Beyond the Grave

by R. W. Wallace

  Stéphane leads Evian and Doubira into his living room. He stands in the middle of the room, not going near any of the chairs at the dining table by the large bay windows or the couches by the gorgeous open fireplace, so everybody else remains standing as well.

  Except Clothilde, who perches on the dining table.

  “What exactly did our colleague tell you yesterday?” Evian asks, her voice gently curious, like she’s asking only to save him the trouble of getting the same information twice.

  Stéphane shrugs and crosses his arms, making his checkered shirt pull across the beginnings of a beer gut. “Not much. Only that you were looking into a case that Robert was working on before he died.”

  Evian’s eyebrows shoot up and Doubira is about to say something but he catches the look on his partner’s face in time so he shuts his mouth immediately.

  “Nadine Tulle didn’t tell him they found your body, did she?” Clothilde asks me in a whisper.

  I shake my head, never letting my eyes leave Stéphane’s face.

  “I assume it’s about that dead girl?” Stéphane doesn’t seem to notice the reactions of the people around him, even the alive and visible ones.

  “That dead girl,” Evian says. Her voice is flat but it’s clearly a question for Stéphane to elaborate.

  Stéphane doesn’t resist for long in the silence that follows. That’s a trick he clearly still hasn’t learned. “I don’t remember her name. It was too long ago. But there was a young woman who committed suicide and we were the first officers on the scene. It was just before Robert disappeared, that’s the only reason I remember it.”

  “You get that many young women who commit suicide?” Doubira asks and I can’t tell from his voice if he really is asking the question and wondering if he’ll end up seeing so many dead people he becomes jaded, or if he’s playing a part to get more information out of Stéphane.

  “There have been more than one,” Stéphane answers gruffly. Defensively. “But that’s not how I meant it. I meant that I remember it being the last crime scene I worked with Robert.”

  “Before he died,” Evian says.

  “Yes.” Another silence and this time Stéphane holds out longer. I think he might be catching on that this isn’t going too well, and in the end that’s what makes him keep talking. To defend himself.

  “It leaves a mark when you lose a partner. So you think back on the last things you did together, both to remember them by and to search for answers. One day we were working together and the next he was gone. That kind of thing leaves a mark. I’ve forgotten many things in my old age but I remember every little detail of the last time I saw Robert.”

  Evian nods in agreement. “I understand. When exactly was the last time you saw Monsieur Villemur?”

  Stéphane opens his mouth to reply, then hesitates. “I wouldn’t want to take up too much of your precious time with my memories of an old friend. I thought you were here to look into Gisèle Grand’s death?” His arms remain folded across his chest and he’s becoming more tense by the second.

  “Ah, I see you remembered her name,” Evian says genially, as if she’s simply happy that his memories are coming back to him. “We are looking into an old case. I didn’t say it was Mademoiselle Grand’s death.”

  “Whatever else could it be?” Stéphane blurts out.

  “Did you not work on any other cases at the time of your partner’s disappearance?” Doubira asks.

  “Of course we did. There was always some sort of big thing we were working on in the background while we waited for the next emergency. But you can’t expect me to remember what case we were working at that specific time thirty years ago.”

  Silence again.

  Clothilde doesn’t bother to whisper this time. “Is his memory going because he’s so old or is he just really bad at lying?”

  “Could be both,” I reply. But I’m leaning toward the second option.

  Which is all kinds of interesting.

  This time Stéphane holds out against the silence and Evian is the one to break it.

  “We have indeed come across the case of Mademoiselle Grand,” she says. “But we were originally looking into the death of Clothilde Humbert.”

  “Me!” Clothilde exclaims, a huge smile on her face.

  “Stop it,” I tell her. “You’re going to distract Evian.” But I can’t stop a smile from spreading across my face.

  “Oh. Her.” I can’t be entirely sure because of his tan, but I think Stéphane’s face has lost some color.

  “Excellent, you remember her.” Evian looks to Doubira, pretending confusion. “I didn’t think Villemur had his partner with him for that case.”

  “Not according to the files I saw,” Doubira replies smoothly.

  Evian turns to Stéphane. “Are the files mistaken?”

  Stéphane uncrosses his arms and seems to stop himself from drying his palms on his pants and settles for placing his hands on his hips instead, making him look even more awkward.

  “I wasn’t at the crime scene with him,” he says. “But Robert told me about it after.”

  “It must have been quite the case, for you to remember it so well thirty years later, and not having worked it yourself.”

  “Well. No. It was just another suicide.”

  “A memorable one.” Evian’s tone is that of a statement but it’s also clearly a question.

  “Yes.” Stéphane’s breathing has shortened and his eyes keep darting between Evian and Doubira, as if judging his chances if he runs for the hills. “It was clearly memorable to Robert, which is why he mentioned it to me, and that’s why I remember it.”

  “All right.” Evian flashes a perfunctory smile to signal that line of questioning is over and Stéphane deflates in relief.

  How he survived an entire career as a cop is something of a mystery right now.

  He seems to realize his mistake when Evian asks her next question.

