Murder at the Lanterne Rouge

by Cara Black

  “We’re short-staffed.”

  She needed answers. And now.

  She clicked her phone. “That’s my other line. Look, this won’t take long. It’s concerning the autopsy results for a male, late twenties.” She paused, rustled her checkbook near the receiver. “A Pascal Samour.”

  “Who’s this?”

  Rain splashed on her boots. “I’m Prévost’s admin assistant, from the commissariat in the third,” she said. “He didn’t tell you?”

  “Tell me what?”

  “I’ll check the paperwork, but it’s somewhere in the request,” she said. “The priority request for Samour’s autopsy results this morning.”

  “Like I’ve had time to write the report?” he said. “I’m subbing for the interim assistant.”

  At least he’d performed the autopsy. As interim staff, he wouldn’t know all the procedures. Or she hoped he wouldn’t.

  “Mais alors, you should have said so.” She gave a short laugh, looked at the report number she’d written on her palm. “It’s case number 6A87. Just shoot the prelim over. Serge does it all the time.”

  Pause.

  “Prelim without pathology?” he said. “No analysis of nail scrapings, stomach contents? That’s all I’ve got.”

  “That will do for now.” She let out a sigh. “Or read the results and I’ll type in the prelim. Add the path later.”

  “Call back. Give me ten minutes,” he said.

  And search for the nonexistent request?

  She recognized the low thumping of hydraulic-pump pressure hoses washing down the autopsy tables, the dissecting tools, the tiled floor. Once, during her brief year in premed, her class spent a morning at the morgue. That’s when she’d met Serge.

  “Prévost’s on my back screaming priority,” she said. “I’d like to mention how helpful you’re being. What’s your name?”

  “Carton, but …” Pause. “Un moment.”

  She prayed he’d find it. And before Prévost got wind of this. She shivered in her wet boots under the glass awning.

  Carton cleared his throat. “Considering the snow, the temperature, the conditions, we put time of death at one to two hours before discovery.”

  So he put time of death between seven and eight P.M.

  “Does that take into account the plastic wrapping? Wouldn’t that keep in the body temperature?”

  “Plastic?” Carton said. “I’m working from a cadaver, you understand. And given that this death occurred outside in the snow, the body would cool faster than the usual degree and a half, two degrees per hour. Let’s see, it says leg flesh was gnawed. There’s a note that says ‘rat meat.’ ”

  She cringed.

  “Cause of death asphyxiation,” he continued. “Apart from the ligature marks on his wrists, no abrasions or contusions were present.”

  Unease flickered through her. She hadn’t seen the ligature marks. All she remembered were the eyes. “So you’re saying …?”

  “I’m saying nothing,” Carton said. “The burns take longer.”

  She grabbed her scooter’s handlebars. “Burns?”

  “Traces on his right index and middle finger. Not fresh, hard to tell,” he said. “The tissue after microscopic examination will indicate the age of the injuries, the healing time. We never commit until the pathology report. Even then this looks cut-and-dry.”

  Cut-and-dry? Samour was wrapped in plastic.

  “Take it up with Serge. You got the prelim results. What you wanted, non?”

  Not what she wanted at all.

  Saturday, 7 P.M.

  RENÉ SMOOTHED MEIZI’S black hair on the pillow. Her soft breaths of sleep ruffled the duvet. He could watch her for hours.

  She shivered in her sleep, a cry catching in her throat. A bad dream? He stroked her flushed cheek until her shoulders relaxed and she turned over.

  At peace.

  He straightened the duvet, tucked it under her chin. To keep her warm. Safe.

  He wrote her a note. Call me at the office when you wake up. Stay here and order anything you want. Bises, René

  René dressed and checked the window. The usual early-evening hum—buses, pedestrians, the lingerie shops open late. He surveyed the street, for a watcher at the corner, for Tso or one of his men.

  Only shoppers, resto-goers catching the bus or hurrying to the Métro. A waiter wearing a long white apron stood on the pavement under an awning smoking a cigarette.

  Satisfied Meizi was safe, he leaned down, inhaled her warm, sleepy scent. Kissed her. She stirred slightly, a smile on her face.

