Sylvie Lopez dropped two ice cubes in a glass of water and handed it to Sebag.
“Would you like a glass?” she asked Jacques.
“No, I prefer it this way. Out of the bottle.”
“José does too,” she replied, not without pride.
Once they had finished their drinks, they divided up the work. Sebag took the living room, Jacques the bedrooms. Sylvie Lopez hesitated a moment, then decided to follow Molina.
Gilles gave little Jennifer a friendly smile, but prudently kept his distance.
“Where would you begin?” he asked her.
The little girl let out a little chirp.
“Really? You think?”
The furniture was modest and disparate. Sebag chose to examine first a strange pile of gray wood boxes that claimed to play the role of a bookcase. The latter was not large, and the books, not very numerous, included a few recent best-sellers, an older volume that had won the Goncourt prize, and a handsome work with aerial photographs of Roussillon. At the very bottom there were three photo albums, which he ignored. He had a feeling that the solution to the case was not to be found in the Lopez’s family life.
He set aside the book that had won the Goncourt, lifted up a colored candle, and ran his finger along the shelf. No trace of dust. He flipped through the books one by one and shook them. A piece of paper fell out of The Da Vinci Code. He picked it up with care. It was a page torn out of a notebook with small squares. A telephone number was written on it. A cell phone number. Nothing else.
He started to explore the family address book lying on the desk. It bore names, sometimes just first names, and also a few nicknames—Jeff, Fred, Lulu—but no esoteric signs, abbreviations, or even initials. Nothing obscure or suspect. Nonetheless, Sebag found no trace of the mysterious cell phone number. He took a plastic bag out of his pants pocket and carefully put the paper in it.
“Watch carefully what I’m doing, okay Jenny? I need a witness. It’s the law!”
He went up to a piece of furniture in Formica that held the television. Underneath was a DVD reader, and under that, two drawers containing films: American TV series, a complete collection of Star Wars, French comedies, two or three little romances. Then he went through the couple’s CD collection. Popular television singers mingled unabashedly with English and American hits. Sebag noted the impressive collection of Barry White CDs. He took one at random, put it into the CD player, and turned the sound down low. The American crooner whispered his sugary songs in his ear.
He ran his finger over the television screen. Still no dust. His suspicions were confirmed. Sylvie Lopez was assuredly a meticulous housekeeper. Maybe even a maniacal one.
Sebag went back to the desk. He stepped over the play-mat. Little Jennifer followed him with her eyes. A pungent odor was emanating from her.
“Oh, don’t you smell good,” he said, holding his nose.
He switched on the PC. It was a new one with a flat screen. The home page showed two accounts. One under the name of Lopez, the other under the name of José. Sebag clicked on Lopez. A photo of a baby appeared in the background. It was without any doubt Jennifer Lopez—he now noticed, for the first time, that she had the same name as the actress—scarcely a few minutes after she had appeared on Earth. A woolen bonnet protected her head and forehead, but could not conceal the birthmark that decorated one of her eyelids.
Sebag looked deep into the baby’s dark eyes.
Séverine had also had very dark eyes when she was born. Her skin was red and wrinkled, her hair was already thick and brown. An adorable little Inca doll. He saw her again just after the birth, lying all flushed on her mother’s white, round belly. That was thirteen years ago.
A heartbeat, an instant.
The screen went dark. It had taken advantage of the inspector’s reveries to put itself to sleep. Sebag hit a random key. The screen jerked and agreed to wake up. Sebag surveyed the icons. The usual programs installed on the computer at the factory. A shortcut led to the taxi’s books. He had no time to waste on that for the moment.
He exited the family account and tried to open the husband’s account. Impossible. It was blocked. He called on Sylvie Lopez for help. The young woman came in three seconds. She smiled when she recognized the music.
“Do you like Barry White, too?” she asked.
“Yes. Well . . . a little,” he replied politely. “I don’t know him very well. I’ve often heard his songs on the radio. Like everyone else.”
“José is a real fan. Absolutely. There are CDs he sometimes plays over and over. It seems odd to me . . . to hear them when he’s not here.”
To hide her embarrassment she bent over her daughter, sniffed her, and then took her in her arms.
“Is she bothering you?”
“Not at all. We’ve been talking. She’s charming.”
Sylvie Lopez gave him her most radiant mother’s smile.
“I called you in because there’s a password on your husband’s account. Do you know it?”
“A what?”
“A password.”
She seemed still not to understand. He explained.
“There’s free access to the computer but your husband’s account is protected. It can be opened only with a code, a password that he put on it.”
He pointed to the flashing cursor.
“Look. Here, you have to write a secret word, a name, nickname, anything. Afterward it simply opens.”
She leaned over the screen despite the burden in her arms. He pitied her back. He’d always admired women’s ability to hold a child in their arms for hours and to go about their business as if it were nothing at all.
“Haven’t you ever used the computer on your husband’s account?”
She looked perplexed. Still leaning over the computer, she was holding the child’s bottom near the inspector’s nose.
“I think there’s a little problem,” he dared to say.
