Loud footsteps pounded across the parquet floor. And then Marie-Dominique’s dress rustled, brushing his hand as she turned, searing his fingers with a touch as light as a leaf.
“Monsieur Conari,” the waiter said. “The commissaire wants to speak with you.”
“The commissaire? About what? We’re having a party.”
Several blue-uniformed policemen entered the crowded room.
Had the flics seen him, Lucien wondered, had someone identified him? The old man with the dog? Nom de Dieu, what if they connected him with the shooting! Or with the Corsican Separatists?
Foreboding flooded him. It felt like when he’d been little and the mazzera, the village shaman, had seen the spell cast on him by the evil eye. But no, this was not scientific; he was scientific and didn’t believe in those things any longer.
“Monsieur Conari, you’re the host?” said a brittle voice. Not waiting for a reply, it continued, “We’re sorry for the inconvenience but a homicide’s been committed across the courtyard. We need to speak with all your guests to find out if they noticed anything suspicious. We must check their papers. It’s just a formality, of course.”
Monday Night
AIMÉE TWISTED GUY’S RING back and forth on her middle finger. The cloudy moonstone in an antique setting reflected the sky’s changing weather. Perfect for her, he’d said. She tried to think of something else. The Commissariat cubicle in which she sat being questioned felt glacial. Several overhead fluorescent panels had burned out, casting uneven stripes of light on the pitted linoleum.
Opposite her at the metal desk, a twenty-something flic with a razor-sharp jaw pecked with two fingers at the keys of a black typewriter. Didn’t he have a computer?
“Voilà, Mademoiselle Leduc,” he said, pulling the paper out of the roller. His cigarette smoldered in a filled ashtray. He leaned back in his swivel chair and eyed his large sports watch. “Read over your statement to see that it’s correct. Then sign at the bottom.”
She read the five-page statement twice, then nodded and signed. “Please attach this, too.”
“What’s that?” he asked, stifling a yawn.
“A diagram illustrating my statement,” she said. So far she hadn’t seen a computer. “I presume you will scan my statement and this diagram into a computer?”
“Curious type, aren’t you?”
She heard the monotonous thrum of a printer from a back office. “Will you?”
“We know our job, Mademoiselle,” he said. “Now if you’ll come with me.”
She shuddered. Good thing she’d made a copy of her diagram.
He escorted her across the foyer of the deserted Commissariat to a holding cell adjoining the dispatcher’s room. It was more like a cage, she thought, with its steel bars, furnished only with a wooden slat of a bench. The flic unlocked her handcuffs and gestured her inside.
“Wait a minute, you haven’t charged me. How long until—?”
“Sit back and relax,” he interrupted and left.
The corners stank of old socks and other things she didn’t want to think about. Across from her, flyers for a police-sponsored community marathon walk and bike security tips sat piled on the counter by the glass-paned reception cubicle.
She rubbed her hands, coarse from the lab soap they’d given her after the gunpowder residue test, and paced three steps across the small cage and back, hoping she wouldn’t really have to stay here all night. So far she hadn’t seen Laure.
She pictured the scaffold skirting the building’s blue-tiled roof. The cape of snow, the angle of Jacques’s body, his turned-out pockets, Laure’s obvious concussion . . . but her mind kept going back to Jacques’s gunshot wound. Had his killer been lying in wait? On a night like this, why had Jacques left a warm café and persuaded Laure to accompany him? Why had he ended up dead on the slanted zinc roof in a storm?
To play devil’s advocate, if in fact Laure and Jacques had continued their argument, and Laure wanted to kill Jacques, easier and less damning ways existed. A blow rendering him unconscious, then a whack of his skull against stone bollards was one method. She’d read about it only last week in the daily Le Parisien. Or she could have tripped Jacques on the stairway leading up to Sacré Coeur. There were so many ways to stage an “accident.”
Yet she’d found Laure unconscious from a blow! Surely, the lack of gunpowder residue on Laure’s hands would establish her innocence. She hoped the flics had questioned the mec standing at the building gate. He might have seen something.
. . .
A female officer, wearing a blue jumpsuit unlocked the cage, shaking Aimée out of her reverie.
“You’re free to go,” she said, handing Aimée a plastic bag containing her things.
Just like that? Morbier had put in a word, she figured. She hoped he’d done the same for Laure.
“Like a coffee?”
Grateful, Aimée nodded, accepting a cup of espresso. “Merci. What I’d really like now is to find Laure Rousseau.”
The flic grinned. “And I’d like to find the man of my dreams. We can all hope, right? Try Hôpital Bichat.”
THE SCUFFED walls and peeling linoleum of Hôpital Bichat needed refurbishing. Laure, her head bandaged, sat on gurney in the hall outside the triage area, accompanied by a tired-looking flic. “. . . speak with an attorney,” Laure was saying. Her words were slurred.
“Officer, may I have a few words with Mademoiselle Rousseau?” Aimée asked.
“You’re family?”
“She’s my friend. Please!”
The flic adjusted his tie and then tapped his fingers against the metal gurney.
“Bon. I’ll check with the Préfecture concerning the charge against her.”
“What do you mean, charge? Check with La Proc. There’s some mistake.”
She saw his noncommittal expression. Then a flush rose from his neck to his cheeks. At least he had the decency to feel shame. After all, Laure was one of his own.
“Let me find out what’s going on,” he said.
“Where’s the physician on call? Look at her. She needs immediate attention!”
“Bad timing. Several trucks collided on the Périphérique. She’s next for intake.”
Aimée saw the caked blood on Laure’s temple, heard her labored breathing, and noted her dilated pupils. The classic symptoms of shock. The officer moved down the corridor, trying to find reception for his cell phone.
“This is all a formality, Laure,” Aimée assured her. “There’s a mix-up.”
“Mix-up?” Laure’s shoulders shook. Tears brimmed in her eyes. “The technicians found gunshot residue on my hands. I don’t know what’s going on.”
Gunshot residue? Aimée was startled. “I don’t understand.” She had assumed Laure, too, would be cleared by the test. “There’s got to be an explanation. When did you last fire your gun?”
“Maybe a month ago, bibiche, at the firing range, I think. I can’t really remember,” Laure said, her eyes glazing.
It didn’t make sense. Then how could she have residue on her hands now?
“Tell me what happened after you left the bar.” Aimée put her hand on Laure’s shoulder. “Take it nice and slow.”
Laure shook her head. “Jacques was acting strange. . . .” Her voice trailed off.
Aimée smelled the tang of the chemical used in GSR testing and saw Laure’s fingertips, black from the fingerprint test. They hadn’t even wiped her hands off.