Paris Ransom

by Charles Rosenberg

  “Where did she go? To find her father?”

  “She went to get a glass of milk out of the fridge.”

  I smiled, and I could tell that Tess was suppressing a laugh.

  “It’s not funny. If she had gone somewhere during the night, I would have been able to follow her and perhaps unravel the mystery.”

  Jenna is a great lawyer, but she doesn’t have much of a sense of humor.

  Not long after that, the lawyer that Tess had arranged for Jenna, Maître Bertrand, arrived. He was wearing a blue pinstripe suit and a red tie. He looked like Jack Kennedy. I could tell that Jenna was immediately smitten. Or at least initially.

  We all retreated to the living room, where Jenna told Maître Bertrand everything she knew about the kidnapping, our trip to Digne and the events at the hotel the night she picked the lock. He made careful notes on a yellow legal pad. When Jenna was done, he asked a few questions, noted the answers, and looked up from his pad. “It is unusual for me to give advice to a client with others around.” He glanced at Tess and me.

  “Why don’t you make an exception in this case?” I said. “I don’t know what the privilege rules are here, but in our country, although having all of us hear your advice to Jenna might blow the privilege, it’s unlikely anyone would ask Tess or me what we had heard.”

  “You don’t know this judge,” he said. “De Fournis can be very thorough. But I will leave the decision to Jenna, who is my client.”

  “Let them stay,” Jenna said.

  “Alright,” he said. “First, let me tell you, briefly, about the powers of a juge d’instruction, what you in America would call an ‘investigating judge.’ This kind of judge is among the most powerful in France. Once he has jurisdiction over a case, he can investigate anything related to the case. He can question anyone he wants under oath or subpoena any documents he wants. He can order wiretaps. He can direct the police to undertake raids to search for evidence. He can even go on the raids himself if he wishes. And he can ask another judge to put you back in jail. This particular judge, de Fournis, is famous for stretching his powers.”

  “Well, the jail part isn’t good, obviously,” Jenna said. “But this investigating judge sounds like he has the power to get to the bottom of the whole kidnapping. And maybe, unlike the police, he will be truly interested in finding Oscar.”

  “That depends, Jenna, on how long you want to stay in France.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “An investigation into the kidnapping could take months. And the judge will not let you leave until he has finished.”

  “Well, I do need to get back for the start of the semester, which is not too far away.”

  “Then I suggest you tell the judge only about picking the lock, and pass it off as a joke you were playing on Oscar.”

  “That will leave Oscar to his fate.”

  “I think you underestimate the police. They may have focused on money laundering, but they will ultimately find him if he can be found.”

  “What do you mean by ‘if he can be found’?”

  “Hasn’t it occurred to you that he may already be dead?”

  A long and sandy silence invaded the room. The idea that Oscar might be dead had, of course, occurred to each of us. But it had never been spoken aloud. It was almost like uttering “Voldemort” in a Harry Potter book.

  Finally, Jenna said, “Of course it’s occurred to me. But until someone tells me he is, and I see his body, I’m going to go on trying to find him.”

  “Well, it is up to you what you want to tell the judge. I have given you my advice. We will see when you meet with him this afternoon what you do. The choice is yours.”

  “I will need to think about it.”

  I spoke up. “Isn’t it unethical for you to suggest to Jenna that she lie?”

  “Perhaps, but it was, in a way, a prank. It was just not a prank done to make anyone laugh. And so I have advised her to speak, not a lie, but something short of the whole truth. Surely you lawyers in American do the same thing?”

  I had to admit that we sometimes did. I didn’t want to say that out loud, though, so I just kind of grunted.

  Before he left, Bertrand gave Jenna instructions on how to get to the Palais de Justice, where the judge had his chambers, and told her that if she had occasion to address the judge, the French equivalent of “Your Honor” is “Monsieur le juge” and the proper honorific for lawyers is “Maître.”

  “And dress professionally,” he added.

  “I’m not an idiot.”

  I was no longer so sure that the two of them were going to get along well.

  CHAPTER 31

  Judge Roland de Fournis

  I, Roland de Fournis, investigating judge of the Fourteenth Panel of the Chamber of Investigating Judges of Paris, was not having a good day. Not only did I have a bad cold, but the trip to my small place in Provence—where the temperature was a great deal warmer than it was in Paris—had been delayed by a small and insignificant case that the presiding judge had insisted I must take up immediately. A predecessor had started the investigation the day before by issuing a summons to some woman in Digne-les-Bains, then departed on vacation and left me with the file. I would have assumed, now that I had finished off the investigation into the cabinet financial scandal, that I was due some time off. But apparently not quite yet.

  In front of me on my desk, placed there by my investigator, lay the case dossier with its red cover. The paperwork within described not a major crime, but a minor and simple délit—the picking of a lock on a hotel room door by an American tourist and the alleged theft by her of an antique pen said to be worth two hundred euros.

