Murder in the Bastille (15 page)

“
Bienvenue à
Mirador,” came a slick media-trained voice at the website. She found the fiscal and corporate structure, how they complied with building codes governing construction.

She hoped René had reached everyone on Josiane’s speed dial. . . . Had the killer’s number been listed? Was that why he wanted the phone? Or did he think the last call could be traced? That thought jarred her.

Of course, if
she
planned to murder someone she wouldn‘t be that stupid. And she didn’t think he was
.
But the attack on her, the similarity to the Beast of the Bastille’s method bothered her. In its very similarity, it seemed
too
planned to resemble the serial killer.

Disturbing. This was someone with access to inside knowledge. Fear danced up her spine.

Draz, the Romanian, might have prior convictions. A long shot. She didn’t even know his last name. Or if he was in the country legally. But checking on the off chance that he had a prior record would save a lot of time if he did. Her father always said “follow your nose.”

What he left out, but adhered to faithfully, was procedure. She’d grown up intimately acquainted with investigative procedure, having done her homework, and lost several baby teeth, on the Commissariat marble floor. Following procedure, if nothing else, eliminated unnecessary legwork—now at a premium, since there was only so much René could do on his own.

She found the cell phone, hit the number of Le Drugstore . . . once the sole all night pharmacy and café in Paris. The worn 70s decor, pricey service, and the location on the Champs-Elysées deterred her visiting. Not to mention the suburban backwash attracted by the seedy glitter.

“Martin, please.”

“You are . . .?

“Aimée Leduc, Jean-Claude’s daughter.”

Pause. He must be checking.

“Call back in three minutes.”

“
D’accord, merci
.”

Standard operating procedure for contacting Martin, her father’s old informant. At least he was still alive and he seemed to be in operation.

After one A.M., despite rain, sickness, or citywide strikes, Martin held court at a back table. He sat near the rear exit, where he could easily slip away.

The phone cabinet, down the tiled stairs branching left from the restrooms, functioned as his communication center. No cell phone, but he brokered information, traded it like a commodities broker. If he didn’t know, he’d find out. Not always a lot, but quality. And worth every franc.

He owed Aimée’s father for saving his skin at least twice. And being of the old school, that counted. Certain ethics prevailed and debts transferred, like a legacy, to offspring. Aimée knew she could count on Martin for something.

She counted to 180 then called the number for the phone cabinet.

“
Bonsoir,
Martin.”

“
Aaah, ma petite mademoiselle!
” his voice boomed, gritty like gravel on an unpaved road. ”Such a long time.
Ça va
?”

She imagined his oversized tortoiseshell glasses, his gray wavy hair combed back, prominent nose, and dancing eyes. A charmer in his own roguish way. Her father always said Martin could have been a first class ship’s cruise director if he’d only trod the straight and narrow.

The last time she’d seen Martin was the day before the bombing in Place Vendôme that had killed her father. He’d furnished information about a gang in the eighth arrondisse-ment. Unrelated. But countless nights, when she’d woken up, she’d wondered if it really was.

The department hadn’t sent flowers when her father died, but Martin had. A bouquet of yellow jonquils. And a donation to the war widows, her father’s favorite charity. Crime created strange partnerships.

“And your dog, smarter than ever?”

The pang of missing Miles Davis hit her.

“Smarter than me, Martin,” she said.

“You need an appointment?”

That was his term.

“Not the usual way, Martin,” she said. “It’s urgent. Thugs evicting tenants in the Eleventh, a Romanian named Draz.”

“You know how I operate.”

He required a personal visit to impart information. He used the phone as a tool, brief and to the point.

“The murdered reporter, Josiane Dolet, what’s the word on her?” she said.

“I want to help you but . . .”

“No disrespect Martin, but I
can’t
come to meet you,” she said. “Logistics problems.” She didn’t want to admit her blindness. Never show a vulnerable side to a thief; it came back to haunt you.

“These days I’ve cut back,” he said.

She doubted that.

“It’s not like before,” Martin said. “The new gangs, new ways of operating . . .”

Paris had plenty of crime to go around.

“You’re the best, Martin,” she said. “Who else knew the Hsieh Tong sliced the bookie in the Thirteenth but you?”

Few penetrated the Asian underworld around Place d’Italie, but Martin had his sources. Even the
flics
used him there. Stroke his feathers enough and he should fly.

