by Cara Black
“The walls have ears.”
The second time she’d heard that in two days.
“Look under the seat.”
Her fingers felt pâtisserie wrappers, a wad of chewed gum, then a manila envelope.
She opened it to find Marcus Gilet’s autopsy report.
“Why wasn’t this in his homicide file?” she asked.
“That’s the problem.”
“What do you mean?”
While Aimée scanned the report, Serge turned off Boulevard de l’Hôpital into the grounds of Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, the largest hospital in Paris, sprawling over a good chunk of the thirteenth arrondissement. He pulled up under a chestnut tree. Set the parking brake but kept the engine idling.
“Toxicology indicates he was clean, no drugs in his system,” said Aimée. The plastic boots were cutting into her calves. “But what’s this . . . Marfan?”
Serge checked his phone. “Keep reading. I copied as much as I could. Got the most important pages. I’ll explain after you look at the photos.”
Black-and-white photos of Marcus’s corpse provided gruesome viewing. The Y incision from his pelvic bone to his shoulders was stitched in rough black thread. The baby face she’d seen in the photo from the pâtisserie had taken on the gauntness of death. “Just a kid. So sad.”
“You’re not looking close enough, Aimée. Hurry. I’ve got to get back ASAP.”
“Zut . . . his fingernail’s gone.” She gasped. “That wasn’t in the police report. He was tortured? But here it says the cause of death was cardiac arrest.”
“Marcus exhibited the classic physical traits of Marfan syndrome—tall, thin build, long arms and legs, thin fingers, slight curvature of the spine, concave chest, crowded teeth, and flat feet.”
“Et alors?”
“So of course the pathologist tested him for Marfan syndrome, which as you know, is usually diagnosed in adolescence.”
She didn’t. Hadn’t gotten that far in med school. Something Serge always forgot. She took out her digital camera, photographed each page as he went on.
“The biggest threat of Marfan syndrome is damage to the aorta—it’s weak and can tear, causing a heart attack. The danger ratchets up with surging adrenalin. Would make sense.”
“What would make sense?”
Serge sighed. Scanned the rearview mirror. “A heart attack. Torture elevates stress levels.”
Aimée cringed. Pictured the hotel room. Had Marcus been tortured there?
“Why wouldn’t this kid give up the notebook under torture?” she asked.
“Maybe he didn’t have time,” said Serge.
“So you’re saying he died quickly?”
Serge took a breath. “My guess? After his first fingernail got pliered out.”
Her gut said Marcus had died with his secret.
“I’ve got to get back,” said Serge.
She wedged her feet out of the boots, folded the lab coat, and left it on the seat. “Why would this autopsy have been removed from the files?”
“You didn’t hear this from me, but someone’s taken a bribe. Makes me sick. It’s wrong. That’s why I showed you. But I’ll deny it if I have to.”
“Who?”
“Someone with enough influence to have this kept in the drawer. The body’s slated for cremation.”
“Then I need to move fast.” She opened the door, glad to get out of the van and away from its pungent odors.
Serge released the parking brake. “Be careful, Aimée.”
She walked, turning things over in her mind. Marcus’s autopsy proved he’d been tortured; he hadn’t died of a drug overdose. Yet how could she use it?
All this ruminating, but what now?
She found herself in one of Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital’s courtyards. Under an alley of chestnut tree branches, she tried calling Martine. Voice mail.
What was her next step? How did any of this get her closer to finding the notebook?
Frustrated, she wanted to kick somebody. Settled on gravel. And realized she was lost. One dilapidated old wing looked like another. This place had been built over an ancient gunpowder factory—hence the name, from saltpeter. By the French Revolution, the Salpêtrière hospice had been home to the mentally disabled, the criminally insane, epileptics, paupers, and prostitutes who had been cleared off the streets of Paris.
