by Pryor, Mark
“Happy to. Looking for anything in particular?”
“Nope.”
The room was immaculate, the bed made and the senator’s clothes stashed neatly in the drawers and closet. His toothpaste, toothbrush, and shaving kit was laid out in the bathroom and his empty toiletries bag hung on a hook beside the bathroom door.
Tom took out his phone and tried calling Hugo. He wanted to check in, and hopefully he could get more information, like a clue as to what he should be looking for. The signal faded once but came back strong the second time, and his friend picked up on the third ring.
“Hey, Tom, I’ve been trying to get through. You’re on board?”
“Yep. In his room, as a matter of fact.”
“Not there, I’m guessing.”
“Correct. I’m going to have a poke around but I’d appreciate some idea about what to look for.”
“Sure. Anything that connects him to Alexie Tourville, for one. Also, and I know this will sound weird, but anything that has to do with Marie Antoinette or her son.”
“Seriously? Like a guillotine, or a piece of cake?”
“I’m not kidding. Something that would fit inside a sailor’s chest.”
“Guillotine’s out then. I’ll look for cake.”
“Tom.”
“What? Look, tell me what the fuck’s going on and maybe I can expand my search parameters.”
“Alexandra Tourville was blackmailing Lake over his past. His ancestors. I think the man himself is a descendant of Marie Antoinette, through her son. Anyway, he decided that instead of paying, he’d kill her.”
“Jesus, are you sure?”
“I found her body, so I’m sure about that part of it. And the rest, too.”
“She’s dead, huh?” Tom whistled through his teeth. “And that’s some theory.”
“Yep. Now I need the evidence to back it up, which is where you come in.”
“OK, I’ll see what I can find.” Tom paused. “Lake didn’t kill Raul, did he?”
“No, that was Alexie Tourville trying to cover her tracks.”
“And he killed her?”
“Yes.”
“Then maybe he deserves a fucking medal.”
“Maybe, Tom, maybe. But that’s not our call, is it?”
“Never is.” Tom looked up as Captain McBride appeared in the doorway and jerked his thumb toward the hallway. “Gotta go, looks like our dear senator came home.”
Tom hung up and saw the captain stand to attention in front of the cabin door. The angry voice of United States Senator Charles Lake barreled down the hallway.
“Who the hell are you, and what the hell are you doing in my room?”
Tom stepped out, next to Captain McBride. “Hello, Chuck. I think we need to talk.”
Charles Lake brushed past Tom into the cabin and looked around. His eyes settled on his briefcase, which lay unopened on the small desk near the balcony door. He started to move toward it.
“Please don’t, Senator,” Tom said.
“Don’t what?” Lake paused. “This is my cabin and I’ll do as I damn well please.”
“I just want to talk for a moment.” Tom tried the friendly route. “Sit on the bed for me, would you?”
Lake didn’t move but Tom saw a tiredness in his face he’d not noticed before, a weariness that showed in wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and a slump in his shoulders. On the left side of his neck, a dark red streak about three inches long hid behind his collar. “Who are you? I mean, who do you work for?”
“All kinds of people. CIA, FBI, the Mormon Church . . .” Tom shrugged.
Lake’s eyes narrowed. “The Mormon—”
“I’m joking. About the last one, anyway.” Tom checked over his shoulder and saw Captain McBride standing in the doorway, seemingly entranced. “Seriously, sit down. Let’s talk.”
Lake sank on to the bed, his eyes on Tom and still wary. “About what?”
“Alexandra Tourville.”
Lake’s eyes flicked toward the desk again, then back to Tom. “So talk.”
“She’s dead.” Lake didn’t respond, so Tom went on. “Our mutual friend Hugo thinks she killed the old lady at the Bassin place, then her own friend Natalia, and then my friend Raul Garcia.”
“The policeman.”
“That’s the one.”
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“Well, that may be the case.” Tom nodded slowly. He turned and looked at Captain McBride. “Would you give us a moment?”
The captain started. “A moment? You mean . . . is that proper?”
