Guilty Wives (30 page)

COLONEL DURAND WALKED
over to the guard, Lucy Denoyer, who was seated in a chair, rubbing her forehead. He squatted down so he could make eye contact with her. She had a rough look about her, not helped at all by the vicious scar across her left cheek.

“I don’t believe you,” he said to Lucy in French.

“I’m telling the truth.” Her answer, also in French, was not convincing—especially given that her eyes were averted—though it could have been because of her nerves. Lucy, after all, was royally fucked at best. Her negligence—if it was just negligence—bordered on the criminally inept.

“You expect me to believe that you were simply checking on the prisoner in the secured room. You, having served a double shift, and having been brutally scarred earlier in the day by the very person lying in that room—you just wanted to check on her well-being before you headed home.”

Lucy folded her arms. She wasn’t going to move off that story.

Durand looked over a map of the prison. “You could have taken the stairs down to the parking garage from E Wing, where you were assigned,” he said. “But you took a detour all the way to G Wing because you wanted to check to make sure Abbie was resting comfortably.
That’s
your statement.”

Lucy’s head bobbed up and down.

“And this was acceptable to Sabine? The chief correctional officer let you waltz into the infirmary to pay a friendly visit to the woman who’d attacked you earlier today?”

“She said it was okay.” Lucy shrugged. “Sabine’s my boss.”

“And while checking on Abbie’s well-being, you decided to violate regulations and arm yourself with a loaded Glock.”

“I didn’t bring that gun in,” Lucy snapped. “Abbie already had it.”

“Abbie already had the gun?” Durand searched her eyes, though the guard avoided eye contact. “Abbie Elliot somehow got through a secured door in the infirmary, then through the secured booth outside the infirmary, stole a loaded Glock, snuck back into the secured room, and somehow locked herself back in, all without Sabine noticing.”

Lucy’s posture tightened; her shoulders closed in. Classic defensive reaction.

“And you’re sure that Sabine told you it was perfectly fine to visit Abbie?”

“Sabine said it was okay. I already
told
you.”

Durand rose to a standing position. Lucy’s eyes peeked up at him.

“I wonder what Sabine will say about that,” said Durand.

He walked out of the room. One of the first directives that Durand had issued to the local DCRI agents responding to the prison, upon learning of the escape at 4:00 a.m, was to sequester the guards involved in the escape. Most escapes from prison didn’t happen without help. The guards were natural suspects. Keep them separated, he demanded, so they couldn’t get their stories straight.

They’d been heavily drugged, anyway, and hadn’t snapped back to the real world until sometime after five. By the time their eyes opened, Lucy and Sabine had long been isolated from each other.

He walked into the next room, H-12.

“Tell me again,” he said to Sabine, who was seated in a chair in the center of the room. Upon superficial appraisal, Sabine seemed even less pleasant than Lucy. But he saw something behind those hard, bloodshot eyes, and that something was fear.

“I was off my station,” Sabine said. “I already told you. It was—wrong, I know, but I’m the head guard, and sometimes I conduct surprise inspections of the others.” Sabine kept her eyes focused on the floor. “Lucy must have gone in there while I was gone.”

“You didn’t see Lucy go in there?” When Sabine didn’t respond immediately, Durand took her by the shoulders and gave her one abrupt shake.
“You didn’t see Lucy go into the infirmary?”

“No! I keep telling you, no!”

Durand nodded. One of them was lying. More likely, both of them. Each making up the story that painted herself in the best light.

“G Wing has guard stations at the infirmary, the underground parking garage, and solitary. Why was only one of those three stations staffed?”

“Solitary was empty,” said Sabine. “A guard isn’t required if—”

“Because
you
emptied it.” Durand grabbed a file off the nearby table. “Earlier that evening, you transferred three inmates out of Le Mitard.”

Sabine tucked her chin into her chest. Her breathing was becoming more rapid.

“You cleared out G Wing, Officer. You cleared it out so that you were the only guard stationed there. You cleared a path for Abbie Elliot to escape.” He threw the file down on the desk. “What did Abbie promise you?”

Sabine’s head snapped up. “You think—I helped her
escape?
”

Durand watched her carefully as she continued to protest. Her reaction had been visceral, natural—convincing, he thought. She had lied about plenty so far, but she wasn’t lying about this.

He walked out of the room into the hallway, where the local DCRI guy, Rouche, huddled with him.

“The guards were working together, no doubt,” said Durand, looking back at the rooms. “But I don’t think they were helping Abbie escape.”