  René hung a Do Not Disturb sign from the hotel room door handle, put ten francs on the room service tray with their dirty dishes, and padded down the hall.

  Saturday, 7:30 P.M.

  SOMETHING NIGGLED AT Aimée. She still hadn’t pinned it down by the time she turned her key in Leduc Detective’s door. Her stomach growled. The couscous felt like a long time ago.

  René sat sipping an espresso at his desk, his expression distant. Saj shot her a knowing look. Winked.

  “Let’s cut to the chase,” René said. “I want to get back to Meizi.”

  “So you two talked …?” She let her words trail off.

  A little smile appeared on his face. “You could say that.”

  She pulled out the book she’d taken from Samour’s office and thumbed to the chapter he’d bookmarked. Medieval glassmaking guilds. She set it down and lifted a fresh demitasse of espresso from their machine.

  “Meizi’s safe for now.” René’s brow furrowed. “But we’re not immigration. Aimée, unless you know a higher-up and can pull strings, I don’t know how to protect her.”

  The only string she could pull was Morbier’s. The wrong one. And he didn’t answer the phone.

  With Meizi safe in the hotel, she had some time to figure out what to do. Fleshing out the plan to keep Tso at bay would have to wait. Right now she needed to concentrate on Samour.

  “There are complications, René.” She plopped a sugar cube in her cup, stirred, and took a sip. “Samour worked for the DST, died a patriot.”

  “So now he’s a patriot?” René sputtered, spilling espresso on his tie.

  “So they say.” She sat on the edge of her desk and outlined what she knew: Mademoiselle Samoukashian’s discovery of Pascal’s safety deposit box, his letter, his repeated messages to Coulade, something about a 14th-century file, Pascal’s ransacked apartment, her arrangement of digitizing holdings at the Conservatoire’s musée, Sacault’s recruiting her. She left out thinking about her mother.

  “Both Samour’s great-aunt and the DST are clients now?” René said.

  She handed him Mademoiselle Samoukashian’s check. “The DST’s concerned with Samour’s project, whatever it was. His great-aunt wants his murderer brought to justice.” Aimée paused in thought. “And the murderer wanted to silence Samour.”

  “Didn’t the DST tell you what he worked on?” René asked. “Give you a lead?”

  “Typical need-to-know basis,” she said. “Sacault, the fixer, played it safe.”

  “How would you have known what to look for, if we didn’t have what Samour’s great-aunt showed you?”

  Aimée shook her head. “Welcome to the gray world. You learn as you go and the rules change all the time. For once, we’re ahead of the DST, unless they know all this already. But I doubt it.” She pulled out her camera. “Check out the diagrams on Pascal’s courtyard walls. Anything strike you?”

  “Context is everything,” René said, flicking through the digital photos.

  “Ideas on how to decipher this?”

  “A few.” He inserted a cable from his computer to the camera. “I’ll scan the photos. Enhance them.” He rubbed his hands together, almost in glee. “Only requires me to write a program to customize my search.” He savored a challenge.

  She handed Saj the disc she’d copied from Coulade’s computer. “Pascal might have sent Coulade information, hidden in another file on Coulade�
�s desktop. See what you can find.”

  Saj nodded.

  “I installed René’s spyware on his computer, too,” she said. “Should be up and running.”

  Saj inserted Coulade’s disc into his laptop. “Nice bugging job, Aimée.”

  She tamped down her impatience. “We need to link the laptop I bring to the Conservatoire back here,” she said, downing her espresso.

  “Done.” René pointed to the laptop on her desk.

  Thank God René seemed back in form.

  “Aimée, shouldn’t we ask Saj if he’s willing to get involved?”

  Saj’s hacking skills had proved so valuable that the ministries he’d hacked had recruited instead of prosecuted him. And kept him on a leash.

  “Bien sûr.” She hoped the irritation didn’t show in her voice. “Up to you, Saj.”

  “In for a centime, in a for a kilo,” Saj said, “as my grand-mère would say.”

  “Franc,” said René.

  “Quoi, René?”

  “In for a centime, in for a franc,” said René, lips pursed.

  Saj stretched his arms over his head. “I’m implicated already since, at René’s insistence, I’m a salaried part-timer. Signed paperwork.”

  René shook his head. “How else could I pay you?”