Aimée tried to orient herself using the gravel path. Her frustration increased as she passed the Quartier des Folles, where a plaque on the wall described its nineteenth-century use: six hundred “hysterical” women were kept in cells, led on chains outdoors once a day for a “hygiene” regimen of fresh air. Like animals, she thought, disgusted. The women had been used as experimental subjects for Dr. Charcot, whose stable of research patients evolved into the notorious Parisian asylum for the insane and incurables. By hypnosis, Dr. Charcot induced hysteria attacks in women before crowds that gathered for his “Tuesday Lectures.” He’d even experimented with electroshock therapy. She shuddered. The Napoleon of the neuroses and the father of modern neurology, who counted Sigmund Freud and La Tourette among his students.
Among the notable patients who’d been treated here more recently was Princess Diana, whose heart the doctors couldn’t revive after her infamous car crash.
Poor Marcus. His fragile heart had given out on him. Besson needed to know what happened to his nephew.
Éric Besson’s number went to a recording: “You’ve reached an unrecognized number.”
Reason told her a successful attorney with clients, in the middle of a case, wouldn’t have totally abandoned his business. His assistant, Gaëlle, would know where he was hiding.
Aimée hailed a taxi on Boulevard Saint-Marcel. The short ride took forever due to a teachers’ demonstration that had closed off Place d’Italie. Stupid of her. Every Parisian knew to take the Métro or bike in September.
She reached Besson’s office perspiring and hoping the morgue van’s cloying odor hadn’t permeated her clothes.
Before she could press the buzzer, the door clicked open, and Aimée slid in behind the person leaving. From the black-and-white marbled foyer, she could hear Gaëlle soothing a client on the phone. The door to the office was open, and Aimée entered the suite. The fax machine was spewing paper, and the door leading to the next office was also standing open. No voices audible except Gaëlle’s.
“Bonjour, Gaëlle. I need to speak with Éric.”
“He’s away on business. Sorry, I don’t have any other information.”
Not if those faxes from a hotel in Brussels were anything to go by. “Marcus died from a heart attack while he was being tortured, not from a drug overdose.”
Gaëlle’s phone slipped from her hand, clattered onto her desk. Her lips trembled faintly. “I don’t understand.”
Aimée had to get Gaëlle on her side. “He was tortured for Léo’s notebook. Whoever did it pulled out his fingernails.”
She gasped. Knocked over the vase of jonquils on her desk.
“Tragic. He had an underlying heart condition—Marfan syndrome—and his weak heart gave out under torture before he revealed the notebook’s location. A senseless loss. The scariest part is that his autopsy report has been suppressed.”
Gaëlle nervously wiped up the water from the vase with a tissue, threw the flowers in a bin. “That’s illegal. No one can suppress an autopsy. It’s a public document.”
“Moot point. It’s been suppressed. But I got this copy.” She showed Gaëlle the digital photos of the autopsy report. “Éric should be demanding the original and exposing the problems with the police investigation.”
Uneasy, Gaëlle said, “You mean there’s a cover-up?”
Took her enough time.
“I need to talk with Éric. He needs to stop Marcus’s cremation before it’s too late.”
Aimée handed Gaëlle a card. “Have him ring me on this number. I’ll call him back on an encrypted line.”
A hot, fusty Métro ride took Aimée back to Leduc Detective. Her mind spun as she pondered the lengths to which someone had gone to camouflage the cause of Marcus’s death.
Her ankle tingled. So much work to catch up on today, and the morning almost gone. Prioritize. She’d done her part, tried to relay the message about Marcus’s autopsy to Besson. He could handle it from there, she reasoned. He was an attorney; his family was well connected. Not her job to pursue this further.
Fat chance. She couldn’t give up until Martine wrote the article to expose the corruption. Couldn’t give up until she found out how her father really was involved. Merde! Couldn’t give up until she found this damn notebook.
She shivered, knowing that Besson had been right. No one would be safe until the notebook was recovered.
