Murder in the Marais

by Black, Cara

  Solange nodded at her, then disappeared behind the rear door. Aimee heard the click of the front doors closing and quickly scanned the security system. Security monitors showed Annick Sausotte striding to the narrow street and Solange signing a clipboard, handing it back to a uniformed driver, and then turning towards the camera. Then Aimee couldn’t see her anymore.

  She pulled open drawers until she found the one with plastic identification cards. Underneath were several passkeys and Aimee grabbed all of them, sticking them into her pocket. Aimee stepped inside the partially open door of Annick Sausotte’s office. She figured she could stay in the office until closing time, which would be in about ten minutes. Aimee had just kicked off her achingly high heels and crumpled into the tubular chair when she heard Solange’s voice.

  “Annick, did you forget something?” she said.

  Aimee looked over and saw a bulging briefcase on Annick’s desk. She realized there was no closet and the desk offered no hiding place. The only other piece of furniture, an antique black-lacquered armoire, stood delicate and three-legged. She opened it to find it full of fragile porcelain.

  Nowhere to hide.

  She heard Annick’s voice as a phone rang. “It’s on my desk. I’ll get this call.”

  Aimee grabbed her heels and flattened herself behind the door. As Solange walked to the desk, Aimee pulled slowly on the door, almost covering herself behind it.

  Solange had picked up the case and turned to leave when Annick said, “Solange, look for that press packet on the deportation monument, will you? Second or third drawer of my desk.”

  She couldn’t see Solange but prayed that she’d find it. Quickly. Her nose itched. Unfortunately, her hands gripped her heels and she couldn’t pinch her nose shut without banging the door.

  She heard Solange rooting through the desk, rustling papers. “I can’t find it. Which drawer?”

  She tried pushing her nose against the wooden door to stop her sneeze but that only pushed it open more. She was just about to explode when Annick called out, “I found it.”

  Solange strode out of the room, banging the door shut behind her. Aimee dropped her heels on the carpet at the same time, muffling her sneeze with two hands as best she could. From behind the closed door came low conversation then silence.

  While she slipped her heels back on, she dialed Leah’s number at the button factory

  “Leah, how is Sarah?”

  Leah’s voice answered in a low, conspiratorial tone. “At last check, all’s well.”

  “How long ago did you check, Leah?” Aimee asked. “Our guest rates among the nervous variety. Probably could use company.”

  “Looked in a few hours ago,” Leah said. “I’m closing up so I’ll check. There’s a Gruyère souffle with a caper tapenade relish in the oven….”

  Aimee realized she hadn’t eaten yet today. “Sounds wonderful. I’ll be tied up a while, so please reassure her. I’ll call you back.”

  Soli Hecht’s foundation on the fifth floor resided in what had been poetically called a garret in the last century. The plaque outside his office stated in bronze that Chopin had died in here, consumptive, penniless, and behind in the rent. Now it consisted of whitewashed rooms with slanted eaves and rectangular windows. White particle board ringed the office with continuous counter and shelving space. Several computers sat near a state-of-the-art copy machine and white metal file cabinets took up the remaining space.

  The general antiseptic impression was marred by the photo covering a whole wall. A small child’s foot hung out of a crematorium oven next to piles of ashes with smiling uniformed Gestapo members poking it with their riding crops. Bold letters below said NEVER FORGET…

  Aimee’s stomach lurched, but she forced herself to stay. She sat down at the nearest flashing computer terminal. She leaned her head against the screen, but still the photo wouldn’t go away. What about that little foot? The mother who’d washed it, the father who’d tickled it, the grandmother who’d knitted socks for it, the grandfather who’d hoisted it on his shoulders? Probably all gone. Generations gone. Only ghosts remained.

  So Soli Hecht reminded himself of why he worked here, Aimee realized. As if he needed the motivation, being a survivor of Treblinka himself. She started punching keys, playing with possible passwords to access Soli’s hard drive. She considered the possibility of the attic effect, that all data storage survives on the hard drive. A user, like Hecht, would think he’d erased information by deleting it. But nothing ever went away. All written code was routed through the computer hardware and lodged in there somewhere, something she was paid well to find in her computer forensic investigations.

