by Cara Black
Michou stroked the baby’s cheek. “Notice how she turns toward my finger—she’s ‘rooting.’” He placed the bottle between her lips and she sucked. “Voilà, she’s a pro! Tilt the bottle up so the formula fills the nipple, otherwise . . .”
“Some kind of baby voodoo, Michou?”
“I’m serious, air’s the enemy,” he said. “If air gets in, she gets gas. Gas you don’t want.”
“Merci, Michou, you’re a lifesaver.”
“Such a little beauty, Aimée.”
She was.
He looked at her. “So she’s on loan, to see if you want to order a model?”
“Do I look the type?” Aimée gave him a brief version of how she had gotten the baby.
“Et alors, the minute the mother calls, I’ll let you know,” he assured her, rocking the baby, blowing air on her toes, eliciting a gurgle.
“You have the touch, Michou.” Some people were born with it . . . a woman’s touch, a maternal side.
“Maybe you do, too, Aimée.” He gave a knowing wink. “It comes with practice.”
“They should come with instruction booklets . . .”
“Like your computer? If only it were that easy,” he said. He grimaced at her chipped lacquered nails. “If you waited long enough for your nails to dry properly, they wouldn’t chip like that.”
As if she had time. She was lucky when she could grab a manicure at all. Still . . . “Gigabyte green, Michou, it’s the new color.”
“Quel horreur. Without that, you’re naked, Aimée.” He pointed to the tube of Chanel Stop Traffic Red on the counter.
As she wiped the lipstick over her lips, she checked Le Parisien for a mention of an abandoned baby or of a woman being attacked on the Ile Saint-Louis. But the headline was about the MondeFocus protest erupting into a riot. The accompanying story alleged that the CRS had provoked the demonstrators. She turned to the short articles from the police blotter, but saw nothing about a woman having been assaulted or a kidnapped baby. The crime section continued on the next page. There had been incidents of purse snatching and an attack in the Châtelet Metro. Strange, nothing about . . . then she saw a short notice in the lower corner: Body of a young woman found in the Seine by Pont de Sully near Place Bayre.
Her hands clutched the rim of the steaming café au lait bowl as she read: Police request help in identifying a young woman, early twenties, recovered from a drain in an overflowing sewer in the Seine.”
The public was allowed into the morgue in such cases in hopes that someone could identify the victim.
Her skin prickled. She recalled the figure with the tire iron who had chased her in the Place Bayre, across from the Pont de Sully. So close by, almost outside her window.
Her cell phone trilled.
“Taxi downstairs, Mademoiselle.” The meeting would start in twenty minutes.
“Go. Buy more diapers on your way back.” Michou kissed her on both cheeks. “What about bisous for the little peach, eh?”
Aimée leaned down into the baby smell, kissed the soft cheeks, and swallowed hard. She tucked the newspaper under her arm and headed for the door, walking faster than she had to. Then she turned around, came back for the denim jacket, thrust it into her backpack in a plastic bag, and ran.
AIMÉE NODDED TO Vavin, Regnault’s head of publicity, a man in his mid thirties, trim, with wide-set eyes. He was cradling a cell phone at his ear.
“Bonjour, Monsieur Vavin.”
He flashed her a quick smile and raised a finger, indicating that he wanted her to wait a moment.
She knew his type: a harried blue-suit who traveled all the time, delegating and supervising ten publicity campaigns all running at once.
Beige carpet, beige walls, beige cabinets. He stood behind his desk. Also beige. The only personal touch was a framed photo on his desk, a smiling child on a wooden hobby horse.
Vavin clicked off his cell phone. “We’ve been hacked,” he said, punching the thick stapled pile of computer printouts on his desk. “Our system’s compromised, Mademoiselle Leduc.”
“Not since last night, Monsieur Vavin. Remember, you only hired us yesterday.” She opened her laptop and brought up the report on her screen, forcing herself to concentrate and ignore the article about the drowned woman she’d reread three times in the taxi. “As contracted, you hired my firm temporarily to maintain your operating system. Shall we go over what I’ve accomplished so far?”
