Dark Zone

62

The earliest train from Paris to Aux Boix on Friday left at 4:50 a.m.; Karr was one of only a half-dozen people on it. He got into LaFoote’s house through the back window and spent an hour looking around, without finding anything useful. Around 6:30 he snuck back out and walked to the village center, a short distance away. The mass Father Brossard was to celebrate wasn’t until eight, and so Karr had breakfast in a patisserie, a small local bakery. The woman who ran it had just taken a batch of chocolate macaroons from the oven in back when Karr arrived; he bought one and after the first bite pulled a twenty-euro note from his pocket to grab the dozen that were left.

The owner refused to sell him more than five. He took those, along with two croissants, and sat at one of the two tables in the window. Neither susceptible to flattery nor particularly talkative, the woman failed to respond to Karr’s attempt to make conversation. Finally he asked flat out if she knew LaFoote; she simply shrugged, then went to tend to her ovens.

There was a park near the center of town, cattycorner from the church. Karr imagined that retired people — like LaFoote, before he got involved in his crusade to find his friend — would spend at least part of the day on one of the three benches there. But if so, it was too early for them; Karr sat alone for a while, watching the light traffic. Around 7:45 an altar boy unlocked the front door of the church, peeked out briefly, then disappeared back inside. Karr got up and ambled over.

Deidre Clancy pulled on her robe as she got out of bed. Her stomach felt somewhat better than it had yesterday, but…

She lurched forward, barely making the bathroom in time. By now, her stomach was completely drained, and she managed to expel only a small bit of fluid as she hung over the ceramic bowl.

Bad snails? Or the flu?

She’d gotten sick yesterday immediately after lunch at a fancy reception and lecture on the Postimpressionists at the Musée d’Orsay. It served her right for blowing off the class she was supposed to attend.

Deidre got up slowly, ran some water on her face, then walked shakily back to bed. The sun was up, but she was tired and there was no question of doing anything but sleeping for quite a while. She glanced at the blinking answering machine in the living room — she’d heard the phone ring several times but was in no condition to answer. She’d deal with it all later, or tomorrow, or next week, or never.

“Father Brossard?”

The priest, dressed in a simple black cassock, turned from the side altar where he had been fussing over some of the candles.

“Oui?”

“I was a friend of Monsieur LaFoote’s,” said Karr in French. “Can we talk?”

“You are the American?” said the priest in English.

“Jes suis Américain, oui,” said Karr. “Yes, I’m an American.”

“The American. Mr. Karr?”

“Yeah, that’s me,” Karr said. “LaFoote talked to you?”

The priest turned and began walking to the front. Karr got up and followed past the altar, entering the sacristy through a side door. Two altar boys were laughing about something as they came in; the boys immediately stiffened, standing at military attention as the priest cast a stern look in their direction. Karr smiled at them, but the boys remained stone-faced.

The priest continued to a narrow hallway and turned into a small, unlit room. He went to a file cabinet in the otherwise empty room and took out a brown envelope.

“Monsieur LaFoote gave me this a month ago,” said the priest in English. “He left a message the other evening that they were to go to you, not the police. His funeral is tomorrow.”

“He was a good man,” said Karr as the priest handed him an envelope.

“He was a sinner.”

“We all are, right?”

The priest didn’t smile. He walked stiffly back out into the sacristy, no longer paying attention to Karr. He scolded the boys in French, telling them their souls had just gained more black marks for whispering in a holy place.

There were a few people in the church now, a dozen or so, scattered around. Karr took a seat; as the service began, a woman slid in at the far end — he turned and realized it was the baker, who made no sign that she recognized him.

There were three photocopies in the envelope. The top two were bank account statements for Vefoures from, as LaFoote had said, a small Austrian bank. There were regular wire deposits of two thousand euros a week, along with irregular withdrawals. The statements were several months old.

The third sheet was a copy of what looked like a signature card for another account at a different Austrian bank; rather than a full name the signature was a single letter: P. Instead of a name and address as contact information, there was a phone number. The account number matched the account the wired deposits had been made from.

Karr pulled out his PDA. He went online to the World Wide Web and tapped into a commercial Web site that had a reverse address lookup. The number wasn’t listed. He tapped the screen lightly and got into the NSA’s comprehensive address search engine.

It took nearly sixty seconds for the database to come back with an ID on the phone number: Jacques Ponclare.