Murder in Montmartre

Monday Night

AIMÉE TWISTED GUY’S RING back and forth on her middle finger. The cloudy moonstone in an antique setting reflected the sky’s changing weather. Perfect for her, he’d said. She tried to think of something else. The Commissariat cubicle in which she sat being questioned felt glacial. Several overhead fluorescent panels had burned out, casting uneven stripes of light on the pitted linoleum.

Opposite her at the metal desk, a twenty-something flic with a razor-sharp jaw pecked with two fingers at the keys of a black typewriter. Didn’t he have a computer?

“Voilà, Mademoiselle Leduc,” he said, pulling the paper out of the roller. His cigarette smoldered in a filled ashtray. He leaned back in his swivel chair and eyed his large sports watch. “Read over your statement to see that it’s correct. Then sign at the bottom.”

She read the five-page statement twice, then nodded and signed. “Please attach this, too.”

“What’s that?” he asked, stifling a yawn.

“A diagram illustrating my statement,” she said. So far she hadn’t seen a computer. “I presume you will scan my statement and this diagram into a computer?”

“Curious type, aren’t you?”

She heard the monotonous thrum of a printer from a back office. “Will you?”

“We know our job, Mademoiselle,” he said. “Now if you’ll come with me.”

She shuddered. Good thing she’d made a copy of her diagram.

He escorted her across the foyer of the deserted Commissariat to a holding cell adjoining the dispatcher’s room. It was more like a cage, she thought, with its steel bars, furnished only with a wooden slat of a bench. The flic unlocked her handcuffs and gestured her inside.

“Wait a minute, you haven’t charged me. How long until—?”

“Sit back and relax,” he interrupted and left.

The corners stank of old socks and other things she didn’t want to think about. Across from her, flyers for a police-sponsored community marathon walk and bike security tips sat piled on the counter by the glass-paned reception cubicle.

She rubbed her hands, coarse from the lab soap they’d given her after the gunpowder residue test, and paced three steps across the small cage and back, hoping she wouldn’t really have to stay here all night. So far she hadn’t seen Laure.

She pictured the scaffold skirting the building’s blue-tiled roof. The cape of snow, the angle of Jacques’s body, his turned-out pockets, Laure’s obvious concussion . . . but her mind kept going back to Jacques’s gunshot wound. Had his killer been lying in wait? On a night like this, why had Jacques left a warm café and persuaded Laure to accompany him? Why had he ended up dead on the slanted zinc roof in a storm?

To play devil’s advocate, if in fact Laure and Jacques had continued their argument, and Laure wanted to kill Jacques, easier and less damning ways existed. A blow rendering him unconscious, then a whack of his skull against stone bollards was one method. She’d read about it only last week in the daily Le Parisien. Or she could have tripped Jacques on the stairway leading up to Sacré Coeur. There were so many ways to stage an “accident.”

Yet she’d found Laure unconscious from a blow! Surely, the lack of gunpowder residue on Laure’s hands would establish her innocence. She hoped the flics had questioned the mec standing at the building gate. He might have seen something.

. . .

A female officer, wearing a blue jumpsuit unlocked the cage, shaking Aimée out of her reverie.

“You’re free to go,” she said, handing Aimée a plastic bag containing her things.

Just like that? Morbier had put in a word, she figured. She hoped he’d done the same for Laure.

“Like a coffee?”

Grateful, Aimée nodded, accepting a cup of espresso. “Merci. What I’d really like now is to find Laure Rousseau.”

The flic grinned. “And I’d like to find the man of my dreams. We can all hope, right? Try Hôpital Bichat.”

THE SCUFFED walls and peeling linoleum of Hôpital Bichat needed refurbishing. Laure, her head bandaged, sat on gurney in the hall outside the triage area, accompanied by a tired-looking flic. “. . . speak with an attorney,” Laure was saying. Her words were slurred.

“Officer, may I have a few words with Mademoiselle Rousseau?” Aimée asked.

“You’re family?”

