Although Mike’s French was poor, he found most of the residents of their apartment building appreciated his attempt to greet them in French. The neighbors were completely unlike the American image of the standoffish and rude Parisians of popular fiction. Both nights they had dinner with neighbors, Margaret brought the dessert. Much of her final week was perfecting French pastries, puddings, and breads.
It was the final day of class and Mike was to attend an informal graduation ceremony at the school. For the occasion, he wore his navy blazer with a water lily tie he’d purchased at the Musée d’Orsay gift shop. It was the same blazer he wore to work at the Sheriff’s Department several times a week. As he approached the school, he saw a man dressed as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec posing for photos with tourists. The impersonator of the nineteenth century artist wore a white shirt with a high starched collar, long gray wool coat, and a bowler hat. He had rimless glasses and a dark beard. The man was sitting at an easel with a print of a French nightclub scene, which he was pretending to paint. Several tourists snapped their selfies and dropped a euro or two in his basket. Mike was considering removing his iPhone from his breast pocket and taking a photo, but he thought it would be more fun if Margaret was in the selfie with him. Maybe the man would still be on the corner when the graduation ceremony was over. He watched for a few seconds and then walked on by.
I happened so quickly Mike hardly remembered it later. Under the impersonator’s palette was a stiletto. In one fluid motion, the man dropped the palette as his arm plunged the knife directly into the area of Mike’s heart with massive force. Mike felt a sharp pain in his chest as he fell backwards from the unexpected force of the blow.
Before his mind even reacted to the threat, the assailant jumped on a motorbike next to his easel and sped away. The attack had taken no more than two seconds, and the attacker was a block away before anyone in the crowd realized what had happened.
A man behind Mike caught him as he slumped down. As he eased him to the sidewalk, the stranger said, “Je suis médecin.”
Mike looked at his chest and saw the stiletto’s hilt standing straight up from his jacket. He felt blood pooling around his chest and spreading to his side and back. Were these his last breaths? The next thing he remembered was hearing the strange sound made by Parisian police or ambulance sirens. His mind wandered, and he wondered if the attacker had knifed him by mistake thinking he was some crime boss or drug kingpin. The next ten minutes were a blur. The doctor checked on the wound only to discover the knife had gone straight through the iPhone in Mike’s breast pocket and penetrated his chest near his heart. When the first uniformed police officer arrived. Mike managed to say the name Captain Victor Granger.
Mike remembered every minute as he was taken to a nearby hospital in an ambulance with the stiletto’s hilt still sticking out of his chest and blood still flowing down his chest to pool at his back. Both the physician who had been present during the attack and the EMTs wouldn’t touch the knife until after an x-ray verified that it hadn’t pierced his heart.
Once the x-rays were taken, an emergency room physician verified that it had not hit a major artery or his heart; he removed the knife, treated the wound, and sewed it shut. By that time Victor Granger had arrived; he’d sent an officer to get Margaret who would still be at the cooking school for another fifteen minutes, probably wondering why Mike was a no show as she graduated first in her class of twenty-two.
Once he’d been tended to, Victor said, “Well my friend, you owe your life to Mr. Steve Jobs.” He showed him an evidence bag with Mike’s bloody iPhone with the stiletto driven through it three inches deep. “If it had been a plastic case rather than an aluminum one, you would certainly be dead.”
Margaret came rushing in and hugged Mike. She was crying.
Victor paused a second before he said, “I’ll leave you for a few minutes, but Mike, I would like to get your account of the stabbing on the record as soon after the event as possible, It’s important that the memory is fresh.”
After Margaret and Mike spent a few minutes together, mostly hugging, Victor returned and took out a recording device. Victor’s wife Camille entered the room right after him and invited Margaret to have coffee with her in the hospital café. They both had husbands that faced danger in their jobs. It was clear that Victor didn’t want Margaret to hear the details of the assault and learn how close to death Mike had come. The blade had stopped only half a centimeter from his heart.
“It’s very unusual for someone who died in 1901 to murder a tourist on the streets of Paris, but all the witnesses agree that the assailant looked exactly like the most famous portrait of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Please tell me what happened.”
Mike repeated the details of his encounter. Once he was over the shock, he assumed that he’d encountered the Park Sniper. The man’s build was similar, and his attempted assassination seemed professional. This homicide attempt had been up close and personal. That was probably because it had been impossible to bring the killer’s Russian sniper rifle on a flight to Europe. It would not have been easy to obtain a replacement in Western Europe, unlike the US where the Park Sniper could purchase almost any single-shot scoped weapon in a private gun show sale. The interview went on for about twenty minutes with Mike repeating things many times to see if he recalled new information. Mike had interrogated hundreds of victims in his long career, and the French National Police used exactly the same process as the LAPD or even the small Coconino County Sheriff’s Department.
