Sensational

by Jodie Lynn Zdrok

  Before she could comment on the renovated sewers being much more hospitable than they would have been in the 1820s of Les Misérables, a wave of chatter overtook them.

  They were following a lively group from Canada. So she gathered, anyway, based on their archaic French phrasing and pronunciation of certain words (she thought the boy in front of her had a problem articulating “dz” for “d,” until she heard them all speak that way). Several men ushered them along, answering questions and expounding on the history of the sewers.

  Jules put his chin over her shoulder. “‘Monsieur, is it true a headless corpse was found in here not so very long ago? My guidebook didn’t say anything about that.’”

  She wagged a playful finger at him. “You’re being influenced by Louis’s gallows humor. I shouldn’t encourage it.”

  “No, no. Tourist humor.”

  “That I can comfortably encourage.”

  When they reached the carts that would bring them to boats, Nathalie feigned light-headedness. They turned to leave; the nattering tourists didn’t notice. One of the men moving the carts asked if they needed an escort out.

  “No,” said Jules. “We see the street markings along the walls. We’ll find our way out. Merci!”

  The man eyed them, suspicion crackling through his gaze. After an extended pause, he nodded, providing them with directions “just in case.”

  Once the group was out of sight, Nathalie and Jules doubled back and went down a side passage that was much more dimly lit. The edge along the water was wide enough for one of them at a time.

  Jules stooped to pick something up. A man’s hat, gray felt with a hole in it. “Keep?”

  “Keep everything. We can sort it out later,” said Nathalie. “And it looks like yours, so maybe you can have a second if the police don’t want it.”

  “Or maybe you can have it, so we’ll have matching hats.” Jules winked as he put it in Nathalie’s satchel.

  “I think we’re under Rue Fabert right now, or close to it.” She held her handkerchief up to her nose and inhaled. “There’s a pneumatic tube here, see it along the wall? I know there’s a depository on Rue Fabert.”

  They approached the end of the smooth, vaulted tunnel, and saw the sign marking; Nathalie was correct.

  “Left is toward the river,” said Jules. “Let’s go that way.”

  She kicked something small but solid. “Ouch! My toe!” She picked up the object and held it to the light. Half the length of her forearm, dull on one end and sharp on the other. “Some sort of rusty tool,” she said, throwing it in her bag.

  They edged along, about to reach another turn. Her skin was clammy, from the sewer, her strange bodily reaction, nerves, or all three.

  “Who’s there?” A man’s voice, reverberating through the darkness, followed by a footstep.

  Just one.

  Jules withdrew into a shadow, tugging Nathalie along. She glanced toward the main tunnel. A rugged man stood in silhouette, his stance aggressive and poised for attack.

  “You shouldn’t be here.” A gruff, agitated voice.

  They pressed their backs against the tunnel wall.

  As she slipped the patchouli handkerchief into her pocket, she ventured a peek.

  He was gone.

  She couldn’t hear her own breathing. The noise of rushing water filled her ears, suspending her ability to detect any but the brashest of sounds. If the man approached them softly, she wouldn’t know it until he was on top of them.

  That might have been his intent. The folly of a single footstep, then unnerving quiet. Perhaps silence was the sound of caution.

  She moved closer to Jules, taking his hand. “Did he leave? Or is he in shadow, like us?”

  “I don’t know. We should go the other way, just to be sure.”

  “Away from the main tunnel?”

  Jules looked past her, searching the darkness. His grasp suddenly tensed and he pulled her. “Let’s go!”

  They burst down the tunnel, opposite from where they came, into the unknown.

  Jules reeled into an opening on the left and halted, Nathalie almost slamming into him. The passage was blocked. A barrier separated them from a section of the sewer system, thick with pipes and valves and levers.

  Thunk. Something on the other side of the system. Banging on a pipe.

  Thunk, thunk.

  “This unknown or that unknown?” Nathalie pointed to the pipes. “Try crossing that or turn around and run into whoever is chasing us? I say pipes.”

