"I'd appreciate Les Blancs Nationaux's phone records, calls made and calls received," she said. "I want to know who Rambuteau talked with when I was in the office."
"Back up here. Who's Rambuteau?"
"A born-again Nazi who could be setting me up."
"Why?"
She hesitated. "I'll know when I infiltrate Les Blancs Nationaux's meeting."
His eyebrows lifted. "How did you manage an invitation? They don't let just anyone in-the scum level is high."
She told him.
"Maybe you shouldn't go."
"It's a bit late now."
He whistled. "Could be a trap."
"Exactly. Can you get me the phone numbers?"
Morbier's mouth hardened. "Before I do anything, hit me with the real reason you're mixed up in this Stein pot-au-feu."
"Maybe if you believed in community policing and made friends with the rabbi at Temple E'manuel"-her shoulders tightened-"he wouldn't have called me about Lili's shoplifting." She paused, realizing she had to be more careful…what if Morbier contacted the rabbi? She shifted the conversation's focus. "I'd like to see the forensics report."
"Me, too." Morbier scowled. "Somehow it's lost in the shuffle between the Brigade de Recherches et d'Intervention, the Brigade Criminelle, and the Commissariat," he said. "You know, the usual rivalry in our three-pronged justice system. Either of the other two would sooner let someone escape than let us at the Commissariat grab them."
To avoid him venting his frustration on her, she tried being sympathetic. She sighed, "Why don't the branches work together?"
"Our squad car radios can't even communicate with each other. Napoleon's theory of divisiveness still prevents us from ever getting together to overthrow the government."
She grinned. "An interesting idea that makes for lousy police work."
"Supposedly, the feds at BRI have a covert operation." He rolled his eyes.
She could tell he was warming up, testing whether to toss a few morsels her way.
"Far as I'm concerned they're all clowns. But you never heard that from me."
"In other words, be careful not to step on anyone's territorial toes?" she said.
"That's one way to put it," he said. He opened his desk drawer and pulled out the crime scene photographs and a clear plastic Baggie which he dangled in front of her eyes. Jumbled inside were dirt, scraps, and leaves.
"Voila."
She reached up but he slipped the Baggie behind his back.
"My commissaire has become extremely interested in this case." He shook his thick finger at her. "Share and share alike, Leduc?"
He'd make her pay for every particle of information. She bit back her nasty reply. "D'accord."
He pulled out two pairs of tweezers, gauze masks, and sterile plastic bags. Aimee put on a mask. He wiped his arm across the top of his computer terminal, laid down newspaper, and dribbled the Baggie contents.
"Where did your men find these?"
"You tell me." His eyes narrowed.
She remembered the splinters in Lili Stein's palm and the bloodless swastika. "You mean she was murdered in the light well?"
He nodded. "There's evidence of a struggle-forearm bruising, linear marks on fingertips from the ligature, concrete bits under her fingernails, metal scratches from the screws in her crutches. Points to the perp dragging her upstairs."
One hell of a struggle, Aimee thought. She leaned over and smelled the damp earth from a cluster of dirt-encrusted leaves. She gripped the tweezers and picked up a mud-spattered paper strip covered with numbers. Carefully, she lifted a length of variegated-colored wool, then a centime-sized cloudy, plastic cylinder. She peered intensely at each. She left the knobby pink button in the Baggie. Aimee turned the Baggie over, pointing out the double interlocked C's on the button.
"Odd," she said. "Lili Stein didn't look the Chanel type."
"Aha!" He let out a big sigh. "The killer wore Chanel and lost a button in the struggle pulling her upstairs." Morbier poked the chunky button. "A designer murder!" He smiled.
She ignored him. "Assuming that's Lili Stein's wool, where are her knitting needles? Or the bag she carried her knitting in?"
And what about Soli Hecht's name in Lili's knitting, the photo, or the threatening fax? She didn't mention any of this to Morbier, especially since Morbier had mentioned the federal BRI, the government's strong-arm enforcement. She'd figured Hecht didn't want flics involved due to his innate suspicion of them. But maybe it was something else…maybe he suspected corruption.
"Checked the dustbins, public and private?" she asked.
"Dustbins, that's quaint," he said. Morbier made a long face and consulted his notes. "Garbage pickup was that morning and the hotel bin had just been emptied."
She cocked her head sideways. "Which hotel?"
"Hôtel Pavilion de la Reine nearby." She'd heard of this exclusive hotel, multi-starred in the Michelin guide.
"What about this?" She pointed to the scrap of paper in the Baggie. "How near to Lili's body was it?"
"The crime-scene unit noted this was found in the courtyard entrance," he said.
"See the numbers. That looks like a receipt. Let me make a copy," she said. "And I'd like to borrow the photographs."
He nodded.
She took a sterile strip of Saran Wrap, laid it on the copier plate, picked up the paper scrap with tweezers, and set it down. Then she laid another sterile Saran strip over it, put down the lid, and pressed "Copy."
The ripped edge had a number, like the bottom of a receipt. She decided to check the shops near the alley.
"Thanks, Morbier." She eyed a Columbo-style trench coat with a patched lining on a hook. "Yours?"
Morbier shook his head. "I'm on call. Inform me if you find out anything."
"Think someone would mind if I borrowed the trench coat for a while?" she said.
He grinned. "Be my guest, your tattoos are guaranteed to offend every group."
"I do try," she said, donning the coat.
OUTSIDE OF La Double Morte, Aimee walked smack into a large knot of people clogging one side of the rue de Francois Miron. Orthodox Hasidic Jews in black stood grouped among bystanders in suits and jeans.
"Nom de Dieu, Soli Hecht!" she heard an old woman wail.
Aimee flinched at hearing Soli's name.
Red lights flashed from an ambulance straddling the sidewalk ahead. She pulled the trench coat tighter and started running. She made it to the corner before the ambulance pulled away. White-coated attendants slid a stretcher into the back door. She caught a glimpse of a blanketed mound before the doors clanged shut. The siren echoed off the cobblestones as it sped down rue Geoffrey l'Asnier towards the Seine.
Worried, she shook her head as she stood in front of the bronze six-pointed star on the gate of the Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine.
Two men conversed beside her in Yiddish. Both wore the black upturned hats; one was bearded, the other's skimpy suit pants didn't quite reach his white ankle socks.
"What's happened?" she asked.
"Soli Hecht got clipped by the Bastille bus," said the bearded one, switching into French. A Hebrew magazine stuck out of his pocket.
"An accident? Is he all right?" she said.
The bearded man turned to look at her and shrugged. "Hard to say, but they didn't pull the sheet over his head. No panier a salade," he said, referring to the blue van that picked up corpses. "An accident? If you believe it was an accident…" He didn't finish.
Startled, she backed into the stone wall. "But he's an old man…," she trailed off as the men walked away.
The bearded man looked back over his shoulder at her. "Do recriminations ever stop?"
Now, with the crowd mostly dispersed, she saw the blood-stained cobblestones by her feet. A shiver ran down her spine. Lili Stein had been murdered less than three blocks away.