“Ah, you English.” Tom smiled. “Yes, it’s proper. Two people having a chat in a cabin. It’s just that part of the chat needs to be in private.”
“But if he’s a suspect in some kind of crime, shouldn’t any interview be witnessed? I mean, that’s how we do things in England and I assume—”
“We’re not in England, captain. This is two Americans having a nice talk in international waters. We’re in international waters by now, aren’t we?”
“Even so, this is my ship and I’m not comfortable with—”
“With what? We’re not going to fight, for fuck’s sake. We’re going to talk, and if it makes you feel better,” Tom reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, flicking at the screen and showing it to McBride, “there you go, I’ll record our conversation, how’s that? I’m even recording me telling you I’ll record it.”
The captain took a step back, then hesitated. “I’m going to head upstairs, make a few phone calls. If someone up the chain of command tells me this is improper, I’ll be back down. And probably not alone.”
“Perfect,” Tom said. “I don’t want anyone getting in trouble with the chain of command.”
“That makes two of us,” McBride said. He stepped out of the cabin and pulled the door closed behind him.
For the first time in years, Tom was unsure what to do. According to Hugo, he was alone in a room with a killer. He was also alone in a room with a US Senator, and a man who had realistic ambitions for even higher office. There was no script for this situation, no training exercise welling up from his CIA or FBI days telling him what to do next. His experience in the field, undercover and in the uniform black suit and sunglasses of those agencies, had left him unprepared. Tom was old-fashioned in that he liked his bad guys obvious and identifiable, he liked a clear red line between them and him, and the idea that Hugo could be wrong tugged at him like an invisible specter.
Tom held up his phone to reassure, or maybe remind, the senator that their conversation would be recorded, and moved to the desk. He laid the phone beside the briefcase, careful not to touch it. Then, not having a plan or even a full grasp of the facts, Tom resorted to doing what he did best. He talked.
“Beautiful ship. You know, I’ve never been on a cruise before. Though is this a cruise or a journey? Seems like cruises are for old couples in flowery shirts who drink too much and like to island-hop in the Caribbean.” Tom paused but Lake just stared at the carpet between them. “Anyway, I was hoping you’d want to tell me what’s been going on.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“No? How’d you get that scratch on your neck?”
“No idea.” His tone was flat, final.
“Then let’s move on to the sudden disappearances in Paris. Or if you prefer, why you’re here on this ship.”
“I don’t like flying. No sin in that.”
“Yeah, true, but it was a bit of a rush to get here, wasn’t it?”
“I decided last-minute, after the talks fell through. Seemed like it’d be a relaxing way to get home, even if it meant hurrying to get here.”
“I’m sure it is. Don’t like flying, myself, not much.” Tom looked around the cabin. “I can see how this’d be preferable. Although we both had to fly to get here, which is kinda weird.”
“Please,” Lake said. “It’s late and I’m tired. Just tell me what you want and go.”<
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“Sure.” Tom leaned casually against the wall, his pose matching his tone. “We can be honest with each other, right?”
Lake nodded but said nothing.
“See, you know Hugo Marston. He’s a smart guy. Super smart. Pisses me off sometimes and he has this really fucking annoying habit of not telling me stuff, making me guess and wallow around in the dark like a blind pig in mud. He does that a lot, and it’s only when he’s absolutely sure of something that he tells me. Like I said, it’s annoying, but there is an upside.”
“Oh?” Lake seemed like he was paying attention now but struggling to follow along.
“Right. The upside is, when he tells me something, the odds are he’s right. Which kinda makes sense, when you think about it. I mean, if he made me wait and was wrong every time, that’d be pretty dumb. Anyway, he made me wallow around on this case, right up until a few minutes ago.”
“Is that right?” Now, Tom thought, the senator was pretending not to care, but there was a tension in the man’s throat that suggested otherwise.
“Yeah, it is. Couple minutes ago he told me that you killed Alexandra Tourville. And I figured, you know, he made me wait, so it’s gotta be true.”
