law enforcement world didn’t exist.
“Dr. Leaud, this detail puzzles me,” she said, sticking the glass tray in front of Serge, sliding the specimen from his microscope and ignoring his look of surprise. “These lines. Those striations. Visible more closely under magnification, I suppose.”
One of the RG men cleared his throat. Another tapped his blunt fingers on the windowsill.
She emptied the Baggie onto a fresh petri dish, slipped it under the microscope. “Quick and dirty, doctor, then I’ll leave you to these gentlemen.”
“No need for magnification to see the beveling,” Serge said. “It’s obvious. But to see the powder residue, it’s useful.”
She smiled at the biggest man. “Forgive me, but Dr. Leaud’s extensive background in forensic pathology saves so much time.”
Serge Leaud put his eye to the lens, whether to keep from laughing or to hide his trepidation, she wasn’t sure.
“Interesting,” he said slowly. “Give me a brief description of the recovery scene.”
She did, mentioning the suicide and caliber of the gun.
“Nice fragment of occipital bone,” he said a minute later.
A part of the skull, she remembered that much from her year of premed at the Ecole des Medicines.
“Those lines are part of the lambdoidal suture,” Serge Leaud said.
“Lambdoidal suture?”
“The union between the bones of the cranium, on the side of the skull,” he said. “What’s this?” He pointed to the other items.
“A wallpaper sample I obtained,” she said. “From a wall a meter and a half away from the victim.”
Serge Leaud turned a knob and adjusted the microscope light. He studied a portion of the sample. “There’s the blood mist from the blast. Distinctive spatter and darker stain. Heavier particles follow.”
He looked up at her. “Did you say this was a suicide with a .25 that perforated the skull?”
Aimee nodded.
“You’re telling me a .25-caliber perforated the skull and sent tissue spattering against the wall?”
Aimee shrugged, watching his eyebrows knit.
“Sounds like a contradiction, eh, Dr. Leaud?” the red-haired RG man said. His feet beat a rhythm on the linoleum floor. “More like a .357 or a .44.”
Mentally, she agreed.
“Internal beveling?”
She noticed the RG men had stopped looking bored. Interest flickered in their eyes.
“As the bullet enters the skull it causes a wider fracture on the inside, beveling it,” Leaud said. “There’s a very clear demonstration right here. You can see it with the naked eye.” He pointed to a curved line. “But that’s not all.”
More from that small bone fragment?
“Look at those traces of soot—gunpowder residue deposited on bone,” he said, “right there. That helps with the range of firing. Of course, I can’t say exactly without further tests but it was close range.”
“How close?”
“Within centimeters, I would say.”
Like Jutta Hald.
“Anything you can be sure of?”
“If a .25 did this, then it will snow tiny white chocolate nonpareils on Noel,” Serge Leaud said, pouring the bits back into the Baggie for her. “My twins would like that.”
Aimee could hear the RG men laughing as she hung up the lab coat. Serge’s quick and dirty analysis confirmed her suspicions. She beckoned to him on her way out. He excused himself and met her in the tiled hallway.
“You know, Aimee, I’ll have to write this up,” he said in a low voice. “It’s procedure with suspicious findings. I’ll need more details.”
Good, she wanted Serge to make a report, to spur the police to investigate Figeac’s death.
“Serge, request the autopsy findings on Jutta Hald, a woman murdered at Tour Jean-Sans-Peur. You should see a match with the bone beveling and gunpowder soot. If the same gun didn’t do it, I’ll make it snow nonpareils in your twins’ room. That’s a promise.”
Outside the morgue, couples strolled along the quai, outlined against the fading dusk. Aimee stared at a
From Place Mazas, she took Pont Morland past the swaying
Muggy heat still hugged the narrow streets. Not a breath of air stirred. All the way to her apartment, a bridge away on the Ile St. Louis, her uneasiness mounted.
She tried to telephone Etienne Mabry, without success, so she took Miles Davis for a walk, grabbing a baguette and pate before the shops closed. After sharing the pate with the puppy, she cracked open her tall windows, rested her feet on the top of the balcony grillwork, the Seine visible through her toes, and got to work on her laptop. Miles Davis curled up next to her.
Once online, her fingers flew over the keyboard. Within minutes, she found Haader-Rofmein, the seventies terrorists’ site. A Web page with photos of young people circled around a hookah. Her cousin Sebastian had a hippie coat like that from Istanbul, she remembered. Probably still in his closet.
Aimee leaned over, and clicked to the next Web page.
She saw long-haired men and women clutching Mausers and Russian bazookas. They stood by a cinder-block building. Distant targets showed in what appeared to be desert bleakness. Some wore El Fateh headgear and army fatigues. None looked much over twenty.
Aimee combed her nails through her hair. Some of the members had died in shoot-outs. The leaders, the rock-star types, had hung themselves in prison but, according to the site, controversy still surrounded the supposed suicides since there was only the warden’s word for it.
She saw the name J. Hald on the once-active list in a sidebar. What had her role been, besides the young and dumb part?
She hacked into a German court records site. According to what she could understand from the West German trial transcripts, Jutta had been charged with multiple counts: arson, armed robbery, stolen vehicles. A heavy-duty powder puff!
Reading further, she saw Jutta’s indictment in France was for complicity in a bank heist and murder. For that, she’d gotten twenty years.
Aimee stood up, stretched, and picked up Miles Davis.
But still no answer as to why Jutta had said her mother owed her!
MONDAY
AIMEE WOKE UP KNOWING she had to contact Etienne Mabry and find Christian Figeac’s girlfriend, Idrissa.