A low throat-clearing came over the phone. He slept all day but must smoke two packs a night. She’d never seen him without a lit cigarette between his fingers or burning in a nearby ashtray.

The thought made her wish for that Gauloise she’d shared with Mimi.

“Quality’s important, Martin, that’s why I’ve come to you.”

She heard a low chuckle. “Not that I owe you?”

“Life’s a flowing river, currents combine,” she said.

“You’re so like your father, bless him,” Martin said.

“It’s been five years, Martin,” she said.

She remembered the explosion, searing heat, and crawling on the bloody cobblestones. The charred limbs of her father, his shattered reading glasses somehow forgotten in her pocket. And the emptiness that followed.

“We were set up, Martin.” As always she wondered why. “You know that, don’t you?”

Pause.

“Don’t you work on computers now?” he said. “Gangs in the Eleventh seem too low-rent for you.”

“Evictions, they’re rent-a-thug style,” she said. “East European bodybuilder types. But they must stick their thumbs in other tartes. See what you can dig up. I’ll call you later.”

“Tomorrow or the next day,” he said. “It takes time. I’m an old man, remember?”

She hoped Martin could deliver. Time passed, and she knew, to solve a homicide, new information couldn’t come soon enough.

She punched in several numbers and finally connected with the central office at the Quai des Orfèvres.

“I’m Commisaire Vrai’s adjutant,” she said, “requesting a search on an East European, goes by the name Draz. No surname known. I’ll wait.”

She knew they’d find Vrai was on leave if they checked. They did. Good.

“No luck with your computer?” the voice asked.

“We want to cast the net wide.”

“Searching Draz.” Whirring came from the background. “Nothing.”

“Try entries with D.”

Aimée heard a yawn.

“Twenty-three entries. But there might be more; not all the files have been made available online.”

“Meaning they’re sitting in the Commissariat files?”

“Or moldering away in the Frigo.”

“Any ‘D’s’ in the Eleventh?”

“Right now the only person detained in the past six months with a D is a Dicelle . . . transvestite trafficking in amyl nitrate. Sentenced.”

“Thanks for checking.”

She sat back. The clock ticked. Too bad she couldn’t see what time it was. Why hadn’t she asked Chantal for one of those talking clocks?

The lack of police interest in the attack on her bothered her. But as Morbier implied, if the Préfet wanted things nice and tidy to close the Beast of Bastille case, there stood little chance they’d exert themselves.

Would Morbier help? He was edging toward the finish line of retirement, too. These days he seemed more withdrawn than ever. And Loïc Bellan detested her.

If only she could interface with Europol. She needed a last name. Had to have it. Tomorrow, she’d get René to lean on the architect . . . he might know more.

Meanwhile, she checked in with the answering machine at Leduc Detective. It felt like not just a few days but forever since she’d been there. She accessed and listened to the voice mail. A query for security work referred by a current satisfied client. Nice.

Then another message. No voice. The machine clicked off.

She felt uneasy. Even though she’d canceled her phone service right after her cell phone had been stolen, the attacker had time to find her addresses, home and business.

The third message, her connection from
la Proc’s
office, bothered her in a different way.

“The Incandescent hearing’s scheduled for Monday afternoon at sixteen hundred hours at the Palais de Justice. If your client’s not there, his firm goes on the docket for issuance of a subpoena.”

Merde!

And then she fell asleep. She dreamt in color. Blood-red and tamarind-hued leaves spiraled down from the autumn trees in Place Trousseau. Children kicked the leaves, scattering them in a red-orange whirl, then ran to the quivering gloss-green see-saw. The crooked fingernail of a moon, its out- line burnished in blue, swayed to accordion strains. The “piano of the poor,” her grandmother had called it, as she slipped the worn straps around her shoulders.

The colors pulsed and throbbed; she’d never witnessed anything as beautiful. It grew larger than life, surreal and wonderful. And she didn’t want it to end.

But it did. The colors faded. Disappeared.

Waves of sadness hit her as she woke up.

Then she’d dozed off again, curled around the laptop, with the cursor flashing on Populax’s logo. Better get back to work, she thought, rubbing her eyes and wondering what the bright thing was on her toe. A patch of sunlight surrounded by gray fog.

