Murder in Pigalle Read online

  René rolled up his sleeves, determination in his green eyes. “I think the Wallace fountain photo was taken overlooking Place Gustave Toudouze.” He pointed to her map. “Here.”

  “That’s where the call to Zazie came from. It was … hold on.” She consulted the phone log. “One thirty.” Her heart skipped. “That was when she was right here, talking to me. The little minx knew all the time.”

  “Knew that her friend Sylvaine would be attacked?”

  Tired, Aimée rubbed her eyes. Her fingers came back covered with mascara clumps. She must look a sweaty mess.

  “That she’d keep investigating, René,” she said. “Even though she promised to wait until this evening and talk with me. She was hiding something even then.” She passed him the police report. “From this we know Madame de Langlet gave violin lessons to Sylvaine as well as Mélanie. That’s the connection.”

  “Even so, we don’t know if these two other girls were Madame de Langlet’s pupils.”

  “True. We’ll follow up with her tomorrow,” said Aimée. “Meanwhile, let’s prioritize.”

  “Figuring out his profile—that’s key.”

  Profile? René read too many true-crime books.

  “Okay, René, let’s put things together,” she said. “Say he’s a music aficionado or a musician picking girls because he’s fixated on their talent. The rapes take place in the quartier and stretch back six months—he’s local, knows the girls’ movements, the families’ schedules. And he’s free in the evenings.”

  René pulled his goatee. “Aimée, these attacks concern power. Power over a child, the only person he can dominate.”

  Let René psychoanalyze. “Bon … but that doesn’t rule many people out. What else do we know about him, specifically?”

  “We know he tapes and binds them,” said René. “Calls the shots. He needs to be in control. He probably attacks little girls because it’s the only time he feels he is.”

  “But what does that have to do with music, René?”

  “What if their talent threatens him?” said René. “Forget him being a connoisseur—he hears them play and feels inadequate. Resents such talented young prodigies. Say one rebuffed him. He sees them as little snobs needing to be taken down a notch. Only a twelve-year-old satisfies him. That’s key.”

  She nodded. René’s profile sounded all too believable. But without any suspects, she had no one to apply it to.

  Make a timeline, that’s what her father used to do. She remembered those charts in his office at the Commissariat.

  “The first thing we have to do is use what we know to track her movements,” she said.

  On the map below, she wrote in Leduc Detective, 1:30 P.M.

  “When I got to the café at about seven, Virginie said Zazie was already almost an hour late.” Below that on the map, Aimée wrote Due home 6 P.M. “Figure Sylvaine’s father discovered her close to seven, since the ambulance arrived when I did.”

  “What about Zazie’s phone?” René loosened his tie.

  “Her uncle’s phone.” She checked the police report. “Discovered by the driver on the number sixty-seven bus a few hours ago, according to this. The number sixty-seven stops out front on rue du Louvre.”

  René nodded and drew a red line of the bus route on his map of the ninth. “So we have her going toward Pigalle. The bus stops at rue de Navarin—that’s above Place Gustave Toudouze, where we pinpointed the call. And where there is a Wallace fountain that matches her picture.”

  She pulled out her bus map. “Rue de Navarin’s more than midway to Pigalle,” she said. “Zazie could have gone a block down to Place Gustave Toudouze, where the call came from and where she’d taken this picture, or two blocks in the other direction, to Sylvaine’s on rue de Rochechouart.”

  “Her photo of men in this square is all we’ve got right now. Think, Aimée.”

  She sat up. “That’s right. Zazie said she’d borrow her friend’s camera again. What if her friend lived there? We have to talk to Virginie.”

  “Hasn’t Virginie already called all Zazie’s friends, talked to the parents? No one saw Zazie.” René had checked in with a distraught Virginie in the café while Aimée sat in the Commissariat.

  “What if Virginie overlooked someone? Look at this call log from the police report. Here’s the number that called Zazie at one thirty.”

  “If Zazie kept secrets from you, she’d keep them from her mother, non?”

  She tried the number. Out of service.

  Her shoulders knotted. Teenager or not, the Zazie Aimée knew would have called home by now. Aimée could only imagine the worst. But to keep the horrific thoughts at bay she had to keep moving.

