The Book Artist

by Mark Pryor

  “I mean, come on.” He spread his hands. “It’s Josh. Mister nice guy. Plus, he’s been Alia’s best friend and greatest admirer for years. He’d do anything for her.”

  Anything except get left behind, perhaps, Hugo thought. Beside him, Marchand cleared his throat unsubtly, so Hugo took a moment to run through the events at the restaurant, and Drummond’s opinion that Reno was incapable of killing Alsaffar.

  “But Alia did tell me he had a temper that she’d seen on a few occasions,” Hugo added.

  “Push him harder,” Marchand said. “That Reno character sounds like he just put himself on our radar as suspect number one.” He held up a cautionary hand. “Early days, I know, but we need to know more about him.” Marchand looked around the small room. “Not here, though. At the prefecture where we can record everything properly. But first . . .” His voice trailed off, and it took Hugo a moment to understand.

  “You’re going to ask him to identify the body. His stepsister.”

  “I have to.”

  “No, I can do it. I knew her well enough to do that, for heaven’s sake.”

  “I’m sorry, no.” Marchand shook his head. “Our procedures do not allow for that. If family is available, they must do it.”

  Hugo looked at him for a moment. “All right. I’ll let him know.”

  “Merci.” Marchand’s voice softened. “It’s going to be a long night for the poor man. I’m sorry for that, too.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  It was midnight by the time they got to the prefecture, a little later by the time they’d settled into an interview room.

  Hugo and Marchand had stayed with Rob Drummond throughout his ordeal at the medical examiner’s office. They’d had to wait for Alia Alsaffar’s body to be wheeled into the viewing area, and then they’d had to hold him up when Dr. Sprengelmeyer pulled back the sheet. Hugo rode with them, too, back to the center of Paris, but Marchand had balked at any further participation.

  “I’m sorry, but my driver will take you to your apartment.”

  “You have a translator standing by?” Hugo asked mildly.

  “I’m sure someone will be available, yes.”

  “And if not? You’re all right with waiting until the morning to interview the victim’s closest relative here, a man who was at the crime scene, and who knows the person you’ve identified as your one and only suspect. You’re all right with that?”

  “My only suspect so far.”

  “And you won’t identify any more tonight if you can’t communicate with your only witness so far.” Hugo turned to Drummond and switched to English. “You’re an American citizen, right?”

  “Yes, of course.” Drummond already seemed dazed, and the question obviously puzzled him. “Why?”

  “Can I assume you’d like a representative from your government present when you’re questioned? Assuming the French authorities agree to that, of course.”

  “Well, yes. I’d like you there. Can you be there? I don’t really speak French, and . . . You know.”

  “I will ask.” He turned back to Marchand, who grimaced and waved a hand dismissively.

  “I understood enough of that. You invited yourself to his questioning, and he accepted. Is that about right?”

  Hugo smiled. “The United States Embassy is grateful for your cooperation and appreciates the accommodations you are willing to show one of its citizens.”

  Marchand turned away and muttered something that Hugo didn’t catch, gesturing for them both to follow him inside the building, but Hugo thought he saw the glimmer of a smile on the lieutenant intern’s lips.

  Once they’d settled in the interrogation room, a uniformed officer appeared with a tray bearing three disposable cups of coffee, creamer pots, and packets of sugar. Marchand spoke to Drummond in halting, accented English.

  “I am sorry. The coffee is not good. Normalement we serve good coffee in Paris, but not here.”

  “Thanks. It’s fine, really.” Drummond reached half-heartedly for a cup and emptied three packets of sugar into it.

  Marchand looked at Hugo, who also helped himself to a cup. “Can you explain that this interview is being recorded? And then maybe ask him about his family history, get him talking about how he’s related to our victim.”

  “Will do.” Hugo looked at Drummond. “Are you OK to answer a few questions?”

  “Yeah, sure. Whatever I can do to help.”

  “And, just so you know, there are two cameras in here with microphones, recording everything we say.”

