The Blood Promise: A Hugo Marston Novel

by Pryor, Mark

  “It’s easy for anyone?”

  “Non. But Lieutenant Camille Lerens began her career with the Bordeaux police as Officer Christophe Lerens.”

  “Wait, what?”

  “You heard me. Christophe became Camille, and the street cop became a damn good investigator. Just imagine what she had to put up with on the way up.”

  “Wow, I don’t know what to say about that.” Hugo knew little about transgender issues, just what he’d read in the news or seen on television. He knew a great deal, however, about the male-centric nature, often misogynistic, attitudes that lived deep inside law enforcement agencies, especially in days gone by. And that meant he could well imagine the veiled hostility and likely outright prejudice a man would encounter during his transition to womanhood. That Lerens had not only made that transition but been promoted to lieutenant may have spoken to the open-mindedness of her superiors, but unquestionably reinforced Garcia’s opinion of her as a tough and capable police officer.

  “You know what, Raul, she sounds perfect,” Hugo said, rounding the corner onto on Rue Samson. “And tell her to bring those shears along. If she waves them around just right, she might get those boys to spill everything.”

  “D’accord, and if the gender thing doesn’t bother you I think you’ll like her,” Garcia said. “She’s a lot like Tom in many ways. Although she doesn’t swear or drink as much, and I think she goes to church sometimes.”

  “So nothing like Tom, then.”

  “She gets results, is what I mean. Just wait until you meet her, you’ll see what I mean.”

  “Yeah, now I’m curious. So, back to business.” Hugo gave Garcia the address. “They said they’d be in the pavilion. I checked on my phone, it looks like it’s near an entrance to Parc Montsouris, which is only five minutes from here. If that.”

  “Bien, I’m on the E5 autoroute, I’m probably closer than you are.”

  “Good but just lay low, OK? If our anonymous friend sees you, they might split.” Hugo started to pull away but the car dragged and lurched, pulling him into the curb. “Merde, Raul, I think I have a problem.”

  “What is it?”

  Hugo jammed the car into a side street, wrestling with the steering wheel one-handed. He jumped out of the car and went to the passenger’s side to confirm his fear.

  “Dammit, flat tire.” He knelt and saw a gash in the wall of the tire. “Looks like someone took a knife to it.”

  “Ach, non. Hippies and antigovernment people all over that neighborhood, they recognize an unmarked police car when they see one.”

  “And apparently do more than recognize them.” His mind flitted to Bruno Capron, but it seemed unlikely that he’d done anything other than run as far and fast as possible. Like Garcia said, someone had probably been walking down this quiet street and decided it’d be funny to puncture a cop’s tire. Hilarious, Hugo thought.

  “Want me to go instead?” Garcia said.

  “Whoever it is, they’re expecting me, it’s almost certainly someone from Chateau Tourville.”

  “How do you know?”

  “They said we had dinner recently. Narrows it down to twenty or twenty-five people.”

  “If they’re telling the truth.”

  “Fair point.” Hugo checked his watch. “I’m supposed to be there in fifteen minutes, twenty at the outside, or they said the meeting was off. If I stop chit-chatting with you I can get this tire changed and still make it, so let’s stick to the plan.”

  “If you’re sure. I don’t mind—”

  “Gotta go, Raul, I’ll call you if there’s a problem.” He rang off and dropped his phone into a pocket. He found the latch to the trunk, took a deep breath, and went to work. It had been a long time, a decade or more, since he’d changed a tire, but he managed to figure out the jack and find a place where it would have good purchase. It took him two minutes to lift the side of the car a creaking eight inches off the ground, and once it was up he set about removing the lug nuts only to find the wheel kept spinning with every turn of the wrench. Which is when he remembered: loosen the nuts while the tire’s on the ground, then use the jack.

  He contemplated fighting with the spinning wheel, hating to backtrack, but decided to cut his losses. He lowered the car and quickly loosened the wheel before jacking it back up. He’d spent ten minutes and a surge of anxiety hit his stomach like acid. As he was fitting the small spare he flinched as a shadow fell over him, the lip of a dark cloud closing over the sun and suggesting that if Hugo didn’t hurry, he might get wet.