After he turned off the recorder, Victor called Camille. She and Margaret came back into the room almost immediately. Victor said, “I do not want you to return to your rented apartment. I will send officers to retrieve your personal belongs. The Gendarmerie Nationale maintains a safe house, actually an apartment, near here. I want you to stay there until you leave on Sunday. After three weeks you’ve probably already seen the major sights of Paris, so I hope you’ll make no attempt to leave the apartment until we escort you to the airport on Sunday. Let tomorrow be a day of relaxing and recovering. I, on the other hand, will be far from relaxed. I believe that we have a murderous assassin that may well be your treacherous Park Sniper on the loose in Paris. Interpol and the French police will be on the lookout, but unfortunately, the description is nearly useless. We retrieved photos from several of the witnesses, but the disguise looks exactly like the Wikipedia photo of the artist. We found the costume, wig, and beard in a trash barrel a few blocks away. We’re trying to trace where they were purchased. If this is the same man who has killed scores in the United States, all Europe is at risk, especially if he can get an illicit scoped rifle. The rooftops of Paris make perfect sniper’s posts as the Germans discovered during the war.”
“Of course, we’ll stay put in your safe apartment.” Margaret had no intention of giving Mike a choice. They had already rearranged their flight to take them to San Diego for their extended coastal vacation. Even if she needed to deplete her 401K to pay for the thirty-day vacation, she was not going to let Mike put himself in further danger.
Mike just nodded. It had been a very close call, and the assassin had been very professional. He’d obviously learned their general location from their Facebook pages before they had made them private. Mike decided that they should both delete their Facebook accounts until this was over. “I need to call my boss in Arizona and let him know the Park Sniper may be here in Paris. The FBI team can check all of the flights to France since the Grand Canyon shootings last week. Every airport in American is now full of cameras.
Victor said, “Of course, we’ll do the same here. I wish we had a better description, but if wishes were fishes.”
Mike and Margaret entered an ambulance in the garage of the hospital. It drove only a few blocks before entering one of those classic French apartment buildings with an inner courtyard. It was a late Nineteenth Century apartment block of gray limestone and ornate wrought iron balconies. The policewoman escorted them to a stairway and up one fl
ight of marble stairs to a spacious Empire-style apartment. She said, “There is food in the pantry, but not much in the fridge. If you’ll make a list, I’ll do your shopping. One police officer will be stationed at your door. You should close the heavy drapes at night so that no one can see in, but in the daytime these sheer curtains will give privacy. There is a TV, but only local stations, no cable CNN.”
Margaret checked out the kitchen and found it was outfitted well. She wrote out a grocery list and gave the policewoman enough of their remaining euros to pay for the supplies. Once the woman was gone, Margaret said, “I think you’ll need to build your strength. It will be fun for me to practice my cooking for you. I’m so sorry I posted all those photos on Facebook before I made the account private. That’s how he found you.”
“Never mind that; I’m fine now. It was just a scratch.”
Margaret grinned at the obvious lie. “Bullshit. Maybe you should call Sheriff Taylor and tell him your lies. Seriously, he needs to know the sniper is probably here as soon as possible.”
Mike had not been looking forward to the call. He felt something of a fool for letting the killer get that close. He’d followed a regular routine of walking Margaret to school, and she had posted photos of the school and mentioned the famous chef by name. Those simple Facebook clues and his adherence to routine had almost gotten him killed. Mike was horrified by what Margaret would have gone through with her husband murdered in a foreign country. The struggle to even get him home to be buried in the cemetery near the house in Sedona would have been a nightmare. Mike had known that he was mortal for over thirty years. Every police officer knew that, but hated the thought that his carelessness might have put Margaret through that sorrow and stress, especially far from the support of family and friends.
Mike called Sheriff Taylor and gave him a rundown. The sheriff also thought it was the Park Sniper. Since he’d discovered that the two Arizona sheriffs were well protected, he’d decided to go after an easier target in Paris. They already knew the sniper had money from the account they’d traced, so a flight to Paris would not have been a big deal. Some indications from his accent indicated he might be a European making entry into the European Union countries easy. The Park Sniper Task Force was temporarily without a team leader. Apparently no one wanted the assignment because the last two leaders had their careers trashed, but Greg said he would talk the issue over with the agents still in their conference room. Airport surveillance in the US was excellent; it might produce some leads. Mike explained that they would not be flying back to Phoenix. They would fly to San Diego and rent a vehicle and wander around without a specific destination. He would stay out of Arizona until he was told it was safe to come home.
When the policewoman returned with the groceries, Mike saw she’d brought a kilo of flour, a kilo of butter, almond paste, and slivered almonds as well as meats, cheeses, French bread, and condiments.
Mike smiled. “Almond croissants!”
“You guessed it my sweet. It was among the most difficult things I learned, but I know it’s also your favorite taste of Paris.”
The Saturday in the safe apartment was pleasant. Mike hurt a little from the knife wound, but it had been nothing like the shot to his leg he’d taken on a case in LA. It took hours for Margaret to make the dough for the croissants, and he realized why the French almost always got their croissants at a bakery. When the first tray was fresh from the oven, he gave a couple to the police guard at their door and put a couple on a plate. They watched the news in French on a local station with Margaret translating. It was clear there was a major manhunt going on for a man who might be the notorious Park Sniper from America. They reported that Mike was still in the hospital and in critical condition after open-heart surgery. Mike assumed the fib was an attempt to lure the sniper to the hospital room where he was supposed to be recuperating.
