The Mentor (19 page)

Part of him was happy the man was dead, but that subtle sense of satisfaction he’d felt when he pulled the trigger had completely vanished.

“Darling!” exclaimed a male voice, dragging Eric back to the present. A big blond man around thirty years old was standing at the door to the hospital room.

“Oh shit! I told you not to come here,” said Miriam, clearly annoyed. She buried her face in her hands.

“Are you kidding?” said the young man, going over to her and completely ignoring the other two people in the room. He sat down on the edge of the bed, pulled her hands away from her face, and kissed her passionately.

Eric felt his stomach contract involuntarily. Where the hell had this guy jumped out from? He cleared his throat in an attempt to get their attention, but he had to clear it again, louder this time, before he could get them to pull themselves apart and look at him.

“Um . . . ,” said Miriam. She was flustered, something rarely seen in the young detective. “Jonathan, I’d like you to meet Eric and Adele,” she said, pointing to them in turn.

“Hi!” said Jonathan, holding out his hand to Eric.

Eric stared at the young man, then down at his hand. He had no intention whatsoever of shaking that thing.

Adele stepped between them, holding her own hand out. “It’s a pleasure,” she said, smiling. She shot a foot out behind her, kicking Shaw. Reluctantly he stood up and shook Jonathan’s hand.

After that, Jonathan only had eyes for his woman, as if the other two had disappeared altogether. He began caressing her face, then her arms, while leaning onto the bed. “Are you sure you’re okay, my little darling?”

“I’m fine,” said Miriam, almost resigned to his ardent attentions.

“I get the feeling we’re two people too many,” murmured Adele.

Eric pretended he hadn’t heard her and continued to watch the two on the hospital bed. They didn’t seem at all like a couple going through a crisis. He suspected that Miriam had exaggerated a little when she’d told him they’d broken up. Or maybe she was just trying to protect her own personal privacy. That thought hurt a little. He’d always looked out for her, protected her, but she’d stopped being a little girl a long time ago.

Now Jonathan was caressing her sides and her stomach, almost as if he wanted to check her out inch by inch. Shaw felt a tug on his arm. He glanced at Adele, perplexed.

“I think they’d like to be
alone
,” said Adele, pronouncing her words clearly.

He gave up. She was right. Eric followed Adele out into the hallway. Miriam and Jonathan didn’t even appear to notice they were leaving.

Only after he’d gone out through the door and started walking alongside Adele down the hospital corridor did Eric realize just how tired he was. It was after midnight now, and he’d been awake since five o’clock in the morning. He’d just come to the end of what had been his busiest day in decades.

When they stopped outside the elevator, Adele took his hand and glanced up at him furtively. “You’re behaving just like a crazy, jealous father,” she said.

“I can’t help it,” said Eric. It was embarrassing to admit.

“It’s sweet,” said Adele, reaching up and caressing Eric’s jawbone with the index finger of her left hand. “I know a secret, something you don’t know.”

Secret? What secrets were left now? But from the expression on his companion’s face, Eric could tell it wasn’t bad news.

“I think Miriam is pregnant.”

“What!”

“Haven’t you noticed how she’s got a weak stomach lately, and she’s irritable?” Adele paused for a moment, then continued. “Okay, she’s always been irritable. But more than usual lately.”

Goodness gracious. Yes, he’d noticed. He’d also noticed her panic attacks had returned, after it had seemed like they’d disappeared for good. Now he knew why.

“You’re going to be a grandfather . . . Aren’t you happy?”

“What! No . . .
No!
” he protested vehemently. A little too vehemently, to be honest. Then he noticed the mocking look in Adele’s eyes. “My son is just fifteen years old. I wasn’t planning on becoming a grandfather anytime soon.”

Adele laughed out loud.

Why the heck was he getting angry? After all, it was good news. Eric started laughing too. Then they both stopped and stared in each other’s eyes.

“I think this time I’m going to take at least a week’s vacation,” Eric said.

“Will you take me up to your country cottage?” She was giving him that naughty young girl glance, the same one that had made him lose control that afternoon.

“I will if you behave,” he said, hugging her close. “But first I need to sleep. A lot.”

