Murder at la Villette, page 2
Every night after work, she traveled through this sketchy quartier. The nineteenth arrondissement, once a manufacturing hub, had boasted three sugar refineries, biscuit-making companies, the abattoir at la Villette, and everything in between. Warehouses still lined the canal, and sprinkled among that bygone commercial age were high seventies housing blocks, blights on the old skyline. Since the nineteenth century, émigrés—from the French countryside or other countries—had worked and lived here with their families. It was cheap. Still the cheapest in Paris for what you got, more space being the big attraction for families.
If she knew Melac, he’d be waiting under the arched bridge over the canal. Just beyond the Jaurès Metro entrance. Better get him off her back once and for all.
She’d assumed Melac’s incessant calling had been about Chloé, but what about that strange last message? What had he meant?
I’ve just seen a ghost.
Monday Late Evening • Quai de la Loire
A SEAGULL SKIMMED the canal surface, its wings silhouetted against the distant Rotonde de la Villette. Aimée hurried. Melac’s words bothered her more than she cared to admit. They were so unlike him.
The flash of blue light from the drawbridge over the dark canal caught her eye. She shivered, a strange feeling coming over her out of nowhere. The rumpled silken surface of the canal churned in the dim mist. Aimée pulled her leather jacket tighter against the wind and struggled to knot her wool scarf.
She wished that there were other people around, that the quai, with its scuffed barricade, didn’t feel desolate and deserted. Then she remembered the championship games were playing and everyone was glued to the télé. Only the just-blossoming chestnut trees kept her company.
Encroaching fog wrapped vague shapes resembling charcoal clumps of silhouettes. The tall aluminum barricade covered most of the walkway, except for one section, which had been pushed aside. She rang Melac. His phone trilled behind the barricade.
Instantly her concern turned to annoyance. Melac was waiting for her again. But hadn’t she decided to end his nagging for good?
“Melac?”
“Aim . . .”
It sounded like Melac calling her name. Fear leapt into her heart. Had he been attacked?
She saw no one. Heard no bus or car. She put her keys between her fingers and made a fist as she slid through the opening in the barricade, glad she didn’t have her bulky Hermès bag with her—just her Metro pass, ID, camera, keys, work phone, and cash in her pockets. She stuck her cheap personal phone in her boot and, work phone in hand, ran up the cobbled quai toward where she now heard splashing. More aluminum fences had been pushed aside. Her footsteps crunched over glass. No streetlights shone. Had someone smashed the lights?
She heard a cry and stiffened.
Good God, had there been a fight? Was Melac involved?
“Melac?”
No answer. Gurgling. Splashing.
She could make out the rushing water, the stream of the overflow from the full lock and the narrow waterway bordering the lip of the stone-paved quai.
Only a dim glow from the small screen of her work phone helped guide her. She kept flicking the buttons of this new device, trying to make it brighter, but the light dimmed after only seconds.
Impatient, she shook it. Then shook it again.
Merde. The battery was almost dead.
Her phone’s light wobbled on the cobblestones to a barely visible metal-grill footbridge flush over the lock. The grill almost touched the black water’s surface.
In the dark mist, she followed the splashing sounds, feeling her way and climbing down a few steps to the thin walkway alongside the water. Below the lock lay walls lined with moss and a sheer drop to the next empty basin.
The moon flitted between the clouds, and it was all gray, even the reflections from down the canal.
A figure, moving.
“Melac? Are you all right?”
Was that a moan? She heard a sickening crunch, like bones breaking. Oh God, was Melac getting slammed into the canal’s grill? Sucked in and pummeled by the rushing water?
She stepped on something and tripped.
She caught her balance on the railing before she lost her footing. What had she stepped on? Had she kicked it away?
She’d dropped her keys on the stone. Great.
She knelt, patting at the cobbles, hoping her fingers wouldn’t close on broken glass. Here was something—but she dropped it when . . . she saw him. There was Melac, all but his head and one arm under water, his body caught against the raised walkway. His face was shrouded in shadow. She knelt, stretched out and tried to grab Melac’s arm but couldn’t reach him.
