by Daniel Kalla
Sylvie led Avril into the ornate living room and over to the antique chairs beside the large fireplace. Though it did not appeal to Avril’s taste, the furniture and decorations gave the room a somber authority. And the warmth of the fire and the lingering pine scent from the logs by the mantel helped to relax her slightly. Avril sat in one of the wingback chairs. “I am sorry for your loss, Mlle. Manet,” she began.
Sylvie nodded her appreciation. “It has not been the best year for my family.”
Mine, either. “I met earlier with Dr. Haldane and Ms. Renard. I understand they have come to see you.”
“Twice.” Sylvie broke into a sad smile. “They wanted a piece of my brother’s glacier.”
“So they told me.”
Sylvie glanced from side to side as if someone might listen in on what she was about to disclose. “They seem to think that some kind of exotic water or ice might factor into the goings-on here in Limousin.”
“What do you think?”
“I always assumed that Philippe acquired his illness from the tainted beef. But I have to admit that it is strange how often water, ice, and my older brother come up in the context of the victims of this illness.”
“They tell me that you still have not reached Georges.”
Sylvie’s eyes darkened with worry. “I’ve sent several e-mails, but they’ve gone unanswered for almost two weeks. And I cannot reach him on his satellite phone.”
“Surely his phone or other equipment has a GPS locating chip in it?”
A helpless frown creased Sylvie’s features. “Maybe, but even if they could locate him, I am not sure anyone could reach him in the Arctic storms.”
“Winter in the Arctic, that must be something.” Avril nodded grimly. “Georges is a scientific researcher, isn’t he?”
Sylvie forced a lighthearted chuckle. “What other kind of research is there, Detective?”
“Of course,” Avril said. “I mean, his research is academic in nature. He doesn’t work for the government or industry?”
“Ah, no!” Sylvie broke into a smile. “Georges is a bit of a socialist. He would never work for the private sector. And he trusts governments even less! He is an associate professor with the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris.”
Avril nodded. “And Philippe?” she asked.
“Was a civil engineer in Limoges.”
“Did he have any kind of physical disability or ailments?”
Sylvie stiffened in her seat momentarily. “Why do you ask?”
I am clutching for anything that may lead to my son’s kidnappers! Avril thought. She shook her head, as if it were all idle speculation. “I hear that Georges gave the water to Giselle Tremblay with the promise that it possessed some kind of curative property for her psychiatric…instability. I wondered if maybe he was using the water as a kind of naturopathic remedy?”
Sylvie looked down at her interlocking hands. “That doesn’t sound like Georges. He is very rigorous about his science.”
“And Philippe?” Avril prodded.
“Philippe was born with a congenital hip problem. It gave him quite a lot of pain. In fact, he was due for surgery next autumn.”
“I see.” Avril showed little reaction, though she realized it was far too much of a coincidence that Georges gave the water to three people—Pauline, Giselle, and Philippe—all of whom had chronic illnesses of some kind. “Do you know Pauline Lamaire?”
“Georges’s former fiancée?”
“Yes.”
“Of course.” Sylvie looked up at her with even more concern. “What does Pauline have to do with any of this?”
“I just closed a missing persons case on her. Coincidentally, Georges’s name came up during the course of that investigation.”
“Oh?” Sylvie said softly. “In what respect?”
Avril considered her words. “It was probably nothing, but Pauline’s cousin told me that Georges used to bring her back mementos from his research trips.”
“Not only Pauline,” Sylvie pointed out. “He brought them home for Maman, Philippe, me, and other people.”
“I realize that,” Avril said, “but Pauline has quite advanced arthritis. I wonder if he might have given her some of the same water he gave Giselle.”
Sylvie was quiet for a moment. “Wait a minute,” Sylvie said. “Is Pauline…sick?”
“We don’t know. She’s still missing. There was no evidence of foul play, so it’s no longer a police matter.”
Sylvie looked at Avril with a knowing nod. “You think Georges might have given all these people what he thought was therapeutic water, when actually it was tainted with this horrible prion. Right?”
“It’s only one theory,” Avril said, though her suspicions ran far deeper than the tone of her voice let on. Even if it were true, she knew it did not explain why people were being abducted and murdered across Limousin. There had to be more. Still, she did not want to tip her hand to anyone, even Sylvie. “Figuring out what is or isn’t in that water is not my responsibility. My job is to follow up on Dr. Haldane’s allegation that someone is meddling with his investigation.”
Sylvie ran a hand through her short hair. “Is that true? Is someone interfering?”
Avril shook her head. “I am really not sure. Like me, Dr. Haldane might be letting his imagination get the best of him.” She raised her shoulders and held up her palms as if to say that her heart wasn’t in this, but she was obligated to see it through. “Do you happen to know a middle-aged man—a big man, stooped in posture—and a smoker—who drives an old gray truck? He might be a farmer?”
“A middle-aged farmer?” Sylvie laughed. “That is practically the only demographic left in this province.”
Avril forced a smile. “But no one specific comes to mind?”
Sylvie thought a moment. “I’m sorry, no.”
“And can you think of anyone around here who drives a gray Audi or black Mercedes sedan?”
