The Burial Society
Page 11
Immigrants from many different countries cajole and catcall, pointing to the less-than-savory products heaped before them on ratty blankets.
Les Puces, the largest outdoor flea market in Paris and a popular tourist attraction, lies just a few short blocks away, but in order to get there, one must brave this teeming crowd selling T-shirts, knockoff sunglasses, counterfeit designer bags, African drums, illegal drugs, and sex on the cheap.
Also for sale here, and most essential to me, are cellphones.
I jostle my way through the aggressive hawkers with urgency. Earlier this morning, I detected an attempt to disable my firewall. I rapidly shut the worm down, but all the same it spooked me. Had I been sloppy? Does the Russian bastard know more about me than he should?
I immediately disabled and ditched the phone I’ve been using for all things related to Elena’s kidnapping. Then I headed here, cursing myself. I should have switched out phones earlier. I should have been more careful.
Ten minutes later, money changes hands and I have five new phones at my disposal.
A fight breaks out between three angry Tunisians jostling for the same street corner. The gathering crowd eggs on the combatants, urging them to go for the kill, and placing bets on the outcome.
I tuck my purchases into my brown leather Chloe satchel, nestling them next to the Mace, stun gun, and leather pouch with loaded syringes (a girl needs to be prepared). Sirens howl in the distance. I hurry away from the commotion.
I enter “The Flea.” Normally, I would take time to browse. I’m fascinated by the extensive variety of objects one can find here: antique bicycles, oil paintings, first-edition books, intricately woven rugs and tapestries, globes and compasses, clocks and watches, wooden tennis rackets in old-fashioned presses. China, crystal, and flatware. Vintage jewelry, handbags, dresses, hats, and gloves. Furniture of many eras, chairs with needlepoint seats and mirrors with ormolu frames. Military gear from both world wars, nautical equipment, telescopes. Copper cookware, steamer trunks, and charming, discarded shop signs, reading COIFFURE or BOUCHERIE.
I can spend hours here exploring, telling myself stories about the times and people who have left these artifacts behind. It may be the only hobby I have. Today, however, I hurry through as quickly as I can.
At the far end of the market, past a shop jumbled with sterling silver teapots, candlesticks, and pitchers, I cut into an alley. I stop in front of a metal roll-up door and rap sharply: two knocks, a pause, then three in rapid succession.
The door whines up and open. Delphine, protective goggles on her face and a blazing blowtorch in one hand, gestures me inside. She slams the roll-up door down behind us.
The space within is vast and dim, a disused warehouse. No windows. Dusty light filters in through a pair of filthy skylights. Cars line the perimeter of the space, older models, nondescript makes.
Delphine’s latest sculpture, a gigantic humanoid figure shaped from harvested car parts, dwarfs the stepladder she has been using to reach the creature’s “face,” where the metal still glows red-hot.
Delphine shuts off the blowtorch and raises her goggles, rubbing the tips of her fingers gently over the ovals they have imprinted around her eyes.
“Looks good,” I say admiringly, gesturing to her work.
Delphine shrugs. Compliments are meaningless to her. She does this work for her own process and pleasure and no one else’s. Her fused-metal sculptures are all homages to her murdered younger brother. Over and over again she re-creates the boy she lost in steel and iron, copper and brass, first welding the pieces together and then blasting them apart when she is done.
“I need you,” I begin. “Some of my Elena communications may have been compromised.”
Delphine’s eyes widen slightly. She knows better than anyone how careful I am. She sets down the blowtorch and goggles.
“Balint will bring her north to the safe house in Stockholm. I want you to meet him there. Stay with her until her transport out of Europe is finalized. It should only be a matter of days.”
Delphine reaches back and pulls free the elastic that binds her long dark hair into a ponytail.
“When do you need me to leave?”
“Now.”
There’s no doubt about it, this is the most uncomfortable family dinner in the entire history of family dinners. A record setter. And Jake ought to know because an inordinate number of other Burrows family dinners have also made the leaderboard.
