Murder in Pigalle (24 page)

Gerard disappeared. She wished she could join him instead of enduring the art and music lesson. But now that he was gone, she could try to get something new out of the old man. Her father’s words sounded in her head: never leave an interview without a name, an address, a hair color, a type of tree—even the most insignificant-seeming details, he’d drummed into her,
would add up. Instead of stewing until Madame Vasseur ended, she needed to try a hunch.

“Is the actress Béatrice de Mombert, your neighbor a few streets over, one of your Conservatoire benefactors?” Maybe there was a link to the “nice man.”

“De Mombert? I knew her father.”

“I’d imagine Béatrice’s ex-husband Zacharié and his business associates must donate.”

“Never met him.” Old Lavigne shrugged. “Or her.”

Another dead end.

Yet she had to reach him somehow. She went back to their earlier conversation, determined to press harder.

“But the rumors must concern you, the implications that the Conservatoire’s bright talent is being targeted by the rapist.”

Old Lavigne looked confused for a moment. “Rumors? Targeted? But the attacker is in custody.”

“Last night another girl was followed after her lesson at Madame de Langlet’s. She escaped, thank God.”

“That’s news to me.” Old Lavigne shook his head. His cane wavered on the floor.

“The attacker’s loose. Still on the street.” She took a gulp of fizzing
limonade.
“The girl remembered him humming her Paganini piece. Madame de Langlet’s been questioned by the police.”

His face reddened. “Terrible. But why? I can’t understand this … 
Non
, I don’t believe there can be a connection. Impossible.”

Denial.

She wanted to explode. Instead, she took a deep breath, wished she could burp and rubbed her stomach. “Madame Vasseur’s daughter’s traumatized,” Aimée persisted. “But of course she’s told you.”

He nodded, and weariness settled in his face. “It sickened me,” he said. “We’ve offered all our support to Mélanie’s family.
But Madame Vasseur’s a trouper, keeps soldiering on for the Conservatoire.”

And neglects poor Mélanie, shipping her off to a clinic.

“It’s a village here,” he said. “We met with the Brigade des Mineurs, offered to help in any way we could.”

And look where that led. Nowhere. Another do-nothing unit whose captain assured Zazie’s mother she’d run away or gone partying. No break in the rape case. All static.

His thin shoulders sagged. “It is troubling, though …”

“More than troubling, Monsieur,” she said, leaning forward to relieve the pressure on her back. “How can you think there’s no connection? Madame de Langlet won’t answer my calls. She’s afraid.”

Understanding shone in his eyes. The light gone out of them, he looked his age. “I promise I’ll talk to Madame de Langlet,” he said. “She’ll confide in me … but I don’t want to spoil this evening for her.”

“Where is she?”

“Delayed.” He shrugged. “How can I get back to you?”

She thrust her card into his hand.

Brianne approached the salon with Madame Vasseur, helping her with her white jacket. About time. Behind them she saw Renaud mounting the dais, leading the applause.

“Monsieur Lavigne, I’ve been called back to the office,” said Madame Vasseur. “Renaud’s stepped in. Sorry to run short.”

Short?

Aimée followed her out, tried to keep her impatience down as they reached the elevator. She needed to hear this message and question the woman in private.

But a duo of
branchée
sisters, both with heavy seventies-style bangs, boarded the elevator with them. In loud voices they gushed over the event all the way to their taxi at the gate, talking about how excited they were to support the Conservatoire. In a whoosh they’d gone.

“Now if you’ll let me listen to Mélanie’s message—”

But Madame Vasseur already had the phone to her ear, deep in a conversation with someone else. Looking agitated, she shook her head. Aimée caught the words “stalled negotiation.” Couldn’t this woman even give her two minutes?

Aimée kept up with her as she strode along the pavement. The dusk had turned the street into a shadowy canyon of buildings. No Fête de la Musique quartets playing on street corners here, no impromptu courtyard concerts—quiet reigned. No ballyhoo of rabid World Cup fans drinking at bars in this part of town.

Her damp collar stuck to her neck. Madame Vasseur stepped out into the narrow, cobbled street, heading toward her black Mercedes.

“Let’s talk in your car,” said Aimée.

“No way, I’m running late as it is,” said Madame Vasseur. Her voice was tight. She rooted in her Hermès bag. “Can’t find my damned car keys.”

