“You scorned her?”
“No, of course not,” he replied testily. “But we had an affair shortly after she came to Paris, an affair that didn’t turn out as she wished, and she does not let me forget it.”
“So what do we do?”
“What any man in my position would do,” Louis said. “I will-how do you say?-gravel.”
“Grovel,” I said.
“That one,” Louis said, digging out his phone again.
He turned and walked away from me, going to stand against the Société Générale building, hunched over as if preparing for blows to his upper back. He listened and then put his palm to his forehead just before my cell rang.
“This is Jack,” I said.
The line crackled before Justine said, “I’m at Sherman Wilkerson’s place in Malibu. Someone broke in and trashed the place. Sherman must have walked in on them. It’s bad, Jack. They beat him. He’s unconscious, bleeding from his ears and nose. Del Rio called in Life Flight. They’ll be here in five minutes. He’ll be with the neurologists at UCLA Medical in twelve.”
“Jesus Christ,” I groaned.
“What do you want us to do?”
I paused, trying to collect my thoughts.
“Jack?” Justine said.
“I’m here,” I said. “Once he’s in the air, and before you call the sheriff, go through the place, very low impact. Try to figure out what’s missing without screwing up the scene. I figure you’ve got an hour before you absolutely have to put in the call. Use it well, and look for anything to do with France.”
“We can do that.”
“Keep me posted,” I said, and hung up, hating the fact that I was eight thousand miles from Los Angeles and unable to help, and wondering if the break-in and assault were connected to Kim. Had to be.
Louis tapped me on the back and, with a weary smile, said, “We’re in.”
“You grovel well,” I said.
“One of my many talents,” Louis agreed. “But it was your name that did the trick. She wants your take on the murder scene.”
Before I could ask why that could possibly be, the officer at the barrier pulled a sawhorse aside for us. We walked to a rear door, where crime scene techs were working and a woman in her early forties was waiting.
Fit and attractive, Hoskins had spiked, frosted hair and wore jeans, a pink blouse, and a brown leather jacket. Her Paris Prefecture badge hung on a chain around her neck. She shot Louis a look that could melt ice, and then smiled at me.
She shook my hand firmly, saying, “Sharen Hoskins. Nice to meet you, Mr. Morgan. I’ve read and heard a lot about you and your company.”
To my surprise, Hoskins’s accent was not French. In fact, I swore it sounded like the Bronx. But before I could ask about that unlikelihood, she turned to Louis.
“You don’t touch a thing inside. Are we clear on that, Louis?”
“It will be as if I have leprosy. No fingers to speak of.”
“Nice image,” Hoskins said sourly. She handed us booties and latex gloves, saying, “Nothing of what you are about to see gets out. Understood?”
“I guarantee it,” I replied. “But I’m a little confused as to why we’re being allowed in here in the first place.”
“You are said to be a smart, observant guy, Mr. Morgan,” she replied before leading us inside. “And I don’t believe in turf wars. Long as I put the handcuffs on whoever did this, I’ll be a happy girl.”
We followed her down a long series of hallways before exiting a door into a stunning foyer, with a dramatic vaulted ceiling, huge mirrors, and gold paint that shimmered in the light of what looked like gas lamps. A grand marble staircase rose to a landing before splitting and climbing again.
Hoskins started up the first flight, and I followed, saying, “Why does this seem so familiar to me?”
“Phantom of the Opera?” Hoskins said.
“That’s it,” I said, looking around in some awe. My late mother had taken my brother and me to see the play when we were boys.
“Where was the body found?” Louis asked. “Richard’s office?”
“Not so lucky,” the investigateur said, and crossed the landing between statues that supported a marble slab inscribed “Amphitheater.”
We went through double doors and emerged in a horseshoe-shaped and lofty space decorated in gold and deep reds. A giant chandelier glowed overhead, revealing the incredible design and sheer opulence of the theater.
“Where’s the body?” I asked.
“I wanted you to see him just as he was discovered,” she said, and barked a command into a radio.
The curtains began to open. The area behind it was shadowed until a spotlight went on above and behind us, throwing a beam aimed into the air ten feet above the center of the stage.
“You don’t see that every day,” I said softly.
“Exactly,” Hoskins replied.
Chapter 17
HENRI RICHARD’S CORPSE hung upside down from a rope tied about his ankles. His white dress shirt had come free of his suit pants and hung bunched up around his lower rib cage. A length of rope dangled from his neck.
Other ropes were lashed to his wrists and held his arms directly out to the sides. All the blood in his body had responded to gravity and had rushed to the opera director’s head. His face was bug-eyed and dark purple.
“Who found him and when?” I asked.
“A security guard shortly after the shift change at six a.m.,” Investigateur Hoskins replied. “The guards on duty last night said Richard arrived on foot at the rear gate at around twelve thirty with an exotic redhead half his age.”
“Why do so many Parisian tales begin with a younger woman?” Louis asked.
Hoskins ignored him and said, “Because she was with Richard, the guards didn’t ask for her identification, and she managed to keep her face turned from the security tapes we’ve reviewed.”
“So she’s your killer?” I asked skeptically. “That’s a big man. It would take a woman of Amazonian proportions to hoist him up like that.”
Hoskins tilted her head as if reappraising me before saying, “Yes, and it would take an Amazon to strangle monsieur le directeur with a length of rope cut from one of the curtains. It appears she had one or more accomplices.”
“Is that fact or conjecture?” Louis asked.
The investigator directed her answer to me. “After the fire broke out across the street, the security guard forgot all about Monsieur Richard and his mystery date. But the tapes from the security cameras at the gate and above that stage door we came through indicate that someone sprayed the lenses with a gel of some kind shortly after the fire started.”
“So the fire was a diversion?” I said.
“That’s what I’m thinking.”
“Motive?”
“None that we understand at the moment.”
“Meaning what?” Louis asked.
“Meaning there’s more to this scene than you can see from back here,” Hoskins said curtly before marching down the aisle.
We followed her past plush red orchestra seats to stairs that climbed the left side of the stage. I could see high above us that the other end of the rope tied to Richard’s ankles had been lashed to a catwalk that gave access to scrims and overhead lights. The ropes that held the opera director’s arms at ninety degrees to the body were tied to light poles at the left and right of the stage.
Hoskins halted just shy of the corpse.
“There’s your motivation,” she said, gesturing to the stage floor.
I came around her with Louis trailing and stopped, seeing for the first time the looping, bloodred graffiti that would torment Paris in the coming days.
AB-16
Chapter 18
I STUDIED THE tag, then looked almost straight up at the opera director’s corpse. Henri Richard’s eyes seemed to stare directly down at the graffiti.