The photo of Boris’s loathsome brand, his “monogram,” that I dutifully emailed him from Budapest was infected with a particularly vicious malware of my own creation.
Boris got his proof that I had Elena but also unwittingly allowed my spyware to transmit huge data dumps from his computers to mine. For hours I have been tracing correspondence and transactions, recording passwords, logging lists of associates, and following the complex money transfers designed to wash Boris’s blood money clean.
He’s been careful and clever, but I’m determined to take him down.
My computer pings, a signal that I’ve received a message on the Tor account I set up just to communicate with Boris. My heart quickens. Here we go.
I open the message. It’s blunt and to the point. Boris requests a telephone call with me. He’s received the picture of the monogram. He’s willing to deal.
Now it’s my turn to let him wait. I want him anxious, off balance. Besides, I’m still data mining.
Hours later, I emerge from the Conciergerie, site of Marie Antoinette’s Parisian prison cell. It was a brief visit, but the queen’s chamber is a touchstone for me, a reminder that all history is in the telling.
The sky is just blushing into sunset. If I hurry I can make the last group allowed for the day at Sainte-Chapelle.
The cathedral is magnificent as always, soaring arches of intricate stained glass, a dazzling crystalline array of artistry in the name of faith.
I step outside to the small balcony just off the chapel, holding the door open for the young Chinese couple heading back inside. Rest my elbows on the balustrade and eye the sleeping-till-morning cranes and earthmovers at the construction site one lot over. Casually, I affix a voice changer to the cellphone I’ve reserved for Elena business. It’s a cheap commercial model, ordered online for a trifling four hundred euros, but quite effective nonetheless.
I will sound like a man to the Russian, which will play into his assumptions.
I make the call. Boris and I come to terms quickly. He will transfer bitcoin. I will deliver Elena. We will go our separate ways.
Or so I let him think.
Despite Frank’s well-intentioned resolve to enlist the U.S. embassy’s assistance in going back to the States, they are still stuck in this damn hotel in Paris. Mumbo jumbo about the ongoing police investigation, mutter, mutter, blah, blah, but bottom line, they won’t release Brian’s body yet and don’t want the rest of the family to leave until that formality is resolved. It’s been eleven days since Della told him she was suing for full custody. Frank’s stress level is skyrocketing as their court date ticks ever closer.
On the phone with his daughters, Frank hears his voice as the twins must hear it: whiny, weak.
How could he have allowed Della to make him feel so impotent? They are angry, his girls, and Frank was taken off guard by the level of their rage. Della is doing a fine job of tainting their perception of him.
He settles his body on the edge of the bed. Taps two fingers of his left hand nervously against the meat of his thigh. “I promise I’ll be home as soon as possible. By the end of the week probably.”
Sweet Analise whines a petulant and elongated “Daaadddy,” while feisty Adelaide delivers a tart “Fuck you.”
“Watch your language,” he snaps at Addy. “That’s not acceptable. Your cousins need me. And you should show a little more compassion, given what we’re all going through here.”
Addy unleashes a few more choice phrases at Frank before he hears a click.
“Ana?” he inquires cautiously.
“I’m still here.” Her voice is small and subdued. “Daddy, I miss you.”
Frank’s heart swells. “I love you, baby. And I miss you too. I promise everything is going to be all right. Tell your sister that too. I’ll be home to take care of you just as soon as I can.”
There’s a divine pleasure in watching something one has planned unfurl elegantly, properly, just the way one envisioned.
With my spyware granting me access to all of Boris’s accounts, passwords, and associates, I have spent the day wreaking havoc on his carefully clandestine operations. I’m going to turn him over to Europol, but first I’m fucking with him a little, I just can’t help myself.
He’s a vain man, weekly pedicures, fingernails shined and buffed twice a week. That mane of hair he is so proud of is meticulously styled on a bi-monthly basis to conceal an incipient bald patch. His wardrobe is tailored by one of Paris’s finest artisans to disguise the swell of his belly. He likes to live large: expensive meals and pricey hookers.
