one with a loud thump.
A few heads looked up. She booted up the computer.
Several of the men shook their heads, bent over their terminals. One, his plump face mirrored in the screen, grinned.
“New?” he asked.
“Can you believe it, they assigned me to a special branch this afternoon, then switched me here tonight for a case La Proc is determined she’ll put on the docket tomorrow?”
“These things happen,” he said, sipping from a stained brown espresso cup.
Aimee’s stomach turned as she tried to ignore the smell of espresso. The papers piled on his desk were addressed NIGHT SUPERVISOR. If anyone could help, he could.
“It’s for the Antecedents Judiciares . . . but it’s happening again . . . the stupid system won’t let me log on!” She pulled out a pack of Marie Lu butter biscuits, the children’s comfort food. He looked the type. “Like one?”
“
Did he mean what she thought he meant? Systeme D, the term everyone used to wangle a way around bureaucracy: cir- cumvent forms for the notary, hedge the real estate requirements or the school registration regulations.
She perched on his metal desk, flicked some crumbs off her leather miniskirt, and crossed her black-lace- stockinged legs.
“Why don’t you show me?”
“How long is your shift?”
She wanted to scratch her scalp under the hot, itchy wig.
“Depends how long it takes.” She sighed and leaned closer.
“Like to watch the sunrise over the Seine?”
Startled, she looked away. That was Guy’s favorite pastime, one they shared together. The thought of his gray eyes and long tapered fingers passed before her. She pushed him out of her mind.
“I can’t plan that far ahead, I’ve got so much to do, Gerard,” she said, noting the name after his title. “I’m Simone.”
“Let me see if I can help.” He grinned, a nice smile despite his pockmarked round face. “What’s the first log- in problem you have?”
“The system refuses to accept my password.”
Gerard clicked
“Try this.” Within a minute he’d logged her on and navigated to the records section. “We go in like this. It confuses a lot of the newbies.”
She nodded, absorbed his instructions, and pushed the spectacles up on her forehead. He’d bypassed two of the tedious steps. And he was fast.
“Cases pending. Cases before the Tribunal,” he said. “See, cases about to be arraigned. Enter the dossier number here.”
“Like this?”
She moved next to him, her leg brushing his, and typed in Laure’s dossier number that she’d memorized from Maitre Delambre’s file.
“
“Gerard,” said a young man two rows over. “Earn your pay. Give me the authorization code on this mess!”
She now had access to Laure’s file but that wasn’t all she’d come for. She had to think fast before he left. “The files from the sixties and seventies. Still kept on paper?”
He shrugged. “Of course.”
He moved the cursor up to archives.
“The system will say special clearance needed,” he told her, glancing at her badge. “But with your clearance it’s allowed if you go in the back door.”
Nice new added feature!
“Back door?”
He reminded her of a bear: brown fuzz on his scalp, the round face, and barrel-shaped chest.
“Use my nickname here.” He typed in
Too bad she couldn’t e-mail Laure’s dossier, newly swollen, direct to Leduc Detective. She’d have to copy what she found onto the disc she’d brought with her.
Aimee scanned the police interviews and the crime-scene findings in Laure’s file. Only one had been included in the file the lawyer had shown her. Sloppy policework, or a cover-up?
She inserted her blank disc. The Manhurin .32 PP, the police weapon licensed by Walther and manufactured in France, had, she remembered, the characteristic six-groove rifling, and its accuracy was up to fifty meters. At least that’s what her father had claimed: accurate and heavy. She’d study the ballistics findings and other reports later. Right now all she need do was copy them to the disc.
After two attempts, she accessed the older personnel files. The most recent for Ludovic Jubert were dated 1969. What about the rest of his career? Where was he now? She had to work faster. Gerard, helpful as he appeared, could check and ask her some difficult questions, like why “Simone” was working on these reports.
All the later data had been pulled. The few documents in Jubert’s file were standard reports covering his police academy graduation, first assignments, and some sparse information ending in 1969. Had these been left in by mistake? The documents listed Jubert, Morbier, Georges Rousseau, and her father as a team working in Montmartre.
So he had worked with her father!
And then something caught her eye. Jubert had worked a special detail, the game-machine detail, in Montmartre. A cafe owner would buy a fixed machine for ten thousand francs and make fifty thousand francs a month from each. Like the ones she’d seen in Zette’s bar. The special investigative section policed gaming and the 147 legal casinos in France. MI—Ministry of the Interior—was stamped on the top of the pages describing the investigation.
The fluorescent light bothered her eyes, the metal surface of the desk was stained with brown coffee rings, and the buttery smell of Marie Lu biscuits made her want to heave again.
“Seems you’ve found your way around,” Gerard said over her shoulder.
She gritted her teeth and nodded. “Funny, haven’t found the rest of this man’s dossier.”
Gerard rubbed the worn elbow patch on his blue regulation police sweater. Most of the computer technicians, even though they were police, wore street clothes. Was he a wannabe action man?
“Aaah, one of those!”
“What do you mean, Gerard?”
He rolled his eyes. “Hands off.”
Jubert was protected. By whom and why?
Only a few men still worked at their computers now; the others had drifted out to the espresso machine. Smoke curled from the hall.
“Break time,” he said.
She didn’t want to leave.
Surprise painted Gerard’s plump face. “The boss?”
Stupid. Why hadn’t she put it together? She had known that Jubert was high up. She tried to recover.
“Oh
