Crossing the Line

by Frédérique Molay

  “This morning, Wednesday, December 2, we’ll be focusing on mandibular wisdom-tooth surgery,” the professor began. Our specimens here are a bit unusual, in that they still have their wisdom teeth. As you know, many people have had these teeth removed by the time they are in their mid-twenties.”

  The tech inserted retractors to hold the jaw open, and after a few jokes, the room hushed.

  “Let’s start with the lingual flap. Ladies and gentlemen, by freeing up this part, you avoid damage to the lingual nerve just inside the mandible. One wrong movement with the drill, and half the tongue goes numb. Now that would be awkward, wouldn’t it?”

  A few students chuckled.

  “Okay, let’s continue. Please pick up a number fifteen scalpel, and we’ll start by cutting into the cheek,” Professor Étienne said as he made the incision on his head, which was then magnified on the screen. “Make a sulcular incision like this.”

  The room was perfectly quiet. The students were entirely focused, as they leaned over their heads.

  “Cut the membrane and part of the buccinator muscle upward toward the front edge of the mandibular nerve branch. Now take a periosteal elevator, and free the gum from the periosteum. Done?”

  The teaching team, led by Dr. Rieux, roamed up and down the rows, commenting and helping out.

  “Now make a vertical incision with Metzenbaum scissors.”

  “Gently, gently,” Dr. Rieux said. “We’re not cutting steak here.”

  Light laughter relaxed the atmosphere.

  “You now uncover the entire bone on the vestibular side, preserving the buccal nerve and making sure the patient still has feeling in his or her cheek. Voilà, you’ve done it.” He worked quickly and smoothly, his hands steady from years of practice and perhaps the assurance that his patient was no longer capable of sensing any pain.

  “Let’s move on to the next step. Do the same sulcular incision on the tongue side. Free up the tissues. When you see the wisdom tooth, introduce your Metzenbaum, and open from front to back and then from the vestibular to the lingual.”

  “That’s easy to remember,” a dentist at one of the tables whispered. “First you open the vestibule, and then you give it some tongue.”

  “Do you have something to share?” the professor asked. “Look at the screen, my dear man. The lingual nerve—it looks like a big strand of spaghetti—is in the flap. We’ll now use a Tessier convex-shaped blade to protect the nerve so you can drill the bone and cut out the tooth without damage to the mandible.”

  Dr. Rieux stopped at a table where two students were working diligently. “Perfect,” he said.

  “This guy has great teeth,” one of the students said. “He obviously takes care of them. He doesn’t have many cavities. And his dentist does excellent work. Look at those composite resins and onlays.”

  “You mean he took good care of them. In case you haven’t noticed, all he’s got left is his head.”

  “Yeah. This is weird, though,” the second student said. “His front teeth are cracked. And do you see that big mercury filling in the back molar? Don’t you find that strange for someone who looked after his mouth so well?”

  “We’re not plastic surgeons,” Dr. Rieux said.

  “And look here. There’s something sticking out of the filling.”

  “What? Let me take a look,” Dr. Rieux said, leaning in to examine the tooth. He picked up a scraper and poked at the object. “Hmm. We’ll ask Marcel to set this head aside. We’ll take a drill to it and find out what that tooth is hiding. I’m sure it’s nothing. For now, though, it’s time for a break. Let’s go to lunch.”

  The dentists set down their instruments and took off their masks. Some let out sighs.

  “I believe that Dr. Rieux has planned a delicious meal for us,” Professor Étienne called out from the back of the class.

  “That’s right. I’ll meet you all in thirty minutes on the Rue Saint-Benoit. It’s right around the corner. I booked tables at the Petit Zinc. You’ll love the décor.”

  “And the lamb shoulder with Lautrec pink garlic,” Étienne added.

  The dentists applauded the morning’s session, and the room filled with the hubbub of squeaking stools, snapping latex gloves, and buzzing voices. The professionals then made their way into the sixth-floor hallway, where they mixed with younger and louder surgical interns spilling out of the Poirier Lab. The result was a good-spirited clamor.

