Murder on the Quai

by Cara Black

  The door swung open, blocking her way out of the passage.

  So persistent. She couldn’t see the driver, but she intended to give him a piece of her mind. She reached forward to shut the door.

  All of a sudden her arm was yanked sideways by a steel grip. Her forehead hit the doorframe—pain exploded in her temple. Her vision flickered. Another yank and she was being pulled inside.

  “Let go of me!” Her aching head was pushed down into the passenger foot well, her lower half hanging outside. Screaming now, she couldn’t see anything but the dirty floor mat. Somehow she curled her booted ankle around the doorframe, trying to pull back and leverage out with all her might. Her arms lashed out and her fingers caught something.

  She heard a rip. She swung out her elbow, hit air. Pathetic. Then again—this time she heard a grunt.

  A horn blared outside. If only she could get herself out of the car. Miles Davis barked. Another elbow jab found its mark. The grip loosened. Fighting the pain, drawing on her last bit of strength, she pulled loose. The taxi shot forward, and her legs were dragging on the cobbles. The engine whined. Somehow she shoved off the dashboard and tumbled out, the door swinging into her head. Again.

  Brakes squealed and she found herself lying on the cobbles in a car’s headlights.

  “Falling down drunk this early?” An irate woman was silhouetted in the headlights’ glare, her hands on her hips. “You young people!”

  Aimée blinked, raising herself up on her elbow. Her head swam, her tights were torn, her knees were scraped raw. Her bag—had he taken it? It held her whole life. “Where’s my bag?”

  Miles Davis whined, pawing the cobblestone as he sniffed her bag where it lay on the pavement. She could have sworn he understood her.

  “I almost ran you over,” said the woman.

  “That taxi driver attacked me,” she said. “Did you get a look at him?”

  “Attacked you?”

  Like she’d lie about that. “Did you see the taxi number? Or the company?”

  “Looked like one of those gypsy cabs.”

  Driven by con artists—on the sly with no taxi license. The damp cold seeped into her limbs, numbed her feet. She got to her knees, pulled herself up from the curb.

  The woman gasped. “You’re bleeding.” Then she had her arm around Aimée’s shoulders, helping her into the car. “I’m taking you to the clinique. There’s one just a few blocks away.”

  “Non, take me . . .” She scrabbled in her bag for a card.

  But everything was spiraling, going dark. Miles Davis was licking her face.

  Givaray · Saturday Afternoon

  Heinz Felsen examined the algae-encrusted remains of the German troop truck in the old garage. An empty, rusted shell. Disintegrated tires. Reeked of the river. “That’s all?”

  The garage worker, a young kid wearing jeans, shrugged. “Alors, I’m afraid you made a wasted trip.”

  “Where is the German soldier’s burial site?”

  The kid shrugged again. Looked bored. “Before my time.”

  Heinz concealed his frustration. Did his accent cause the yokels to put up roadblocks? He’d made the trip; he had to find out something. “Show me where you found it.”

  But the kid picked up a drill. “The river’s straight ahead. Can’t miss it. We dredged the truck right there in the deepest section by the mill.”

  No respect, this generation, Heinz thought.

  The river’s olive green-colored water flowed and swirled under a sky the color of tin. Whatever secrets it held, he could see no trace of them. Standing on the bank, gazing at the river and the village on the opposite bank, he sensed eyes watching him. His noticeable accent and age had drawn looks in this place. People remembered. It wouldn’t do good to spend time here.

  “You have a carte de visite, monsieur?” asked the grey-haired woman about his age who’d answered the church rectory door.

  He had several, but none this woman would appreciate.

  The minute he’d opened his mouth and asked for the priest, Père Robert, she’d stiffened. His smile and his little bow hadn’t fooled her. For a moment he thought she’d yell dirty Boche and slam the door.

  “I’m sorry, not with me.”

  “If you write down your name, I’ll let him know when he returns . . .”

  “The comtesse told me to contact Père Robert.”