  The spare tire looked weak and delicate, but Hugo double-checked the tightness of the nuts and heaved the flat into the trunk, slamming the lid closed as he checked his watch again. He had five minutes to make a five-minute drive, ten if the caller kept their word to stay put. He backed quickly out of the side street and headed to Rue Martin Bernard and onto Rue de Tolbiac. He cursed the red light at Avenue Reille, but the car’s clock told him he might make it.

  A final left onto Rue Gazan, which bordered the park, and Hugo gripped the wheel as he scanned for a street number. He caught one, then another, and knew he was close. Looking ahead he saw that his destination was a gap in the sidewalk, a narrow turning into what looked like a tiny parking lot, which likely gave access to the park.

  As he slowed, the sound of sirens reached him. He checked his mirror and saw two police cars racing down Rue Gazan behind him. His skin tingled and he gripped the wheel a little tighter as he pulled to the side of the road to let them pass, but up ahead another police car appeared from behind a delivery truck, all three heading right for the park. As soon as the cars had rounded him, Hugo stamped on the gas and accelerated the last hundred yards to his destination, the road now blocked by one of the white police cars. He leapt out of the car and scanned the side of the street for Garcia’s blue Renault, cursing when he didn’t see it.

  More sirens sang from across the rooftops to his left, an avalanche of noise heading his way, and fear seeped into Hugo’s mind and body, chilling his veins and making him feel sick. That many police cars meant one thing, in his experience, and one thing only: an officer down.

  He rounded the front of his car toward the uniformed officer blocking the street, but the man waved him to the side as an ambulance edged past them and turned right into the parking lot. Hugo’s view was blocked and as he tried to get closer, the policeman put a hand in his chest.

  “Police,” Hugo said, gesturing to the unmarked car.

  The flic’s eyes narrowed, unsure. “Identification? This is a crime scene, I need to know everyone who comes in and out for the log.”

  Hugo fumbled for his embassy credentials, desperately hoping the young officer would give them the same weight he’d give to his own detective’s identification. The officer looked back and forth between the photo and Hugo before handing it back.

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “You can go in, but my commanding officer is in there. Please show your identification to her.”

  Hugo nodded and blew straight past, striding the final twenty yards toward the entrance to the parking lot. When he reached it, his knees buckled. He grabbed at the stone wall for support and he heard a voice, his own voice, whispering a desperate plea, “No, no, no.”

  His friend’s car sat neatly in a parking space not ten yards away, the driver’s window shattered, glass littering the ground. The two flics assigned to preserve the crime scene weren’t looking, distracted by a growing crowd in the park itself. As if in a trance, Hugo circled the front of the car, stopping only when he stood a foot away from the motionless figure laying across the steering wheel. Raul Garcia’s face was turned toward Hugo, spider-webbed by the blood that seeped from two crimson holes in the side of his head, his mouth gaping and his eyes staring sightlessly toward the gentle roll of Parc Montsouris.

  Hugo tried to process what he was seeing, but he couldn’t understand why the men in the ambulance just sat there. He moved toward them as if in a dream, his mouth working but no w
ords coming out. His hands flailed, gesturing for them to do their job, to go help his friend, to stop fucking sitting there like nothing was wrong.

  One of the paramedics saw him coming and shouted to a policewoman in plain clothes. The dark-skinned woman turned and gave an order to two uniforms who stood nearby, the men approaching Hugo with grim faces. He held out his credentials, which bought him enough time and space to get near the woman, who was clearly in charge.

  “Why aren’t they doing something?” he shouted. “They need to stop the bleeding, get him stabilized. Take him to a hospital, for fuck’s sake.”

  She turned to him. “Monsieur—”

  “Why are they just sitting there?” Hugo couldn’t tear his eyes from the surreal scene before him, unable to fathom why no one else seemed to care. “Raul needs help, please, make them help him.”

  The woman detached herself from the men around her and moved toward him. She wore military-style pants, heavy boots, and a black leather jacket.

  “Vous êtes Hugo Marston?” she asked.