  Jules gave one quick nod and stole across the walkway to the pipes. He stepped over a rail, found his footing on a platform, and helped Nathalie over. Five large pipes stood between them and a clear path. They maneuvered their way around one, then another. They were approaching the third when a rapid series of clangs erupted from the pipes, followed by a loud hum.

  Nathalie flinched. The sound intensified, and she motioned for Jules to hurry.

  He resumed crawling around the third pipe with Nathalie right behind him. She turned around. A shadow moved. A man? The reflection of the water?

  She didn’t want to find out.

  A deafening release of water pushed through the pipes. If they screamed right now, no one would hear them. Nathalie pressed her hand to Jules’s back to hurry him along.

  They stepped over and around the last two pipes. The tunnel ahead was clear but split sharp left or sharp right. Jules hooked right and halted. “Other way!”

  He wheeled around and ran down the opposite tunnel. Nathalie dashed after him, peeking over her shoulder long enough to see that same silhouette. The hulking man lumbered after them. Her heart pounded three times faster.

  He’d disappeared from the original tunnel.

  To ambush us on another route.

  He wasn’t content to let them go.

  He wants to trap us.

  They scurried along, taking the first opening on the right, then darting left. Very dark, very empty, and very narrow. No street signs in sight.

  They eased along the tunnel, hearing nothing.

  “Two more lefts and we should end up back where we came from,” whispered Nathalie. Exploring places had made her attentive to details and directions in spaces great and small. “I think.”

  “Agreed.” Jules peered around her. “Clear for now.”

  They hurried along until they reached one left, then the second. Nathalie was about to turn the corner when her foot slipped. “Jules!” She fell, catching the ground with one hand and water with the other. And something else. She had gloves on, so she couldn’t tell what it was. Thin and hard but some softness.

  A bone?

  With clothes over it?

  No. Not that.

  A dead bird?

  No.

  Leaves, branches. Something natural. Not a head. Not a body.

  She tried to regain her balance but almost tumbled into the water, falling hard on the edge of the walkway. Her lungs squeezed out all the air she’d been holding in them. She gasped and gasped and still couldn’t get in enough air.

  Jules grabbed her wet, gloved hand, stuck his foot against hers for leverage, and hauled her up.

  “I’m not hurt. I just need to breathe.”

  Where was the man now?

  Jules put his arm around her shoulder, eyes moving in every direction, as she drew in some air. Breathe.

  After a few deep breaths, she was back to normal. She signaled Jules and began making her way along the wall, leading the way. Water flowed on their right, quieter now. The tunnel angled up as they passed a footbridge. She recognized where they were, back in the original tunnel where they’d seen the man. The main sewer lay several dozen meters ahead of them. At last.

  Nathalie yanked Jules’s sleeve and gestured toward the tunnel. They took a few steps. Jules stopped, and something splashed behind them. Nathalie jumped.

  “I threw in a centime,” Jules whispered. “Distraction. If he’s around.”

  Something scampered acros
s Nathalie’s foot. A rat. She put a soggy-gloved hand over her mouth to mute a squeal.

  It was too late.

  Footsteps crossed the bridge behind them.

  They broke into a run.

  Light shone from behind, dancing along the walls and the water as they ran toward the main tunnel. Nathalie was several steps ahead and veered left.

  She was disoriented. Left or right? She waited for Jules. “Which way?”

  His eyes were wide. “I don’t know!”

  “Neither do I. Pick one!”

  He looked up and down the sewer tunnel. “There!” he pointed.

  She raced ahead, hoping he was correct. Otherwise they’d be lost.

  Trapped.

  “This isn’t it!” she cried. She’d been running too long; it hadn’t been this far. There was no choice now other than to keep going.

  But it was the way. A beam of brighter light lay ahead, and she caught the sign on the wall. This was it.

  She charged toward the entrance, Jules close behind. Then a third pair of footsteps.

  “Arrêtez!”

  They did not.

  Nathalie ran ahead, her nose and lungs rebelling against the rank air, until they reached the stairs.