“She’s my friend. Please!”

The flic adjusted his tie and then tapped his fingers against the metal gurney.

“Bon. I’ll check with the Préfecture concerning the charge against her.”

“What do you mean, charge? Check with La Proc. There’s some mistake.”

She saw his noncommittal expression. Then a flush rose from his neck to his cheeks. At least he had the decency to feel shame. After all, Laure was one of his own.

“Let me find out what’s going on,” he said.

“Where’s the physician on call? Look at her. She needs immediate attention!”

“Bad timing. Several trucks collided on the Périphérique. She’s next for intake.”

Aimée saw the caked blood on Laure’s temple, heard her labored breathing, and noted her dilated pupils. The classic symptoms of shock. The officer moved down the corridor, trying to find reception for his cell phone.

“This is all a formality, Laure,” Aimée assured her. “There’s a mix-up.”

“Mix-up?” Laure’s shoulders shook. Tears brimmed in her eyes. “The technicians found gunshot residue on my hands. I don’t know what’s going on.”

Gunshot residue? Aimée was startled. “I don’t understand.” She had assumed Laure, too, would be cleared by the test. “There’s got to be an explanation. When did you last fire your gun?”

“Maybe a month ago, bibiche, at the firing range, I think. I can’t really remember,” Laure said, her eyes glazing.

It didn’t make sense. Then how could she have residue on her hands now?

“Tell me what happened after you left the bar.” Aimée put her hand on Laure’s shoulder. “Take it nice and slow.”

Laure shook her head. “Jacques was acting strange. . . .” Her voice trailed off.

Aimée smelled the tang of the chemical used in GSR testing and saw Laure’s fingertips, black from the fingerprint test. They hadn’t even wiped her hands off.

“So you went along with him,” she prompted.

“But I wondered . . .”

“What?” Aimée asked.

“His informer . . . Why would he meet an informer there?”

A meeting on a slippery roof on a frigid, snowy evening? Made no sense, Aimée concurred.

“It must have been a setup.” Laure leaned against the wall and rubbed her temples, leaving black streaks. “My head, it hurts to think.”

Aimée’s eyes narrowed. “A set-up. How do you know?” Aimée asked.

“All I know is I didn’t kill him.” Laure’s shoulders shook. “Jacques was the only one who gave me a chance. He took me under his wing. You can never return to the force if your partner’s killed and you’re . . . you’re th-the suspect.”

“We’ll straighten this out, Laure, reste tranquille,” Aimée said, even as she wondered what she could do.

A door slammed somewhere. The fluorescent lights flickered. Drunken voices shouted in the hall. An orderly ran down the green-tiled corridor, his footsteps echoing.

“You’ve got to help me,” Laure said. “Everything’s hazy, it’s hard to remember.”

Aimée feared they’d saddle Laure with an appointed attorney and conduct a minimal investigation. Or, more likely, just forward the inquiry to Internal Affairs, where police-appointed judges presided.

“They relish making an example of flics like me,” Laure said.

The sad thing was, it was true.

But she had to reassure Laure. “It won’t come to that, Laure. Like I said, there’s been some mistake.”

Laure stared at Aimée, her lip quivering. “Remember, we promised we’d always help each other out, bibiche,” she said. Laure leaned against Aimée’s shoulders, sobbing.

Aimée held her, remembering how Laure had always had to play catch-up, had been the butt of playground jokes before her cleft palate surgery, yet had dreamed of a career like that of her heroic, much decorated father. Unlike Aimée, who kept the flics at arm’s length.

“I swear on Papa’s grave, I didn’t kill Jacques.” Laure gripped Aimée’s arm, then closed her eyes. “I’m dizzy, everything’s spinning.”

“Laure Rousseau, we’re ready for you now,” said a nurse.

About time, Aimée thought. “Looks like shock, a concussion,” she said.

“Diagnosis is our job, Mademoiselle.” The nurse wheeled the gurney toward a pair of white plastic curtains.

