Murder Without Pity (21 page)

“Locard’s Exchange Principle. Named after Monsieur Edmond Locard, a brilliant criminologist from Lyon.”

Stanislas glanced over to the doorway. A handsome man in a tawny overcoat had slipped inside. Grasping an attaché case in his right hand, he snapped his umbrella shut, shook raindrops off it as though he were the Pope blessing them, swung it in an arc under his arm, and pocketed the room’s key. Marco Gallo, he thought, flipping to the man’s bio. Worked in an anti-pickpocket unit around the Champs-Elysées and other pretty tourist spots. Expert at detecting thieves teamed in threes. A soft assignment and odd man out here, he noticed, for other agents glared at him. Sensing contempt, Marco sauntered toward the seat furthest to the left of Zidi in the back row.

“Bravo,” Leclair said. “You’ve made your grand entrance. Have pity on those who aren’t as informed and let them listen to me. Locard’s Exchange Principle,” he continued, returning to the others. “A suspect’s nightmare. The Forces of Order’s best friend. It can entrap. It can condemn, assuming of course, the crime scene boys do a thorough job, which the second team did in fact do.

“Well, what did they find at this grim scene the suspect briefly lived in? No fingerprints—he covered himself there. But not entirely. Firstly, they beamed a strong white light around the studio they’d darkened and detected a latent impression on the floor directly behind the rocker the victim had sat in. Using an Electrostatic Dust Lifter, they collected dry dust particles that formed a right shoeprint. Its size, width, and type—judging by its sole, used for outdoor wear, for example, in hunting—ruled out the victim. These same characteristics led them to assume, though, a man might have imprinted his intrusion at that spot.

“Secondly, buttressing their assumption of sex and position were two coarse hairs found near that print. Also, despite suffering damage beyond DNA analysis so far, these hairs revealed something: heroin. A trace, anyway, indicating our suspect may use it heavily. Pablo, question?”

“How’d you know the hairs weren’t from the victim?”

The agent seated near Jo Jo had roused himself from his lethargy in a voice whose deepness surprised Stanislas. He thumbed to his profile. Pablo Rousseau. Fluent in six languages. Specialty, sniffing out arms caches from Basque guerrillas. On loan to the Spanish Interior Ministry. Led their anti-terrorist police to 2.3 tons of explosives and 4,000 detonators. Rotated out of Madrid for recuperation.

Pablo knocked off mud caked to the bottom of his tennis shoes and leaned forward for the answer.

“Because,” Leclair answered, “the victim’s hair was corn-yellow in color. The specimen hairs were darkish brown like yours.”

“You’re certain they didn’t come from a visitor?” Jo Jo flicked a mutinous cigarette ash onto the floor.

“For the moment we’re assuming otherwise. The techs found the strands behind the victim’s rocker, as I said. So we think the suspect might have positioned himself there to intimidate or to hold the victim down.”

Jo Jo glanced over his shoulder to Zidi. “He’s giving us lots to go on.”

“Not so fast,” Leclair said. “Remember, he could be a drug user or dealer, and that might help us at some point.”

“We’ve narrowed our target down to half a million.” Jo Jo flicked off another ash.

“Patience, Jo Jo. Our boys found two more helpers. Thirdly, a thread snagged in the doorframe. The fabric’s color and texture—used in a parka, perhaps—didn’t match anything in the victim’s wardrobe, such as it was. And so far, nothing in his friends’. What intrigues us was the thread’s location: at a level a full head taller than the victim’s. Did the suspect brush his jacket against the frame in his rush to flee and unwittingly clue his height? Maybe.

“Lastly, our fourth ally, a spore. The techs found it on the lower right extremity of the rocker’s backside. Which leads us to believe the suspect rubbed a pant leg against the fabric. Where can one most likely find the source region for this charming little creature? In Serbia, where this particular species of pine’s endemic.”

“He’s Serbian?” Marco had removed his overcoat and folded it neatly over the chair in front of him.

“As a possibility, yes. Or he might have passed through that country on his way to Paris. An Albanian drug dealer, maybe. Or Russian tourist. Or what we fear the most, Russian military or one of their paras either of whom might have evasion expertise. Or he might have traveled for whatever reason from here to Serbia and returned. In that case, perhaps French.”