“I know a professor at the university who has a silver Mercedes convertible.” She sighed. “He is about seventy and arrogant as can be. I would be surprised if he even knows where Lac Noir is, or Limoges, for that matter.”
Avril rose from her seat. After bidding Sylvie good-bye at the door, she stepped out into the biting wind, her mind racing as fast as the air whipping around her. She had no doubt that Georges was handing out contaminated water. Why is he or anyone else so desperate to conceal his tracks? she wondered.
She got into her car and pulled away from the Manet home, following the same route back to the highway along the quiet streets of the town as she had taken before. Think motive! She focused on her criminology fundamentals: Why do people commit murder? Money, sex, drugs, jealousy, fear of exposure, or any combination of the above led to the vast majority of violent crimes. No such motives jumped out in this case. Someone had gone to extreme measures—abducting people and engineering a mad cow outbreak—to hide the truth about the water. And yet, there was nothing criminal about handing out untested, unproven “therapeutic” water; at most, it was ill-advised experimentation.
Experimentation! The word stuck in her brain. What if Georges or others were testing the water because they intended to gain from it somehow? Maybe they planned to publish the finding as some kind of new natural cure that he had uncovered in the polar ice? Or, possibly, he or someone else planned to sell it as such? Mad cow disease would definitely not be an acceptable side effect for a commercial product.
Could that really be it? Avril thought with a quick glance in her rearview mirror. At that moment, she spotted a black Mercedes sedan rounding the corner behind her.
36
Limoges, France. January 20
As they headed northwest along the Avenue Saint Surin, Noah again checked his side mirror. Nothing. He looked over to Elise, who had hardly said a word since leaving the hotel. Eyes fixed on the road, she was lost deep in her own thoughts.
Noah thought back to the scene in the hotel lobby. After he had ended
the telephone conversation with Maurice Hébert, the others—even Javier Montalva—waited wide-eyed, impatient for the news. Noah explained that the brains of the BSE-infected cows had accumulated a fingerprint-like protein not seen in the human victims. “This essentially proves we’re dealing with two separate infections in the humans and the animals,” he concluded. Montalva responded with predictable skepticism and doubt, but Noah couldn’t help but take some satisfaction from the wounded pride in the minister’s eyes. Jean Nantal had been far more accepting of the significance, vowing to expedite the analysis of Georges Manet’s ice sample.
The silence inside the car finally got the better of Noah. “Elise, why so quiet?”
Staring at the road ahead, she said, “It is all so complicated.”
“The prion illness?”
“All of it.”
He wondered if the proximity of Montalva, her intermittent lover, had provoked Elise’s moody introspection, but her clenched jaw and straight-ahead stare discouraged him from broaching the subject. Instead, he said, “You know what I don’t understand?”
She glanced at him. “What is that?”
“If it turns out that the human victims didn’t get sick from eating beef, wouldn’t that be the best possible outcome for your Agricultural Commission? Your boss said so himself.”
She nodded.
“So why wasn’t the minister happier to hear it?”
“Maybe it is….” She sighed. “I don’t think Javier is overly fond of you.”
Noah grunted a laugh. “You don’t say?”
“He is a proud man,” Elise said, rising to his defense. “Perhaps you don’t intend to, Noah, but I think in his eyes you undermine his authority.”
“Maybe there’s a little intent on my part,” he admitted.
“A case of one too many alpha males?” she said with a touch of levity that didn’t last. “Though Javier is far too competent to let his feelings affect his judgment.”
“Then what?”
She took a hand off the wheel and touched her lip. “By nature, he is very cautious in accepting statistics or studies of any kind.”
“You mean he doesn’t believe Maurice’s results?”
“More likely, he doesn’t yet trust your interpretation of them.”
Noah viewed her for a long moment. “Do you?”
She turned to him with utter impassiveness. “You are a brilliant man, Noah.”
“But?”
“At times, I think you let emotions affect your professional opinions, too.”
He resisted the urge to argue. “You don’t believe that we’re dealing with two separate disease processes in the animals and humans?”
“Of course, it’s possible,” she conceded. “But the idea that someone at Ferme d’Allaire stuck needles loaded with prions directly into cows’ brains seems—”
“Far-fetched?”
“Dramatic.”
“Fair enough,” he said. “I wish I could think of a less dramatic explanation. Can you?”
“We need to know more.”
Elise turned onto the Avenue Albert Thomas. Noah stared out his window at the collection of modern orange-roofed brick buildings that made up the science and technology campus of Limoges University. The tidy group of matching structures reminded him of a small Ivy League school. And the association brought a wave of homesickness, not only for his own academic and clinical work, but even more so for Chloe. Gwen, too. With his desire reawakened in the elevator the night before, Noah longed to see her again. Confusion reigned in him. Though still unsure how far he could trust Elise, he found her more attractive than ever. He even questioned how much her relationship with Montalva factored into his own dislike of the man.
Noah pushed the thoughts from his mind as Elise pulled into the parking lot on the far side of the campus. Following a map that she extracted from her jacket pocket, she led them to a smaller building with a sign above the entrance that read GÉOLOGIE.