Panicked, she reached out again and almost lost her balance.
How in God’s name had he gotten in here? This couldn’t be happening. But it was.
The rushing water echoed off the damp, mossy stone walls. Gurgling sounds, as if he were trying to speak. He was drifting away. Merde.
“Melac?”
Her heart pumped like a jackhammer.
She crawled closer, across the narrow footbridge wide enough for only one person. The rushing water was so close it splashed her. What was he doing here? Why hadn’t she come earlier? Why hadn’t she just agreed to meet him? No time for that. She had to use every bit of her reach. Somehow, she caught his wet elbow.
“Melac . . .”
No answer.
He was too slippery; she was losing her grip. She grappled for his cold hand. Pulled as hard as she could, gasping with the effort of keeping him above water.
Then she saw it—the gaping bloody gash serrating his neck. Aimée’s throat caught. Melac’s frigid, wet hand slipped from her grasp. The water sucked at him, the pull too strong.
The next thing she knew, a whack sent her staggering against the bridge rail. Reeling, she felt a crushing blow to her windpipe. Then another whack to her head and everything went black.
Monday • Close to Midnight • Quai de la Loire
RUSHING SOUNDS FILLED Aimée’s ears. Pain seared her side. A harsh light glared everywhere.
The snick of a pistol sounded by her ear. “Don’t move.”
A metallic clanking came from near her feet.
All of a sudden, her arms were pulled behind her. Handcuffs enclosed her wrists, the metal biting into her skin.
White flashes and sparks danced and swirled in her vision. Everything blurred.
With the throbbing ache in her head, all she could think was that she would never see again. She was reliving the attack in the Bastille years ago that had blinded her temporarily. How dumb she’d been to take her recovery for granted.
Another blow like the one she’d just taken and her ocular nerve would be damaged beyond repair. This time she wouldn’t see again.
The scents of dirty water and wet stone assailed her. Blinking blindly, she tried to reach out, but she couldn’t. Her hands were bound. All she could feel was the slippery moss catching under her fingernails. She concentrated on the feel of the air current, trying to orient herself.
She heard a sucking in of breath, caught a whiff of garlic and cigarette smoke mixed with the metallic smell of blood as she felt mist hit her cheekbones.
She fought the urge to scream—what the hell was going on here? Was this a flic?
“Help me, I can’t see. It’s all white and blurry.”
Only rushing water.
“Who are you? Listen, call an ambulance. That man needs help.”
Sirens blared in the distance, growing closer all the time.
“Melac? Melac?” she shouted, but got no answer.
She felt someone picking her jacket pockets, removing her wallet and work phone.
A thief?
She heard a low whistle, a man’s throaty whisper. “Aimée Leduc of the high heels, red lips. Enchanté.”
Her blood curdled.
“Wait . . . do I know you?”
Any minute he’d be saying “I’m placing you under arrest on charges of . . .”
But blaring sirens filled the air.
“Lucky me. Two birds with one stone.”
Or that’s what she thought the man had said. The sirens grew louder. She couldn’t distinguish a damn thing between the flashes in her head and the jagged light shining in her face.
A jiggle of the handcuffs, a metallic clank, then her hands were free.
“Just open your fingers. Slow and easy. All right, on three . . . un, deux . . . Do as I say . . . Now just open . . . trois.”
A low laugh.
She felt something sticky, sharp: the blade of a knife being folded into her hand, cutting into her palm.
Good God. Had this been placed in her hand to implicate her?
Shouts came from over the water. A hard kick connected with her chest. She felt a white-hot burst of pain in her ribs and doubled over, clutching her side. Slipping . . . her feet were slipping. He was going to push her into the water.
But he didn’t. Abruptly, footsteps pounded away from her. The man was running. Why?
Breathless, she yelled, “Who are you?”