She stood up.
“I’m sorry. I use the computer only to do the bookkeeping for the taxi, and I don’t need a password.”
He sighed.
“Too bad. Thanks all the same. You can go back to my colleague now.”
After a short hesitation, he added, pointing to the diaper:
“The little problem I was talking about was, uh, related to the big job.”
The young woman’s eyes smiled. They were just as dark as Jennifer’s.
“Oh yes. Excuse me. I’m going to change her.”
Sebag was alone again. That’s how he preferred to work, even if it wasn’t altogether legal. He opened the desk drawers. The files were categorized. Taxes. Gas. Electricity. Health. Just like his. Like everyone’s, he imagined. He glanced through it all rapidly. Nothing caught his attention.
He sat down on the sofa in front of the TV. The sofa was soft. Too soft, as always. It was incredible how many uncomfortable sofas could be invented. Sebag preferred chairs, but he could see the whole room better from the sofa. He silenced his thoughts and tried not to pay attention to details. He wanted to feel the soul of this apartment.
The sunlight made the stark white walls of the living room dazzling. Sebag stroked the paint with his fingertips. It was rough. A simple primer coat. The only thing that enlivened the room with a touch of bright color was a painting that hung to the right of the TV.
Despite the heat that was gradually filling the room, he shivered. Something was wrong. The furniture was disparate, the place hadn’t been fully moved into, there was a total absence of disorder. Those were the objective facts. They could have been found in many other homes. But what he felt, beyond that, was a kind of . . . absence of life. That was it! That was what he felt deeply. There was no life in the Lopez’s home.
“I’ve searched the bedrooms and the bath,” Molina interrupted. “I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary.”
Jacques’s sudden appearance had made Sebag jump. He slowly raised his eyes and looked at him. Sylvie Lopez came in as well. With little Jennifer still in her arms. She smelled of baby powder.
“In fact, you don’t spend much time here, do you?”
The apparently anodyne question seemed to hit the young woman like a sucker punch. She started breathing faster, her back hunched slightly. Sebag had wanted to be direct, not brutal, but he’d touched a sensitive spot. Sylvie Lopez shifted her daughter from one hip to the other and answered looking down at the living room’s linoleum.
“We work a lot, you know, and especially we come home late. It’s true that some evenings when I stop at my parents’ home to pick up Jenny and I see her sleeping peacefully, I don’t have the heart to disturb her. Sometimes I just lie down beside her, and at other times I go sleep in the bedroom I had when I still lived with my parents. That way, if Jenny wakes up crying it’s my mother who takes care of her and I can catch up on my sleep a little.”
Little Jennifer began to fuss. Her mother hoisted her up a bit on her hip.
“The first evening, when your husband disappeared, you weren’t at home, in fact?
“No,” she whispered. “I was with my parents.”
Quiet up to now, Jacques broke in.
“So he could very well have come home without you knowing it?”
She turned her delicate face toward Molina. Her eyes detached themselves from the floor. They were darker than ever. The color of night.
“No, he didn’t come home. I’m sure of that.”
“How can you be so sure if you weren’t here?” Jacques persisted with a gentleness Sebag had never seen in him. “He could have at least been here briefly. That night or even another night. Or any time during the day.”
The young mother’s eyes jumped from one to the other of them. She didn’t know how to explain. Then she took on a stubborn air.
“I’d have noticed if he’d come home.”
Sebag tried to help her. He knew that the most experienced policeman’s power of observation was not equal to the steely and inquisitorial eye of a homemaker.
“You think he would have to have left some trace behind if he’d been there, don’t you? A footprint in the entry hall, a coffee stain on the kitchen table, a dirty glass in the sink. Or simply some object that he moved and didn’t put back exactly where it belonged.”
The young woman’s eyes fell on the inspector and lit up for an instant. Putting his hand in his pants pocket, Sebag felt a plastic bag. He took it out and showed Sylvie Lopez the paper he’d put inside it.
“Does this telephone number mean anything to you?”
She looked at the paper attentively. Her eyebrows came together and furrowed her forehead. Then her features suddenly relaxed.
“Where did you find this?”
Sebag didn’t like it when a witness answered him with further questions, but he chose not to be offended.
“In a book in the bookcase.”
“That’s the phone number of a girlfriend of mine who has just come back to France after a stay in New Caledonia—her husband is in the military. I wrote it down the other night when she called me and I couldn’t find it again.”
She reached for the plastic bag but held back at the last moment.
“Can I have it back or is it important for your investigation?”
Sebag avoided Molina’s eyes. He could imagine the laughter shaking his broad shoulders as his colleague gently made fun of him. He took the paper out of the bag and gave it to Sylvie Lopez. Another idea ran through his mind.
“Do you have a garage?”
“Yes, of course. That’s why we moved here.”
Molina immediately reacted.
“Will you show me the garage, Mrs. Lopez? My colleague surely has things to do here.”
The young woman reflected for an instant. Sebag followed her eyes from little Jennifer to the play-mat.
“Will it take long?”
