Max's door was at the top of the staircase. Hugo stopped to catch his breath, irritated that his breathing and heart rate were faster than he would have liked. He stepped forward and knocked on the door. Silence. He looked around and saw a small wooden table on the landing, not even knee high. It bore no plant or ornament, just a thin layer of dust.
Hugo shook his head, a slight smile on his lips. It was an apparently pointless piece of furniture, but Hugo had learned over the years that very few things were without reason. He walked over and picked up the little table. He turned it upside down and inspected it. He then flipped it onto its side and found what he was looking for. Taped under the rim was a key. He peeled it off and inserted it into Max's door, paused for a second, and then felt it turn cleanly in the lock.
The door swung open silently and Hugo stepped into Max's living room and looked around. The room was large and bright, with three windows to his left that looked out over Rue Condorcet, and filled with furniture that would have cost Max very little but would last a lifetime, dark and heavy. And everywhere, books.
Obviously, someone else had gotten there first. While the furniture was still upright, the floor was awash with the contents of the room, mostly books. Some lay alone on the floor, their covers flung open like the outstretched wings of dying birds. Others had been tossed into piles, making untidy pyramids beside, and on, the furniture. Opposite Hugo was a long sofa piled high with them, several precariously balanced at the precipice edge of the leather seat.
A wing-backed armchair sat beside the couch, near the windows and at an angle to the room, its seat one of the few spaces free of literature. A pair of round end tables flanked the chair, books piled five and six high, and some spilling onto the floor. Directly to Hugo's left was an armoire, its doors open. He moved further into the room, intentionally keeping away from the large windows, and looked inside.
Max had inserted some cheap pine boards to hold more books, but the shelves of the armoire were mostly empty, their contents scattered on the floor at Hugo's feet. He looked down at them and his boots crinkled the discarded plastic envelopes that had once protected these books from the elements. With the bent covers and torn pages around him, the empty sheaths seemed like discarded body bags, too late to do any real good other than carry away the dead.
The plastic covers told Hugo one thing, though: the books tucked away in the armoire had been Max's more valuable ones. He knelt and sifted through them. No more Rimbauds, and he didn't see On War.
Standing there, in Max's home for the first time, he felt the familiar buzz of the crime scene. His senses and training were reactivating for the first time in years, absorbing and channeling information, processing what he saw into a coherent story. He crisscrossed the room, touching as little as possible, his eyes raking over everything. By the time he'd finished scouring the room he knew one thing: someone had searched Max's place, quickly and quietly. But there had been no fight in here.
Hugo moved to a half-open door in the far corner. It led into a short hallway, off of which sat a tiny kitchen on the right and a bathroom on the left. The hallway ended at Max's bedroom, the door open. He trod quietly, again out of habit as much as necessity, glancing into the kitchen and bathroom for further signs of intrusion. Nothing.
At the entrance to Max's room, he paused.
The bedroom was a person's greatest sanctuary, the place where he did his thinking, his sleeping, his loving. Walking in uninvited gave Hugo pause. He had, or hoped he had, always treated these rooms with utmost respect. So many of the bodies that he'd seen were in bedrooms; Austin's axe murderer hacked his victims to death as they slept, and he'd killed half a dozen before Hugo caught him a thousand miles away, sound asleep in a disused box car that sat at the back of a Cincinnati rail yard. Children, too, he'd found in bedrooms, though not usually their own.
He stepped inside. Facing the door was Max's queen-size bed, the blankets pulled up. At its foot sat a low, wooden trunk, its lid open. Hugo's chest tightened as he moved toward it, but he found it empty, blankets dropped carelessly in front after it had been searched. He turned to the closet on his left. The floor creaked as he walked to it and the door creaked, too, as if in sympathy. A string hung from a light bulb and Hugo tugged it. In the harsh light he saw two brown leather suitcases, open and empty. Beside them was a large duffel bag, panels of green canvas stitched together with heavy thread. Military, thought Hugo, and also empty. He ran his hands over the shirts and jackets hanging in the closet, then looked over the half-dozen pairs of pants on a high shelf.
Hugo heard a gentle click from the hallway. He snapped the light off and instinctively put a hand under his jacket. He heard the noise again. Had he closed the apartment door behind him when he came in? Locked it?
Hugo moved slowly out of the closet, staying close to the wall so he wouldn't be seen, and because that was where the floor was less likely to creak. He approached the back of the open bedroom door and peered through the crack between door and jamb. He saw a thin sliver of the hallway. He watched for a second, but saw no movement. His fingers closed around the butt of his gun.
“Anyone there?” he called out. If he was to startle someone, it should be from somewhere safe, from here. But no response.
He stepped around the door and moved quickly into the hallway, eyes darting from the kitchen to the bathroom. He ghosted against the wall when he heard a noise from the bathroom, a light brushing sound. He slid the gun from its holster and spoke in a low, calm voice. “I am an officer from the US Embassy and I am armed. Please remain where you are and identify yourself.”
His heart hammered in his chest and his grip tightened at a light thump from the bathroom.
He raised his gun and aimed it at the door.
With a gentle bump the door swung open and a black cat wandered into the hallway and looked up at him. It meowed once, licked its lips, and then sashayed into the living room. Hugo let out a breath that he hadn't known he was holding and reholstered his weapon. He'd always preferred dogs.
He stepped into the bathroom. A simple pedestal sink and bathtub, but no shower. Beside the bath sat two saucers, both empty. Hugo knelt and touched them. Dry, so whatever milk or water Max had left for his cat was long gone. He stood and opened the vanity above the sink. A razor, shaving brush, and a little pot for the cream stood together on the shelf. Beside them, a plastic beaker holding a toothbrush and toothpaste.
He tried the kitchen, hoping to see something to change his mind, to challenge the disturbing and obvious conclusion that was settling in. The waist-high fridge held an open tub of paté, a large block of cheese, several plastic containers of unidentifiable leftovers, an unopened bottle of Sancerre, and a half-container of milk. He pulled it out, sniffed it, and almost retched. He went to empty it into the sink but the policeman in him said to preserve everything, so he put it back, silently irritated that he'd put his fingerprints on the carton.
Hugo looked over the rest of kitchen and noticed a loaf of bread protruding from under a dish cloth, so he picked it up and tapped it against the counter. Hard as a rock. He grimaced and moved back to the living room, where he found the cat perched on the top of Max's armchair.