They walked through the front door into the lobby. The faint smells of science—solvents and other chemicals ubiquitous in labs—drifted to Noah’s nose. Elise stopped a passing female student laden with a bulky backpack and asked directions. The girl pointed toward the staircase and rapidly mumbled something that Noah had trouble understanding.
Downstairs, they followed the corridor to a steel door near the end. Elise rang the bell beside the door. A man in jeans, turtleneck, and Harry Potter–style wire-rimmed glasses answered. Medium height and narrow-chested, he had a small paunch. Long brown hair flowed past the smooth whiskerless skin on his friendly face. He stepped aside to welcome them into his lab. “Ah, you must be the bigwigs from Geneva and Brussels,” he said in the flat accent of Northern England.
“Professor Milton?” Elise asked.
“Assistant professor. No tenure,” Milton said. “Please call me Jeremy. It’s less painful that way.”
Elise introduced them. Noah was surprised by the chilliness of Milton’s damp, bony grip. “Sorry, I was messing about in the freezer,” the geologist said, as if reading Noah’s thoughts.
Noah looked over and saw that beyond the desks, computers, and other gadgetry he didn’t recognize, the far wall of the room was hidden behind a bank of silver refrigerators and freezers.
“I’m doing a study on glacier firn—immature polar ice—kind of a hybrid between snow and ice. Anyway, it takes up a lot of freezer space.”
“You don’t sound local, Jeremy,” Noah said.
“Depends on whether you consider Leeds local.” Milton nodded to Elise with an impish grin and a wink. “Just ask Ms. Renard here. We’re all one close-knit family in Europe.”
Elise returned his smile. “Like any healthy family, we have our differences.”
“Especially mine. I married a girl from Limoges. And I’ve never looked back. ’Course, she won’t allow me to look back. I’m barely allowed to look sideways.” He laughed again as he blew on his hands to warm them. “But you’ve come about old Georges, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” Elise said. “Is he a colleague?”
“Georges? I’m not in his league—he’s world-class—but I’ve known him since our postdoctoral days. Crazy as he is, he’s a mate. And we both dabble in paleoclimatological research.”
“Excuse me—” Elise started.
“The study of climate changes,” Milton explained. “In our case, through glacial ice records.”
“Is Georges based out of Limoges, too?” Noah asked.
“No.” Milton waved his hand away. “He uses our little provincial university—specifically my lab—for storage. He’s on faculty at Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris. With tenure, mind you. La-de-da!” He laughed. “He’s hardly there, either. Most of the time, he’s in the field.”
Milton walked them over to counter space at the back of his lab. He offered them stools, but both refused. “Do you know where Georges is now?” Elise asked.
“Last I heard, he was still in the Arctic on Axel Heiberg Island.”
Noah nodded. “His sister has had trouble contacting him. When was the last time you heard from him?”
“Good question.” Milton’s neck tensed with a grimace. “Been at least a month or two.” His upper body relaxed. “I’ve hardly noticed, though. His e-mails have grown so tedious.”
“What do you mean?” Elise asked.
“For a Frenchman, Georges has quite a sense of humor. Very irreverent, too. I used to look forward to his e-mails, but lately they are all business. No fun at all.”
“Business?” Noah asked, his interest piqued. “About his research?”
Milton shrugged. “Mainly he wants to ensure that his precious samples are okay.”
Noah looked over to Elise and caught her eye fleetingly. “Water samples?”
“Not unless the backup generator has gone out in the last hour!” Milton laughed. “His ice samples.”
Noah nodded, a little deflated. “Did he store any water in your lab?”
“Jeremy, can we see his samples?” Elise asked.
Milton shrugged and turned for the wall. He walked over to the scratched and dented freezer, twice the size of most American refrigerators, in the far corner of the room. He dug in a pocket, pulled out a crowded key ring, and flipped through various keys until he chose one. He slid the key into the lock and opened it with a light click. Then he pulled open the door. Inside, the four levels of shelves were stuffed with clear bags holding blocks of ice of various sizes, shapes, and colors. A light mist of frozen vapor wafted out the open door. “Georges would fill all my freezers if I let him.”
“Why doesn’t he keep the samples at his lab in Paris?” Noah asked.
“When he stays with his family in Lac Noir, this is a more convenient satellite research lab.” Milton’s narrow shoulders shook with laughter. “More convenient for him, not me!”
“May I?” Noah pointed to the samples.
Milton nodded, and Noah reached inside the freezer and pulled out one of the bags. It was labeled with the same blue ink as the one Sylvie Manet had given them and read: ARCTIC, ÉCHANTILLON 0314G3117. No heavier than the ice from Sylvie’s freezer, its weight was still sobering in Noah’s hand. What kind of microscopic monster is hiding in these crystals?
Elise pointed at the label. “What does the number refer to?”
“George had his own referencing scheme for his samples. He tried to explain it to me once, but I almost nodded off. The first four digits refer to the month and date. The lettering has to do with years. Beyond that?” Milton shook his head and chuckled. “He told me it was the only way he could remember where the ice came from, but I think he was afraid someone was going to steal his precious glacier.”