It was pleasant to have time to themselves, and the day passed quickly. The following morning they were up early for their trip in a police van to the airport. Victor Granger was also there to say goodbye. He also wanted to learn if Mike had remembered anything else about the assault. It was clear that he expected to work all day Sunday on what the local press called the Toulouse-Lautrec case. He looked exhausted, as if he might not have slept since the incident on Friday. They said goodbye and rode to the airport in the back of the windowless van. It did not take them to the main entrance. They drove through a gate and up next to a door, which lead directly to their departure gate.
They found they had been upgraded to First Class, and they boarded the Air France plane early, before any other passengers. Only one non-crewmember was onboard. He was a representative from the American embassy in Paris who would stay with them until the flight departed. Mike was savvy enough to realize this was no attaché. He was an armed federal agent of some kind, maybe CIA. Their nonstop flight to San Diego left exactly on time. Paris had been wonderful until Friday afternoon.
Chapter 24
Margaret and Mike were back in the States. They had turned off the location service for their iPads and iPhones. They were sitting on a deck of their second floor room in Pacific Beach watching the action on the sidewalk directly below their perch. The gentle Pacific waves broke on the sandy beach a few hundred yards in the distance. They saw a dozen sailboats and scores of surfers farther out to sea. Mike was enjoying the young women in swimsuits who were roller-skating along the sidewalk. Margaret was clearly enjoying the young men who were doing the same. They had aged gracefully and remained in good physical shape, but in their fifties, they didn’t feel like joining the young skaters.
Margaret said, “This is nice, but won’t we be bored to tears long before your month’s leave is over. We’ve both worked since we were teenagers, and neither of us could stay retired even in a spectacular place like Sedona.”
“I don’t even think the sniper is on the same continent right now. It might be quite safe to return home in the short run, but Sheriff Taylor was very specific in his orders not to return to Arizona. Most people would love a month driving up the West Coast.”
Mike was not really a beach lover even though he’d grown up and spent most of his career in LA. This was pleasant enough, but an additional month away from home was a strain. It was asking a lot of the neighbors who’d been looking after the house. They already would have accumulated three weeks of mail at the post office, and the neighbors couldn’t pick that up for them. Maybe a quick trip to Sedona to get mail would be worth the risk, but he didn’t say that out loud.
Instead, Mike said, “Maybe we should relocate to the Best Western down in Coronado Island. The tourists are closer to our age.”
“No I’m enjoying this. I never knew how many people had elaborate tattoos until we can see them with almost no clothes. That guy had wings tattooed on his back like an angel or maybe a bird.”
“Those were bat wings. He thinks he’s batman. Didn’t you notice the swim trunks have the batman symbols. See that girl, isn’t that a greatly enlarged Tinker Bell.”
The next day, they made their secret trip to Sedona. They flew to Phoenix on an early morning flight and drove their rental car to the Sedona Post Office and retrieved their mail. They went by their house for some additional summer clothing before driving back to Phoenix Sky Harbor for the short flight back to San Diego. They made it back in time for a seafood dinner with only an additional suitcase and a large bag of mail. After dinner they sorted through the mail, paid a couple of bills online, and caught up on the local newspaper, The Sedona Red Rock News. At noon, the next day a man in a navy blue suit knocked on their motel room door. Mike checked him out through the peephole before opening. He decided the man must be FBI.
“Captain Damson, I’m Agent Howard Schultz of the FBI. I’d like to speak with you about a security matter regarding your trip to Arizona yesterday.”
Mike had on surfer-style swim trunks and no shirt since they were about to have a picnic on the beach. Margaret had a picnic basket in her
hand and a surprised expression on her face. She put the basket down, and they took a seat on the couch while the agent sat on the only other chair in the motel room.
“Captain Damson, we know you flew to Phoenix and drove to Sedona to get your mail and some things from your house. Your house has been under surveillance since Sheriff Rodney was killed. We strongly recommend that you do not return to Sedona. The Park Sniper has eluded the Paris authorities and may have already returned to the States. You’re clearly a prime target. If you needed your mail, you should have coordinated your travel through us, or with your written permission we could have picked it up for you. Your travel has left records that can be hacked, including with the airline, the rental company, and the post office. Several of your neighbors even saw you enter your house.”
Agent Shultz paused before continuing, “Captain, I had no trouble in finding where you are registered. I just had an assistant call the front desks of seaside motels and asked. The San Diego office will assign a surveillance team to watch you. It might be our best chance to catch the sniper; however, that would probably be after you’re already dead since he’s almost never missed a shot. We can’t protect you while you enjoy a picnic on a public beach outside the motel where you are a registered guest.”
Margaret said, “We’ll skip the picnic. Maybe we should drive up the coast tomorrow and stay in a different place each night.”
“Well that might keep you safer, but we can’t provide surveillance if we don’t know where you are going and where you’ll be staying. Perhaps you could stay here a couple of more days and not expose yourselves nearby. There are a number of high-rise hotels on this beach that have balconies. They would make perfect sniper’s nests.”
The Body at Midgley Bridge Page 16