  The dentists found themselves outside in the winter cold. Christmas was a few weeks away, and Paris was covered with snow. The sky was one of those pewter grays captured by Pieter Bruegel the Elder in Renaissance paintings, and the air was filled with the aroma of hot roasted chestnuts offered by street vendors. The sights and smells brought a festive allure to the capital, as shoppers, their arms full of gifts to place under their Christmas trees, rushed in and out of stores.

  The Petit Zinc was a delightful example of Art Nouveau, called style nouille—or noodle style—by its detractors because of its pasta-like swirls and curls. The dentists were transported back to the Belle Époque, into a warm and magical atmosphere far from the stainless-steel dissection tables.

  Dr. Rieux clapped to get his colleagues’ attention. “The chef has prepared some fine dishes for us today. We’ll start with a salmon melody, gravlax style, and follow that with chorizo-larded cod steaks and mashed potatoes.”

  Professor Étienne interrupted. “But nothing beats their lamb shoulder.”

  “Francis, admit that I’m doing you a favor. I could have ordered the veal’s head, but I think we’ve had enough noggins for the moment. For dessert, there’s bourbon vanilla crème brûlée. We’ll have a cabernet sauvignon with that, served at the ideal temperature of ten to twelve degrees, Celsius, of course. There’s no risk of killing anyone today, but don’t overdo the wine. A little respect for the dead, please.”

  The group laughed, as other restaurant patrons looked on.

  “One more thing before we start eating. Unfortunately, Marcel won’t be able to join us. I had to excuse him. Without him, nothing that we do within the walls of that university would be possible. His work with the dead serves the living, as we all know. So before we pick up our forks to taste this delicious marinated fish, let’s raise a toast to him.”

  In unison, they raised their glasses of wine.

  Meanwhile, Marcel was at work on the sixth floor. Time was ticking away. He needed to process the bodies for the afternoon and could spare only a few minutes to wolf down a sandwich—ham and butter on a fresh baguette.

  There was deep silence all around. It didn’t bother him. He was used to working alone, removed from the living. In the Poirier Lab, surgical interns had opened up the abdomens and stitched them closed on the batch of subjects he was now loading onto trolleys. Some of them had been used so often, they would be sent to the incinerator. He took them back through the red door, which was off limits to the public. Behind the door, he had three walk-in cold rooms, where the bodies were stored on metal shelves. Although the rooms were large, the ceilings were low, and the lighting was poor.

  Next, he attacked the heads in the Farabeuf Lab. He’d have to replace some of them, the ones that had been through the hands of student ophthalmologists and neurologists and were in a pitiful state. He set them out in his lab, which resembled a small kitchen, with a portable stove, pots, a sink, and a coffeemaker for long nights and days that started when the rooster crowed. He placed the overused parts in a large pot of water and brought it to a boil. He would simmer the contents until the flesh fell off and nothing but bone was left. The skulls would be used for lecture classes. In the meantime, Marcel prepared a dozen upper limbs that the European School of Surgery had ordered. He amputated the inert arms at the shoulder. The class would focus on the elbow joint.

  When he finished, he returned to the Farabeuf Lab to put out some new heads. He stopped for a moment to study the one Dr. Rieux had asked him to set aside. It belonged to a man who was probably forty or so ye
ars old. He was rather handsome and most likely well off, which was clear from his shiny white teeth. The cracks in the front teeth and the horrible filling ruined it all. The filling was especially strange. All the others were the same color as his teeth. Marcel took a closer look at the thick gray amalgam. Something was sticking above the surface by a tiny fraction of an inch. He hadn’t noticed it before the dentists started working on the head. Their manipulations had probably jarred it into view.

  Marcel couldn’t resist. After all, he was responsible for the bodies. He plugged in the drill. A quick run at forty-two hundred revolutions per minute was all it would take. Despite his large, powerful hands, Marcel was skilled at minutia. He turned on the instrument, and it made the familiar whirring sound that caused the living so much anxiety. He began to dig at the molar. The filling slowly crumbled—until the bit became ensnared in a tiny piece of cotton. Marcel stopped the drill, grabbed a little scraper, and explored. Inside the cotton, he discovered a miniscule piece of meticulously folded plastic.

