Nico’s men had sangfroid and reflexes, and they knew that there were three children in the house.
A gated entry for cars in the middle of the building opened to an interior courtyard. From there, they would make their way to the office and the secondary entrance to the house, which had a garden. The goal was to control all the exterior spaces to prevent anyone’s escape to the Rue d’Estienne-d’Orves or the Avenue de Paris. Commander David Kriven and his troops rushed into the courtyard as discreetly as possible. On the street, a small set of steps hidden behind a low wall led directly to the family home. Nico went up the steps while Commander Charlotte Maurin and Captain Ayoub Moumen kept a safe distance. The three other members of their group stood along the front wall, ready to break a window and demonstrate their authority if needed. Finally, Nico rang the Merciers’ doorbell. It was breakfast time.
The chief heard chairs scraping the floor, muffled voices, and footsteps in the vestibule.
“Yes?” a woman asked behind the door. It was probably Camille Mercier.
“Good morning, ma’am. I’m Chief Sirsky of the Criminal Investigation Division. Can you open the door, please?”
Silence. Then a barely audible whisper. She was trying to get her husband.
“Mrs. Mercier?” Nico asked again. “I have a warrant to search the premises as part of a criminal investigation. You are under obligation to grant entry. I hope that we can do this peacefully. There are minors inside. But if you don’t open the door, I will be required to use force.”
A line from Blaise Pascal ran through his head. “Justice without power is inefficient, and power without justice is tyranny.”
A key turned in the lock, and the door opened. Camille Mercier, wearing pajamas, seemed frightened. Nico handed her the search warrant. Commander Maurin mounted the steps and closed ranks behind her boss. The lady of the house stepped aside in resignation, and Laurent Mercier approached with a relaxed smile.
“Chief, to what do we owe the pleasure of your visit?” he asked in a toneless voice.
A finely chiseled face, Deputy Chief Rost had said. A nice ass and a nicer face. Yes, Nico could see what Rost had meant.
“The investigation into Jean-Baptiste Cassian’s murder.”
“That old thing? Again? I’ve managed to move past that sad affair, which hurt Camille and me so much.”
“Sorry to bother you, Mr. Mercier. But we believe this murder is connected to more recent attacks.”
“What does it have to do with my family?”
“You were among the victim’s closest friends. I have a search warrant signed by the magistrate.”
“A search warrant? Forgive my ignorance, but I don’t know what you’re getting at.”
The man was extraordinarily calm, just as he’d been when Rost and Becker had stared him down.
“We also have a warrant for your arrest.”
“An arrest warrant for me?” Mercier asked, clearly taken aback.
“Now!” Nico yelled to his teams. They had talked enough. It was time to act.
“Where are your children, Mrs. Mercier?” he asked.
“I sent them to their rooms to get ready for school.”
“Can somebody in your family take them to school this morning?”
“Why would that be necessary?” Laurent Mercier asked.
His wife didn’t say anything. She was looking at the floor.
“If not, our agents will go with them and then take your spouse to headquarters for questioning.”
“I thought I was the one you wanted.”
“Your wife is being brought along as a witness. I would suggest that you get ready, ma’am.”
Commander Maurin followed Camille Mercier to make sure she didn’t destroy or hide any evidence. The investigators would scour the house.
Nico asked Laurent Mercier to wait in the kitchen and assigned an officer to watch him.
Twenty minutes later, Mrs. Mercier and her three teenagers came downstairs. Two officers followed them.
Nico had gone into the kitchen and was inspecting the drawers and cabinets with a calculated slowness and false concentration as a clearly anxious Laurent Mercier looked on.
“Over here!” he heard Franck Plassard shout.
“Where?” Kriven responded from the living room.
“In the basement! Chief, we need you.”
“What’s in the basement?” Nico asked Mercier.
“A game room,” the man replied. “With a bar, couches, a billiards table, a CD player, a television, and a console.”
“Nothing else?”
