Murder in the Palais Royal (2 page)

She stepped into her heels, combed her fingers through her hair, and opened the glass door to the ICU. Her eyes adjusted to the bright lights. A steady thrum of beeping noises came from machines, and the smell of alcohol pervaded the room.

“
Excusez-moi
, may I see Monsieur Friant?”

“You’re a relative?” the nurse asked, looking up from a chart.

“I’m listed on his medical card. The hospital called me.”

The nurse pointed to a curtain on the left.

“What’s his condition?”

She heard short beeping sounds, then an alarm rang. “Cardiac arrest in 10,” shouted someone.

“The doctor will explain,” the nurse said, rushing off on crêpe-soled shoes.

Aimée took a breath and parted the white curtains of #6.

René lay there clad in a child’s hospital gown printed with red fire trucks, his head bandaged, eyes closed, a ventilation tube filling his mouth, a large dressing taped to tubes snaking from his chest.

She gasped. Helplessly, she watched the rise and fall of the ventilator machine breathing for him. The blip, blip, blip of a cardiac monitor beat in a steady rhythm. She bent down and kissed him, her lips lingering on his fevered cheek.

She uttered a mantra, “Save him, save him,” to the steady rhythm of the blip, blip, blip. She pulled up a stool near his bed, sat, and took his hand.

“Don’t die on me, René,” she said. Her lip quivered. “Don’t you dare.”

She stroked his limp hand. IV drips were connected to tubes taped to his wrist and his dressing. Dawn’s rose-orange glow peeked in a pattern through the hospital window lace curtain. She focused on the band of light streaking across the metal headboard, praying René would wake up. Praying he’d live.

She heard the patter of footsteps, the clinking of the curtain rings being pulled aside.

A surgeon in green scrubs, glasses atop his thinning brown hair, consulted René’s chart, then scanned a monitor labeled OXYGEN SATURATION.

“Is he in a coma, Doctor?”

“He’s under deep sedation, Mademoiselle. Standard practice during surgery and the intubation procedure.”

She nodded. The terms, lodged in the recess of her mind from her stint at pre-med, sounded familiar.

“His numbers look good, Mademoiselle.”

That standard phrase, used by physicians, guarded and neutral. Her hand flew to her mouth. The École des Médecins professors had advised using that term for anything from routine to terminal.

“And if his numbers drop?”

The surgeon pulled his chin, his eyes tired.

“Please, Doctor. I’m on his medical card, but no one’s told me anything.”

“I apologize. We have a full ward, as you can see.”

She steeled herself to listen. “Tell me.”

“The bullet entered the chest cavity by the nipple and bounced off a rib, puncturing the right lung,” he said. “A through-and-through, resulting in a ‘dropped lung.’ But a good clean exit wound.”

From bad to worse.

“Will he live?”

She grew aware of the aroma of coffee, as the curtains parted further. She looked up to see a man, tall, mid-thirties, wearing a brown jacket with a lived-in look from which a loose button hung. The odor of cigarette smoke clung to his clothes. He was hollow-eyed, with an up-all-night drag to his gait. He verged on attractive, she thought, given sleep and a shower. He stared at her.

The doctor beckoned to Aimée. “Mademoiselle, please step outside.”

“Not just yet, Doctor.” The man flashed his badge. “Melac, with Brigade Criminelle. I need to question your patient.”

“He’s recently come out of surgery and is still sedated.”

“It’s imperative. I only need to ask him one question.”

The surgeon studied the monitors. “Can’t this wait?”

“Give me just a minute.”

“The breathing tube stays in until he’s stable. He won’t be able to speak.”

“But he can signal, can’t he?” Melac said.

“I could lighten the sedation,” the surgeon conceded. “But I warn you, patients often panic when they find themselves in pain and with a tube down their throat. His lung collapsed, but we’ve sealed the puncture. So far, he shows no artery or nerve damage. But we don’t know.”

Aimée stared at Melac.

The surgeon gestured to a nurse, who checked the IV. “Lower the drip a milliliter per second.” He turned to Melac and Aimée. “We had difficulty locating the pediatric instruments required by his small chest size. I warn you, the moment he exhibits stress, I’ll re-up the medication.”