  Just then, my court clerk—my greffier—who doubled as the court stenographer, came in.

  “Bonjour, Marie.”

  “Bonjour, Monsieur le juge.”

  “The trip to Provence is off. At least for now. Instead I have a new matter.”

  She shrugged and asked the question she had asked on arrival each day for the more than twenty years we had worked together: “Who’s on the griddle today, then?”

  “A rather small fish,” I said. “We should be able to fry her up quickly—the accused is a woman, by the way—and get out of here before it gets any colder. I have requested that she appear first today. If she admits the crime, we can work out some sort of plea with the public prosecutor and be done with it.”

  There was a knock on the door and an attractive, professionally dressed woman who looked to be in her thirties entered along with her lawyer, Maître Bertrand. He was in his usual court garb—black robe and white cravat. My office was, after all, a court, even if it was just a box of a room with two desks and a few chairs, and even if I was wearing a suit rather than a robe, which was the tradition of simplicity in our chambers.

  I was pleased to see Bertrand. He had appeared before me many times, and had always been candid. And best of all, quick.

  “Please sit down,” I said.

  “If I may, Monsieur le juge,” he said, still standing, “before we begin, I would like to tell you a bit about this case.”

  “Of course. Please proceed.”

  “First, my client, Professor James, does not speak French. So we will need a translator.”

  “Why did no one tell me of this?”

  “I do not know.”

  I was annoyed. Getting a translator was going to take at least several hours, and unless some miracle occurred, I wasn’t going to be leaving for Provence any time soon.

  “But,” Bertrand said, “with my client’s permission, I can tell you about the case in a way that I think will be helpful to a quick disposition—even though she will not be able to understand what I say.”

  “I speak a little English, Maître Bertrand. Let me try to make sure this is okay with your client.”

  I addres
sed Professor James in English. “Professor James, it will work with you if your lawyer talks to me in French for a little, but you cannot understand?”

  “Yes, Monsieur le juge.”

  I smiled at her use of the honorific in French. We would perhaps get along.

  “Okay,” I said to her. “We will do this.”

  Then I turned to Maître Bertrand. “Maître, you may proceed in French.”

  My greffier interrupted, “Monsieur le juge, do you want me to transcribe this session or leave it unofficial?”

  “I see no harm in your transcribing it.”

  “Okay.” She popped open her notebook computer—the device she used to transcribe testimony—and we were ready to begin.

  “So, Maître Bertrand, what do you want to tell the court?”

  “It is this, Monsieur le juge. The public prosecutor dismissed this case after the accused had been held in garde à vue for only a few hours—because it is a nothing case and there is no proof.”

  “Maître Bertrand, doesn’t your client admit she picked the lock on the hotel room door of another guest?”

  “Yes.”

  “How can you then say it is a nothing case?”

  “It was a joke, Monsieur le juge, played on someone she knows.”

  “Really. What kind of law professor picks locks as a joke? Is that something common among the Anglo-Saxons?”

  “No, Monsieur le juge, it is not. It is like a party trick.”

  “They must have very different kinds of parties in America, eh?”

  “It is no doubt very different there and, if I might say, since my client cannot understand what I am saying, more barbaric.”

  “Yes. I visited there once. It is a country without a deep culture. But why has this case not been disposed of? Normally, the public prosecutor would take this simple délit directly to the criminal court.”

  “In this case, Monsieur le juge, the public prosecutor saw no value in the case, dismissed it and released Professor James from garde à vue. He no doubt assumed it would continue as a civil matter between the parties, focused on damages. But then the hotel owner insisted, as is his right as the partie civile, that it continue as a criminal matter. And here we are.”

  “Merde.” I looked over at my greffier. “Please take that word out of the transcript. Substitute zut alors.”

  “Of course, Monsieur le juge.”

  I sat and thought about it for a moment. There was a way to end this quickly. I had the power to bring the suspect and the hotel owner together in front of me for an interrogatoire simultané—a face-to-face confrontation. Perhaps that way I could coerce the suspect into giving the hotel owner what he no doubt really wanted—money—and then finally get on my way to Provence, even if a little later than planned. I needed to know a little bit more, though.

  “Maître Bertrand, have the judicial police investigated this? I do not see anything in the case file except the barest mention of an investigation.”

  “Yes, the, uh, regular Parisian police.”

  I caught his hesitation and assumed there was more he was not saying. “By anyone else?”

  “Eh, yes. By the Brigade Criminelle.”

  “For a stolen pen? They investigate terrorism!”

  “Yes, yes they do.”

  The case before me had suddenly become, at the same time, more interesting and, for me personally, threatening. After eleven three-year terms as an investigating judge, I intended to make the corrupt cabinet investigation—which had included no end of political abuse being heaped upon me—my swan song, and I had only a year to go on what was to be my last term before retirement. At age sixty, I had gone on working much longer than most of those with whom I’d entered the judiciary. Almost all had retired long ago. I wanted my final year to be without complication and without the necessity of facing the inevitable demand—if the case weren’t finished within a year—to stay on.