“Chief?” Kriven had come upstairs again and had joined Nico in the kitchen.
“I’ll come in a minute.”
Kriven left, and Nico looked Mercier in the eye.
“What else?” he repeated.
“A lab.”
“A photo lab, is that what you mean?”
“Yes,” Mercier confessed.
Nico left him with the officer guarding him. He went down the stairway to the basement dark room. Kriven and Plassard were looking at the prints pinned on a clothesline. Although practically all photographers were now using digital methods, some professionals, as well as hobbyists, still preferred the older way, which involved processing film in a room with only a red light. They considered it more creative and satisfying. Mercier had a fully equipped darkroom with enlarger, developing tanks, tongs, paper, and chemicals.
“Portraits,” Kriven observed.
“So that’s his hobby,” Plassard said. “But unlike Vion, he doesn’t take group and travel photos.”
“He’s good. His angles are well-framed and thought-out.”
“If Mercier is Jean-Baptiste Cassian’s photographer, then maybe he kept a souvenir,” Nico whispered. “Let’s find it.”
He knew they had to work fast. Anya would be going into the operating room at any minute now.
31
Nico sat on the couch facing Samuel Cassian. On the coffee table, his wife had set out refreshments, as always: tea, coffee, chocolate, slices of cake, and cookies. The ceremony didn’t bother the artist, who played the game patiently and lovingly. Then he sent his wife away on a ruse. After so many years, he still wanted to spare her needless suffering. Nico respected him for that.
“I can still see myself on the Rue de Valois, in the gilded offices of André Malraux and the minister of culture,” Samuel Cassian reminisced. “We were smoking Partagas. Jacques Langier took me out on the terrace overlooking the Palais Royal’s gardens. He was proud of the palace courtyard; they had replaced the parking lot with the Colonnes de Buren, Daniel Buren’s art installation. It was so long ago, but I remember it like it was yesterday. Bernard Tschumi was with us. He unfolded the map of the Parc de la Villette so we could decide where the banquet would take place.”
“And you picked the Prairie du Cercle to the north of the Canal de l’Ourcq,” Nico said. “There was no changing your mind.”
A smile played on Samuel Cassian’s face as he looked at the police chief.
“The City of Blood and Fear. Quite the foreshadowing, wasn’t it? One second and your life is flipped upside down. Your son disappears, and you disappear along with him. My wife lost her mind, and sometimes I wish I had too.”
His eyes had a strange glow.
“Your wife always believed that Jean-Baptiste left the country,” Nico said. “She thought he’d rather flee than face the idea that he’d never be your equal. Or perhaps it was the other way around, and he was terrified of surpassing you.”
“Yes, she preferred to believe that he went to the United States and was living a happy life in anonymity. She’s told me this many times. She’s even convinced that she has grandchildren. My God. I wish I could believe it myself.”
The old man closed his eyes for a few seconds. Nico could see that he was struggling to avoid betraying his emotions. Once again, Nico laid out each of the group photos on the coffee table. He knew he was rubbing salt in the wou
nd, but he didn’t have a choice.
“Mr. Cassian...”
“Call me Samuel. Samuel would be nice. You remind me of my son. He was committed to his work too.”
Nico looked away. This man had lost his son. Was he himself about to lose his mother? It was strange how their fates had aligned.
“Samuel, the man behind these prints was a friend of your son: Daniel Vion. Jérôme Dufour told him that your wife believed Jean-Baptiste was living abroad. Laurent Mercier, who’s here in this picture, told him. So I have a question: How did Laurent Mercier know what your wife thought?”
“Oh, that’s easy. Laurent came to visit us many times after Jean-Baptiste’s disappearance. He was distraught.”
“Was Laurent a family friend?”
“No, not really. But he was very close to our son.”
“What makes you say that?”
