area piled with rebar and bricks. Snow crusted the wooden slats over the windows; suffused moonlight showed a mesh of footprints.
She heard creaking and forced herself to traverse the scaffold, to look beyond the pepper-pot chimneys and zinc rooftops laced with snow stretching like steps down the hill of Montmartre. Taking small steps, Aimee edged toward the roof edge and tripped. Her arms flew out; icy slush brushed her cheeks. Then she saw Laure’s sprawled body.
“Laure!” she cried.
A groan answered her
“Laure, can you hear me?” she said, bending down. Her fingers located a weak pulse on her friend’s neck.
She rooted in Laure’s pockets for a police radio, couldn’t find one, pulled out her cell phone, and tried to control her shaking hands to punch in 18, the emergency number for the police.
“Officer down, possibly two, 18 rue Andre Antoine, on the roof,” she said. “Send backup, an ambulance. Hurry.”
The Commissariat was nearby. Would they get here in time?
“Jacques,” Laure moaned.
Dull thuds came from somewhere on the roof.
“Help him . . . hh . . . have to . .
Aimee tried to control her panic. Think, she had to think straight.
“Laure, backup’s on the way. . . . What’s going on?”
“Jacques . . . couldn’t wait anymore, some informer. . . . He saved me . . . I . . . owe Jacques!”
If he had saved Laure’s life . . . Aimee hesitated.
“You came up here after Jacques? Where is he?”
“Over there . . . take my gun. Help him!”
The last thing she wanted to do was deal with Jacques, or his informer. Sleet gusted and the rising wind took her breath away. Aimee felt for Laure’s holster. It was empty.
Worried, she stood, took a few steps, and climbed onto the tiled rooftop, grabbing at the chimney to steady herself. She worked her way across the slick roof, the sleet blinding her. And then her legs buckled.
She landed on something bulky, inert. A body. Her gaze locked on its staring eyes. Jacques’s eyes, his eyelashes flecked with snowflakes. Terror coursed through her as sirens wailed in the distance. She brushed the snow from her face and her hands came back covered with pink-red slush. Blood.
“Jacques!”
He blinked, the whites of his eyes showing. He was trying to tell her something. She checked his neck and found a weak pulse, the carotid artery.
She pulled herself to her knees, pinched his nose shut, checked his tongue, and started blowing air into his mouth. Her hands were so cold. None of the breath-and-pause sequences elicited a response from his blue lips.
“Can you hear me, Jacques? Can you talk?”
His mouth moved. She folded her hands, began quick, sharp thrusts to his chest. As Jacques tried to speak, a thin line of blood trailed from his mouth. She thrust harder now, counting and breathing. The air was stinging cold. Faster now, because while she panted and thrust, she felt him go limp. “Don’t leave me now, Jacques!”
She didn’t know how long her frozen, numb hands worked on Jacques. Finally, she heard footsteps on the scaffolding and the clang of metal. Chalk white beams blinded her.
“Take over . . . he’s . . . respond . . .” She struggled, trying to get her breath.
She heard static from a police radio and the words “Move away from the gun!” And then she was flying into the wall, tackled, her head shoved into the snow. She couldn’t breathe. Her hands were wrenched behind her, she heard the clink and felt the cold steel of handcuffs.
She fought, jerking her head, tried to move her legs. “What are you doing?” She spit out the ice that had been forced into her mouth.
More radio static, biting wind.
Catching her breath, she shouted, “Help him for God’s sake.”
A medic leaned over Jacques. She heard the words “crackling . . . subcutaneous emphysema wound seepage.” A stark white beam of light showed the black-red bullet hole and the blood seeping from Jacques’s chest.
“Too late,” the medic said. “He’s gone.”
Her shoulders slumped.
“Backup’s here, crime-scene unit’s on the way,” a hoarse voice shouted. When it was one of their own they made it a priority response. “Move her . . . careful.”
She felt her arms lifted, hips shoved forward.
“I’ve seen it before,” the hoarse voice said. “They shoot them, then try to save . . .”
“What do you mean? Check the roof,” Aimee said, melting ice running down her face. “Someone attacked the officer on the scaffold. I heard noises and came up here and found her, then him.”
So you shot him with his own gun.”
“You’re wrong, I tried to save him!”
More footsteps and a portable halogen light illuminated Jacques’s body slumped on the slanted rooftop between the chimney pots. His coat and pants pockets had been turned inside out. Clumped red matter spread across the snow. He’d been shot at close range, Aimee observed, horrified.
In the beam of the halogen light, Aimee saw a Manhurin F1 38 .357 Magnum nonautomatic, the standard police handgun, in a plastic bag laid down on the blue tarp. Jaques’s gun or Laure’s? Snowy sleet whipped by, sending flurries across the roof.
An officer, his crew cut sprinkled with snow, rolled up Jacques’s pants. “His gun’s still strapped to his ankle. Yet this Manhurin’s police issue.”
“It must belong to the officer at the edge of the roof,” Aimee said.
“And it just flew over here?” he asked.
She realized she’d better shut up and wait to explain to the investigating magistrate.
He leaned into his matchbox-sized monitor and spoke. “Bag the hands of the officer below and check for gunshot residue.”
“You’ve got it all wrong,” Aimee burst out, despite her resolve. “Jacques came up here alone to meet someone.” She’d deduced that from what Laure had said.
“And bag this woman’s, too,” he said. “We’ll send her down.”
The wind rose again, whipping more snow into lacy flurries. Each breath stung. She wanted to wind her scarf over her mouth. The Level 3 weather warning had turned into a first-class storm. The plastic sheeting the crime- scene unit had raised whipped into shreds in the wind and blew away.
“Get another plastic sheet, quick!” a crime-scene technician shouted. “Now! Haven’t seen a storm like this since 1969!”
A few members of the crime-scene unit unpacked their equipment on the coating of ice by the skylight, making a futile attempt to deal with the area.
“The light’s changing every second!” said the photographer, pulling out his camera, his shoes crunching on the brittle snow. “Hurry up, I can’t get a good light-meter reading!”
Aimee noted the interlacing footprints. Any evidence there might have been was now compromised.
“Take her downstairs,” the officer said, an edge to his voice.
“I know my rights.”
The officer waved her away.
From the edge of the roof, Aimee saw flakes swirling in flashlight beams and snow-carpeted rooftops stretching toward distant Gare du Nord. Across the courtyard, several lit windows appeared amid the yawning dark ones. Strains of bossa nova fluttered on the wind. That party in the adjoining building was still going on.
Down in the apartment, Laure crouched as a group of men with snow-dusted shoulders huddled about her, an anguished look on her pale face as the gloved technicians pressed double-sided adhesive tape over her fingers and palms. The wind blowing from the window snatched away their conversation but she overheard “Custody . . . at the