Her heart leapt. She could see!

She squinted, tried to focus. And the image slowly evaporated into more fog. A fog that shifted and moved.

She wanted to shout and dance. Her sight had returned. A little, a very tiny bit, but she’d seen her toe! It was only when she struggled into her T-strap high-heels that she realized the fog, now a dense charcoal color, remained.

Depression descended over her. Would her eyesight ever come back?

Friday Morning

“WHICH EDITOR DO YOU want?” said the man in the T-shirt to René.

René, wiping his damp forehead with a handkerchief, noticed the man’s stringy hair and the ASK ME ABOUT THE BERLIOZ OPERA button on his sleeve.

Hard sunlight beamed down from the soot-laced skylight. Men hammered and saws whined in the background of the newspaper building.

“Someone in charge of investigative reporting, please,” René said, wishing he knew how to word it better. And wishing, too, that he’d foregone his early workout at the dojo.

“All reporting’s investigating for truth . . . so you could say, they all would do,” said the man, looking down at the clutter on his reception desk.

“How about the city desk?”

“If we had one, it wouldn’t be on this floor,” he said.

Great. Forty minutes of wading through construction workers and over cables . . . for this René had tramped all over this tank of a building and had ended up in Accounting?

“What about the eleventh arrondissement?”

“It’s not cheap anymore, eh, especially around the Bastille, but my former girlfriend lives there and still has a great rent.”

Frustrated, René threw up his short arms in supplication. “I mean articles, an exposé about illegal evictions in the Bastille area, the eleventh . . . who’d edit that?”

The man’s eyebrows arched. “Check with Dossiers. Behind the Archives section, second floor. That’s if they haven’t moved.”

“Moved? Don’t you know where they are?”

“They’re installing new fiber optic lines,” he said. “My phone’s dead. I’ve tried all morning.”

By the time René reached the right desk, his hip ached more than it had yesterday. Was pain cumulative? He gave a small smile to the young woman with black cornrow braids, wearing blue lipstick and a tight, bright blue jacket.

“I need to speak with a reporter about an exposé on evictions . . .”

“I’m sorry,” she interrupted, “those articles come from stringers. Freelancers who’ve established a relationship with us. They turn in the finished work, someone copyedits it, and it’s printed.”

“No internal control?”

“Our stringers know the rules. Of course everything’s run by the head editor.”

“May I speak with him?”

“Give me your name and number. He returns the day after tomorrow.”

Frustrated, René handed her his business card and went to sit on the island on boulevard du Temple. He wedged himself up on the green slatted bench, wondering what to do next as he watched the old men play
pétanque
in the dust. A crowd of bystanders looked on in the dappled sunlight under the plane trees. Still leafy, but changing color to signal autumn’s approach.

His phone rang.

“René?” asked Aimée.

“No luck with Josiane’s editor, Aimée,” René said. “But I left a message, maybe he’ll get back to me the day after tomorrow.”

Pause.

“I tried the last number on her speed dial,” he said. “But I don’t know what it means.”

“Tell me.”

“It’s in Taverny, outside Paris,” he said. “A Dr. Alfort’s office at the Nuclear Commission. The receptionist says he’s out until Monday. But I left both our numbers.”

“Bon
. . . good job. When you talk with the editor, René,” she said, “don’t forget to ask what else Josiane worked on. Maybe she was also writing an article about the Nuclear Commission . . . seems she was active in the Green party.”

“A real socialist-with-a-trust-fund type!”

“Or a woman with a conscience, René,” she said. “I found out that Vaduz died in a car crash near République.”

“Vaduz, the Beast of Bastille?”

“The very same.”

“When?”

“That’s what you’ve got to find out from Serge.”

“But he’s a forensic pathologist.”

“
Exactement
,” Aimée said. “The
flics
are keeping their cards close to their chests. Letting no word out. So, on the quiet, you’re going to ask Serge. And find out the cause of Josiane Dolet’s death, too. You know, what he thinks. Ask him if it differs from the serial killer’s MO.”

“Whoa . . . after my last visit to the morgue, when we came through the sewers, I decided to skip any future ones. Except maybe my last.”

“Please, René, I tried, but it’s too risky for him to give information over the phone.”

“How can I just walk into the morgue and get him to talk?”