Aimée stood. “I’m Aimée Leduc, René’s partner. Concerning the shooting, Detective. . . .”

“Inspector Melac,” he said. “You’re a hard woman to find.”

“Did you check the waiting room?” she asked. “I’ve been there since the hospital called me. Do you think René knows who shot him?”

Melac’s face was impassive. “Last night at ten o’clock—”

“He was shot at ten?” she interrupted. “Where was he?”

“I’ll ask the questions.”

The sheets stirred. “He’s coming around, Inspector. A minute only,” the doctor said. “Monsieur Friant, you’re in the hospital. The detective wants to ask you one question. But you cannot speak: you have a breathing tube in your throat. Try to raise your left hand, if you can, to respond. Can you hear me, Monsieur?”

René’s eyelids quivered.

“René, you had me worried, partner,” Aimée said, forcing a smile and squeezing his hand.

One green eye opened, then the other. His dilated pupils were as big as centime pieces.

Melac leaned in from the other side of the bed.

“Monsieur Friant, I need your help. Witnesses allege your partner shot you. But we need your positive identification,” he said.

Open-mouthed, Aimée stared at the detective.

“Monsieur Friant, did this woman, Aimée Leduc, make an attempt on your life?”

She didn’t want to believe what she was hearing.

“Did she shoot you, Monsieur Friant?” he asked.

Aimée’s heart jumped.

A look of bewilderment and pain contorted René’s features. His left arm shot out toward Aimée.

Melac’s gaze darted from René’s face to Aimée’s with a probing look that raked her skin.

Did René actually think she’d shot him?

René scratched at the tube, trying to pull it out. Panic showed on his face. A sputter of a cough, a choking sound came from the tube.

“That’s enough.” The surgeon nodded to the nurse, who was re-adjusting the drip. “Monsieur Friant, you’re going back to sleep.”

Aimée got to her feet, grabbing her bag from the floor. “What witnesses?” Her throat caught. “Who says I shot my best friend? That’s crazy.”

“You were seen by Italian soccer fans partying in the office next door,” Melac said. “They interrupted the shooting and saw you flee the scene.”

She stiffened. “If I shoot, I don’t miss. All you know is that a woman who looked like me broke into our office. Maybe she shot René. I didn’t.” She’d found her tongue.

René’s eyes had closed. The ventilator whooshed, breathing for him.

“We discovered a Beretta and a cartridge casing in your desk drawer.”

“She used a Beretta?”

“And left it for us to find. Do you have a license for the Beretta?” Melac checked for dirt under his fingernails.

“For
my
Beretta, of course.” Somewhere. Where had she put it?

“Otherwise, that’s two counts against you.”

“Last time I checked, seventy-eight Berettas were registered in Paris. Who says it’s mine? And why would I come here if I had shot René?”

“We see it from time to time. Maybe remorse.” He shrugged. “Or a way to cover up.”

“Impossible. Last night I had someone over for dinner. Ask him. We were together until the hospital called.”

“But your partner pointed at you when I asked if you had shot him,” Melac said.

The surgeon gestured toward the hallway. “Outside. You’re disturbing the conscious patients.”

She looked at René, his bandages, the lines hooked from his wrist to the IV drip. A deep pain welled inside her.

“Patients panic coming out of deep sedation; they feel suffocated and exhibit a gag reflex,” the surgeon said. “They often try to pull the tube out, as Monsieur Friant attempted. I warned you. His gesture is inconclusive. We keep patients under and immobile to monitor closely for possible complications. And considering the low bone density and narrow chest cavity common in dwarves his size, we have to be cautious. Now, if you’ll excuse me?”

The glass door shut behind him.

A pair of handcuffs appeared in Melac’s hand. He gestured to the EXIT sign.

This wasn’t happening. “You’re arresting me?”

“Consider this a request to assist in our inquiries.” Melac consulted an old pocket watch on a chain. “If you’ll accompany me, Mademoiselle Leduc?”

How could she leave, with René in ICU?

“I’m on my second shift, and my patience is wearing thin,” Melac said.

She hesitated. “You’ll keep a guard here?”

