Seen and Not Heard (26 page)

Claire didn’t wait to see if Tom was following her. She raced down the flights of stairs, holding on to the railing to keep herself from falling in her unthinking panic. The late-morning streets were crowded on the first sunny day in ages, and she careened into passersby, bouncing off them without so much as a mumbled apology.

She didn’t bother to look for a taxi—with the traffic it would take less time to run. And run she did, numbly aware of Tom’s long-legged figure keeping pace with her, numbly aware of the burning pain in her heart as she gasped for breath. And all the time she prayed, a silent litany begging a heretofore unfriendly God to keep Nicole safe. She promised everything in a tumbling flurry of rash thoughts. She’d become a nun, she’d die herself, she’d go back to the States and face charges, she’d never go near another man again. But please, dear God, let Nicole escape from that madman.

She half expected the street outside Marc’s apartment to be jammed with police cars and ambulances. As she stormed into the ancient brick building she had a split second to marvel at the ordinary charm of the day, the tourists crowding the streets, the elegant Parisians taking the infrequent sunshine to heart.

Tom caught her halfway up the broad marble stairs, jerking her to a halt, and for a moment all she could do was lean against the walls and stare at him as she struggled for breath.

If Tom wasn’t equally winded it was probably due to his six flights of stairs. Even so, it took him a moment to be able to speak.

“We can’t just … storm in there,” he said. “It might push him over the edge.”

“He
is
over the edge, damn it! Didn’t you hear what he said? He’s going to kill Nicole.”

“I heard him. I heard what he said in French, too, and it was far worse than what he was threatening in English. He
told us exactly what he was planning to do to Nicole, and then what he’d do to you when he caught you.” Tom’s face was pale beneath the sweat, and Claire shivered.

“I don’t care. We can’t wait …”

“We have one advantage,” Tom said ruthlessly, holding her still when she tried to break free. “He only uses a knife. That’s what he was talking about, that’s what the papers have said. So he’ll have to get fairly close to either of us to hurt us.”

“The papers,” she said numbly. “Do you really think he’s the one who’s been killing these old women?”

“Do you really think there’s a chance he isn’t?”

“God,” Claire moaned. “What sort of monster have I been living with?”

“I don’t know. But I think we’re about to find out. Carefully now. Stay behind me. It’s you he wants to hurt. He seems to want to prey on women. Maybe he’ll think twice about hurting me.”

“Bullshit.” She pushed herself away from the wall. “You heard him. I don’t think he’s capable of thinking about it one way or the other. He’ll go through you to get to me. And I don’t give a damn. Anything to get him away from Nicole.” She yanked herself out of his grip and started back up the stairs, moving swiftly, dreading what she knew she’d find in the apartment.

Tom gave up arguing and came with her. The heavy green door stood open into the deserted hallway. There was no sign, no sound, of a living human being anywhere near the apartment.

Claire started forward, and once more Tom caught her arm. “He might be lying in wait for you,” he warned.

She shook her head impatiently. “He’s gone,” she said with great certainty, moving into the apartment with Tom beside her, slowly, carefully, listening for any unexpected sounds, watching for movement out of the corner of her eyes.

She half expected, half dreaded to see blood stains on the floor. There were none. No sign of a struggle. No sign of Marc. No sign of Nicole. The apartment was deserted.

“I’m calling the police.”

Claire barely heard him. “She’s still here.”

“No one’s here, Claire,” Tom said impatiently. “Marc’s taken her somewhere, and the sooner we get help the better.”

“Go ahead and call them. I’m going to keep looking.” She headed back toward the bedrooms, and with a sigh Tom replaced the telephone and followed her. “I thought you were going to call the police.”

“In a minute. If Nicole is here I don’t want you to have to find her alone.”

Claire shivered. “She’s not dead.”

“If you say so.”

“God damn it, Tom, I’d know …”

The sound was very faint. If every nerve in Claire’s body hadn’t been tuned in, waiting for it, she might never have heard it. Just a whisper of noise, calling her name.

“Nicole?” She kept her voice calm, as hope and panic threatened to swamp her. “Nicole, honey, where are you?”

The call came again, so softly she could scarcely hear it. She knew the voice, but the words were distant, incomprehensible.