  “You seem to work under the assumption that Robert Villemur is dead?”

  Stéphane was in the process of returning his arms across his chest and now he freezes, making him look like a terrible ballerina halfway into a pose. “I, uh… Honestly, I just always assumed he was dead. A man like Robert doesn’t simply take off like that without telling anyone. If he didn’t come back, it’s because he couldn’t.”

  “He could have been kidnapped.” Doubira is mimicking Evian, standing at parade rest and rocking slowly back and forth.

  “I said I made the assumption.” Stéphane’s voice is close to a whisper. “Is he not dead?”

  “Oh, he’s dead,” Evian says genially. “In fact, we found his body when we exhumed Mademoiselle Humbert.”

  “That’s where—” Stéphane catches himself and tries again. “That’s terrible! Do you know how he died?”

  “Oh, yes. The bullet that killed him was still lodged in his spine. I expect feedback on the ballistics within a day or two. Isn’t that so, Doubira?”

  Doubira lifts up on his toes and lets himself fall back down. “Yes. Possibly by the end of the day.”

  I’m seriously worried Stéphane will die of a heart attack right before our eyes. I’m not entirely sure he’s still breathing and I can see his erratic pulse in his neck from across the room.

  “This is absolutely fascinating,” I say to nobody in particular.

  Clothilde eyes me with an odd look in her eye. “You’re taking this very well. Seeing how you reacted when your family described you, I’d expect a little more of a reaction here.”

  Not sure what it says about me that I’m more comfortable with my partner clearly having been involved in my murder in one way or another than with my family describing me as a follower. But it’s true.

  Except for the fact that I would, obviously, rather not have been murdered thirty years ago, I really couldn’t car
e less that Stéphane had something to do with it.

  Unless he was the one to pull the trigger?

  Possibly not even then. Stéphane was like me—he followed. If he had anything to do with my death, it’s because he followed orders.

  “The officer who called you yesterday told me you seemed to be of the opinion that your partner was involved in something illegal before he disappeared,” Evian says.

  The relief in Stéphane’s expression is pathetic. “Yes! That’s why I assumed he was dead. He got involved with the wrong people and when they weren’t happy with him, they turned on him.”

  That’s oddly detailed.

  Evian seems to think so, too. “Do you know who these people were? What kind of illegal activity he was involved in?”

  Stéphane shakes his head so hard his jowls shake. “I wouldn’t know. If I did, I would have turned him in. I just got the feeling he was doing some shady stuff on the side.”

  Another silence settles. Evian looks around Stéphane’s living room, very obviously studying the nice furniture and the large expanse of lawn visible outside the large bay windows.

  “Anyway,” she says as if suddenly remembering she has a job to do. “We should probably get going. We have other people to talk to today.” She takes two steps toward the door, stops and turns back to Stéphane.

  “By the way, you wouldn’t happen to know a lawyer named Laurent Lambert?”

  Stéphane shakes his head. Vigorously.

  Yeah, he knows him.

  Forty

  “Shouldn’t we bring him in for questioning?” Malik asks as they get back in the car.

  “We will,” Emeline replies. She takes her time buckling up and turning the ignition while keeping an eye on Stéphane Petit’s home. “I want to see what he does when he panics first.”

  There’s isn’t even a question of whether or not the man will panic. He will. He was already panicking before Emeline and Malik were out the door.

  Clearly the man knew more than he should about Robert Villemur’s demise—but did he just know something or had he been involved in the murder himself? Also, how could nobody else have figured anything out before now?

  Being a good liar isn’t exactly a criteria to become a police officer—but following the training on interrogation techniques definitely is, even back in the eighties. Either the man is losing his touch—big time—with age, or he’s never been the sharpest knife in the drawer.

  Which brings Emeline back to the question of how this went undetected for so long. Did nobody question Villemur’s partner?

  Emeline can feel them closing in on answers concerning Robert Villemur’s death—but she has a feeling they’ll end up with an even longer list of new questions.

  No matter. She’ll figure it out, one question at a time.

  Malik checks his watch. “Didn’t you say you have a meeting in the city at noon?”

  The clock on the dashboard reads a quarter past eleven. With the traffic they’re bound to run into, they have to take off.

  Emeline pulls out of Stéphane Petit’s driveway and directs the car toward Toulouse. “We’ll have to come back to check on Petit. Or simply bring him in for questioning. I don’t think he’ll be too hard to break.”

  Malik chuckles. “No kidding.”

  Emeline pulls to a stop at a light. As the light turns green, something brings her to look in the rearview mirror. About a hundred meters back, a black BMW comes out of a side street. The same street they just came from.

  “Did you happen to see the type of car Petit drove?” she asks as she accelerates. She watches the road but checks for the BMW in the mirror every five seconds. It rolls through the intersection right before the light turns red.

  “A black BMW,” Malik answers. After a glance at Emeline, he turns in his seat to look behind them. His tone turns incredulous. “Is he following us?”

  “There aren’t that many roads out of this village. He could just be going out.”