“That’s not the point, Aimée,” said René, working on two screens at his desk at Leduc Detective. He was all revved up about the autopsy results. “It’s more than that.”
She stood, half listening, at the copier, printing out the photos of Marcus’s autopsy report, which she’d downloaded from her digital camera.
“Whoever’s incriminated in this notebook wants it found and—”
“I gathered that, René.”
“Non, think out of the box. Look at it from a different angle. What if word leaked out about what was in the book?”
“Blackmail?” she said.
René shrugged. “Or maybe an insider takeover, someone looking for sensitive information to control the situation?”
“You’re right,” she said, scooping up the copies. “Martine needs the autopsy.”
“Eh, did I miss something? How is Martine involved in any of this?”
Fizzing nervous energy filled her. “If Martine exposes the real autopsy findings, either the Hand or its rivals—”
“Will jump up and fight over the same bone.” René looked worried. “This cover-up shows power. Power to murder, influence the police, and disappear an autopsy. I’m glad you’re going hands off on this. Once you tell Martine, leave it alone.”
Hands off? Not without knowing what the notebook said about her father.
“My father always said the flip side of power is fear. Fear of losing power.”
With a warning in the header, she emailed Martine Marcus’s gruesome photos, the toxicology results, and autopsy findings.
Put in an hour’s work on her paying jobs. She hadn’t even made a big dent in her client list.
Maxence entered with his jaunty John Lennon cap pulled over his Beatle bangs. A flesh-colored bandage on his cheek.
“How’s your injury?” Aimée asked.
“That scratch? Healing fine.” He slapped a file on her desk. “I found a little more about Léo Solomon’s business license. Red flag here—he was working with a holding company in Luxembourg.”
Hopeful, she read Léo’s business history: accountant at the Gobelins office, under the Ministry of Culture, and accountant at a limited holding company registered in Luxembourg. The perfect place for a hidden nest egg for the Hand, beyond reach of the Ministry of Finance. His position had been terminated on the first of the previous month. Right before his death.
“Aimée, don’t get ideas. Hacking into a Luxembourg-based company is no walk in the park.” René shook his head. “For all you know, they’ve moved the money to the Caymans by now.”
“Alors, if the notebook’s history, how will this help?” asked Maxence, after she’d brought him up to speed.
“We don’t know its history,” she said. “But we know someone’s desperate to find it. And that it’s worth murdering two people to them. I think this notebook is the only proof.”
She stared up at her list on the butcher paper. Stood, winced at her damn ankle, and added the names Vauban and Dandin, which had been mentioned in Morbier’s email.
Who was she missing?
Cyril Cromach. As if she could forget who had gotten her time in a holding cell.
“Eyeball this for a minute, René,” she said.
“Me, too?” Maxence said eagerly.
René looked up from his screens. “As long as you get the Y2K analytics in the hopper by four . . .”
Maxence set a file on his desk. “All done, René.”
Amazing, this kid.
She shifted to her other foot. “En effet, someone, in the collective sense, has enough power to derail a murder investigation, hide the autopsy report, hire Cyril—a sleazy ex-flic—to snoop on Léo’s tenure at les Gobelins and derail me by having me held at the commissariat.”
René had turned in his ergonomic swivel chair to stare at the butcher paper. “Wouldn’t whoever hired Cyril be in a report?”
“A Madame de Frontenac.” She wrote the name under Cyril’s. “Let’s find this woman.”
René hit save. Nodded to Maxence. “Up for searching around?”
“Do bees like honey?” Maxence loved this kind of thing.
Aimée opened her Moleskine to the map she’d scribbled at the Gobelins dye works while talking to Madame Livarot. She remembered how her father used to moan that his toughest cases were the ones where the object hid in plain sight—the thing you were looking for often stared you smack in the face.
She copied the rough sketch of the Gobelins courtyard, adding the surrounding buildings onto the butcher paper. Made an X where Leo’s apartment had been located.