Rouche nodded. “You think it was just Lucy wanting some payback for Abbie attacking her earlier in the day? Sabine turns a blind eye and lets it happen?”

Durand made a face. “But with a loaded
Glock?
That violates twenty different regulations, and it’s just plain stupid. She had a canister of OC spray and a baton and plenty of other things she could have used. Every guard knows that a firearm is the last resort, because it can be taken off you.”

Rouche shrugged his shoulders. “Then what? If not a conspiracy to break Abbie out, if not an old-fashioned assault—then what?”

Durand sighed and shook his head absently. “They were trying to kill her,” he surmised. He thought some more and nodded firmly. “They were trying to kill her and she used that to her advantage and escaped.”

“Wow. Maybe so.” Rouche brought a hand to his chin. “But even if you’re right—even if they wanted to kill her—does that get us any closer to finding Abbie Elliot?”

Durand thought about that. “It might,” he said. “If we can figure out why.”

BOULEZ STARED AT
himself in the bedroom mirror. He hardly recognized the man staring back. He was beyond tired, of course, having lost a night’s sleep. And he was essentially still in a state of shock, still unable to fathom what had transpired. He was like someone who had taken several punches in such rapid succession that he hadn’t yet realized he should fall down.

But he was ready to fall now. The final blow had come a half hour ago, a call from the man himself, the Minister of Justice and Liberty. Boulez had been relieved of his duties. Not demoted. Not suspended. Not placed on administrative leave. Fired. Gone.
Au revoir.

He fingered his cuff links out of his shirt and pulled at his tie. His career was in ashes now. And that might be the least of his concerns. The DCRI was all over Lucy and Sabine, interrogating them separately and probing for inconsistencies. What would they say? Would they put this on Boulez? It would make sense. He could deny things all he wanted, but it might be two against one. If each guard, separately, broke down and confessed to trying to murder Abbie Elliot, and if each of them said the directive came from the top, Boulez’s denials wouldn’t be convincing.

Boulez froze as he felt something change in the bedroom. Something intangible, an adjustment to the temperature or something—

He whipped around and saw the man. He hadn’t heard him. How had he—

“I won’t say anything,” Boulez said to the man. “I can keep a—”

Boulez didn’t finish his sentence. He didn’t take another breath. The bullet between his eyes saw to that. The impact sent him back against the chest of drawers. The last thing he saw was a small insect crawling across the ceiling. The last thing he felt was the release of his bowels. The last thing he thought was: I can’t believe she beat me, I can’t believe Abbie Elliot won.

I DROVE BACK FROM
downtown Blois to Le Domaine as dusk settled over Onzain. I parked my car in the same distant corner of the lot and, in the backseat, changed from my nice clothes to the running outfit. I carried a bag of items from the pharmacy and the sleeping bag and made my way back to the forest, the portion that was off the beaten path, where I planned to hide and, I hoped, sleep in obscurity.

I found a good spot and positioned the sleeping bag just as I wanted it. Then I walked about ten yards away and sat behind a thick tree trunk. I needed the flashlight to read the directions on the kit. It had been more than a decade since I’d dyed my hair, and that was in a beauty salon, not following the instructions on a box. But how hard could it be?

When would I leave this little hideout? I had to admit that I felt pretty safe here. It was tempting, though illogical, to stay here for days.

But I had to get moving. I had a small window of opportunity and once it closed, it would stay closed.

“Oh, Abbie,” I whispered to myself. “You better know what you’re doing.”

“OBVIOUSLY, I HAVE
no intention of revealing any communications with my client.” Jules Laurent, Abbie Elliot’s defense attorney, raised his chin defiantly.

Durand remembered him from the trial. A good lawyer, he thought. Not some polished shyster but a sincere advocate. He had protested when DCRI agents stormed his law office in Paris this morning, but he hadn’t been given a choice in the matter. He had arrived at the prison just before dusk, under a DCRI escort.

“You are aware, Mr. Laurent, that client confidentiality will not shield you if you aided and abetted an escape.”

“I didn’t do anything of the kind,” Jules said. “Abbie never said anything to me about breaking out of prison.”

“She never said anything about prison?”

Jules said, “She never said anything about
breaking out of
prison.”

Durand blinked. The lawyer was making a careful distinction.

“She thought they were trying to kill her in here,” Durand said, then waited for a reaction.

Surprise registered in the lawyer’s eyes, in the parting of his lips. Not
you-must-be-kidding
surprise but
how-did-you-know
surprise. But Jules seemed to be calculating what he could reveal to Durand, and so far he’d come up with nothing.

