“Detective Dupond, do you think it’s absolutely necessary to have an active police presence on a college campus?”
“Viktor Watt, he heads our History Department,” Burke rumbled from his chair.
“Yes, professor, we think it might help,” Cassies said, fielding the question. “We understand your point, but look at it this way. People see things all the time. Your students are out and about more so than the average citizen. They’re also reluctant to deal with police for one reason or another. By being here and being familiar, they may be more willing to come and talk to us about something they’ve seen or heard. We also think having us around may deter any further attacks.”
Watt didn’t seem impressed. “It could also have the opposite effect. The students might feel like they’re under some kind of suspicion.”
“Hold on, Viktor,” another woman spoke up. She was younger than the rest of them, wearing black glasses and a white shirt with cutoff sleeves, her hair pulled back in a ponytail.
“Susan Glass, Sociology,” Burke said.
“I think we all agree this is a terrible situation. If we can do anything to help, then we should do it. Can we get some assurances that this isn’t going to turn into a wholesale interrogation of our student body?”
“I can assure you, Professor Glass, I don’t have enough manpower to do that and wouldn’t if I did. Your students will have to come to us?”
“What makes you think they will?” Watt asked.
Cassie fielded that one. “Because someone is killing their friends, Professor Watt.”
Caught up in working the case, and the growing intensity of her relationship with Dupond, Cassie had forgotten about Wesling. After the meeting at the school, Dupond dropped her off. She kissed him goodbye at the doo
r. He took it good-naturedly, despite his obvious interest in coming in. The folder was on the table. She made a sandwich and a glass of milk, taking the folder into the living room to read. There were 10 pages and an 8x10 black and white shot of a portly man dressed in a white open collar shirt and dark slacks. He was sitting at a table smoking a cigarette, a glass of wine in front of him. The photographer must have caught him in mid-sentence, speaking to someone across the table. Cassie studied the face before reading the stack of papers.
Anton Lorie was 46 years old, a Frenchman by birth. His parents were diplomats, raising him in a series of Middle Eastern countries where he maintained extensive contacts. He had to. Lorie had become an arms dealer on a small scale in his youth, funneling weapons into Libya and Jordan where they were traded across the region. Nobody cared at the time. There were a dozen like him operating in the shadows. Lorie lived mostly in Paris, taking occasional trips to visit customers.
Had he the sense to stay in his sphere, Lorie would have been left alone. He didn’t. He began to seek out bigger and better deals. In the last two years, he began selling directly to the Palestinians, mostly rifles and ammunition. The contracts grew bigger and Lorie was happy to fill them. The authorities knew, and watched without alarm until they began to get reports that Lorie was trying to buy larger weapons, RPG’s and explosives powerful enough to outfit small units and be used in the creation of suicide bombers. The Israeli’s hated suicide bombers even more than they hated the average Palestinian. It would have been an easy job for Mossad to step in and take care of the situation but there was one hitch.
Lorie came from a wealthy family. His sister met and married an American diplomat, a low level diplomat to be sure, but because of the money and the family connections he may not remain low level for his entire career. It was a delicate situation and the Israeli’s went their friends in the American organization that handled this type of thing and, out of cou
rtesy, asked that they please dispose of the problem. No sense getting your hands dirty in another family’s business or offending your most powerful partner. Again, out of courtesy, the Americans agreed. The job fell to Wesling, who saw it as a perfect opportunity for Cassie. It was a simple job, no elaborate planning was needed. Some preparation, locate the target, eliminate, and return. It happens all the time.
The meeting with Dupond, the decision to put police detectives directly in his building, shook Watt to the core. For the first time he realized just how vulnerable he was. He returned to his apartment, barely able to drive. A straight shot of vodka was next. He took the bottle, straight from the freezer, into the living room. There was an easy chair in front of the television. This was where he would watch the news and gloat over his success. He could see the breakfast table where he pored over newspapers with glee.
He looked around. The apartment was in an upper class building, each unit equipped with a boathouse beneath. He kept a twenty-foot sailboat in immaculate condition. It was where he prepared Clay for what he thought of as her showing. The floors of the apartment were polished wood, the kitchen as well as the living room looked out over the lake. He enjoyed good things, had spent an entire summer when he moved here choosing fine furniture. His inheritance, not his career, allowed him the luxury. Good paintings hung on the wall, the throw rugs were quality Persian.
Now it was all in jeopardy. How could he have been so stupid? He had led them right to the school. At the time, it just seemed right, all the places he’d chosen,
the victims he consumed. All brought to him by fate. Or so he thought. It had not been fate. It was his own weakness leading him on.
Adapt
, he thought.
Learn. Respond
. He resolved to stop. Given enough time, the furor would recede. Obviously, they had no concrete evidence or they would have been knocking on his door already. They were close but not that close. He could wait, maybe take a leave of absence, travel. Go back to Europe. He had the money.
Or. He could stay. Face the challenge. Stop the killings of course, if only for a while. A small pause in the action. Regroup. Staying had the added benefit of being able to keep an eye on what was happening with the investigation. The police would be in his building. He could be accommodating, stop in, make friends. He was a charming man when he wanted to be. The more he thought about it the more attrac
tive the idea became. He could play a chess game against professional hunters. He liked it, loathed himself for panicking. The vodka went back into the freezer. He put on a fresh blazer and treated himself to dinner at a good seafood restaurant down the road.
“It’s time, Cassie,” Wesling said. “We can’t put it off any longer.”
Cassie was in Wesling’s office, arguing. The trip overseas was always hanging in the back of her mind during the whole investigation. She knew it was inevitable but thought it could wait. Wesling wanted it now.