“Léo and his wife, Marie, lived here for fifty years. The apartment was a perk for years of service—they were allowed to stay even after retirement. Madame Livarot said Léo had been back a few days before he died.”
“To pick something up?” asked Maxence.
“Or to hide something?” René guessed.
“Not the notebook,” said Maxence. “He gave that to Besson. So something else important?”
“Maybe a copy?” Aimée said. She’d wondered if Léo had kept a backup log; a meticulous accountant type would be likely to. “Or corroborating documents? Worth a look.” She needed to get back to Gobelins to check. But when?
René shook his head. “A good accountant would use a secure place. Meaning a bank safety box.”
Her phone trilled. A number she didn’t recognize appeared. Deep in what she was doing, she let it go to voice mail. But the caller didn’t leave a message. Then the phone rang again.
What if Serge was calling from the morgue? Maybe he’d found out something more? She couldn’t ignore the call.
“Oui?” she said.
“You’re like me, Aimée. Zut, never answer an unknown number.” She recognized the Parisian accent of Xavier from the reception. “I’ve got good news—we have a new foundation sponsor. Can you tell René?”
“Fantastic.” Her neck felt warm. Flushed. She wondered why he hadn’t just called René himself. “Better yet, you tell him.”
She handed her phone to René.
“Perfect, Xavier . . . What? I wish,” said René. “We’re on deadline . . . Aimée’s the boss; invite her.”
René handed her the phone back.
“I’ve got this incredible chance to sign on major sponsors,” Xavier said. “It’s what René and I discussed last night. René pooped out. Can you make it to lunch at Le Batofar, say one o’clock?”
His face floated in front of her vision, and she remembered how warm his hands had been when they gripped hers. She knew something stupid would come out of her mouth if she opened it.
Somehow she managed, “Tant pis. I’m on a project.”
“You have to eat, non? If you come, we can secure their sponsorship today.”
She looked at the clock. “Make it one-thirty.” Hung up. “Xavier’s got this hot foundation sponsor. But I have to go to lunch.”
&
nbsp; “I told you he gets things done. Go ahead. We’ll cover the office.” As she wrapped her foulard around her neck and double knotted it, René looked up. “You’ve got pink cheeks.”
Blushing—when had that last happened?
“So warm in here.” She hit the switch, and the overhead fan chugged to life. Grabbed her Hermès bag.
“I forgot, the concierge asked me to bring up the mail. It’s on your desk,” Maxence said to Aimée.
She swiped it into her bag. She’d read it later.
Le Batofar was moored on the Seine close to Bibliothèque François-Mitterrand. After opening the previous year, it had become a hot venue for le clubbing. Not that she’d ever gone—she was always so tired at night with a bébé.
The sun had come out, shining so brightly on the moving Seine she pulled out her Jackie O sunglasses. Aimée couldn’t miss the red barge with its distinctive lighthouse. Or Xavier waving from the deck. Why did his crooked smile make her insides tingle and her neck flush?
His hands gripped hers. Warm as they’d been the night before. Then he pulled away, embarrassed. “Desolé, I’m like a kid, excited. I just need you to go over their website specs.”
She chucked her bag under the table and sat down. The cool river breeze was tinged with the scent of algae. A world apart from the morgue and Marcus’s remains, just a bridge away.
“Fantastique,” she said. “Who’s the sponsor?”
By the time they’d ordered—salad Niçoise for her, steak tartare for him—he’d filled her in. She felt that connection from the previous night again—that fizz warming her blood. Le Batofar rocked in the wake of a long blue barge.
“Parfait,” she said. “René promised to squeeze time in today to get their name up on the website. But how did you manage this?”
“We’re going to sponsor a contest at les Gobelins, a woven textile from a tag artist’s design. Graffiti in silk—the melding of new art and ancient tradition.”
Aimée was skeptical. Everything she’d seen of the tapestry factory seemed closed off from the rest of the world—no outsiders. “Do you have an in there?”