Crossing the Line

by Frédérique Molay

  This was where Bruno Guedj chose to go after his death. He even knew what awaited him, unlike most of the people who donated their bodies to science. Some tech had cut off his head and set it on one of the racks in this dark, frigid place. Fortunately, Marcel was a nice fellow who liked things spick-and-span and respected the dead. Nico shuddered at the thought of what a cold room managed by someone who was less meticulous would look like. He knew he wouldn’t want anyone but Marcel to take care of him if, by chance, he ended up in this school feet first.

  Nico started at the sound of a cart. It was covered with a blue sheet.

  “You feeling better, chap? Me, I wouldn’t want to see some dude that’s just been bumped off. A woman or child would be worse. Don’t know how you do it. I’m so used to this, I can’t imagine how it could shock anyone.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t worry. I should have warned you.”

  “You’ve got quite a job there.”

  “I wouldn’t change it for anything. Watching over them puts my mind at ease. Who will do it when I’m gone?” Marcel walked through the red door and headed toward the dumbwaiter.

  Nico changed the subject. “What do you think about the message in the tooth?”

  “I heard what they’re saying on TV. Do you believe that theory?”

  “Apparently you don’t.”

  “We’re on the same wavelength, my friend. The man with the filling was throwing a bottle out to sea. We did our jobs and caught the bottle. Now Subject 510 is 10-35.”

  Nico laughed at his reference to the major-crime-alert scanner code. It would have made a great headline in a paper, but for that, the copy desk would have needed to know about Marcel.

  Once out of the elevator, Marcel typed in a door code. “Here, we have small work labs and a larger central room for embalming. We’ll have to go through it.”

  “No problem.”

  Inside, a series of sinks filled an entire wall. Four bodies lay on tables, tubes connecting them to strange machines. They were skin and bones, ugly and terrifying.

  “Those pumps inject a chemical solution into the arteries. We use formol, which is a ten percent solution of formaldehyde. We inject through the carotid. The process stops bacteria and keeps the cells from breaking down. The procedure also pushes out the blood and other body fluids that cause decomposition. The fluids drain out through the jugular vein.”

  Two masked men walked over.

  “Is the subject ready?” one of them asked.

  Marcel tapped on the blue sheet and led them into a small room, where he took the limb and placed it on an operating table. One of the surgeons adjusted the operating lamp to light up the knee, while the other picked up a scalpel. Marcel closed the door on his way out.

  Nico took a deep breath once they were out of the embalming room. This butcher-turned-body-processor lived in another world altogether.

  “Someone killed 510, didn’t they?” Marcel said. “He seemed like an ordinary guy. What do you think happened to him?”

  “He met up with an old college friend.”

  “That’s all? Is that enough to get bumped off?”

  “Except that college friend died in a car accident more than a year ago. Everybody thought he was dead and buried.”

  “Did he kick the bucket or didn’t he?”

  “We exhumed the body and autopsied it. The old friend in question never died on the road.”

  There was no disputing DNA tests. The man found burned in Dr. Christophe Parize’s vehicle was not Christophe Parize. So who was he? The lab was running the results through the national DNA database, created in 1998 and shared by the police and the gendarmerie. It was designed to help find culprits and missing persons. Parize’s replacement, however, was still unknown.

  Marcel whistled. “You don’t do anything halfway, do you? That’s quite a job you’ve got there.”

  “I wouldn’t change it for anything. It puts my mind at ease to catch the bad guys.”

  The return to the outside world felt like a shock to Nico’s system. It was a strange sensation, and he wondered how Marcel made the transition every day. He had to come back to reality, to the unidentified body found in Christophe Parize’s car. And most of all, to this basic question: why had the doctor’s disappearance been staged? If he answered that, he most likely could solve Bruno Guedj’s murder. The pharmacist wasn’t supposed to know that his friend was alive, and certainly, he wasn’t supposed to start turning things upside down to find him. Bruno Guedj’s death notice had been signed in the coincidence that caused him to cross paths with his old school buddy.

  Practically speaking, nothing linked the fake suicide to the burned body in the car. The .22-caliber long-rifle bullets taken from the respective skulls hadn’t matched up, so the Unique DES 69 hadn’t been used on the John Doe. Too bad. That said, whoever came up with the diabolical plan to erase Dr. Christophe Parize from the face of the earth had a major problem. That problem was La Crim’. Now that Nico and his team had picked up the scent, they wouldn’t let go.

  As Nico put some distance between the Paris Descartes University and himself, between the cold rooms at the school and the winter vista outside, his mind returned to Sylvie. Jacqueline and André had talked to their daughter. She had cried at the sound of their voices. Sylvie was feeling better, and she missed Dimitri. But she had to do more than miss her son. She had to be his mother, drug-free and emotionally healthy—present in every sense of the word. No one could take her place. The pharmacist’s sons had lost one of their parents. They would always suffer for it. Nico intended to do whatever he could to ensure that Dimitri had two parents who were fully engaged in his life.

