Pelleter touched the bruise on his cheek and rolled his shoulders, satisfying himself that the pain was unchanged. Madame Pelleter would have scolded him for playing with his wounds.
The door to the magistrate’s office opened and Letreau emerged holding up a sheaf of papers. “Let’s go,” he said.
Pelleter caught a glimpse through the door behind the chief of police, but it opened only onto an outer office where a secretary sat at a desk. The town magistrate was hidden away in some interior office, doubly protected from the town he administered.
The two men headed towards the connecting hall that led back to the police station.
“Where are we going?” Pelleter said.
The chief inspector was not surprised when Letreau answered, “Rue Victor Hugo.”
In daylight, the Rue Victor Hugo showed itself to be little more than an alley, similar to the one where Rosenkrantz had gotten drunk in the basement pub. At some time after the alley had formed between the surrounding buildings, an attempt had been made for drainage by lining the center of the cobblestone path with a concave well of brick. The project had been ill conceived, however, since puddles lined the edges of the alley even five days after the rain. Pelleter saw that he had been lucky not to break an ankle on his chase the night before.
The concierge for Passemier’s building lived two buildings away on the corner of Rue Victor Hugo and another alley that had not been deemed worthy of a name. She was a worn, middle-aged woman doing the washing outside her door in a large tin tub with a washboard.
“Have you been up there yet?” she asked, not stopping her washing.
“An officer was there earlier, and no one answered,” Letreau explained. “You see we have the warrant. We just need you to let us in.”
She was unconvinced. “I don’t know anything about a warrant. I’ve been concierge of this building, that one, and that other one,” she pointed with her chin, “for seven years now, and I’ve never seen anything about a warrant. Monsieur Passemier works out at the prison as a guard.”
Letreau blew out his cheeks, and then opened his mouth to speak, but Pelleter stepped forward. “Madame, I appreciate your caution. If all concierges were as cautious as you, then perhaps the police wouldn’t have as much work as we do.”
The woman narrowed her eyes, unsure if he was truly complimenting her or mocking her.
Pelleter wondered how close this spot was to where he had been beaten the night before. The concierge might have been one of the many nonexistent witnesses. “We don’t think that Monsieur Passemier is home or that there is any trouble in your building. But we need to ask Monsieur Passemier a few questions, and we were hoping that something in his apartment would tell us where he had gone.”
The concierge regarded Pelleter for another moment, pausing in her scrubbing and blowing a stray strand of hair out of her eyes. She looked at Letreau. “That paper means I don’t have a choice, does it?”
Pelleter tried a kind smile and nodded an apology.
She began scrubbing again and nodded with her head towards the open door behind her. “All the keys are on the ring just inside the door. It’s got the number on it.”
Letreau went forward to find the keys, and Pelleter said, “Thank you.”
They waited awkwardly a moment while the woman continued washing, before Letreau came back with a key ring.
The two lawmen went partway down the alley, further from the main street that led to the hospital. The concierge watched them.
When they got to the door, which was a few steps below street level, they found it partially ajar.
“Guess we didn’t need the key after all,” Pelleter said.
“Damn it,” Letreau said. He looked at Pelleter. “What do we do?”
Martin had not said that the door had been opened, so either Passemier had been home when the officer had knocked and had since left, had come and gone in the meantime and forgotten to close the door, or the prison guard was home now and didn’t expect to be there long.
Pelleter pulled out his revolver, and, taking a deep breath, Letreau did the same. Then Pelleter pushed his way in.
“Hello!” Letreau called.
The apartment had the mustiness of a below-ground room. Pelleter wondered if it flooded when it rained, like the baker’s basement.
“I guess you don’t make much as a prison guard,” Letreau said, looking around.
“Or he didn’t have much reason to spend money on anything,” Pelleter said.
The flat was furnished with the barest of necessities, a few chairs, a table, a single shelf with assorted books. Everything was neat, because there was nothing to make it cluttered.
A hall opened off to the right at the back of the room, and there was an opening to the left. Pelleter nodded to the left at Letreau. Letreau turned for the opening, and Pelleter went towards the right.
The hall led to two small rooms, one that opened immediately to the right off of the hall and the other that opened straight ahead. The room to the right was a storage area. The man had accumulated some things over his lifetime, but whatever they were he had boxed away and stacked in this small space. Pelleter opened one of the boxes nearest to him and found that it was filled with newspapers. Another one had dime novels.
The room straight ahead was the bedroom. It was as spare as the others, but a chest of drawers had been emptied, the drawers left open. The bed cover had been thrown back from the bottom as though Passemier had retrieved something from below the bed. That would have been his suitcase. The night before he had planned to fight, but something had changed, and he was now clearly on the run. Had Soldaux been able to tip him off? Maybe it had just been his intuition.
Pelleter went back out into the living room and found Letreau holding a gray cat with a white speck off-center above its nose. “Look who I found enjoying a saucer of milk in the kitchen.”