  Marcel pulled it out with a pair of tweezers. Then he sat down on the nearest stool. He had seen much in his career, but nothing like this. It had to be some kind of joke, or the man was very smart. Marcel looked him in the eye.

  “Just what I thought,” the body processor said.

  He pulled out his cell phone. “Dr. Rieux?”

  “Speaking.” There was talking and laughing in the background.

  “Marcel here.”

  “Oh, Marcel. We’re sorry you’re not with us.”

  “I haven’t been wasting my time, doc, believe me.”

  “What’s that you said?”

  “I said that if I were you, I’d get back to the classroom on the double.”

  “Is there a problem?”

  “It’s possible, yes. Nothing I can explain over the phone. You’ll have to see it in person.”

  “Okay, I’m on my way.”

  “And ask your friends to take their time. Tell the restaurant to serve up an extra coffee.”

  Dr. Rieux ended the call without another word. Marcel knew the doctor would be on his way faster than a rabbit. Now he had to call his boss, Elisabeth Bordieu.

  She answered on the third ring. “Yes, Marcel, what is it?”

  “I’ve got a problem in the lab.”

  “Did something else break down?”

  “No, nothing like that. But I think you should come see this. We’re going to need you.”

  3

  Deputy Police Commissioner Michel Cohen, his signature cigar in his mouth, knit his brows and looked Nico in the eye. He was short—five feet four inches—but he imposed his authority. “I’m counting on you. The prefect is impatient. He’s got the media on his tail, and the interior minister breathing down his neck. His job is on the line, which means our jobs are on the line. Understood?”

  Six months earlier, thieves had pulled a heist at a jewelry shop on the Avenue Montaigne. They had gotten away with eighty-five million euros in booty, an absolute record in France. The police hadn’t yet caught the thieves, which was embarrassing the interior minister. After all, this member of the prime minister’s cabinet was responsible for the country’s security and law enforcement. Naturally, the interior minister was putting heat on the prefect, whose job was coordinating the police force.

  Now, headquarters was under the gun. Nico understood this all too well. The media would jump all over the slightest mistake, and heads would roll. The first to go would be the prefect. Nico wasn’t eager to see that happen.

  “We’re on top of it,” Nico said. “We’ve intercepted the jewels the thieves hawked. We’ll catch them soon. It’s a matter of hours.”

  “There’s no time to waste,” Cohen said. “We need to act now.”

  Nico nodded. His boss wanted arrests. That morning, he had discussed the case in detail with Deputy Chief Jean-Marie Rost, one of his four section chiefs. He led the investigation squads headed by commanders Kriven, Théron, and Hureau. Rost had fine-tuned the operation hand in hand with the Organized Crime Division. Nico was confident. They had proof that the security guard at the jewelry store had participated in the holdup. The guard had been killed after the robbery, but thanks to him, they had tracked down the brains of the operation. All they had to do now was to catch the fish. They were cunning fish, but they were within reach.

  Deputy Chief Rost was calm, despite the dark circles under his eyes, his pallor, and his unpredictable moods. These days he went quickly from wearing a silly smile, which his colleagues teased him about endlessly, to looking stressed and preoccupied, as if something were eating away at him. The explanation was simple: Jean-Marie Rost was a new dad. As the father of a one-month-old baby, he was facing a life full of surprises and emotion that were worth more than those eighty-five million euros. It was enough to make anyone wiser and more committed.

  Michel Cohen walked slowly across the room, leaving a smelly cigar trail. At the door he turned and gave Nico one of his trademark winks, a sign of encouragement. In moments like these, he looked like a movie rendition of a mob boss from the nineteen twenties. It was a rather incongruous image.

  Nico dived back into his case files. The Avenue Montaigne heist was not his only concern. His job had an inexhaustible supply of crimes and misdemeanors.

  His phone rang. It was the police commissioner’s secretary.

  “Chief Sirsky? Commissioner Monthalet wants you in her office. Now.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  He trotted down Stairway A to the third floor. A uniformed officer monitored access from behind a large window and control screens. She looked up from the mystery thriller she was reading and greeted Nico as he walked through the doors. He continued past the offices of Nicole Monthalet’s chief of staff, a charming man who had once been a police commander. These days, he called himself the minister of propaganda and master party organizer. It was his job to buff the division’s image.