  So it seemed that Maître Bertrand and I had a mutual interest in not delving too deeply into why the Brigade Criminelle had taken an interest in the case.

  “Eh,” I said, “I suppose I will let sleeping terrorists rest for now. That will shorten what we have to do here.”

  “I agree,” Maître Bertrand said.

  “Good. Then let us go to lunch and reconvene at two. By then a translator will have been found and we can proceed.”

  Maître Bertrand thanked me, and they all left my court.

  As I considered where to lunch, it occurred to me that I could just adjourn my court ten minutes after everyone returned. That way, I would have started the case that very day, just as the presiding judge had demanded. Then, when I got back from Provence, I could make this odd law professor who picks locks and the hotel owner confront one another, face-to-face. And get the matter hammered out in one hour. I had done it at least a hundred times before.

  I ate lunch at a café that I favored near the courthouse, then took a long walk in the neighborhood. When I got back to my office, I found the professor and Maître Bertrand waiting for me on the long bench that faced the offices of the juges d’instruction, which are all lined up in a row along a narrow corridor. Beside them was a woman I assumed to be the translator.

  We all went in. My greffier was already there and ready.

  After we were settled, I asked the professor to take the chair in front of my desk and said to the greffier, “Please administer the oath to the witness. Be sure to wait for the translator to catch up before you say anything that follows on the oath.”

  She waited for the translator to translate what I had just said, then asked, “Do you, Professor, swear to speak without hatred and without fear, to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth?”

  “I do,” the professor said.

  After that the translation ran smoothly, almost as if the translator were not there.

  “Professor,” I asked, “are you aware that you have the right to remain silent? Has Maître Bertrand told you this?”

  “Yes, he has.”

  “And you wish to waive the right to remain silent and testify?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Very good. And has he explained to you the nature of these proceedings, that even though I am not in a robe, I am a judge, and that I am charged with investigating the crimes with which you are allegedly involved, picking a lock and stealing a pen, which are violations of the Penal Code? And that if I find the evidence is sufficient to think that you have committed these crimes, I will pass my dossier on to the appropriate criminal court with a recommendation that you be prosecuted?”

  “Yes, he has explained all of that.”

  “Did he explain that the possible punishment for these crimes, if you are convicted, is up to ten years in jail and a fine of up to five thousand euros?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very good. Let me ask you first, then, did you pick the lock of your hotel neighbor”—I had to look at the file because I had forgotten his name—“Monsieur Oscar Quesana?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “How did you do that?”

  “With a nail file and a bobby pin.”

  “It says here in the dossier that the hotel owner asserts that the lock was damaged. Was it?”

  “No. It’s a very simple lock. A child could probably open it, and there is nothing to damage. I just suppressed the tumblers, retracted the bolt and turned the handle.”

  I was curious where the professor had learned to pick locks, even though it wasn’t especially relevant. One of the joys of being a judge is that you can satisfy your curiosity. “Professor, where did you learn to pick locks?”

  “From my uncle, when I was in high school.”

  “Was he a professional thief?”

  “No, he was a private detective.”

  “Ah, I see. Once inside, did you take an antiq
ue pen, as it says here in the dossier, again as charged by the hotel owner?”

  “No.”

  “Did you see an antique pen in the room?”

  “With the door closed behind me, the room was dark. All I had for light was a tiny flashlight. I had left my cell, with its flashlight app, in my room. The only thing I managed to search before I was caught was the closet, and I hadn’t even finished searching it. I’d hardly even had a chance to look around the rest of the room.”

  “So you deny taking the pen?”

  “I didn’t even see a pen.”

  “Why did you break into the room?”

  “It was to play a trick on a colleague.”

  “What kind of trick?”

  “Uh, I hadn’t quite figured that out yet. Something to tell him I’d been there.”

  “Why did you expect him to find that funny?”

  “He’s an odd kind of guy.”

  “Wouldn’t most people find it offensive that someone had broken into their private quarters, even if it was to play some kind of joke?”

  “Well, Oscar might not find it offensive.”

  “I see.”

  Bertrand interrupted. “Monsieur le juge, if you please, since my client has admitted she broke into the room, is it necessary to explore all of this in detail?”

  “I think it is. It may shed light on whether she took the pen.”

  “Okay.”

  Over my many years as a judge, I had developed a sixth sense as to whether witnesses were telling the truth. I did not think this one was—and the attempt of her counsel to divert the questioning strengthened my feeling about it. But what did she have to hide? Sometimes, a direct approach worked best.

  “Professor, I can’t say exactly why, but I have the sense you are not telling me the full story.”

  “I think I am.”

  “You are not only a professor in your country but a lawyer, is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “You practiced law at one point?”

  “Yes.”

  “And did trials?”

  “Yes.”

  “Criminal trials?”

  “Some.”