“You don’t know. That’s what you’re really saying,” Jo Jo said.

Leclair ignored him. “Whatever the situation, he unknowingly brought with him this spore. His betrayer, as it turns out. And our dear friend, who might helps us at some point. To our approach. A day-and-night stakeout. Eighteen hours on. Six off from one in the morning till seven. Easy on the coffee; we don’t want you in the toilette half the time, and your moans won’t shorten your shifts. We’re undermanned, so we’re trying to round up more agents. For the time you’re it, and we’ll concentrate you in the most likely districts.”

“Is he armed?”

“He can kill five ways quickly and six slowly, Pablo. Judge Cassel thinks the crime victim, Person A, confronted Person B to brag he had uncovered damning evidence against him and was going to sue. For a reason we don’t yet understand, our target, Person C—with or without any accomplice, this too, we haven’t to date determined—might have followed Person A back to his residence and again for some inexplicable reason, tortured him. This torture caused victim’s death. Target-Person C later might have killed, we believe, Person B for reasons again unknown. This, anyway, is the scenario for the moment so you best assume he’s deadly.” He paused while he took a sip of water.

Superb, officer, Stanislas thought. Nice and vague. He flipped to a district map of Paris in the folder.

“Field rules,” Leclair continued. “If you spot someone with this profile, you’re not—”

“—to arrest him.” Stanislas pushed himself up. This stakeout was too vital to let anyone else explain this part. “You’re not to talk to him. You’re not to confront him. You’re not to do anything that could endanger this operation because if he suspects anything he’ll vanish, and we may never again sniff him out. This is clear? Good. I hope this is also clear: You can be sloppy here, but not out in the field. I’ll have anyone’s head, if he violates my no-contact order.” He turned to Leclair. “I’ll also explain this myself to Debré and Sébastian.” He shifted back to the agents. “What you’ll do is call me immediately. If I’m not available, Officer Leclair. I don’t care the time of day, the day of the week, if your wife’s gone into labor. You notify one of us at once.

“Considering his profile, especially his height and drug habit, finding him isn’t impossible. It’s merely a little difficult. We’re still working on addresses to watch within each district. Meet me here tomorrow at 6 A. M. sharp for that. And remember Officer Leclair’s warning: no gossiping about this case.”

“Your districts for now,” Leclair said. “Marco, your usual seventh and eighth. A reminder: Watch your expenses when eating in any Russian restaurants.”

“Let’s double-team the Russians,” Stanislas said. “Give Jo Jo the sixth. There are several bookstores and libraries that cater to them.”

Jo Jo glanced back at Marco and snickered. “I’ll work with him?”

“We’ll try to team you with Bruno, if we get him.”

And so Leclair and Stanislas proceeded, negotiating and coddling as they parceled out the assignments, trying to balance their operational goal with each agent’s temperament. At the end of half an hour, three of them trudged out, leaving Marco behind until he at last also left.

As the door closed, Leclair arched a brow at Stanislas. The officer suggested what he himself feared. He fingered aside some files in his satchel and shoved the folder in without uttering anything. They hadn’t fooled any of those street-wise agents. Before the briefing, he had thought the case was turning. Afterwards, seeing how few undercovers he had, how fatigued they were, and how little cohesion there was among some of them, he didn’t know what would happen.

STAKEOUT

The stakeout’s first week began unfavorably when Leclair informed Stanislas Monday he couldn’t get Vic Debré. The hope of an added undercover faded Tuesday. The doyen of the examining magistrates within the Anti-terrorist Section at the Palace of Justice informed him he required his operative to shadow suspected Corsican guerrillas and couldn’t loan him as promised. Stanislas had to settle for his small cadre.

To increase his pool of suspects, he chatted with Swiss authorities in several telephone conversations about their Kosovar Albanian exiles. From names later faxed, he instructed Officer Leclair to trace as many of their relatives in Paris as possible.

Pinpointing more members of the local Russian community took less time. They had lived in Paris for centuries, as the officer explained, when late that Friday he dropped off an updated target list that included a cultural center and several Russian cinemas.