I mentally filed away these tantalizing details before I got to the real business of the day: the diversion of a bitcoin payment for a shipment of automatic weapons. The intended recipient of the money is enraged, but Boris doesn’t know that, as I have intercepted and deleted the recipient’s furious tirades. The guns won’t be delivered to Boris as scheduled and with a tickle of pleasure I anticipate the oppressive heat that will rain down on him when he can’t fulfill his buyer’s order.
I know I shouldn’t be playing like this. My concentration should be on getting Elena safely away. After that, I can do anything I want with Boris. But if I stop thinking about entertaining ways to upset the Russian (I’ve also screwed with his account records at all of Paris’s finest shops), then I will be thinking about the Burrows family.
Just wrap this up.
The day is hot. Jake’s damp T-shirt clings to his skin; sweat trickles down into his jeans from the small of his back. A baseball cap is pulled low over his forehead; oversized sunglasses shadow his eyes.
With the help of a flirty room service waiter, he’d escaped through the hotel kitchen and into the throbbing, thrumming streets of Paris, avoiding the lingering members of the press camped out in front. There’s a good half a dozen still there, smoking and spitting, perched atop motorbikes and car hoods, senses attuned for the shot or the quote.
The police, on the other hand, as of this morning, are no longer a constant presence outside their suite door. This happened with no prior notice. Just a brief phone call from Aimee Martinet to Uncle Frank, after the fact, when the gendarmes were already gone.
The cops had felt like jailers. But now that they’re gone, Jake realizes the cops also made him feel safe.
People surge and eddy around him, but he has never felt so lonely.
He’s afraid to talk to Natalie, who’s an alarming mess. Or to Uncle Frank, who shuts him down every time. And Jake’s French sucks. Even if it was better, who could he talk to here anyway?
Jake lifts his cellphone and snaps another picture.
Using their now-abandoned summer apartment as his ground zero, he’s spent the day methodically scouting the surrounding streets for CCTV security cameras. He’s made note of their street addresses. Photographed their locations. And, as best as he could, determined what precise frames their lenses were trained to capture.
He wants proof that William Crane was in Paris on the day of his dad’s murder. The more Jake thinks about it, the more convinced he is that Crane is responsible. She chose us, you sick fuck. And you just couldn’t bear it.
Jake is convinced Crane will show up somewhere on footage from one of these cameras. He wonders if Crane’s still here in the city, wandering through the neighborhood, exulting arrogantly in his crime. Crimes.
Jake will need evidence, concrete and tangible, if he has a hope of getting the police to believe him. They had already checked area CCTV footage (or so they said) and found nothing useful.
But they didn’t know to look for Crane. And how can you find a man you don’t know you’re looking for?
Jake won’t let himself think about how many of these cameras might be dummies. How certainly a number are broken. How even if footage was taken on the day his dad was murdered, it’s likely to be erased or recorded over by now.
Whatever. Jake couldn’t take another day in that hotel, watching Natalie wither before his eyes. He had to do something
.
Thinking about Natalie twists at him. It was awful after Mom disappeared, Natalie’s rapid decline, followed by the thorny decision to put her into treatment. He feels guilty about his complicity in the intervention, can’t forget her beseeching eyes. How helpless and conflicted he felt. And now it’s starting all over again, she’s hurting herself. He must figure out what happened to their parents.
Jake pauses for just a moment by an oak wine barrel turned planter, overflowing with scarlet geraniums. He smells the wet soil and allows himself the still-rare luxury of remembering his mother. For months after her disappearance, and then the letter taking credit for her death, thinking about her was agony.
They’d had a memorial service for her, well attended, replete with sadness over her loss and also joy in her remembrance. But Jake couldn’t bear to imagine her rotting body abandoned somewhere unknown, denied a burial. He learned it was easier to pack up his memories and feelings. Put them away.