“Let’s go home,” she whispered in his ear.

The elevator doors rolled open.

“Oh! Hey there!” Jane’s voice was unmistakable. This was the last thing they needed right now. “No, no,” Jane continued, “I don’t want to bother you two.” She stepped out of the elevator and brushed past them, pausing only to wink.

CHAPTER 15

SEPTEMBER

“Okay, okay, now it’s time for my present!” exclaimed Miriam, plopping a red gift down on the tabletop right in front of Eric.

Today was his birthday, and he’d brought together his entire odd family for dinner: his son, his “adopted” daughter, and his partner Adele. Despite the way their love affair had begun, it was slowly but surely moving forward, with highs and lows and not too much pressure. They’d decided to start by dating, each living at home but taking increasing advantage of opportunities to spend time together and share one another’s interests. They wanted to take time to get to know one another and figure out where they were heading together. If he were being completely honest with himself, Eric felt ready to skip a few steps in this process, but he appreciated her attempts to set limits. This way he felt like he appreciated each individual moment more, which was exactly what they had gathered together to do today.

Now looking around and seeing himself surrounded with the people he loved the most, Eric felt truly happy. Though he wasn’t the least bit excited to be turning fifty. Surrounded by all these younger people, he felt a little younger himself—and that’s exactly what amused his companions the most.

He examined the present with an air of suspicion. He picked it up. It felt light. He shook it but couldn’t hear any telltale sounds from within. Whatever lay inside the packaging, it was lodged in tight.

“Go on, open it!” urged Brian.

Adele caressed his arm and looked at him with one of her usual enigmatic smiles.

“How come I’ve got the feeling that everybody knows what’s in here except me?”

“Eric,” protested Miriam, “stop being an investigator for once and open that goddamned present!”

Shaw raised both hands in a show of surrender, making everyone there laugh, save Miriam, who stood at his side and glared at him, her hands on her belly, which was just starting to show.
His
baby girl was about to become a mother herself. It was hard for him to think of her in that role, and he continued to be less than impressed with her boyfriend. When she’d told him she would be coming alone because Jonathan had to work, he hadn’t exactly broken down in tears. He smiled now at that thought, but Miriam’s impatient look told him that now was not the time to make her wait any longer.

Eric untied the bow and started opening the present, moving with deliberate, studied slowness. Every once in a while he stopped, made a silly grimace, and then started again. Finally he got all the wrapping paper off and found himself holding a box with a smartphone.

“Oh no, not one of these infernal contraptions!” he groaned.

“Oh Dieu, le gentil vieil homme . . . ,”
echoed Miriam, making everyone assembled burst out laughing.

“I’m right here, young lady,” he said. “I can hear you, and I can understand you!”

Miriam finally abandoned her grumpy air and smiled, then gave him a gigantic hug. “Happy birthday!” she said, accompanied with a big kiss on the cheek.

Eric took the phone out of its packaging and began examining it suspiciously.

Brian yanked it out of his grip. “You stick your SIM card in here,” he said, pointing to the battery slot, which was empty. He pulled out the battery from its box and removed the back cover for his dad. “Then you close it.”

Gee whiz, he thought. The kid could already set up a smartphone. “Okay, I think I can take it from here,” said Eric.

“No, wait. I still have to show you how to set up your e-mail account.”

“Who picked that phone, you or him?” said Eric to Miriam.

Miriam and Adele exchanged a mysterious look. Then Adele said, “To be honest, Jane was the one who suggested it.”

“Oh no. That means she must be preparing a trick of some sort for Saturday.”

The two women giggled together, obviously accomplices. It was a pleasure to see them like this. They’d never really gotten along together, but over the past few months, once Miriam finally accepted the reality of Eric’s relationship with Adele, they’d practically become friends.

“Don’t worry. I’m sure the party Jane’s preparing will be a relaxed, easygoing affair,” said Adele. But her reassuring tone did nothing but raise his innate sense of anxiety. What the heck did she have in mind?

“You know Jane,” he said, followed by the sound of their laughter.