There was the “which-take-out-place?” dinner the night after his mother disappeared (once the police had come with their questions and condescension and left trailing platitudes). Then there were the endless meals cooked from Uncle Frank’s limited playbook: pasta Bolognese, steak on the grill, simple roast chicken, all served with a side of misery and a dollop of dread. And of course there was the infamous “last supper” just before they had Natalie committed (during which Jake, Brian, and Frank were so suffused with anticipatory tension they practically emitted sparks). Not to mention the take-out deli they’d consumed in silence the night after Mallory’s memorial service, the salty meats, sour rye bread, and earthy mustards like glue in their mouths.
Tonight, Natalie’s eaten maybe two French fries and sliced her steak into the thinnest of ribbons (Jake’s caught her pushing them under the mound of potatoes). She doesn’t look at all well; her face has a sallow cast; her eyes look empty.
And Uncle Frank. Packing in fat juicy morsels of bloody meat, gulping down swallows of rich red wine, dragging his fries through a mound of yellow mayonnaise before stuffing them into his mouth. Jake stares at Frank’s furiously working jaws, trying to make sense of the information his uncle is trying to impart.
Frank’s enraged about the embassy. Although Jake doesn’t know what his uncle expected. Brian’s death is an open murder investigation. Did Frank really expect they would all just be sent on their giddy way?
Besides, Jake isn’t as desperate to leave Paris as Frank. He thinks he’s genuinely on to something.
It makes sense. Dad would never have stopped looking for Crane. As much as Brian had spouted exhortations about “looking to the future,” and how “she would have wanted all of us to move forward,” Jake had always known these encouragements were for his and Natalie’s benefit. After Mom died, Dad was broken. Jake didn’t believe he’d ever let her go.
And then there were those reports Nat was so excited to share. That Dad’s co-workers swore he’d been afraid in the days leading up to his death. Will Crane fit that too. Who else would Dad be afraid of?
Suddenly deeply sorry about all the loving things he’d never said to his father and all the awful things he had, Jake takes a hasty gulp of wine. He doesn’t want to feel this sadness. His head starts to throb.
Uncle Frank’s still yammering. Natalie’s pushing food around her plate.
Jake catches her slipping the bone-handled steak knife into her purse. Their eyes meet, his mouth opens, he intends to speak but—
Please. Please let me have it, her eyes beg him. Please don’t bust me.
Jake looks away from her. Takes a vicious stab at his filet with his own knife, imagining the blade is cutting into Will Crane’s yielding flesh.
He doesn’t bust Natalie. He lets her keep that weighty, greasy knife she tucked into her embroidered cotton bag.
He’s not sure why.
I’ve changed up all the electronics, shifted all of my plans, dispatched Delphine. I’m back in charge of the game. Natalie’s been texting me with the relentless persistence unique to teenagers. When I finally replied, her eager relief was palpable.
The crush of press outside the hotel has largely dispersed, chasing fresher scandals, no doubt. Only three obvious members of the fourth estate still linger: a huge, lumpy man with an acne-scarred face, a hawk-nosed woman, whippet thin and bristling with energy, and a chain-smoking photographer, with a mane of silver hair and his camera at the ready.
I slip around to the hotel’s back entrance.
My chest tightens with a sticky pull of anxiety. I take the stairs slowly. What if Scovell’s information is another dead end? What if I am only bringing false hope to a young woman who’s already on the edge? This is not the time for these questions. But why do I feel so much dread?
At the third-floor landing, I stop.
I’ve ordered my life around choices that allow me to be in control. Of all things. At all times. Even my excesses are conducted under my rules and parameters.
But my life collided with the Burrowses’ lives in a way that destroyed that imperative. My excesses caused their loss.
I can still turn around. It’s not too late.
No. I owe them.
I owe Mallory.
I climb the last flight of stairs, itchy and uncomfortable in my own skin. Or should I say, “in Hannah Potter’s skin”?