“How long will it take?”

“Intake and observation will take several hours.”

The same flic walked past her. Aimée caught his arm. “I’ll come back then to pick her up and take her home.”

She recognized a “don’t count on it look” in his eyes as he shook his head.

“Why not?”

“I don’t have time to explain.”

“Take my number, call me.” She put her card in his hand.

He disappeared behind the curtains.

AIMÉE STOOD on the gray slush-filled pavement in front of the hospital. She had to do something. She couldn’t stand the idea that Laure, still injured and in shock, would be arraigned at the Préfecture. There had to be evidence to clear her on the scaffold or the roof. There had to be some way out of this nightmare for Laure. She pulled out her cell phone with shaking hands and called her cousin Sebastian.

“Allô Sebastian,” she said, eyeing the deserted taxi stop. “Can you pick me up in ten minutes?”

“For the pleasure of your company?” he said. “Désolé, but Stephanie’s making a cassoulet.”

Stephanie was his new girlfriend, he’d met her at a rave.

“Remember, you owe me?” Aimée replied.

Pause.

“It’s payback time, Sebastian.”

“Again?” She heard music in the background. “What do I need?”

“Gloves, climbing boots, the usual. Make sure the tool set’s in your van.”

“Breaking in like last time?”

“And you love it. Don’t forget an extra set of gloves.”

Sometimes you just had to help out a friend.

SEBASTIAN, WEARING tight orange jeans, an oversize Breton sweater, and a black knit hat pulled low but with the glint of his earring still showing, gunned his van up rue Custine. His over-six-foot frame was squeezed into the beat-up van he used for deliveries. Beside him, Aimée sat scanning the shuttered cheese shops, florists, and darkened cafés dotting the steep, twisting street. Once this had been a village high outside the walls of Paris. Parisians had flocked to the butte, “the mound,” to dance at the bal musettes, to enjoy la vie bohème and to drink wine not subject to city taxes. Artists such as Modigliani and Seurat had followed, establishing ateliers in washhouses, before their paintings commanded higher prices. Then Montparnasse had beckoned.

“Voilà,” she said, pointing to the gated building with leafless trees silhouetted against the lights of distant Pigalle.

The crime-scene unit and police vans were gone. Jacques’s car,too. Sebastian parked by a fire hydrant Parisian style, which meant wedged into whatever space was open on the pavement.

“Bring the equipment, little cousin,” she said. “Let’s go.”

Eighteen rue André Antoine, a white stone nineteenth-century building, faced others like it on a serpentine street. Gray netting camouflaged the upper floor and scaffolding of the roof, which adjoined the other buildings in the courtyard. A red-brown brick church wall partially occupied the rear of the courtyard, cutting off the view. She’d hoped to question the man who’d stood on the steps but he had not lingered. Only a crust of snow crisscrossed with footprints remained.

The wind had died down. From somewhere came the muted squeak of a creaking swing. The crime-scene unit must have left not long after she’d been evicted, evidenced by the light dusting of snow on the cars now parked where the police vans had been. Thank God, the architect Haussmann had been unable to swing the wrecking ball here. No one could tear these buildings down or the ground underneath would collapse. The earth was riddled with spaces and tunnels . . . like a Gruyère cheese, as the saying went. Aimée could never figure that out; Emmenthaler was the cheese with the holes. You received a certificate that the building was sound when you bought a place. But, as a friend had informed her, the latest geological calculations had been made circa 1876.

She rang the concierge’s bell, unzipping her jacket to reveal the blue jumpsuit Sebastian had brought for her, and noted that there were no names inscribed above the upper floor’s metal mailboxes. Several moments later, a sharp-eyed woman answered. She wore a man’s large camel coat belted by a Dior chain, black rain boots, and had a cigarillo clamped between her thumb and forefinger.

“Don’t tell me you forgot the body?” she said, exhaling acrid smoke in Aimée’s direction.

Startled, Aimée clutched a workbag labeled Serrurie and leaned away from the smoke.