“Hospital security’s been alerted, Mademoiselle,” Melac said. “My car’s downstairs. By the way, officers found packed suitcases in your apartment hallway and your dog with your nice concierge.” Melac motioned to the Air France folder sticking out of her bag. “Looks like you’re planning on going somewhere,
non?”

“New York. No law against that.”

Her flight left in two hours. A local detective was meeting her at JFK with a car. He’d said he had a lead to her brother.

Impossible to go now. “It looks like I’m canceling my trip.”

“I’d say so.” Melac unlocked the handcuffs and took a step toward her.

She swallowed. “That’s unnecessary.”

“Procedure, Mademoiselle.”

A
IMÉE’S HEELS TAPPED on the worn wood floor as she sat behind bars in the Brigade Criminelle’s unheated holding area. Melac had yet to question her or take her statement. Her mind burned with questions about René’s prognosis, who might have shot him, and why Melac thought she had done it. René had been confused and disoriented by medication, hooked to a machine with a painful tube breathing for him. When he reached out, had he been trying to pull her closer, to tell her something?

The handcuffs chafed her wrists. She tried rubbing her hands, sticky from the gunshot-residue tests, then grimaced at the spots made by the double-sided carbon adhesive on her silk blouse; no amount of dry cleaning would remove them. And the procedure had taken up valuable time that she would have spent finding the shooter.

Further down the wooden bench in the holding area, a man in handcuffs, wearing tight jeans, ran his tongue over his lips as he’d done for the last ten minutes. His eyes rested on her cleavage.

She stood to catch the duty officer’s attention. Young, smelling of pine cologne, his was not a face she recognized. “Can I give my statement to Melac now?”

He scanned the roster. “Melac’s off duty.”

He hadn’t told her. “
Et alors,
what’s going on? Who’s responsible for the investigation now?”

“Would you know if I told you?” he said.

This could take all morning. Her father, a former
flic,
had always moaned that transferring case files to the new shift took forever. Often investigators were called out on a new case and the backlog waited. But time was what she didn’t have.

“I want to see Commissaire Morbier,” she said.

“So do a lot of people.”

His pine cologne got to her. No doubt it had been on special at the local Monoprix.

“I’ve known him all my life.”

The
flic
eyed her silk blouse, pencil skirt and leopard print heels, and the mascara smudged around her eyes.

“And you’d like a café crème and
Le Figaro
to read while you wait.” There was a grin on his face. “A brioche to go with that, perhaps?”

“Please, let him know his goddaughter’s here,” she said, ignoring his sarcasm. She hoped to God that Morbier was working today. “Try Commissaire Morbier’s cell phone for me, please: 06 88 32 49.”

“You’re making that up,” he said.

“Only one way to find out. I’d do it, but. . . .” She jangled her handcuffs. “You took my purse.”

“And if I do?”

She could see the wheels turning in his head.

“My eternal thanks and I’ll put in a good word for you,” she said, summoning a smile, “mentioning your efficiency.”

He dialed the number on the black rotary phone. She was unable to overhear the conversation. Then he looked at her, surprised. “Wonders never cease,” he said. “Follow that officer.”

* * *

D
ETERMINED TO IGNORE the fatigue weighing down her shoulders, Aimée accompanied a female officer, who knocked on the third floor
Groupe R
office.

“Entrez.
”

Morbier stood hanging a white silk scarf on the coat rack. Instead of his usual worn corduroy jacket and mismatched socks, he wore a tuxedo, formal evening shirt, dangling bow tie, and cufflinks. And spit-shined black-tasseled loafers.

Aimée’s jaw dropped.

But Morbier’s drooping basset-hound eyes, dark hair—now more salt than pepper—the cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, were the same.

He caught her expression. “Just call me a dancing fool.”

“Who is she, Morbier?”

“I was at a colleague’s retirement party, Leduc.” Morbier tapped ash from his cigarette in the full ashtray on his desk.

“Tough night, Leduc?”

“You could say that. Tougher for René. He was shot.”

Morbier’s hand paused in midair. Dust motes floated in the desk lamp’s rays trained on his glasses and folders.

“Ask the officer to remove the cuffs and I’ll tell you about it.”