  The man caught up to them. “What are you doing here?” he demanded. Bearded and sweaty, he slapped a hand on the railing.

  He was dressed in a blue uniform. A sewerman.

  A what?

  The routine harmlessness of it all was nearly comical. Her heart resumed its normal rate, and she let out a sigh.

  Who did she think was chasing them, anyway? The killer?

  One encounter underground with a murderer more than sufficed.

  Jules put his hand to his mouth, trying not to laugh.

  The sewerman, for one, was not amused. “I said, what are you doing here?”

  Nathalie stifled a grin. “Looking for Jean Valjean,” she said, then bolted up the stairs with Jules at her heels.

  As they neared the top, a slew of police officers ran past them, practically shoving them out of the way, and into the sewers.

  12

  Nathalie watched the men go down, staring at the dark space below long after they disappeared from sight.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” said Jules, wagging his finger.

  “Because you’re thinking the same?” Nathalie lifted her head with a sly grin. “We could at least see. There’s only one reason I can think of as to why they’d all go charging into the sewers like that.”

  “To retrieve the mischievous pair of young people running about in dark passages?”

  “Two reasons, then.”

  “I can think of a few more.” Jules straightened out a frayed collar. “We should be prudent. We can laugh now, but we weren’t laughing five minutes ago. We did get chased away.”

  “True, but now that it’s over—oh!” She gripped Jules’s wrist. “What if the sewerman is the killer? We could see it all unfold!”

  Jules paused, almost as if he were considering it. “Whatever the police are doing, I don’t think they’d want us to watch over their shoulders.”

  “Such focus on the details, you.”

  “We still have to go to the morgue, too,” said Jules as they climbed the final steps onto the street.

  “More details.”

  If she’d recognized one of the policemen, she might have resisted more. Jules was right, however. In all likelihood they had a headless body to tend to, though neither expected to have the aid of their gifts. Nathalie only had one vision for each murder victim. Of all the malleability her Insightful power had displayed, that never varied; she had one chance to gather all the details she could. As for Jules, he’d never encountered a headless body. Given that his very ability was contingent upon placing his hands on a head, a thought reading seemed unlikely.

  In any case, she was eager to tell Christophe what they saw upon leaving the sewer.

  Nathalie tucked her handkerchief in her dress pocket and greedily took the above-ground air into her lungs. For whatever disagreeable smells Paris carried to her nostrils on any given day, they were far preferable to the sewers.

  “Here,” Jules said, reaching into his pocket. He produced a sodden piece of parchment paper with a coin-sized hole in it. “I saw this when I crawled over the equipment. It was stuck to the side of a pipe and I shoved it in my pocket.”

  Nathalie’s eyes widened. “I’m impressed you had the presence of mind to do that as we were being chased,” she said, taking it from him. There was handwriting on it in neat rows, with block lettering at the start of almost each line. The ink had run, rendering the words illegible. “Hat, tool, paper. Hmmm … should I have taken the leaves?”

  “I think we can describe leaves well enough.” He kissed her on the cheek. “I do admire your diligence, though.”

  From there, they took a steam tram to the morgue. The queue was like a snake in the sun, elongated and winding. Persnickety M. Arnaud waved them through (with pursed lips) and his more jovial counterpart, M. Soucy, was stationed inside. He whispered a cheerful “Bonjour!” when they crossed the threshold. She thought she picked up a faint trace of alcohol from him.

  The headless corpse wasn’t on display.

  Two new bodies were. A stocky man with greasy, dark hair and a woman with boils on her arms and sunken eyes.

  “Let me see if there’s anything here,” she murmured to Jules, stepping to the side. She removed her right glove, since dried from the sewer, and placed her fingertips on the glass.

  Now she was in an alley. A circle of men shouted soundlessly as an enraged bald man came at her. He swung hard and landed a punch. The killer launched one in return, straight to the man’s throat. The man clutched his neck, eyes wide with the panic that the recognition of finality brings, and collapsed.

  Nathalie came to, needing to catch her own breath. Jules was holding her by the elbow.

