“I agree,” Capestan admitted reluctantly. “There’s no rigor in these files, and no persistence either.”
“Going from that to suggesting he’s committed the murders seems a bit hasty to me,” Lebreton said.
Capestan stared at the commandant. He wasn’t wrong; she even hoped he might be right. That said, Buron’s behavior since the formation of this squad had been intriguing. Something about it didn’t flow. His usual serenity seemed to be stymied. The commissaire couldn’t hold off sharing this any longer:
“There’s something else about Buron. I don’t think he created our squad on a whim.”
“How do you mean?” Lebreton said, his attention piqued.
Capestan gave a brief outline of the situation: Merlot’s discovery of the spat between Buron and Riverni, her own misgivings, and the details of her conversations with the police chief. Two seconds of shocked silence followed her declaration. Pilou sat up, on high alert.
“And you’re only telling us this now?!” Rosière spluttered.
“Yes, I didn’t consider it worth discussing before,” the commissaire answered firmly. “We only would have come up with a load of wild theories about his intentions. I wanted to let it play out on its own.”
Lebreton turned to the flickering flames to absorb the information, while Rosière grumbled, still poking at her strip of wallpaper.
“Whatever, it couldn’t be clearer, these cases reek of crooked cops,” she concluded. “And if that’s true, then Buron is the killer and he’s hoping we’ll serve up a nice little scapegoat so he can sit back and enjoy his retirement.”
“If he’s guilty, the last thing he’d want is for these files to resurface,” Lebreton objected. “The cases were wrapped up happily and waiting to lapse—it was ideal.”
“If that’s right, then why does he just throw them our way rather than giving us a proper heads-up? He twiddles his thumbs at HQ, he doesn’t give Anne any info when she goes to see him . . . He throws us some blocks and some rings and tells us to play ring throw. Does that sound like an innocent man to you?”
Rosière came and sat back down, pulling a rolled-up tissue from her sleeve and rubbing her nose irritably. The commissaire was deep in thought. Yet again, she was finding it impossible to tease out a theory about the chief—his fondness for manipulation meant that no theory was off-limits.
The smell of wood smoke was now masking the onions, bringing with it a different kind of comfort. Capestan felt the tough cotton of the sofa’s armrest softening under her hand. This investigation required a delicate approach, come what may.
The commissaire took a deep breath before airing her thoughts:
“The fact is, one way or another, Buron is involved. He knows something we don’t, and he doesn’t want to share it with us. We can’t question him, but we can put him under twenty-four-hour surveillance and see where he leads us.”
Buron, in his slightly tight-fitting black Lanvin suit, presented his ticket to the usher without forgetting to give her a smile. The young woman guided him to the third row of the boxes and pointed to the fourth seat in. As always, Buron’s features contorted in a brief grimace as he contemplated how narrow the gap was. Damn these Italian-style theaters, he thought to himself. The hum of the audience in the Salle Richelieu began to swell, and heady gusts of perfume wafted across the walkways. The divisionnaire was already reveling in the spectacle. Don Giovanni in French—absolutely unmissable. The customary three claps sounded as he wedged himself into the red-velvet seat. He was feeling marvelously at ease that evening, safe in the knowledge that Capestan would do what was necessary.
38
The neon lights were buzzing in the hospital’s lackluster corridor, and the air was thick with the unmistakable smell of bleach. Capestan’s shoes squeaked on the blue-black marble-effect linoleum as she followed the numbers on the patient room doors. One of them was ajar, revealing a bed-bound patient in a crumpled hospital gown wriggling up toward her dinner tray. Capestan knocked when she reached number 413.
Wearing a pair of yellow flannel pajamas with brown bears on them, Torrez was sitting up in bed, propped against a white pillow. He had a bandage double-wrapped around his head and a splint was preventing his shoulder and elbow from moving. His right hand was attached to a drip via a plastic cannula, and the bag was filled with a thick, transparent liquid. He was gripping the remote in his right hand even though the TV was off. His face lit up when he saw Capestan. The commissaire had brought along a portable stereo and a CD of French classics, which she placed on his bedside table.
“How are we this evening?” she said, adopting the tone of a nurse about to empty a bedpan.
“We’re fine, we’re happy. We’d quite like to pee.”
“Oh! Do you want me to call someone?” Capestan asked.
“No, I’m only joking.”
Torrez smiled broadly, causing his bandages to crinkle. Capestan wasn’t sure she had seen that expression on his face before. He winced as he sat up a bit higher. The monitor next to his bed emitted some beeps that sounded like a game of Breakout on an old Atari Arcade. Capestan didn’t know how to express her thoughts, so she kept things simple for lack of a better option:
“Thank you. If it weren’t for you I would have been a goner.”
“Don’t you realize?” Torrez said, seeming genuinely happy. “You’re not dead. I took the hit.”
She felt terrible, but Torrez was in high spirits:
“The spell’s over. It’s been reversed, even. I didn’t just avoid cursing you, I actually kept you alive, too.”
“I was certain nothing would happen to me. I don’t believe in bad luck. I’m all about good luck.”
A shadow fell over the lieutenant’s swollen face:
“You think it’ll only work on you?” he said.
“No! No, not at all,” Capestan said, backpedaling furiously.