Natalie looks even paler than the last time I saw her, swimming in her long-sleeved shirt and jeans. Her face lights up when she sees me.
“I was afraid you weren’t coming!”
“Here I am.”
The door to the corridor swings open. I press a finger to my lips to urge Natalie to hush and pull us both back under the shadowy recesses of the stairs.
A man steps through the door. Mid-forties, attractive and fit, with salt-and-pepper hair and searching eyes. He blinks as he adjusts to the bright light of the stairwell.
“It’s okay,” Natalie assures me. “It’s just my uncle Frank. I asked him to come.”
Shit. I hadn’t counted on this.
“Mrs. Potter?” Frank inquires. “Natalie says you have information about my brother?”
I step forward and Frank Burrows’s eyes meet mine. Something about his intensity unnerves me. But I’m here. I have a question to ask. Surely I can handle a salesman from Connecticut along with this teenage girl?
I shake the hand he extends to me.
In for a penny, in for a pound, so I cut to the chase.
“You know Hank Scovell?”
Frank Burrows’s face is blank, but Natalie chimes in. “Of course. He worked for my dad.” She turns to her uncle. “Remember? He was Dad’s second on the project here.”
“Right. Well, Natalie, as you asked, I spoke to Lilja, the project manager. She suggested I speak to your dad’s assistant, who confirmed Lilja’s impression that your dad was afraid of something or someone.”
“Who? Did she have any idea?” Frank Burrows’s face twists in confusion.
“No. But Hank Scovell had something more to add. Brian also confided in him. He snapped a picture of a man he caught tailing him and he texted the photo to Scovell to see if he knew him. He wondered if it was somebody they had encountered in connection with the project. Someone that might have had a beef.”
“Didn’t Mr. Scovell turn the photo in to the police?” Natalie wants to know. Her face is alight with fresh hope.
“He says he did. But he also felt that the police had another agenda they were pursuing and so didn’t pay him much mind.”
“Did Scovell recognize the man in the picture?”
“He says not. Look, I have a copy. Will you look at it? Maybe you’ll know who it is.”
I extract a cellphone from my brown leather satchel. Open the photograph Scovell texted to me. The subject, a man I would gauge to be in his early thirties, has one hand raised to forestall the inevitable picture. His watery blue eyes are widened in alarm, but otherwise he’s pleasant-looking, with a sweep of streaky blond hair that falls across his forehead.
I hand the cell to Natalie. She stares intently. Her face crumples. “I don’t know him.”
She passes the phone to Frank. He looks carefully at the picture, swiping his fingers across the screen to make the man’s features larger.
“Not a clue,” he says, handing the phone back to me. “Nat, why don’t you go back to the room? Let me talk to Mrs. Potter alone for a second.”
“Somebody must know who he is! He was stalking Daddy!” Natalie’s desperation colors her cry.
“Come on, let me talk to Mrs. Potter alone,” Frank repeats.
To my surprise, Natalie flings her thin arms around me. “Thank you for trying,” she whispers before releasing me.
Frank Burrows waits until the stairwell door swings closed behind her. “Look, Mrs. Potter, I appreciate what you’ve tried to do. I’ll follow up with the police and ask them to look deeper into that guy in the photo.”
“Do you agree with Natalie that the police aren’t investigating as thoroughly as they should?”
“How the hell do I know? They tell us jack shit! And the embassy’s been useless. We all need this solved. For Brian to rest in peace.” He groans. “We just need to go home.”
“It must be very hard for you,” I murmur. So often this is the only thing to say.
“You don’t know the half of it!” And then the words spill from him in a torrent. I learn of his custody battle, how he feels he’s betraying his own children by taking care of Brian’s. His explosive fears about Natalie and Jake, the former reverting to old patterns of self-mutilation, the latter vacillating between withdrawal and rage, prone to what Frank believes is delusional thinking.
He speaks of their isolation in the hotel, his disgust with the press frenzy, how very badly he misses his daughters. He is overwhelmed. At a complete loss as to what to do next.