Later on he wound up alone in the car with his son. He was bringing the boy back home and wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to have a heart-to-heart with him. Lately that seemed all but impossible to organize, since there were always other people around. Even now, when they were theoretically “alone,” that wasn’t really the case. Brian was busy messaging someone on his phone and appeared entirely consumed by his virtual conversation.

Lord how the boy had grown over the past few months! When the days slipped past one at a time, it was impossible to see the way they grew up, but seeing him just twice a month made the changes obvious. He’d be turning sixteen soon. He was an adolescent now, and Crystal certainly had her hands full raising him. Being a
good
parent, the one who hands out presents and has all the fun, was something of an advantage. But if he was honest with himself, Eric had to admit that he often missed parenting full time. He had the feeling that he’d lost control of his son’s life, and that the person now sitting next to him was becoming more and more of a stranger.

Suddenly Brian burst out laughing. They were stopped at a stoplight, so Eric watched his son sidelong, taking advantage of the opportunity to get a good look at him, his face illuminated by the city lights. There was something in his eyes, a certain kind of mischievousness that Eric knew all too well.

“Who? Nicole?” Obviously he was messaging a girl. That was the only kind of subject that could get Brian to disappear entirely from the world around him like this.

Brian’s face reddened, and he shook his head no. It wasn’t Nicole.

“So it’s someone else, another girl?”

His son fumbled around with his phone, then showed his father a photograph. It was a close-up of a pretty girl with blond hair and green eyes.

“Very pretty!”

The streetlight turned green and the car got moving again.

“Her name is Claudie. She’s French.”

“Really? Then I’m guessing your French is improving.”

“Yeah. Thanks to her. We met on Facebook.”

“Oh,” was all Eric could reply, taking the opportunity to make a mental note that he should get one of those accounts too. Maybe that way he’d be able to maintain a closer relationship with his son. The thought made him laugh a little to himself. “So you two have never met in person?”

“Well, no. But we’ve seen each other on Skype.”

“Oh.” Okay, at least he knew what Skype was, but it would probably be better to change the subject before they wound up in entirely unfamiliar territory.

“She’s coming to London on vacation for New Year’s Eve.” He could tell his son was excited about it. He really liked this girl.

“So she helped you with your French, you said?”

“Yeah. She’s really patient. She showed me a ton of websites and interesting blogs where I can practice.”

“I like blogs.” When they’d started becoming trendy, Eric had followed a few, back when they were a lot more intimate. People wrote about themselves then, protected by anonymity. Those days were nothing like today’s social networks. The fact that they’d been anonymous helped people express what they were thinking honestly, directly, and readers all pitched in with advice. He’d found it to be an interesting way to observe humanity. Now blogs had become first and foremost a marketing tool, and they’d lost their original appeal with him.

“There’s this one that’s really cool,” Brian said before his phone beeped again, interrupting the conversation. He typed in a response to his friend with an incredibly rapid dance of fingertips across the screen. “You’d like it,” he continued. “It’s all about murder.”

Eric couldn’t help but laugh, which obviously annoyed Brian a tiny bit. “Sorry, sorry,” said Eric. “It was just the way you said it. I work with this stuff every day, you know.”

“Yeah, but this one’s special. At first it seemed like a real story, but then we realized it was all too over the top to be true. It’s like a novel about a serial killer.”

“It keeps getting better and better,” said Eric. There was irony in his voice, but Brian didn’t seem to pick up on it.

“It’s written by this killer who murders the people who destroyed her family, then frames one of them for the murders she’s committed.”

What?

“Unfortunately she stopped posting three months ago, just when things were heating up. She’d hidden the murder weapon in this guy’s car and then ran away.

Eric hit the brakes. He stared out at the road ahead while a thousand different thoughts raced around in his head. Adrenaline was coursing through his veins, keeping him from moving.

“Dad, what’s going on?” Brian reached over and shook his arm gently. “You okay?”

The car behind them started honking, so Eric pulled his SUV over to the side of the road.

He turned to look at his son. “Was . . . When . . . Was the blog in French?” he stammered.

“Yeah, it was . . . What’s the matter?”

“Who is the blogger?”

The boy shrugged. “Who knows what her real name is. She signed her posts
Mina
.”