“Ridiculous.” Lake finally held Tom’s eye. “Why would I do that?”
“I’m not sure, not yet. Hugo said something about your ancestry. Marie Antoinette or some shit.” Tom waved a hand. “I didn’t get all the details, to be honest.”
“That’s insane.” But the firmness had gone from his voice, as if the discovery of a motive was more powerful than any piece of physical evidence, a reason for murder more revealing than his prints on a bloody knife or smoking gun. “I would never kill anyone, not . . . premeditated, not unless provoked.”
“Maybe.” Tom looked down and to his left, at the briefcase. “That locked?”
“Yes.” Lake looked up. “But please don’t. You need a warrant, right?”
“Not if you give me permission. It’s called a consent search, and I’m thinking there’s something pretty damning in there.”
“Damning? I’m already damned. You’re going to see to that, aren’t you?”
“I’m just trying to find the truth,” Tom said. He hesitated, but then said what he was thinking. “And part of the truth, Senator, is that if you killed Alexandra Tourville, and if Hugo’s right that she killed Raul Garcia, you deserve a fucking medal.”
Lake smiled thinly. “They don’t give medals to murderers,” he said.
“Sometimes they do. But yeah, probably not in your case.” Tom tapped the briefcase. “So I have your permission to look inside?”
“No. In fact, I think you need to leave and that I should speak to a lawyer before I talk to you or anyone else.”
Tom sighed. “OK then. That’s your right, of course, though fuck knows where we’ll find a lawyer in the middle of the ocean. I mean, there’s probably a stack of them on board, but in my experience the guys who do criminal defense don’t make too much money. They’re the ones crammed into coach class, assuming they can afford to fly at all. The attorneys on board this tub, I’m betting they can tell you a thing or two about oil and gas law or how to sue someone for trademark infringement, but not so much on criminal law.”
“I can wait until we get back to America.”
“America?” Tom amped up the surprise in his voice. “Oh, no, Senator. If you want to take a look outside, maybe look behind as best you can, you’re going to see a nice wake bubbling in the moonlight. Be all romantic if, you know, you hadn’t killed someone.”
Lake’s voice sharpened. “We’re turning?”
“Sure are, and we’re headed for Brest.” Tom smiled. “And not the good kind, no, the kind that has a harbor on the northwestern tip of France, where good Captain McBride will weigh anchor and the French police will send a boat out to pick us up and take you to a jail cell. That kind of Brest.”
Color drained from Lake’s face and his jaw dropped open. “No. No, not that.”
“Yeah, I can see why that’d suck for you. I mean, all those things you said about the French and now you’re going to be . . . I mean an American prison would be bad enough, but a French one?”
“No, please, we have to go back to America. Arrest me there, give me a chance to . . . if I have to go to jail at all, there. Please, be reasonable.”
“What do you expect? You killed a French chick on French soil.” Tom shrugged. “Also not my call. Look on the bright side, you’ve got to think the food will be better. Finally, a stereotype that might work in your favor.”
“But immunity. I have diplomatic immunity!”
“I thought so, too, but apparently your mission was over when you throttled dear Alexie to death, which means you were on your own time, as it were. Funny how these things work, isn’t it?”
The life went out of the senator and he folded almost in half, his head sinking to his knees and his hands wrapped in desperation around his head. “I can’t go to prison,” he whispered. “I can’t, I just can’t.”
Tom was quiet for a moment, and when he spoke his voice was gentle. “You know, there is one possibility. One other option we could discuss.”
Hugo and Lieutenant Lerens had made the drive back to Paris as part of a small convoy of cars that included the medical examiner’s van containing the body of Alexandra Tourville. Earlier, Lerens had requested Dr. Alain Joust attend, and the ME had set off from his apartment in the Fifteenth Arrondissement immediately, not minding being dragged out of bed to drive almost an hour down here.
“Even if it’s night, I do like to get out of the city occasionally,” he’d said as he hefted his bag of tools to the trunk of the little black car. “And so much more interesting than the usual gang stabbings and beatings.”
