She went outside the tent to look for Morbier and came face to face with a camera crew. Immediately, the bright lights glared on her.
Reporters shouted, "Are you with the Brigade Criminelle? What do you hope to uncover?"
Her jumpsuit was already causing her to sweat as if she was in a sauna. The lights made it worse.
"Official crime recovery scene. Press is not allowed," she said. She whistled to a blue-uniformed flic, who approached the camera crew.
She hadn't counted on this Luminol test to go public. Wouldn't the killer become suspicious if there was a connection between the two murders?
Her silence would be the killer's objective. She filed that disturbing thought away. If this caused the rat to surface, all the better, she told herself.
Back inside the tent, she put on another pair of booties to avoid contamination, and began taping everything with a lowlight-sensor camera. Serge sprayed Luminol on the cobblestones in the courtyard and on the old concrete around the sink to see if anything would show. He continued spraying as he backed away from the old boards in the light well and slowly retreated up the stairs. He saturated the original wood steps, all the way along the wooden planks that stretched to the Steins' door.
He yelled down at Aimee, "Get Morbier. If it's gonna work, and I said IF, there should be a light show in three minutes."
Aimee knew the wood should show blood traces in cracks or fissures and hoped that the concrete and stones over it had protected and preserved any remaining evidence. Well, they would find out. After five years, the blood couldn't be typed, but that didn't matter to her. That wasn't what she was looking for.
Morbier entered the tent, letting in a wide slice of light.
"Hurry up," Serge shouted, pausing at the Steins' door. He couldn't move until the Luminol took.
If it did.
"Secure the panel from the outside," Morbier shouted as he fumbled blindly with his Day-Glo booties.
Inside the tent it was pitch dark.
"Jesus, Leduc, this had better work. My ass is in a harness here. We've blocked off half the street, relocated these tenants courtesy of the Parisian taxpayers, who are as tight as ticks, there's some idiot from the 4th arrondissement who thinks we're making a science-fiction movie and tells the press. On top of all that, Agronski, some sharp-eyed inspector from Brigade Criminelle, came because he told me he 'just loves Luminol.'"
"Keep going, Morbier, I'm getting everything you say on tape even if I can't see you," Aimee told him.
He was fuming now. "Leduc, I told you…Aaah!"
Aimee shone the portable LumaLite as she and Serge chorused, "Fireworks!"
The Luminol glowed, displaying a fluorescent scene of fifty-year-old carnage.
"Oh my God," she said into the camera, which was catching every streak and splatter of blood. Javel had been right. Blood was everywhere. Arcs sprayed up the light well and a jagged stream snaked to the drain and disappeared. Luminol lasted less than a minute but she captured it all on video.
"It's unbelievable!" Serge inched his way down the stairs beside the trail of bloody footprints. "Blood preserved under concrete and stone for fifty years. I'll get into police bulletins all over the world!" he said.
"Let's spray the staircase again," she said grimly.
She prepared her ruler and laid it quickly next to a pair of footprints that fluorescently appeared. The prints led up the stairs and measured nine centimeters. Something else of a muted color was mixed in with the blood.
"Tissue or organ probably; this area has been remarkably protected," Serge said.
She looked up at Lili's dirty windowpane above them. Aimee figured it had been quick, brutal, and more messy than even the Luminol showed. Her fast take, from the angle of the arc of the blood spray, indicated an attack from above the victim. Footprints walked out of the light well. They resembled a solid shoe, like boots with splayed heels, worn on one edge as if the wearer was slightly pigeon-toed. The ball of the foot was more pronounced and they stopped at the troughlike concrete sink. Smudged bloodstains were on the chipped concrete. It was creepy to think that she'd walked over this. No one had lived in the concierge's rooms for years; now she realized why they'd been abandoned.
Morbier stood next to Aimee.
"Two tracks." She pointed the camera at a path of footprints. "A small person and a slightly larger one." She peered down at the sink, examining it with her magnifying glass. "The smaller ones must be Lili's but whose are the other ones?"
They stopped.
Another set of footprints led out from the light well to the sink and stopped.
Smeared blood and a fine spray of droplets in the sink had been absorbed by the porous stones and concrete. She peered at the cracked porcelain knobs on the faucet.
"Little bit here, when he turned the water on. He even had time to wash his shoes before going into the street," she said. "Or were they boots?"
She felt like she was right next to the murderer. Agonizingly close, but so far away. Fifty years too far. What could she prove?
HOURS LATER, when the criminologist had finished his job and Inspector Agronski was so suitably impressed that he invited Morbier to supper, Aimee still couldn't leave.
She kept retracing the area where the footsteps had appeared next to the smaller ones, trying to figure out what the murderer had been thinking. Then she carefully mounted the stairs.
She tried imagining herself as the scared sixteen-year-old Lili Stein. A young Jewish girl, her family gone, living alone and dependent on the concierge. A concierge who, according to Javel, had been dangerously involved in the black market.
"All recorded now, Leduc," Serge was saying. "I'm packed up, the plasterers are ready to come in, time to go." He tapped his heel impatiently. "This is union time we're talking about here, Leduc."
Aimee was still not satisfied. "I need one more look. I'll meet you on rue des Rosiers."
The plasterers, in white-caked coveralls, waited, grumbling, in the courtyard. The Steins' building was getting a reconstructive face-lift long overdue and major renovation, courtesy of the city of Paris and the 4th arrondissement. Records showed that the most recent construction had been done in 1795. She figured it would be that long again before another renovation.
She had the nagging feeling she was missing something, something that was crying out to her but she couldn't get it. The high-pitched "beep beep beep" of the plasterers' van was deafening as it backed into the courtyard and almost drove over her toe.
"Hey, watch out!" Frustrated, she kicked at the bumper, pounding the metal.
That's when she realized the one place she hadn't looked. The one place a killer would pause, maybe grip the sink, to wash his hands. Wash the blood off his hands.
She ran back into the courtyard and crawled under the sink. Sharp cobblestones dug into her sore shoulder, mildew assailed her nostrils. Shining her flashlight in every crevice and knobby ridge, she strained to reach as far as she could, lying on her back. Then she saw it.
"Get your Luminol out again, Serge. Tent and cover the sink. See the very faint ridges of a fingerprint in the crack?" she said. "This fingerprint will shine up nicely when you've done your stuff. I've got him!"
Tuesday Late Afternoon
RENÉ BUMPED THE CITROËN over the narrow gutter lining rue des Rosiers.
"I thought you were in Lyon," she said, surprised.
"Get in, Aimee," he said.
Rene's Citroën was customized for his short legs and arms, allowing him to clutch, shift, and zoom like any other speed demon in Paris. And did he ever. The car was adjustable, so Aimee could manipulate the levers to fold her five-foot, eight-inch frame into the marshmallowy interior.
"I got him, Rene, I knew the answer was here," she said. "Now I just have to figure out who he is or was." Her eyes shone brightly and her cheeks were flushed. "I took a Polaroid of the fingerprint. At the office I'll magnify and scan it into the computer."