  She discovered the password Shoah and found the terminals in Soli’s foundation linked with the center’s system downstairs and rubbed her hands excitedly. Methodically, she began accessing the hard drive, checking both data banks for Lili’s name.

  Soli’s last computer activity was dated Friday, the day of his accident, two days after Lili’s murder. No files had been opened or new files added. As she read his E-mail she grew disappointed. There was only a brief message from the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Where would Soli’s floppy backup disks be?

  The locked file cabinets yielded to a wiggling paperclip and Aimee searched, keeping her gaze averted from the photo. Hundreds of pages of testimony from survivors about Klaus Barbie, the “Butcher of Lyon” which Soli had successfully documented. Aimee kicked the nearest cabinet; nothing newer than 1987. Baffled, Aimee began a systematic search of the whitewashed rooms. She emptied the files and took the file cabinets apart, checked under the computer for anything taped to its underside, and checked the carpet seams. Three hours later she remained thwarted. Nothing. Not even one floppy disk.

  Something to do with Lili had to be here, she felt it. Would Soli have taken it with him? Even if he had, he’d have a copy or backup disk. At times like this, Aimee knew it was best to walk away and come back with a fresh eye to catch something she might have overlooked. She decided to go downstairs and check the center’s microfiche file for cheat sheets from the Occupation.

  The third-floor library system was clear, concise, and immaculately cross-referenced. Microfiche files of Jewish newspapers and bulletins rolled before her eyes.

  An hour later, she found the old grainy photo with a brief article, “Non Plus Froid”:

  Students at the lycee on rue du Plâtre demonstrate patriotism for our French workers in Germany. This wool drive contributes to keeping our men warm this winter.

  She saw Sarah and Lili, yellow stars embroidered on their dresses, standing by piles of coats in a school yard. There, too, was the face Odile Redonnet had identified as Laurent de Saux. On his neck, peeking from his shirt collar, was a butterfly-shaped birthmark.

  She copied the article, complete with photo, on a laser copier standing flush with the wood-paneled library entrance. It eliminated distortions and blurs due to yellowed unarchival newsprint so that even minor facial distinctions were clear. The quality was excellent and irrefutable. She wondered how Laurent de Saux had hidden that birthmark.

  Here was proof that Laurent knew Lili and Sarah. His identity remained the question. She had to check the bloody fingerprint against the French national file. Of course, she thought. Find a Laurent de Saux and check him against the bloody print!

  That was when she heard the echo of footsteps. She froze. A raspy, hacking cough came from the hallway. Security? She dove under a nearby trestle table, clutching the copy in her hand. Then she realized the copy machine’s cover stood suspiciously open and the red light blinked irritatingly.

  Her leather bag lay on the marble floor by the machine. She peered from under the table and saw an elderly man, probably a retired flic, in a security uniform. She’d have to overpower him to log back on to Soli’s computer and finish her search.

  He hawked and spit into the metal garbage can near her head. Finally he switched off the machine, closed the cover with a thump, and flicked off the l
ights. He left a scent of last night’s onion meal in the library.

  And then she realized where Soli could have hidden things. Somewhere disturbing and offensive. That had to be it. The only place she hadn’t looked! Silently, she rolled the copies into her bag, slipped off her heels again, and padded back up to the fifth floor.

  Inside Hecht’s foundation she approached the wall. Up close to the Gestapos’ leering faces in the photograph she felt around. Smooth all the way to the tips of the riding crops, then she felt an indentation and slight groove. Pressing it, she heard a click, then felt a part of the wall open to her right with a swinging whoosh. A drawer slid out on tracks holding several disks in envelopes. She found a floppy titled “L. Stein.” Steadying her hands, she took a deep breath and attempted to open the disk. But it didn’t work.

  The floppy was a WordPerfect file that had been protected with a password. She tried Soli’s birthdate, his birthplace, events and names from the Holocaust. No success. Then she tried the names of all the concentration camps. Nothing. She tried Hebrew prayers and simple configurations of biblical references. Nothing. She needed Rene’s code-breaking software to pick the lock of the file on Soli’s disk.