  Nico parked in front of police headquarters. On the other side of the Seine, a travel agency on the Quai des Grands Augustins was teasing him again. What was he waiting for? All he had to do was cross the river, go into the agency, and buy the tickets. Wait, and it could be too late, as it almost had been three months ago. Too late could happen at any time. “But where should we go?” he wondered. To a spot where he could watch Caroline run along the beach and wade in a blue ocean? Or an enchanted place he could introduce her and Dimitri to—a place that would make Anya’s eyes glisten and make his sister Tanya’s heart beat faster? For now, though, he needed to let the fantasy go.

  He walked through the door on the Quai des Orfèvres. Deputy Chief Jean-Marie Rost met him as he was going into his office.

  “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  “Of course. Come in.”

  “Did you just come back from the med school?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing special.”

  “Are you pulling my leg? You don’t do anything without something in mind.”

  “I just needed to think about the case. I talked to Marcel.”

  “The guy who prepares the bodies? Vidal and Almeida told me about him. I think that weirdo left a lifetime impression on them.”

  “I get that, believe me. Do you have any news from Christophe Parize’s parents?”

  “That’s why I wanted to see you. They’ll be in this afternoon.”

  “Who’s handling them?”

  “Kriven, unless you want someone else on it.”

  “No. David is perfect. Do you have an update from him?”

  Nico had sent Kriven and his team to Saint Louis Hospital, where Parize had worked. Saint Louis Hospital had been built at the beginning of the seventeenth century to quarantine those struck by the plague. Over the centuries, the hospital’s mission and medical offerings had expanded considerably. It now provided a full range of care and boasted nearly 600 beds. Dr. Parize had been one of the hospital’s more than 3,200 employees. Among them were 780 doctors, including five specialists in the hematology-oncology department. Nico felt sure that at least one or two of them had something to say about their former colleague, who had so abruptly disappeared.

  “They’re still at the hospita
l, digging for information,” Rost said.

  “I hope they reel in a big fish.”

  “They’d better. Clearly, the divorce was not enough to explain his disappearance or the car accident and burned body.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking. Not with Parize being so attached to his daughter. He must have had a really good reason. Did you reach the lycée?”

  “Yes, I went to Louis-le-Grand. Marine is in a preparatory class. I also made an appointment with the head of the math prizewinners association she belongs to. Nobody noticed anybody stalking the girl, and nobody has seen Dr. Parize since his presumed death. However, Marine continues to include her dad’s profession in all the paperwork she has to fill out, as if nothing ever happened to him.”

  “The father’s admiration for his daughter gives us something to go on. He was proud of her, so much so that he took the risk of trying to catch a glimpse of her at the reception in her honor. We have to question her. We don’t have a choice, and I have this strange feeling—”

  “I agree.”

  Rost’s cell phone rang, interrupting the conversation. He put it on speakerphone.

  “Chief?” a woman’s voice said.

  “Yes, what’s going on?” It was Commander Charlotte Maurin, the new recruit who had replaced Hureau.

  “Some funny business near the Île aux Cygnes.”

  “What is it?”

  “A man weighed down with an anchor, near the pier.”

  “That’s no fun.”

  “He’s dead.”

  “An important detail.”

  “He looks like the twin brother of the guy whose photo you gave us. His features are a little puffy, but the resemblance is there.”

  Neither Nico nor Rost responded.

  “Chief?”

  “We’re on our way,” Rost said, ending the call.

  21

  Just going into a place like this made his hands clammy. David Kriven worked in a world full of horrors. He was constantly exposed to violence, tears, and blood. But this was unbearable, and the energy he needed to cover up his discomfort was taking almost everything he had.

  On the Avenue Claude Vellefaux, the Saint Louis Hospital security guards opened the gate and let Kriven and Vidal park in the inside lot, which was off limits to visitors. Behind them, in another car, were Lieutenant Almeida and Plassard.

  The few yards between his car and the main hospital building were enough to spike Kriven’s blood pressure. The spacious modern lobby, with its high glass-topped ceiling that let the daylight in was not enough to calm him. It had the opposite effect, as did the cafeteria and the exhibit recounting the hospital’s storied history. The sight of women wearing turbans to cover their bald skulls, patients clinging to their rolling IV carts, gaunt figures, and empty eyes panicked him. So did the signs to the different wings of the hospital. They all pointed to death row, as far as he was concerned. In the midst of this jumble, people in white coats circulated with swift, determined steps. Nothing dared to impede their drive to heal. In general, Kriven kept his distance from people of that species. They brought bad luck.

  Kriven led his team to the elevator. The hematology-oncology wing was on the seventh floor. Just as the doors began to close, Kriven caught a nauseating whiff of coffee. He spotted a young man in a bathrobe and slippers stooped in front of the coffee machine. He was so pale, it was scary. The elevator shook as it started taking them up. Kriven had the feeling he was trapped in a crypt.

  “You’re not looking so good,” Almeida said.

  “He doesn’t like elevators,” Vidal said.

  “The smell of antiseptic doesn’t help,” Plassard said.

  The ride up seemed overly long. Lieutenant Almeida cleared his throat several times in the silence.

  “I don’t smell anything,” Vidal said.

