The Bones of Paris

by Laurie R. King

  “Why the hell are you following me around!” the photographer demanded. “Do you have some kind of a fixation on me?”

  “You could say that.”

  “Well, stop it, you damned pansy! You want me to have you arrested?” Half a dozen friends at his side lent Ray a lot of backbone.

  “I’d like to see you try.”

  The Miller girl pushed in between them. “Please, let’s go home, Man.”

  “Has he hit you yet?” Stuyvesant asked, his voice loud.

  She gaped at him. “What did you say?”

  “Your boyfriend here. Has he backhanded you yet? Beaten you with his belt? Maybe just turned you over his knee?”

  “Jesus, Man,” one of the others said, “this guy’s plastered.”

  Ray’s friends closed in to hustle the photographer towards the street. One of them stuck up his hand for a taxi, leaving Lee Miller to confront the big man with the angry face.

  “Mr. Stuyvesant, you shouldn’t go around making accusations like that.”

  He ignored her, talking in a loud voice to the man with the Valentino gaze. “When did you take Sarah Grey’s photograph?”

  “Who?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Grey? English girl? Friend of Le Comte?” It dawned on Ray that this mattered to Stuyvesant. His dark eyes took on a gleam of triumph. “Oh yes, I did her just the other day. The girl with the laugh that makes a man go all hard.”

  The night, the month—the year—rose up in the blood of Harris Stuyvesant. For two weeks, he’d been roaming Paris looking for an enemy, and finally, Ray’s insult gave him what he needed. Righteous rage swept over him and he dove forward, getting in two solid punches before Ray’s friends swarmed over them.

  Sixty seconds later, he went down under a pile of flics.

  SIXTY-FIVE

  BENNETT GREY WAITED for the candle’s flame to move.

  Whenever he looked, it was perfectly still.

  But why else would there be a chair?

  Not that the flame didn’t move at all: as the candle burned, the line of its light edged up the back of the chair. Once it had left the chair back, Grey estimated seven hours of wax before he was left in the dark with Death’s pirouettes.

  It didn’t require a chair to shoot a man. And by the height of the five bullets that had hit the wall behind him, neither the gunman nor his victims were sitting.

  He’d seen walls like that during the War, where deserters had been lined up for execution. But the only chairs during the War had been for soldiers too terrified to stand.

  He waited for the flame to quiver. Surely his captor wanted something of him, some conversation long enough to require a seat?

  Bennett Grey watched the dancers and the motionless flame, eked out his water and bread, and listened to the faint tick of the clock hands.

  The vibrations of Saturday died away. A long night ticked past, waiting for his captor to return.

  As Sunday grew above him, he began to wonder if the constructed hope was a vicious hoax. If food and light made just another layer of cruelty on top of torment …

  No. The flame would move. Someone would come.

  SIXTY-SIX

  A DAY DIDN’T REALLY start in jail, it just grew louder, with the clanging of cell doors like the crack of doom. Stuyvesant groaned and pulled his arms more tightly over his throbbing head.

  “Just fucking die, why don’t you?” he muttered.

  He was not talking to the jailers. Jesus, what have I done now?

  “Steevaysont!” The nonsense syllables slowly assumed meaning. He raised his arm to squint at the door.

  “Yeah?”

  The cop jerked his head in command.

  His neighbors in the drunk-tank cursed and kicked him as he waded through their legs. In the corridor, the cop pointed with his baton. Stuyvesant shuffled along, black and blue all over, stomach filled with battery acid, one hand on his trousers waistband since they’d taken pretty much everything, including his suspenders. You stupid shit, here you are until Monday, and that sure does Sarah a whole lot of good. And Bennett. Jesus, you’ve done some really knucklehead things in your life, but this? How could he get a message out? And who to: Nancy? Yeah, right.

  He made a noise like a gargling crocodile and tried to speak. “Can I get a gl—”

  A blow in the middle of his back sent him staggering against the wall. He looked up at the eager baton.

  Yes, he could do without a glass of water.

  A turn, some stairs, and at the end of the hallway, an open door. He slowed, but the baton delivered another shove and drove him expertly inside.

