by R. J. Jagger
“The looters’ house?”
“Yes!”
“Are you nuts?”
“Just be quiet and listen because I don’t know how much time I have,” Alexandra said. “All of Remy’s stuff is here, just like we thought. Here’s the dilemma. If I take it, they’ll know we have it and they’ll hunt us to the ends of the earth to get it back. I don’t mind the risk but I’m not going to put your life on the line without your consent.”
Deja stood up and paced.
She didn’t care about herself but did care about Alexandra.
“Are you there?” Alexandra asked.
Yes.
“I’m thinking.”
“Well think fast.”
“Is Remy’s laptop there?”
It was.
At least, she assumed it was his.
“Are there any blank discs around?”
A beat then, “Yes.”
“Copy his files and leave everything else for now,” Deja said. “Whatever you do, don’t let them catch you.”
“I’ll call you in fifteen minutes,” Alexandra said.
The line went dead.
ALEXANDRA ACTUALLY CALLED in thirteen. “Done deal,” she said. “I’m safe, in my car, heading out.”
Deja exhaled and wiped her forehead.
“You shouldn’t have done that without a lookout,” she said. “I thought we had an understanding.”
They did but Alexandra drove by, saw an opportunity and got stupid.
“I don’t think they’re going to know I was there, but I’m going to rent us a place this afternoon, somewhere safe. We need to do that anyway. It’s time. I’ll call you later with directions. What I don’t know is whether—”
She stopped talking.
“Alexandra, are you there?”
No response.
Deja checked her phone.
The connection was fine.
Then Alexandra’s voice came through.
“There’s a car behind me,” she said. “I don’t know if it’s following me, or what. I’ll call you later.”
The connection died.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Day Three—July 14
Wednesday Morning
______________
THE FILES FROM LUC TRICKETT’S LAPTOP had nothing to do with Durand’s client, nor did they provide any hints as to who killed the boxer or why. Durand went through everything twice, just to be sure, before he finally gave up.
Most of the files were porn.
The boxer apparently had a fetish for lesbians.
Young ones.
The younger, the better.
Borderline kiddie-porn.
Is that why he got killed?
Some irate father?
Durand scratched his head and decided he needed sunshine, needed it bad and needed it now. Fifteen minutes later he was at a café table on the sunny side of the street, drinking coffee and reading the paper. All the while, he kept pulling up an image of the woman from De Luna.
The blond with the tattoo.
Stretched out on the rack.
Blindfolded.
Caressed and tickled by strangers.
WHEN THE WOMAN LEFT DE LUNA Monday night, she left alone, and Durand followed.
He had to.
He stayed a good distance back.
Luckily, she didn’t call a cab or get on the Metro. In hindsight, there was no need. It turned out that she lived on a houseboat, a short twenty minute walk from the club. Durand found a private nook in the darkness and watched the boat for an hour.
He rubbed his cock until he came, then got up and left.
That was Monday night.
Now it was Wednesday morning.
HE FINISHED HIS COFFEE, drank another cup, and then took the Metro over to the houseboat to see if the tattooed woman was out and about.
Maybe she was in a bikini, working on her tan, but that wasn’t the case.
The boat was quiet with no signs of life, rocking gently from the wake of a barge.
He strolled down the cobblestone walkway, not more than five feet away, and diverted his eyes to the windows as he passed. The interior was nice, with lots of wood. But that’s not what he cared about. He wanted to know if anyone lived there besides her.
He couldn’t tell but at least he hadn’t seen anyone so far.
That was good.
HE WAS ON A BENCH forty meters from the houseboat, enjoying the sun, when his cell rang and the voice of the client came through. “Did you figure out who killed Luc Trickett yet?”
Durand chuckled.
“Not quite yet,” he said. “My crystal ball is in the shop for maintenance.” He got serious and added, “Some of the girls on his computer were pretty young, maybe under eighteen—maybe under sixteen. But I don’t think that’s why he’s dead.”
“Agreed,” the client said. “Can you draw at all?”
Durand tossed a rock into the Seine.
“I’m no Michelangelo, but I’ve held a pencil or two on occasion. Why?”
“Why don’t you see if you can sketch a picture of the guy and fax it to me, while everything’s fresh in your mind.”
Sure, why not?
He’d give it a try but couldn’t give any promises as to the quality.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Day Three—July 14
Wednesday Morning
______________
TEFFINGER WOKE BEFORE DAYBREAK Wednesday morning, rolled onto his back with his eyes still closed, and remembered the insane sex with Fallon last night. He moved his hand over to be sure she was still there. She must have felt his touch because she said, “You up?”
He was.
“I’m going to go for a jog,” he said.
“I’m coming with you.”
Really?
Yes, really.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll go slow so you can keep up.”
