Murder Without Pity

by Steve Haberman

  Fabrice’s head jerked back. His eyes crushed shut in pain. His mouth twisted, exposing yellowy teeth. Bits of food splattered across Lucien’s stunned face.

  “For Anna!” Stanislas shouted in a depth of rage Christophe had never heard before. “For all of them!” He flung down his fork. He tossed his napkin aside. His chair toppled over, as he rose. He limped out before other diners realized what had happened.

  That was the extent of the fight, Christophe saw, a few words, whose meaning he didn’t understand, and a blow which he did. Something had happened to his boss in those few minutes, something he’d never seen before. The man had turned violent. He had crossed a line, Christophe felt certain, and from that moment on Stanislas Cassel wouldn’t ask for any mercy or give it.

  Part II

  CHAPTER 23

  THE BRIEFING

  “Monsieur Minh!”

  A gendarme in bulletproof vest parted coils of wire that looped around the Annex’s perimeter.

  Preoccupied with the bag’s content in hand, Stanislas hobbled past with a perfunctory nod. “Monsieur Minh!”

  Another guard hopped out from his booth beside the entrance and pushed open the massive front door.

  Even before it had eased shut, Stanislas yelled out again, “Monsieur Minh. Quickly. We’ve work to do.”

  His voice echoed down the corridor. Relatives of prisoners jerked their heads his way and hushed. On a bench a man with orange hair rattled manacled hands at him. “M’sieur,” he screeched. “That stabbing was self-defense. Help me.”

  Monsieur, I don’t help. I indict. He tossed his cane onto the table in front of him, startling the gendarme seated behind it. Without any apology, he snatched the pen in front of the guard’s hands and scrawled his initials across the ledger in the tense silence.

  “Monsieur Judge,” the policeman said. “Your complete name, if you please.”

  Stanislas pitched the pen down and closed him out.

  “I’m on the phone,” Christophe finally answered.

  Cassel shifted to a half shut office door to his left. “I need you immediately.” His voice was raw with impatience, and he didn’t care. The pen rolled onto the linoleum. He limped past the table and gendarme, past the crowd and down to the washroom where he banged open its door. Whimpers from behind rose again in misery as the door swung shut.

  A harsh ammonia smell made him cough. A bulb from a tangle of wires above yellowed the walls. Ahead, an opened window crosshatched with wire let in a chill. He bunched his shoulders from the cold as he dropped his cane on an adjacent basin, tossed the bag onto the glass countertop above the sink, and twisted hard on the tap. Water trickled into the stained bowl.

  “I was speaking with Monsieur Vallon. He wants to talk with you about Fabrice and a disciplinary hearing.” Christophe entered and stood just inside the doorway.

  The male prisoner on the bench screeched another cry. Christophe kicked the men’s room door shut with his heel and stepped further inside. “We’ve a new security directive too. This one’s filled with six pages of do’s and don’ts.”

  “I’ll read it later. Tell Officer Leclair to see me in half an hour.” Stanislas splashed lukewarm water over his face.

  “What about these?”

  He glanced sideways and caught a pile of message slips Christophe held. The calls must have come in while he was out. Be absent fifteen minutes, he thought, and you fall further behind. “Hold them for the next hour. I’ve got some reading to do.” With one rip, he brought a length of paper towel from the roll on the countertop to his hands and lightly patted them. “And come into my office.” Not waiting for any response, he pitched the towel into the trash, grabbed his cane and bag, smacked open the door to the corridor, and crossed to his office.

  The DO NOT DISTURB sign on the outside doorknob and the murmur of a twenty-four hour news station from his portable radio were excessive precautions, he knew as he eased into his swivel chair. He didn’t care. The case had become too important to risk any leaks.

  The bag lay discarded in the trash. Centered in the middle of his green desk blotter lay its sole content, a thick folder, whose cover proclaimed the report’s importance in red capitals: SECRET. FOR INVESTIGATING MAGISTRATE STANISLAS CASSEL, PARIS PALACE OF JUSTICE ANNEX, ONLY. NO OTHER SIGNATURE ACCEPTED.