“My wife would always fill him with sweets when he visited,” Samuel Cassian replied with an affectionate smile. “Then he’d ask to go see Jean-Baptiste’s room. He’d spend ten minutes or so in there all by himself. I didn’t think this ritual was very healthy, but the young man seemed genuinely overwhelmed, and I hoped it would give him some comfort. I also hoped that his visits would taper off. They didn’t, so I had to put an end to it.”
Nico set his folder on the couch and drank some coffee. He wasn’t hungry. He felt tired, not because of the long night at the club or because of all the time and energy he had put into solving this case. It was the thought of giving Samuel Cassian a final blow that was wearing him down.
“Samuel, I have something important to tell you.”
His host sat up.
“I’m listening. I loved Jean-Baptiste, and nothing could change how much I loved him. Nothing, you hear me?”
Nico thought of Dimitri and knew he felt the same way. Was that what it meant to be a good father?
“Jean-Baptiste was cheating on Lara.”
It was then that he saw that Samuel Cassian was holding a rosary. He was working the beads.
“At the time, Lara knew, but she wanted to go ahead and marry Jean-Baptiste,” Nico continued.
“He was a young man. Those things happen.”
“This case was, well, different.”
“Don’t beat around the bush, Chief.”
“Call me Nico, please.”
“I’m listening, Nico.”
“He had been involved with another man.”
The rosary fell to the floor. Samuel Cassian’s face paled, but he managed to maintain his composure.
“Why didn’t he tell me?” he asked. “I accepted everything about him. It wouldn’t have mattered. Laurent—is that who you’re thinking of? I caught him with his nose buried in one of Jean-Baptiste’s sweaters. He was crying. My God, I should have known.”
“The investigation isn’t over, but I should have an answer for you very soon. Thank you for helping me, Samuel.”
“No, Nico. Thank you. It sounds like you’re close to arresting our son’s murderer.”
“We’re closing in, yes. We hope to have something for you soon.”
“Soon,” the artist repeated, as if a theater curtain were about to fall.
So Samuel Cassian understood that the young man he had taken into his home and comforted, that this young man had done the unforgivable.
From his window, Samuel Cassian watched the chief’s car pull away and merge with traffic between the Café de Flore and the Saint-Germain-des-Prés church. He wished it was his son in that car, the son he had missed every day for thirty years.
Why had Jean-Baptiste kept that vital part of himself a secret? What kind of mess had he gotten into that someone would kill him? If only he’d come to his father, things would have gone differently. But Samuel had no way of knowing that for sure.
Samuel rocked back and forth and pressed his head against the windowpane.
“Sweetheart, are you okay?” his wife asked nervously.
“I’m fine, darling.”
“The police officer?”
“He left.”
“I know. Just like I knew our son was dead the day he disappeared.”
Samuel turned around.
“What did you think, Samuel? That I really believed Jean-Baptiste would leave us to go live in America? How could you think I was that far gone?”
Their eyes met, and his softened as he tried to read his wife’s dark gaze.
“Even if Jean-Baptiste had fled to America, he would have found some way to let us know that he was all right. He would have sent us a postcard, at least. But we’ve both known all this time that he never left the country.”
Samuel pursed his lips. Those few seconds of clarity that flowed every so often through his wife’s mind would fade away, and she would go back to her imaginary and orderly world. A world where their son lived forever on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.
Samuel glanced at his watch. What time was it in New York? He closed his eyes. If only forgetfulness or madness could save him.
32
On the fourth floor of headquarters, the excitement was palpable. Tension, too, which was always felt just before the conclusion of an investigation. The division’s finest had put together the pieces of the puzzle: Timothy Krall in custody, Laurent Mercier in the next cell over, Camille Mercier and Daniel Vion in interview rooms.
Nico walked into his office, along with Becker and the top officers.
“Mercier’s alibi for the night Mathieu Leroy was attacked has fallen apart,” Deputy Chief Rost said. “Camille’s story is full of holes and inconsistencies.”
