The Hanged Man's Tale, page 16
42
Mazarelle sprang up from his chair, grabbed the framed cartridge, and strode away from his desk, calling as he came.
“Maurice! Jeannot!” Brandishing the Lucite frame for the two to see, he exclaimed, “We need to get this thing out of here ASAP!”
Maurice and Jeannot looked at each other.
“The cartridge!”
Jeannot was the one to answer.
“Boss, I thought you liked our present. You don’t need to make excuses to get rid of it. You can just tell us.”
Mazarelle shook his head. “What? No! We need to send it to ballistics.”
“For what?” asked Jeannot, his head cocked to the side.
Mazarelle tried for patience.
“For testing. The shell.”
He handed the plexiglass frame to Maurice.
“It’s the same casing we picked up that day, right? The one from the parade? It never left our hands?”
“Absolutely.” Maurice knew his bullets—the nine mils and the .357s, the wadcutters, the hollow points, and the full metal jackets. He also prided himself on chain of evidence, even when the case was over. This one was a .22 LR, the same one Jeannot had found back on Bastille Day.
“So how can we test to see if…”
Mazarelle looked lost in thought, on to the next idea.
“To see…” Jeannot prompted him.
The commandant’s attention snapped back.
“To see if this thing is a blank.”
Maurice look startled.
“No testing required. You can tell by the casing itself. But why do you want to do that?”
“Remember what we saw on that tape? And what Jeannot saw in Berthaud’s car? Now if you can figure out whether this cartridge is from a blank, you better damn well tell me.”
Mazarelle passed the Lucite frame over to Maurice who held the shell up to his face. He turned the frame over, inspecting all sides of the spent cartridge.
Finally, Maurice looked up. He nodded.
“You see the crimping at the top of the casing? That’s normally where the bullet would be. But this shell never had a bullet.”
Jeannot was having a hard time keeping up.
“Wait. What?”
Maurice pointed to the fanlike folding pattern at the top of the cartridge.
“On blanks they crimp it like this to keep the powder in.”
“Are you sure?”
“No question. It’s a blank.”
“So…at the parade…Max was shooting blanks?” asked Jeannot, his face creased in a mask of concentration. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means, my dear Jeannot, that we may now have a new lead. A reason why someone might want Berthaud out of the picture,” said Mazarelle, eyes twinkling.
43
When Mazarelle awoke early the next morning, he was still thinking about Jeannot’s question. A puzzle he needed to solve. And he was getting closer. Just a little more time…
It was then that he noticed the message from Claire on his mobile.
“Hello, chéri, I’m back in town,” she said. “See you at noon. Missed you.”
He caught himself grinning. She must have sent it at the crack of dawn. His smile widened. He hadn’t felt this way since Martine. Just a friend, but who knew what came next? He’d have to cancel several meetings he’d scheduled for the morning. Easily done, but it all took longer than he expected.
* * *
—
He was already a little late as he hurried into the hotel. The desk clerk was busy—talking to guests. The lobby seemed to be festively decked out in yellow roses as if to welcome Claire’s return. Mazarelle simply had no patience to wait for the elevator. Ignoring his limp, he took the stairs three at a time to the top floor. But as he approached Claire’s landing, Mazarelle felt his legs cramp up, pressure on his chest, a shortness of breath. What the hell was the matter with him? It was then he realized that her door was slightly ajar. Suddenly he had a very bad feeling. Without knocking, he pushed the door open and went inside. Only the smell of her marvelous perfume seemed familiar.
Claire, on the other hand, appeared eerily still. She was sprawled out naked on top of the bed, motionless, her black curls splayed around her zinc-white face. With not a care in the world except for her tightly clenched fist. Opening her fingers, one by one, he found the tarot card in her hand. It was the Hanged Man. She’d been strangled. Her head lolled to the side. The marks on her neck were livid. As if whoever did this wanted to wrench her head off in a frenzy.
