Murder in Pigalle (6 page)

“Parents let their kids go home alone that young?” René shook his head.

Get real, she almost said. Instead she made a mental note to sign her child up for after-school programs.

“I did. From the time I was eight.”

Since the day she returned from school on a rainy March afternoon to an empty apartment. Her American mother had packed up all her things. Left and never come back.

Aimée shivered. Made herself continue reading. “Look here. Discovered blindfolded, mouths taped and tied up.”

None of the victims had been able to identify or describe the attacker. No more details.

“I saw duct tape on the floor by Sylvaine,” she said, suppressing a shudder.

“That doesn’t explain the FotoFit,” René said.

“Zazie said Mélanie was able to give some description to the composite artist,” she said. “She must have glimpsed him somehow.”

Aimée paged through Zazie’s grid-lined Claire-Fontaine notebook: notes on Bar NeoCancan, the list of schools. An unfinished map sketched in pencil with Xs. No street names, Métro stations or recognizable landmarks.

René looked over her shoulder. “Could be anywhere,” he said.

She hiked up her black linen agnès b. shift from last summer’s sales, glad of the Citroën’s roof between her and the pounding rain. All they needed was AC.

“Zazie mentioned a pattern. So far, there’s their age, the fact they were latchkey kids, the same arrondissement,” she said.

René pulled out his large-format navy blue Paris plan, the
kind used by taxi drivers. Thumbed through. “
Et
voilà
.” He stabbed his finger on the page of the ninth arrondissement. “The two schools are here. And rue de Rochechouart, where Sylvaine was attacked, borders the ninth, which makes a triangle. Each school’s on the edge of the arrondissement: northwest, southeast … and if Sylvaine attended Collège-Lycée Jacques-Decour, the northeast.”

She nodded. “A pattern the
flics
didn’t notice? But the school parents, from what Zazie told me, had gone up in arms at the Commissariat.”

“What do the girls have in common?” said René. “A special type, a look? The fact he knew no one was at home?”

“We need more,” she said. “But I know Sylvaine took music lessons. The violin.”

René nodded. Excitement in his large, green eyes. “I’ll get on it. What if the others took lessons, too?”

Aimée traced her finger on the fogged-up windshield. “Why did the others survive and Sylvaine didn’t?” she said.

“He’s amped up?” René said. “Something’s thrown him off.”

Her heart fluttered as she realized something. “Say his timing was off when he attacked Sylvaine. She wasn’t alone—Zazie was there. He didn’t know, she surprised him, which made him even more violent this time. Or …”

“Or she really wasn’t there,” said René. “Keep that possibility in the mix.”

What if Zazie had lied?

But what if she hadn’t? Time was slipping by as they hashed this out. René hit the defroster, and she thought hard, watching as the fog began to clear from the car’s windshield. She wanted to act. Do something. Now.

“Why hasn’t Zazie come home, called, met me when she said she would? That’s not like her, René. She wanted my help.”

“Don’t you remember being thirteen? What if she … Let’s
say with all this World Cup fever, she goes to a party. She’s afraid to come home, knows she’ll get in trouble.”

Excuses. He didn’t want to face it. Neither did she. But something niggled at her.

“True, it feels off,” she admitted. “What if she’s hiding from him because she witnessed something? Or …” Or he’d got her, but she couldn’t say it.

A burst of techno music blasted from the window of a car, reverberating off the Haussmannian apartment buildings.

René’s lips pursed. Then he grabbed Aimée’s arm. “Where did Zazie get this night photo?” asked René. “What if one of these is the man from the FotoFit?”

He held up the black-and-white photo from Zazie’s notebook, with the night street scene taken from above: several men, a few wearing hoodies, stood near a Wallace fountain. Boys from the
lycée
, it looked like.

Now she remembered. “Taken with a telephoto lens. Zazie mentioned she needed to use her friend’s camera.”

René pointed to the Wallace Fountain in the picture. “I’ll drive around until I find it.”

“Every
quartier
has them, René. It could be anywhere. It’s hard to tell the location from this angle.” Tall, cast iron and forest green, the Wallace fountains had been donated by a philanthropic Englishman after the ravages of the Commune. They were once the only safe public drinking water.

“
Bon
,” he said, pulling on his driving gloves. “I’ll use Zazie’s map to identify the streets. You can ask Virginie if any of her friends live on them.”

