Did Viard tend his orchids to find a beauty absent in his work? She noticed the lines around his mouth were deeper, his brow’s crease more pronounced. Did staying in the closet wear on him?
Above his desk hung gun-show posters and a colored spectrum showing the trail of magnified bullets, arced like rainbows.
She took the Baggie out of her pocket and dangled it in front of him. “I’m not a betting person, but a franc says the GSR in this report came from this.
“A franc?”
“I’ll throw in a bottle of Château Margaux.”
He whistled, incredulous. “Do you know how much these tests cost to run, Aimée?”
She shook her head. “As a taxpayer, I pay for it.”
“You and a few others. Listen, my department’s budget couldn’t absorb this. Or even Internal Affairs’.”
Was that why Delambre had rejected her idea? He knew they didn’t budget for special tests? And procedure didn’t call for it?
“So Internal Affairs covers the costs?”
“Most of it, but only the basic test. Standard procedure, end of story.” He shook his head as he kept on misting the orchids. “You know I’d help if I could. It’s impossible. I’m sorry.”
She had an idea. It might work.
“But, Viard, the Ministry’s involved. In tandem with Internal Affairs. Didn’t I mention that?” She knew there was a link there somehow. Right now she didn’t know where. That could wait. “I just assumed you knew.”
“Ministry of the Interior?” He shrugged, set down the spray bottle, and checked his desk. “I haven’t received any requisition or paperwork.”
“Let’s see, what was the name . . . the man responsible?” She ran her fingers through her spiky hair, glanced at the piled-up SIG Sauer pistol manuals. “Starts with a J. Jubert, that’s it. Ludovic Jubert.”
He nodded. “In that case. Well . . .”
She tried not to show surprise, eager to find out which office Jubert worked in.
“I forget which division he’s in.”
Viard stared at the lab report. “There’s an incompatibility between a Manhurin bullet’s residue and the GSR on the officer’s hands?”
“Incompatibility, yes. Also, please test to see if this bullet’s tin content is compatible with the GSR on the officer’s hands.”
She hoped she’d left enough residue traces on the wall from which she’d pried the bullet for the flics to find later.
“Well, if the Ministry’s paying . . .” His eyes lit up and he pulled out a requisition form. “I suppose, in lieu of the requisition, I could note approval en route.”
“Wonderful idea,” she said.
Despite her eagerness to pinpoint Jubert’s location, right now she mustn’t deflect Viard from running the test, or raise his suspicions by asking how to reach Jubert.
Viard slipped latex gloves on and took the Baggie from her. She’d hooked him.
“What’s the white stuff?”
“A gift from the pigeon gods.”
“Aaah merci . . . fascinating,” he said, pulling goggles from his desk drawer. His voice had changed, it was higher. Excitement vibrated in it. “High tin content is a signature of the Eastern European models hitting the marketplace these days.”
Something resonated in the back of her mind. Bordereau’s words. Think. “You mean the Eastern European arms used by the Armata Corsa?”
She could swear he almost rubbed his gloved hands in glee. “After the Bucharest conference last year, I’ve been dying to try this.” He stared at the dull copper-nub-nosed bullet. “I’d say it’s a Bulgarian make but let me run a test I saw performed on a Sellier-Bellot.”
AT LEAST Jubert’s department would foot the bill for tests run on a Sellier-Bellot, whatever that was. She liked that it was expensive and that Viard had fairly salivated to carry it out. She felt it in her bones—she’d exonerate Laure. And find the culprit.
Time weighed heavily. It would be hours, maybe a day, before Viard got back to her with the results. In the meantime she had to deal with questions she’d put aside.
She exited the Les Halles station and found an Internet café with cane-bottomed stools and posters advertising the Chatelet ethnic music festival papering the walls. The steady beat of trance music competed with the whoosh of the milk steamer. She slid ten francs to a doe-eyed waitress in flared paisley pants, found a vacant terminal, and logged online. First, she trawled the net for Ludovic Jubert’s name in the Ministry system. Once again, she found nothing.
It was time to address the feeling she’d sensed behind Zoe Tardou’s hesitant answers, her frightened manner. She’d meant to revisit her earlier—this reclusive medieval scholar who lived in an elegant Deco apartment across from where Jacques was murdered.
The geranium stem. Had Madame Tardou witnessed the murder when she was watering the flowers in her window box and kept silent out of fear? She had mentioned overhearing the names of planets, spoken in another language from the roof. Corsican? And she had let slip that she had spent time in an orphanage. An anomaly struck Aimée. If Zoe was the stepdaughter of the well-known Surrealist Max Tardou, why would she have lived in an orphanage? How did that fit?
If something itched, scratch it, her father had said. She had to probe deeper. What better place to start than online.
She searched under Surrealism and Max Tardou, finding an array of Web sites. She plowed through them. Tardou, a well-known painter, had fled the Occupation to Portugal at the onset of World War II. So much for his later claims of fighting in the Résistance. According to a Surrealist Web site, Zoe’s mother, Elise, had met him after the war.
She searched further. She found photos of Elise; one in profile, taken at a Montmartre Dadaist ball. It showed a crowd in turbans and bowler hats with the Greek letter š painted on their faces. Another showed Elise backlit, her blonde hair pulled high on her head in a halo effect, her mandarin eyes slanted with kohl, draped in a cloak of her own design. A striking woman, renowned for her Dadaist poetry.
Unable to find more current information, Aimée was about to exit, when she noticed a cross-reference. This one listed the name Elise Tardou in a 1980s documentary film about Lebensborn. Strange. Was it the same Elise Tardou? Lebensborn referred to the Nazi stud-farm program to propagate Aryans. It had been established in Norway, Germany, and occupied Europe. Even a member of the seventies group ABBA was listed in the documentary as a child of the Lebensborn. What was the connection here? Was there one?
She downed her espresso and read further. Château Menier, outside Paris in Lamorlaye, bordered the only Lebensborn site in France. Aimée hadn’t known one existed. She was shocked. She read further. The article quoted an excerpt from the account of Elise Tardou, identified as a Dadaist poet, about her captivity there in 1944. What Aimée read astounded her.
“There were French women in the château, though not many,” Elise was quoted as saying. “Few admit it. The shame. It wasn’t our choice, we were captives. Most of the women were prisoners from Poland, and blue-eyed Hungarians. They had a nursery, ran it like a birthing factory.”
Nineteen forty-four. Zoe looked to be in her fifties. A terrible idea entered Aimée’s mind. She printed out the page. And then located an article on a summer art colony, the haunt of the old Surrealist icons in the sixties. It had been located in Corsica.
Corsica! According to an article she’d read previously, the Tardous had spent their holidays in Corsica every August. For years.
She’d caught Zoe Tardou in a lie. Now she thought she knew why. She had to test her theory.
“MADAME TARDOU! ” she said, knocking on Zoe Tardou’s door.