The Bookseller

by Mark Pryor

  He walked with his collar turned up against the sharp morning breeze, enjoying the emptiness of Paris's side streets at that time of day. Occasionally a student would scurry past, winding a long scarf around her neck or balancing books on the handlebars of a bicycle, woolly hats pulled over chilly ears. Puffs of coffee and warm air punctuated his walk, a meandering wander toward the hospital Hôtel-Dieu. After half an hour he stopped and bought a croissant and coffee, eating and drinking as he strolled along the Boulevard Saint-Germain, window shopping to kill time, watching Paris come alive minute by minute.

  He dropped his cup into a trash can as he started across the bridge to the Isle de la Cité, the tiny island that was the foundation of Paris and sat in its geographical center, roughly a one-mile walk from Hugo's apartment. One of two natural islands in the River Seine, Hugo knew it to be perhaps the most expensive patch of real estate in the city. Half a dozen bridges spanned the island, bringing in tourists and Parisians alike to one of the greatest of Paris's attractions, the Cathédrale de Notre Dame.

  Behind Notre Dame sat the Hôtel-Dieu Hospital, founded by Saint Landry in 651 CE. And behind the hospital was Hugo's second stop, the Prefecture de Police, where Capitaine Garcia would be waiting with a stack of photos and a skeptical frown, Hugo knew.

  Claudia was sitting in bed reading Paris Match when the policeman stepped aside to let him in. She looked up when Hugo entered and he was pleased to see color in her cheeks and a smile on her face. Her left arm was bandaged and resting in a sling.

  “My hero,” she said. “Come for your reward?”

  “I don't think they allow that here.”

  “Good, I'm exhausted.” He leaned over and kissed her cheek, but she turned her head so their lips brushed. “Seriously, Hugo. You saved my life.”

  “Actually, I'm not so sure,” he said. “If they were trying to hit me, then I'm the one who put you in danger.”

  “Semantics.” She put a hand on his as he sat beside the bed. “Are you OK?”

  “Oh yes. On my way to give a statement at the prefecture.”

  “Good. My father is coming by later. I think he likes you now.”

  “Well if I saved your life, he has to.” He smiled and squeezed her hand. “So are you getting out of here anytime soon?”

  “Today. I lost some blood but they put some back in. No harm done.”

  “Makes for a good news story.”

  “Yeah.” She grimaced. “Only when you're the one who gets shot, you don't get to write it.”

  “That doesn't seem fair.”

  They talked for an hour, about the shooting some, but mostly not. When her head started to nod and her eyes droop, Hugo kissed her forehead and took the magazine from her lap, putting it on the side table. He watched her for a few seconds, sleep taking over a tired body, then let himself out of the room as quietly as possible.

  The walk to the prefecture was quick but pleasant, the air warmer than it had been earlier, and the breeze carried a teasing reminder of autumn, or maybe a false hint of spring.

  He had telephoned ahead to let Capitaine Garcia know he was coming, but he nevertheless had every expectation that he'd be made to wait. In Hugo's experience, French concepts of time were like those in South America: malleable, so that a rendezvous scheduled for ten o'clock usually meant that just one of the parties concerned would be there close to the appointed hour.

  Hugo was surprised, then, when he walked into the prefecture to be welcomed as if he were late. A young assistant took him straight into the offices of the directorate of judicial police, the section of the building that houses the national police force's plainclothes division. After a brief wait on a hard bench, a door opened down the hall. Capitaine Garcia came out and the men shook hands.

  “Thank you for coming, Monsieur Marston. This way.”

  Garcia led him into a large carpeted room where secretaries typed quietly at their stations and several disconsolate individuals sat waiting for attention. They wound their way through the rows of paper-filled desks to a row of offices at the back of the room. Garcia held open a frosted glass door and bade Hugo enter.

  “Please. Take a seat.”

  Hugo walked in and sat on the only chair in front of Garcia's desk. Out of the capitaine's window he could see across the tree tops and over the Seine to the Right Bank. “Nice view,” he said.

