“You said you’re into environmental issues,
Sharp as ever. All this time he’d been leading her where he wanted her to go and she’d thought he’d lost it.
“Right now, Morbier, I’m into a boring and highly lucrative system administration contract with a network just aching for a rehaul.” And minding a baby who spit up, pooped, and cried at the most inopportune times. But she kept that to herself. “My contractor’s always sticking out his hand for money.”
“How many tight spots have I pried you from, eh?”
His influence, albeit exerted with reluctance, had helped her more than once. And his tone had changed. Deepened.
“What are you saying Morbier?”
Morbier leaned back, tenting his fingers. “Get involved with saving the ecology of the planet. Sniff around 38 Quai d’Orleans.”
“But that’s . . .
“Two blocks away, the MondeFocus office,” he interrupted. “In your backyard.”
She had planned on questioning the organizers at MondeFocus. Yet if she gave in without a fight, Morbier would be suspicious.
She wanted to trust him, to confide in him. But he withheld things from her, doling out information sparingly. And he had kept his distance since her father’s death.
“Don’t you have undercover cops for that?”
“Not like you.”
“Meaning?”
“You can worm your way in and find a connection we’d never think of. I’ve seen you do it before.”
Was Morbier complimenting her?
“Should I take that as a compliment?”
“I’d consider it to be repayment for some favors, Leduc.”
Her thoughts flashed to the man with the tire iron in the park close to Pont de Sully, the footsteps following her.
A wolf. Maybe he was right.
AIMEE PAID FOR lunch, said good-bye to Morbier on the corner, and with misgivings walked through the pelting rain. The carved wooden door of Saint-Louis-en-l’Ile stood open, and she took shelter in the church.
The dark vestibule was hung with heavy velvet curtains to keep out drafts. They opened to the rear nave and marble holy water font. Flickering shadows and an aroma of wax came from the votive candles. The ribbed struts of the vaulted ceiling had witnessed Jean Racine’s baptism and the time Henri Landru, the
She nodded to the restorer in overalls who was testing the organ pipes, hitting D notes that reverberated in the air, then faded away.
She dipped her fingertips in the ice-cold water, crossed herself, and murmured a prayer for her mother, as she had ever since she was eight years old, when her grandfather brought her here every Sunday. But years of earnest Sunday devotions and her little confessions apologizing for whatever she’d done wrong hadn’t brought her mother back.
Aimee had watched the Dassaults in the pew ahead of them—the father in his Sunday suit; Madame Dassault’s arms filled with an infant; Jeanette and Lise, her classmates, nudging each other and pretending to sing. After mass, Monsieur Dassault and her grandfather would stop at the
Aimee would hear the Dassaults through an open window. Once Lise had knocked, inviting her and her grandfather for birthday cake. Entering their apartment had been like visiting another world. Beaming, Madame Dassault had hugged her infant and helped Lise fill a bag with party favors, and welcomed Aimee. Monsieur Dassault had set up the domino table, and for a time she had felt as if she were part of this family, a real family. Not an outsider.
But afterward, from the open windows, she’d heard the harsh tone of Madame Dassault’s voice escalating to screams, then slaps and crying. At school the next day, Lise had bruises on her arms and swollen cheeks. She’d never been the same laughing tease.
Even seemingly perfect families had secrets.
A deep chord issued from the organ, startling her and bringing her back to the cold air, the stiffness in her knees, and the knowledge that she couldn’t take care of this baby.
She had to reject her wish to become the mother she’d wanted to have. Life didn’t work like that.
She stood, brushed off her knees, and wended her way past the pews toward the confessional, a dark, vaulted wooden closet reeking of holy water and damp. Inside, she pulled out her cell phone and punched in Serge’s number at the lab. He’d have the autopsy results by now.
“Serge?”
“Sorry, we’re backed up, Aimee.” She heard water running. “I’ve never figured out why warm weather brings out the psychos and suicides.”
The whine of a saw erupted in the background. She cringed. A bone-cutting saw.
“What did you discover about Orla Thiers?”
“So you know her name,” he said. “The bruise joined a laceration behind her hairline.”
“But you said the bruise could have come from hitting her head as she fell . . . wait a minute. You’re saying there was a blow to the head before submersion?”
“A skull fracture as evidenced by the pooling of blood over her brain. That indicates a blow to the head prior to death.”
A door shut. Footsteps echoed. There was a clinking sound, then a long pause.
“This machine coffee tastes like river water,” Serge said, disgusted. “The canteen sandwich is a slab of dry Gruyere between pieces of stale baguette.”
She figured Serge had changed the subject because someone had come in.
“Who eats four star every day, Serge?” She heard him chewing. “Can’t you talk somewhere else?”
Echoing footsteps. The sound of a door slamming shut.
“It’s quieter here in the hallway,” he said. “Have to grab lunch while I can.”
How he could eat while performing a postmortem was beyond her. Her stomach turned. Yet in her brief year in premed she remembered students keeping their yogurt in the refrigerators with body parts.
“That’s the conclusion. A deep laceration and a fracture of the skull beneath a bruise, caused by a heavy instrument.”
She thought of the figure in Place Bayre with his tire iron.
“Lots of interest in this victim. What do you know about her?”
More to the point, what had he found out? “You’re the pathologist, Serge, you first.”
“Two cavities, a healed femur fracture, and stunning good health for a dead person. I’m just curious since the
The Direction du Renseignement Militaire? Did that explain Morbier’s interest? She shoved that aside for later. Her fingers tensed on the worn satinlike wood of the confessional railing. She had to know.
“Had Orla given birth recently?”
Serge cleared his throat, and paused, as though reading from a report. “No evidence of cervical enlargement, distortion, or a C-section.”
Medicalese for no, she recalled that much. Relief and surprise filled her. Still, she had to be sure.
“Had she ever been pregnant?”
“Never. According to traces in her bloodstream she took the pill,” Serge said.