“Nicole, where are you?”

The voice was louder as they ran toward the bedroom, and clearly in muffled French. Tom shook his head. “I don’t understand what she’s saying. She says she’s in something, but I don’t know the word.”

As they reached her bedroom they were greeted by a loud clang that shook the bedroom floor. Moments later Nicole crawled out of a hole in the bedroom closet, her sallow face pale, her dark hair hanging limply, her eyes still dilated and glassy. She looked up at Claire, murmured something in French, and collapsed on the floor, crying.

Within seconds Claire was on the floor beside her, pulling her into her lap, cradling her, murmuring ridiculous, comforting phrases as she pushed her damp hair out of her face. She rocked her, back and forth, for long, soothing moments, until Nicole’s tears shuddered to a halt, turning into occasional
whimpers of fear as she clung to Claire, until she’d drifted back into an exhausted, semi-drugged sleep.

Claire turned and looked up at Tom. “Lock the doors,” she said. “We have to make sure he can’t get in.” And her arms tightened protectively around Nicole’s shivering figure as she jerked in fear.

Tom nodded, heading for the door, when her voice called him back.

“What did Nicole say when she saw me?”

A semblance of a smile lit Tom’s face. “She said she knew you’d come. She knew you’d save her.”

Claire managed the ghost of a smile in response. “I hope she’s right.”

“You’re the last person I expected to see.” Hubert’s voice was chilly with high-pitched disdain as he looked up into Rocco’s face. The old man was wearing mourning—a beautifully cut black suit with a single white rose in the lapel. Mourning the old bitch, Rocco thought with a sneer he didn’t let show.

“I’m in trouble, Hubert.”

“And? You expect something from me?”

Rocco shrugged. “Information, perhaps. I’ve been useful to you in the past. It might be in your best interests to keep me around in case I could prove useful in the future.”

“It could be that you’ve outlived your usefulness. Things become dangerous when you start enjoying your job, Rocco. You were always such a professional. When you start killing for pleasure you run into trouble. Things are bound to catch up with you.”

Rocco veiled the hatred in his opaque black eyes. “We all have to have some sort of hobby, Hubert.”

“When you’re in a dangerous line of work you ought to find a discreet hobby, not one that will call more attention to yourself. Malgreave is after you, isn’t he?”

Rocco wasn’t surprised at Hubert’s knowledge. Little escaped the old man. “Malgreave has always been after me.”

“But he’s beginning to put things together. Your friend Bonnard is in deep trouble, and he’s going to drag you down with him.”

“Where is he?”

“Is that what this is about?” Hubert sniffed. “I haven’t the faintest idea.”

“Don’t give me that shit. You know everything. Where the hell is Bonnard?”

“Out looking for his girlfriend, I expect. Not to mention her lover and Bonnard’s stepchild. You find them, you’ll find Bonnard.” Hubert took a black silk handkerchief from his breast pocket and dabbed at his pursed mouth. “Come to think of it, you might be able to assist me after all. And in the end, you’ll assist both Bonnard and yourself.”

“Name it.”

Hubert smiled. “You really have gotten the wind up, haven’t you, my boy? I never thought to see the day you’d be so thoroughly spooked. It’s very simple. Find the
Américaine
and her lover and kill them. Bring the child to me. I’ll be grateful, and you know I’m capable of astonishing things in my gratitude. Malgreave could be forced to take an early retirement. Or given a promotion to a police department in Lyon or somewhere equally distant.”

“Why do you want the child?”

“I’m a sentimental old man. She’s the last living relative of a woman I loved dearly. For Harriette’s sake I want to protect her.”

“And Bonnard?”

“Once the woman and the man who cuckolded him are dead he will regain reason. He’s had times like this before, word has it. But if you wish to survive you’ll have to stop your nasty little hobby. Even if I can manage to get rid of Malgreave, someone else will be after you and if you’re almost caught once, someone else can put the same facts together. And next time it won’t take them so long.”

Rocco wished he had a silk handkerchief of his own to wipe the sweat from his forehead. “I’ll stop. I don’t know if it will be possible for Bonnard.”

Hubert smiled sweetly. “Then you’ll simply have to stop him.”