  “Oui.” Garcia rounded his desk and turned his computer monitor so that Hugo could see the screen. “Monsieur, I heard about the shooting and am pleased that you were not hurt, and that your friend will be fine. You may be accustomed to such things in Texas, but shootings like that are very rare here and we are looking hard for those responsible.”

  “Merci, capitaine, I appreciate that. And I promise, the rumors of frequent gunplay on the streets of our towns is greatly exaggerated. At least in modern times.”

  “I am pleased to hear that. Now, monsieur, I have pulled together the mug shots of as many black men as I could find matching the description you gave who have some connection to the other intruder, or some history of drugs.”

  “You think this is about drugs?”

  “I still don't know what this is about, but I do know that criminals tend to stick with their own type. If one is a petty criminal, his friends will be. Your burglar, or whatever he was, is a drug dealer, so I have to assume his friend is.” Garcia shrugged and turned to a stack of unopened mail. “If you don't see him, we'll find more photos for you to look at.” He slid his computer mouse to Hugo, who began scrolling through the faces, twenty-five to a page. Ten minutes later, on the tenth page, Hugo saw him, the familiar cunning scowl worn by a man in custody.

  “Here you go. This is him.”

  Garcia came around the desk to stand behind Hugo. “Click on the picture, let's see who he is.”

  Hugo did, and the men looked over their suspect's profile. Alex Vacher, a Frenchman. Forty-one years old, with multiple arrests and convictions for theft, fraud, and drug dealing. His most recent conviction had been three years earlier.

  “Good,” said Garcia, “I'll print this out, give it to some of our people, and they'll pick him up.”

  “That was easy.”

  “We're not done, monsieur.” Garcia walked back behind his desk and sat. He began to stroke his mustache. “My superiors received a call from your embassy. It seems you have offered assistance and I am to accept your offer.”

  “Ah, yes. Look, capitaine,” Hugo began, “I don't mean to—”

  “No need, monsieur,” he held up a hand. “I have been ordered to open our files to you on the bouquiniste deaths and give you other assistance as requested. I am told you are a gifted behavioral profiler.”

  His tone and expression would have been the same had he been accepting assistance from a crystal-ball-holding gypsy psychic, Hugo thought. But he just smiled and said, “I promise not to get in your way, capitaine, and you can do what you want with my findings and opinions.”

  “Very kind of you. I should make it clear that I do not approve of guesswork masquerading as science, I do not approve of potential witnesses, or actual victims, involving themselves in investigations, and I have already expressed to you my opinion that the deaths of the three bouquinistes are unrelated.”

  “You mean two. Max Koche and Francoise Benoit.”

  “Three.” He opened a notebook in front of him. “A Pierre Desmarais was pulled out of the river this morning. The autopsy is going on right now, but it looks like he drowned.” Garcia looked up. “Attendez, is that the name of the bouquiniste that Madame…”

  “Roget. And yes, that's him.”

  “I see. She is not officially involved, so I would appreciate it if you would wait until his family is told before passing on the news. At least tell her to keep it to herself.”

  “Of course.” Hugo hesitated. “Capitaine, you have two accidental drownings and an overdose in less than a week. All three bodies popping up in the same stretch of the Seine. Do you really think this is all j
ust a coincidence?”

  “My mind is not closed to any possibility.” Garcia rested a finger on the tip of his mustache and leaned forward. “But the word coincidence exists for a reason. This is not America, monsieur. We don't have guns or serial killers like you do, which means that people have to die in other ways. And when you have a major river running through your city, dead people tend to pop up in it.” He waved a hand at a long table pushed up against the wall behind Hugo. “There you have copies of autopsy reports, photographs from each place where the bodies were found, and relevant investigation reports and witness statements. If you can find a serial killer among them, Monsieur Marston, I will be genuinely interested to see how.”

  Hugo decided not to argue the matter. He now had access to the files, which was all he'd wanted. And he planned to take his time; if the police didn't want him there and weren't bothering to look for a connection, this might be his only chance to spot it. He looked at Garcia, who'd returned to his stack of mail.