  “I figured.”

  “That’s important because you need to be careful with your answers. I know you want to help, but if one of us asks a question and you don’t know the answer, don’t make it up just to be helpful. You can get yourself in serious trouble that way.”

  “Right, got it.”

  “Why don’t you start by telling me more about your stepsister?” You said you weren’t close due to geography and age, right?”

  “That’s true, yes.” Drummond puffed out his sizeable cheeks and blew his breath out slowly. “This is so surreal. I’m in a French police station. Alia’s dead. I mean, really dead. That sweet girl gone, and for what? Why?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out. And, believe me, you may think you don’t know anything, but you know more than anyone in this room. We need your help. Even if you don’t know who killed her, you’re the first step, our starting place. We’ll use what you tell us to properly launch this investigation, which is why we have you here so late. The first few hours are the most important in any investigation, which is why we have to do this now. And why you’re here—because at this point only you can help us.”

  “Sure, whatever you need. Ask me anything.”

  “Oh, first, can we take your DNA and fingerprints? For elimination purposes.”

  “Err,” Drummond shook his head slowly. “I don’t mean to be a jerk, but no. I don’t like . . . touching things I don’t have to touch, and putting my fingers in some grubby ink that a million criminals have touched . . .” He shuddered. “Sorry, but no. My DNA you can take because you use those sterile swabs, right?”

  “We do, yes.”

  “That’s fine, but unless you get a warrant, or whatever they use here, no one touches my hands. Sorry.”

  Hugo smiled. “I did notice you wouldn’t take the tip I offered.”

  “Cash is the worst,” Drummond said. “Just disgusting.”

  “And the bottle of hand sanitizer on the hat-check counter.”

  “Even that doesn’t feel like it helps sometimes,” Drummond said. “But thanks for understanding.”

  “Sure. I’m curious, why were you checking coats? What with you being family.”

  “Oh, the guy who was supposed to do it, the museum employee, was sick. Alia seemed stressed about it, so I just offered, seemed like a good way to avoid shaking hands with people.” He grimaced. “I didn’t think about all the cash I’d have to handle.”

  “Makes sense. So, why don’t you tell me about your parents, I guess all three of them.”

  “Well, OK. My father I never knew growing up, so that’s an easy one. My mom went to Germany, she was in the military, met some English guy and they . . . had me. I grew up in America and kept her name, she would never even tell me his, said he didn’t deserve to be thought of as a father, just a sperm donor.”

  “That must have been tough.”

  “I guess, but it’s all I knew. And my mother, she was mom and dad, if you know what I mean. She could arrange flowers and change the oil in the car. She played both roles. Then he showed up, one day. Out of the blue.”

  “Was that strange?”

  “I was in my teens at that point. I was so used to not having a father that he was pretty much a curiosity and nothing more. He had money, I guess was charming, and told me about the English side of my family. But he was more like my mom’s friend, not a real father, even though they eventually married. Just before her death.” />
  Hugo translated so far, but Marchand seemed to have understood pretty well. Hugo continued: “So your father met and married Alia’s mother at some point?”

  “Yeah, her father died about three years after she was born. Cancer.”

  “That’s rough,” Hugo said.

  “She never showed it, but yes, I’m sure it was hard growing up without her dad, even though I hadn’t much minded doing that. Anyway, when she was . . .” He thought for a moment. “Must have been around sixteen or seventeen. Her mother met my father, they married, and we became stepsiblings.”

  “You were in your twenties?”

  “Right.” He smiled. “Don’t make me do math, please. But yeah, late twenties.”

  “Are they both still alive?”

  “No, they’re not. Her mother was killed in a car accident.”

  “And your father?”

  Drummond sat back and looked down at his hands, saying nothing for a moment. Finally, he looked at Hugo, then Marchand, and back to Hugo. “I suppose you’ll find out eventually, won’t you?”

  “Find out what?” Hugo asked.

  “About my father.”

