“Shhh,” she said, putting her finger over her lips and unwrapping her lock-picking kit.
Thursday Night
BERNARD SCROUNGED IN HIS suit jacket pockets. Pills. Where were those pills? The little blue ones. The ones that calmed him down, marshaled his words into succinct phrases.
The bottle was empty. He panicked. He’d already had the hunger strikers removed to the hospital. But after several hours they’d checked themselves out and returned to the church.
Bernard paced back and forth in front of his desk. Rays from his weak desk light pooled on his worn office carpet. What could he do with these people? How would he get Hamid out of the church?
Finally he found a broken blue pill in his pocket lining, chalky and only half a dose. He swallowed it, lint and all. Maybe it would help clarify his thoughts.
The captain of the Compagnies Republicaines de Securite had disappeared; then the minister had paged him. But Bernard had no phone. No aide de camp. He just clung to a thin rope above the raging rapids of Interior Ministry politics.
Bernard knew Hamid was too weak to conduct negotiations. And the buses bound for the air terminal were pulling up outside the church in Belleville. He remembered their rumbling engines. Like roars of hungry beasts waiting to be fed.
AFTER AIMÉE’S REPEATED GENTLE coaxing, the cylinder lock opened. Relieved, she took a deep breath, then pulled out her Beretta. Breaking into a dead person’s apartment didn’t guarantee it was vacant.
Eugénie’s door creaked open. Aimée hoped the apartment would surrender the woman’s secrets. Brisk currents emanated from the windows, hung with tattered lace. Aimée motioned to Sébastien.
Alert for another presence, they padded into the apartment. Aimée almost tripped over a pile of building notices. Luckily Sébastien caught her arm. A musty odor trailed by faint whiffs of decay hit her.
The place had been trashed. By the look of things, this was definitely professional.
Aimée saw the detritus of the woman’s life in her ransacked apartment. It was as if Sylvie had been violated again, even in death. Aimée wanted to leave. But she had to put her feelings aside, get on with the job. Find something to point her toward the killer or killers whether it felt good or not.
She padded into the front room, its windows facing rue de Jean Moinon. A bottle of Evian water had fallen on the floor, its contents long evaporated.
The apartment reminded her of an old-fashioned waiting room in a doctor’s office—impersonal, bereft of life. She wondered why a well-off mistress of a minister would use this place. If Sylvie stayed here as Eugénie, there had to be a reason. And if the ransackers had found something, she wouldn’t have a clue.
Frustrated, Aimée scanned the rooms, but no answers came to her. Looking down from the window into the courtyard, she felt a strange sensation. She pulled her jumpsuit collar tighter around her neck.
Aimée unrolled more sheets of felt. She nodded to Sébastien and they tacked them up over the windows. Better than the flimsy blackout curtains provided during the war, her grandfather had told her, and the felt material kept the heat inside. Always keep some handy, he’d winked. You never know when you’ll need to make an unannounced visit.
Now she felt safer and took out her large flashlight. The period and layout of the apartment appeared identical to Madame Visse’s. However, in contrast with Madame Visse’s apartment cluttered with boxes, bright yellow walls, toys, and furniture, Eugénie’s was austere. Stark and deserted.
Several cracks in the plaster flaked onto the floor. She figured the nicotine-stained brown walls hadn’t seen a new coat of paint since the 1930s or before. In the hallway faint pink rose-patterned wallpaper peeled in places. Former gas fixtures converted to electricity showed frayed wires. To her this didn’t seem like a love nest or rendezvous spot for a minister and his mistress.
Aimée nodded to Sébastien and pointed to the old workshop down in the courtyard. He’d agreed to search for the blue garbage bags if they were still there. He made an okay sign with his fingers, pulled out his tools, and padded downstairs.
Back out in the hallway, the air was stale and frigid. But her gloved hands, clammy and moist, and the perspiration sticking the jumpsuit to her neck, made her feel like she was in a steambath.
She shined her flashlight inside the narrow kitchen, with barely enough space for one person to stand and reach the drawers. A double gas ring cooker and scorched aluminum kettle were tossed on the floor. By the old enamel sink, an upside-down bottle of Maison Verte dish soap had run green in the sink, leaving a perfumed soapy gunk. Every drawer was pulled out. Strewn teabags littered the chipped Formica table. Grease-stained linoleum tiles, curling up at the edges, lined the floor.
Apprehensive, Aimée stared at the bare hallway, noticing that chunks of the plaster were gouged out, creating gaping holes in the faded wallpaper. Whoever had trashed this place was looking for something—blowing up Sylvie hadn’t been enough.
In the shadowy bedroom, a shredded black sleeping bag leaked feathers over the floor. An Ikea pine desk, the kind requiring self-assembly, had been pulled apart, one of the legs smashed and splintered against the wall. Below the window, she noticed a phone jack in the wall. She searched the room. No telephone.
She found it hard to imagine the woman hadn’t had a telephone.
Inside the bedroom closet was an orange crate filled with a pair of denim overalls, white shirt, and black sweater, turned inside out and ripped at the seams. A long black nylon raincoat hung from the only hanger, slit to ribbons. Aimée looked for a label.
None.
Curious, she edged further. Inside the cubicle-size bathroom was a shredded two-roll pack of Moltanel pink toilet paper. Pink tissue bits and cotton balls carpeted the stained tub. A large pump bottle of Sephora makeup remover, the expensive kind, had been emptied. The aluminum pipe under the sink had been removed, clumps of black hair and wet matter lay on the old tile floor.
Aimée went to the window overlooking the courtyard. From below, Sébastien flashed a thumbs-up at her, then left to fetch the van.
She turned, ready to untack the felt from the windows and leave, when something red by the empty coatrack caught her eye.
She centered the flashlight beam and peered forward.
Long wisps of what appeared to be red hair peeked out from the hall closet door.
Why hadn’t she asked Sébastien to wait? Her flashlight beam centered on the closet door. She willed her hands steady and slowly coaxed the door open wider.
A shag-style red wig lay on the warped linoleum.
Nothing else. Aimée peered closer. The wig looked as if it had been tossed in as a casual afterthought. It had to be the one Sylvie used as Eugénie.
A lot of things bothered her, but one thing in particular cried out. She walked back into the shadowed bedroom. It was the phone jack with no phone. But perfect for a modem. Had Eugénie used a laptop and gone on-line?
She searched among the clothes in the closet. In the back pocket of the overalls she found the phone cord. The laptop had to be somewhere close.
She shone her flashlight and began searching the closet. Testing each floorboard to see if it had been pried up recently, feeling each wallpaper seam for bubbles or uneven joining.
Nothing.
She sat back on her heels. Where would she have hidden a laptop?
What spot could she have shifted the laptop to if she’d been caught off guard, with only time to slip the phone cord in her pocket?