  Instead of the gathered batons he’d been dreading, there was a single figure. “Fortier!” he said in relief. “I thought I’d have to wait till Mon—”

  He was not prepared for the speed of the meek Sergeant’s fist, or its force. Stuyvesant spun into the wall, rattling the window and ending up in a puddle on the floor while the cop bent over and assaulted him with words.

  “You bastard!” his dizzy brain translated. “You fucking bastard, I thought I’d seen a lot in this life, but you honestly win it all.”

  “What the hell—”

  “Stand up! Stand up, you son of a bitch.”

  Eyeing the furious Sergeant and the waiting guard, Stuyvesant warily obeyed. As he rose, the top of the table came into view, on it a familiar object: his pistol and shoulder holster. He’d left the rig beneath the floorboards last night, after he’d realized how much he wanted to use it.

  Oh, Jesus. Had the various departments finally compared notes and fitted him up for Lulu’s shooting? Or had somebody put a bullet into Man Ray after—Oh, don’t be thick-headed.

  “Look, what’s going on? I haven’t used that thing in months, and I always leave it in the room because I know guns are—”

  “Ta gueule! I wanted to do this myself.” Fortier’s face was hard with pleasure as he crushed a pair of handcuffs onto the prisoner’s wrists. “Harris Stuyvesant, you are under arrest for the attempted murder of Inspector Émile Doucet.”

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  GREY’S CAPTOR DID not appear. The chair waited, the candle burned, the clock hands marched. Sunday evening, he licked the last of the water from the cup.

  A few hours after Sunday’s vibrations had died from the stones, a tapestried lady curtsied. His eyes snapped over to her, daring her to move again. She did not. She merely gave the same coy look over her fan that she’d been giving her dashing young lover for the past two days.

  But while he watched her, a figure off to his right took a step.

  He could not keep his eyes on them all. Soon, dancers whirled and leapt, musicians swayed, thread garments and painted faces rippled with motion. Panel after panel of Death waltzed with his scythe.

  He shut his eyes.

  Towards morning, the music began.

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  THE NURSES IN the Hôpital de la Charité stayed close to Émile Doucet, all of Saturday, Saturday night, on into Sunday. They eased teaspoons of water between his lips. They took his blood pressure, checking for signs of improvement, or failure.

  Sunday evening, their heroic patient began to shift and mumble, indicating an approach either of consciousness, or of fever. At ten o’clock they tied his restless hands to keep him from pulling his bandages. At midnight, they were grateful when Sergeant Fortier arrived, taking up the bed-side watch to keep l’Inspecteur from damaging himself.

  SIXTY-NINE

  ACCUSED MURDERERS RANKED higher than mere drunks in the Paris system of justice. Harris Stuyvesant had been given his own cell. And his own, almost-clean uniform, several sizes too small. There was even a cup of water.

  He sat on the hard bunk staring at his bare, gnawed-looking shins. Not murder: attempted murder. Doucet was still alive, then. But what an incredibly, abysmally, fatally dim-witted ass he’d been. Would the cops even bother comparing his gun with Doucet’s bullets? Or was he just too convenient a fall guy? Bennett
and Sarah missing, Pip gone, Lulu murdered—and now Doucet. And what had Harris Stuyvesant done to help any of them?

  He’d gotten smashed, blown up at an artist, and got himself thrown behind bars.

  And for what? He’d been so sure about Man Ray. But in the harsh, sober light of a new day, could he honestly say the guy had killed Pip Crosby—or anyone on Doucet’s list? Ray was the kind of man who liked to strut. He might talk big, might even use his belt on a girl, but a series of cold, deliberate killings? Deep in his queasy and somewhat tender gut, Stuyvesant didn’t think the photographer had it in him.

  He stiffly rose to lurch back and forth across the cell.

  How about Didi Moreau?

  He could see the little creep happily feeding body parts to his damned beetles, sure, but having the nerve and the wits to choose a series of victims, kill them, and conceal their bodies until they were reduced to bone? The man didn’t have enough muscle to lift a medium-sized dog. He lacked the guts to stand up to his maid. And sure, any weakling could pull a trigger, and a man bullied by the help might harbor a built-up antagonism towards women, but any killer who’d managed to escape Doucet’s attention for what looked to be years had to be either phenomenally lucky, or a clever and controlled man.