Turning away, he went over to the windows. Mazarelle stood there for a few moments, not moving. There were tears in his eyes. He opened the door onto the balcony to get some air. A police car went by below in the street, siren blaring. Pulling himself together, he walked back to the bed, bent down, and kissed her lovely lips. They were cool. Whoever did this was probably long gone by now. He felt he was losing his grip. He couldn’t bear to look at her this way, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to look anywhere else, as if somehow he was to blame for what happened. If he’d just been more attentive to the threat she faced, warned her what she was up against. But he did warn her, even stressed the fact that she was dealing with dangerous people—killers. Whatever he’d done, it wasn’t enough. A wonderful woman like Claire to have ended like this. It made him feel empty inside, as if something crucial had been cut out of him, leaving nothing but a painful sense of loss. She’d clearly been playing with fire. Whoever did this, Mazarelle swore that he’d find them and make them suffer.
He bent over to examine the Hanged Man’s card in Claire’s hand. It was very much like the one that he’d found on the body of Alain Berthaud—but given the way he was feeling, he couldn’t be sure. Mazarelle hadn’t believed Claire for a second when she’d told him she knew nothing about his murder victim. Any more than when she said, “I’ll try to help you all I can, Commandant.” Actually she was almost convincing. It was her direct look combined with a knowing but innocent face that made her irresistible. Initially he’d assumed she was trying to keep him distracted and herself informed about what he was up to. But love does peculiar things to a man, and soon he didn’t give a damn what she was doing, or why for that matter, as long as it included him.
The ringing phone on her desk startled him. He picked it up, and stayed silent. Almost anything might be a lead.
But the caller wasn’t talking either. That was strange. It was like a game of chicken. Who would crack first?
Suddenly, on the other end of the line…
“Claire? Claire?”
Mazarelle didn’t recognize the voice. He kept his silence.
“Are we still good to go?” More urgent now.
Finally Mazarelle had to ask: “Who is this?”
The click on the other end of the line was the only answer he got. That and the phone number that popped up on the screen. The area code 04 for the South of France.
Mazarelle stayed for a long few seconds staring down at Claire’s phone. And then the detective in him finally took over. He started with 36 and the BC, reaching out to Maurice first. He wanted their procédurier for the record. He told Maurice to trace the number, and to round up Jeannot and Serge immediately.
“All of you should meet me here at the Hôtel Château Saint-Germain. There’s been a murder. When you arrive, don’t stop at the front desk. Say nothing to anyone. Come right upstairs. Top floor.”
Next he called the Police Scientifique and told them where to send the men in white. The one victim: a woman, adult, in her thirties, Caucasian—murdered. The crime scene a room on the top floor of the Hôtel Château Saint-German. Identifying himself as Commandant Mazarelle of la Crim, he said he and his men would be waiting for them.
On his first visit, Mazarelle had noticed the small office Claire had set up in an adjoining alcove. She’d said it was where she did her real work. Looking around the little room, he didn’t have the patience to rummage through her desk drawers. That would come later. The computer on top of her desk would probably be more interesting. As for that, he’d let Jeannot handle it when he arrived. There were other calls he had to make first, but he was too depressed to make them right away.
Mazarelle had always thought of himself as an optimist, but life seemed to be making the challenge harder and harder for him. And the older he got, the higher life raised the bar. Now, with the death of Claire, perhaps he wasn’t up to it anymore. The angel of optimism seemed to have deserted him. One after another, the women of his life had died on him.
No matter what problems he had with those he loved, he’d always come back for more. That was the way he’d felt about Martine, his young wife, even on those occasions when she went away without a word, and then returned to fill his life as if she’d never left. With the secretive Claire, it was hard to understand what was on her mind other than ambition. That was the only way he could make sense of her marriage to the wealthy Armand Lavoisier.