Rocco shut his eyes for a moment, feeling the sweat roll down his back and under his arms, pooling in his groin. If he was frightened of anyone in this world he was frightened of Marc Bonnard. He met Hubert’s grave expression and nodded.

“And take good care of the child for me. I would be very distressed if Bonnard got to her first.”

“I’ll find her. And the Americans.”

“And Bonnard,” Hubert said gently.

“And Bonnard,” agreed Rocco.

Claire slammed down the telephone, crashing it into the receiver. Nicole slept onward, curled in a fetal position on the uncomfortable sofa in the salon, and Tom stood by the window, looking out into the afternoon streets. “They won’t listen,” she said, her voice raw with frustration and unshed tears. “Damn their souls to hell.”

“What did the police say?”

“Just the same garbage they told you. They would record my complaints and pass the information on to the next available officer. That they appreciated my assistance in this matter. Damn them!”

“You couldn’t remember who’s in charge of the investigation?”

“I know who’s in charge of the investigation.” Claire wrapped her arms around her shivering body. “He’s a tall man, in his late fifties, with gray eyes and a deeply lined face.”

“I hate to be nitpicking, Claire, but what was the man’s name?”

“For God’s sake, don’t you think I’m trying to remember?” she cried. “It was something French. And don’t tell me that isn’t any help. I know most people who work for the Paris police have French names. It was something like … Mal … Malgreave.”

He still hadn’t moved from his spot by the window, and she wanted nothing more than to cross the elegant, haunted room and lean against him, huddle in the shelter of his warmth and strength. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t give in to the weakness and terror she was fighting so hard. Tom couldn’t take responsibility for the three of them, much as she wished she could simply hide her head in the sand and let him. She had gotten herself, and to some extent, the two of them, into this mess, and she had to get them out.

“Did you leave your number with the police?” Tom asked. “Are they going to call you back?”

“Yes. Not that I’m holding my breath. It was clear they thought I was a crazy American lady.”

“They wouldn’t listen to me either.”

“You’re a crazy American man. They’re not going to take our word against that of a man with Marc’s reputation, not unless we can prove it. At this point it’s our word against his.”

“And you don’t think there’s enough proof? What about when Nicole wakes up? Won’t they believe her?”

“She’s a child, a child who’s recently lost her mother and her grandmother in violent, unexpected ways. They’ll think she’s fantasizing.”

“I think you’re being needlessly pessimistic. Let’s wake her up, go outside, and get a taxi to police headquarters. We can just camp there until someone listens to us. At least Bonnard couldn’t get to you there.” She could tell Tom was making an effort at being reasonable, but she couldn’t listen.

“No!” she said, fighting panic at the very idea. “I know how charming Marc can be, and when it comes right down to it, I have no right keeping Nicole with me. He could even tell the police that I drugged her, I kidnapped her. They’d take her from me and give her back to him, and there’d be nothing I could do about it.”

“I don’t know if Bonnard is capable of such rational behavior anymore,” Tom said slowly. “He sounded like he’d slipped over the edge.”

“Maybe. I can’t count on it.” She moved over and sank down on the couch, inches from Nicole’s bare feet. Tom had
been surprisingly patient all afternoon, calling the police and trying to get through in his adequate French, making tea that neither of them drank, his very presence a comfort, a defense against the forces of evil. She wouldn’t be surprised if he’d had enough. After all, he had no ties to her. They were merely chance-met strangers in Paris, and she’d managed to draw him into a web of murder and madness from which there seemed to be no escape. It would be little wonder if he wanted to wash his hands of the whole sordid affair.

“Damn it, Claire, we can’t just sit here …” he began, rumpling his already tousled hair in frustration.

“No, we can’t,” she said, pulling a hard-gained serenity back around her. “And I’ve decided what I have to do.”

“Have you?” His tone of voice wasn’t promising, but Claire ignored it. The sooner Tom was out of this mess, the better.

“Nicole and I are going into hiding. My new American Express card should be ready. With that I’ll rent a car, take Nicole, and go off someplace where Marc can’t find us. Just long enough for the police to realize we’ve been handing them their murderer on a silver platter. Once I read in the paper that Marc’s been arrested I’ll bring Nicole back.”