  She prayed that Rene had made it to her cousin Sebastian’s by now. She punched in Sebastian’s number on Hecht’s white phone.

  Sebastian answered. “He’s here.”

  Rene got on the line.

  “Are you all right?” she said.

  “Just a graze, I’ll live,” he said. “I’ve hooked up the laptop.”

  Thank God, Rene was a computer fiend like she was. “Download this and let’s try to crack it,” she said. “Let’s talk it through step by step.”

  Rene’s fingers clicked over the keys nonstop.

  Aimee checked her screen.

  “OK, download complete,” Rene said. “What are we looking for?”

  “We’re searching for Soli Hecht’s password. I can’t open the disk.”

  After a few minutes, Rene mumbled something that sounded like “Azores.”

  “What’s what?” Aimee asked.

  “Beat your neighbors out of doors,” he said.

  “Care to elaborate?”

  “The old card game,” Rene said. “‘Beat your neighbors out of doors’—popular during the war. Even in her eighties my grandmother could ace me every time.”

  “Am I missing something here?” Aimee asked. “What are you talking about?”

  “Remember the Jigny case?” he said. “I used our software to pick the password lock and got the first couple of letters.”

  “Go on, Rene,” she said.

  “Well, after getting the first couple of letters I guessed that the key was in a fantasy game,” he said. “The guy’s kid loved Dungeons and Dragons, a real aficionado, so that made it easier. I got the password and opened the file. We bought a new computer system with our fees from that one.”

  She blew a noisy kiss through the phone. “Haven’t I said you’re a genius! I don’t know if Soli played many card games in Treblinka. He’d have been fourteen or sixteen then. All I know is he was intense and methodical—that’s from what I’ve seen of the office in his foundation.”

  “Let me sink my teeth into this,” Rene said. “I’ll call you on the cell phone.”

  She thought about what Rene had tried. Games. Did Soli play games in Treblinka? Survival would have taken up most of his time. What games could Soli play in a death camp…if he’d played any? Something that could only be played on the rare occasions when the guards didn’t watch. Something that prisoners could make that could be hidden easily. Something that required thought, planning, and deliberate moves. Just like the way he’d finally assembled his case against Klaus Barbie.

  Of course! Chess could be played in a concentration camp. CHECKMATE opened the file immediately. She pulled out a fresh disk from her bag and started copying the now open file.

  While she did that she called Leah.

  A perky-voiced Leah answered, “Allô?”

  “Did Sarah enjoy the souffle?”

  “But she’s with you,” Leah said, suddenly awake. “Isn’t she?”

  “No!” Aimee panicked.

  “She said she was going to meet you, something about the salamander,” Leah said.

  “What?” Aime trembled. Why would Sarah have left?

  “That man picked her up,” Leah said. “He said they would meet up with you.”

  “Who?”

  Leah described someone who could only be Thierry. Aimee hit “Eject,” grabbed the floppy, and ran down the stairs. By the door, she deactivated the security system in just the way Solange had described. On her way out, she tiptoed past the guard, who didn’t even snort himself awake.

  By the time she stood at the traffic light on the corner of rue de Rivoli, she knew she was being followed. She ducked into the Metro, remembering how she and Martine used to hide from their cronies after school. Latched to the tiled walls were hinges that held the swing doors of the Metro, and enough empty space for two giggling teenagers. Now it was a harder squeeze for her. But she just fit. A big rush of hot air, the screech of brakes, and the whoosh of pounding feet as passengers disgorged up the steps past Aimee. She counted to thirty, then ran back up the Metro steps and found a taxi by the western entrance of the Louvre.

  Saturday Afternoon

  “WHERE IS SARAH?” AIMÉE asked into her cell phone.

  “You haven’t found her?” Hartmuth said.

  From the second floor of her cousin Sebastian’s cluttered antique poster store on rue St. Paul in the Marais, she surveyed the narrow alley wedged below her. Sarah, not realizing the danger from her son, had gone with Thierry. Or maybe he had forced her.

