“Sit down, for God’s sake.” She pushed Chloé’s high chair aside and helped him onto the kitchen step stool. Chloé’s wails rose from the counter, escalating in pitch. “Put your arms up.”
“Take care of Chloé, Leduc,” he said, catching his breath. “Your daughter needs you. Before you go: I’ll ask around on one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“You keep your nose out of it, d’accord?” he said. “If you want my help, then it’s on my terms, Leduc.”
As if she wouldn’t do her own nosing around. Aimée nodded.
His phone was vibrating on the counter as he waved her off.
Aimée found Chloé in a wet diaper and tangled blanket. The window was open, and the room was cold. Chloé could catch a chill.
How could Morbier leave the damn window open in April? She was spitting mad until she remembered. Disorientation was a classic heart-attack symptom.
She took off the sopping diaper, swept up her daughter and wrapped her in a fresh blanket, kissing her tears away as she hurried to the kitchen.
“Hold on, Morbier, I’m just changing Chloé and then we’ll call the doctor … Morbier?”
No answer.
With Chloé clutched to her hip, Aimée found the kitchen warm and empty. She rubbed her finger on the fogged window to clear it but saw only a spotlit cone of mist under the yellow sodium lamp on the empty, cobbled quai.
On the piece of paper with the attorney’s name on it, Morbier had written a message: Get your priorities straight.
Sunday, 11 P.M.
NICU FELT SOMEONE shaking his shoulder, pulling him from his nightmare. He blinked awake, sitting up on the hard bench in H?pital Laennec’s chapel. Before him stood a white-coated hospital attendant and a blue-uniformed flic.
“Nicu Constantin?”
He nodded. Rubbed his eyes. “You found Maman?”
“We’d like you to come with us,” said the flic, before saying into a small microphone clipped to his collar, “Got him.”
Fear rippled through the hair on Nicu’s neck.
“What’s going on?” He grabbed his bag. “Is she all right?”
“Par ici, Monsieur.”
The flic took hold of his arm.
They led him down the hospital corridor. He heard footsteps and the clatter of medication trolleys. A gurney whooshed past covered in bloodstained sheets.
With mounting anxiety he realized they weren’t going toward Ward C. They’d descended a deep flight of stone steps. “You found her? Is she hurt?”
“This way, s’il vous pla?t.” The flic and attendant escorted him through swinging double doors to a grey, tiled hallway. They stopped at a wide, scuffed grey door. The sign above it read MORGUE.
Mon Dieu, he thought, they’d found her too late. His stomach dropped, a heaviness like stone filled him. Apart from a curtained window, the bare room resembled a prison cell. Nicu wanted to escape.
“We’d like you to identify her and answer some questions.”
“Non, non! It’s all my fault …” A sob caught in his throat.
The flic, his grip still on Nicu’s arm, looked up as the door pinged open. Instead of a doctor or a priest, a man in a leather jacket appeared, took the unlit cigarette from his mouth and stuck it behind his ear. “Pardonnez-moi,” he said. “Please proceed.”
The attendant nodded to Nicu. “Ready?”
“Oh, I think he’s ready,” said the man. The cigarette nestled under a brown curl wedged behind his ear. “Go ahead.”
Nicu’s hands shook. Cold, so cold in here. A priest glided in, nodded to him.
The attendant parted the curtain. Behind the glass Nicu saw a mound covered in a sheet with only the face exposed. The stark light exposed an older woman’s closed eyes, her sallow cheeks and mouth sunken in death.
Nicu blinked. “Who’s this?”
“We think you know, Nicu,” said the man, then inspected his fingernails. He rubbed his thumbnail on his pinkie’s cuticle. “I’m Captain Ponchet. The Père’s here if you want to make confession. To confess how you killed your mother. A mercy killing, isn’t that what you said to the doctor?”
Nicu’s mouth dropped open. “What?”
“Get if off your chest, Nicu. You’ll feel better.” Ponchet took a step toward him.
“But this isn’t my mother.”
“You just said, ‘It’s all my fault.’ I heard you. Now that’d be a good place to start.”
“There’s been a mistake.” Nicu’s stomach churned. “I meant it was my fault I didn’t make her visit the doctor sooner. But I had no idea how ill and weak she’d become.”
“So you helped her on her last journey,” Ponchet said. “You’re one of those gens du voyage, travelers, non? Gypsy culture has no room for the sick, the aged. No room in the caravan.”
One more flic who, just like the rest, subscribed to the stereotype that manouches all belonged to organized crime clans. Flics hated Gypsies—the ones they dealt with stole, begged, pickpocketed and ran cons. People like Nicu’s Uncle Radu. It was like that old joke: How do you bake a Gypsy cake? First you steal twelve eggs.
“I don’t know who this poor woman is. Quit wasting my time.” He read in their faces that they didn’t believe him. He was just another Gypsy, another criminal to be contained by whatever means necessary.
“I’m afraid, Nicu, that this medical chart we found with her says this is your mother.”
“Then there’s a mistake!” He was yelling now. His shoulders were shaking, heat spreading up his neck. “Someone stole my mother’s chart and planted it on this woman. Don’t you understand? It’s some kind of setup. The DNA will tell you. My mother’s dying somewhere. She needs hemodialysis.”
“She died by strangulation.” Ponchet’s eyes were like hard, brown stone. “Even in a terminally ill victim, we call that murder.”
Fear collected in the pit of his stomach.
“My mother’s forty-three. This poor woman looks eighty.” Nicu clenched his fists. “Where’s my Uncle Radu?”