Tears sting his eyes. Mom. Cheering on the sidelines at his basketball games. Ruffling his hair as she passed him on the stairs. How understanding, no even better, how genuinely nonchalant she’d been when he came out to her.
He knows she wasn’t some paragon of virtue, some idealized notion of a mother. She was sometimes hotheaded and flew off the handle, said things everyone regretted later. Sometimes she would retreat into her bedroom for days on end, watching crappy makeover shows or Law & Order, leaving Jake with the responsibility of fending for himself and Natalie if Dad was out of town.
But god, he misses her.
When he went back to school after she disappeared, when the creeping dread of “not-knowing” finally morphed into the horror and shock of loss, Jake dove equally hard into his studies and into partying. He couldn’t think about his mother, he couldn’t think about Natalie locked in that treatment center north of the city. He needed to occupy every minute of the day and night, so he burned the candle at both ends until he was burnt out.
But Nat got better and came home. Jake managed to kick ass with his grades (all A’s that first semester back) but also realized he had to calm the fuck down, so he did. They all healed as best as they could. That’s what their respective therapists encouraged. This summer in Europe was supposed to hit the reset button for all of them.
Look how that worked out, he thinks bitterly.
Jake shakes off his spiraling thoughts and concentrates on the task at hand. There’s another camera, mounted above the entrance to an antiques store, lens trained on the street outside. Jake takes photos of the camera and its probable view and taps the name and address of the store onto his list.
His eyes are caught by the glimmering display in the antiques store window. Sun glints off silver picture frames, elegant cigarette cases, art deco jewelry. A collection of pocket watches, ivory figurines, a gold-embellished tea set. A selection of knives with ornately carved bone handles.
A shiver passes through him. He feels spooked suddenly, vulnerable. Is that a reflection of a man behind him in the glass of the store window?
Jake whirls around, heart thudding, arm raised, fist clenched, certain he will see the face of Will Crane behind him.
He startles a trio of pretty teenage girls who yelp and scatter. A hunchbacked old crone raps her cane against the pavement and spits at him as she passes by.
But Will Crane is nowhere to be seen.
When Hank Scovell calls me, his eagerness to talk to “Hannah Potter” becomes an irresistible lure.
Brian Burrows’s ambitious lieutenant invites me to meet him for a glass of wine at a restaurant on rue des Récollets in canal Saint-Martin called Les Enfants Perdus. “The Lost Children.” How very apt.
Exposed brick in the square front room. Mahogany paneling lines the narrow room that extends behind it. The place is crowded despite the early hour. A blackboard announces the day’s special in curlicues of pastel chalk. White-aproned waiters deliver plates of fresh vegetables and seared meats that look like paintings. At the small bar, there is room for only three stools. Two are empty. Hank Scovell occupies the third.
I’ve researched him, of course. I know he grew up in Michigan and studied architecture at Cornell. I’ve examined his bank accounts and credit card statements (he spends a little more than he ought). I know he is single and looking, and not above sending the occasional crass dick pic. (I personally find that predilection juvenile and silly, but will do my best not to hold it against him.)
I greet him, introduce myself as “Hannah Potter,” thank him for meeting me. His eyes rake across my body in a way that makes me feel violated. I understand Ursine’s distaste.
He’s drinking Sancerre. I agree to join him in a glass.
“So you’re a friend of Brian’s?”
There’s something about his tone, aggressive, slightly accusatory.
“Well,” I reply cautiously, “friend might be too strong a word. We met at a grief group here in Paris shortly before he died.”
He purses his lips and fixes me with a flinty stare. Scovell’s features might be fine taken individually, but collected on his face they seem off—his eyes too small, his brow too heavy, his nose askew. There’s no denying the intelligence in his eyes, though. Or the hunger.
“I didn’t know Brian was attending any kind of a grief group,” he challenges.
I shrug. “I guess it’s not the kind of thing everyone wants to talk about.” I fall silent, proving my point.