  “You mumbled, ‘No, no!’” Jules said, letting go of her arm. “Which one was killed?”

  She put on her glove. As they approached the Medusa door, she told Jules what she had seen.

  M. Cadoret answered, graver than his usual demeanor. Tall and brawny, he was completely without hair—not just his head, but also his eyelashes and eyebrows. He always wore a hat, even though most men removed their hats in the morgue. “Monsieur Gagnon isn’t available at the moment, but he did say to bring you into Autopsy if you came by. And Jules, I have one for you to read, as you saw.”

  Only one? There were two new bodies.

  Nathalie waited in the corridor while Jules accompanied M. Cadoret to the display room. When they returned, M. Cadoret pinched the frame of his tiny glasses and licked his lips. “I must tell you,” he said as they walked toward Autopsy. “It’s an, uh, especially disconcerting sight.”

  Nathalie was about to ask why—murder victims were always unsettling to see—when the body on the table explained it to her.

  M. Cadoret left them, and Dr. Nicot, brows almost perpetually knit in concentration, muttered a hello to them.

  The headless corpse had a sheet up to the chest.

  She gasped.

  “It doesn’t seem real,” she blurted. “I’m sorry. That was unkind.”

  Dr. Nicot stroked his gray beard. “Even in this line of work, we don’t often see a body without a head. So much of what we understand as human is connected with a face or a voice that the absence of it…” He scratched his jowls. “Your response is not unexpected, let’s phrase it as such.”

  Jules hadn’t taken his eyes off the cadaver.

  “I realize neither of you may be able to do your work here, but you may try if you wish,” said Dr. Nicot. “There is something of note here.”

  He gestured for them to come forward. As they flanked him, he pulled back the sheet. The swollen, bloated body had a small hole, above the stomach and to the right.

  “Postmortem.” He drew the sheet up once again. “How, we don’t know. It could have been a
stab wound, an object inserted there, or something that happened in the sewer.”

  “There’s no reason for me to see anything, but I’ll try,” said Nathalie.

  Dr. Nicot reached for the pane of glass and held it over the body. Nathalie removed her glove once again, placed her hand on the glass and … nothing. As expected.

  Jules placed his hand on the chest of the corpse as Dr. Nicot returned the glass. “Nothing.”

  The man’s clothes, stinking and discolored from blood and sewage, hung in the corner. A once-white shirt and dark brown pants with an elegantly cut evening coat.

  Dr. Nicot took some instruments out of a drawer. “Unless you want to be here for this, it’s best to step out now.”

  Nathalie had never been present for an autopsy and didn’t care to be now. Although her penchant for learning was vast and undoubtedly morbid, she was nevertheless put off by dissection and organ-handling. “No, thank you,” she said with a timid smile as she and Jules left the room.

  Colder in the morgue than outside in the sun, she buttoned her coat and put her glove back on. “Did Monsieur Cadoret have you do one thought reading or two?”

  “Only for the woman,” he said. “Lots of coughing and problems breathing. A tuberculosis patient who disappeared from a hospital days ago. The hospital made an inquiry to ascertain whether it was of her own volition, and it was. She died under a bridge.”

  “Oh.” Nathalie was focused on murder victims and forgot, from time to time, how tragic lonely, sickly deaths could be. “Why no reading for the man who died in the fight?”

  “He said it wasn’t necessary and that Monsieur Gagnon would elaborate.”

  When they went to Christophe’s office, his door was closed. Nathalie could hear him talking inside; the cadence of his voice suggested he was carrying on a conversation. Although she didn’t catch the words of the other speaker, she could tell it was a woman.

  Nathalie and Jules passed the time talking about their adventure in the sewers. What had been frightening to experience became titillating to recount.

  “It’s all in how it ends, isn’t it?” remarked Nathalie. She meant today, the sewers. Yet wasn’t that always so? Beginnings and middles danced around memories, changing partners here and there, but endings stayed on the floor long after the music stopped. Even she with her occasionally stolen recollections knew that.