  “Come back later, monsieur.”

  Her face went blank. She was lying. Some things never changed.

  But he wasn’t here to interrogate her, just the priest.

  He handed her Marie’s old-fashioned carte de visite—an elegant, thick, pale-pink vellum—with her comtesse title. “I believe she arranged an appointment.”

  The woman took the card, then spit on his shoes. “No German enters this house of the Lord.”

  He met her gaze. “I’ll wait.”

  Hate simmered in her eyes. She shut the door.

  Heinz walked in the rectory garden, among its leafless trees and bare rose bushes. Below, the bank led to the river, where it crooked like a hairpin. Voices came from an open window in bits and snatches.

  “Père Robert . . . traumatisée . . . your family . . .” was all he could catch.

  Heinz noticed how the garden extended to the water’s edge. His gaze caught on the flowing, dull-green river, how it swirled and eddied, lapping on the bank.

  A while later, he grew aware of a presence. Turned to see a priest wearing a black cassock—a man in his sixties, white hair and a thin, long face.

  “Hypnotic, non?” said the priest. “I watch the river for hours. Meditate.”

  “Père Robert. I’m Heinz Felsen.”

  “I know. He said you would come.”

  Heinz twisted the ring on his pinkie. “You mean, after all these years . . .” His throat caught, couldn’t finish.

  “I want to show you something,” said the priest. “This way.”

  Paris · 7:30 p.m.

  “No retinal damage,” said a voice close to Aimée’s nose. White halos filled her vision—a probing light in her dilated eyes. “But we won’t know the extent of your head injuries until we examine the X-rays.”

  Aimée groaned. Her temple throbbed, as did her shoulder, courtesy of the taxi door. Why hadn’t she taken that self-defense class? There were too many classes she wanted to take—and too many she needed to take.

  Another doctor had come into the small clinique room.

  “What are you doing here?” the first asked. “I thought you were off this weekend.”

  “Plans changed,” said the new doctor, consulting Aimée’s chart. “Let me take over on this patient.” He reviewed her file for another moment as he waited for the first doctor to leave. “A medical student should understand the potential gravity of a head injury. Shouldn’t you know better, Mademoiselle Leduc?”

  “Know better than to walk my dog on the street and get attacked?” she said, irritation rising. “Attends, how do you know I’m a med student?”

  He gestured to her student ID and the carte d’assurance maladie clipped to her chart. She got a look at him for the first time: thin, middle-aged, blond hair whitening at the temples. Vaguely familiar—maybe he taught classes at her school.

  “My son’s a medical student at Université Paris Descartes, as well,” he said.

  Her pager started beeping on top of her coat. She reached, missed. It clattered on the examining table. The doctor picked it up, glanced at it, did a double take.

  Pause. “And he appears to be paging you.”

  She froze. Wanted the earth to open up and swallow her. Now she remembered Florent saying that his father, a top surgeon, consulted at a clinique in the eighth. Just her luck. The father who, Florent had complained, insisted he follow in the medical family tradition.

  But what wa
s Dr. de Villiers doing here if Florent was getting engaged this weekend? Come to think of it, why was Florent paging her now, of all times?

  “Why’s my son paging you now?”

  She shook her head. Winced. “I don’t know.”

  “Let me guess—you’re the one in that picture in his room?”

  Florent’s father saw her picture from that all-night party?

  “From what I gather, you know each other well,” said Dr. de Villiers. His thin eyebrows knit in disapproval, reminding her of how Mimi’s were drawn on—the apple didn’t fall far from the tree in this family.

  Trying to cover up her shock, she shrugged. Her shoulder throbbed. “From what I hear, Florent’s getting engaged.” And you and Mimi resent me for getting in the way.

  “Not today.”

  Hope fluttered in her heart. She couldn’t help it.

  “My aunt had a car accident. We’ve postponed the engagement party.”

  Hope flew off on wings. No wonder Florent was paging her. He assumed she’d be waiting and available.