If he’d hired Leduc Detective last week when she had presented the security proposal to him, instead of yesterday, the hacker would have been foiled. But she thought better of pointing this out.
“You can see from these results, it’s running smoothly. The system is secure.” She smiled. “For now.”
He studied her screen and calmed down. “Excellent, Mademoiselle. I like the way you’ve streamlined user functions and smoothed out the glitches in the interface. You’re as good as you claim. A small independent security firm like yours is what we need right now.”
She decided to seize the opportunity to reoffer the comprehensive security design he’d hedged about committing to the previous week.
“My firm found vulnerabilities in your system during our comprehensive security overview. We did a minor patch last night. With hackers, you can close the door but they’ll look for an open window. In our proposal we noted that . . .”
“We pay you to keep them out.” He gave her a tired smile.
He wanted a finger to plug a hole in the dike but sooner or later it wouldn’t be able to hold back the flood.
“As outlined in our proposal, your system has numerous flaws and we recommend stronger firewall protection.” She paused for effect, consulting the file in her hand, which she’d memorized. “My report shows that twice last month hackers took advantage of your vulnerability. It’s not in your interest or ours to apply Band-Aids to an old system.”
“Correct,” he said. “But my manager’s overwhelmed. I put your proposal on his desk but he was off to Johannesburg. This year our accounts have tripled. And, as with many companies enjoying a growth spurt, our auditing and computer services have been neglected.”
“I suggest you start fresh.”
“In the meantime, Mademoiselle Leduc, we need to operate and keep our systems functioning and secure.”
She turned to the window overlooking the Jardin des Plantes, the botanical garden, while she thought. A few protesters with banners reading STOP OIL DUMPING stood on the pavement below, fanning themselves in the heat. She wondered why there were protesters in front of Regnault.
“I’m not up to speed on your client accounts yet but . . .”
He noticed her gaze, shrugged. “The environmentalists don’t understand. Our premier oil company account is Alstrom. They have recently acquired some small companies that have ignored regulations. But Alstrom has already taken steps to cure these infractions.”
Typical spin from a PR man. She thought back to the article about the MondeFocus riots in Le Parisien.
“From what I understand about the MondeFocus allegations—”
“All blown out of proportion.” His eyes snapped. “They jump on any bandwagon, smear ‘the big, bad corporations.’ Uncalled for. They’ve targeted us, not knowing our client is already cleaning up toxic waste. They’re misinformed—that’s putting it in polite terms.” He shook his head. “Look, I’m progressive, so’s our firm and those we represent. Bottom line, my firm’s integrity means more to me than a huge contract. I’ve got a family and like every parent I want my child to grow up in a clean world. Believe me, pollution’s a great concern to all of us.”
His intercom buzzed and he glanced at his watch. “Excuse me, I’ve got a meeting.”
She smiled and tried once more. “Our joint package of security and system administration makes economic sense for you.”
Vavin reached in his drawer. “Right now I need you to continue maintaining our systems.” He slid a new addendum extending their contract across t
he desk. “Our sysadmin’s been hospitalized with acute appendicitis and we’ve lost two of the contract staff to a crisis in Milan. Count on me to recommend your comprehensive package to my manager when he returns.”
One didn’t say no to a client. Especially one with this much potential. Better more work than no work, René would say. She scanned the contract, signed it, and shut down her laptop.
“Last week, when we met,” Vavin said, his voice lowered, “I didn’t realize the ongoing nature of our system issues.” He flipped open a file, studied it. “A few areas . . . well, they concern me.”
Of course, he wanted to look good to his boss, to appear to be on top of his projects. Or was there something else she couldn’t put her finger on?
“Do you foresee more problems, Monsieur Vavin?”
Nadia, his assistant, peered around the door and smiled at Aimée. “Your car’s here, Monsieur Vavin.”
“Merci, Nadia,” he said. Then he turned to Aimée.
“In our line of work, we call them issues, Mademoiselle.”