“That depends,” Molina said evasively. “Is there a lot of stuff in the garage?”
“No! Just a few tools and a couple of boxes.”
“Then fifteen minutes should be enough.”
“Fifteen minutes? Then let’s go right away.”
She resettled her daughter on her hip and went off with Molina.
Sebag could now snoop around the apartment alone. The walls of Jennifer’s bedroom were the only ones that were papered. Cherubs on a sky blue background. A large photo hung over the crib: papa, mama, and little Jenny. The only thing tying the three members of the family together.
Sylvie and José were clearly having problems, but had they ever really been a couple? Sebag had met many people like them in the course of his career. Far too many of them. A man and a woman meet one evening and go out together. He could have chosen another woman, she could have done worse, and they take that accident for love. One day they have a kid. Because when a man and a woman are together for a couple of years, they have a kid. Necessarily. Ultimately it’s easier than choosing not to have one. The headlong rush maintains the illusion.
Josie and Sylvie Lopez no doubt met from time to time. Around the dinner table, in front of a television screen, over the crib, or perhaps simply on the landing. They weren’t happy together. Or unhappy, either.
The music stopped and the room was silent again. Sebag got up, put away the CD, and sat back down.
Who was José Lopez, really, and what role did he play in all this? That of a man in love who’d run away? He no longer believed that. The hypothesis didn’t fit with either the abandoned taxi or young Ingrid’s profile. She could have gone off to the other end of the world with her cab driver, had a perfect love affair with him, and continued to call her papa and mama every evening. He probably had to assume that the worst might have happened. Was Lopez a victim or a murderer? His convictions, including the one for assault and battery, meant that he wasn’t gentle as a lamb, but to jump to the conclusion that he was a killer . . . The fact that someone will break an egg doesn’t necessarily mean that he would kill an ox. And still less a young woman.
The door at the end of the hall opened. Molina came back in and found him sitting on the sofa. Lost in his thoughts.
“Are you falling asleep?”
Jacques turned to Sylvie Lopez.
“Trust my colleague, madam. He looks like he’s sleeping, but he’s thinking. Me, it’s the other way around . . . ”
He thought it necessary to add:
“I look like I’m thinking, but I’m really sleeping.”
Sebag got up.
“Did you find anything?” he asked.
“Negative. The garage is almost empty. That’s normal, since the car is . . . elsewhere.”
Sebag looked again at the reproduction of the painting that hung on the wall. He went up to it. The canvas was signed “Derain.” A classic of fauvism.
He took the frame off the wall to check out an idea.
“This picture is recent, isn’t it?”
“Absolutely.”
“It was José who brought it here a few days ago, right?”
“Yes, how did you know that? Is it related to his disappearance?”
“No. That is, not directly.”
He didn’t have the heart to tell her about Ingrid and her studies in art history. When he called earlier, Molina hadn’t been very specific. He’d just told her that José’s disappearance had disturbing resemblances with that of a young Dutch tourist and that this coincidence required them to pursue the investigation further and thus to search the apartment.
“Did you know that your husband has a police record?”
“It was just a fight. He was young.”
“Has he seemed worried recently?”
“No, not at all. On the contrary. He no
longer seemed concerned about his taxi. He still had loans to pay back, but he said we’d be able to manage somehow.
The inspectors thought about these answers. Then Sebag gave the signal to leave.
“I think we’re done here. We’ve bothered you enough for today.”
She assured them that they hadn’t bothered her, that there was nothing worse than waiting without anything to do, and that at least she’d felt for a short time as if she was helping them in their investigation. She offered them another drink before leaving, and when they refused finally asked the question she was dying to ask:
“Do you think something serious has happened to José?”
The two men looked at each other in silence. They were playing for time and each hoped the other would take the lead. Sebag was better at this little game.
“It’s too early to say,” Jacques explained. “Every year many people disappear in France, and most of the time, things turn out okay.”
Statistically, Molina was right. What he deliberately failed to say was that these were usually minors who’d run away or senile old people. In cases of adults who had disappeared, the outcome was often more complicated.
The sun lit up a star in the young woman’s dark pupils. Sylvie Lopez sniffled. The star was soon washed in tears.
Jennifer put her hand on her mother’s cheek. She was astonished to feel the wetness under her little fingertips.
“Everything will be all right, you’ll see,” said Jacques, putting his hand on her frail shoulder.
The young woman was polite enough to be satisfied with these banal words. Before leaving, Sebag and Molina picked up the computer and had Sylvie fill out the usual form. As they were carrying the PC to their car, she wrote down, as they had asked, a few possible passwords. Their daughter’s first name and her various nicknames, the names of her parents-in-law, her husband’s birthplace, a place connected with some memory . . . everything that occurred to her. Sebag sensed that she was willing but doubted her inspiration.
The engine was idling and the air conditioning made him forget the early summer heat. Parked in front of a gym, he was watching a magnificent parade of girls. Some were amazingly beautiful. They knew it and weren’t afraid of going out in leotards. It was enough to make you want to get involved in sports . . .
Summertime All the Cats Are Bored Page 8