  A nurse stepped in with the X-rays. Dr. de Villiers studied them and clipped them on the lit board. “Good news, Mademoiselle Leduc. The radiologist has concluded no cranial involvement,” he said, in professional mode now. “You’ll just have a lump.” He pointed to the greyish-white image of her skull on the backlit screen. “See here. It’s normal. But if impact had occurred three centimeters to the right, your orbital cavity would have been affected.”

  Looking at the image of a human skull, she thought of the details in Peltier’s autopsy report, of the bullet entry hole at the back. The shot would have to have been fired at very close range for the stippling and gunshot residue evidenced on the autopsy. Similar findings would appear, she figured, on Baret’s autopsy report, once they got around to it. But she hadn’t seen any bullet casing on the quai—her photo was clear enough that she thought she would have spotted it if it had been there. This was different from the Peltier crime scene, where, according to the police report, they had found a nine-millimeter casing. What could that difference mean?

  “How often, would you say, in a case of a close gunshot to the back of the head”—she pointed to the spot on the image of her cranium—“would a bullet lodge in the brain instead of exiting?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “What are the odds, would you say?”

  “Is this for a class project?”

  “It’s a hypothetical question, doctor.” All doctors like hypothetical situations. In such cases, they can’t be blamed, held accountable, or sued. “Approximately what percentage of bullets shot from a distance of say this far”—she stretched her arms—“would exit and leave a casing?”

  “You’re quite something, mademoiselle.” He shook his head. “That’s not my area of expertise, and I’d need exact measurements. But in med school, when we did the forensic unit, I asked a similar question. I remember the forensic pathologist speaking of a total of maybe four or five cases of a bullet exiting the soft tissue of the brain. That’s out of hundreds of cases he’d worked on.”

  Her pager went off again. Awkward.

  “Bordeaux has an excellent forensic pathology department,” said Dr. de Villiers. “You’re bright, mademoiselle. You’d do excellent and succeed there, and transferring is easy. I’ll smooth the waters with my old colleagues.”

  He wanted to get rid of her. So hypocritical, making it sound like he had her interests at heart.

  “I could never leave Paris.” Couldn’t and wouldn’t. She reached for her Chanel jacket. Slipped her pager in the pocket. “Why do I sense you’re warning me off, Dr. de Villiers?”

  “I’d say you’re not the type to take second place.”

  He got that right.

  “So you’ve been the one messing with my pager and sending me threatening messages?”

  Gone and opened her big mouth again.

  His shoulders tightened. “Threaten you? As if I have time for that, mademoiselle?” A muscle in his cheek twitched. “Désolé, my daughter gets carried away sometimes.”

  Mimi? She could believe it.

  “But like I said, you’re smart. You should see a wonderful opportunity opening up, I’d imagine. Florent is taken.”

  Cruel, too, Florent’s father. His words stung. “You think it’s me chasing Florent? It’s the other way around.”

  There. Let the aristocrat chew on that.

  “Be careful not to muddy your January exam scores,” said Doctor de Villiers. “Everyone knows cheating’s rampant. Any hint or allegation and an exam is void. To the point, mademoiselle, my old friends on the board at Descartes will think as I do.”

  “I hope that’s not a threat,” she said with more bravado than she felt. “My godfather’s a commissaire in the police.”

  Fat lot of good that would do her. She grabbed her bag, slung it over her good shoulder, and ran out the door before she could hit him with it. The gall.

  At the reception, she wheedled the duty nurse for use of the back office phone. The nurse, who’d been dog-sitting, was happy for a few extra minutes to shower Miles Davis with treats, and Aimée slipped behind the desk.

  Her pager showed three pages from Florent. Screw him and his father.

  Shaking, she dialed into the Leduc Detective voice mail as she downed a painkiller with several slugs of Evian. Blinked her dilated eyes—damn blurry vision.

  A message from Elise, her voice trembling. “Maman’s had a stroke. I must see you. The last train from Gare de Lyon leaves at nine twenty-five.”