“How can you say that?” Aimée said. She was hot and tired of wasting time. “I’ve waited for you for almost three hours, come all this way to hear one voice mail that may save a child’s life! I’m asking for two minutes of your time here.”

“You know what, forget it!” said Madame Vasseur. “Between you and talking to the
flics
over and over—I can’t deal with any of this.”

Aimée grabbed her arm. “How dare you?” She’d had enough. “How would you like all your music friends to know you didn’t help find a missing girl? A girl taken by the same man who raped your daughter?”

Madame Vasseur backed away. Surprised, Aimée realized her eyes were brimming with tears. “Shame,” she said, her voice low. “I can’t deal with this shame. But my daughter’s safe now.”

For a moment she felt sorry for this woman. “You think sending Mélanie to a Swiss clinic will make it go away?” said Aimée. “Your daughter needs you, her mother.”

Madame Vasseur stood helpless, tears dropping into her purse. Was there something else? Was she holding back? Afraid?

In the sudden silence, Aimée felt a chill. The quiet street was too quiet.

“Give me your phone.” She reached out, and Madame Vasseur relinquished her phone. “Where’s Mélanie’s message?” Aimée asked, flicking through the log. “Was the rapist familiar to her? You said she mentioned his hair …”

A motorcycle revved, shattering the quiet. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of its headlight, bright and steady. So out of place on this shadowy street. The blinding headlight made it impossible for her to read the cell phone’s display.

“What’s wrong?” Madame Vasseur asked.

“Let’s drive to the Grands Boulevards. We shouldn’t linger.”

“Why?”

The motorcycle was coming the wrong way down the oneway street. A wave of fear hit her. “Get in the car. Now.”

Madame Vasseur stood by the door, still digging for her keys, as the blinding light got closer and closer.

“Watch out.” Instinct took over, and she yanked at Madame Vasseur’s arm, trying to pull her out of the street.

But too late. She heard a low pop so distinctive it chilled her blood. Only a gun with a suppressor made a sound like that.

“Get down!” she yelled, pulling at the woman’s shoulder with one hand and shielding her stomach with the other as they hit the pavement. The woman shook off her grip as Aimée rolled on the sidewalk toward the shelter of a massive doorframe. Another
pop pop
followed, echoing in the street. Metal pinged, glass shattered by her ear. A stinging in her shoulder, then a cold, oozing wetness.

When the revving of the motorcycle had faded away, Aimée pushed herself up to her hands and knees. In the dim streetlight, she saw something glinting under the car. Bullet casings.

She reached out, grabbed the door’s metal carriage protector
and crawled, keeping low. Madame Vasseur sprawled on the cobbles. Blood seeped from the grey-ringed holes in her white linen jacket. Her eyes were wide open to the night sky. The last whine of the motorcycle echoed, and Aimée turned to see the red brake light disappear.

“
Non
,
non
,” she gasped. With shaking fingers, she felt for a pulse. Faint but beating. “Hold on … stay with me.” Despair and frustration mingled with regret for this difficult, sad woman.

Where was the woman’s cell phone? She needed to call for help. Frantic, on all fours, she crawled on the dark pavement looking for it. Her fingers came back wet and sticky.

Had the shooter been after Madame Vasseur or her? Cell phone, where was the damn phone? When Aimée tried to stand, waves of dizziness hit her.

“
Mesdemoiselles
,
mesdemoiselles
,” came a drunken shout. Two men were coming down the narrow street. Laughing. “Join us for a drink.”

Aimée’s vision blurred. Doubled. The two men were now four men. “Can’t you see? She’s been shot. Call an ambulance.”

Why didn’t these men respond? Why were they staring at her, backing away?

“Now!” she yelled. “Call eighteen.”

She tried to stand, staggered against the side of the Mercedes, clutching her stomach. But her hands were red, sticky. Blood.

Pain choked her, and everything blurred and spun. “Oh my God, my baby …”

Z
ACHARIÉ
PACED ACROSS
the old tiled bathhouse in the shadowed courtyard, alert to car horns, a muted saxophone, high heels clicking on the pavement. His neck was tense with fear. He squeezed the cell phone so tight he thought he’d break it in half, cursing Jules for the millionth time.

He’d tried every crony and gotten nowhere. Either Jules had paid them off, or they owed him silence. And the piece of
merde
wouldn’t answer his cell phone.