After the third week, the stakeout’s topography took shape for Stanislas: long periods of anxiety interrupted by hopeful moments. On Tuesday of the fourth week, Marco phoned his hourly incident report nine minutes early. Not two steps from the Place de la Madeleine in the eighth, he had just spotted a hatted man, whom he estimated a head taller than average, park his Peugeot 605 Executive outside a restaurant and hurry inside. A computer check on the license plate revealed a drug record. That lifted their hopes higher until the suspect emerged, hat now in hand, and Marco saw a thatch of reddish hair, which caused Stanislas to write him off.

By the thirty-eighth day, a Sunday, a testy disregard for rank caused from fatigue settled in that Stanislas detected when they reported. He agreed reluctantly to rotate in, starting with taking Pablo Rousseau’s place, which proved, as he had feared, a mistake. Anna’s memory came to him in the lonely confines of the Fiat. She, clear-eyed about the Occupation and the larger evil it portended. He, closing his eyes to that evil his grandfather had helped create, burying himself in his career until her murder. The mental tricks he had played on himself to avoid that period. Monsieur Lenoir’s first appointment, forgotten? More likely, delayed to avoid contact with a man, who’d lived through the war. Boucher killed during a robbery turned bad, as he had suspected? As he had hoped, he now understood, realizing he had again wanted to wish away contact with that epoch. The target of their stakeout had more likely murdered that man for a reason tied to the case and faked a robbery. Had he unconsciously suspected the moment Boucher strutted into his office the Pincus case was more than another Little Misery? And had he backed off, fearing the dossier would trigger memories of his grandfather’s complicity with the Nazi Occupation of France?

He must stop obsessing, he chided himself, and focused outward to passersby. He couldn’t stop the thoughts. Léon, tortured by at least one sadist, the victim dying with terror in his eyes. Anna, prominent because of the Center, shoved into the path of that metro by an apparent skinhead—with a look of terror in her eyes? he wondered. And he had assumed indifference as the violence rose. He welcomed the distraction of his office when his shift ended.

A beeping made him flutter an eyelid open and glance across to the nightstand. It was Friday night or Saturday morning. He had eaten dinner; he had skipped it. He had taken his painkillers; he had forgotten. He couldn’t remember much in his grogginess. It must be Saturday evening, he guessed, and the damn phone was ringing.

He ignored it and turned his head away from the stand to the curtained windows. The drops thudding on the skylight over the courtyard made the world outside sound cold and miserable. Always the damn phone. He required rest like everyone else. Except that Christophe or the police or some ministry official, sanctioned with his unlisted number, must be calling. He groped across.

Officer Leclair’s urgency broke through the static. Bruno had tried several times unsuccessfully in the last few minutes to reach him on his cell.

“Bruno?” Stanislas asked.

“The undercover built like a lumberjack,” Leclair reminded him.

He must have fallen into a deep sleep, Stanislas replied, and not heard. Good thing the officer had the number to his land line phone; it rang louder.

“I’m with him now,” Leclair said. “He’s found a promising profile. Could you be ready in, say, twenty minutes? I’ll send a driver around.”

Stanislas blew more warmth into his cold hands as Leclair passed him a thermos of coffee. “How long has he been inside?” He unscrewed the top.

“A little over three hours.”

“Anyone come with him?”

“He came alone in a car.”

“Here, Monsieur Judge.” Bruno handed the field glasses over Stanislas’s shoulder.

Officer Leclair had maneuvered the Fiat between two cars in front and three behind so that they had a view across the street. Stanislas gazed past the intersection ahead to a passageway, whose cobbles steamed with vapors. Puddles reflected red from a garish FOR RENT neon sign that swayed in the chill. Opposite the vacant storefront on the right, the H TEL NORTH had boards planked across its doorway. The BAR CENTRALE, fronting the dead end, looked like any drinker’s retreat on any alley-street in Paris except this one announced itself in Cyrillic-looking letters across its poorly lit entrance.

Parked in front of the doorway, he saw, was the vague outline of a car in darkness, making reading its license plate impossible. Squeezed between it and the bar’s left wall appeared the shape of a motorcycle. Was that the one that had nearly run him over? he wondered. Something soft pattered on the other side of the street.

Leclair glanced right. Stanislas did too. A dog trotted past. It paused to relieve itself against a trash bag dumped on the sidewalk before scampering on toward the end of the block ahead.

“See its owner?” Leclair whispered.

“In this fog?” Bruno asked. “It’s hard enough seeing to the end of this street.”