  Which brought him to Le Comte. A decorated War hero who spent his life and his fortune helping his fellow soldiers and the people of Paris; a wealthy, middle-aged man with generations of aristocratic blood running through his veins; a man under whose influence Pip Crosby had learned self-respect.

  Also Sarah’s employer, Pip’s lover, and—apparently—the last person to see Bennett Grey and Émile Doucet. Yes, Harris Stuyvesant was hardly an objective judge, having bone-deep misgivings about any man born with a Renaissance silver spoon in his mouth, but the Marquis de Sade wasn’t the only rich bastard to get away with crimes that would throw a commoner to the gallows.

  As for Doucet’s list, well, the Comte had as much opportunity as the others to insinuate himself into the lives of any number of women and make them disappear. Hell, the man didn’t even have to get his hands dirty if he didn’t want to, since money like his could hire a cold-blooded assistant or six. Money like his could buy off …

  Stuyvesant’s feet shuffled to a stop. A cold draft trickled into the stuffy cell.

  No! That was absurd. The man was near death in the hospital.

  Or so Fortier said—and the flic hadn’t lied. That kind of fury—rage enough to turn a Caspar Milquetoast Sergeant into a cop who beat a prisoner—couldn’t be feigned, not if the man had all the skills of the Grand-Guignol. Sergeant Fortier honestly believed l’Inspecteur was dying.

  So yes, Doucet had been wounded, probably to the head. But what if a man could summon the guts to lay a gun alongside his own skull and pull the trigger?

  Would any doctor question that patient’s lack of response? Would anyone in their right mind suggest that a police Inspector covered with blood had shot himself?

  Only that chronic drunk and incompetent, Harris Stuyvesant.

  On Friday, Grey had asked if Stuyvesant knew how Sarah and Doucet had met. Stuyvesant did: the Inspector was questioning people about one of his missing persons and got to talking with Sarah in the park. Grey asked in order to illustrate the unlikely links that bound the residents of Montparnasse.

  But wasn’t there another question behind his?

  Yes, l’Inspecteur was all over Paris: meeting artists, rubbing shoulders with the upper crust, wandering through parks on sunny days showing pictures to pretty girls. Getting them into conversation. Getting them into bed.

  But wasn’t showing around the photographs of missing persons a job usually given to lesser cops?

  No! That’s loony. Stuyvesant resumed his pacing. A man with something to hide would never have welcomed an American private investigator. And damn it, Bennett Grey trusted Doucet!

  Bennett: whose eyes were as blind as any man’s when looking at someone comfortable with their madness.

  From the start, Doucet’s easy camaraderie had seemed unlikely from a cop—even a lily-white innocent cop. Stuyvesant might have reflected on that fact a little harder if he hadn’t been so damned eager for the man’s information.

  But once that private investigator finally got around to wondering why Inspector Doucet was so cooperative …

  It was too late. He was already in jail.

  Charged with the attempted murder of that very Inspector.

  Who any moment would conveniently wake up from his coma to point a shaky and grieving finger at the American busybody who had come to Paris to murder a former lover and her fiancé. And any evidence to the contrary—well, once on his feet, l’Inspecteur could easily tidy away such inconvenient matters as a bullet that didn’t match a gun, or a suspect who had been seen elsewhere. He’d even have an explanation for Bennett Grey’s absence. Or death …

  Could France guillotine a foreign citizen? Or would they give Harris Stuyvesant over to the Americans to be hanged?

  SEVENTY

  SHORTLY AFTER 1:00 a.m., the heroic patient’s eyelids flickered open.

  “Don’t try to talk,” Fortier urged, his voice low and close to his boss’ ear. “I’m not sure if you can, with that mummy-wrapping, but just in case, the nurse said we weren’t to let you and she’s a ferocious little thing, I wouldn’t want her mad at me. So, you’re in la Charité, lost some blood but they got the bullet out and there’s no infection. Not much, anyway. Blink once if you understand.”