  “Yes.” Hugo blinked, another surprise. “How did you . . . Are you . . .” His mind struggled for the name Raul Garcia had given him but it wasn’t there. His mind was a fog that reason couldn’t penetrate, a haze that quivered with an image of his friend’s smiling face and then, looming behind it like some hideous mirage, the destroyed version of the man who lay lifeless in the car.

  “Camille Lerens.” She put a hand on his arm, a strong grip, and steered him backward. “Monsieur Marston, I’m sorry. I’m very sorry. But this is a crime scene, you shouldn’t be here.”

  “But someone needs to—”

  “I know.” Her voice softened. “But I’m sorry, there’s nothing anyone can do. He was shot in the head, twice. Il est mort.”

  He’s dead.

  Dead.

  Raul Garcia is dead.

  There was no time or place for those words, no way in which they made any sense. They echoed in Hugo’s mind, bouncing around inside as if the words themselves demanded that he listen, accept, and absorb them. But he couldn’t.

  Lerens steered him back onto the street and knelt as Hugo sat on the curb, half falling as his legs finally gave way.

  “Do you know who did this?” she was saying, her voice calm but insistent. “You were with him today, do you know who did this?”

  I was with him an hour ago. I talked to him ten minutes ago. “No. I mean, yes.” He shook his head to clear away some of that thick fog. “I don’t know who it was, but I spoke to them an hour ago. Less.”

  “Explain. Quickly please.”

  Hugo told her about the jewelry store and the phone call, his words stumbling out at first but lining up as his mind focused on the simple task of relaying a story that took him away from what he’d seen and into the safer, easier territory of what he’d done. Soon his words twisted together like the strands of a rope, strong enough to pull him back into a semblance of control and hold him together while he tried to help this woman catch a killer.

  “The store owner, he’s still there?” she asked.

  “Yes. Cuffed to a stove, he’ll still be there.”

  “Do you think he knew the caller?”

  “If he bought the necklace from him, yes, but he claimed his son had bought it. Did I mention that?”

  “Yes, you did. Thank you.” She stood and for the first time he paid attention to her appearance. She was squarely-built, but like an athlete so not overweight, with light brown skin and black hair that was cut close to her head. She had a soft, almost sensuous mouth, and above prominent cheek bones her dark, hard eyes appraised him as they talked. “I’ll send a couple of men over there to search the place, I was on my way with the warrant when . . .” She stopped and shook her head. “Merde. Please wait here, I may have more questions.”

  Hugo looked up as a slow beeping announced the reversing ambulance, lumbering backward out of the small parking lot before it roared forward past the police blockade and away down Rue Gazan, its lights no longer flashing and its siren quiet, growling through the streets of Paris until it could light up again, maybe this time to help, to arrive in time to fend off death’s merciless and unpredictable hand.

  Hugo sat on the curb with his head bowed, unable to think, aware only of warm and heavy rain drops hitting the back of his neck and spattering the sidewalk and road in front of him. He looked over and caught Camille Lerens watching him. He looked away, wondering whether she was as good as Garcia had said, and knowing that he didn’t have the luxury of waiting to find out.

  Those bullets, he knew, could have been meant for him. But even if Raul had somehow provoked the shooting, by being spotted or exchanging words with the killer, Hugo also knew that his actions had put his friend in the line of fire. The caller had told Hugo, ordered him, not to tell anyone and Hugo had disobeyed. Out of necessity, yes, but if he’d played it right and done as he was instructed, then the only downside would have been an empty pavilion and no meeting. The anger and sadness that wracked Hugo with almost-physical spasms were made all the more painful by the desperate wish that Hugo could take back that last phone call to Raul.

  Hugo willed himself to abandon the recriminations—for now, at least. He had to find whoever killed Raul, and right now there was just one person who could set him on the path to knowing who pulled the trigger. A fury burned white-hot in his chest, and Hugo knew, without any shadow of a doubt, that the person who’d killed Raul Garcia had done nothing less than sign their own death warrant.