He swipes at his eyes with an impatient knuckle.
“It’ll be all right,” I mutter, offering the platitude but knowing all too well that nothing will be all right. Some things you can’t recover from.
Frank fishes a crumpled tissue from his pocket. “Thank you for listening.” He blows his nose. “I haven’t really had anyone to talk to. And I try to be strong for the kids…” he falters.
“Of course.” I give him an understanding nod. “But can I ask—did Brian confide in you? Do you know why he was so scared?”
He shoves the tissue in his pocket. “No. I wish he had. Look—you seem like a nice person. I get you were trying to help. But I advise you to stay out of this from here on in. My brother was killed for a laptop. Whoever did this doesn’t exactly value life.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“Yeah. That’s what Brian thought too.”
Jake sits impatiently in the drab waiting room at the prefecture. With his right thumbnail he scrapes at the yellowing tape holding a flyer to the wall. She’s kept him waiting for over forty fucking minutes. And after all that bullshit she put him through to begin with.
Aimee Martinet was polite to Jake the first time he called. Sympathetic even. But when he called again and asked to meet her, she put him off. Then she stopped taking his calls. So Jake changed tactics. Emailed her. Repeatedly. Finally she replied that he could make an appointment to come in with his guardian. So he had dutifully made the appointment. Except that he had never let Uncle Frank know.
At least he finally has an audience with the goddamn bitch.
Even as that last thought escapes, Jake kicks himself. If he wants Aimee Martinet to believe a thing he says, he can’t afford anger. He’s got to cool down. He clasps his hands tightly. Resolves to keep his temper in check.
There she is, swinging open the door to the inner sanctum. Her eyes alight on Jake, then dart about, searching for Frank. She click, click, clicks over to Jake in her pointy navy heels.
“Is your uncle with you?” She gets right to the point. Her point. Jake has to get her to listen.
“No, I—”
“You must go, then,” Martinet says firmly. “Make another appointment. Come back with him.”
“Just ten minutes of your time,” Jake entreats. “How can it hurt to listen to what I have to say? Besides I’m twenty-one. He’s my uncle, but he’s not my guardian.”
She cocks her h
ead and studies Jake with frank appraisal. He meets her gaze confidently. The light shifts in her eyes. A decision has been made.
“Follow me.”
Jake follows her down the corridor. She opens the door to the same meeting room they had been in the last time, the one with what Jake is pretty sure is a two-way mirror on the single red wall.
She gestures for him to sit. He does. Then he lays it all out for her. His theory about his mother’s lover, Will Crane. His investigation of all the cameras in the vicinity of the apartment. His certainty that if they examined the footage from all of these cameras, they would see Crane.
She lets him talk without interruption. He keeps his voice calm and persuasive as he constructs a controlled argument based on logic and analysis. Jake knows he is right. Finally, he runs out of steam, his initial rush of words petering out into fumbled, half-formed phrases.
He’s unsure how to read her expression.
Her lips tighten and release. She tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Quite a compelling presentation,” she remarks.
Jake’s heart leaps. Has he gotten through to her? He must have. She believes him. He’s dizzy with relief.
“The only problem is that we’ve been pursuing a very different line of investigation. One that seems quite promising.”
He can’t hide his surprise. He didn’t expect that. But she seems so sure, suddenly so primly disapproving of his story woven from strands of Crane.
“What line of investigation? What have you found out?”
She leans in toward him and touches his forearm lightly. Never breaking eye contact, she croons, “Well, for one thing, we know you came back to Paris earlier than you led us all to believe. In fact, you came back the day before your father’s murder.”
I kick off my shoes and close my front door behind me, firmly turning the lock.
My command center awaits; I have work to do. I press my thumbprint on the lock. Sink into my chair and roll between the two desks, firing up computers. I pull a bottle from a drawer and take just one healthy swig of tequila. I need to take the edge off, but can’t afford to get stupid.