Murder in Montmartre

Wednesday Afternoon

AIMÉE PACED back and forth in Maître Delambre’s oak-paneled reception foyer, waiting. The fusty paper smell kept her company. The young receptionist, wearing a string of pearls and a blue sweater set, worked on a computer, ignoring her.

She’d taken two taxis and the Metro to the lawyer’s, to make sure no one followed her. Zette’s murder had convinced her this was part of something bigger.

Had René hit on something? René viewed things from different angles, tried odd equations. Like a good computer hacker.

Maître Delambre rushed in, his white-collared black robe trailing. “You said you had some reports? Just leave them. I’ll go over them tonight, at home.”

“We need to discuss them,” Aimée began.

“Look, I’m late and I can’t talk.” He unbuttoned his robe, hung it on a wooden coatrack. “Catherine,” he said, turning to his receptionist. “Cancel my next two appointments.”

“Maître Delambre,” Aimée said, trying to control her voice so as not to show her rising anger. “It’s vital. This can’t wait.”

“It has to,” he said. His face looked paler than usual. A strange rose pattern mottled his jowl. “The dentist has to finish the extraction and take out the tooth slivers he ‘overlooked’ last week. Otherwise it will abscess and he’ll have to lance my jawbone.”

Aimée grabbed her coat. “I’ll go with you.”

IN THE overheated taxi, she punched in the Hôtel Dieu’s number. “Please, can you identify yourself and inquire about Laure’s condition?”

Maître Delambre waved the phone away.

“They won’t talk to me,” she said. “Something’s very wrong with Laure. Please ask. That’s all; then you can sit back and—”

“She’s in a coma.”

“What?” Fear prickled her spine. Laure, comatose!

“The message reached me in court this morning,” he said. “She’s stable but nonresponsive.”

The taxi sped along the quay. Aimée eyed the rising waters of the gray-green Seine, white wavelets lapped against the weathered stone. Things had become murkier like the water below them.

“Zette, the bar owner Jacques Gagnard worked for, was murdered in Montmartre,” she told the young lawyer.

“Murdered?”

She explained finding Zette and her suspicions.

“Mademoiselle Leduc, you’re convinced of something I’m not sure even connects.”

“Convinced? The very day after I question him, Zette’s killed. I call that a connection. A big one.”

Maître Delambre clutched his jaw in pain.

“Don’t you have the autopsy report yet?” she asked him “Somewhere . . . here in my briefcase,” he said.

She wanted to yank the case from his lap and open it. Yet she realized his head would be clearer now than it would be after he was treated by the dentist, and she had to show him the files she’d printed out from the DTI disc. “These reports weren’t included in Laure’s file. You should be aware—”

“What reports?” He winced and clutched his jaw again.

“The detailed crime-scene investigators’ report, the—”

“How did you get them?”

She handed him a Doliprane and fished a bottle of Vichy water from her bag. He hesitated, then popped the pain-killer and uncapped the water bottle.

“By law they should be in the file you received,” she said. “They can’t really refuse to acknowledge them, can they?”

He shook his head as a spasm of pain crossed his face.

“Now you can deal from an equal position, at least, for the moment.”

“I can’t accept these,” he said. “It would be unethical. I can’t afford to.”

“You can’t afford not to. After all, it was their duty to furnish you with these reports.”

He sat back against the taxi seat, closing his eyes. “Are you insinuating they left these out on purpose?”

“You’re the lawyer,” she said. “Aren’t the police required to furnish you with all pertinent documents relating to your client?”

The taxi halted in Nouvelle Athenes in front of a soot-stained hôtel particulier now occupied by offices, opposite the building where George Sand and her lover, Chopin, had lived, on the slope below Montmartre. Now the eighteenth-century mansions housed government ministries, corporations, actors wealthy enough to remodel. Or they crumbled away in decayed splendor, awaiting developers.

“You’ve put me in a difficult position.”

Of course she had. However, ethics dictated he act in the interests of his client. How could he ignore the reports now that she’d thrust them in his face?

“But I can’t take these if you obtained them under false pretenses. A simple case shouldn’t turn me into the Préfecture’s enemy.”

“D’accord,” she agreed. “Who says I gave them to you? They could have just turned up on your doorstep. For all intents and purposes, they have. You present these files. They can’t very well deny them. The files contain the officers’ names, required filing date, and case number.” She went on. “Besides, they already know the information’s been copied.” She bit her tongue to stop herself from adding that he’d be a fool not to use it.

“By someone . . . like you?”

She shook her head.

“I realize these files come from the police intranet system,” he said, his eyes narrowed.

“STIC, to be precise.”

He handed the taxi driver twenty francs and opened the door to a wall of cold air. “I have to think it over.”

Rain pelted down on them as she ran after him.

THE WHIR of the dental drill drowned out most of Delambre’s moans in the next room. Aimée gave a small smile to the white-clad dental technician who held a tray of surgical instruments.

“Valérie, I need the clamps!” said a deep voice from the open office door.

Valérie disappeared into the office, accompanied by a whiff of mint fluoride, and shut the door. Aimée hated waiting. Maître Delambre’s damp raincoat hung from the coatrack by the receptionist’s desk; his briefcase stood on the floor under it.

The receptionist sat with her head turned away, talking on the phone. To her boyfriend, from the sound of the conversation and giggles.

Aimée picked up a magazine, thumbed it open, and slid her leg toward the briefcase, hooked her foot around it, and drew it to her.

She unclasped the briefcase, found Laure’s file, and stuck it between the pages of her magazine to study.

Autopsies, as her pathologist friend Serge often said, showed the road map of death. Atherosclerosis, sky-high blood pressure, a wearied heart pumping into arteries constricted by plaque. And the path of a bullet ripping tissue, slicing organs and muscle, too. A good pathologist, like Serge, was like a detective, listening to what the body told him as he probed, weighed, and examined organs, to reveal their secrets.

The autopsy on the body of Jacques Gagnard, dated Wednesday morning, stated, “Exsanguination due to gunshot wound to left lung and heart. Entrance wound on the left side of the chest. The bullet was recovered in right pleural cavity.”

The image of Jacques on the snow-topped roof passed in front of her. She didn’t like the man or his manipulation of Laure but she’d wanted to save him. Would have . . . no, not with part of his lung and his heart impacted. His eyes. They’d widened for a brief second and his lips had moved as though he wanted to say something. She finished reading the report, disappointed at the scant findings.

There was no mention of a second bullet. She sat back on the waiting-room bench to think. Could Jacques have been working undercover? Were the police protecting their own? Would her efforts somehow compromise an ongoing investigation? She was clutching at straws and her grip was slipping.