Thank God she had his help. At almost six months pregnant, feeling like a whale in slow motion, she appreciated his taking on this legwork. Meanwhile she’d see if Mélanie had heard from Zazie.

“I’ll take you to the office first,” he said.

As if she were an invalid.

“Drop me at the
clinique
on rue de la Grange-Batelière, René,” she said. “Zazie’s friend Mélanie should be able to shed more light on this.”

A few blocks away at the clinic, she hefted herself up and out of the car. The downpour had stopped. Rain-freshened air layered with lime blossom greeted her. She breathed the scent deep into her lungs. Her neck unknotted.

But the evening duty nurse at the clinic shook her head. “Discharged,” she said, checking her screen in the darkly lit reception.

To Aimée’s further questions, she shrugged. “Patient confidentiality precludes my giving information.”

Great. A wasted trip.

She called the café. Virginie had left to meet with the Brigade des Mineurs, but Pierre, after a breathless search of the kitchen, tracked down Mélanie’s address.

Aimée would question the girl at home, hoping against hope that Zazie had contacted her. Figuring it counterproductive to score a taxi in the snarled traffic on the tree-lined Grands Boulevards, she took the Métro. Changed once and exited on the platform at Liège, her favorite station, joining crowds scurrying by the blue-and-white, mosaic-tiled scenes of the old Flemish city.

Near a teeming café
terrasse
, she found the bus stop. Just in time to catch the 68 uphill toward Clichy. It was chock-full of passengers, standing room only. An elder whiskered gentleman offered her a seat, and she didn’t refuse.

Heaven. She pulled out her water and prenatal vitamin packets and popped a mouthful.

The bus ground upward in the dark, passing limestone buildings whose pale blue shutters and iron-grille balconies glowed from the lights within. Past the evening crowds under the marquee of the bright Casino de Paris, behind which once extended the Duc de Richelieu’s pleasure gardens of Tivoli,
home to the long-gone pavilion where Louis XV supped with Madame de Pompadour.

She got off by a weathered building—a nineteenth-century debtor’s prison, now apartments with a fruit shop and tailor on the ground floor. Aimée reached her destination, the shadowed rue Ballu, where an almost palpable hush descended. It was a world apart from rue de Clichy, the bustling thoroughfare that had once been the Roman road to Rouen. Rue Ballu was upscale, she noted, and exclusive, gardens and cobbled entry passages leading to lanes with
hôtels particuliers
behind grilled gates.

She’d forgotten to ask Pierre for the building code. Stupid! But she didn’t have to wait long before a dog barked. “Done your business?
Bon.
” Footsteps and little sniffs sounded behind her. A figure punched numbers in the digicode.

She pretended to root in her Birkin. “Sorry to disturb you …”

A click and the foyer lights flashed on, illuminating a grey-haired woman with a Westie on a leash.

“Forgot the new code again?” she said, irritation in her voice. “Should write it down. It’s been three days now.”

So right after Mélanie’s attack they’d changed the code. Smacked of locking the barn door after the horse bolted. But if everyone was as trusting as this woman, Aimée wasn’t surprised the rapist had gained entry.

The woman held the blue metal-grille gate open, and Aimée slipped inside. “
Merci
, Madame.” Aimée paused, still rummaging in her bag, until the woman entered a building on the right.

A quick scan of the mailboxes revealed Vasseur at Number 7. Scents of jasmine drifted in the darkness ahead, accompanied by the chirp of crickets. She hadn’t heard crickets since last summer in the Jardin du Luxembourg.

Off a cobbled lane to the right stood Number 7, an eighteenth-century townhouse, its garden sloping up from the two Mercedes parked in front. Some remnant of the Tivoli, she
figured. A welcome mist splashed her from the fountain, which was backed by trellised ivy and surrounded by bulbous orange and pink roses, reminding her of the countryside. Not bad for the center of Paris. A cause for envy for the other few million Parisians who slogged up narrow stairs to a closet-sized apartment with a window overlooking a wall.

A lighted window on the upper floor faced the side garden. About to knock on the carved wooden door, Aimée heard a woman shouting. “I couldn’t leave the merger negotiations again!”

A man’s raised voice. “That’s your answer for everything. She’s your daughter, too. But shipping her off to a Swiss clinic?”

A door slammed shut.