  “Yeah, right. Someone freaks me out about a murder that happened thirty years ago and I’ll go, ‘Hey, I think I’ll go shopping.’ Do you think he thinks he’s being smooth? I mean, we couldn’t possibly miss seeing him.”

  Emeline stops checking the mirror every few seconds now that Malik is keeping an eye on the BMW. “Who knows what’s going through his head right now. Sometimes, when people are too stupid, I find it hard to anticipate their movements.”

  Malik chuckles again. He stays turned backward as Emeline makes a left turn to take one of the larger roads in the direction of Toulouse. The traffic isn’t exactly dense but it has enough cars that someone like Stéphane Petit should have trouble keeping track of a car as common as the one Emeline is driving.

  He manages to keep track.

  Emeline makes several turns, aiming for the highway leading back to Toulouse, and Petit makes the exact same turns.

  “Could he have been faking the whole idiot thing?” Malik asks. “He’s following even when he couldn’t possibly have seen us turn.”

  Emeline is starting to have some doubts, too. She arrives at the toll station and on a whim, instead of driving through, she pulls into the small parking lot to the side. A huge trailer is already parked there and she makes sure to pick a parking spot behind it so she won’t be visible to any cars coming into the toll station.

  Less than a minute later, the black BMW drives straight through the gate for subscription passes and accelerates onto the highway toward Toulouse. He never sees Emeline and Malik in their little rental, and doesn’t seem bothered to have lost them.

  “He’s not following us,” Emeline says and hurries to pull out of the parking. “He’s simply going the same direction.”

  “He couldn’t even wait until we were out of sight to take off?”

  Yes, Stéphane Petit is apparently that stupid. Or that panicked.

  Emeline speeds through the toll booth, barely letting the barrier open before she floors it and lets the little car do its best at catching up to the larger BMW.

  “I take it we’re not going to see Laurent Lambert?” Malik’s voice is calm but his right hand is clutching the car door so hard his knuckles are white.

  “We’re not late yet,” Emeline says. “If we can manage not to lose him, we’ll see where he’s going. Then we’ll see if we can make the meeting with Lambert or if we should reschedule.” She went a little over the speed limit for the first five hundred meters or so but she soon caught sight of the black car and now she’s cruising just below the speed limit two to three cars behind Petit.

  She’s not particularly worried he’ll spot them.

  Petit takes the exit toward Toulouse and proceeds in the direction of the city center. In order to make sure not to lose sight of him, Emeline places herself so that only one car separates her from Petit’s. She suspects she could have been right behind him and he wouldn’t have noticed.

  “He never looks in his rearview mirror,” Malik comments. “This guy was a cop?”

  Petit’s car stops so suddenly the car behind him almost runs right into him. As it becomes clear Petit intends to parallel park in an open spot, the car behind him pulls around, freely hitting the horn.

  “Looks like we’ve arrived,” Emeline says. She also drives past the BMW. Even Petit will have to look behind him if he’s going to parallel park.

  “There’s another spot down there.” Malik points and Emeline sees the spot. It’s barely longer than the car but Emeline didn’t grow up in Paris for nothing. She parks the car in two maneuvers, leaving them waiting while Petit fits his much larger car into his spot.

  “Isn’t that the City Hall down the road?” Emeline asks. She’s not very familiar with the city yet but recognizes the majestic brick building with the French flag above the main entrance.

  “Yes,” Malik answers. “In fact, Laurent Lambert’s o
ffice is down that street back there.” His voice trails off and his eyes widen as his gaze meets Emeline’s. “You asked if he knew Lambert. You think… Come on.” He turns in his seat to better see Petit as he exits his car.

  And takes off down the side street Malik just pointed out.

  “Really?” His incredulity is bordering on comic and if it wasn’t suddenly very important not to lose sight of Petit, Emeline would have made fun of him.

  “Looks like it,” she says and jumps out of the car. “Let’s go.”

  Forty-One

  We all take off after Stéphane. Evian and Doubira draw some stares because of their hurry and focus, but Stéphane, being up ahead and never so much as glancing behind him, doesn’t notice.

  He runs straight into a large building of gray stately stones and huge ancient wooden doors. The plaque by the door reads Laurent Lambert.

  “So we’ll be on time for the meeting after all. Awesome!” Clothilde’s tone is her usual lighthearted one but the look on her face is anything but. Her hair is moving as if it’s affected by the slight breeze flowing through the inner courtyard of Lambert’s building and her eyes look ancient and angry.

  Evian and Doubira jog after Stéphane, across the courtyard and up two flights of stairs. Clothilde and I are close behind.

  We find the door to Lambert’s office open and the even-higher-than-usual voice of Stéphane seeping out. Evian stops right by the door where she won’t be seen by anyone on the inside and makes a sign for Doubira to do the same.

  Being invisible to whoever is inside, I move into the office. Since the door is open, I don’t need to stay in the same room as Evian. I just can’t move too far away from her.

  Stéphane is at the reception desk, red-faced and yelling at the poor receptionist, a young man in his early twenties with hipster glasses and a crisply ironed salmon-colored shirt.

  “I need to see Maître Lambert right now. It’s an emergency! Is he here? I know he’s here.”