Murder Below Montparnasse (9 page)

Serge moved the scalpels and knives to the next cutting board. “A little difficult to argue, given the tire tracks on his fractured arm.”

“But the lack of blood bothered me,” she said. “And his expression—blank, even as he hit the windshield. Seemed so strange.” She made herself look down again at the scraped, tattooed torso. “Sounds stupid, since my closest experience to seeing someone get run over by a car was a rabbit René ran over near Charles de Gaulle once.”

“A rabbit?” He lifted his arm. “Never mind, I don’t want to know.”

The whole scenario from last night smelled, and she needed to air it out. “Can’t you give me the autopsy results now, Serge? I need ammo to shove in the
flics’
faces to clear Saj.”

“Clear him?”

Why did he pretend not to understand? His pager buzzed. After a quick glance he shook his head. “I’ve got to make a call. Let me get back to you later.”

“Saj could sit in
garde à vue
under suspicion for involuntary homicide while.…” She took a deep breath. A nauseating sickish-sweet filled her nostrils. Bad move.

“What if I throw in overnight babysitting,
chez moi?
You know, twelve uninterrupted hours of freedom for you and your wife.” He wouldn’t be able to turn that down. But she didn’t own a TV. Somehow she’d figure out how to entertain the twins. Or take them to Martine’s.

Serge set the autopsy report down near the bucket containing the liver. “Make it quick. You were pre-med—figure it out yourself. And I never did this,
compris?
”

After the door closed, she picked up the clipboard and concentrated on trying to decipher the autopsy-ese:

She looked up as Serge entered.

“
Zut alors
, we ran over a dead man?”

Serge gave a small nod.

What the hell had happened? What had they gotten into? Between this news and the nauseating smells, her knees went weak. She grabbed at the table. Felt the corpse’s leather-cold flesh, gasped and let go.

Serge cleaned his glasses with the edge of his lab coat. “The medic reports the victim was still warm upon resuscitation attempts, no rigor mortis or lividity until later. His heart could have stopped anywhere from five minutes to an hour before.”

He turned the corpse over.

Aimée stared down at those half-lidded eyes. They looked exactly as they had when pressed against the windshield in front of her. Dead. “That accounts for his expression. No look of pain. No blood from the cuts on his face.”

Serge pointed his ballpoint pen at the pale bruise on the Serb’s shoulder. “I’d say he bounced off the windshield here. After he landed, his arm was run over, as the fracture indicates.”

“But if Feliks the Serb was already dead, how could he fall in front of the car?”

“Good question. The whole thing bothers me. Let’s look at the prelim crime scene photos.” Serge rustled through a folder. “This one shows the angle. Do you recall any parked cars, a tree, a motorcycle—anything he could have fallen off of?”

“It happened so fast, although it felt like slow motion at the time.” She studied the photos. The position of René’s Citroën. “A white van pulled ahead of us.…” Her index finger stabbed at the photo. “Here. If the Serb was standing between this parked truck and this motorcycle.…” She paused to think for a moment. “He could have caught his sleeve on the truck’s side mirror. For reasons unknown, his heart stopped. Then the car’s vibrations on the cobbles caused him.…”

“To fall.” Serge nodded. “His accumulated weight could have torn his jacket pocket, and he landed as you drove by.”

Serge pointed to the photo of the body on the cobbles. The ripped jean jacket pocket.

“Brilliant. No one dies twice. At least not as far as I know.” Aimée grinned. “This puts Saj in the clear.”

Serge didn’t share her excitement. He tapped his pen. “Still doesn’t give me his cause of death.” His other gloved finger probed the Serb’s jawline. “He presents no wounds apart from the crushing attributed to the injuries sustained after death from René’s Citroën,” Serge said. “No bullet holes, knife marks, or concussion or injury to the brain.” He checked the autopsy clipboard. Turned some pages. “His organs, brain came out normal. No distinguishable cause of death.”

Not her problem.

“Aimée, I’ve never issued an inconclusive autopsy report in my career.”

“Perfectionist” was Serge’s other middle name, after Pierre. He was thorough, a recognized expert in the medical pathology field.

“
C’est bizarre
. But before I throw my hands up, I’ll do a microscopic examination of the organs for what could have caused sudden death. Inflammation in the heart, maybe, like myocarditis, or inflammation in the brain. Never obvious.”

“What if he was using a new designer crack or injectable synthetic cocaine cocktail?” She shivered, and not only from the chill of the cadaver room. “They wouldn’t show on the standard tests you performed. You should run one of those advanced tox screen panels for other drugs, too. Have you examined his tattoos for puncture holes? He’s got enough of them.”

“Speaking of crack, our department head’s cracking down on our pathology budget,” Serge said. “We’re allocated funds for only standard blood screens and tests.”

“Didn’t you misplace that memorandum, Serge?” Aimée winked. “Or it got lost in the shuffle when you were at the medical conference in, where was it, Prague,
non?
”

His dark eyes lit up. “You want me to bend rules, like you?”

“Live dangerously, Serge. You’ve only got one life. Add spice.”

“So you’re adding spice with Serb gangsters? You need to watch out, Aimée.”

Her hands trembled. She put them in her pocket. She was tired of hearing this. “Has his brother ID’d him?”

Serge took off his glasses again. Rubbed the other lens with the edge of his lab coat. “No family has claimed him so far.”

Odd.

“How did the
flics
ID him?” Aimée asked. “Driver’s license,
carte d’identité?
”

Serge paused, put on his glasses and consulted another chart. Flipped the pages. “You never saw this either, Aimée.”

A smudged copy of a receipt from a kebob takeout on rue d’Alésia for Feliks. He must have ordered ahead.

“So his stomach contents corroborate this?”

“See for yourself.” Serge gestured to a bowl.

