AL07 - Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis

“Not here,” Krzysztof said, landing in a puddle beside her.

“What do you mean? It should be easy, once the cover’s off.”

“A flic car’s parked right on top of the manhole!”

She shivered as a burst of frigid water gushed over her feet.

“I don’t want to drown . . . I have to get out . . . it’s too close down here.” Krzysztof’s breath came in short gasps.

“We’ll find another exit,” she said and thought hard. Hundreds of kilometers of sewers, quarry tunnels, and abandoned Metro tracks existed but they were honeycombed with water mains, and other substructures. Without a map or guide one could stumble into a warren of passages and be lost for days.

Yet the sewers followed the layout of the streets above: wide boulevards had wide tunnels and the narrow ones and the side streets were duplicated underground. All they had to do was follow the well-marked blue signs mirroring the streets above, then find another exit.

“I figure we’re under . . .” The flashlight illuminated RUE SAINT LOUIS EN L’ISLE written in white paint on the stone. “See, we’re close; we’re just a few blocks from my place.” She took Krzysztof’s arm. “We’ll get out there. It’s just five minutes away.”

“She’s right,” Jules said. But the flics were right overhead and the only way out was a sewer full of water and rodents. Two red eyes glared and a rat the size of a cat squealed as it struck her boot. She jumped as a rush of water hit her knees. “The freshwater valves opened,” Jules said. “It will rise another meter, so hurry.”

They slogged down the tunnel in cold knee-high water laced with chlorine and feces. The flashlight’s yellow beams played across the rising water and the rivulets running down the walls. In a stone niche sat a statue of a saint, chipped and furred with moss. The saint of the sewers? With rats this big, they needed all the help they could muster.

Panicked, Krzysztof grabbed onto a set of metal rungs and started climbing.

“Come on, just one more street,” Aimee coaxed him.

He clung, unsure, his feet slipping.

“We’re almost there.” She reached for his hand and helped him down. “I promise.”

They wound to the left and she prayed they’d find the sluice gate below her building. The ground juddered overhead. A car or truck had passed by.

“Quai d’Anjou,” she said, pointing to the blue-and-white sign. “See.”

She found openings—a few were bricked over; others were covered by ancient, decayed wooden doors, bearing almost invisible coats of arms. She counted them and tried the tenth, a medieval stone arch enclosed by iron grillwork. But bits of debris and plastic bags were caught in the grillwork and there was no way to open the doors. Next to it was a waist-high chute. “Here. Give me a boost. It’s dry—feel the grit? Sandstone.”

If she’d counted right, this was the aperture she’d explored as a child, and it led to her building’s subterranean cave—the storage area in the basement.

“A marquis’s daughter hid here during the Reign of Terror while the authorities searched the house for her,” she told Krzysztof. That was building lore, anyway.

She found a wad of francs and handed it to Jules.

“I’m going in, Krzysztof. You can stay here if you like; it’s up to you.”

Cobwebs caught in her hair and webbed her eyelashes as she crawled up the chute. She blinked and wiped them away. Grit got under her fingernails. But the flowing air was warmer and dry. She heard Krzysztof crawling behind her. And then Aimee was facing a pile of copper pipe and stacked plastic tubing.

She straightened up, stretched her legs, and climbed over the pipes. She shone the flashlight around and hit a light switch on the wall. A single hanging bulb sent harsh light over the cavern, which was lined with gated compartments piled with the stored possessions of the building’s inhabitants. Her own bin lay open, a pit dug in its sandstone floor from which wires and pipes protruded.

“Nowhere’s safe.” Krzysztof’s face paled under the stark light.

“My apartment’s upstairs,” she said. “And when we get there, you can tell me where Nelie’s hiding.”

“I don’t know. No one knows.”

“You’re going to have to try harder. Make some calls, track her through your MondeFocus connections.”

He shook his head. Agitated, he picked at the cable-knit sweater he wore. “Fat chance. They think I’m spying for the right!”

She grabbed his arm and led him upward. She needed to think. And to find warm wool socks.

ON HER BLACK-AND-WHITE marble landing, she saw cardboard boxes piled up and an old-leather tooled chest leaning against her door. Cave #8 was written on it. A present from the concierge, no doubt. Just what she needed: to sort through her grandfather’s forgotten auction finds and then make room in the closets in her apartment for them.

She unlocked the door.

“Ca va, Miles?” His wet nose sniffed her boots. She bent and he licked her hand, then growled at Krzysztof.

Together she and Krzysztof slid the boxes inside the foyer. The chest’s leather bindings were crumbling, leaving a trail of brown powder on the floor. She needed to shower to get the sewer smell off her, and then to put on clean clothes. She pulled off the cracked boots, hung up the tuxedo jacket to dry, and motioned Krzysztof toward the kitchen. “I’ll join you in a minute,” she said and, barefoot, padded to her bedroom. First, she had to call Mathilde and check on Stella, then shower.

“Allo, Mathilde?”

“Oui?”

She heard irritation in Mathilde’s voice and Stella’s whimpers.

Aimee clutched the cell phone tighter. Mathilde was young, probably inexperienced. She shouldn’t have just taken Martine’s word that the girl was capable. So many complications could occur with newborns, according to the manual. She imagined Stella’s face flushed with fever, eyes rolling up in her head, her limbs twitching, all the signs of a febrile convulsion.

“Does Stella have a fever?”

“Relax, Aimee,” Mathilde said. “She woke up fussy. Now she’s refusing the bottle but I’m coaxing her to drink, little by little.”

Aimee took a slow breath and tried to remember what she’d read in the baby manual; terms like gastric distress and viral infection swirled in her head.

“Last night, too, Mathilde, she woke up every hour. I rocked her back to sleep.”

Mathilde yawned. “That’s what I’m doing. Are you coming back soon? I have an early morning class.”

“Please, Mathilde,” Aimee said. “It won’t be much longer. I’ll make it worth your while.”

“I hate to charge you for staying overnight but I’ll have to.”

“No problem,” Aimee said. “Of course, I’m giving you taxi fare and something extra for your trouble.”

“Oui . . . shhh. See you when you get here,” Mathilde said and hung up.

Aimee jumped in the shower, then toweled dry and checked her cell-phone messages. One was from Rene saying he and Saj were working at the office. The other, from Claude, said that he’d found more video footage, that she should see it, and that he had a bottle of Chinon waiting. She thought of the Chinon and Claude’s warm arms, but before she could go to him she needed to know what light Krzysztof could shed on MondeFocus connections and the video.

She pulled on black jeans and the nearest T-shirt. No time for makeup. She slipped on socks to warm her numb feet and black patent leather-heeled boots.

In the kitchen, she spooned the butcher’s scraps into Miles Davis’s chipped Limoges bowl, which stood on the brown mosaic–tiled floor. The kitchen, in the throes of remodeling, stood with one wall open, revealing pipes and ancient lath and plaster. Disaster lurked every time the contractor went to work.

She found Krzysztof standing at the closed kitchen window. Below, searchlights shone and Zodiac boat motors beat the water. Divers, their masks catching in the light, bobbed in the Seine.

“They’re looking for you,” Krzysztof said.

She stilled her shaking hands.

“For someone,” she said. “You took my bag; they don’t know my identity.”