  Aimée grabbed her anatomy notebook and a kohl eye pencil, the closest thing to a writing implement she could find in her bag. She wrote down Elise’s directions and checked her Tintin watch. Just enough time to leave Miles Davis with her grandfather and grab some clothes. Looked like she was leaving Paris after all.

  The branches of an ancient pear tree, Aimée’s favorite, spread a shadowy canopy over her courtyard back at home on the Ile Saint-Louis. The pear tree was one of the reasons she loved living here, despite the freezing, wet winters, the sputtering heat, the icicles which hung from her bedroom ceiling in years of record cold.

  Miles Davis scampered beside her up the marble steps to the third-floor apartment.

  “Ça va, ma puce?” Her grandfather stood, an apron around his middle, over the copper pot of something smelling wonderful.

  She settled Miles Davis by the radiator. Took a breath, leaned against the counter.

  “A run-in with a gypsy taxi.”

  “The fancy clinique called and said you’d had an accident. Before I could find my keys to come pick you up, they’d rung again and said you’d discharged yourself.”

  “No accident, Grand-père,” she said. Shivered. “I was attacked by a taxi driver. I’m getting close to the truth about Bruno Peltier, that’s why.”

  “Wait a minute, young lady. You’ll tell me what happened.”

  She condensed it—the corpse’s identity, the agenda at the hunting bookstore, how it felt like a front. She tried to keep the trembling out of her voice.

  “So this gypsy taxi was a plant; you’re being trailed by someone who wants to kill you and followed you to the bookstore?”

  The way her grandfather put it opened her eyes. Scared her. The thrill dimmed. But she couldn’t give up the chase. And wouldn’t know any more until she confronted Elise.

  He banged down his stirring spoon on the tiled counter. “Too close for comfort. Back off. Don’t throw yourself in danger.”

  “That’s why I’m going à la campagne.”

  “The countryside at this time of year? Don’t you need to study? Aren’t exams coming up?”

  Not this again. Like she didn’t worry about it all the time?

  Her eyes welled. She didn’t want to tell him. Wouldn’t tell him.

  “You
r turn with Miles Davis, Grand-père. I’ll return tomorrow.”

  She turned away. Wished her shoulders wouldn’t shake. Wished she could stay in this warm, fragrant kitchen and feel safe.

  “Ah, ma pauvre.” His big arms enfolded her. His wiry mustache scratched her cheek. “There’s something else. What’s really wrong?”

  He tilted her quivering chin up with fingers smelling of tarragon. Stared deep into her eyes. She blinked and the tears flowed. She never could hide things from him for long.

  “L’amour,” he guessed. “Picked the wrong one again? Ah, you take after me.” He sighed. Hugged her. “In so many ways, ma chère.” With a deft touch, he dried her cheek with the edge of his apron. “It’s that Florent, the one who’s been calling all afternoon?”

  “I hate him. He’s getting engaged.” She inhaled her grandfather’s musky smell. “Can you believe it? Just my luck, his father treated me at the clinique. He warned me off Florent. Threatened if I don’t transfer to medical school in Bordeaux, he’ll make sure I fail the exam.”

  “One of those, eh?” Her grandfather kept his arm around her shoulder and guided her to the stool. “You did tell him your grandfather’s retired Sûreté, and your godfather is a commissaire?”

  She nodded. “Don’t tell Papa, please.”

  He paused. “Never trust a doctor, Aimée. Hypocrites milking the system. At least with a criminal, you know where you stand.”

  Sometimes.

  He took in her look. “Medical school’s making you unhappy, ma puce. Maybe you should do something else. Something you feel passionate about.”

  He’d never pushed her, unlike her father.

  “But I can’t give up, Grand-père.”

  “You don’t have to look at it that way, Aimée. Vous allez trouver votre place.”

  You will find your place. That common saying. But it made her think. Where was her place? What was she good at?