“Jubert’s not a good adversary to box with. But if I’m going down, he’s joining me.”
René took her hand. “You’ve found the eyewitness you needed to clear Laure, and the lab report. Hell, you’ve even found the bullet.”
“If they’ll accept it as evidence and credit Isabelle’s account.”
“How can they not?”
“I hope so,” she said. Looking down at her wet boots, she told him, “You won’t like this, but it’s better you work at home. Don’t go to the office.”
He rolled his eyes. “Giving it to me piecemeal, eh. What else haven’t you told me?”
“I can’t pin it down but there is a thug named Petru mixed up in this, too. He’s Corsican, but he doesn’t fit in with the Separatist movement. And he—or his friends—were on my tail.”
René handed her a box from his briefcase. “This arrived this morning.”
The return address was Dr. Guy Lambert, Hôpital Quinze-Vingts, Opthamaligie Department.
Something she’d forgotten at his office? She slit the tape with her keys.
Inside lay a six-month supply of her eye medication, a referral to an eye specialist, and several lines of Lord Byron’s poem “Fare Thee Well”:
And life is thorny; and youth is vain;
And to be wroth with one we love,
Doth work like madness in the brain.
She crumpled the paper.
René stared at her.
“Guy’s parting gift. Conscientious, as always.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s gone to Sudan to work with Doctors Without Borders.”
“Sudan?”
“To save the blind of Africa,” she said. “To get as far away from me as he can, and still work medical wonders.”
René kept staring. “He saved your vision, Aimée.”
Her lip trembled. If René didn’t shut up she’d burst into tears. She lowered her gaze.
“Like I didn’t know that, René!”
“Another thing you didn’t tell me,” René said, hurt and something else mingling in his voice.
“Isn’t it enough that I burden you with my love life . . . or my nonexistent love life, most of the time?” she asked. “It would be selfish. You’ve found someone and seem so happy; it’s not fair to dump on you.”
Instead of the acknowledgment she expected, more anger flashed in his eyes. “I thought we were closer, Aimée.”
“You’re my best friend! But do I have to reveal the squalid details of how I let Guy down?”
Pride, yes, her pride prevented her from revealing that Guy had left her. Left her because of who she wasn’t.
René shook his head in disgust.
All wrong, she got everything wrong with René whichever way she turned.
“Didn’t you throw yourself into this investigation to fill the void, Aimée? As usual?”
She slumped in the chair. Was he right?
He stood up, brushed off his black wool jacket, and handed her a card with the address of the Convent des Recollets. “Paul and Isabelle’s accommodation. The convent offers assistance to families in transition.”
He took his briefcase and walked down the hall.
What had she done now?
She called after him, “René, you’re so happy, I didn’t want to—”
He turned. “So I gather.”
How could it all go so wrong and all at the same time? René upset, Laure in a coma, Guy on another continent leaving Byron to console her: three thin lines. And Jubert with his gray snake eyes, now high up in Internal Affairs. The list grew. And the gnawing fear that Jacques’s murder was part of something bigger. The tape in her head replayed Lucien Sarti’s voice, the sensation of his thigh brushing hers, and his warm lips’ imprint on her cheek.
The door opened, and the floor creaked under Isabelle’s feet.
“Ça va?” Aimée managed a small smile, handing her the convent’s address. “They’re expecting you. Ask a friend to bring your things over. Stay until things get sorted out.”
“Merci,” she said.
“Mademoiselle Leduc, a moment please.” Edith Mésard spoke from her office.
Aimée crunched her plastic espresso cup and tossed it into the wire trash bin.
Edith Mésard and Jubert stood by a grouping of wingback chairs. A cigarette butt smoldered in an otherwise clean ashtray on the windowsill.
“No need to sit down, Mademoiselle. I’ll make it brief and to the point,” Edith Mésard said. She buttoned her tailored jacket. “Besides the municipal code infractions I could charge you with, not to mention a misdemeanor charge of evidence tampering and some hijinks with the police intranet system—” she paused. “You’re compromising a joint Renseignements Généraux and Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire undercover operation.”
Aimée was startled. She hadn’t expected this.
“What do you mean?”
“As Monsieur Jubert pointed out, it’s too late in the game. The covert operation is too far advanced for us to switch directions.”
“You’re asking me to cease trying to clear Laure Rousseau? I won’t. I’ve handed you exculpatory evidence on a plate. Heaping full. There’s no way to ignore it.”
“I’d suggest you listen, Mademoiselle,” La Proc said. “For a change.”
Aimée felt as if she were back at school being reprimanded for talking out of turn. Jubert watched her without a word.
“If Laure’s off the hook,” she said. “I’m all ears.”
“Do you forget, Mademoiselle, we operate in the real world according to regulations, Le Code Civil, and the judicial system?”
“So you’re saying you won’t—”
Jubert spoke for the first time, his voice calm and even. “She’s saying, Mademoiselle, all pertinent and legally obtained evidence will be presented at the hearing of the charges against Officer Rousseau.”
Right. She trusted him no further than she could spit.
“Do you agree that the bullet I obtained will be accepted into evidence?”
Jubert pulled at his chin with his thumb and forefinger.
“Mademoiselle, I see you don’t mince words,” he said. “Refreshing, I’m sure, in your line of work.”
Her line of work? Like she strong-armed witnesses? While he worked the old-boy network of favors asked and granted, shrouded by payoffs, implied and unspoken.
“We’d like your assistance,” he went on.
“My assistance?” She blinked.
“Your persistence has been noted. Instead of compromising our operation, which you seem bent on doing, we want you to work with us.”
Right. Her father had worked for the RG and it got him killed. She hated their everyday world of lies, deceit, and cover-ups.
“My report card said, ‘Doesn’t play well with others.’ I haven’t changed,” she told him.
But she had the sinking feeling that working with “them” was the price for Laure’s vindication. A complex RG and DST sting operation, orchestrated by the Ministry, was the last thing she wanted to be involved in. Her dealings with the secret world had blown up, literally in her face, in Place Vendôme and taken her father’s life.
“You’re thinking of your father. A tragedy, yes,” Jubert said. “Nothing to do with this operation or this branch. The circumstances were totally different.”
“I’d like to know who was responsible,” Aimée said, her gaze fixed on Jubert.
“That branch closed down. If any files exist, they’re classified,” Jubert said. “Live in the present; think of this as your contribution to guarding and preserving the security of France.”
Appealing to the patriot in her with their hollow jingoism? Think again, she wanted to say. Their offer smelled, but they didn’t leave her many options.