  “A special courier from Lyon just met me a few blocks from here,” he explained to Christophe, seated to his right. “We have movement in the Pincus dossier. A profile of sorts from a further analysis on evidence found in that studio. You’ll work late tomorrow night.”

  Christophe let out a moan. “I promised Suzanne Thursday evening.”

  “Not this one. This is urgent. You’ll type up my notes after an off-premise briefing Officer Leclair and I will hold tomorrow night at eleven. This dossier’s turning at last.”

  “What do you think of that Rudolph Fuchs fellow?” Leclair asked.

  “That Austrian fringe freak?”

  “He’s marginal no more, Jo Jo. Read the latest Der Spiegel. They did a twenty-page piece on his rape trial and found his support growing in spite of those charges.”

  “I got better things to do with what little time off I get these days, Officer Leclair.”

  Who could blame Henri for talking about everything except the briefing? Stanislas thought. He paused in reading the folder’s contents and glanced across to Leclair, who stood a step back from the curtained window the other side of the room. “It’s thirty-seven minutes past by my watch, and Zidi still hasn’t shown. Neither has Marco.”

  Jo Jo shuffled toward the first of the four rows of metal folding chairs at the front of the room, abandoning his friend to his explanation. Leclair surrendered his military bearing with an apologetic shrug. “I’m asking myself the same question. Where are they?”

  “You talked to them personally?”

  “To Marco, yes. Not to Zidi. His chief dropped him into another dark hole earlier this year. No one can get near him on that housing estate. It’s too dangerous in that maze of high-rises. The Zombies control a good part of that project with their drug trade. I did manage to get a signal to him last night, however.” Leclair turned back to gaze down at the pedestrians passing below. “He signaled he’d be here.”

  It’s the fog, Stanislas thought, trying to ease his anxiety. It makes driving hazardous, if Zidi and Marco are driving, and you can’t snap your fingers and expect undercovers to rush to your command. Not like the old days. Not with terrorist bombings and riots that might require their services elsewhere at the last minute.

  He returned to studying the bios Leclair had prepared, one-page overnight wonders the officer with his two-finger pecking had dashed off, each agent’s specialty on the first line, strengths and weaknesses in two columns underneath, a sullen photo head shot paper-clipped to the upper right corner of the sheet, case name and number left blank. Good for you, Henri, he thought. You can’t be too careful these days even with your own boys.

  The nerves in his right leg pinched a dull pain up his back, and he recognized the sign. Unable to shake his tenseness, he clamped both hands on his cane, pushed up, and hobbled over to the window, gripping the folder.

  He peeked out though he knew he would see nothing except the night and its pestilential fog. Two moons of light burned funnels through the rolling mist off to his right at the end of the block. He squinted forward for a better view.

  “That might be our boy,” Leclair said.

  “If it is, he should have parked elsewhere and walked. He’s gotten careless.”

  “Battle fatigue probably.”

  And on my operation. Stanislas smacked the folder hard against his side in disgust as he started limping back to his seat. Jo Jo had slumped into a chair and dozed with his long blue-jeaned legs stretched out. He didn’t recognize the other agent stooped four seats over from that undercover. The youth stared ahead to the blank wall like a shell-shocked combatant. We’re recruiting them that young these days? he wondered.


  The room’s barrenness resembled a canteen for soldiers on leave from a war against terrorism that hadn’t left them, he noticed, whose worsening violence he had seen yet hadn’t seen. And these exhausted would work for him?

  The buzzer next to the red wall phone beside the door sounded two times, then stopped. Leclair lunged left to answer. “Paul speaking. I’m sorry. Gwen’s at Club Narcissus for the evening.” There was a pause. “In that case, try Pandora’s Box.” His face brightened, and he cupped the receiver. “It’s Zidi,” he said in triumph across to Stanislas. Then back to his agent. “Come up. We’re waiting.”