“Yep,” Lerens said, “this one’s classy all the way.”
“Well then, let’s have a look at her.”
Blunt force trauma and/or strangulation had been Dr. Joust’s initial opinion. “Usual disclaimers, of course, it could change once she’s on the table. But my best guess right now is that she made someone very, very angry.”
Joust had promised to get to work right away, so Hugo and Lerens waited in her office at the prefecture. He’d spoken to Tom on the way back into Paris, interrupted when Lake returned to his cabin, and Hugo now thought about calling him back. But he figured Tom would ring once he had something, or once he’d searched and found nothing.
In the meantime, he called his second-in-command at the RSO’s office, knowing he’d be home and wanting to help. Ryan Pierce had joined the Bureau of Diplomatic Security straight out of Tulane Law School, where he’d graduated at the top of his class. He was an athlete, too, the starting pitcher for Louisiana State University. He was from Bossier City, Louisiana, and had the southern accent to go with it, as well as a love for catfish and gambling. But he was also one of the nicest and brightest men Hugo had ever worked with. He answered his phone almost immediately, and in the background Hugo could hear children shouting.
“Ryan, it’s Hugo.”
“Hey boss. Need me to come into the office? Please?”
Hugo laughed. “Nope. I need some help but you can take care of it from home, I think. Once you’ve brokered peace between your kids.”
“That’ll never happen.” Ryan had two boys and a girl, all high-energy and loud. “What do you need?”
“Two things. First, check with TSA and see when Alexandra Tourville last visited the States.”
“Easy. Next.”
“Hang on.” Hugo stood and excused himself from Lerens’s office, smiling enigmatically at her quizzical look. He closed her door before speaking again. “I’m back. And this one you might want to do in private, out of earshot of your wife.”
“Oh really? Top secret?”
“Not in the slightest.” Hugo chuckled again. “Come to think of it, delete your internet history once you’re done, too.”
“Why?”
After Hugo had ensu
red Ryan knew what to do, he sat back and waited with Lerens for Tom to call. They chatted amiably, Hugo with a million questions he didn’t dare ask. Over a carafe of wine, maybe, where he knew she wouldn’t mind, but they wouldn’t have been appropriate in her office. Instead they swapped war stories and Lerens was recounting the first time she arrested someone, a well-known Bordeaux vintner who was driving drunk, when Hugo’s phone rang. They both looked at the display and saw it light up with Tom’s name. Hugo answered and put him on speaker.
“Hey Tom, I’m with Camille, what news?”
“You go first.”
“Nothing much. Tourville was either beaten to death or strangled. Maybe a little of both. The ME’s doing an autopsy right now to make sure. He took swabs from her neck and face at the scene so we may have DNA to match with Lake.”
“DNA. There’s an irony,” Lerens said.
“Why’s that an irony?” Tom asked. “You fuckers better fill me in when I get back.”
“We will,” Hugo assured him. “You have Lake?”
“Senator Lake, you mean? Senator Charles Lake?”
“Tom.”
“Why’s it only you who gets to withhold information? It’s not fair.”
“Don’t you remember your mommy telling you life isn’t?”
“You as my mom, that’s about right.”
“It’s worse for me than you,” Hugo said. “Now answer the damn question and tell me Lake’s in custody.”
“I always wondered if these fancy ships had jails. You know, just in case.”
“On a ship, they’re called brigs,” Hugo said. “And I’m hoping the Queen Mary’s is occupied by a US senator.”
The line went quiet for a moment, then Tom’s voice came on. “Gonna have to disappoint you there.”
“Tom, explain. Where are you?”
“I’m in Lake’s cabin. Hold on a sec, the captain just came back. Need to tell him something.”
Hugo shook his head and smiled at Lerens, who stared wide-eyed at the phone, her palms facing up and disbelief on her face. “What’s he playing at?” she asked.
“Have patience. I have a sneaking suspicion things haven’t gone to plan and he’s stalling for some reason.”