So this jewel of an eighteenth-century townhouse didn’t bring with it happiness for these high-roller parents and their suffering daughter. The front door opened before she could knock. Streams of light blinded her as a man rushed out. Stepping back, she lost her balance. Felt an arm grab hers.

“Who are you?”

“Monsieur Vasseur?” she said, pulling her heel out of the gravel. Her eyes adjusted to the light, and she kept talking. Bad mood or not, she needed his information. “I’m Aimée Leduc.
Excusez-moi
, but …”

“What are you doing here?” The man scowled. Tall, with thinning, blond, side-combed hair and narrow eyes, he wore a rumpled suit.

“Zazie’s parents, the Duclos, gave me your address,” she said. “Forgive me for showing up like this, but Zazie’s disappeared.”

“Who?”

“Your daughter Mélanie’s friend.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t know all of Mélanie’s friends. Afraid I can’t help you.” His voice assumed a gloss. He jingled the car keys in his palm, impatient to leave.

“I wouldn’t trouble you, but it’s crucial,” she said. “I need to speak to Mélanie. Zazie might have called her.”

“Impossible.” A brittle finality sounded in his voice.

“Another girl was raped tonight. She died en route to the hospital. And Zazie’s missing …”

“Claude … Claude, who’s that?” came a woman’s voice from the foyer.

“Talk to my wife.”

With that, he got into a Mercedes, started the ignition. The window rolled down. “I’m sorry, truly sorry, but …” he said. Then pulled out, spitting gravel.

Great.

The tall woman in a designer suit stood silhouetted against the lit doorframe. Mascara streaks trailed down her cheeks.

“Madame Vasseur, I know it’s a bad time, but please, we need to talk.”

“I’m not in a sociable mood right now,” she said, about to close the door.

“I wouldn’t describe this as a social call. Mélanie’s friend Zazie is missing. Please let me speak with Mélanie. Just five minutes.”

“We can’t help you,” she said. “Mélanie’s not here.”

Sent to the Swiss clinic already?

“Can you tell me what happened?”

“Like I want to go over the whole thing again? My daughter is traumatized.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “But Zazie decided to trail the rapist after what happened to Mélanie. He attacked again tonight, and now Zazie is missing. There’s a connection. If Mélanie’s rapist took Zazie …”

“How do you know it’s the same man?” Madame Vasseur interrupted.

“That’s what I need to find out. Any information, anything Mélanie told you or anything you saw will help.”

Madame Vasseur shook her head. “He violated my daughter, our home … I won’t relive that.”

“But he has raped another girl, and this one didn’t make it. She died in the ambulance several hours ago.”

Madame Vasseur gasped. She grabbed the doorframe. “You mean …?”

“Do you understand?” Aimée gripped the woman’s arm. “Zazie’s parents are desperate to find her.” Aimée stepped inside. “Please, it’s vital you help me.”

Madame Vasseur led her into a salon with carved moldings, a chandelier and large abstract paintings on the paneled walls. Taken from the pages of an architectural magazine—a showpiece without a lived-in feeling.

Madame Vasseur poured herself a glass of Burgundy. “Wine?”

Tempted, Aimée shook her head. “
Non
,
merci.
”

She sat down on a maroon-suede couch, gestured for Aimée to do the same. Took out a pack of cigarettes, lit one and offered the pack to Aimée.

“Much as I’d like to …”

“Ah,
d’accord.
” She eyed the bulge in Aimée’s middle. “Pregnancy’s a bitch, I remember. Then joy of joys, potty training.”

A real candidate for mother of the year, Madame Vasseur. She sat back, blew a plume of smoke and kicked off her heels. Talk about rubbing it in. Aimée wanted to tear that cigarette out of her mouth and that wine out of her hand.

A tan pigskin Hermès briefcase lay open on the couch, revealing files and legal documents. The woman tapped her cigarette ash into a blue bowl, distracted.

“Mélanie was attacked three days ago, as I understand?” Aimée said to prompt her.

“My husband, Claude, found Mélanie,” she said, her voice hollow. “When he returned from work.”

“Any sign of forced entry, anything stolen?”

Madame Vasseur shook her head. “Nothing was touched but my daughter. But Claude blames me because I worked late.
I’m prosecuting a huge case. Three years of litigation, and they threatened to bow out. I had to hold their hands.”

Aimée’s blood ran cold. What about holding her daughter’s hand?

“I know it’s painful, but can you give me any details of Mélanie’s attack?” she said.