“But you won’t have to,” she said. “He’s willing, I’ve already arranged it. He’s lecturing at the musée des Moulages.”

René drew a breath. “The Plaster Museum?”

“Part of l’hôpital Saint-Louis; it’s in the Dermatology research wing,” she said. “Where are you?”

“Boulevard du Temple.

“
Bon,
you’re two Métro stops away.”

“I like to drive.”

“Even closer. Park by the northeast entrance,” she said, concern in her voice. “Your legs bothering you?”

“Me?
Pas de tout
, not at all, doing great, I need this exercise, it’s keeping me in shape,” he said rubbing his aching hip. He lifted his swollen ankle to rest on the green wood-slatted bench, wishing he could ice it. “Don’t worry about me. Take care of yourself.
”

BY THE time René found the musée des Moulages in hôpital Saint-Louis, he realized this was the third hospital he’d been in this week. And a temple of dermatology, René noted, renowned for the treatment of plague victims, syphilis, psoriasis, ringworm, and leprosy.

Built by Henri IV, in rose-colored brick and stone, the walled hospital resembled a medieval internment camp. Distinctive, but less beautiful than the Place des Vosges, his other seventeenth century construction, the hospital had been built to combat epidemics. And isolate the Black Death, the plague raging at the time.

And getting around in it was hard on René’s short legs.

The Musée des Moulages, reminiscent of a nineteenth century natural history museum, would have made Jules Verne feel at home. One hundred and sixty-two glass showcases containing plaster samples illustrating various skin diseases lined the four sides of the huge rectangular room. More lighted showcases were reached by spiral staircases leading to long balconies running the length of the room. Glass-enclosed wooden cabinets held all manner of leprous fingers, limbs, ears and even faces pocked with bumps and lesions. Faded numbers in old script were tacked above each.

René cringed at the life-like portrayal of these diseased body parts. The wood floors creaked and a stale smell emanated from the showcases.

A sign informed the visitor that Baretta, a shop owner in the Passage Jouffrey, who made casts of fruit to display his produce, had been discovered by a dermatology doctor who used Baretta’s skills to document skin diseases. So helpful was Baretta that the museum still displayed more than 2000 of his casts documenting every form of skin disease on every body part imaginable.

Finally, René located Dr. Serge Leaud, full black beard over a rosy complexion, standing on a podium before a screen, pointing at slides. An audience of a hundred or so men and women sat on folding chairs surrounded by the glass showcases. Many wore white labcoats and some, René figured, were medical students.

Léaud indicated a slide on the screen, showing a purplish and yellow lesion. “Here’s an excellent example of the small ulcer, less than a centimeter, another manifestation of the various infectious complications of intravenous drug usage. In this case, an ulcer has developed as a consequence of a throm-boembolic event associated with bacterial endocarditis. Of course, I’m sure you remember the cutaneous ulceration and destruction of the underlying tissue so reminiscent of the profound heart valve damage due to the antibiotic-resistant organisms we observed this morning.”

René suppressed a groan. He pulled the laptop from his bag, averted his eyes from the screen, and did some work.

Finally, Léaud finished and the group of students surrounding him dispersed. René stood and smiled at him. Serge returned the smile, motioning toward a side chamber with a lowered ceiling and even more lighted displays. More intimate and quiet.

“Riveting stuff, Serge.”

Serge nodded. “It’s a little-known killer. In the morgue, we’ve seen only three incidents of this in the past thirty-five years. But last month, an ulcer reached a woman’s varicose vein.” He snapped his fingers. “Bled out like that.”

“Fascinating, Serge, but I’m short on time. Did Aimée tell you . . .”

“You didn’t hear this from me,” Serge interrupted, looking around and lowering his voice. “If you repeat it, I’ll deny every word.”

“Deny what?”

“The Dolet autopsy findings,” he said. “I assisted. Saw most of the preliminary examination. But the final pathology reports take time. All the other Beast of Bastille victims’ autopsy findings, according to the attached police report, were consistent. Only Dolet’s evidenced nothing of a sexual nature. But then, maybe he was interrupted.”

Serge moved toward a window facing a display of syphilitic noses and leprous, misshapen ears. René winced but followed, as Serge tamped the end of a nonfiltered Gauloise and lit up.

“That can kill you,” said René.