“Why?” Cassie asked. “You said we had time. I’m right in the middle of this thing and I want to see it through. I can’t just waltz away.”
“Lorie is getting close to moving something big. The Israeli’s don’t want it to happen. He has to go. We agreed to do it. That’s all there is to it. Look.” Wesling leaned on her desk, tapped the surface. “You go to Paris. We know he’s there, we’ve been keeping an eye on him. We’ll have someone there. Everything is set up. All you have to do is get close and pull the trigger. You don’t even have to get that close.”
“When can I come back?”
Wesling shrugged. “Right after the job if you want. Or spend a few days in Paris. It doesn’t matter. What matters is you do this right. This is your first assignment. Remember what you’ve been taught. The killing is easy. You just pull the trigger. The setup and the leaving are where most of the failures are. Now, take a day to get your things together. You fly out day after tomorrow.”
If there was a choice left to her, Cassie couldn’t see it. She left Wesling’s office, returning to her apartment. Dupond showed up a few hours later for dinner.
“Day after tomorrow?” he said when she told him the news. They were sitting at Cassie’s kitchen table, a meat loaf on the table between them. Not one of her better meals but all she found when she got home. “That’s pretty sudden.”
“I’ll be back in about a week. I can’t help it, I have to go.” Cassie said.
“To do what?”
“To do my job. You know how it is, I can’t talk about it.”
“Is this how it’s going to be? You run out without warning because of your job?”
“I’ve given you as much warning as I got. Don’t make this any harder than it has to be. I don’t like it either.”
Dupond put down his fork. Picked it back up again. Pushed food around on his plate. “Is that all it is? Work? You’re not running away from this whole thing?”
“Running away? From what?”
“Well, from this whole thing. The case? Maybe me?”
She got up, went to his side of the table, sat on his lap, held his face in her hands, forced him to look at her. “No. Definitely not. Is that what you think? Come here.” She hugged him. “I’m coming back in a week. Maybe ten days at the most.”
“I was thinking that maybe you were getting a little freaked out about us. I don’t want to push you, but…”
“But what?”
Dupond made her get up, and went to the sink. Refilled his glass of water. He held it in his hands, leaning on the counter. “I just…I guess I’m a little freaked out myself. You know, I’m not what you’d call inexperienced. It’s not like I haven’t dated a fair amount of women. But that was just…fun. This is different. I never expected this. Let me ask you something.”
“What?” Cassie said.
“You told me about the whole thing with your old boyfriend. You haven’t dated in what, three years? What am I? Am I the guy you grab when you jump back into the dating pool? I don’t want to be that guy.”
Cassie stood up, met him at the counter. She put her arms around his waist, laying her head on his shoulder. “I’ll tell you something if you promise not to tell anyone else.”
“And what’s that?” Dupond asked.
Cassie looked up. “If you leave the Rigolets Marina and go two miles along the western shore, there’s a cutback. The water is shallow, and in the fall, when the tide is right, you can catch your limit of redfish right there. Every time. My father took me there for years. Now eat your meatloaf.”
It was raining in Paris
when Cassie landed, a steady dripping pour that seemed equally likely to end in minutes or continue for days. She rode in the back of a cab through wet streets, alternating between flat pavement and old cobblestone. Two hotels were at her disposal, the first an old style French hotel/restaurant, Le Cantal, catering to business travelers and tourists looking to save a buck, people who wanted an inexpensive place to stay while in tow. The rooms were clean, the restaurant quaint with good food at a reasonable cost. There were two Metro stations within a block of the place. She keyed the door, dumped her bags, opening the window on a wide street with a spacious tree lined median. It was Paris but could have been New Orleans. It had the same old world feel, which didn’t surprise her. Her hometown was simply imported France, shaped and changed by the New World and American sentiment but clinging to its past.
Ten minutes later she left the hotel carrying a small suitcase, crossed Boulevard De Charrone, traveling a block to Nation Metro stat
ion where she purchased a pass good for a week and caught the A line to Chatelet, headed North. At Strasbourg, the #9 headed east and she crowded into the car at the last minute, exiting at Richelieu-Drout, two blocks from the Ambassador hotel where the clientele was more upscale and the neighborhood noticeably more Metropolitan. Unlike the Hotel Le Cantal, the Ambassador had the feel of being stamped out of a mold and dropped into Paris. It could have been anywhere in the world. Once inside, a visitor couldn’t tell France from Seattle.
Her room was pre-arranged and waiting. She bypassed the front desk, taking the elevator to the 3
rd
floor, knocked on the door. She could hear a television droning on, knocked again. The young man who opened it had all the look of a student spending his summer abroad. Longish hair curled down to his shoulders. The knee of his jeans had a small hole and his T-shirt, from the Rush 2112 tour, looked like it had been through the wash, but not recently.
“Sorry,” he said. He moved to turn down the TV. “I’m working on my French by watching old movies.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a key with a tag. “Here’s the room key. You’re paid up for the next ten days, but not for room service. I’d advise paying cash for that. Your package is over there.” He pointed to a shoe-box sized parcel on the desk, wrapped in gold paper and tied with a blue ribbon across all four sides, a bow on top.
“If you need anything else, call this number,” he said, handing her a slip of paper. “Memorize it, don’t carry that with you. But I’d rather you didn’t call.” With that, he picked up a backpack from under the desk and left. The door clicked closed behind him and Cassie put the chain on. Not that it would do much good. Cassie pulled out her map of Paris. She had already committed the important parts to memory, but it wouldn’t hurt to look it over again.
Dupond spent most of the day Cassie left moping around the University while his officers set up shop. He split his detectives between the Student center and the History building, giving each of them a uniformed officer to work with. It was a cake job and they all knew it. Everyone was in a good mood, especially the uniform.