  Hugo slipped away while Lieutenant Lerens wasn’t watching. Sooner or later, maybe already, she’d have her men at Capron’s store and that’d be the end of Hugo’s investigation. The murder of a police officer, pretty much anywhere in the world, meant a deep, painstaking, and meticulous investigation, one that would shake every corner of Paris until the killer was caught. But meticulous was not fast, and Hugo had no plans to wait for the scrupulous machinery of the Paris police to warm up and start shredding the city for clues.

  Hugo backed his vehicle carefully through the rows of police cars that had stacked up, a show of solidarity that Hugo had seen at each of the five officer shootings he’d been unlucky enough to attend, in the United States, England, and now here in France.

  As he finished a three-point turn on Rue Gazan, his phone rang and he looked at the display with irritation, ready to ignore Lerens’s order to return to the crime scene. But when he saw who it was, he pulled to the curb and answered.

  “Tom, did you hear?”

  His friend’s voice was tight, desperation and hope clutching at his throat. “Tell me it’s not true, fucking tell me that it’s not true, Hugo.”

  “I’m sorry, Tom. I’m really sorry, but it is, it’s true.”

  “Bullshit. Fucking bullshit until you see him. I mean it, Hugo, I’m not believing this until you tell me you’ve see him.”

  “I did, Tom. I saw him. No mistakes, no miscommunication. Raul’s dead.”

  Tom’s breathing was ragged. “Do you know who did this?”

  “No. But I’m going to find out, you better believe that.”

  “I’m already on my way, you’re on scene?”

  “I’m leaving, got somewhere to go right now.”

  A flash of a pause as Tom’s mind worked. “You have a lead?”

  “Kind of, yeah. I’m going to turn it into one, anyway.”

  “I’m close, tell me where and I’ll meet you.”

  Despite it all, Hugo smiled. He needed Tom right now, and he knew Tom needed him. They’d pretend it was about the lead—and they did truly work well together—but right now it was more than that. It was the way family and friends gravitate to each other for comfort in the wake of a tragedy, and while both men had seen more blood spilled, more grief and agony, than most, it was rare for death to envelop one of their own, someone so close and dear to both of them.

  Hugo gave Tom the address, then hung up and pulled away from the curb with a wheel-spin that turned the
heads of several officers drifting around the perimeter of the scene. He drove fast, every car in front an infuriating impediment. The stop light on Avenue Reille was an enemy that he triumphed over with the police lights on his unmarked car and a hand on the horn. He didn’t bother with a surreptitious approach to the jewelry store. Old man Capron would either be there or not, the cops would either have swarmed the place or not, and he thumped the steering wheel with relief when he saw the place was still dark, the Closed sign still in place, and no police in sight.

  He marched through the door and saw Bruno Capron standing over his father, a hacksaw driving back and forth over the handcuffs. Both men looked up, shocked when they saw Hugo standing there with a gun pointed at their faces.

  “No more fucking games,” Hugo said. “This just got serious.”

  Bruno’s eyes darted toward the office, his former escape route.

  “You run, you die,” Hugo snapped. “The last time you scurried out of here a policeman was shot and killed, which means that every cop in this city will kiss me and buy me drinks for shooting you in the back the moment you take one step toward that door.”

  “You wouldn’t . . .” Bruno Capron started, but his voice tailed off because it was evident he believed Hugo would.

  “Get on your knees,” Hugo said. “Now.” Bruno complied, kneeling beside his father, the hacksaw forgotten in his hand. Hugo walked up to him and snatched it away. He held the gun to old man Capron’s head and looked into Bruno’s wide eyes. “Now you’re going to tell me what I want to know, because if you don’t your dear papa is going to be very upset with you.”

  The two men looked at each other, but André remained defiant. “I don’t believe you would.”

  Anger boiled inside Hugo, that this worthless thief would fight to keep hidden the one link to Garcia’s killer, to the killer of Collette Bassin. He bent down and put his face inches from the old man, and tore into him. “Listen to me, you two-bit piece of crap. That cop who was here with me? He’s dead. Murdered. Some putain put a gun to the back of his head and blew his brains out and if you think for one fucking minute I’m leaving here without the name of the person who sold you that necklace, you are very, very wrong.”