“Nice of you.”
“I’m a saint. Didn’t you know?” Del Rio said, and hung up.
Louis ended his call as well and said, “My friend the graffiti expert will see us once classes are over for the day. Around four.”
I brought him up to date on Sherman’s condition and on Del Rio’s discovery of Kim’s trust account.
“If you can get some kind of alert every time she uses her ATM card, we should be able to track her down,” Louis said.
“Exactly,” I said. “I’d still like to know what they were after-the guys who beat Sherman, I mean.”
“Maybe the same thing,” he grunted. “Some way to track Kim.”
It made sense, and it made me anxious. Even though she’d run on us, I didn’t want to see her end up like her grandfather, with surgeons sawing off part of her skull to relieve the swelling.
The driver pulled over a few minutes later in front of a pharmacy on the Rue Popincourt, a narrow street of trendy boutiques. Louis led the way to the high arched double doors next to the pharmacy and was ringing the bell when I happened to glance at the lower wall. I tapped Louis on the shoulder and gestured at the small red letters.
AB-16
“Looks like we came to the right place,” Louis said.
Chapter 22
I GOT OUT my phone and took a picture of the tag before the door opened and the concierge, an older woman in a smock and apron, looked out at us suspiciously, and barked at us in a French patois that completely lost me.
Louis showed her his identification and spoke to her. She argued for a bit, but then reluctantly allowed us in. We entered a nice courtyard, and Louis spoke again to the old woman, who scolded him in return.
“Okay,” he said. “Richard’s mother’s place is on the top floor.”
As we climbed a steep set of switchback staircases, I said, “I didn’t understand a thing that came out of that old woman’s mouth.”
“Because she’s from Portugal,” he said. “Most concierges are.”
“What were you arguing about? The apartment?”
“No, no,” he said. “About the woman. She says she never saw a redhead come to see Richard here. Plenty of other women, but no redhead.”
“She here all the time?”
“Pretty much.”
“When was the last time she saw him?”
“Four days ago.”
We reached the upper floor. The ceiling of the garret was quite low and we had to stoop beneath a beam to get to Richard’s studio flat. We put on latex gloves. Louis got out a pick set and fiddled with the lock until it clicked.
When we pushed open the wooden door there was a rush of wind. Shredded paper and several pigeons flew everywhere. The windows were wide open. Once we’d shooed out the birds and closed the windows, I could see that the place was less than five hundred square feet and completely in shambles.
Bookcases turned over. Desk drawers pulled out. Files dumped. A laptop computer lay smashed beside them. The kitchen cabinets were open. So was the small refrigerator, which smelled of rotted meat and curdled milk.
Paper was strewn across the floor and on the bed, which had been stripped of linen and blankets save a blue pillowcase. And on the wall above the headboard there was the tag again: AB-16.
Louis picked up a handful of papers and files and started going through them.
I went to the head of the bed, leaned over, and sniffed the graffiti paint.
“New,” I said, pulling back and crinkling my nose. “Past day or so.”
Louis said, “And it looks like he was working on an opera libretto.”
Then he looked confused and went back to reading.
I got down on my knees to look under the bed, hearing Louis grab up more files and more paper. At first glance, I saw nothing. But as I drew my head back to get up, I noticed that a section of floorboard about eighteen inches long was sticking up a half inch or so over by the wall.
I got up and moved the bed to get at that floorboard. I was able to use my fingernails to pry up the board, revealing a plastic Tupperware-style container.
I lifted it out, unsnapped the lid, and looked inside.
As I did, Louis slapped the files in his hand and said, “I sensed at the murder scene that Monsieur Richard had been playing with fire. This proves it. No wonder he got burned.”
That didn’t register for several seconds while I studied the shocking contents of the box. Finally, I looked up and said, “Come again?”
“The libretto of his opera, Jack,” he said. “It is the tale of a doomed love affair between a Catholic priest and a Muslim woman.”
I glanced back in the box, squinted one eye, and said, “Then I’ll bet this is what they were in here looking for.”
Coming over to look, Louis said, “What have you got?”
“The gas Henri Richard played with when he was playing with fire.”
Chapter 23
INSIDE THE BOX were condoms, lubricant, and sex toys. There were also raunchy porno photos of Richard in a priest’s collar having sex with a woman.
In some of the pictures she wore a flowing black robe hitched up over her hips. In others, she was naked from the neck down. But in every picture we found, she wore a black hijab and veil that hid her face except for deep-brown eyes that seemed to stare defiantly into the camera lens.
I took the pictures out, one by one, and set them on the lid, where Louis could see and make his own judgments. When I did, I realized there was something else zipped inside the kind of clear plastic case my mother used to use to protect her sweaters.
“I’ve got the priest’s collar and the hijab here,” I said. “Those could be different women in the pictures using the outfit to fulfill his fucked-up fantasies.”
Louis shook his head and said, “It is the same woman. Sans doute.”
I looked at him skeptically and then he pointed out the evidence in the pictures, and I was horrified and sickened. Setting the pictures back on the box top, my mind whirled with questions and speculations.
Was the veiled woman in the photographs also the redhead Henri Richard was seen with last night? Were these disturbing photos behind the opera director’s murder? Someone in the woman’s Muslim family seeking vengeance?
Something Louis said came back to me, and I looked over at him. “What was that you said earlier about the murder scene being more than it seemed?”
His jaw stiffened. “With these photos, I cannot see it another way now. The whole thing looked highly symbolic to me, Jack.”
“Okay.”
Louis hesitated and then said, “Remember how Richard was hanging?”
I nodded and said, “Inverted, arms out to his side, looking down at the graffiti.”
“Yes, now put a narrow beam of wood behind him from above his toes to below his head, and a second one holding his arms out at right angles.”
I saw it, and my eyes flew open. “An upside-down cross?”
“The cross of the apostle Saint Peter,” Louis said. “Do you know this story?”
Though lapsed, I’d been raised a Catholic by my staunch mother, and vaguely remembered the story. “When the apostle Peter was condemned to death for spreading Christ’s word, he asked his executioners to crucify him upside down because he thought he was unworthy of dying as Jesus had died.”
“This is correct,” Louis said.
“But what does that have-”
He held up his hands and said, “Over the centuries, Saint Peter’s upside-down cross also became an anti-Christian symbol, one that suggested the religion’s ultimate demise, especially among Islamists and during the Crusades.”
“Crusades?” I groaned. “I hope you’re not telling me this is one of those hokey stories that link a killing to some secret Christian society and a valuable ancient whatever belonging to Saint whomever.”
“No, no,” he snorted. “No evidence of that, thank God. I’m just saying that you can interpret Richard’s body position as anti-Christian, and perhaps pro-Islamist. That’s how it struck me at first view, but I had no other link. Now, with pictures of Richard role-playing a priest having sex with a Muslim woman, and Richard writing an opera about a torrid affair between a Catholic priest and a Muslim woman, I’d say we have the link.”