When he eased open Claire’s bureau drawer, he found a rainbow of pink, red, yellow, orange, and blue bikini panties floating on a pleasant cloud of lavender sachet. No surprise there. It was what he found underneath that was unexpected. When he opened the black leather business notebook and saw the familiar names of Alain Berthaud, Luc Fournel, Guy Danglars, Théo Legardère, and Philippe Riche, and the enormous amounts of money that each of them had been paid, Mazarelle realized how deeply Claire had been involved with the ripoux. He closed Claire’s notebook and put it away in his jacket. He wanted to think about what came next before throwing her name to les boeuf. Even dead, he wanted to protect her reputation.
Under the black notebook sat a handful of file folders. Opening the first, Mazarelle smiled. Inside, he saw Frank’s picture, and several scrawled pages of notes. He knew it! She was doing an article on that American playboy the whole time. That made more sense now. What dirt had she found on the congressman? Was it a motive for murder? The second file was more of a shock. It had Mazarelle’s own picture in it. He slammed it shut.
With the folders in his hands, Mazarelle almost missed the sound of the doorknob turning, it was so quiet. But the handle was rotating slowly, almost imperceptibly. Mazarelle was startled. This was way too fast for his team to have gotten there. Jamming the files into his jacket, he hurried toward the balcony, moving with surprising speed for a man his size. If this was Claire’s killer, coming back to clean up the scene, he would be ready.
But the men entering the apartment were not killers. They were cops, pulling on gloves. Not Mazarelle’s team though. He didn’t recognize them. How had they gotten there so fast? He was about to step back into the apartment to greet them, when the words he heard stopped him cold.
“Where is it?” the stocky one was asking. He and his partner, the cop with a buzz cut, had walked right by the dead body on the bed. They didn’t seem to be interested in the murder. They were looking for something else.
“He said it would be here.”
From the balcony, Mazarelle watched both men as they went through the drawers in the apartment. Both seemed to be wearing the uniforms of the National Police. Mazarelle was sure he didn’t know them, but they seemed familiar somehow. Who the fuck were they?
“Black, right? I don’t see the damn thing.”
“Keep looking. We’re screwed if it gets out.”
Mazarelle could hear more rummaging around in the drawers, just beyond his eyeline, and then the low buzz of a mobile phone.
“Oui? Oui. Merde alors.” The cop jammed the phone back into his pocket. “That was Théo. They’re almost here. We’ve got to go.”
* * *
—
Mazarelle emerged from the balcony to see the apartment door closing. And now he had a decision to make. He could follow the dirty cops. They were clearly up to something illegal. But it didn’t seem to be murder. And with every fiber of his six-foot-three-inch frame, Mazarelle wanted the killer.
Staring grimly at Claire’s lifeless body, he did the thing he knew a detective is never supposed to do. He blew past the evidence, the meticulous review of data, and went right to the list of suspects. The tarot card clearly put Alain Berthaud’s murderer at the top. Frank Nash was on the list. And, frankly, he had to admit that, to others in the department, he would soon be on the list as well.
Mazarelle tried to take a breath. Angelique, his physical therapist, was always talking to him about breathing. As if he didn’t breathe all the time. A deep cleansing breath she called it. This one felt soiled all the way down. But he couldn’t duck his next call anymore.
The patron was astonished when he learned that Claire Girard, the editor in chief of the popular Paris-Flash, had been murdered.
“What the hell is going on in this city anyhow!” Coudert exploded. “How was she killed?”
Mazarelle said that it looked like she’d been strangled. Visible bruises around her neck. A violent murder.
“Who discovered the body?” asked Coudert.
There was a momentary pause before Mazarelle told him that he’d discovered the corpse. “Madame Girard”—he volunteered, to avoid interruptions—“has a pied-à-terre. A small private office on the top floor of the Hôtel Château Saint-Germain. It’s far from the brouhaha of her magazine’s editorial offices.”
She’d called him early that morning, Mazarelle explained. She had something to tell him about the case of the Canal Saint-Martin’s hanged man. And considering the sensational nature of that story, she preferred to give it to him in her private office. Mazarelle understood that completely.
“Yes, yes, of course,” Coudert acknowledged. “Go on.”