  “Any other ideas, René?”

  RUE DU LOUVRE’S streetlamps blurred pale vanilla over the glistening black pavement. The freshness in the air after the thunderstorms eased the headache building in her temple. But it did nothing to ease her mind.

  In the café she and René sat across from Virginie. Pierre stood behind the counter serving late-night customers with his cell phone to his ear.

  “See, Aimée?” Virginie said. “I listed everyone. René faxed the list to the flics. They’ll follow up in the morning.”

  Virginie kept rubbing a towel over the spotted marble-topped table, her eyelids red-rimmed and her gaze distracted.

  “That didn’t stop me from calling every single parent myself, mais non.”

  Aimée looked at the checkmarks Virginie had made next to all the names but two. “What about those two girls?”

  “Didn’t answer but I left their parents messages.”

  “That’s good, Virginie.”

  But who wasn’t on the list? Who did Zazie hide from Virginie?

  “Can you think of a friend with this cell number who lives near Place Gustave Toudouze?”

  Virginie stared, then shook her head.

  “What about your husband?”

  While Virginie showed Pierre, Aimée checked her own phone. No message from Morbier. Uneasy, she rang his number. Disconnected. She didn’t know what to make of it. She had to put Morbier out of her mind. Concentrate on Zazie. “Morbier’s phone’s disconnected, René.”

  “Haven’t you’ve got another connection in Vice?” René said. “You know people, n’est-ce pas?”

  She racked her brains. A lot of them had retired. But apart from Morbier, she knew someone who would know someone. Suzanne, Melac’s team member, formerly in Vice. Transferred to his elite unit that was so hush-hush he couldn’t tell her what he did.

  Virginie sat down, gripping her dishrag. “Pierre’s on the phone with the flics again. He can’t file a missing persons report until tomorrow.”

  Aimée reached out and held Virginie’s damp fingers. “But they put out an alert for her as a potential witness, Virginie,” she said.

  “Thanks to you, I know that.” She squeezed Aimée’s hand.

  “When did you last see Zazie?”

  “She made herself a coppa tartine, then stood at the bus stop outside. I watched her until the bus came—like usual …” Virginie’s lip quivered. “Say two P.M.”

  “Bon, she’d come to my office just before and mentioned her friend who had a camera. Any idea who that could be on your list?”

  “Camera?”

  “High-end with a fancy telescopic lens?” René said.

  “I’m trying to think. Besides her school report, that research she had to do for it, all she talked about was Mélanie.”

  “Was she still in contact with her old friends from l’école maternelle?” said René.

  “I wrote down everyone I could think of.”

  “But she was friends with Mélanie and Sylvaine, who were both attacked,” said Aimée. Coincidence? “If Zazie didn’t take violin lessons … did she know them from some club at school?”

  Virginie gave a quick nod. “Tout à fait. The girls worked together on a quartier-wide science-fair project in spring. Became friends. But look at my list, Aimée,
I spoke to all the parents except those two.”

  Aimée thought back. Tried another angle.

  “Didn’t Pierre ground Zazie about a month ago after she stayed out late with a friend?”

  “That girl’s out of the picture,” Pierre said, joining them. “That actress’s daughter. Screwed-up family.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Screwed up as in a father in prison, mother’s a druggie actress with a younger live-in lover,” said Pierre. “A younger lover with a title, according to Le Parisien the other day.”

  René shot her a look.

  “But I called them already. The housekeeper hadn’t seen Zazie.”

  René nudged her under the marble-topped table.

  “Have her address, Pierre?” asked Aimée.

  “Somewhere on rue Chaptal. I wrote it down, think it’s in the back.”

  She had to pee. Again. “While you look, Pierre, I’ll hit the WC.”

  She’d forgotten about the old, cracked Turkish squat toilet. Each day it got harder to bend down. She pulled the chain and stepped back before the water gushed over her peep-toes. Research … Zazie’s words about research kept coming back to her.

  “Found it, Pierre?”