  Doucet blinked.

  “Good,” Fortier said. “Good. Well. The doctor said that if you woke, I should tell you to go back to sleep, though it seems to me that a man who’s been out for two days might—Hey, no, wait, don’t try to—okay, I’ll get the straps. Guess I shouldn’t have let it slip how long you’ve been out—don’t tell the nurse, eh? Hah! There: better? Now, before you go to sleep again, let me just say that we identified the fingerprints on the photos and arrested Moreau, then we found the gun in Stuyvesant’s hotel room and picked him up for this. Tomorrow morning I’ll go see the American ambassador and—Wait—don’t sit up! What? What was that?”

  The bandages kept the patient’s jaw from opening, but the Sergeant leaned down, hoping to hell the terrifying little nurse did not come in and discover him permitting Doucet to speak.

  SEVENTY-ONE

  THEY CAME FOR Harris Stuyvesant in the dark of the night. The door’s crash hurled him off the bunk and upright, his back to the wall.

  “Venez,” a guard said.

  Stuyvesant stayed where he was, knowing there was no way to defend himself, knowing he would try …

  Venez, his brain whispered. The vous form, rather than tu. Politeness? No, a command was a command. But a single prisoner: no reason not to wade in, yet the guards just waited. Stuyvesant peeled his back off the stones and edged out of the cell.

  He started down the silent corridor, skull and shoulders tense with apprehension, but the only blow that came was a prod, not a slam that left a man pissing blood. Go here rather than, Go here or I’ll beat you bloody.

  The corridor; the open door; Sergeant Fortier, again. If Doucet had died, wouldn’t his sergeant look more hostile? The man’s face gave nothing away.

  The room’s table held what remained of Stuyvesant’s evening clothes. On top lay his shoulder holster, which he’d left under the hotel floorboards. No gun. Nor were the brass knuckles in the heap of things they’d taken from his pockets—notebook, cigarette case, Ronson, wallet—and from the hotel—folding knife and lock picks.

  “Inspector Doucet is awake,” Fortier said. “He ordered me to let you go.”

  Stuyvesant took a quick step to the side, as if the floor beneath him had shifted. “Well,” he said. “Yes. Good. You mind if I sit down?”

  He didn’t wait, just dropped into a chair and reached out to disentangle the cigarette case and lighter from what had once been a bow tie. His hands were not very steady, he noticed, and scowled at them.

&nb
sp; So: not Doucet, and not a setup.

  “Who shot him?”

  “The gunman had the light behind him. L’Inspecteur caught a glimpse of a man shorter than you before he was hit.”

  “Hit where?”

  “Here, and here.” Fortier drew his finger alongside his head above the ear, then jabbed the hollow of his shoulder, inches from his heart.

  Stuyvesant’s brain tried to operate through the sludge. Shorter than me leaves most of France. “Was Grey with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he doesn’t know what happened to Grey.”

  “No.”

  “Or Sarah? His … fiancée?”

  “He asked about the young woman. He is not aware that she is missing.”

  “Am I free to go?”

  “Until such time as we have evidence of your guilt.”

  “Does that mean you don’t have any suspects? Other than me?”

  “It means we will proceed with the case, Monsieur.”

  “You arrested Moreau?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re not giving me back my weapons?”

  “You may apply in writing for the return of your possessions.”

  Stuyvesant put out his cigarette and got to his feet, more slowly than he’d sat down. “Where do I change?”

  “The guard will take you to the men’s room. And, Monsieur? I am ordered to apologize.”

  Stuyvesant looked at Fortier’s outstretched hand. “What, for smacking me around? If I’d been in your place, I’d have done a lot worse.”

  “Nonetheless.”

  After a moment, the American shifted the bundle of clothing to his left arm and shook Fortier’s hand. “Can I ask you a question?” Fortier didn’t walk out, so Stuyvesant continued. “Saturday morning, I suggested that you take a look at unsolved murders. Did you have a—”

  “I have been busy, Monsieur.”

  “I know. Well, it was just a thought. Tell your boss I hope he’s feeling better.”