wouldn’t.
“
Pause.
“Prelim without pathology?” he said. “No analysis of nail scrapings, stomach contents? That’s all I’ve got.”
“That will do for now.” She let out a sigh. “Or read the results and I’ll type in the prelim. Add the path later.”
“Call back. Give me ten minutes,” he said.
And search for the nonexistent request?
She recognized the low thumping of hydraulic-pump pressure hoses washing down the autopsy tables, the dissecting tools, the tiled floor. Once, during her brief year in premed, her class spent a morning at the morgue. That’s when she’d met Serge.
“Prevost’s on my back screaming priority,” she said. “I’d like to mention how helpful you’re being. What’s your name?”
“Carton, but …” Pause. “
She prayed he’d find it. And before Prevost got wind of this. She shivered in her wet boots under the glass awning.
Carton cleared his throat. “Considering the snow, the temperature, the conditions, we put time of death at one to two hours before discovery.”
So he put time of death between seven and eight P.M.
“Does that take into account the plastic wrapping? Wouldn’t that keep in the body temperature?”
“Plastic?” Carton said. “I’m working from a cadaver, you understand. And given that this death occurred outside in the snow, the body would cool faster than the usual degree and a half, two degrees per hour. Let’s see, it says leg flesh was gnawed. There’s a note that says ‘rat meat.’ ”
She cringed.
“Cause of death asphyxiation,” he continued. “Apart from the ligature marks on his wrists, no abrasions or contusions were present.”
Unease flickered through her. She hadn’t seen the ligature marks. All she remembered were the eyes. “So you’re saying …?”
“I’m saying nothing,” Carton said. “The burns take longer.”
She grabbed her scooter’s handlebars. “Burns?”
“Traces on his right index and middle finger. Not fresh, hard to tell,” he said. “The tissue after microscopic examination will indicate the age of the injuries, the healing time. We never commit until the pathology report. Even then this looks cut-and-dry.”
Cut-and-dry? Samour was wrapped in plastic.
“Take it up with Serge. You got the prelim results. What you wanted,
Not what she wanted at all.
RENE SMOOTHED MEIZI’S black hair on the pillow. Her soft breaths of sleep ruffled the duvet. He could watch her for hours.
She shivered in her sleep, a cry catching in her throat. A bad dream? He stroked her flushed cheek until her shoulders relaxed and she turned over.
At peace.
He straightened the duvet, tucked it under her chin. To keep her warm. Safe.
He wrote her a note.
Rene dressed and checked the window. The usual early-evening hum—buses, pedestrians, the lingerie shops open late. He surveyed the street, for a watcher at the corner, for Tso or one of his men.
Only shoppers,
Satisfied Meizi was safe, he leaned down, inhaled her warm, sleepy scent. Kissed her. She stirred slightly, a smile on her face.
Rene hung a Do Not Disturb sign from the hotel room door handle, put ten francs on the room service tray with their dirty dishes, and padded down the hall.
SOMETHING NIGGLED AT Aimee. She still hadn’t pinned it down by the time she turned her key in Leduc Detective’s door. Her stomach growled. The couscous felt like a long time ago.
Rene sat sipping an espresso at his desk, his expression distant. Saj shot her a knowing look. Winked.
“Let’s cut to the chase,” Rene said. “I want to get back to Meizi.”
“So you two talked …?” She let her words trail off.
A little smile appeared on his face. “You could say that.”
She pulled out the book she’d taken from Samour’s office and thumbed to the chapter he’d bookmarked. Medieval glassmaking guilds. She set it down and lifted a fresh demitasse of espresso from their machine.
“Meizi’s safe for now.” Rene’s brow furrowed. “But we’re not immigration. Aimee, unless you know a higher- up and can pull strings, I don’t know how to protect her.”
The only string she could pull was Morbier’s. The wrong one. And he didn’t answer the phone.
With Meizi safe in the hotel, she had some time to figure out what to do. Fleshing out the plan to keep Tso at bay would have to wait. Right now she needed to concentrate on Samour.
“There are complications, Rene.” She plopped a sugar cube in her cup, stirred, and took a sip. “Samour worked for the DST, died a patriot.”
“So now he’s a patriot?” Rene sputtered, spilling espresso on his tie.
“So they say.” She sat on the edge of her desk and outlined what she knew: Mademoiselle Samoukashian’s discovery of Pascal’s safety deposit box, his letter, his repeated messages to Coulade, something about a 14th- century file, Pascal’s ransacked apartment, her arrangement of digitizing holdings at the Conservatoire’s
“Both Samour’s great-aunt and the DST are clients now?” Rene said.
She handed him Mademoiselle Samoukashian’s check. “The DST’s concerned with Samour’s project, whatever it was. His great-aunt wants his murderer brought to justice.” Aimee paused in thought. “And the murderer wanted to silence Samour.”
“Didn’t the DST tell you what he worked on?” Rene asked. “Give you a lead?”
“Typical need-to-know basis,” she said. “Sacault, the fixer, played it safe.”
“How would you have known what to look for, if we didn’t have what Samour’s great-aunt showed you?”
Aimee shook her head. “Welcome to the gray world. You learn as you go and the rules change all the time. For once, we’re ahead of the DST, unless they know all this already. But I doubt it.” She pulled out her camera. “Check out the diagrams on Pascal’s courtyard walls. Anything strike you?”
“Context is everything,” Rene said, flicking through the digital photos.
“Ideas on how to decipher this?”
“A few.” He inserted a cable from his computer to the camera. “I’ll scan the photos. Enhance them.” He rubbed his hands together, almost in glee. “Only requires me to write a program to customize my search.” He savored a challenge.
She handed Saj the disc she’d copied from Coulade’s computer. “Pascal might have sent Coulade information, hidden in another file on Coulade’s desktop. See what you can find.”
Saj nodded.