  But he’d gone out front to serve a customer. Aimée scanned the kitchen counter, sink at one end and cluttered paperwork space on the other. Virginie tabulated their accounts and Zazie did homework here. There was Zazie’s report, labeled “Madame Toullier: Resistance Agent in Corrèze.”

  Why hadn’t she taken that report to Sylvaine’s? Feeling naïve, Aimée realized Zazie had had no intention of studying. How could she have been so stupid?

  Aimée riffled through the papers for more. She found a postcard for Le Bus Palladium. She and Martine had clubbed there in the ’80s.

  A worn, leather-bound book, Resistance and Espionage in 1942. Colored Post-its on different chapters highlighting dead letter boxes, invisible ink, surveillance techniques, evasion, chalk markings.

  For her class project?

  Aimée shook the book and a paper came out. Written in Zazie’s hand she saw:

  Go to plan B

  Zazie had some plan and a backup for when it failed. But what it could be Aimée had no clue.

  “May I borrow this tonight?” she asked Virginie. She’d picked up Zazie’s report, the book.

  Virginie nodded.

  RENÉ HAD THE Citroën idling in front of Leduc Detective. Thunder rumbled. She ran to the passenger door and climbed in before the rain started.

  “Pierre gave me that bad girl’s address on rue Chaptal,” he said. His wipers slashed the fat raindrops pelting the windshield. “But first I’m taking you home. Got to think of the baby, Aimée.”

  “As if I don’t?” she said. But she had little energy to argue. Her time would be better spent going over Zazie’s report and rereading her notes. “You’re okay, René?” Although he never let on that he was suffering, she knew dampness and rising air pressure aggravated his hip dysplasia, common in dwarves his size.

  “I can handle this. Tomorrow we’ll see how creative Saj got on the taxes.”

  She rubbed her stomach and felt an answering flutter. “It moved, René.”

  René’s face broke into a smile. “Voilà, the Bump has spoken. It wants to go home.”

  She sat back. Thought. “While you’re at rue Chaptal, show this photo of Zazie to the bouncer at the disco Le Bus Palladium.”

  “What?”

  “Ask about the …” She racked her brain. “What’s it called, something like la nuit du teenybopper.”

  “Zazie’s underage, Aimée. They wouldn’t let her in.”

  “Then why did she have this Bus Palladium postcard for a boy-band concert?” She waved the postcard. “They had those groups when Martine and I were at the lycée. The club switches over to adult and open bar after ten P.M.”

  René shook his head. “Don’t be scattershot. Keep your focus.”

  Plan B. She had to figure out what Zazie meant. But with the passing hours the danger she was in increased.

  “Every avenue needs exploring. I’ve got homework of my own,” she said. “Maybe it’s nothing, René. But it’s on your way. Matter of fact, the disco’s around the corner from rue Chaptal.”

  TEN MINUTES LATER the rain stopped, and Aimée walked Miles Davis, her bichon frise, along the dimly lit quai. Miles Davis was sporting his new Burberry rain apparel. Algae odors rose from the gurgling Seine and mingled with the smell of wet leaves. She stood lost in thought as Miles Davis did his business under the dripping lime tree. But she needed to walk to think, and Miles Davis needed exercise. Her steps took her around the corner of Ile Saint-Louis to the church she’d been christened in. Her christening outfit sat boxed in an armoire—but she couldn’t think that far ahead.

  Several members of the evening choral practice group clustered at the wooden door to the Saint-Louis-en-l’Ile church. Candles sputtered, and she heard the chant of a novena. She picked up Miles Davis and slid into the last pew. The smoking incense, the red glass lanterns and the drone of prayers took her somewhere else.

  Her mind cleared. She said a little prayer for Zazie. Patted her stomach. Dipped her fingers in the holy water font, touched them to Miles Davis’s paw and slipped out.

  Now to decipher what she’d found in the café kitchen.

  SWATHED IN A cotton duvet and propped up by feather pillows, her one indulgence until tax time, she spent ten minutes reading the musty, yellowed chapters of the Resistance book Zazie had marked.

  Code names, dead letter boxes and dry narrative. Techniques for secret communication. For surveillance.

