The Body at Midgley Bridge

by Charles Williamson

“I love you too much to ever cancel the trip.” Maybe that was a white lie, but Margaret didn’t call him on it. He continued with a smile, “We’ll have this weekend together in Paris to explore, and I have tons of plans for the days you’ll be in cooking school. I expect to try every bakery in the neighborhood for breakfast before I explore the sights on foot. Of course, I’ll need to walk everywhere to work off the almond croissant’s calories. Next week, John, Sue, and the twins will join us. I’m sure that will keep me very busy while you learn to be an expert in French cooking.”

  “Oh sweetie, I can’t be an expert in three weeks, but I should get better each week. I’m excited. I hate to leave you alone on weekdays, but I’m sure you’ll keep out of trouble. Are you still hooking up with the Paris police for a ride-along?”

  “Yes, I’ll be with them both Tuesday and Wednesday. A senior homicide detective will be showing me around. I’ve exchanged e-mails, and he already knows about the Park Sniper serial killer and several other cases I’ve been involved with. The whole idea of a rural sheriff’s department and the types of crime we investigate is interesting to them. My contact’s English is excellent, so I should learn a lot.”

  Margaret had been improving her college level French for the past year concentrating on culinary vocabulary, and Mike knew she was now surprisingly fluent. She used a computer program that checked the accuracy of her pronunciation, and now she almost never needed a correction. Mike only knew a couple dozen words and was a little apprehensive about getting around Paris on his own. They planned to use the Metro for most of their travel around town, and Mike had memorized a metro map.

  Mike smiled excitedly. “Sunday, I suggest that we go to the Musée d’Orsay and wander along the Seine as it makes it way through the heart of the city.

  They held hands as they walked to their car. They enjoyed a cozy evening at home after their dinner out. It already felt like a vacation.

  Chapter 20

  They had spent Sunday afternoon at Musée d’Orsay. Four hours in a museum was near the top of Mike’s attention span, but the impressionist works had truly been spectacular. As they walked along the Seine, Mike received a text from Agent Goldman. It was the first time he thought of the Park Sniper case since they boarded their flight in Phoenix on Friday.

  The text said, “The new Agent-in-Charge of the Park Sniper Task Force is Stacey McDowell. She has over twenty years in the criminal investigation section of the Bureau and is an excellent choice. I will give her your name and cell number. Have a great time in Paris.”

  Mike texted back, “I’ve heard that Oklahoma City is one of the friendliest cities in the country and also inexpensive, but consider a house with a storm shelter or safe room. Best regards - Mike.” He showed the texts to Margaret and they continued their stroll along the famous river. They held hands as they walked and had broad smiles like teenaged lovers. The city was as wonderful as they had anticipated.

  After a few minutes, Margaret asked, “What will you do while I’m in class tomorrow?”

  “I’ll save the main sights until you’re with me. I’ll probably just wander around and explore our neighborhood. I’ve considered a walk over to the army museum at Les Invalides since you’re not very interested in it. Napoleon is buried nearby.”

  “Armor, swords, and primitive firearms are not my thing. Where will you meet me after class?”

  After mass at a neighborhood church that had been built a couple a centuries before Arizona was a state, Margaret had shown Mike where she would be studying. Mike planned to walk with her the mile to the class each morning and meet her after class each afternoon at four.

  “I promise I’ll be there. I’ll wait in that small café directly across the street. I have to admit that I love the local coffee, and I’ll probably need a pick-me-up after a day of walking around the city.”

  On Monday, Mike had a great time just exploring the center of Paris. He spent two hours at the Army Museum and discovered the nearby Auguste Rodin Museum, which he decided to wait to visit when Margaret was available. He wandered through the Champ de Mars to the base of the Tour Eiffel, but he wouldn’t go up in the Eiffel Tower without Margaret and the family along to share the experience. They had made dinner reservations in the Eiffel Tower Restaurant for when the rest of the family was in Paris next week. Mike knew it was considered overpriced with mediocre food, but the twins would love the experience.