Pelleter stepped over to the kitchen and glanced in. It was only large enough for a stove and an icebox. A layer of grime coated everything. A single skillet hung from a nail on the wall, and the saucer of milk was on the floor. It was still mostly full. Passemier must have left only moments before. That was why the door was open. If he wasn’t coming back, then the cat needed a way to get out.
“The warden said that Passemier didn’t have a car,” Pelleter said, back in the living room. “How would he have gotten to work?”
“Many of the guards share a ride.”
“So we need to get a list of which guards have cars, and start checking them. He’s definitely running for it.” They had to keep moving. He took out his notebook, wrote something there, and tore off the sheet. Then he went for the door. “Come on.”
Once outside, he put the note between the door and the jamb, closing the door and locking it. In the distance, the faint sound of the midday train’s whistle sounded. The two men shared a look, but said nothing.
They stopped back at the concierge’s where the woman was still at her washing. There were a few more articles of clothing on a line overhead, but otherwise no time might have passed.
“Here are the keys and a friend,” Letreau said, taking both into her apartment.
“What are you doing with that? I can’t have a cat in there!”
“Did you see Passemier in the past half-hour?” Pelleter asked.
“No. I thought you said he wasn’t home.”
“Let the police know if he comes back. He’ll know you have his cat, we left a note.”
“Is he dangerous?” the concierge said, for the first time showing real concern now that she had been given a responsibility.
The two men turned without answering.
“What am I supposed to do with the cat if he doesn’t come back?”
Letreau had given his men orders to report in every hour. When he and Pelleter returned to the police station they found that nothing had changed. Lambert had also reported. The midday train had passed without incident. Letreau went to find out from the warden wh
ich of the guards had cars, and who Passemier was most likely to trust.
Pelleter sat in one of the waiting room chairs, pulling on his lips, and occasionally putting his fingertips to the bruise on his cheek. All eyes in the police station were on him, but he ignored the attention. He was bothered by a sense that they were on the wrong track, that Passemier, while brutal, was not stupid, and that he would know not to trust any of the other prison guards. After all, while the lines were perhaps hard to see at times, in the end, the prison guards were on the side of the law, not crime.
The chief inspector bowed his head. He thought of the saucer of milk laid out for the cat. Passemier was not a sentimental man—the meager furnishings in his apartment indicated that—but he was a responsible man. Perhaps that was why he had stayed to the last minute, out of an obligation to see the whole thing through.
And that saucer of milk had still been full. The man was still close. They could not afford to search a list of people. They needed to know where he was going, and be certain of it.
Pelleter rolled his shoulders, the bruise on the top of his spine turning white hot for a moment, and he winced. The Verargent gendarmes continued to watch. He imagined them thinking, This is a real policeman. Injured in the line of duty and still going on. But what was the alternative?
Pelleter looked back towards the hall leading to the holding cell. Where was Letreau?
Pelleter reviewed the precautions they had taken, roadblocks and the train station. The Perreaux boys had been found in the middle of a field. Why wouldn’t Passemier just walk around the roadblocks that way and try to catch a ride further on down the road?
Letreau arrived with the list. “There are only ten of them, and two are at the prison now. I just called.”
“Good,” Pelleter said. “Put some men on it. Then get the word out. We need to organize a search, like you did for the children, and we need to do it now.”
Letreau puffed out his cheeks, “Right.”
“He was still in town within the hour.”
Letreau looked disconsolately at the list of names in his hand. Then he turned and shouted, “Arnaud!” and headed back to his men.
Phone calls were made. Pairs of police officers left the station. Soon there were men filing in from outside. These would be the search party. Having seen the search party from the other night, Pelleter noted that this was a different sort altogether, only young men, some who were still almost boys, all with mean faces. Several of them carried rifles. At least one of them had a pistol in a shoulder holster. They laughed and smoked, filling the public space of the station. There was none of the worried urgency of the other night. This was the excited anticipation before a football match between rivals.
Pelleter thought of the warden’s description of his youth as a Verargent troublemaker.
Reports came back negative. They were losing time.
Letreau interrogated the warden and Soldaux again to see if there were any places that Passemier visited regularly, but the man led a simple life of work and then home, work and then home...and of course disposing of murdered corpses.
At last Letreau appeared with a large map of Verargent and spread it out over the front desk. “Quiet now,” he yelled over the noise of the crowd.
Pelleter worked his way beside the chief of police.
“Quiet, please.”
The remainder of the police force that was not currently on a roadblock or checking on other prison guards stood in silence behind their chief.
“Gentlemen!”
“Right, now!” Pelleter said, at a stern but normal level.
The men closest to him fell silent, elbowing those behind them. There was a last stray laugh, somebody said, “And she will,” and then, “Shut up, blockhead,” and there was quiet. The smoke from their cigarettes clouded above them.
Letreau cleared his throat.