Scovell takes a sip of his wine. “Excellent, isn’t it? So crisp and aromatic.”
I take a sip myself. Flash a smile in agreement. “Delicious.”
“So why exactly are you nosing around into Brian’s murder?” There it is again, blunt aggression.
Is this just his manner?
Or does he have something to hide?
Perhaps something to gain?
I laugh lightly. Touch his arm. Play the coquette. “You make me sound like some kind of hard-boiled private eye when you put it like that, which is hardly the case. I just feel bad for his kids. He talked about them a lot. And so when I met Natalie and she asked, I said I’d talk to Lilja. She sent you to me. End of story.”
Scovell’s narrow eyes grow even smaller as he peers at me. His mouth opens as if he is going to say something, but then he pokes out a pink tongue and licks his fleshy lips. Takes another sip of wine.
“So what did you want to tell me?” I press.
Scovell slugs back the rest of his Sancerre and motions to the bartender for another glass. An American family piles into the restaurant, a couple in their fifties with three sullen teenagers. They uncomfortably crowd Scovell and me at the bar while waiting for their table.
I touch Scovell’s shoulder, lean in close to his ear. “We all want to bring whoever did this to justice, don’t we?”
Our eyes lock, but his defenses are up. I can see the reserve in his chilly gaze. The American family follows the maître d’ as he gestures toward a table in the back. Scovell’s eyes follow them. I gather up my jacket and bag.
“Look,” I continue. “You’re the one who asked to meet me. But, you’re right. I should keep out of this. It’s none of my business. If you know something, talk to the police.”
One, two, three. I’m certain he’ll stop me before “ten.”
Four, five, six.
Scovell grabs for my wrist. “Wait. There’s something I want to show you.”
“Let go of me,” I snap.
He pulls his hand off me as if scalded. “Sorry.” His face turns pink.
I settle back down on the stool. Reach for my wineglass. “Okay. What have you got?”
Uncle Frank’s at the embassy again, and Jake’s been gone for hours, god knows where. Fuck it, Natalie decides, I’m going out. Stupid really, that she’s allowed herself to be constrained by Uncle Frank as it is. She’s eighteen, a legal adult. Perfectly capable of walking around the streets of Paris unsupervised.
Natalie pushes away the annoying thought that his
insistence on her staying in the hotel is for her own safety. She feels reckless. If there’s a madman out there who killed her father and now is looking for her, bring him on! She may be small, but she’s no one to mess with, the prick’ll find that out soon enough. Whoever the fuck he is.
Armed with this bravado, Natalie slips out of the hotel, half-expecting someone to stop her. No one does.
She weaves through pedestrians, bicyclists, cars, and taxis. Idly, she window-shops boutiques, bookstores, ice cream stands, and patisseries. She pauses in front of one shop and admires the elegant formations of squared, crescent, and domed cakes, tipped with gold or ornamented with flowers made from icing.
She hasn’t eaten all day. She darts into the patisserie and purchases the most fanciful cake in the case. She takes her time with the pastry, nibbling minute bites and letting them dissolve slowly on her tongue as she threads through the crowded streets.
Natalie checks her phone. Nothing from Jake. Nothing from Hannah Potter. Nothing from Uncle Frank.
She feels as if she might disappear into thin air, just like her mother did three years before. Unmoored and adrift, who or what could stop her?
Desolation sets in as she realizes she has no place to go.
Except back to that fucking hotel.
Natalie’s tongue licks her fingers clean. She presses her damp finger pads into the wound on her wrist. The rush of pain is delicious, as sweet as the cake.
The Porte de Clignancourt metro station is the last stop on the 4 line, way up in the northernmost tip of the 18th arrondissement. I’ve been here hundreds of times, but even so, emerging from the station into the street above always causes a jolt of culture shock.
The sidewalks here are grimy. Garbage overflows from trashcans and blows across the pavement. Vivid, rude graffiti is splashed about indiscriminately.
The Burial Society Page 10