His palms were wet, perspiration beaded his lip. Dervier and the team, right on schedule, entered the misty courtyard, followed by Jules’s driver, the Corsican with a scar-rippled eyebrow.

Zacharié froze. The Corsican had never been part of the plan.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Boss’s orders.”

Insurance.

“Where’s my daughter?”

The Corsican shrugged.

The team was disappearing one by one into the old water workers’ entrance at the side of the bathhouse. Dervier looked back. “Let’s go, Zacharié.”

“I don’t go in there until I hear from my daughter,” he said to the Corsican. “Call her.”

“You know I can’t. Cell-phone towers will triangulate this location.”

“Like I care? I don’t go in until I talk to her.”

The Corsican hit speed dial on his cell phone. Zacharié grabbed it from his hand.

“Jules? I want my daughter.”

“
Soyez calme
,” said Jules, “she’s right here. Go ahead, talk to her yourself.”

He heard fumbling, scratching as the phone was handed over.

“Marie-Jo? Are you all right?”

“Papa! Papa, get me out of here.” A gulp. “I’m scared.” Marie-Jo’s voice broke. “Do something, Papa. Zazie’s hurt. Help us.”

Zacharié’s stomach clenched.

Muffled noises, then Jules’s voice. “Finish the job, Zacharié. We’ll meet you afterward, as planned.”

His mind went to the arranged rendezvous spot, the flower stall at the east exit of the Gare de Nord. Originally he’d planned to take the Thalys from there, and he and Marie-Jo would have breakfast in Brussels. A new life.

“I don’t go in and do your job until I see her, Jules.”

“With a rapist on the loose, the area’s crawling with
flics.
You can’t be too careful.”

Zacharié bit his lip so hard he tasted blood. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Watch the news, Zacharié.” Jules sighed. “That hot female detective’s face is all over the place, looking for a red-haired girl.”

And then the woman with the big, intense eyes flashed in his mind. That leggy pregnant looker on rue Chaptal searching for Marie-Jo’s red-headed friend. He hadn’t told her that Jules had abducted his daughter and the redheaded girl and was going to use the rapist to hide his tracks, because he hadn’t understood until now.

Zacharié wanted to kick the stone, smash the metal drainpipe.

“You complicated everything by kidnapping Marie-Jo and
her friend. Stupid, Jules. Not like you. What about the repercussions?”

A sigh. “Bad planning, I admit.”

Zacharié sensed an element of desperation in Jules’s plan. That was a first. “Someone’s got you by the balls.”

Pause. “I need this, Zacharié.”

And now that other people were searching for the girls, too, Jules was risking everything on this little kidnapping insurance scheme. What about this file Zacharié was supposed to steal was so precious that Jules would go to these lengths to ensure Zacharié saw the job through to the end?

If the woman twigged on the girls’ abduction and got too close … He couldn’t worry about that now.

“Do the job and we’re done, Zacharié. Think of your new passports, new country, a new life.”

A thin red laser beam danced on the worn stones. Dervier’s signal—the team were in their positions along the dry vestiges of the ancient river Grange-Batelière. Zacharié needed to hang up the phone now and finish this job—he had no choice. It was beyond his control.

In one last hopeless attempt, he said into the phone, “You want the job done, you bring those girls. Now.”

A deep sigh came over the line. “In fifteen seconds I’m going to shoot off Marie-Jo’s toes, then work my way up unless you perform the job as planned.”

The phone clicked off.

The Corsican smiled and grabbed the phone. “Satisfied?”

“Get the hell out of here.”

In several long strides, the Corsican crossed the damp pavers and disappeared into the street.

Bile rose in Zacharié’s throat. He wanted to spit the sour taste out of his mouth. He was stuck.

T
HE BRIGHT GLARE
hurt Aimée’s eyes. Her shoulder stung and throbbed. Her head reverberated with the whines of the ambulance’s siren and the beeping from the machines. Her hand flew to her stomach, and she saw the tube in her arm. She moaned into her oxygen mask.

“Blood pressure a hundred and fifty-five over eighty-six,” said one medic to the other. Both
sapeurs-pompiers
, firemen, always the first responders. “Pregnant woman, gunshot wound to the shoulder,” he said into his radio. “Alert: Emergency. Possible preterm labor.”