  “So, do you plan to sit there and watch me?”

  “Non, monsieur.” Garcia put down his letter opener and picked up the printout of the black assailant, Alex Vacher. “Now that I can say I've been through my mail, I have real police work to do.” He got up and walked out of his office, closing the door gently behind him.

  Hugo began with the photos. Human nature, he thought to himself, to look at the pictures before reading the words. He learned little from them, but hadn't expected to. Soggy and bedraggled, the three corpses in the color pictures were hard to imagine as people, alive and vital.

  And yet one of them was Max. Hugo looked at his picture for a long time. You're gone, old friend. This isn't you. Hugo shook his head and tried to concentrate. Reminiscing wouldn't help find the truth. He finished with the photos and put them away. He turned to the two autopsy reports. Each consisted of a series of diagrams of the body, the skeleton, and the organs, standard forms that the medical examiner used as he went through the exam. Hugo knew that the medical examiner would either dictate into a voice recorder as he went and make the notations afterward, or have an assistant make notes as he went along.

  He started with Francoise Benoit.

  The medical examiner had seen no bruising, cuts, or other signs of violence, either intentional or accidental. His comments did indicate, unsurprisingly, extensive damage to her liver. Her other vital organs had been weighed and each was compared with a range of expected weights. All seemed normal enough, for an overweight alcoholic. Hugo read through her other materials but found no obvious indicators of homicide.

  Except…Hugo sat back and looked again at the list of her possessions. It was divided into two groups, those found on her body, which included her clothing, and those items retrieved from her stall by police after she was found. It was the latter that interested him. According to the list, there had been a receipt in a canvas bag showing that she'd bought two bottles of vodka at about noon. One was the regular, 750 cl bottle, the other much smaller, just a pint. In the canvas bag, buried at the bottom according to the notes, was the small bottle, three-quarters full. The larger one hadn't been found.

  Hugo went to Garcia's desk, tore a piece of paper from a notepad, and borrowed a pen. He made a note of this finding and then turned to the information about Max. He knew that whatever he found would have to stand up to Capitaine Garcia's skepticism.

  He found it quickly. The autopsy report noted severe bruising to his chest and back. He might have been hit by boats or driftwood, Hugo knew, assuming he'd fallen into the river alive. But he found what he was looking for in the toxicology report.

  Hugo knew that the capitaine, like many cops, might skip over the numbers in the report, the micrograms of whichever substance was found in the blood, the digits showing oxygen levels and concentrations of the drug. But Hugo had done a stint in the lab. He was uncomfortable with relying on the technician's conclusions when he didn't understand the numbers themselves. What this report told him was that Max had ingested not only a large amount of cocaine, but cocaine of an extremely high grade. Not the kind you get on the street, even if you're a lawyer or stockbroker paying the big bucks. No, this was what you found at the wholesale end, not the retail end. And certainly not what you'd find in the hands of a hard-up bouquiniste.

  Someone with access to pure cocaine, Hugo was sure, had held a gun to Max's head and made him ingest enough of the drug to kill him. Kill him unpleasantly, too. Such purity would have given him the briefest of highs before torturing his old body to death. First his muscles would be set on fire with tremors that quickly turned into convulsions, then his whole body would have started seizing, the old man wracked with pain before his system gave out entirely, the drug killing him suddenly with a massive heart attack or, if his heart was somehow strong enough to cope with the drug, shutting down his lungs, suffocating him to death.

  Hugo calmed the anger rising inside him and turned to the third file. He had less to work with in the case of Pierre Desmarais. Another drowning, supposedly, but a quick look at the photographs made Hugo frown.

  Did Garcia even look at these?

  A large bruise was evident on the man's forehead and his chin was bloodied. It was hard to tell from the angle of the picture, but his jaw may even have been dislocated. The autopsy report, when it came in, would confirm that.

  Hugo picked up the crime scene report and walked out of Garcia's office. He looked around until he found a secretary willing to meet his eye. “Is Capitaine Garcia returning, do you know?”