Jules raised a finger and then went to his briefcase. “This I can give you, because it’s not confidential information,” he said. “These are papers I just filed with the court yesterday.”

Jules handed Durand a series of documents. Durand wasn’t a lawyer but he got the point easily enough: Abbie Elliot’s lawyer was asking the court to subpoena a number of documents, some located within France and some abroad.

Durand read them over once, twice, three times. They included specific arguments showing how the production of these documents would assist Abbie Elliot in proving that she did not murder the president of France and his bodyguard.

Durand burst out of the door and found Rouche conferring with some other DCRI officials down the corridor in H wing. He motioned Rouche over.

“Who was the guy at the U.S. Embassy during the trial?” Durand asked. “The pain in the ass who kept complaining that we were violating Abbie Elliot’s civil rights?”

“Oh, right, right.” Rouche searched his memory. “Ingle… Inger—”

“Ingersoll,” said Durand. “Daniel Ingersoll.”

“That’s it, sir.”

“Find him,” said Durand. “Get him on the phone right away.”

DAWN. ONZAIN WAS
just another tranquil Loire Valley village. The car drove slowly on the road that tracked the Loire River. It missed the turnoff for Le Domaine the first time, then doubled back and slowly drove into the entrance, over the gravel, which made more noise than was desirable.

The sun was just emerging over the horizon. The trip had taken longer than expected. Darkness would have been preferable, but there was nothing that could be done about that now.

He surveyed the surroundings. Highly doubtful that Abbie was in one of the cottages. That would require a passport and probably a credit card. Presumably, she had neither of those. But that conclusion was qualified by the cold fact that underestimating Abbie Elliot had been a hazardous practice indeed.

Still, logic dictated that the cottages were a last option. Especially because there was a pretty obvious alternative—the large tract of forest covering one end of the grounds. There would be any number of places to stow away in there.

He sighed. The forest was sizable. This could take a while. And with each passing moment the damn sun peeked higher over the horizon and lit up more of the countryside. For obvious reasons, he preferred to find Abbie asleep.

He reflexively patted his belt, reassuring himself that his gun was still there. Then he started walking. He found a stone path that wound around a pond and disappeared into the trees. A nature walk, or something like that. He took the steps lightly, on the balls of his feet, holding a Maglite flashlight but not turning it on. He didn’t want to signal his arrival any more than necessary.

He stopped, turned on the flashlight, and swept it quickly over a patch of trees. Nothing. He turned it back off. Kept walking.

The path began to curve, tapering away from a large swath of forest. He stopped and tried to get his bearings. The path covered a lot of ground, but not all of it. Part of the natural forest was preserved.

There were a couple of acres of forest to his left, where no hotel resident was invited or expected to tread.

If it were me, he thought to himself, that’s where I’d hide.

He drew his gun, crouched down, and listened. Then he left the path and walked into the thick trees. He moved slowly, reluctant to bring his body weight down on the crunchy leaves. He used the flashlight sparingly, just enough to wave light over an area to see if anything warranted a second look before clicking it back off. He repeated the procedure many times—gentle steps forward, wave the flashlight, click off.

His hand jumped as the circle of yellow light hit something. He took a breath. Paused. Flashed the light again over the same area.

It was mostly hidden behind a tree trunk. But he could make out a small portion of it.

Hair. A woman’s hair. A sleeping bag.

Abbie.

He shuffled forward, keeping the flashlight trained on the sleeping bag, not her head. The light on her head might awaken her, and he didn’t know how she might react. But the sleeping bag didn’t have eyes. It allowed him to monitor her movements without alerting her. Or so he hoped.

He got within ten yards. Abbie hadn’t stirred. Eight yards. Five yards. Close enough now so that it didn’t really matter if she reacted—he’d be on top of her.

He moved right, to get a better angle, to see the rest of what was obscured by the tree. He shined the light again. The entire sleeping bag. She was asleep.

He crouched down, moved toward her.

But something about the hair—it wasn’t—

A wig. It was a wig, lying atop a gym bag, stuffed inside the sleeping bag. A nice diversion, he thought, as his instincts kicked in and told him to move, but it was too late.

“Don’t move,” came a voice from behind him. “I have a gun and I’ll use it.”

He froze in place, like an action-figure doll, his legs spread apart, his arms out and poised for movement. Well played, Abbie, he thought.

“Turn your head, and only your head, around toward me.”

He turned and squinted as the beam of a flashlight blinded him.

“Fancy meeting you here, Christien,” Abbie said.