Aimée nodded. She noticed a stack of environmental reports, pamphlets bearing the MondeFocus logo by his key ring and briefcase.
Before she could ask him if he had studied them, he’d put on his coat, dropping his key ring into a pocket, and shouldered his case. Pausing at the door, he said, “Mademoiselle Leduc, I appreciate your help but there is one more thing. Any problems, you deal only with me.”
She detected something behind his words. “Of course, Monsieur Vavin.”
As a system administrator, their firm would monitor Regnault’s network, deal with glitches in the staff’s computers, but rarely, if ever, would this involve the managerial staff. His request was strange. Unless Vavin was watching his back.
“Only me, comprends?” he repeated.
OUTSIDE, AIMÉE STARED at the khaki-colored Seine lapping against the mossy stone. Two years ago, a clochard—now termed sans domicile fixe (SDF)—the politically correct phrase for “homeless”—who’d slept under a bridge had fallen in, his foot catching in the branches of a tree carried on the swollen water. The current had swept his bloated body past her window. She shivered. More often corpses sank, drifting along with the bottom currents until they were caught in the locks downriver at Sceaux.
She ran her fingers over the stone wall fronting the L’Institut médicolégal’s brick facade, Le Parisien under her arm, her laptop case slung over her shoulder. She had a bad feeling in her bones.
She wondered if the young woman found in the Seine might be the baby’s mother. Her father always said, Think like the criminal, find the motive. If that didn’t work, go with the victim. Retrace her steps. In this case, she imagined a young woman looking over her shoulder, seeing the light in Aimée’s window, trusting Aimée to keep her baby safe. Safe from whom and what, she had no clue. And how had the woman known her name and phone number?
Aimée tried to think the way she must have. Scared, running away from someone, something, she sees light, finds the digicode broken, as it had been for a week, and enters the town house through the front door. Before she can go upstairs, she hears noises; someone’s followed her. Quickly, she takes off her denim jacket—now she looks different. She wraps the baby in it. She runs through the courtyard, sees the garage, which is open late, and uses the pay phone to tell Aimée that the baby’s downstairs. Then she runs to the Place Bayre.
But the attacker has recognized her. Did they have a confrontation on the quai? Was he the father of the baby, demanding his child?
Questions . . . all she had were questions.
To her right, the Ile Saint-Louis glimmered in the weak sun. Her apartment stood past the curve of the quai. She turned to face the rose-brick médicolégal building.
If she didn’t check out her hunch, she’d kick herself later. She hated this place—the odors of body fluids that were hosed down the drains in the back courtyard, the miasma of misery and indifference surrounding the unclaimed corpses. She couldn’t forget identifying her father’s charred remains after the explosion in Place Vendôme as the bored attendant scratched his neck and checked his watch, as her tears had dropped into the aluminum trough by her father’s blackened, twisted fingers.
She took a deep breath and opened the morgue door.
AIMÉE STOOD ALONE in the green-tiled viewing cubicle of the morgue basement. On the other side of the window lay a young waxen-faced corpse, a white sheet folded down to her neck, livid stains appeared on the skin of her cheek and neck, but Aimée could see that her eyes were deep set and her cheekbones were prominent. Unforgiving, stark white light bathed her features; there was a bruise on her temple, a mole on her chin, and she had straw blond hair that hadn’t been completely combed back, falling in greasy strands over her temple. Her partly visible ear showed raw, jagged edges and there was a frothy blood bubble on her neck. Weren’t they supposed to clean up the corpse to protect the family’s feelings?
Aimée didn’t recognize her. She’d had a hunch, but she’d been wrong. Why had she expected a corpse to sit up and talk, to give her a clue to the baby’s identity? Nothing tied them together.
“I’m sorry,” Aimée whispered, her breath fogging on the glass, “whoever you are.”
The door opened and she heard shuffling footsteps behind her. A blue-uniformed flic from whom the telltale aroma of Vicks emanated—used by new recruits to combat the odor—approached her.
“Mademoiselle, can you identify the victim?”