  “Oui, monsieur, he said he was getting himself a sandwich and would be back.”

  Right, thought Hugo, a sandwich. There's real police business for you. “Thanks,” he said, “I'll wait.”

  He went back into Garcia's office, sat down, and dialed Ceci Roget. She picked up just as he was about to give up. They exchanged pleasantries, then Hugo took a deep breath. “Ceci, I have some bad news.”

  “Oh no, is it Pierre?”

  “Oui. I'm sorry, Ceci, he's dead.”

  “Dead? You're sure?”

  Hugo pictured the old man's bedraggled hair, his lifeless but open eyes. “I'm sure.”

  “How?”

  “That I don't know. The police are taking the position that he drowned but I'm hoping I can persuade them to look again, more closely.”

  “Do you think it's Gravois?”

  “I still don't know, Ceci, I wish I could answer that. The trouble is, other than their jobs, there's nothing tying him to these people, not directly.”

  “I know. I know.” He heard the deep sigh. Then, “Oh, I talked to several more bouquinistes.”

  “And?”

  “More of the same. Offered money to give up their stalls. They got the same feeling I did, too, though none of them were threatened or hurt.”

  “OK, thanks Ceci. Listen, you probably shouldn't call any more people. We don't want word to get back to Gravois.”

  “Do you think I am in any danger?”

  “Even if he is behind this,” Hugo said, “I wouldn't think so. You don't know anything and you did exactly what he wanted you to do. Keep your eyes open, though, and call the police if anything happens. But I think you should be safe if you stay in Bielle.”

  They rang off, and fifteen minutes later Garcia arrived. He had two sandwiches, one of which he was most of the way through. The other he offered to Hugo. “Je m'excuse, Monsieur Marston. I was a little rude earlier. Too much to do and not enough help to do it. It's ham and brie. I hope you're not one of those vegetarian Americans.”

  “No,” Hugo said. “I'm from Texas.”

  Garcia grunted and sat behind his desk. He began to unwrap the remainder of his sandwich, and as he did so, he looked up at Hugo. “I should perhaps clarify my position on these deaths. I am far from convinced they were accidental, but I am equally unconvinced they are related. You must understand that to present a claim like that to my superiors would require a significant amount of proof, because they would then be
obliged to devote many resources to solving the killings.” He looked at his sandwich, then back at Hugo. “So did you find anything?”

  He's being careful to keep his voice neutral, Hugo thought. And he's not expecting me to find a damn thing.

  “Actually, yes.” Hugo turned to the file on Francoise Benoit and picked up the possessions log. He passed it to Garcia and explained about the small bottle being found in the bag, while the larger one was missing.

  “Oui.” Garcia nodded. “She was drinking down by the river, we assumed that. She could have dropped the large bottle in the water, we'd never find it.” He took a bite of sandwich and sat back to listen.

  “Oui, c'est possible,” Hugo said. “But think about it this way. She has two bottles, one large and one small. Why? I think it was because she doesn't want people to know she's an alcoholic, capitaine. That's why she bought a small bottle, so she could drink without people noticing. It's a pretty classic ploy for alcoholics, and when I talked to her, she was chewing breath mints.”

  “To hide the smell of alcohol.”

  “Exactement.” Hugo had to be careful not to oversell the theory. After all, she'd admitted being an alcoholic to him, maybe she had to others. And yet the way she told him seemed like a confidence being shared. “It's entirely reasonable that she'd try to hide her drinking, particularly from her customers.”

  Garcia grunted again and kept chewing.

  “My point,” Hugo went on, “is that if she'd been down by the river's edge for a drink, she would have taken the little bottle. That's why, I think, she bought it. You can see from the report that she'd been drinking from it. I'm guessing she was planning to take the big bottle home.”

  Garcia swallowed. “So where is the big one?”

  “I don't know. Maybe someone walking past the stall saw it and took it. I don't know, but I don't think it matters. What matters is that she was by the Seine for some reason, but that reason wasn't to drink.”

  “OK,” Garcia nodded slowly. “Anything else?”