  Then Zazie’s note fell out again—Go to Plan B.

  Had her surveillance of the so-called rapist stemmed from this school project? Was there some hint here of how she had trailed her suspect?

  Why the hell hadn’t Zazie told her everything?

  The church bell on Ile Saint-Louis rang midnight, muted and dulled by the Seine gurgling outside her open window. She hated calling people so late, but there was no other choice. She reached for her cell phone.

  “HOW SERIOUS, AIMÉE?” Suzanne said. “Look, I just walked in the door and paid my babysitter. We’re short with Melac gone. But of course you’ve heard, non?”

  She’d left Melac’s messages unanswered, not ready to deal with his decision to stay in Brittany. She understood deep down, and she knew if she told him about the baby, his life would change. He didn’t need that right now with his daughter in a coma.

  “Child endangerment. A twelve-year-old rape victim murdered. Serious enough for you, Suzanne?”

  “Zut! Let me take off my wet shoes … ahh, better. Okay, give me a quick rundown.”

  Aimée did.

  “The Brigade des Mineurs’s priority’s the rapist,” said Aimée. “Zazie’s peripheral.”

  “Standard procedure, Aimée,” she said. “Doesn’t mean they’re not working that angle, too.” A sigh came over the line. “The team’s fifteen people, specialists all trained in psychology, family dynamics. And trained first as police, for God’s sake. They know the field. Deal with the perverts on a daily basis.”

  “No doubt, Suzanne, but they’re playing catch-up. Don’t ask me how but I saw the reports.”

  “Good, because I’m tired,” she said. “And it’s too late for me to arrest you tonight.”

  “Who do you know who works Vice in the ninth?”

  A pause. In the background she heard a child’s voice. “Maman, I’m thirsty.”

  “It’s late, désolée,” Aimée said. “But look, you’ve got kids. Help me out here. Zazie’s mother’s frantic. I promised her I’d pursue anything I could. And please don’t tell me Zazie’s a teenager and that’s what they do.”

  A little laugh.

  “Right now I’d love her to walk in the door and to hear everyone tell me ‘I told you so,’ but vraiment, Suzanne, if Zazie hasn’t returned by now, in my gut I know it’s because she can’t.�
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  “Hold on, Aimée,” she said. “Let me see what I can find. Vice assignments changed. Let me check on a mec I know.”

  A moment later Aimée heard water splashing, little footsteps. “Ma puce, back to bed, story in a minute.”

  Was that how her life would turn out? A crying baby in the night, a toddler and playdates in the park, then down the road a headstrong teenager?

  She envisioned a hazy future—her trying to run a business orchestrated around this little Bump. Would there be enough Dior concealer in Paris to blot out the dark shadows under her eyes?

  She heard Suzanne come back on the line.

  “How do you do it all, Suzanne? Work, kids, keep a relationship?”

  “Do it all?” Suzanne snorted. “Why would anyone do it all unless they had to? Being a parent today comes with built-in worries: vaccinations, the right school, doing enough or not enough, giving up your career or your time with your child … I’m so sick of my friends debating this guilt in the sandbox all the time.”

  Aimée thought of the mothers chatting over pastel macaroons in the Jardin du Luxembourg—it looked idyllic until it erupted in sand-throwing.

  “You just do it, because that’s how things work. It’s what we’ve always done,” Suzanne was saying. “Think about it—our mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers raised families while helping on the farm or in the shop, non? They did what they could with one, two or ten children, and everyone survived. Mostly.” She paused. “Think about your mother. You turned out all right, right?”

  Because she had her father and grandfather.

  “Does this mean you and Melac might …?” Suzanne hesitated.

  “Look, it’s late. I’ll let you go. But did you find that name in Vice?” she said quickly, afraid she’d blurt everything out—Melac’s departure, her fears, how she’d avoided returning his calls, how uncharted this all felt. No one to guide her. If only her mother …

  Crazy to want help from a woman who left her when she was eight years old.

  “Tell Beto I know you, that’s important,” Suzanne said, and gave Aimée his number. “Call him suspicious, but it’s kept him alive. Counterterrorism background. He owes me.”