  As he waited for Margaret at the small café across from her school, he thought about the Park Sniper. He was glad to be away, but he still worried about the FBI profiler suggestion that the sniper might come after the three sheriffs who had exposed his crimes and forced the killer to hide and change his appearance. He hoped that Sheriff Taylor, Sheriff Duncan, and Sheriff Rodney had taken enough precautions. Unfortunately, it was difficult to see how to remain safe if a sniper could kill you from thirteen hundred yards away.

  On Tuesday morning at nine, Mike entered the Main Paris Police Station located at 10 Rue Pierre Lescot. He’d taken a cab so he didn’t need to figure out the metro system for the trip; he was anxious to be on time. He asked at the desk for Captain Victor Granger, and learned he was expected. Mike was conducted to the captain’s small office where a tall man with graying hair and a muscular build greeted him warmly in English. They sat for a few minutes getting acquainted and having coffee until Victor’s phone rang.

  Mike recognized a few words of the conversation including homicide, which he’d learned was spelled the same in both languages.

  Victor explained that there had been a fatal knife attack a few blocks from the Basilica of Saint Denis in the suburb of that same name. He asked, “Mike would you like to ride along to the crime scene? If we have time, I’ll show you the Basilica. It’s where many French Kings and Queens are buried.”

  During the thirty-minute ride, Victor asked many questions about the Park Sniper case. He was especially interested in why the FBI had kept the case a secret.

  “It was not an FBI decision. The head of the Park Sniper Task Force of the FBI was forbidden to make public statements by very senior people at the Attorney General’s Office at the Justice Department. Agent Goldman was recently removed from the case. There is a new Agent-in-Charge, Stacey McDowell. She was assigned after I got to Paris so I’ve never spoken with her.”

  “Why would they not make the manhunt public? I saw your press conference on YouTube. You really broke the story with that photo of the killer. The posts and new articles I’ve seen mostly vilify the FBI’s secrecy. There’s also a wide range of estimates of the total number of victims from twenty to fifty. That would be the biggest story in Europe if it happened here.”

  “I have no certain knowledge of the number of deaths, but I assume forty in close to correct. It may be that some people don’t want to admit the administration’s failure to find the killer. Perhaps others don’t mind the FBI being taken down a notch even though the FBI agent in charge wanted full disclosure. It’s also possible that some officials were afraid the attacks at national parks and national monuments would lower total visits and as a result reduce Park Department revenue. I assume we’ll never know for certain.”

  Victor was quiet for a few minutes, before he said, “It could probably happen here, but there would certainly be a leak within a month or two.”

  Mike nodded, “FBI agents don’t leak. They kept the crimes a secret for almost a year until the Arizona cases forced their hand. In fact, there may be a European connection to these American homicides. Both the deputy who interacted with the killer at a rural campground in Arizona and the clerk in the bookstore who waited on him in Flagstaff think he had a European accent, maybe Slavic. He used a powerful Russian sniper rifle, a .338 cal. ORSIT T-5000 for most of his kills. There’s been a lot of speculation that he learned his sniper skills in the army. However, it was not the US Army; that possibility had been fully investigated.”

  Victor mulled that over as they neared the crime scene. Mike saw four police cars and
what he assumed was a morgue vehicle parked at the end of a small alley. He was within sight of a massive church that he assumed was the Basilica of Saint Denis.

  As he parked, Victor said, “The war in the Balkans produced many expert snipers, and of course, all the national armies in Europe have trained snipers. The Russians are especially well known for their skills.”

  As they approached the victim, the uniformed police officer removed the sheet that had been covering the body. It was the remains of a young, perhaps eighteen years old, girl whose throat had been cut nearly to the spine, almost decapitated. She had dark-chocolate skin, and beautiful facial features. Her eye shadow and lipstick flickered with gold highlights in the dim light of the narrow cobblestone alley. Arterial blood spray coated a nearly yellow brick wall and pooled in the cobblestones of the alley. The young woman had been dressed in a tight and nearly transparent red dress. She wore large hooped gold-colored earrings, and she still had her small red purse on a shoulder strap.