“Thank you all for coming.” The chief of police glanced at Pelleter for support, but the chief inspector remained impassive. “Right. We are looking for a man by the name of Passemier. He is six foot one, two hundred twenty-five pounds, fifty-one years of age, with dark hair graying at the temples. You are to assume he is armed and dangerous. We know that he was in the Rue Victor Hugo within the last two hours and that he is most likely trying to leave town.”
Letreau held up the map and pointed.
“This is Passemier’s home. We’re going to conduct a house-by-house, block-by-block search from there to the edge of town, and we’ll search through the night if we have to. If he’s still in town, that will force him to show himself at some point.”
“What, we can just go in people’s houses?” one of the men said near the front.
“There will be officers with you. You have to explain the situation. If somebody refuses, get an officer, and he’ll take care of it.”
There was an uneasy pause. The men shifted on their feet.
“Any other questions?”
No one spoke.
Letreau turned to his officers. “Men, divide up the search party, and get started. I want constant updates here.”
The noise started then, as the door opened, letting in a breeze and a shaft of bright light over the heads of the search party. The crowd filed through the door.
Letreau turned to Pelleter. “Do you think we’ll get him?”
“Maybe not today. But we’ll get him eventually.”
Letreau rolled the map in front of him with both hands. “That’s what I think,” he said, the hint of a pleased smile on his face. “But the warden...and the other one...” He nodded to himself. “Surely you won’t refuse dinner tonight!”
The crowd at the door had shrunk to just police, and then the last of those were out the door.
“Madame Pelleter will expect me back,” the chief inspector said, but even as he said it, he was thinking that there was something that he was missing about Passemier’s whereabouts that was important. He wanted to at least see the search through. He wouldn’t feel settled if he didn’t.
“And what of Madame Letreau?” Letreau said, clapping the chief inspector on the shoulder.
The Verargent chief of police was clearly feeling pleased. He had had perhaps the worst week of his career with six murdered persons showing up and two lost children. But he had suspects in custody for the bodies—even if they were not the murderers, they were responsible—and the children had been found unharmed.
“Let’s see how this afternoon goes,” Pelleter said.
“Right,” Letreau said. “I’ll tell her you’re coming.” And he walked back towards his office.
The police station appeared emptier for the disarray in which it had been left. The desks were scattered with papers, files left opened, fountain pens across their pages. Chairs were pushed back, and a file cabinet drawer had not been shut. The cloud of smoke from the search party’s cigarettes drifted, a diffuse haze over the empty scene.
A lone officer had been left to man the phones. He was busy taking notes, the receiver of a phone cradled between his shoulder and his ear.
Here it was again. The waiting. That was perhaps all that was left with this one. It was best to be moving.
Pelleter turned to go outside. He badly needed a cigar. There was a tobacco shop in a little out-of-the-way street just off of the square. He left the station.
The weather was almost too perfect, but the chief inspector did not notice that as he crossed the square. He pictured Passemier sitting across from him in the interrogation room in the prison, first bluster, then confusion, then arrogance. Was he going through those stages again now? He had followed Pelleter two nights in a row. He had attacked him the second night. Now he was on the run. Was he confused or was he arrogant?
The chief inspector nodded to the old men around the war memorial, touching the brim of his hat. He shook his head as though he had been asked a question, and then passed on.
The warm comforting smell of tobacco enveloped him in the tobacconist’s shop. Distracte
d, he bought three cheap cigars, just enough to get him through the rest of the day.
“Beautiful day,” the tobacconist said.
“Oh? Yes.” The chief inspector snipped the end of one of the cigars. “If a large man with a suitcase comes in, you let the police know.”
The tobacconist’s brow crumpled into a question, leaving the smile alone on his mouth.
The chief inspector turned to leave the store without answering the unspoken question.
Outside, Pelleter scanned the square almost without thinking, the old habit of a longtime policeman. But nothing registered out of the ordinary. He lit his cigar, and his muscles relaxed with the first inhalation of smoke. He rolled his neck, feeling the now reassuring pain in his shoulders. He wondered if Fournier had heard yet of the warden’s arrest. What about Mahossier, who seemed to know everything?
The chief inspector’s nostrils flared, and he bit down on his cigar. Yes, perhaps it wasn’t quite finished. Maybe Letreau was near satisfied, but what had Mahossier said, that Pelleter was to find who had taken the bodies out of the prison and the madman would supply the names of who had made them bodies in the first place?
Pelleter shook away the thought of having anything more to do with the man. He headed back across the square, forced to nod to the old men at the war monument again as though he had not just seen them minutes before.
Over the course of the afternoon, Pelleter regretted having bought cheap cigars. He regretted having bought only three cigars.
The reports came in from the search party, from the roadblocks, from Lambert at the train station.
Nothing.
15.
Dinner with Friends
“Come then, shall we?” Chief Letreau called across the station, emerging from his office, already arranging his overcoat on his shoulders.
The Twenty-Year Death Page 16