  “Bon, no one here’s broken the law,” Aimée said, and took another sip. “Yet.”

  Saj was clicking keys, scanning his computer screen, now a forest of Coulade’s icons.

  “Not only do we keep tabs on the professeur, we can browse his domination fantasies and collection of erotica, circa 1930,” Saj said, with a tone of distaste. “Do I have to weed through everything?”

  “We need to find out,” she said. “So oui, get weeding.”

  A quick knock. Leduc Detective’s door opened to a gust of chill air from the hall. Martine Sitbon, Aimée’s best friend since the lycée, strode inside, dressed in black denim from the pointed toes of her high heels to her oversize newsboy cap.

  “Mais alors, not ready, Aimée?” She leaned and kissed René on both cheeks. Winked at Saj. “We’re late. Hurry or nothing will be left on the rack.”

  Now she remembered. The last day of January soldes.

  René’s mouth turned down. “With all this work?”

  “It’s once a year, René,” Martine said.

  “Twice.” Saj grinned.

  “July doesn’t count. That’s vacances.” Martine turned to Aimée, her red mouth set in a pout. “But this sale’s invitation only. Don’t you still need a dress for Sebastien’s wedding?”

  Merde!

  “With that bulging armoire full of clothes?” René said.

  “That’s my work wardrobe, René!” Aimée shot him a look. “I’m the maid of honor.” She rooted under her desk for her vintage ostrich-skin Vuitton travel bag, a ten-franc bargain from the octogenarian in her building who’d nearly thrown it in the trash.

  Saj nodded. “Fully loaded, I’d imagine? That bag’s lethal and guaranteed to clear crowded aisles.”

  “Silk lingerie sales get ugly. You have no idea, Saj.” Martine tugged Aimée’s arm. “The line’s all the way around Les X.”

  Les X lay underground in an old wine cavern, a mix of vintage, retro, and last season’s gently worn couture jumbled with Tati polyester and Monoprix seconds. A Left Bank fashionista secret.

  “We’re pros,” Martine said. “With synchronization, it won’t take long.”

  Aimée grabbed her coat. “Keep working. After I meet Pascal’s Gadz’Arts classmate, I’ll know more.”

  The image of Jean-Luc floated in her mind. His warm smile, self-assurance—the antithesis of his geeky classmate, Samour. An unlikely friendship forged by class ties? Soon, she’d meet him for a drink and find out.

  René frowned. “Check in before.”

  Her cousin Sebastien had asked René to escort her to the wedding. She paused at the door.

  “René, have you gotten your tuxedo alterations?”

  René’s hand went to his mouth.

  Saturday, 8:45 P.M.

  “YELLOW LIGHT, MARTINE,” Aimée said, knuckles clenched on the Mini Cooper’s lime-green dashboard. Martine had only passed her driving test last week. Aimée wished they’d taken the Métro.

  She glanced at the time. Fifteen minutes to her aperitif with Jean-Luc. In the blurring fog, the streetlights gave off a tobacco-yellow haze.

  “An off-the-shoulder seventies Dior organza … and in winter blue, parfait!” Martine was saying. She downshifted, the orange tip of her cigarette long with ash. Aimée regretted forgetting her nicotine patch.

  “You didn’t do badly yourself, Martine,” she said, gesturing to the car’s backseat overloaded with shopping bags.

  Martine rolled down the window, threw her cigarette out into dank mist. She shivered as she rolled it back up. “Shouldn’t Melac escort you to Sebastien’s wedding instead of René?”

  She shook her head. Wary. Martine’s longtime mission, to find Aimée a man, was now focused on Melac and his ex-wife.

  “I didn’t ask him.”

  “Why not?”

  “My father almost missed my baptism. You can’t count on flics to attend weddings, or funerals either. Not to mention Melac’s just been promoted. All hush-hush,” Aimée said. “Now he can’t tell me what he does, or …”

  “He’d have to shoot you?” Martine grinned. “Not that you want to know.”

  Aimée pushed aside her worry about Melac. Time to compartmentalize. Concentrate on what she’d ask Jean-Luc. Then check in with René to see if Saj had connected the dots, what the diagram signified. How this tied into the DST recruiting her. So much to think about.