“Non, merci,”
she said. “How soon will you file the autopsy, Serge?”

“I’m not finished, Aimée. First, I need the cause of death.”

She wanted to grab him by the throat. Shake him. Didn’t he understand?

“Until you send in the prelim,” she said, keeping her voice even with effort, “Saj faces manslaughter for this
mec
. Please, Serge, you know it’s wrong to leave Saj hanging. Get the prelim paperwork to the lead investigator’s desk.”

“What’s a few hours? Saj still needs medical care.”

“Didn’t I tell you this Serb’s brother tried to talk his way into
garde à vue—
”

“Bon,”
Serge interrupted, waving his rib cutters. “You’re babysitting the twins while we take a weekend in Brittany.”

“Wait a minute, I offered overnight—”

“A weekend alone with my wife, Aimée. Take it or leave it.”

She stifled a groan. Saj better appreciate this.

S
HE CHEWED HER
lip as she opened Leduc Detective’s frosted glass door. Saj wouldn’t face manslaughter charges—a good thing. Yet, considering the snail’s pace of paperwork required for a release, she couldn’t hold her breath. She hated waiting for the catch-up.

Stacks of printouts, color-coded folders, and copies of faxed proposals lay neatly on her desk. Maxence had been busy. Nice job. “You’re starting to dazzle me,” she said.

Maxence grinned. “There’s a message on the machine.”

“From who?”

“Didn’t hear it, sorry. I got wrist-deep changing the printer toner.” Charcoal smudges ringed Maxence’s fingers. “Think you need a new printer.”

And the money to pay for it.

She hit
PLAY
.

Aimée heard a cough, clearing of the throat. What sounded
like running water. “Please pick up if you’re there. Please, Mademoiselle.” She recognized Yuri Volodya’s voice. “I should have told you the truth.”

A chill crept up her neck. She turned up the machine’s volume. Listened close.

“I lied to you last night.” She heard the catch in his throat. Fear edged his voice. “Come now.” Another pause. “Please, if you’re listening, pick up. Your mother told me things.”

Her breath caught.
Go on, Yuri, tell me what things. Tell me what my mother means in this. To you
.

“You look just like her, you know. Those same big eyes.
Alors
, we need to talk in person.”

Aimée wanted to scream.
What about my mother?

“I have to trust someone,” he continued. “A person on the outside.” Still that sound of running water. “
Zut
, it’s complicated, but I know who stole the painting. I need you to understand.”

Understand what?

She made out a faint knocking in the background. “You should know … 
Merde!
”

Go on, Yuri
, she prayed.

The message clicked off.

“He a friend of yours?” Maxence asked, looking up.

“I wouldn’t call him that.” Frustrated, she tapped her chipped mocha-lacquered nails on the
PLAY
button.

Maxence nodded in a knowing way. “Your mother referred him and now you have to help the old fart,
n’est-ce pas?
I know what it’s like.”

She sat, stunned. A slap like a wave of cold Atlantic seawater hit her. “Say that again, Maxence.”

“Don’t I know it, Aimée.” He shrugged. “My mom volunteers me all the time to help idiots who can’t even turn a laptop on. Stupid.”

Maxence didn’t know her American mother was on the
world terrorist watch list. Or that she’d gone rogue. Rogue from whom, and why, Aimée didn’t know.

Her fingers gripped the phone. She sensed in the marrow of her bones that her mother was alive. Last month she’d been convinced that figure standing on the Pont Marie was … But what did that have to do with the painting?

Aimée hit the callback button. Busy. Shivers of hot and cold rippled through her.

She heard the fear in that sad, feisty voice of Yuri’s. Serb thugs had threatened him, he’d said as much. She’d found the Serb’s jacket button, seen the blood. The Serb dead before they’d hit him. What in hell was going on and how did it involve her mother?—if it even did.

Some trap? A setup?

The phone rang.

“Leduc Detective,” she said.

“I’ve changed my mind, Mademoiselle,” Yuri Volodya’s voice came on the line. “Forget my message.”

“What? Why?” She tried to make sense of this. “
Mon Dieu
, you talked to my mother.” Silence on his end.

“You two have history together, don’t you? That squat in the seventies. Trotskyists,
non?
”

Water rushed in the background. “My damn sink’s flooding. Don’t … come. Too dangerous. Complicated. She doesn’t want you involved.”

Doesn’t want …
Her mother was here? So close?

But she was involved already.

“I’ll be right over.”

“Tell me about it!” Maxence was saying. “So if he calls again, shall I tell him you’re swamped with ‘real’ work?”

From her bottom desk drawer, she took her Beretta. Checked the clip to make sure it was loaded. Maxence’s jaw dropped.

“
Non
, tell him I’m on the way.”

B
EFORE EXITING HER
building’s foyer, she pulled on a black knit cap, shapeless windbreaker, and oversize dark glasses. She’d been warned three times this morning about Serbs; she’d exercise caution. On the rue du Louvre she scanned the parked cars for a telltale tip of a cigarette, a fogged-up window indicating a watcher. Nothing.

Tension knotted her shoulders. On the side street, rue Bailleul, she unlocked her Vespa and walked it over the uneven cobbles. For a moment, she wondered if she had overreacted. Nothing seemed out of place on the busy rue du Louvre except for a lone squawking seagull on a pigeon-spattered statue. He was far from the water. As lost as she felt.

She shifted into first gear and wove the Vespa into traffic, passing the Louvre. Fine mist hit her cheekbones. She shifted into third as she crossed the Pont Neuf. A
bateau-mouche
glided underneath, fanning silver ripples on the Seine’s surface. Swathes of indigo sky were framed by swollen rain clouds over Saint-Michel. The season of
la giboulée
, the sudden showers heralding spring.