I am so sorry but I can’t help you.” “
A young man in a zip-up sweatshirt, brown hair curling behind his ears, edged into the room.
“Then if you’ll follow me, Mademoiselle, I’ll see you out,” the flic said.
She turned to leave, heard a small gasp, and saw the man clap his hand over his mouth.
“Monsieur, do you recognize the victim?” the flic asked.
He shook his head, looking away. He had a copy of Le Parisien in his back pocket.
“You seem upset,” the flic said, gauging his reaction.
“It’s unnerving to see a dead person,” he replied.
Aimée followed the flic but not before she noted that the man had recognized the corpse.
“Mademoiselle, this way please,” the flic said, hurrying her past several other sad-eyed people standing in the hallway.
AIMÉE INQUIRED AT three offices before she found Serge Leaud in the morgue foyer, which was lined with busts of medical pioneers, talking with a group of white-coated technicians. She hated bothering Serge, her friend as well as a medical pathologist, but she had to clear up the nagging doubt she felt.
“What if?” kept running through her brain. She had to find out if the woman had recently given birth. She caught Serge’s eye, mouthed, “Please.” And waited.
Serge shifted from foot to foot, his gaze flitting from her to his colleagues, one hand in the pocket of his lab coat, the other stroking his black beard. A moment later, he excused himself and joined her.
No customary kiss on the cheek greeted her; instead, he displayed a harried frown.
“The chief’s here and my blood-screen panel’s waiting,” he said. “I’ve only got a minute, Aimée.”
“Can you show me an autopsy report, Serge,” Aimée said, lowering her voice, “for the young woman found in the Seine by Pont de Sully.”
Serge nodded to a white-coated staff member who passed them.
“Let’s talk over there.” He jerked his thumb toward the corner. “You mean for the Yvette?”
She knew that was what they called all unidentified female corpses.
She nodded.
“I’m not supposed to do this, Aimée.”
“Help me out,” she said, “and we’ll call it quits.”
He owed her. His mother-in-law and wife both down with grippe, Serge tied up at work, and no Sunday babysitter available, she’d answered his plea and agreed to take his toddler twin boys to the Vincennes Zoo. The highlight of the day had been
the ride on the Metro, and the twins, fascinated with trains, had refused to leave the station. The afternoon was spent greeting trains and saying good-bye to every engine. She’d finally bribed them with Mentos to go home. She’d been exhausted, wondering how his wife coped every day.
“The autopsy’s later this afternoon,” Serge said. “Désolé.”
First she felt disappointment, then relief. Of course, the baby’s real mother was alive and would return; she might be at Aimée’s now. Yet Michou would have called if she had turned up. A prickling sense that it all connected troubled her.
“No ID, and waterlogged fingerprints.”
“Was the skin on the hand so sloughed off she’ll need the ‘treatment’?”
Serge shrugged.
She knew the treatment, a technique used on waterlogged corpses that consisted of slicing the wrist to peel back the skin of the hand so the technician, inserting his own gloved hand inside the skin, could exert sufficient pressure for a print. Gruesome.
“It’s a hard call,” Serge said. Creatures have nibbled on the fingertips and there are injuries on the hand from the buffeting of the waves. We’ll inject saline for the soft tissue pads to plump them out. And if we’re lucky, we’ll get prints.”
He shook his head. “A sad case, I’d say.” He pulled a sheaf of papers from his pocket. ”I have a prelim report. It indicates suicide. So young.” His brow furrowed as he thumbed through the pages. He flipped one over and read on.
“But the bruise I saw on her temple might mean she was attacked,” Aimée said.
“It could have been caused by contact with the stone bank after she hit the water.”
“And the blood froth?”
“I’d say blood pooling in the ear first, associated with drainage. Or feasting by the river creatures.”
Aimée suppressed a shudder.
“You mean they showed that side because . . .”
“The other side was worse.” Serge exhaled. “The river squad, well . . .” he paused. “Let’s say the turbulent current and sewer grate against which she’d lodged made it difficult to pull her out.”