  From a closed-circuit television monitor on the metal table to his left, Stanislas watched Zidi grasp the railing. He saw him pull himself up step by labored step, the first, the second, then the rest of the floors, like an elderly man, till at last he heard the thump thump dirge of the last few steps, then heard the door creak open, and a slight man with a Middle Eastern swarthiness entered. Breathing heavily, he paused to rest. That can’t be him, Stanislas thought.

  “Zidi!”

  Zidi ignored Leclair’s hand. The undercover had brought with him the ghetto’s squalor on his baggy pants and Nike baseball cap knocked awry. Acknowledging no one, he shuffled over to the last row and slouched down. He also brought the slum’s hopelessness in his slow pace.

  Stanislas flipped to Zidi’s page and studied the color photo, dated years ago. It wasn’t the same man slumped in the chair, whose shagginess stunned him. Working without a gun or backup had aged him.

  “I think we can do with what we have.” Leclair had returned to standing in front of the table.

  His plan was falling apart before the briefing had even started. “One moment.” Stanislas once more struggled up. “What the hell is this?” he demanded as he limped over.

  His anger woke up Jo Jo, who stretched.

  “Zidi arrives in a car,” Stanislas continued, “maybe alerting half the quarter. The other two agents are half-dead from fatigue. We’re missing Marco.”

  “They were what I could dig up, Monsieur Judge. Every unit’s thin because of these riots and bombings. I was lucky to get these few. It’s them or nothing.”

  Stanislas thumbed to the last page in the folder where someone had scribbled three names in the margin like an afterthought. “What about these?”

  “Vic ‘the Rat’ Debré works the train tunnels for gang hangouts these days. Bruno Sébastian covers the eighteenth where there’s an enclave of Serbian émigrés. I’ll talk to them when their shifts end tonight.”

  “And Officer Henner, what about him?”

  “He’s now doubtful. He had to rush his wife to the hospital.”

  Seven undercovers at best, Stanislas thought. A beggar’s manhunt in fog where you couldn’t see past your hand sometimes. “Okay, get on with it.”

  Leclair clasped his hands behind him and began pacing in front of the table. “Rules of procedure as a reminder, tired as you are, to make things run smoothly. We’re running a secret operation since you arrived. No notes. No phone calls out and don’t worry. We’ve opened our hot line in the next room should an informer need to reach you about arms, drugs, etc. uncovered. No discussion about this case with your wife or joyful other, should she ask you your whereabouts this evening. You were working late at the office or whatever. No discussion with any colleague outside this case.”

  “His Excellency permits smoking?”

  Jo Jo remained slumped in his chair, Stanislas noticed, his legs still stretched out, his Beretta evident in his left ankle holster.

  “You can smoke your Camels, Jo Jo. No one will consider it unpatriotic.”

  “What dossier is this anyway?”

  Leclair stopped abruptly and stared down at him. “That’s irrelevant, point one. Point two, I’ve asked your various chiefs to second you here for the time being because you’ll be hunting a murder suspect, whose traces the techs found at the crime scene. You’ll put in lots of time on this one—”

  Zidi swore loudly. Jo Jo groaned. The youth four chairs over from him showed nothing on his haggard face.

  “—more pay, naturally,” Leclair continued, raising his voice over their protests.

  The buzzer next to the red phone sounded. Everyone ignored its stridency and glared ahead at Leclair.

  “You’re men of the shadows,” he continued. “You infiltrate. You lull. You put to sleep. And may God bless your treachery, you betray if necessary. Your milieu’s the street, the alley, the housing project, the filth and depravity most Parisians never see. What’s in order here is something beyond your expertise, a bit of forensic science to help you better understand our problem.

  “Every time someone comes in contact with another person or place, something of that individual’s left behind at that place, and something’s taken away with him.”

  “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, an
d 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.”