  Aimee pushed that thought from her mind. She had to get to a computer with municipal on-line capability and find Sarah.

  Sebastian, in black leather pants, jacket, and matching black bushy beard, was helping outfit Rene. She’d rescued Sebastian once, her cousin by marriage and a former junkie. As he often said, he owed her for at least one lifetime.

  Rene emerged from the upstairs loft, his arm hanging in a sling, wearing a fisherman’s vest customized with flashlights Velcroed in all the pockets. Sebastian gently lifted him up and down into thigh-high rubber fishing boots.

  “What’s the salamander?” Aimee said into the phone.

  Hartmuth let out a ripple of breath. “The marble arms of Francois the First.”

  Loud rumbling noises from below reached her ears. Sounds of distant thunder came from the direction of Bastille.

  “Skip the history lesson,” she said, frustrated that she might be too late. “What does it mean?”

  “The salamander is a sculpture, carved in the arch of the seventeenth century building she’d lived in, opposite the catacombs.”

  Below her on narrow, medieval rue St. Paul, the street slowly filled with a line of khaki light utility tanks. Sleek and streamlined Humvees rolled over the cobblestones, straddling the stone bouches d’egout that led to the sewers. Aimee hadn’t seen tanks in Paris since the riots of 1968 by the Sorbonne. Parked cars stymied the tanks’ progress and they emitted clouds of diesel exhaust in the chill November afternoon.

  “Has there been a bombing?” Aimee said.

  “Radicals versus rightists,” Hartmuth said. “I’m afraid I have something to do with it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Hartmuth’s voice sounded tired. “My failure to vote. The EU was unable to ratify the trade agreement with its exclusionary policies.”

  “Thierry took Sarah to the catacombs,” she said. “How does he know about them?”

  “I showed him the old exit,” Hartmuth sighed. “Hidden in the Square Georges-Cain.”

  “Meet me there,” Aime said. She clicked off.

  “We won’t get through on any surface route, Aimee,” Rene said as he walked over to her. “Checkpoints all over, armed militia is sealing the Marais.”

  She kissed him on both che
eks. “I cracked Soli Hecht’s locked file with ‘Checkmate.’”

  Rene smiled. “Ditto.”

  “Great minds think alike, eh?” she said. “That’s why we’re going underground.”

  “The catacombs don’t extend this side of the rue St. Antoine,” he said.

  “But the sewers do, Rene.”

  He rolled his eyes. “You know I don’t do well with…”

  “Rodents, me neither, but Sebastian’s got something to help us with that,” she said. “Did you bring the laptop?”

  “Talk about addicted to computers!” he said. “Making a wounded man just out of the hospital borrow pirated software from friends!” He growled but his eyes shone. “I love it! What is the plan?”

  “Hook the laptop to the municipal system and access FRAPOL 1 incognito,” she said.

  “Why?” Rene winced as he slung the backpack over his good shoulder.

  “So I can identify that bloody fingerprint and find out who owns the building in the Marais,” she said. “I’ll nail the killer in dot matrix or laser gray scale.” She quickly changed behind a 1930s poster that proclaimed “Ski the Alpes Maritimes” with parka-clad figures cavorting stiffly among old-fashioned ski lifts.

  “Unload here or outside?” Sebastian asked, his beard muffling his voice. He had arranged everything she asked for.

  She nodded to the rear door, which opened on a rain-soaked alley. He bundled up the bulky materials, then crouched under the eaves of his shop, his black leather pants glistening with raindrops.

  “Thanks.” She sidled near him in her dark vinyl hooded jumpsuit.

  She gripped the handle of a small gray box, while Sebastian lugged a large backpack. They trudged in the light rain along the cobbled alley to the Quai des Celestins, a block away. Rene kept up the rear.

  “What about the inhabitants below?” Rene said. “The ones with long greasy tails?”

  She pointed to the box. “Sonic disturbance. They hate it. At least that’s what the advertisement promised.”

  “It’s high tech all the way with you, Aimee,” Rene puffed.