She herded René and a hesitant Isabelle inside the courtyard of the Préfecture, turning left under the arcade to the wide brown wooden doors.
“Where’s Paul?” Aimée asked.
“At school.” Isabelle glanced at René. “Where’s her computer? You said she works on a computer.”
“Sometimes we have to do things the old-fashioned way,” René said.
They climbed several flights of the brown-tiled stairway. Aimée remembered counting them as a little girl. Five hundred and thirty-two steps, still the same. When she got to the top, if she’d counted right, her father would give her a Carambar. At the Enforcement Section, she showed her ID again.
Isabelle pulled back, staring at the group of policemen standing by the head of the stairs.
A uniformed flic ushered them along a high-ceilinged corridor, past open-doored offices. Their footsteps echoed on the polished wooden floor. A few heads looked up as they entered the long arched corridor of the procureur général’s wing. Aimée heard laughter, a snatch of conversation—“Barring the miracle of the loaves and fishes, her sighting puts the mec in the boulan-gerie at the time of the murder”—and smelled the aroma of coffee.
She paused. Isabelle had come to a halt and was buttoning her coat, her mouth tight. “I’m leaving.”
“What’s the matter, Isabelle?”
Isabelle shook her head. “Forget it.”
Dread hit Aimée. Too late now, she wanted to say. So much depends on you. Instead, she nodded. “This place makes me nervous, too.”
“Stupide, I’m leaving, I can’t get involved.”
“It’s a lot to ask of you, I know,” Aimée said, perspiring. “We wouldn’t impose, René wouldn’t be so persistent, unless we had to. Remember, it’s not about you and Paul.”
“Easy for you to say!” Isabelle turned away.
Frightened, nervous probably, needing a drink. Aimée had to reach her, to convince her. She put her arm around Isabelle’s thin shoulders. “You’re right, Isabelle, easy for me to say. You can walk away right now, go down the stairs, and leave. However, a man was murdered and you were the unlucky one who witnessed the shots. And if you don’t speak up, the killers will get away with it. They’ll probably do it again. And then someone’s looking for Paul—”
She paused. Isabelle wouldn’t meet her gaze. So close, and yet . . .
“I’ll pick Paul up,” Isabelle said. “I’ll take him to my sisters in Belleville.”
“Can you tell me this won’t go through your mind when you’re out on the quay, or taking Paul to a new school? Won’t you constantly wonder if the mec who was looking for Paul will turn up at your door? And worry that this time he’ll find him?”
Isabelle’s eyes clouded. “I did time in prison. Years ago, but still, they won’t take what I say seriously.”
“That’s past. You know how prison feels. My friend will go there if you don’t help us,” she said. “René’s arranged a place for you and Paul to stay. A safe place. Please.”
“Mademoiselle Leduc.” The flic cleared his throat, beckoning to them. “May I remind you, La Proc’s got a tight schedule.”
The lines at the corner of Isabelle’s mouth had relaxed a fraction. “Today?” she asked Aimée. “We can go today?”
“Right after you speak with La Proc. You’ll do fine, just tell her the truth. La Proc’s fair. Remember that.”
After a single sharp rap, a woman’s voice called, “Entréz.”
The flic opened the door and gestured them inside. Tall ceilings, windows overlooking the Seine, a framed photo of Mitterrand wearing the blue, white and red ribbon of Le Président. A coveted corner office indicated Edith Mésard’s status.
La Proc wore her blond hair coiffed sleekly behind her ears. In her tailored dark green Rodier suit, holding a dossier, she looked formidable. It was the word Morbier had used to describe Mésard’s prosecutorial skills. A white-haired man sat next to her desk.
“Bon, make it good, Mademoiselle Leduc. You’ve got fifteen minutes,” La Proc said.
“Thank you for making the time, Madame La Proc,” Aimée began.
“You won’t mind if a consultant to Internal Affairs stays?” Edith Mésard asked. “He’s interested in what might transpire.”
The white-haired, ruddy complected man filled out his double-breasted navy blue suit. His eyes flicked over them, calculating. Who was he?
Aimée cleared her throat. “All the better. This is my partner, René Friant; Isabelle Moinier, and you are Monsieur . . . ?”
“Ludovic Jubert,” he said. His eyes locked on hers.
She felt the color drain from her face and a leaden sensation in her feet. She’d finally flushed him out. Yet she was filled with fear.
“Monsieur Jubert, you worked with my father, didn’t you?” She paused, searching for the words. “I’ve been wanting to speak with you.”
“So I gather, Mademoiselle Leduc.”
Concentrate! She had to concentrate on his reactions as well as to make sense to La Proc.
“You can catch up later, I’m sure,” Edith Mésard told her in a calm tone underlaid with steel. “You indicated urgency, Mademoiselle Leduc? I’m listening.”
“On the night of Jacques Gagnard’s murder, Mademoiselle Moinier, who lives on rue André Antoine in the adjacent building, saw three flashes. I think that means there were three shots fired. I believe that a high-tin-content bullet, presently undergoing tests in the police lab, was responsible for the gunshot residue on Laure Rousseau’s hands, not her Manhurin.”
“So you’re saying what?”
“Laure didn’t shoot her partner.”
“I don’t understand,” Edith Mésard said. “Where did this ‘bullet’ that’s being tested come from?”
“The rooftop. I dug the bullet out of the chimney.”
Ludovic Jubert hadn’t said a word. His eyes hadn’t even blinked. Behind him, flecks of snow fluttered outside the window, drifting over traffic moving at a snail’s pace along the quai. And disappeared into the sluggish pewter Seine below.
“Who do you suggest shot Jacques Gagnard?”
“Another apartment resident heard men speaking Corsican on the scaffold that encircles the roof.”
Edith Mésard looked at Ludovic Jubert. Aimée saw his shoulders move in a slight shrug.
“If you and your partner would wait outside, please,” Edith Mésard said.
“YOU LOOK like you saw a ghost,” René said.
She nodded and sat beside him on the wooden bench. The hall radiator sputtered, emitting ripples of heat. “I did. In the flesh.”
A metal trolley with several coffees stood by a potted palm.
“Tell me about it over coffee?”
She nodded.
He edged off the high bench, slipped some francs into the tin with “two francs s’il vous plaît” pasted on it, filled two plastic cups with espresso, and handed her one.
“It’s about my father. And Jubert.”
“Your father?”
“And a cover-up.” She sighed, leaned back, and told him about Laure’s hint that her father had been involved in some cover-up and Jubert’s supposed connection to the Place Vendôme explosion that had killed Aimée’s father.
“You could have told me before.” René’s large green eyes flashed in anger. “But, Aimée, Laure’s disjointed ramblings don’t prove anything.”
She rubbed her eyes. “Jubert knows I broke into STIC. That’s why he’s here. He probably found out I used his name to request an expensive ballistics test. He wants to see what I’ve discovered.”
René shook his head. “How can he prove it? You covered your tracks, right?”