  Nico opened the door that had just been painted red—a color befitting Monthalet’s authority and power. It led to a freshly renovated sitting room with bright white walls and hardwood flooring. An elaborate bronze chandelier hung from the ceiling. To the right were Cohen’s office and another office for the head of the Bureau of Information, Statistics, and Criminal Documentation. Straight ahead lay Monthalet’s antechamber.

  Nico walked down the hall to Monthalet’s office. The door was wide open.

  “She’s waiting for you,” one of the secretaries said.

  Forty-five years old, Nicole Monthalet had short blond hair and dark brown eyes. She was wearing a gray pantsuit and gold earrings with black-diamond settings. Her only other jewelry was a simple wedding ring. She had natural class.

  “Sit down, Chief. You know that Paris Descartes University is one of France’s flagship medical schools, right? It’s also an important research institution, and the school’s president is a friend of the interior minister. I’ve attended functions with them. Well, the president of the university has contacted the interior minister about a very strange case. It must be handled with care. I don’t want him coming down on us. You’ve been handpicked to deal with it.”

  Nico noted the half smile on his boss’s lips.

  “It already looks like a case that could go down in the textbooks,” Monthalet continued. “It may be a bad joke, but be forewarned, it could also get a lot of unwanted attention. Very unwanted.”

  Nico didn’t react. Monthalet would soon show her cards. She was drawing out the suspense, but perhaps not for the fun of it. She looked disconcerted. That surprised Nico.

  “Dental students at the university were working on some heads, and one found a foreign object in a molar. At lunch, a tech drilled the tooth and pulled out a piece of plastic with a message on it.”

  “What did it say?”

  “I was murdered.”

  Nico was silent. Now he understood.

  “The public prosecutor has ordered a preliminary investigation. If it’s
a prank that went bad, I want to know right away. This case takes precedence. Make it go away.”

  Nico opened the door to the Coquibus Room, where Commander David Kriven’s squad had its office. A large poster of Henri-George Clouzot’s 1947 movie Quai des Orfèvres, with Louis Jouvet playing Inspector Antoine, hung on one of the walls. None of Kriven’s detectives were even born when the movie came out, yet they personified the emblematic police characters in the film. Nico couldn’t help noting the timeliness of the poster. Quai des Orfèvres had unfolded on a snowy Christmas Eve.

  Kriven sprang from his chair. The fair-complected commander with raven-black hair was like a big cat ready to give chase at any moment.

  “You get to stretch your legs,” Nico said. “Orders from the prosecutor. You’re coming with me.”

  Of the division’s twelve squads, nine of them—which handled homicides, kidnappings, missing persons, sex crimes, arson, and other sensitive cases—were on call every ninth day. Kriven’s squad was on.

  Captain Pierre Vidal, the third-ranking detective in the squad and the one in charge of processing the crime scene, grabbed his field kit. He and his assistant would collect and document the evidence. At the back of the room, under the window that looked out on the Seine River and the Pont Neuf Bridge, an overflowing ashtray sat on a radiator. That was Vidal’s doing. Nobody held him to the rules. He had started smoking again after Captain Amélie Ader had been slain. A mint-scented air freshener barely masked the odor. Vidal and Nico gave each other a knowing look, one that said, “We will get better; every day is a little bit better.”

  Nico settled into the passenger seat. David Kriven turned up the heat and pulled into traffic. He was intent on the road, swerving past pedestrians and cars and barely staying off the sidewalks as they drove along the Seine. At the sight of the flashing lights, other drivers pulled aside. Snowflakes hit the windshield, forming stars like those that would soon hang from Christmas trees. Nico allowed his mind to wander for a moment. He was thinking about what he would give his son, Dimitri, his mother, Anya, his sister, Tanya, her husband, and their two children. And then there was Caroline. She gave this Christmas even more significance. He had a family that meant everything in the world to him—a family that he had wanted to draw even closer since his brush with death. He wanted to do something that would express his feelings in a way that required no words.