“So my wife tells me,” Serge said. He glanced at his wrist, a red Mickey Mouse watch with a EuroDisney strap on it. “A birthday present from my twins,” he said, in explanation.

“We know the victims ranged from twentysomething to fortysomething blondes living in the Bastille. Party types,” said René. “Vaduz waited in the passages they lived in or walked through, slipped in the door behind them, and attacked.”

Serge nodded. “Not the most innovative or original serial killer. Boring but consistent. He did it every time. The DNA was monumental.”

“So what distinguished Josiane Dolet from the Beast of Bastille’s victims? That’s what I need to know,” said René. “What made her different from the others, the serial victims.”

Serge buttoned his pea-coat, lifted his briefcase. “According to the Préfet, we don’t have serial killers in France. That’s an American phenomenon.”

“What do you call Polin and his predilection for slicing up old ladies in Montmartre?” asked René.

Serge grinned. “We called him an old lady killer.”

“So how did Vaduz get released?”

“Technicality. Verges, his lawyer, knows the game. And how to play it after a
flic
makes a procedural error. This Verges, known as a big civil liberties crusader, moves in the lofty Lefty circles.”

René remembered what Aimée had asked. “Were the autopsy details released to the public?”

Serge shook his head, puffing away
.
“Never. That’s why it was so hard to nail him. The
flics
didn’t enlist the public’s help until the last murder. The one before Dolet’s, that is. It was only then the newspapers put it together, labeling him the Beast of Bastille, saying he killed women in the passages. The next day they found him. But no thanks to whoever routed the file to the wrong arrondissement.”

“Like Aimée says, Napoleon’s centralization of the military, police, and administration decentralized their power. But it bolstered his. They couldn’t overthrow him,” said René. “And still couldn’t today.”

“We let Waterloo and the Russian winter do that,” Serge said.

“When did Vaduz die in the car crash?” René asked, as Serge edged toward the door.

“He’s dead, what does it matter?”

“That’s just it,” René said, wishing Serge would slow down. His hip hurt again. “If Vaduz stole the car and died before Aimée and Dolet were attacked, it’s proof he couldn’t have attacked them. Even if he died later, but before Aimée was attacked in the residence, we’d know there was another culprit.”

René had followed Serge out under the colonnades, glad to escape the musty
musée
and its contents.

“She didn’t tell me about that.” He shrugged. “I asked around. The dossier’s been moved. Seems they found Vaduz like steak tartare, mostly raw and scattered, his edges burnt when the engine caught fire. They cremated whatever bits were left.”

René winced.

“Serge, you have to find out,” he said.

How did they do it on those TV shows? They always had some clever way to obtain information. All he could think of was mundane.

“Can’t you find out what time they delivered Vaduz to the morgue? Someone must have logged it.”

He was guessing but in a bureaucratic system one needed a signed, stamped certificate for everything, and even more so in the police.

A breeze laced with damp leaves from nearby Canal Saint Martin wafted under the stone arches to them.

“I want to help, René, but I’m late for the lab,” Serge said. “
Alors,
tonight’s our wedding anniversary, my mother-in-law’s coming to babysit. If I’m late they’ll both shoot me.”

René racked his brain. What could he do?

“Look, Serge, when you leave the morgue can’t you go out the back?” René said. “Through the gate used by the vans and ambulances. On your way, have a brief chat with the drivers, the men who unload bodies. Say you’re just wondering about something and check their log. It will only take a minute, then you’re on your way home. I’ll meet you outside.”

“How bad is Aimée?”

She must not have told him.

“She’s blind, Serge.”

René saw anger in Serge’s eyes.

“See you at five.”

RENÉ STOPPED at Leduc Detective to check the mail and messages. He needed to get some work done, rack up some billable hours, and honor their security contracts. Someone had to keep their income coming in. And he worried, as he had since Aimée’s attack, about how they could make things work now. Or if they could.

As he hung up his jacket, the phone rang.

“Monsieur René Friant?”

“Speaking.”

“I saw him again,” said a hesitant man’s voice.

René took a breath. “Who did you see?”

“Draz, only he’s not called Draz. These Eastern European names confuse me. He’s called Dragos.”

Now René recognized the voice of Yann Rémouze, the flutemaker who lived in the square overlooking Gymnase Japy. And Dragos was the name the architect Brault had mentioned, too.