabot made a show of checking his watch. “Ms. Renard, Dr. Haldane, if I had known you were coming I would have cleared the afternoon, but unfortunately I have a meeting already scheduled.”

  Despite the inspector’s apologetic tone, Avril suspected his meeting was invented, and he was already distancing himself from any potential fallout related to the international visitors. After he hurried from the room, she sat down behind his desk. She reached for the notepad and pen sitting on the neat desktop and then looked up at the others. “Do you mind if I take notes?”

  Noah shook his head, and Elise said, “Please.”

  “Can we start from the beginning?” She held up her pen.

  “Detective Avars, I work for the Agricultural Commission of the European Union,” Elise said. “Dr. Haldane is a world authority on infectious diseases.”

  “Of course, Dr. Haldane,” Avril said deferentially. “The ARCS virus.”

  Elise nodded impatiently. “We were sent here to investigate the regional outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalitis, or BSE.”

  “Mad cow disease?” Avril asked, tensing at the words. What does this have to do with my son?

  Elise nodded. She recapped the local situation, and explained how their trail had led them back to Ferme d’Allaire as the likely source of the infected animals and tainted beef.

  Noah tapped his chest. “My role is to establish how BSE is related to the human cases that were thought to be a form of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, or vCJD.”

  Avril flexed her toes tightly. “‘Thought to be’?” she said.

  “I am not convinced that the human victims fit the criteria for vCJD.” Noah went on to offer her a brief summary in lay terms of prion diseases and to explain how the Limousin cases deviated from other vCJD sufferers.

  As Noah spoke, Avril slipped fully into detective mode. She was beginning to recognize a connection between the illness and the women’s abductions, but she kept her suspicion from her face and tone. “The science is fascinating, and to be honest, beyond me.” Her lips formed a sympathetic smile born from years of deflecting trivial, irrelevant, and sometimes unhinged complaints. “But, with respect, I still do not see the role for a police investigation.”

  Noah glanced at Elise, who nodded her encouragement. “There have been several unusual coincidences and events relating to our investigation,” he said. “Too many.”

  Avril frowned. “Coincidences?”

  “For starters, it appears the victims are all linked through one family.”

  “A family here in Limoges?” Avril asked.

  Noah shook his head. “From Lac Noir. The Manet family.”

  Avril’s gaze dropped to the notepad in front of her to hide her surprise. “M-A-N-E-T?” she asked, buying time. Overcome by déjà vu, she remembered jotting the same name when Marie Lamaire mentioned the ex-fiancé of her cousin Pauline.

  “Yes,” Noah said. “Philippe Manet—one of the victims—had an affair with another victim, Benoît Gagnon. And the third victim, Giselle Tremblay, was the former girlfriend of Philippe’s older brother, Georges. A geologist who researches polar ice.”

  “Giselle’s mother says that Georges Manet provided her a sample of water from one of his research trips,” Elise said. “He told her it had therapeutic properties.”

  Avril buried her head in her notes while her heart thudded in her ears. She recalled Marie’s description of the mysterious new therapy for arthritis that someone, likely Georges, had given Pauline shortly before the woman became confused. Was this water the same ‘therapy’? she wondered.

  “The issue of water comes up over and over again,” Noah said.

  Avril cleared her throat, still not daring to look up from the page. “And have you interviewed Georges Manet?” she asked.

  “Only his sister, Sylvie,” Noah said. “Apparently Georges is snowbound above the Arctic Circle on a research project. But Sylvie gave us an ice sample that he brought home last summer. We’re having it analyzed now.”

  Blank-faced, Avril looked back up at the others. “Can you not reach Georges by radio or e-mail?”

  “We are trying to track his whereabouts from his satellite phone signal. In the meantime, he has not replied to his sister’s e-mails in almost two weeks.”

  Avril wondered if Georges Manet had suffered the same fate as Pauline Lamaire and Yvette Pereau. “You mentioned other coincidences?” she said.

  “Someone broke into my room at the Grand Hotel Doré.”

  “A theft?”

  Noah shook his head. He dug in his pocket, pulled out his notebook, and showed Avril the happy-face bookmark clipped inside, explaining how he found it dislodged upon returning from Paris. “Whoever broke in must have been looking for my notes.”

  Avril tilted her head from side to side. “Certainly, it is one explanation.”

  Noah eyed her with a trace of impatience. “You can think of others?”

  “A clumsy or perhaps curious maid? But it is worth looking into.” She wrote a note on the pad. “What else?”

  “We think we are being followed,” Elise said.

  “Oh?” The wo
rds jabbed at Avril’s heart, reminding her of her own desperate situation.

  Noah described the tall stooped man in the pickup truck who waited for him outside the hotel and then later ran from the train station. He added a description of the black Mercedes and silver Audi he had spotted over the past days.

  Avril realized that none of these sightings were coincidental. From her anonymous caller, she knew someone had to be keeping a close tab on the investigators. She made a mental note to check for a black or silver car on her own tail. If she could corner the driver of one of them, maybe he could lead her back to Frédéric. Meanwhile, she needed time and that meant stringing along the two investigators. She looked from Elise to Noah and said, “German sedans are very popular in this region. If you had a license plate for them or that truck…”

  Noah exhaled heavily. “I think they’re smarter than that.”

  Avril put down her pen. “From what I understand from the newspapers, it seems to me the financial stakes in this mad cow situation are great. True?”

  “Very,” Elise said.

  “So I could see why people in the industry might be taking an active—possibly even illegal—interest in your investigation,” Avril said. “It could explain much of what you have described.”

  Noah folded his arms across his chest, clearly dissatisfied. “The Ferme d’Allaire findings have been way too convenient,” he said.

  “How so, Dr. Haldane?”

  “Maybe the human victims have nothing to do with the cows.” Noah said. “What if there is a conspiracy to cover up an outbreak of a new disease among humans?”

  Avril nodded patiently, as if soothing a frustrated child, but her ears burned and her chest thudded. “A new disease spread by water?” she said, making her tone as skeptical as possible.

  Noah nodded vehemently.

  “And how would you go about infecting the cows?” Avril asked.

  “I don’t know,” Noah admitted. “Deliberately feed them tainted food? Or maybe just inject it into them. It would be faster.”