A slight chill hung in the morning air, but nothing like Denver. They crossed the bridge and ran on the islands where the traffic was thinner. The barges and Batobuses were still tied up somewhere in the dark, leaving the Seine smooth. The lights of Paris reflected off the black surface. Teffinger had always thought that Denver was a beautiful city, set at the base of the Rocky Mountains. He now realized how wrong he had been. It was nothing compared to Paris. Being here made him realize how sheltered and uncultured his life had been.
HE PICTURED HIMSELF LIVING HERE, maybe not even returning to Denver at all. Targaux seemed to like him. Maybe he’d find a way to bring Teffinger on board if he lived here and learned a little French. If not that, Fallon mentioned she had connections with INTERPOL. Maybe she could get him hooked up there.
Or maybe he’d join the FBI or CIA.
Or, hell, just float on his savings for a year.
Maybe get out of the crime business altogether.
He could live on the boat with Fallon and spend the weekends with her in the museums.
He’d pick up the paintbrushes again.
Live a little.
See Paris through Fallon’s eyes and taste it with her mouth.
Take holidays in Amsterdam and London and Vienna; and other places he had never been to or even knew about. Maybe he would take a one-year sabbatical from his job instead of quitting. Then if things didn’t work out, he’d just go back, none the worse for a few new experiences.
He looked at Fallon jogging beside him.
So hypnotic.
So sensuous.
So frail.
What would she think of the idea? Would she go for it? She probably would. She had let Teffinger get a hold of her, deep down, and she wanted more—he could tell. True, she was wild, but there was another part of her that longed to be tame.
Needed to be.
She had chosen Teffinger for that project.
He could feel it down in his soul.
THEY JOGGED ANOTHER MILE, slower now, slow enough to talk. Teffinger said, “I didn’t
know you were bi.”
She looked over.
“You mean Sophia?”
Right.
Sophia.
“That was the first time I ever did anything like that,” she said.
Really?
Yes.
“Did you enjoy the show?”
“To tell you the truth, I was a little jealous.”
She tossed her hair and smiled.
“Good.”
TEFFINGER DROPPED FALLON OFF at the houseboat and then headed to the hotel to shower and change. Tracy White’s roommate, Michelle Berri, had been missing for more than four days at this point.
Not good.
Statistically, she was dead.
And the hunt so far had been nonproductive.
They finally got a good look at the DJ last night when he went to the restroom. He might be the caveman, but he just as easily might not. It was too hard to tell with the long hair and the goatee. Even worse, after getting two phone tips early Tuesday morning, they dried up. Not a single additional call came in yesterday, even though the caveman’s sketch had been broadcast on every TV channel both in the afternoon and the evening.
They better come up with something real brilliant, real fast.
Meaning today.
WHEN HE SWUNG BACK to the houseboat to pick up Fallon, something was visibly wrong.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
She sat down on the couch, got lost momentarily in thought, and said, “I did it. I shouldn’t be surprised. I knew I was going to do it, but now that it’s actually done, it feels a lot more serious than I expected.”
Teffinger had a pretty good idea what she was talking about but needed to be sure.
“Did what?” he asked.
“Someone called the office and said he was with INTERPOL,” Fallon said. “He said they might have a similar eyes-gouged-out case in Greece and wanted to talk to the Paris witness, the one who gave the sketch that’s all over the news. The office patched that call through to me, but didn’t give the guy my name, which is standard protocol. I told the guy that the witness was someone named Fallon Le Rue, where she lived and her phone number, my land line, not my cell. He said, Thanks. I waited for ten minutes and didn’t get a call. Then I phoned one of my contacts at INTERPOL and asked her if they were working on a case in Greece.” She paused, looked Teffinger in the eyes and said, “They aren’t.”
“So he did the exact same thing he did in Denver,” Teffinger said.
Fallon nodded.
“The bait is set,” she said. “And I’m it.”
Her lips trembled.
She stood up and hugged Teffinger tight.
Teffinger hugged her back and cursed himself for ever coming up with such a stupid idea.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Day Three—July 14
Wednesday Afternoon
______________
THE VEHICLE BEHIND ALEXANDRA followed for five kilometers before it mysteriously veered off and disappeared. Alexandra immediately called Deja and said, “I think it was them, there were two guys in the car. They must have seen me leaving and thought I took their files. My guess is that while they were keeping me in sight, someone else went through the house, didn’t find anything missing and then called them up and said to abort. In hindsight, it’s a good thing I didn’t take anything; otherwise I’d be dead right now. That means that’s the second time you saved my life.”
“Yeah, well, return the favor someday.”
Alexandra exhaled.
“Hopefully I’ll never get the chance. I’m going to zigzag around until I’m positive they’re gone. Then I’m going to rent a hotel room and see what’s on Remy’s disk.”
“Pay cash,” Deja said.
“Huh?”
“For the hotel room, pay cash instead of using a credit card. We don’t know how sophisticated these people are.”
Right.
Cash.
Good idea.