  Victor asked, “What do you notice about the crime scene, Mike?”

  “I would guess that this young woman was interested in partying for the right price. I think it would have taken at least two people to force her to bend over and allow her throat to be slit in this manner. I can’t see how a single man could force her to kneel and also slit her throat that deep while he also kept her from screaming and fighting. In fact, if that is her red stiletto-heeled shoe at the alley entrance, I’d guess that two or three men drug her back here keeping a hand over her mouth to stifle her screams. The actual homicide would have taken only thirty seconds for her to bleed out with that massive trauma to the throat.”

  Victor smiled and nodded as Mike summarized, “I’d say at least two men, probably even three, grabbed her and drug her into the ally where they slit her throat. Her purse is still on her shoulder strap and her earrings were not disturbed, so I don’t think the motive was a robbery. It’s unusual for a crime of passion to involve one or more accomplices so I’m at a loss for the motive.”

  “Alas, it will turn out that the motive is one that has plagued the French Republic since the beginning - religion. This is the fourth body of a Muslim girl who turned to prostitution to make a living in this grim suburban environment. This is an unfortunate neighborhood of recent refugees from Africa living in public housing where jobs are few and street crime is high. It’s a different world from the one most tourists see. In this case, we think there is a group of religious fanatics who are executing Muslim women for the crime of prostitution. Of course, the neighbors will not speak to us about it. We’ll send a group of uniformed officers who speak the languages of the neighborhood door to door, but I don’t expect to learn anything. You see my American friend, vicious crimes are not unique to your country.”

  They spent the next half hour at the crime scene, but since the conversations were all in French, Mike didn’t learn much more about the case. After Victor released the body and cleared the crime scene, they walked a few blocks to the ancient Basilica of Saint Denis where Victor proudly showed him around and discussed French history as he pointed out the tombs of French kings and queens. Afterwards they went to a nearby Moroccan restaurant for lunch and then drove back to Victor’s office in the center of Paris. They spent the rest of the afternoon discussing crime investigation strategies and crimes they’d solved in their careers. Victor had an impressive record of solving serious crimes and so did Mike.

  That evening as they had dinner, Mike decided not to bring up that morning’s homicide. Margaret was already a little uncomfortable in a beautiful but unfamiliar city and the woman with her throat cut was not suitable dinner conversation.

  They had stopped at a grocery and bought several types of cheeses, rich French butter, and several jams to eat with the fresh French bread. Margaret was already full from the three dishes they’d learned to prepare on their second day of class, but she’d brought home samples of her cooking for Mike to enjoy for dinner. That began their tradition of eating Margaret’s leftovers for dinner each night after class. They were always delicious, and it saved about sixty-five euros a night compared to a full French restaurant meal. Margaret had found that the classes were too exhausting for her to enjoy much sightseeing after class so they planned to have busy weekends enjoying the Paris sights.

  John, Sue, and the twins would arrive Saturday morning after a night flight from New York. John was an investment banker with a Swiss bank, and both John and Sue had been to Paris. This was the first trip for the seven-year-old twin girls. Margaret and Mike thought it should be extra fun to see the important sights through the youngsters’ perspective. They had bought a guidebook, Paris for Children, which should make it easy to entertain them.

  Chapter 21

  During his second day with Captain Granger, Mike went with the police captain to another crime scene, this time in the wealthy nearby town of Fontainebleau. In this case, a young woman had been assaulted and raped on the grounds of the elaborate palace of the French kings located in the town. The palace and its grounds were a favorite tourist destination, but the victim had been a local girl, the daughter of a French senior official. Since Victor was among the most senior member of the French Federal Police, his boss had asked him to personally head the case.

