'Pointers?' She snorted. 'I thought I got lucky last night. Turns out I couldn't have been more wrong.'
She chewed her Nicorette gum furiously. 'Why don't you badger our overdue Lyon account? Explain it to that nice director, face to face. It would be hard to throw you out of the office,' she said.
'Are you trying to get rid of me?' Rene said.
She threw his Citroen keys at him. 'Go on. You love to drive. Just don't kill yourself. And while you're there, get an advance out of him.'
He grinned. On his way out, he looked back over his shoulder. 'Where's your protection?'
She patted the pistol bulging in her silk pants pocket. 'Here.'
BY 3:00 P.M., Aimee had obtained permission from Abraham Stein and the other tenants, a clearance from the MCCHB (Marais Citizens' Council of Historic Buildings), a writ of permission from the 4th Arrondissement Supplemental Housing Federation, and the required demolition permit to expose the wooden staircase. Having a search warrant from Morbier certainly had expedited the process. He was grumbling because he couldn't smoke. Luminol was highly flammable.
'Where the hell is that crowbar, Leduc?' he said.
But she couldn't hear. Inside the tent in the darkened courtyard of the Steins' apartment on rue des Rosiers, Aimee and Serge, the middle-aged, bearded criminologist, were busy. Wearing fluorescent Day-Glo jumpsuits to avoid the chemical's being absorbed into their skin, they sprayed Luminol on the old oak boards exposed in the courtyard by the sink. Luminol showed blood and its traces on any porous surface. Despite whatever had been painted or scrubbed over it, traces of blood would remain.
'An unsolved homicide fifty years ago and you think you'll find the murderer's footprints?' Serge's voice was muffled through his mask. 'Seven years is the outside edge, maximum has been shown at eleven years. Why do you think it'll show traces?'
'If it's worked on a seven-year-old stain, why couldn't it work on a fifty-year-old one as well?' she said. 'No one has ever proved it wouldn't.'
Her arguments for using Luminol had been predicated on that assumption. But now she wondered if it would work. And what if it didn't?
She went outside the tent to look for Morbier and came face to face with a camera crew. Immediately, the bright lights glared on her.
Reporters shouted, 'Are you with the Brigade Criminelle? What do you hope to uncover?'
Her jumpsuit was already causing her to sweat as if she was in a sauna. The lights made it worse.
'Official crime recovery scene. Press is not allowed,' she said. She whistled to a blue-uniformed
She hadn't counted on this Luminol test to go public. Wouldn't the killer become suspicious if there was a connection between the two murders?
Back inside the tent, she put on another pair of booties to avoid contamination, and began taping everything with a lowlight-sensor camera. Serge sprayed Luminol on the cobblestones in the courtyard and on the old concrete around the sink to see if anything would show. He continued spraying as he backed away from the old boards in the light well and slowly retreated up the stairs. He saturated the original wood steps, all the way along the wooden planks that stretched to the Steins' door.
He yelled down at Aimee, 'Get Morbier. If it's gonna work, and I said IF, there should be a light show in three minutes.'
Aimee knew the wood should show blood traces in cracks or fissures and hoped that the concrete and stones over it had protected and preserved any remaining evidence. Well, they would find out. After five years, the blood couldn't be typed, but that didn't matter to her. That wasn't what she was looking for.
Morbier entered the tent, letting in a wide slice of light.
'Hurry up,' Serge shouted, pausing at the Steins' door. He couldn't move until the Luminol took.
If it did.
'Secure the panel from the outside,' Morbier shouted as he fumbled blindly with his Day-Glo booties.
Inside the tent it was pitch dark.
'Jesus, Leduc, this had better work. My ass is in a harness here. We've blocked off half the street, relocated these tenants courtesy of the Parisian taxpayers, who are as tight as ticks, there's some idiot from the 4th arrondissement who thinks we're making a science-fiction movie and tells the press. On top of all that, Agronski, some sharp-eyed inspector from Brigade Criminelle, came because he told me he 'just loves Luminol.''
'Keep going, Morbier, I'm getting everything you say on tape even if I can't see you,' Aimee told him.
He was fuming now. 'Leduc, I told you. . .Aaah!'
Aimee shone the portable LumaLite as she and Serge chorused, 'Fireworks!'
The Luminol glowed, displaying a fluorescent scene of fifty-year-old carnage.
'Oh my God,' she said into the camera, which was catching every streak and splatter of blood. Javel had been right. Blood was everywhere. Arcs sprayed up the light well and a jagged stream snaked to the drain and disappeared. Luminol lasted less than a minute but she captured it all on video.
'It's unbelievable!' Serge inched his way down the stairs beside the trail of bloody footprints. 'Blood preserved under concrete and stone for fifty years. I'll get into police bulletins all over the world!' he said.
'Let's spray the staircase again,' she said grimly.
She prepared her ruler and laid it quickly next to a pair of footprints that fluorescently appeared. The prints led up the stairs and measured nine centimeters. Something else of a muted color was mixed in with the blood.
'Tissue or organ probably; this area has been remarkably protected,' Serge said.
She looked up at Lili's dirty windowpane above them. Aimee figured it had been quick, brutal, and more messy than even the Luminol showed. Her fast take, from the angle of the arc of the blood spray, indicated an attack from above the victim. Footprints walked out of the light well. They resembled a solid shoe, like boots with splayed heels, worn on one edge as if the wearer was slightly pigeon-toed. The ball of the foot was more pronounced and they stopped at the troughlike concrete sink. Smudged bloodstains were on the chipped concrete. It was creepy to think that she'd walked over this. No one had lived in the concierge's rooms for years; now she realized why they'd been abandoned.
Morbier stood next to Aimee.
'Two tracks.' She pointed the camera at a path of footprints. 'A small person and a slightly larger one.' She peered down at the sink, examining it with her magnifying glass. 'The smaller ones must be Lili's but whose are the other ones?'
They stopped.
Another set of footprints led out from the light well to the sink and stopped.
Smeared blood and a fine spray of droplets in the sink had been absorbed by the porous stones and concrete. She peered at the cracked porcelain knobs on the faucet.
'Little bit here, when he turned the water on. He even had time to wash his shoes before going into the street,' she said. 'Or were they boots?'
She felt like she was right next to the murderer. Agonizingly close, but so far away. Fifty years too far. What could she prove?
HOURS LATER, when the criminologist had finished his job and Inspector Agronski was so suitably impressed that he invited Morbier to supper, Aimee still couldn't leave.
She kept retracing the area where the footsteps had appeared next to the smaller ones, trying to figure out what the murderer had been thinking. Then she carefully mounted the stairs.
She tried imagining herself as the scared sixteen-year-old Lili Stein. A young Jewish girl, her family gone,