“Fuck me . . . ,” muttered Shaw. He’d heard the name in his head even before it came out of his son’s mouth. He was breathing too quickly. He needed to calm himself down. Maybe it was all just a coincidence. “Where does the story take place?” he asked Brian. He wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to hear the answer, but Eric knew he wouldn’t be able to rest until he’d found out more. Surely it was an anonymous case. A story like that wasn’t really very original. There were probably lots of examples in books and movies.

“Here in London,” his son said.

Eric closed his eyes, fighting a feeling that the world was crashing down around him.

“Here, I’ll show you.” Brian took his tablet out of his backpack. “It’s saved in my favorites.” He quickly opened his browser and jumped straight to the blog. “Look,” he said, holding the tablet up so his father could see.

Eric was almost afraid to take it. Finally he reached out, took the tablet, and started reading. Almost instantly, he was hooked. He ran down the pages, trying to understand the meaning of the French words.

“It’s not easy to understand,” said Brian. “Claudie had to help me a little.” He leaned over to see where his father was in the blog. “If I’d known you were interested in it, I would have told you about it earlier. You could ask Miriam to help you translate it.”

“Leave Miriam out of this!” shouted Eric. His son stared at him, open-mouthed and confused. “I’m sorry,” he said, trying to calm down. “It’s not you. Listen, can you e-mail me a link to this site?”

“Yeah, of course.” Brian couldn’t hide his curiosity. “What’s up? Why won’t you tell me what it is?”

Eric took a long, deep breath. He didn’t want to scare his son. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s nothing. Probably nothing. It’s just some . . . nothing. It reminds me of an old story I read a while back, that’s all.”

Eric went into his office and locked the door behind him. At this hour, the building was practically deserted, but he wanted to make sure he wouldn’t be disturbed. Someone, Jane for example, might find it strange to see him in here working on his birthday. He certainly would have preferred to spend the evening somewhere else, but he couldn’t put this off.

He turned on his computer and waited patiently for it to warm up. It always seemed too slow when he really needed it. One last glance out of the glass door to the office. No lights, no noises.

Eric opened his e-mail and saw the message from Brian. He clicked on the link and found himself staring at the blog.

Mina’s Blog.

That was the title. Simple, straightforward. It looked like any other website, equipped with minimalist, welcoming graphics. But the content froze his blood. Evidently it didn’t have the same effect on its numerous subscribers, who left plenty of commentary after the entries, evidently believing them nothing more than very convincing stories. But for Eric, they were far more than that.

Every detail checked out. In the sections where his rusty French, learned thanks to his close connection with Miriam and her extended family, wasn’t good enough, he cut and pasted segments into Google Translate.

With every line, every paragraph, all the little pieces of the puzzle fell into place. All the little inconsistencies he’d spent so much time trying to ignore suddenly became too much to push away.

He knew it. He’d always known that
she
must have been involved, but he’d never wanted to believe it. Garnish had been too enticing a lead to let go, and his death had been far too convenient. The truth of this case died along with Christopher Garnish, and that had been enough for Eric, at least until now.

Now that he found himself faced with the cynicism in those words, with the complete and utter absence of remorse, with Mina’s wickedness and malice, Eric couldn’t lie to himself any longer.

He still hoped that somehow he was wrong. After all, what was he looking at? A blog? A work of fiction? But no. He was sure she was the author . . . The details were too precise, too accurate. She hadn’t even hidden the names with pseudonyms. She must have been completely sure no one would ever make the connection. Or maybe she wasn’t afraid it would happen. It was just supposed to be a story. If it had been something different, she would undoubtedly have erased it already. Why leave clues behind her? Why, after she’d spent so much time and energy carrying out the perfect vendetta?

Unless she wanted to leave crumbs, wanted to be discovered. There were only a very few people on the planet who could connect that blog, that name, to the real facts. Eric might well be the only person who had all the information necessary to do so.

He released the breath he’d been involuntarily holding back. No. It couldn’t be true. They were certain a man was involved in those murders. They had the video from outside the building where the first victim was murdered. The fake woman dressed in black was undoubtedly a man. It couldn’t be her.