She toppled onto her side, writhing on slick wet stone. Her leg was halfway in the water of the canal’s lock.
Arctic cold water.
“Freeze, don’t move.”
She was sliding—she couldn’t stop herself. By instinct her arms reached out, scrabbling at anything to grasp and hold tight. Her elbow caught on the quai lip. She could only see a gray haze, only feel her ice-cold, soaking wet leather pants, their damp weight pulling her down.
Arms lifted and swung her out of the water.
Voices reached her ears. “Mon Dieu.” Then the sound of someone being sick.
What was going on?
“Bag the knife for evidence. Her hands, too. Then get her in the pompiers response vehicle,” a voice barked. “Now.”
Tuesday • 1 A.M. on the way to Hôtel Dieu Hospital
AIMÉE’S VISION CLEARED by degrees. The darkness settled into a deep grayish blur, then gradually morphed into a light haze. She felt a huge cold rock on her temple until she realized it was an ice pack for the swelling. The interior of the firemen’s first-response vehicle came into view. She grew aware of beeping noises and the cold metal of a stethoscope on her chest. Her vitals were being taken. Her vision focused on a screen—reddish dots and a blue background.
Thank God. She was seeing again. Her pulse thudded. Was this all a bad dream?
Her throat hurt like hell. And her ribs. Why? Until it all came rushing back: the bloody gash on Melac’s neck, his cold, wet hand, the rushing, swirling water and the stinging whack, then the thunder in her head.
Tears welled up.
All of a sudden the doors were yanked open and her stretcher was slid out, the wheels clanking on the ground.
“Emergency bay two,” someone was saying.
Harsh lights and searing brightness. Painful. She squinted and shut her eyes. Then another voice said, “What’s your name?”
“Aimée Leduc,” she said, rasping. “Where’s Melac?”
“Melac?”
Her throat burned, but she made herself speak. “He was in the water . . . the canal. I tried to pull him out.” She wanted to pull the baggies off her hand. “What happened to him?”
“We’re examining you before the flics start your interrogation.”
Her stomach churned.
Interrogation.
ON AND OFF her vision blurred. But it was better than before. She could make out figures. After the CT scan and X-ray, she could distinguish faces and features. Fear ate her. The last time she’d had a head injury and lost her vision, she regained it. Luckily. But the eye doctor, Guy Lambert, had said next time she wouldn’t be so lucky.
She hadn’t been lucky with him. Their affair had gotten off to such a good start, and for a while it looked like she’d be a doctor’s wife—until she realized that would mean moving to Neuilly and hosting luncheons for the other doctors’ wives, giving up her career in Paris for a lifetime of hostessing and wifely duties.
A messy breakup. The last she’d heard, he’d joined Médecins Sans Frontières in Afrique.
She wished he were here now. She couldn’t trust new doctors who didn’t know her previous condition and would take too long to get her files.
But that was the least of her worries.
“Mademoiselle Leduc?” The man who belonged to that voice came into focus. “I need to ask some questions. The doctors deem your condition stable enough for you to be moved to the sixth floor, the secure unit. We’ll follow you up there.”
She smelled antiseptic. Hell, she was on a gurney in a corridor. Everything was shrouded in whitish fog.
“Where am I?”
“Emergency at Hôtel Dieu. Didn’t anyone inform you? You’re in custody.”
The sixth floor in Hôtel Dieu, the public hospital, was the medical unit for injured suspects and the convicted.
“W-why?”
“You’re a suspect in the murder of Jérome Melac.”
Aimée exhaled sharply. Murder. Melac was dead. She’d hoped there was a chance he’d survived.
“But I heard Melac . . . He was calling me . . . from the quai under the bridge, but . . .” she rasped, her throat raw.
“He was alive?”
“I think so,” she said, making herself talk despite the pain. “I didn’t kill him. I tried to save him.”
“We found more than enough evidence to get you convicted.”
Liar. They’d say this in hopes of getting a quick confession.