  The assault and rape had occurred at six that morning while the victim was at her morning run. Victor and Mike drove to a local hospital to interview her. The young woman had a bandage on the back of her head where the attacker had struck her with a rock from behind prior to raping her. Since the conversation was in French, Mike had to wait until they left her hospital room to learn what the beautiful auburn-haired coed of eighteen had to say. Once they were in the hospital hallway, Victor used his cell phone and issued a long stream of rapid-fire orders.

  As they drove to the attack sight on the grounds of the palace, Victor explained what the young woman had described. “She knew nothing of the attack until the rape was almost over. The blow from behind knocked her senseless until she roused slightly after she’d already been penetrated. Her attacker spoke to her in English, but her own English is excellent and his was heavily accented. She didn’t think he was from an English speaking country. She is certain that she can identify him, and I’m sending a police artist to work out an electronic identification drawing.”

  “Did she describe him?”

  Victor nodded, “Yes, as we drive around, keep on the lookout for a man with long brown shoulder-length hair, brown eyes with dark circles, a reddish corduroy coat, and tan-colored jeans. She said he had a gray backpack and smelled like he hadn’t bathed in a week or more. I have already dispatched officers to the train station and bus stops in case he is still in town.”

  As they drove from the hospital to the palace, they approached a small café. It was about a block away when Mike noticed something. It had outside seating of a dozen small green tables. “Victor, there is a man in the back table of the café in the next block with shoulder-length brown hair. I think there’s a grayish backpack resting near his feet. He’s not wearing a reddish corduroy jacket, but it’s gotten too warm for a jacket. His t-shirt has something written in Cyrillic letters.”

  Victor pulled the car to the curb and made a quick call. He opened a compartment in the dash and removed a Sig Sauer Pro SP 2022, the standard weapon of the Gendarmerie Nationale. Victor ordered, “Mike, stay in this unmarked vehicle until I return, and please don’t look at the suspect. There is a newspaper in the backseat. Pretend to read it.”

  Mike did as he was instructed. He only looked up from the paper when he heard shouts. Four uniformed police officers and Captain Granger had surrounded the suspect. The all had their firearms drawn. Two were roughly handcuffing the longhaired suspect. Victor turned and nodded to Mike to join them. Mike walked the block to the café to get an update. As he approached, he saw one of the officers remove a rust-colored corduroy coat from the backpack. Five feet from the suspect, Mike could smell his body odor. He was not responding
to any questions and seemed not to understand any more French than Mike did. Victor switched to English, but the suspect still did not respond.

  Finally the suspect said, in a heavily accented English, “Attorney – Refugee – Asylum.”

  Victor took a photo of the suspect with his iPhone before he said something in French that sounded like a cussword. He nodded and the uniformed officers drug the struggling man to a waiting police van.

  Victor smiled at Mike and said, “I’ll be something of a hero for making an arrest within a few hours of the crime. The victim’s father is the Deputy Finance Minister. I was certainly lucky. Thanks, Mike, for spotting him. I would have turned left at this intersection and not driven past the café. The odds are high that I would have missed seeing him. His passport indicates he’s from Belarus, but there is no stamp for when he entered the European Union.”

  He drove back to the hospital and went back to the victim’s room. She smiled for the first time when he showed her the photo. She was certain it was the same man. After they left the room, Mike and Victor enjoyed exchanging anecdotes about the dumbest criminals they ever caught. When they got back to the city, Victor explained that he had performance reviews scheduled for the afternoon. He dropped Mike at his rented apartment and suggested that he come back to the police station in the morning for an update on the two crimes, the homicide in Saint Denis and the rape in Fontainebleau. Of course, Mike agreed. He went to a local bakery and a nearby grocery to stock up on provisions since they did not plan to go out for dinners.

  When he met Margaret at the cooking school, they stopped and relaxed with a glass of wine before walking to the Rodin Museum for a brief tour. They only had slightly more than an hour in the magnificent Hôtel Biron with its extensive Rodin collection. They decided to return next week when the family was in Paris. It was something they didn’t think the twins would want to miss.