“Mercier settled his tab at Le Defender with his credit card at twelve thirty in the morning,” Commander Charlotte Maurin said. “According to the clients they spent the evening with, everyone left the Hôtel du Louvre and went their separate ways. The security guards at the Parc de la Villette discovered Mathieu Leroy around two in the morning, which gave Mercier plenty of time to commit the crime. The student was probably looking forward to a hot meeting. Instead, he met an animal. I’d say he was like the ones they used to sell at La Villette’s markets, but those animals weren’t predators.”
“We’ve done voice recordings for Laurent Mercier, Daniel Vion, and Timothy Krall,” Jean-Marie Rost said. “Gianni and Théo should be arriving at any minute now. Charlotte’s group is getting ready for them.”
“As soon as Clément Roux is well enough to listen, we’ll pay him a visit at the hospital,” Maurin added. “I understand he’s recovering.”
“Great. Here’s the plan,” Nico said, turning to Alexandre Becker.
Caroline’s text caught his attention: “Anya won’t be operated on until the end of the morning. Don’t worry. She’s in good hands. And Alexis and Tanya are here with me. They’re letting us keep her company until she goes in. Then we’ll stay till she wakes up. Don’t forget: I love you.”
“We’re going to let Tim stew in his cell,” Nico continued. “Plassard is dealing with Daniel Vion. We need to make sure he tells us everything; maybe he knows something else about Mercier. David, you’re being assigned to the wife. Be cold and scare her. If her husband is the man we think he is, she’ll break down. She needs to spill the beans.”
Everybody nodded.
“Jean-Marie, you’re in charge, and you’ll collect all the information.”
“What about Laurent Mercier?” Becker asked.
“I’d like to take him myself,” Nico answered.
The magistrate was required to interrogate any suspect charged in a crime that he was investigating. He could authorize police officials to interrogate any suspect who hadn’t been charged, as well as those who were close to a case, such as witnesses. Technically, the landscape designer hadn’t been charged yet. Nico was counting on Becker to give him the go-ahead.
“Let me do it, and you’ll have the signed confession this morning,” he told Becker.
Becker nodded. “I’ll be in my office. Keep me informed.”
As everyone else streamed out of Nico’s office, Becker stayed behind. “You aren’t yourself this morning,” he said, touching Nico’s arm.
Nico hesitated. Could he tell his friend about the pact he’d made with fate?
“I’m sorry, Alex,” he said. “I’m worried about my mother.”
“She’ll be okay. I’m sure of it,” his friend assured him. “My wife spoke with Caroline last night, and she was confident.”
“I’ll feel better once she’s out of the hospital.”
“I understand.”
“We’ll hit the jackpot if our witnesses and Clément Roux positively ID Mercier’s voice,” Nico said.
“But we both know that’s not enough. We need more than a vocal match to make a case that a good lawyer won’t punch holes through.”
“We also have the photos that we found at the suspect’s house. They’re just like the photos of Jean-Baptiste.”
“You think Laurent Mercier was Jean-Baptiste Cassian’s lover?”
“Why not? His wife and Daniel Vion may have the answer to that question. And I’ve got one last trick up my sleeve.”
“Oh?” Alexandre Becker stared at him. He knew Nico had a flair for suspense.
“I’m keeping that a secret.” The chief winked at him.
Charlotte Maurin received Gianni and Théo in the small office she shared with Captain Moumen. Gianni had traded his see-through mesh shirt for an impeccable Jean Paul Gaultier suit and tie.
“We have a real lead here,” she told them.
“One of the guys from the pictures?” Théo asked. “I didn’t recognize any of them.”
“We’re not focusing on the way Clément Roux’s friend looked, but rather on how he sounded.”
“How he sounded?” Théo asked.
“I’m going to play three recordings for you and ask you to listen. Tell me if you recognize one of the voices. Listen carefully. You must be absolutely sure.”
“We’re ready,” Gianni replied calmly.
Moumen grabbed his computer mouse, opened the audio window, and started playing the recordings. The first voice rang out in the office. The two witnesses leaned forward in their chairs.
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