“That’s it.”
“You mean she was dead when you got there? She left nothing?”
“I didn’t say that. I haven’t begun my investigation yet. But I can tell you this. Madame Girard had clutched in her hand a tarot card of the Hanged Man that appears to be identical with the one we found on the body of Alain Berthaud.”
“Aha! I see. Do we have a goddamn serial killer on the loose?”
“Much too early to tell.”
“What else?”
“Nothing. Except that I’ve informed the PS to set up a crime scene, notified my team to meet me here, and before doing anything else called you to learn if this will be part of my case too.”
“Of course it will. Don’t be ridiculous. Now get started and keep me fully informed of your progress. Understood?”
“I’ll do my best, chief.”
* * *
—
Before looking over Claire’s room, Mazarelle had one more call to make. He tried to reach her husband at home. Somebody by the name of Emily answered. It was Claire’s housekeeper. Madame Girard wasn’t home. “Can I take a message?” she asked.
Mazarelle identified himself and asked for Monsieur Lavoisier. He had some news for him. Could he stop by? Emily said that monsieur had left early that morning on the TGV to Lyon and would be back tomorrow. Mazarelle asked if she had a phone number where he could be reached, and she did.
It was a Lyon number. A secretary said that Armand Lavoisier was just getting out of a meeting about a new Canal+ project. “I’ll call him. Hold on.”
“Yes? What is this about?” Lavoisier had a velvet voice, patient, curious, reeking of culture. “Who is this?”
Commandant Mazarelle explained why he was calling. He had some bad news. He reported that Monsieur Lavoisier’s wife had had a serious accident. In fact, she was dead. That sounded so cold, so unkind to Mazarelle, that he added, “I’m truly sorry.” He wanted Lavoisier to know that there would have to be an autopsy and promptly. Mazarelle pointed out that his wife had been murdered. In this sort of case they tried to have as little delay as possible. Lavoisier objected, couldn’t understand his need for such haste, insisted that they wait until he got back to Paris. The commandant coolly suggested that Monsieur Lavoisier return home as soon as possible. Lavoisier said that he planned to be back in Paris tomorrow on the TGV.
“That’ll do,” Mazarelle said.
“Just a minute. Hold on. Where was Claire killed?”
“I’ll tell you all about that when I see you here.”
Lavoisier paused. “I’m changing my reservation. I’ll be leaving later this afternoon at three p.m. I’ll call when I arrive. Give me your number and address.” He jotted them down. “I should be in your office by six p.m.”
“Better,” the commandant assured him.
44
The knocking was coming from the door. Despite the Paris traffic, his team had made good time.
“Oh, la vache!” Jeannot cried. He couldn’t take his eyes off the naked woman on the bed. “That’s one beautiful lady, boss. Do you know who she is?”
Mazarelle strode to the bed and covered Claire with a sheet. “Yes, I do.”
Maurice told the chef de groupe that as they entered the Château Saint-Germain he’d noticed a few of the vultures from the press gathering outside like storm clouds.
“Already!” Mazarelle said.
Jeannot wondered how the paparazzi got on it so fast.
“Probably an informant at the hotel’s front desk,” said Maurice.
Mazarelle slapped his forehead. “Imbécile!” he cried, annoyed with himself. How could he be so stupid? Using the phone on her desk rather than taking his mobile outside. So flustered by Claire’s death that he’d no idea his brains had seeped out. He guessed that the hotel management downstairs had listened in to all his calls. “That’s what they do these days. Even small hotels like this. For some reason they think they’re entitled to know what’s going on.”
The men in white arrived and shooed Mazarelle and his team out of the room into the hotel hallway. Standing there, Mazarelle organized his men. He wanted Jeannot and Serge to go to Paris-Flash on the rue Delambre. “Speak to Philippe Riche, Madame Girard’s deputy editor, and tell him what happened. Say I sent you. Then go through her desk. Get me her calendar, her files, her address book, her Rolodex, and anything else you can find of potential importance to us.”