  But for the moment she tried to ignore Martine’s pack of Murattis near the gearshift.

  “There’s another angle behind the DST, Martine. I feel it.”

  Earlier, while trying on outfits in the dressing room, she’d filled Martine in on Pascal Samour’s murder, Meizi, and the DST.

  Martine hit the horn at the bus cutting in front of her. “Better idea, give me access to Meizi,” Martine said. “Perfect for an exposé on sweatshops. I’ll write a series on working conditions, the luxury items made in China and finished here, the snakeheads. No names, of course.”

  She’d whetted Martine’s appetite. Her plan. “Need to stretch your journalistic chops?”

  “Call me tired of seven-minute fluff pieces on Radio France.”

  Aimée grinned. “Deal.”

  Martine shrugged and hit the horn again. “Watch your back with the DST. You need connections in high places. De rigueur, but have you seen any real proof on your mother?”

  An investigative journalist, Martine broadcast on Radio France and nourished her network of connections.

  “What if it’s all lies, Aimée?”

  Aimée’s hand trembled.

  At the red light, Martine forgot the clutch and stalled the car. “I don’t want you disappointed again. Or hurt. Desolée if this sounds brutal, but what’s the point if your mother’s dead? A five-year-old surveillance report doesn’t bring her back.”

  The wisp of hope reopened the wound in her heart. The wound that never went away. She wondered if she could face that.

  “Don’t you see, they want to use you?”

  Her shoulders stiffened. “Tell me something new, Martine.”

  “And you’ll beat them at their own game, Aimée?” Martine let out the clutch, ground into first. “All those psychological profilers sitting on Aeron chairs in think tanks outside Versailles, funded by you and me. Dissecting your personality, your vulnerability.”

  Common intelligence practice, Aimée knew.

  “They could rehash old intel, smother it with béarnaise sauce, and serve it fresh. Reel you in. Over and over.”

  “Nothing’s free.” Aimée pulled down the visor, flicked on the light, and checked for lipstick on her teeth. “Plan two steps ahead, Papa always said.”

  A scooter cut in front of them and
Martine braked just in time. “Idiote!”

  “Bien sûr! That’s it.” Of course. The DST had attached a GPS to her scooter. Stupid. Why hadn’t she figured that out before?

  “Your plan?”

  Aimée shut the visor. Hesitated. Sacault’s matchbox message had contained a time and location. Nothing else.

  “The DST’s got me under surveillance. My scooter, my office …” She looked at Martine meaningfully.

  Martine blinked. “Stay at my place, of course.”

  “Martine, the first place a profiler would look is at my best friend’s.”

  “So what will you do?”

  “Do you still have your learner’s driving permit?”

  Martine nodded. “Check my wallet.”

  Aimée rifled through Martine’s Hermès. “May I take a press ID, an old one?”

  “Will I regret this, Aimée?”

  “Just insurance.”

  Aimée put both Martine’s old Libération press ID and the permit in her bag. “I need to play the game by my rules. Not the other way around.”

  All of a sudden a figure darted into the narrow street.

  “What the hell?” Martine yelled.

  Illuminated in Martine’s headlights was a man, on the cobbles directly in front. Aimée’s stomach jumped to her mouth. She knew they were going to kill him.

  “Don’t hit him! Martine!” Aimée shouted. Each detail imprinted in her mind, as if in slow motion. The man’s camel-hair coat and dark leather buttons came closer. And closer. Martine punched the Mini Cooper’s brakes, skidding on the slick cobbles. With a squeal they veered toward a lamppost. Whipped forward, Aimée threw up her arms and hit the windshield. Pain crunched her wrist. The lime-green Mini Cooper scraped the lamppost, then shuddered to a halt. And stalled.

  “He ran out of nowhere,” Martine gasped, her knuckles white on the steering wheel. “Into the street, just like that!”

  Shaken, Aimée rubbed her wrist.

  “Mon Dieu, are you all right?”

  “Just a bruise, Martine.” Aimée unsnapped the seat belt. It could have been worse. The camel-hair coat under the wheels, and herself through the windshield.

  “He just jumped out,” Martine said again, gesturing to the man, his light-brown coat now bobbing through the crowd.