Aimée leaned forward to take off Miles Davis’s leash, and Morbier’s borrowed jacket flapped open. Madame Cachou’s gaze caught on her yesterday’s worn clothes, stiff with blood. The bandage.
“What happened this time?” Shock mingled with concern in her tone. She wagged her finger. “An accident on that scooter? A woman in your condition …”
Quit sounding like my mother, she almost said. But her mother hadn’t said that, because her mother wasn’t there.
“I saw you on the télé in the appeal for that young girl.”
Her and the rest of the world. The rapist, too.
Apart from getting herself shot at and Mélanie’s mother murdered, where had the news appeal got her? Zazie was still missing. The “nice man” rang no bells with the owner of the NeoCancan, and no girls were held captive in his cellar, according to Beto’s message. No brioches this morning, either, because of his double shift. No word from Zacharié’s parole officer. And neither Madame Pelletier at the Brigade des Mineurs or Madame de Langlet had answered her calls.
“My baby’s fine.”
“Always in trouble, and now with a little life inside you …”
And the shooter still out there. Where was the police protection Morbier had promised her?
“No one’s heard from Zazie in two days. There’s a rapist on the loose.” Her shoulder stung.
“And why is that your business?”
“A little girl I’ve known since she first started talking? I can’t rest until I find her.” She looked the concierge in the eye. “Could you?”
And with that she left an openmouthed Madame Cachou. Mounting the worn marble stairs more slowly than usual, she pulled out her cell phone and called Virginie again.
“I’m sorry, Aimée,” said a breathless Virginie. “So many tips have been called in.”
Aimée leaned on the scrolled metal filigreed banister, rooting for her keys. “Anything concrete?”
“Every tip’s being checked out. The flics promised.”
About time.
“Got to go, Aimée.”
Not even a “how are you feeling?”… but then Virginie wouldn’t know about what had happened last night. Or would she? And the flics had warned her against contact. She couldn’t worry about that.
She checked her messages as Miles Davis scampered up the stairs. A missed call. Serge, her friend at the morgue. So Morbier had come through and asked for a ballistics report.
She hit callback. “All?, Serge?”
He cleared his throat. “We’re awaiting the final report, but the bullet’s a match for the victim, Commissaire.”
One of the staff had to be in the morgue with him.
“That’s all, Serge? Didn’t you notice anything out of the ordinary for a nine millimeter? The casing grooves? A magnifier would show.”
“Commissaire, you’re referring to the ballistic prelim?” said Serge. “It showed the bullet’s from a Luger. A 1942 German standard issue for the Wehrmacht.”
The shooter was smart. Lugers had no serial numbers, and making a definitive match would be difficult.
She heard water splashing in the distance. The whine of a bone saw. Tried not to cringe imagining Serge, with his black-framed glasses outfitted with magnifiers and his black beard muffled by a mask, leaning over a half-dissected corpse on the stainless-steel autopsy table.
“Thanks, Serge.”
“Now if you’ll let me get back to my autopsy,” he whispered.
“Wait, Serge,” she said. “Have you autopsied Sylvaine Olivet, the twelve-year-old rape victim?”
Pause. “What’s it to you?”
“Yes or no?”
She heard a door creak. Footsteps. He’d stepped into the corridor. “A hard one, Aimée. Children are the worst.” Serge had twin preschool boys.
“Was her convulsion brought on by the rape, her injuries?”
“Not what comes to mind, but I’d have to check my notes. Why?”
She had to think.
“I asked what’s it to you, Aimée?” He cleared his throat again. “I’ve got a whole queue of bodies—multiple gunshot wounds, suspicious asphyxiation, and that’s just before lunch.”
“But I found her, Serge, with her distraught mother, on the floor …” She paused, the scene playing in her mind, Sylvaine’s cold limbs. “Any traces of sedatives, drugs in her blood?”
“Does this have to do with you on the télé?”
“Long story, but yes, and Zazie might be another victim. Please, Serge, I’ll take the twins for their vaccinations.”
He hated to do that. A medical pathologist who couldn’t face seeing his own children poked with needles.
She heard a door shut. “Sir, the magistrate’s waiting.”
“I have to go,” he whispered. “And you owe me big time, Aimée. Vaccinations and the boys’ summer camp physicals.” He clicked off.
She groaned inside. Never mind taking them to the doctor, the boys were bad enough just to babysit—they never sat still for longer than a minute.
But a German Luger from the war? She filed that away. Right now her bladder called. Again.
Her seventeenth-century flat, bone-chill cold in the winter and stifling in the summer, welcomed her with stale air and the tang of lemons from the silver bowl on the dining table.
In front of the door, she’d found the package Madame Cachou had mentioned, which was addressed in René’s handwriting. More pregnancy books and Lamaze pamphlets. She’d promised he could be her Lamaze coach, whatever that meant. But she guessed she’d find out by studying this new batch of material.
First she had to get the bloody clothes off, wash up and think about next steps—what favors to call in. Favors she didn’t have. She’d just have to figure that out.
Steam fogged her gilt-framed Directoire bathroom mirror. In the tub she kept the bullet-wound area dry and sponged around the stinging in her shoulder. Only two stitches. She swabbed on the doctor’s ointment, attached an Asterix bandage over it.
Just as she was pulling a towel around her expanding middle, she heard the front door click. She froze, prickles running up the backs of her damp legs.