ALEXANDRA PICKED DEJA UP at the end of the day. They took the Metro into the Invalides and Eiffel Tower Quarter where they got on a Batobus. That took them up the Seine, across from the Ile St. Louis, where they got off and walked north on Rue Vieille Du Temple into the boutiques, cafes, art galleries and narrow streets of the Marais district in the northeast corner of Paris, a high-rent trendy place.
Deja knew the area well.
A couple of gay friends lived on Rue St. Giles.
The hotel room was nice.
Too nice.
Deja must have had a look in her eyes because Alexandra said, “Relax. The government’s paying for it. We deserve a little luxury after spending a night on the grass. I’ve been studying Remy’s disk all day. Like I said before, there was no map in there. I did a search to find all files that had been generated or updated in the last six months, after the tomb was discovered. Most of those files were just cryptic notes—lists of things to do and stuff like that. But as I started to go through them, I think I figured out what Remy’s theory was.”
Deja pulled off her shoes, flopped down on the bed and stretched out.
“So what was it?”
ALEXANDRA PULLED THE CURTAINS SHUT. “Just in case,” she said. “Remy’s theory—if I’m piecing it together right—was that a wealthy man orchestrated the robbery of the tomb.”
Deja wrinkled her brow, confused.
“Why would he think that?” she questioned. “I would think just the opposite, namely that a pack of lowlife thieves did it.”
“First of all, what a lot of laypeople don’t appreciate is that it wasn’t just royalty who mummified the dead,” Alexandra said. “Private citizens did too, but only the wealthy ones, because only they could afford it. Mummification was the way to ensure the transformation from death to immortality. Private persons had just as much desire as royalty did to see the ones they loved live forever.”
That made sense; perfect sense actually.
“Remy’s theory appears to be that there was a death in the family of a wealthy private person very close in time to the death of the pharaoh. Probably a son. To maximize the chances for the son’s immortality, the wealthy man employed the services of several men—probably his servants—to rob the tomb of the pharaoh. Then he included those items in the mummification of his son.”
Deja scratched her head.
“So if we figure out who this wealthy man was, and where he buried his son, then we have our treasure.”
Alexandra nodded.
“If it’s true that Remy had a map,” she said, “it must show the location of the son’s burial site. Somehow Remy figured out who the man was and where his son was buried. Unfortunately, those matters aren’t discussed in any of his computer files. What we need to do is get our hands on the source documents that Remy was studying before he died. That’s how he got his answers and that’s how we’ll get ours.”
Deja sat up and cocked her head.
“The looters have those,” she said.
Yes, they did.
“Which means we need to get back into that house,” Alexandra said.
“You’re kidding, right?”
No.
She wasn’t.
“Tonight,” she added.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Day Three—July 14
Wednesday Afternoon
______________
MARCEL DURAND DIDN’T HAVE A LOT OF FRIENDS. Not because he couldn’t, but because he didn’t want them or need them. He had his P.I. work and his money. People who weren’t his clients or critical to his investigations were, for the most part, baggage that didn’t do much except clutter up his life. He did, however, tolerate a few people.
Anton Fornier was one of them; taxi driver in the day, a hitman at night, a man with a slight caveman edge.
Durand spotted him parked outside the Hotel de Sille, wandered over, stuck his head in the window and said, “They need better security around here. Even people from prehistoric times are getting in.�
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Anton looked up, ready for confrontation, but the corner of his mouth turned up ever so slightly when he saw who it was. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “It’s been—how long?—two or three years?”
“At least,” Durand said. “You whacked the beard off. I wouldn’t have recognized you if it hadn’t been for the cab.”
They chatted while Anton waited for his fare. Then Durand lowered his voice and asked the question he was curious about, “So, how’s the contract business?”
Anton’s eyes darted, as if searching for cops.
Then he said, “It’s been slow, actually. I’ve got one on the horizon though, as soon as they can figure out the target’s name.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means they know they’re going to kill him, but haven’t figured out who he is yet,” Anton said.
“Why? What’d the guy do?”
“He killed a woman,” Anton said. “He put a plastic bag over her head and duct-taped it around her neck. Then he sat back and watched the air run out.”
Durand pictured it and said, “Nice guy.”
Anton made a face and grunted.
Madonna’s “Like A Prayer” came from a parked car.
The fare shuffled out of the hotel wrestling with two suitcases. Anton popped the trunk, stepped out and ran over to assist, wearing his best smile, already posturing for the tip. Durand waved goodbye, headed across the street and shouted over his shoulder, “Give me a call when you feel like getting drunk.”
Anton looked up and chuckled.
“That’s every five minutes,” he shouted back.
The fare—an elderly woman—froze.
Anton took the suitcase out of her hand, put it in the trunk and said, “I’m just messing around. You’re fine.” When the worry washed off the woman’s face, Anton slammed the lid, held the door open for her and said, “I’m not a drunk. I’m actually a killer.”
She looked stunned.