“I’m here to change the locks,” Aimée said.

“But the locksmiths were already here.”

Aimée stamped the ice from her boots on the mat. “To secure the windows and skylight access?”

“Far as I know.”

“But we’re doing the rear windows. They didn’t finish.” She jerked her hand toward Sebastian. “We had the parts back at the shop.”

“What do you mean?”

Aimée thought fast, wishing the concierge would quit questioning her.

“Tiens . . . they didn’t tell you . . . the rear windows need special locks?”

The concierge sighed. “The apartment’s vacant. The upper floors are being remodeled.”

“Bon, we’ll go home,” Aimée said, turning toward Sebastian. “You can explain to the commissaire why snow blew in through the windows to blanket the apartment like a rug. Squatters will love it then.”

The woman glanced at her thumb, pushed the cuticle back. “The top floors have been empty for a month already.” She shrugged. Another sign of the gentrification that was invading the area. “Be sure not to disturb the old coot on the first floor. He’s furious as it is what with all the commotion,” the concierge said. Her mouth turned down and she stabbed the cigarillo out in an empty flowerpot. Then she thrust a small key ring at Aimée. “That’s the door key. I won’t wait up for you.”

“We’ll see ourselves out,” Aimée said, nodding to Sebastian, who shouldered the tool kit.

He followed her up the staircase, its worn red carpet held in place by bronze stair rods. The wrought-iron banister, an intricate pattern of acorns and leaves, spiraled up several floors. Once it had been exquisite, the latest style.

“Talk about a hike! What the hell can we find after all this time, Aimée?”

Sebastian’s words mirrored her own doubts. Yet new evidence was vital. “If one listens, the scene will speak,” she remembered her father saying. If there was any chance to prove Laure’s innocence she had to find it.

“Put on your surgical gloves,” she said, panting, wishing she hadn’t gained that kilo over the holidays. She left the key in the door. “Rooftop first.”

The snow flurries had subsided, melting onto the floor of the scaffolding. She and Sebastian pulled on woolen ski masks. Sebastian followed Aimée’s lead and dropped to his knees. With luck, they might find something the police had missed.

“What are we looking for?” Sebastian asked.

“Wood splinters, blackened metal on the scaffold, a discarded lighter, cigarette butt, scraped tile . . . anything.”

“Like in those shows on the télé?”

She nodded. She was doubtful but one never knew. The concierge had said the apartment had been vacant for a month. Was that why Jacques had arranged to meet his informer there?

The spires and roof of the church blocked the view of all but the adjoining roof and a dark neigboring building across the street. Witnesses, if any, would be few.

They crouched, moving silently to avoid detection from the adjoining apartments connected by the roof. One tall lighted window shone from across the courtyard. Below, from the construction site, came a pinprick glow like the tip of a lit cigarette. And then it disappeared. Into a hole in the earth? The remains of old quarries underlaid all of Montmartre. Gritting her teeth, she turned her gaze back to the roof.

For forty minutes, they crawled. They covered every centimeter of the scaffold, inspected chimney pots, stones, the windows and sills let into the mansard roof, and the small flat area of the zinc roof on top. Aimée’s hands were wet with snow, sore from abrasion by pebbles and rough stucco. Disheartened, she leaned against the chimney.

“Find anything?” she said to Sebastian, who was leaning over the edge and combing the rain gutter.

He held up a fistful of sodden brown leaves. “Toss it or . . .?”

“Wait.” She edged her way toward him, opening a plastic Baggie. “In here. What’s that?”

“Just a twig, like these,” he said indicating others clogging the gutter. “They need to clean this or . . .”

She pulled out a green stem. Smelled it. “Freshly broken, a geranium stem.”

“My cousin, the botanist!” he said.

She gave him a wry smile. “A Calvados says there’s a deck or window ledge nearby with pots of geraniums.”

“Proving what?” he asked.

A few stars glittered under the thinning clouds, just over the dark line of roofs.