  “What about him?”

  “He’s dead,” Drummond said quietly. “I killed him.”

  Hugo translated as close to word-for-word as he could remember, and just as Marchand was about to speak, a knock on the door interrupted him. A uniformed policewoman stuck her head into the room.

  “Lieutenant Intern Marchand, there’s some new information, from the victim’s phone. You said to let you know when we got anything at all, so I hope you don’t mind me interrupting.”

  “No, it’s fine.” He looked at Drummond and spoke in English. “Please, excuse me for a moment.” He gestured to Hugo to step outside with him. “I’m only catching half of what he’s saying, but it’s all recorded and I can have it transcribed if I need to. But if you’ll continue with him and take notes, fill me in after, then we can get more done. And more quickly.”

  “Happy to,” Hugo said. He was pleased that Marchand had gone from clear annoyance at his presence to trusting him with this interview. Objectively, this was a simple task and a smart way to divide the labor, but that didn’t mean a petty or resentful detective had to let him conduct the interview.

  “Merci. I’ll be back in a few minutes, I’m sure.”

  Hugo returned to the interview room and sat down. “He said I should continue, since he doesn’t speak English too well.”

  “He’s gonna miss the best bit,” Drummond said.

  “How you killed your dad?”

  “Yeah. It was about five years ago. Since my mother’s death, and since Alia’s mother’s death, he’d turned into a drunken asshole. Like, truly mean. Anyway, one of his drinking buddies had a niece living with him. Ten years old, something like that. I went over there one night to talk to my dad. There was no answer when I knocked, but the door was unlocked so I went in. I found the two of them taking photos of her in the basement.”

  “What kind of photos?”

  “The ones adults shouldn’t take of kids. Ever.”

  “Good God, what happened?”

  “I lost my mind. I went to call the cops, but they begged me not to, and when I ignored them, they came at me. My dad’s buddy, he was so drunk he took one swing and fell over, missed by a mile. But my dad . . . he had a look in his eye, like how dare I question what he’s doing? Even though it was . . . sick. He came at me, and I just grabbed him and hit him, over and over. It was like a red mist came over me, I couldn’t stop. Didn’t want to stop.”

  “Were you charged with anything?”

  “Hell, no. The cops took one look at the digital camera and all but gave me a medal.”

  “Still, I’m sorry you had to go through that,” Hugo said. “Pretty traumatic for you. Did you and Alia talk about it?”

  “No. I mean, not really. She knew what kind of person he’d become, she was pretty much estranged from him anyway, at that point. She understood, I think.”

  No wonder she didn’t want to talk about family, Hugo thought.

  The interview-room door opened, and Marchand came in and sat down at the small table. “Anything we can use?” he asked Hugo.

  “Just getting the family history.”

  “Oh, yes. He said he killed his father?”

  “Yes. I’ll fill you in later, an emotional story and the poor man’s tired.”

  “Hugo, he killed his father, are you saying that’s not relevant here?”

  “Yes,” Hugo said, “I am. Trust me, that situation is not this one, even a little bit. A violent and twisted father, basically self-defense . . . not the same.”

  “Fine, if that’s what it was, I agree.” Marchand looked at his watch. “Well, we can let him go. Or take him home. We have someone else we need to check out.”

  “A possible suspect?”

  “Too early to tell, but could be,” Marchand said. “Someone was nearby, whose number was on the victim’s phone, but who wasn’t invited to the event.”

  “Intriguing, who is it?”

  “A woman by the name of Claudia Roux. Ever heard of her?”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Tom sat on a bench, huddled against the cold in his long wool coat, and looked out over Prinsengracht canal to consider his options. The sweet, tempting aroma of the local pancakes drifted to him from a stand twenty yards away, reminding him that it was almost three in the afternoon and he’d not eaten since an early breakfast.

  He had half a mind to call off the search for the day and just be a tourist for a few hours, maybe stand in the long, snaking line to get into the Anne Frank House, which was close by. But his feet hurt, and shuffling along for an hour before even getting in did not sound like fun.

