AL07 - Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis

She nodded.

“That flickering, twitching effect shows the degradation. Really, it’s showing part of the next image. It is impossible to isolate one movement. See what I mean?”

She did. The blurred tape showed her little. Another dead end.

He sat back, glancing at his watch. “Give me a few hours. I’ll work on the color contrast and saturation, using a processor to boost the sound. I’ll see what I can do.”

A pool of water had dripped from her feet onto the hardwood floor beneath them.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. Again, apologizing. She reached for a rag by the large porcelain sink and mopped it up.

“Any other proof that this Krzysztof sabotaged MondeFocus’s demonstration?” Aimee asked.

“I like him. It’s not my place to say anything.” He paused, hands in the pockets of his torn denims.

Was this some code of honor not to tell on fellow activists?

“Did anything strike you as odd at the vigil? Did Krzysztof seem out of sync?”

He shrugged.

She figured he’d said as much as he would.

He switched off the video camera. Then paused. “It was odd the CRS knew about the bottle bombs but the demonstrators didn’t.”

More than odd. She filed that away for later and tried another angle.

“Would any of the demonstrators know Nelie’s whereabouts?”

“Ask Brigitte.”

She was wasting his time—and hers—now. Better go.

“I’ll call you later to get a copy of the enhanced tape.”

Again, she saw that lost look. Vulnerable, at sea. A maverick bad-boy type looking for a life raft. Her.

“How about a verre?” He gestured to a bottle of Chinon, half full, and pulled out the cork. “Until your clothes dry.” He jerked his thumb toward the window. Water ran from the gutters nonstop.

Thirty minutes until her next appointment if she hurried. His sandalwood scent and dark eyes were appealing. She stepped closer. Then caught herself. She shouldn’t get involved. Couldn’t.

“Merci,” she said, accepting the ballon of rouge. She sipped it. Flowery, notes of juniper, hint of berry. Nice. Expensive. Out of her price range. Like everything else until the check from Regnault cleared.

She sat on the stool.

“You got me thinking, you know, why I do this. Film.” He sat. “Call me a red-diaper baby, my mother did. So proud of it, too. She was steward of the Lyon railway trade union.”

Aimee nodded. Lyon, capital of unions, the staunch labor movement stronghold. She knew the milieu, figured he’d grown up in a working-class socialist household.

“Madame organizer, they called Maman. I crawled around her legs in soup kitchens for the workers. It’s in my blood, I guess.”

No wonder.

“And you? What compels you to write about causes?”

Startled, she ran her finger around the rim of the glass. Not many men asked her what she thought.

“I don’t like injustice, real or abstract. My mother didn’t either.” She paused. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d talked about her mother with anyone. And never about her mother’s ideals, the causes she’d embraced. “A seventies radical. But I don’t know much. She left when I was eight. To save the world.”

He gave her a sad smile.

“That’s young. Mine left when I was sixteen. Soon after, I stowed away on a freighter bound for Liberia. I came back years later but my father had passed away by then.”

“I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. “Maybe we’re the same in some way, don’t you think?”

Both scarred and searching.

“That and a franc, twenty centimes gets you the paper,” she said, a half smile on her lips. She didn’t want to deal with this.

“You have to face it sometime,” he said, almost reading her thoughts.

As if she could and it would disappear.

She turned away.

He put his hand on her shoulder. Warm. “Voila, done it again.”

“What’s that?”

“Brought down the burden of the world onto your shoulders . . . no wonder I’m not invited to parties.” He shrugged. “My friends tell me to lighten up.”

“Right now I’ve got a story to write,” she said.

She pulled out her worn Vuitton wallet, removed two hundred francs.

“Of course, I’ll pay you for the tape and your time. You’re busy. You can leave it outside your door, and I’ll pick it up or send for it,” she said. “Will this cover your expense?”

“Forget the money,” he said. “Journalists don’t pay their sources.”

Didn’t they? If she didn’t hurry, she’d miss her next appointment.

“I do. You’re a professional.”

“On one condition,” he said, an amused look in his eye. “This goes toward more of that superb Chinon and you come by later.”

AIMEE SKIRTED PLACE VALHUBERT. His words, the wine, the warmth. She’d wanted to stay. But mixing business and men never worked.

She heard a baby’s cry and turned around to see a woman emerging from the Metro with a stroller, the plastic cover coated with rain, blue-bootied feet just visible. A shudder of guilt went through her. Stella. And those big blue eyes. She had to hurry to her appointment, then relieve Rene. An oil company seeking an injunction against an environmental protest group; Krzysztof Linski discredited as a right-wing plant and drummed out of MondeFocus; bottle bombs that the CRS knew about in advance while the demonstrators were ignorant: It didn’t make sense.

Ahead, car headlights illuminated the wet pavement. She passed the Musee National d’Histoire Naturelle, a belle epoque building Jules Verne would feel at home in—musty glass display cases of taxidermied tortoises from the Galapagos, two-headed fetuses curled in glass tubes from the year 1830. A place where she’d spent many a Saturday afternoon with her grandfather, hiding behind him to peek at the more graphic displays.

She checked her watch again and ran. A raincoated flic directed traffic and by the time she’d made it down the bank, littered with sand and salt to prevent slipping, to the Brigade Fluviale’s headquarters, she had a less than a minute to spare.

Quai Saint-Bernard, home in the summer to evening tango dancing, glimmered wet and forlorn in the lights from Pont d’Austerlitz. The slick gangplank to the Brigade Fluviale’s long, low-lying peniche swayed over the Seine’s current. She clutched the gangway rope tightly, almost losing her balance twice.

On the left loomed L’Institut du Monde Arabe. And not more than a few barge lengths across the Seine from it lay Place Bayre, at the tip of the Ile Saint-Louis, like the prow of a ship. White wavelets lapped against the stone steps and brushed the deserted bank. She thought of the tire iron, of fleeing through the park, and shivered with fear as well as cold.

She tapped on the white fiberglass door. A blue-uniformed member of the river police greeted her, a snarling white German shepherd at his side.

“Bonjour. Aimee Leduc to see the capitaine de police.”

He pulled the leashed dog back. “Arret, Nemo!” he said as he motioned her inside. The brigade headquarters reminded her of a holiday houseboat except for the computers, the white erasable boards filled with assignments, the scurrying officers, the thrum of fax machines, and the smell of the river.