“I’m guessing. What if someone leaned out their window and saw the shooting.”

“But, Aimée, people keep geraniums inside in this weather.”

He made sense. A dead end?

Right now, it was all they had to go on.

“Give me a boost, I want to check.”

Sebastian reached up the wall and tied the rope around the chimney bracer. Aimée tied the other end in a slip knot around her waist.

“Ready?” he asked, knitting his hands together and planting himself against the concrete. “On three.”

“One-two-three.”

Chill air and a dirt-encrusted skylight greeted Aimée as she reached the adjoining roof. She grabbed the roof edge, hoisted herself up further, and came face to face with a dormer window. Several pots of geraniums were visible within.

Now she knew where to start asking questions in the morning. But she’d found no evidence to indicate that anyone other than Laure had shot Jacques. Yet something . . . something had to exist.

“I’m coming down,” she said, gripping the ledge caked with pigeon droppings by one hand, the other braced against the smooth wall.

“Sebastian, can you shine your penlight over here?”

“Gifts from the pigeon gods?”

As his thin beam illuminated the chimney pot, a light went on in a courtyard window opposite and they heard someone struggling with a window. “Quick, Sebastian. Time to go.”

She felt him tug at the rope and her feet slipped on the slick ice.

“We’ve got company,” he said, pointing below. “The flics.”

Two cars had pulled up in the street, their blue lights casting a glow over the snow-laced courtyard. Had someone heard them and called the flics? She peered around the chimney, saw more rooftops and the pale moon’s reflection glinting on more skylights, a few feet away.

“Grab the bag, come join me,” Aimée said.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Hurry up. We can jimmy open a skylight.”

She felt the rope tug.

“How many skylights do you see?” he asked.

“Three. Two side by side, then one some distance away.”

“Bon. One of them must be over a hall. I’m right behind you.”

She tucked the Baggie in her jumpsuit pocket, climbed, then gripped the chimney edge and let herself down on the other side.

Her feet scrabbled and she landed on all fours. And then she was sliding down the slick wet roof surface. Panic gripped her. Only the gutter ledge was between her and a drop of several stories. She grabbed and her hand caught the metal. She pulled herself up toward a rectangular flat area.

Sebastian landed behind her. By the time they reached the furthest skylight she was panting. The cold air hurt her lungs.

“Here,” he said, handing her the pliers. “Work the skylight lock open.”

She was startled to find that it was already broken. Sawtooth-edged shards of glass, knife sharp, jutted from the frame. Deftly, she eased her hand past them and grasped the lock from inside. Within seconds, with Sebastian’s help, she’d lifted the skylight. She held onto the metal rim and let herself down, hoping her feet would find the ladder usually attached to the wall of a communal hallway, that she wasn’t about to land in someone’s bedroom.

Her toes hit ladder rungs, and she climbed down to a level surface, a musty carpet, wet with footprints. Odd.

“Quick, take the bag,” said Sebastian, handing it down to her. He made a perfect tiptoe landing and they found themselves in what appeared to be the entry of a sixth-floor chambre de bonne, a maid’s room converted into an apartment.

“Look at the footprints.”

“My feet aren’t that big,” he said, about to rub them out with his boot.

“Leave it, let’s go,” she told him.

They crept down the flights of creaking wooden stairs, past a glass entry door and into a covered courtyard area. Several doors fronted the coved stone alcove. Large green trash containers stood by a concierge’s loge. Sebastian thumbed a button on the side wall and within the huge vaulted door a small door clicked open.

They found themselves outside on the street opposite their parking place. Lucky!

Back in the van, Sebastian switched on the ignition and turned on the heater.

“All that for a geranium twig! Satisfied?”

“In more ways than one,” she said. “Think back to the broken glass, the open skylight.”

He nodded, taking a curve, then gunning his engine as they climbed the steep street.

“We might have discovered an escape route.”

Hot air shot from the floor vents, warming her frozen legs.

“Escape route?”

“The killer’s escape route.”