Murder at the Lanterne Rouge

“I threw it away,” she said, her voice trembling. “Don’t you see, it’s all trouble since …” She stumbled, leaned hard into Aimee.

Something glinted ahead. “Rene’s up there,” Aimee said. “Just to the corner, you can make it.”

Then the start of an engine. A car’s headlights blinded her. The wheels crunched ice. Merde. They’d been seen.

With a burst of energy, she ran, pulling Meizi along with her.

“My ankle!” Meizi cried.

“Half a block, not far.”

Meizi let go.

“The car!” Rene shouted. “Watch out.”

Aimee heard an ouff as Meizi stumbled on the street, shoving Aimee forward. Aimee’s heel caught in the cobble cracks, and then she was flying through cold air. A thump as her head hit the lamppost. Lights spinning. And she crumpled, dazed, on the wet pavement.

The car’s engine whined.

Aimee heard Meizi’s scream. A sickening thud. Shots.

Rene was firing and running.

The car pulled away. Red brake lights evaporated in the fog.

“Non … non,” she heard Rene’s voice break. Saw the gun in his hand.

THE REST PASSED in a blur. Vaguely, she was aware of the surveillance van, the flashing blue lights from the flics’ cars, her examination in the emergency room of Hotel-Dieu, the public hospital. Sometime later, the waiting room, Meizi in the operating room, Rene’s pacing, and Prevost’s long face.

“But I wrote down the license plate number,” Rene was saying in the waiting room.

“We found the car,” Prevost said. “Stolen and abandoned at Place de la Republique.”

“But Tso’s men followed her,” Rene said, insistent. His fingers drumming the blue plastic chair.

“We apprehended them approximately fifteen minutes prior to the incident.”

“Incident?” Rene shouted. “Attempted homicide!”

Prevost cast a look at the flics by the reception desk. “We took them into custody at Theatre Dejazet’s back entrance. But I think Mademoiselle Leduc knows more about that.”

Thanks to Madame Liu.

Aimee nodded. Pain shot through her temple. She shouldn’t have done that. The doctor had diagnosed a raging headache, not even a mild concussion, and had counseled against foot races or long division.

“Did you get anything from dumping Samour’s phone?”

She hadn’t heard back from Saj on the microcassette yet.

“Different SIM card,” Prevost said. “Replaced.”

Useless now.

She wished her head didn’t ache. Wished the nurse would update them on Meizi’s surgery. “But the killer’s still out there,” she said.

“Tso’s under interrogation, Mademoiselle,” Prevost said. “He’ll talk.”

Enjoying his cake and claiming the credit too. But she didn’t care. “Don’t you understand? A Frenchman followed Meizi. Ask Madame Liu. Aren’t you investigating—?”

“Monsieur Friant, I’m sorry.” The surgeon in green scrubs appeared, taking off his surgical mask. “We did everything we could to save her. But she suffered massive internal bleeding.”

Rene blanched. Staggered. Aimee caught his arm.

She stared at Prevost. “It’s homicide now.” Prevost turned, strode past the white curtains to the flics down the green-tiled hall.

IN THE OPERATING room, Rene took a stool and climbed on it. He pulled back the sheet, revealing Meizi’s ashen pallor, the bruises, the blue tinge already formed around her lifeless mouth. Aimee trembled. So senseless.

She reached for his hand but he shook her off.

“I meant for her to have this.” He pulled the red velvet box from his pocket. Took out the ring. The pearl glinted under the harsh operating table lights. Aimee forced herself to watch Rene as he slipped it on Meizi’s stiff, dirt-covered finger.

Aimee’s gut wrenched. “I’m sorry, Rene. I should have …” Her voice cracked. All the things she could have done flashed in her mind: bolted Meizi to the bed, given her the damn phone, gained her trust.

Rene reached on his toes and kissed Meizi’s forehead.

“It’s not your fault, Aimee,” he said, his eyes wide and dry.

Aimee looked down. Meizi’s spattered blood on the green tile, the oxygen machine tubes trailing on the floor. She made a sign of the cross.

“I’ll take you home, Rene.”

“Meizi made me feel things. Things I didn’t know I’d feel again for anyone. Almost as much as …” He paused. “And I thought …”

What was that look on his face? “What, Rene?”

His voice had changed when he spoke again. “I want to say good-bye. To be alone with her.”

“But Rene …”

He raised his hand. “Do one thing for me, Aimee.”

“Anything, partner,” she said.

“Get the bastard.”

She blinked at the hardness in his voice.

“That’s a given, Rene.”

Sunday, 10:15 P.M.

ARMED WITH EXTRA-STRENGTH Doliprane, she left Hotel-Dieu and stood across from floodlit Notre Dame. No tourists, just bare-branched trees and the speckles of light from the Gothic window. Opposite lay the prefecture.

Her headache had subsided to a dull throb. She could walk for hours and still not erase the ache, the pointlessness of Meizi’s death. Or the hardness in Rene’s voice.

She needed to talk to someone. And she bet that someone sat in his office on the quai behind the prefecture.

She pulled out her cell phone.

“Morbier, turns out I’m free for dinner.”

A clearing of his throat. “Ever hear of advance notice, Leduc?”

“Knowing you, you’re at your desk with a cigarette burning and a half-drunk cup of espresso.”

She heard what sounded like the closing of a door.

A pause. “Something wrong, Leduc?”

“Why don’t I stop at Le Soleil, bring up a casse-croute?” she said. “You’re paying, right? I’ll put it on your tab.”

Pause. “Forget it.”

“Didn’t you want to talk to me, Morbier?” she said, kicking a cobblestone. “No matter if you don’t have Clodo’s file. He didn’t make it.”

“I meant forget Le Soleil.” Voices, a loudspeaker in the background. Sounded like a train station. “L’Astier. Give me twenty minutes.”

He hung up.

SHE WALKED BACK to her Ile Saint-Louis apartment knowing this only postponed the sleepless night ahead of her. Reliving the sickening thud, Meizi’s ashen face, her spattered blood on the green hospital tiles. The fact she hadn’t found Samour’s murderer and he’d struck again.