Her heart jumped. It came back to her now: the sticky knife in her hand, the man who’d been there, who’d seemed to have known her.
“There’s been a mistake. There was a man who handcuffed me.”
“You were discovered with a knife and bloody hands. No restraints.”
“That’s right. The siren sounded and he took them off.”
“Sounds convenient. But the lab work will tell us.”
Typical flic talk to scare her.
“Make it easy on yourself,” he said. “Get this over with and you’ll feel better.”
“Are you insane?”
Her throat felt like sandpaper.
“Was it a crime of passion? Was he jealous? We know he wanted to get back together with you.”
Who was this officer? He had a mustache and thick hair, but it was hard to see him distinctly. He hadn’t even arrested her yet.
“Show me your credentials.”
That was stupid. She couldn’t see. But maybe she could gain a little time to think.
“And get Commissaire Morbier,” she said. “He’s the only one I’m talking to.”
Tuesday • Hôtel Dieu Reception • Ground Floor
WHAT IN GOD’S name has Aimée done now?
Dragged out of bed, catching a taxi, and still only half-awake, retired Commissaire Morbier rocked on his worn brown heels in the lobby of Hôtel Dieu. He’d looked at many police reports in his time. This time, however, his goddaughter Aimée had gotten into more trouble than ever before. The little clout he maintained working part-time in the Special Branch had gotten him a peek at the report and a visit. No more.
According to this report, she’d be charged with killing the biological father of her child, a former flic, who had been threatening to fight Aimée for custody. She’d been discovered with the murder weapon in hand. Damning evidence and a motive.
Not to mention she’d talk only to him—and only if he contacted her babysitter first. As if he were an errand boy.
He pulled out a match and flicked it against the matchbox until it caught with a thupt and lit his cigarette. He took a deep drag and inhaled his Gauloise. Oh, Melac. Poor mec, a good flic and an even better counterterrorism operative. Relationship-wise with Aimée, not so great.
Merde.
He coughed and looked around for an ashtray in the green-tiled hallway. On the left, the view of Notre Dame filtered through the old colored-glass window, spilling blue on the tiles. To his right, the busy wing resounded with the pad of rubber soles.
Morbier didn’t know any of this new crew of flics. He’d aged, and as a former commissaire, his connections were with old-timers of his generation. All the strings he could pull were short ones.
He knew Aimée. He thought of her anguish and bitterness at Melac. If she’d killed him . . . but non, how could she?
A doctor wearing a white coat and a haggard face passed by, clutching a file.
It had new admit Leduc, A written on the tab.
“What’s going on here?” Morbier asked.
“Going on?” a doctor said. “You’re family?”
“I’m her godfather,” he said. Practically raised her, he almost added. Instead he flashed his police ID. “We need to talk,” he said.
“Not here.”
The doctor indicated the adjoining door to the hospital gardens. Once outside and on a bench, Morbier puffed and exhaled a spiral of smoke in the night air.
“Aren’t people retired at your age?” said the doctor.
“Retired and not retired, doctor,” said Morbier. “If you get my meaning.”
The doctor, probably around Morbier’s age, with graying sideburns and temples, smiled. “I hear that a lot.”
“Please answer my question, doctor. Tell me the scope of her injuries. You should know she’s got preexisting conditions.”
“Her CAT scan revealed previous damage on her ocular nerve. Is that what you’re referring to?”
“She went blind temporarily.”
The doctor took a deep breath. “She’s not out of the woods. Too early to say. But no severe damage has been done. So far, her eyesight’s clearing. Still could be touch and go.”
Morbier realized he’d been holding his breath.
“Where is she?”
“After triage, we sent her up to the sixth floor.”
The wing for criminals and suspects in custody.
The doctor checked his watch and stood. “I have to get to a surgery. Don’t jump the gun, monsieur. There’s still so much we don’t know.”
Morbier wondered where Aimée’s business partner, René, was. Had anyone reached him? He’d tried and René’s phone rang and rang. No voice mail.