  Hugo ought to be here helping, he thought. He’d know what to do next. And he wouldn’t have broken into the wrong room at the hotel.

  That had been a mistake. And one he was lucky not to be arrested for. He sat back to think but was interrupted by the gentle ring of his phone. He didn’t recognize the number, but answered anyway.

  “This is Tom.”

  “Hi, Tom. Brendon Fowler here.”

  “Bren, you find something out?”

  Fowler had been a colleague of Tom’s at the CIA. A tall, muscular redhead with a law degree from Duke, he was a man you could count on in a pinch, even if you no longer worked for the Company. The only odd thing about Fowler was his appetite—he ate pizza and only pizza for every meal of the day. No one had ever seen him eat anything else, and he admitted it was what he consumed on the way into work every morning.

  “Bad news, I’m afraid,” Fowler was saying.

  “Fuck, you drew a blank?”

  “Not what I meant,” Fowler said. “It’s bad news for you.”

  “How’s that?”

  “You told me he was a smart guy, if I remember rightly.”

  “Not that I’d admit it to the bastard’s face. But yeah.”

  “What he’s doing isn’t smart.”

  “So you did find something,” Tom said.

  “Most definitely.”

  “And you’re going to make me beg and plead to get it out of you, I see.”

  “Nah, you already promised me a pizza coupon, so I’ll just tell you. He used his dead brother’s passport.”

  Tom let that process for a moment. “That’s actually pretty clever. Obvious, and yet I didn’t think of it.”

  “Right? I thought the same thing at first, but let it sink in,” Fowler said. “Think about what it really means.”

  It dawned on Tom, probably the same way it had on Brendon Fowler. “Shit,” Tom said. “It’s clever but also obvious. He’d have known that the minute he was suspected of being here, the authorities would flag any passport with the name Cofer on it.”

  “Right,” Fowler said. “Fake passports are almost impossible to get away with these days, but if you do manage to create one, you can stay under the radar. He didn’t go that
route.”

  “But using his brother’s passport . . . There’s no way he can make it back home without being caught, and that’d be a violation of his parole.”

  “Which, in turn, means . . .” Fowler prompted.

  “He has no intention of going back to the States, let alone back to prison. This is a one-way mission for him.”

  “Right. And, as an aside, we also now know he’s not staying at a hotel.”

  “Because they make a note of guests’ passports,” Tom said. “He may be on a mission to hell, but he’s not ready to be found that easily.”

  “Right. And this makes him so much more dangerous, Tom. Seriously, you need to think about getting the authorities involved, officially.”

  “I can’t. We’ve had barely a glimpse of him, and some lazy cop somewhere will say that just because his dead brother’s passport is being used means nothing. Someone else could’ve purloined it.”

  “And yet that’s not the reason you won’t be calling for help, is it?”

  “This problem needs to go away permanently,” Tom said. “Not back to prison for a few years.”

  “That’s my point. He’s already fixing to go away permanently. The thing is he’s planning to take you with him.”

  Tom thought for a moment. “What I don’t know is, does he want just me? Or will he go after Hugo as well?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. Either way, he’s suicidal.”

  “If he’s also going after Hugo, then he’s not suicidal yet. Unless Cofer’s planning to haunt him to death.”

  “Well, let me know if I can help,” Fowler said. “Whatever you need, official or unofficial.”

  “I will. And thanks, Bren, I appreciate it.”

  “Just do me one favor, will you?”

  “Sure,” Tom said. “What is it?”

  “Stay alive.”

  Tom gave into his senses and bought a paper plate loaded with Dutch pancakes, juggling with them back to his bench. As he sat facing the canal, a duck flapped onto the bank and ventured toward him, quacking quietly. It fell silent as it got close, but its beak stayed open slightly, and Tom assumed the wee feathered fellow was used to tourists, and maybe locals, sharing their spoils.