Murder in the Bastille

Hard sunlight beamed down from the soot-laced skylight. Men hammered and saws whined in the background of the newspaper building.

“Someone in charge of investigative reporting, please,” Rene said, wishing he knew how to word it better. And wishing, too, that he’d foregone his early workout at the dojo.

“All reporting’s investigating for truth . . . so you could say, they all would do,” said the man, looking down at the clutter on his reception desk.

“How about the city desk?”

“If we had one, it wouldn’t be on this floor,” he said.

Great. Forty minutes of wading through construction workers and over cables . . . for this Rene had tramped all over this tank of a building and had ended up in Accounting?

“What about the eleventh arrondissement?”

“It’s not cheap anymore, eh, especially around the Bastille, but my former girlfriend lives there and still has a great rent.”

Frustrated, Rene threw up his short arms in supplication. “I mean articles, an expose about illegal evictions in the Bastille area, the eleventh . . . who’d edit that?”

The man’s eyebrows arched. “Check with Dossiers. Behind the Archives section, second floor. That’s if they haven’t moved.”

“Moved? Don’t you know where they are?”

“They’re installing new fiber optic lines,” he said. “My phone’s dead. I’ve tried all morning.”

By the time Rene reached the right desk, his hip ached more than it had yesterday. Was pain cumulative? He gave a small smile to the young woman with black cornrow braids, wearing blue lipstick and a tight, bright blue jacket.

“I need to speak with a reporter about an expose on evictions . . .”

“I’m sorry,” she interrupted, “those articles come from stringers. Freelancers who’ve established a relationship with us. They turn in the finished work, someone copyedits it, and it’s printed.”

“No internal control?”

“Our stringers know the rules. Of course everything’s run by the head editor.”

“May I speak with him?”

“Give me your name and number. He returns the day after tomorrow.”

Frustrated, Rene handed her his business card and went to sit on the island on boulevard du Temple. He wedged himself up on the green slatted bench, wondering what to do next as he watched the old men play petanque in the dust. A crowd of bystanders looked on in the dappled sunlight under the plane trees. Still leafy, but changing color to signal autumn’s approach.

His phone rang.

“Rene?” asked Aimee.

“No luck with Josiane’s editor, Aimee,” Rene said. “But I left a message, maybe he’ll get back to me the day after tomorrow.”

Pause.

“I tried the last number on her speed dial,” he said. “But I don’t know what it means.”

“Tell me.”

“It’s in Taverny, outside Paris,” he said. “A Dr. Alfort’s office at the Nuclear Commission. The receptionist says he’s out until Monday. But I left both our numbers.”

“Bon . . . good job. When you talk with the editor, Rene,” she said, “don’t forget to ask what else Josiane worked on. Maybe she was also writing an article about the Nuclear Commission . . . seems she was active in the Green party.”

“A real socialist-with-a-trust-fund type!”

“Or a woman with a conscience, Rene,” she said. “I found out that Vaduz died in a car crash near Republique.”

“Vaduz, the Beast of Bastille?”

“The very same.”

“When?”

“That’s what you’ve got to find out from Serge.”

“But he’s a forensic pathologist.”

“Exactement,” Aimee said. “The flics are keeping their cards close to their chests. Letting no word out. So, on the quiet, you’re going to ask Serge. And find out the cause of Josiane Dolet’s death, too. You know, what he thinks. Ask him if it differs from the serial killer’s MO.”

“Whoa . . . after my last visit to the morgue, when we came through the sewers, I decided to skip any future ones. Except maybe my last.”

“Please, Rene, I tried, but it’s too risky for him to give information over the phone.”

“How can I just walk into the morgue and get him to talk?”

“But you won’t have to,” she said. “He’s willing, I’ve already arranged it. He’s lecturing at the musee des Moulages.”

Rene drew a breath. “The Plaster Museum?”

“Part of l’hopital Saint-Louis; it’s in the Dermatology research wing,” she said. “Where are you?”

“Boulevard du Temple.

“Bon, you’re two Metro stops away.”

“I like to drive.”

“Even closer. Park by the northeast entrance,” she said, concern in her voice. “Your legs bothering you?”

“Me? Pas de tout, not at all, doing great, I need this exercise, it’s keeping me in shape,” he said rubbing his aching hip. He lifted his swollen ankle to rest on the green wood-slatted bench, wishing he could ice it. “Don’t worry about me. Take care of yourself.”

BY THE time Rene found the musee des Moulages in hopital Saint-Louis, he realized this was the third hospital he’d been in this week. And a temple of dermatology, Rene noted, renowned for the treatment of plague victims, syphilis, psoriasis, ringworm, and leprosy.

Built by Henri IV, in rose-colored brick and stone, the walled hospital resembled a medieval internment camp. Distinctive, but less beautiful than the Place des Vosges, his other seventeenth century construction, the hospital had been built to combat epidemics. And isolate the Black Death, the plague raging at the time.

And getting around in it was hard on Rene’s short legs.

The Musee des Moulages, reminiscent of a nineteenth century natural history museum, would have made Jules Verne feel at home. One hundred and sixty-two glass showcases containing plaster samples illustrating various skin diseases lined the four sides of the huge rectangular room. More lighted showcases were reached by spiral staircases leading to long balconies running the length of the room. Glass-enclosed wooden cabinets held all manner of leprous fingers, limbs, ears and even faces pocked with bumps and lesions. Faded numbers in old script were tacked above each.

Rene cringed at the life-like portrayal of these diseased body parts. The wood floors creaked and a stale smell emanated from the showcases.

A sign informed the visitor that Baretta, a shop owner in the Passage Jouffrey, who made casts of fruit to display his produce, had been discovered by a dermatology doctor who used Baretta’s skills to document skin diseases. So helpful was Baretta that the museum still displayed more than 2000 of his casts documenting every form of skin disease on every body part imaginable.

Finally, Rene located Dr. Serge Leaud, full black beard over a rosy complexion, standing on a podium before a screen, pointing at slides. An audience of a hundred or so men and women sat on folding chairs surrounded by the glass showcases. Many wore white labcoats and some, Rene figured, were medical students.

Leaud indicated a slide on the screen, showing a purplish and yellow lesion. “Here’s an excellent example of the small ulcer, less than a centimeter, another manifestation of the various infectious complications of intravenous drug usage. In this case, an ulcer has developed as a consequence of a throm-boembolic event associated with bacterial endocarditis. Of course, I’m sure you remember the cutaneous ulceration and destruction of the underlying tissue so reminiscent of the profound heart valve damage due to the antibiotic-resistant organisms we observed this morning.”