Jean looked down at the worn soles of his brown shoes. A decade ago Hélène had turned up and walked into the shop only to ask with a vacant smile if he had her schoolbooks.
“‘Hélène . . . where were you?’” he’d asked.
“Down south,” she’d said.
He’d recognized the burns on her temples. She’d had shock treatments. The part of her brain they hadn’t burned out was living in the past. Guilt had racked him.
“Mustn’t be sad, Jean,” she said now. He came back to the present as she took his chin in her hand, searching his face. There was a puzzled, warm look in those violet-tinged eyes.
“Stay here,” he offered.
“I can’t. The bad one might catch us.” She leaned closer, whispering, “We have to hide.”
“Who are you afraid of? Did someone threaten you or call you names again? I told you I’d take care of—”
“The bad one,” she repeated. “You know, the one who threw the girl in the river. Paulette’s ever so afraid the bad one will toss her in.”
Paulette? Her sister Paulette had been taken in 1942.
“She’s afraid that he’ll kill her, too.”
“What do you mean, Hélène?” Jean had overheard talk at the café-tabac counter that morning and read the newspaper article: a young woman’s body had been found in the Seine. “You witnessed this?”
She nodded mutely.
In her own way she never lied. But he couldn’t credit this.
“So I took care of the bad one, Jean,” she said, her mouth set in a thin line.
Jean controlled his shudder. He gripped the chair’s threadbare armrest. “Took care . . . how?”
“I couldn’t let the bad one do it again,” she said, shaking her head. “Now I’ve made it safe.”
He wanted to shake information out of her. As he learned toward her, his foot hit the shopping bag at her feet and he looked down. Inside one of the bags he noticed the black handle and ornamental bee of a Laguiole knife.
“Did you use that knife . . . to protect yourself?” he asked her.
She stood, gathered her bags and broken umbrella, and went to the door.
He followed her, putting his arm around her shoulders. “Wait, Hélène. What did you see?”
“Merci, Jean.” Her eyes clouded. “There’s a break in the rain. I have to go.”
He stared after her as she padded down the rain-soaked street, mumbling to herself. She’d gone over the edge, he concluded. Next it would be UFOs.
But he couldn’t get her voice out of his head. What if someone had attacked her and in self-defense she’d retaliated? She might have hurt someone. Worse—someone might be attacking women and the homeless on the island. He thumbed through the the phone directory, found the listing he sought, and, with shaking fingers, dialed the Commissariat.
Tuesday Late Afternoon
MARTINE’S RED-SOLED, black-heeled Louboutins clicked across the creaking floor of the Musée des Hôpitaux de Paris. She was wearing an orangey peach wool suit and matching blossomlike hat. Breathless, she still managed to kiss Aimée on both cheeks.
“Nice place to meet! These old operating theaters look like torture chambers.” Martine pointed to an exhibit—a gray, tubular iron lung. “Trying to tell me something, Aimée?”
Martine smoked a pack a day.
“You? Never.”
Martine, her best friend since the lycée, did investigative reporting now after her stint at a defunct fashion magazine. She was tamer than she’d been in her student days. Martine shared a huge high-ceilinged flat with her boyfriend, Gilles, and his assorted children, overlooking the Bois de Boulogne in the sixteenth arrondissement. Haute bourgeois, too staid for Aimée.
“Charming.” Martine stared at the enlarged sepia turn-ofthe century photos of barefoot children in line at a milk bar. She grinned. “Gilles’s kids only stand in line at FNAC for the latest CD.”
“What did you find out?” Aimée asked.
Martine opened her pink alligator bag and thrust a batch of printouts at Aimée. “Not much. Last week, certain allegations surfaced. There was enough there for the Army to put Orla Thiers and Nelie Landrou on their wanted-for-questioning list.”
“What kind of allegations?”
Martine consulted a printout. “Sexy stuff,” she said, with a moue of distaste. “Apparently, they acquired knowledge of truck schedules—arrivals and deliveries.”
A far cry from nuclear secrets.
“That’s all?”
“Looks like it,” Martine said. “It’s a favorite tactic of MondeFocus to set up a roadblock to stop a fleet of semis, tanker trucks carrying hazardous materials.”
“The Army steps in if there’s any activity threatening radioactive materials, Martine,” Aimée said.
Martine shrugged.
Aimée stuck the printouts in her bag to study later. If Krzysztof Linski was implicated as well and on the run, too, it would explain his behavior.
“I’ve got to rush.” Martine took Aimée’s arm and they walked through the hall under the painted ceiling showing eighteenth-century surgeons in panels encircled by trompe l’oeil pillars. “The oil conference . . .”
“Wearing that?”
“First, my niece’s baptism. You know Liliane, my youngest sister.”
“You’re a godmother how many times over?”
“Three, or is this one the fourth? Can’t keep track of all of them.” Martine had three married sisters, all with children. “She’s hired another babysitter. To supplement her other nannies.”
Aimée suddenly perked up. “Liliane’s got a babysitter, too?”
Martine nodded.
“I need one. Think she’d share?”
Martine stared at Aimée. “Don’t tell me! You’re pregnant?”
Aimée’s gaze rested on an exhibit with an explanatory placard: Circa 1870. Often the desperate parent left a bracelet, beads, or some other token with the infant being abandoned, hoping to reclaim the child in the future.
“The color’s drained from your face,” Martine said, steering her to a bench. “You’re paler than usual. Sit down. Morning sickness?”
Aimée was stuck on the phrase “or some other token . . . hoping to reclaim the child.” Had those marks on the baby’s chest been meant as identification?
Aimée shook her head.
“Tell me, Aimée.”
“It’s not that, Martine, it’s worse.” Then she told Martine everything: the phone call, finding the baby, the body in the morgue, the matching blue beads, Morbier’s demand, and finding René wearing an apron, buying a stuffed animal without admitting it.
“René’s nesting,” Martine said.
“What do you mean?”
But she knew.
Martine dug into her bag and uncapped a small brown bottle with red Oriental characters on the label, took a swig, and passed it to Aimée.
“Drink this. Oronamin-C, a Japanese energy drink full of electrolytes. You need it.”
It was dense, viscous, and tangy, with an aftertaste like a children’s liquid vitamin drink. Her cheeks puckered.
“René’s exhibiting the classic signs: cleaning, cooking, feathering the nest for the new baby, Aimée,” Martine said, outlining her lips with a brown pencil. “Instead of you. He’s a gem.”
“My best friend next to you, Martine.”
“A lasting relationship can be built on friendship, but it is rare in life.”
What was Martine getting at?
“Knowing what they look for in adoption court, I’d say you’ve got a good start. René could help—”