  The elevator finally arrived on the right floor. Kriven was saved, for the moment, at least. They entered the wing where Dr. Parize had practiced medicine before giving it up for no apparent reason, before staging his accident and passing himself off as dead, before some poor fellow named Bruno Guedj had gotten himself killed simply because they had met by chance in a bookstore.

  “Can I help you?” a nurse asked, looking surprised to see the four detectives.

  Kriven showed his badge. “We called ahead.”

  “Oh, you’re the detectives. We freed up an office for you. Shall I take you there?”

  “We would like to question the doctors one by one.”

  “I’ll let our department head know right away. I don’t know how it’s been organized.”

  Kriven ordered the team to go through the halls and discreetly question the staff. He would handle the five specialists. In circles where professional and patient privacy reigned, getting information required a certain amount of cleverness. If there was information to get. Kriven bet there was.

  The first man to sit down with him was barely over thirty, his own age. Kriven wondered if he would trust the young man with his life. Kriven knew it wasn’t the same in his line of work. His people were already dead. All he had to do was catch the guys who murdered them.

  “You worked with Dr. Parize. I would like to ask you a few questions about him,” Kriven began.

  “I was transferred here a year before he disappeared, so I didn’t know him well,” the doctor said, point blank.

  Kriven figured the doctor was hoping he would let him go without asking many questions. But this man was the perfect kind of person to interview, because he didn’t seem to have any emotional bonds with his former colleague. Kriven thought he might even be willing to share some stories.

  “A year was enough time for someone like you to form an opinion of the man.”

  The doctor started blinking. Kriven knew he was making the young physician nervous.

  “First, give me your general opinion of Dr. Parize. What kind of doctor was he?”

  “A very good one. Really. I learned a lot from him.”

  “I imagine that you have to be very ambitious to end up here. Ambitious and talented.”

  “That’s correct. Saint Louis Hospital is known the world over for its work in the area of hematology. Professors Jean Bernard and Jean Dausset were our forerunners, and we are continuing their work.”

  “So was Dr. Parize a worthy successor, in your opinion?”

  “I…I would say so.”

  He had hesitated. Kriven pushed. “That’s strange. You seem to have some doubts.”

  “It’s just that he changed after we met.”

  “How is that?”

  “He became curt and irritable.”

  “With you?”

  “With the entire team.”

  “Did he have family problems?”

  “Uh, there were rumors, but I couldn’t tell you if they were true or not.”

  “Rumors, you say. What kind of rumors?”

  “That he was getting a divorce.”

  “Your source was reliable. And did he have any problems professionally?”

  The young man looked down for an instant. He fiddled with a pen. “Things weren’t going the way he wanted them to,” he finally said.

  “I’m sure that you can be more precise.”

  “The boss was on the verge of leaving, and Dr. Parize wanted his job.”

  “Which job?”

  “Department head.”

  “So he applied for the position and didn’t get it?”

  “That’s right,” the doctor responded.

  “Who made the decision?”

  “The board.”

  “What reason did they give?”

  “His family situation.”

  “Oops. You mean they didn’t want to give divorced physicians that kind of responsibility?”

  “I said he had changed. I suppose his behavior wasn’t appropriate.”

  “Who was the lucky person to get the job?”

  “Dr. Christine Sahian. She’s very competent.”

  “Okay, ple
ase send in one of your colleagues.”

  “It’s a real confessional here. What about Dr. Sahian?”

  “We’ll save the best for last.”

  Franck Plassard had chosen to interview a gray-haired nurse, one old enough to know the ins and outs of the hospital and some truths that were better left unsaid. He used his charm to draw out the woman, who looked about the same age as his mother. Pierre Vidal walked by and gave him a wink.

  “I liked Christophe. I knew him when he was just a kid. He didn’t deserve to die in a car accident. I’m still upset over it. I guess nobody deserves that, right?”

  “You’re right, nobody.”

  “The law of series. It’s so sad.”

  A red flag. Plassard paused. “The law of series?”

  “You know. When a random event happens more than once in a short period of time, and there doesn’t seem to be any logical explanation.”

  “I’m not following, ma’am.”

  “Doctors killed in accidents, dying unfairly when they’ve dedicated their lives to healing others.”

  As if dedicating your life to helping others shielded anyone from danger.

  “Who are you talking about, ma’am?”

  The Île aux Cygnes was nothing more than a strip of artificial land. It was built in the nineteenth century and was now a promenade about a half mile long and less than forty feet wide, lined with trees and peppered with benches. It was best known for harboring a small replica of the Statue of Liberty, which the United States gave to France on the hundredth anniversary of the French Revolution.

  Nico and Jean-Marie Rost rushed down the steps of the Viaduc de Passy, crossed the police line, and headed toward the rusty landing stage. The island, which offered a view of Trocadéro and its fountains, had a pier for barges that gave dinner cruises. At the moment, a patrol boat belonging to the river brigade occupied the pier. Divers were already searching the waters for evidence. Commander Charlotte Maurin’s squad was busy around the body that had been pulled from the water.

  “Who discovered the body?” Rost asked.