Cara Black - Murder in the Marais

Alert for an intruder, she padded down the hallway, examining each closet and scouting every room. Empty.

She hadn't come face to face with a homicide since working with her father. Her impulse was to run out of the apartment, call the flics , and return Hecht's money. But she forced herself to go back.

In the bedroom she surveyed the dead woman more carefully. Deep and bloodless, the swastika stretched from her eyebrows to the wispy gray hairs at her hairline, exposing bone and pulpy tissue. A gold chain with Hebrew letters hung twisted in the bloody ligature mark around her neck.

She swore, shooing the persistent fly, who'd alighted on the woman's wool skirt that crumpled up at her knees. Swollen ankles puffed out over scuffed shoes. Aimee noticed the scratches and bruising on the pasty legs; the hands, in half fists, lay at her side as if she'd died struggling.

"In Lili Stein's hands" was what she'd promised Soli Hecht. That no longer made sense as the woman was dead. She wasn't superstitious but…she bent down, peering at the woman's hand. Bits of wood splinters were embedded in her palms. Aimee looked around her. No marks were scratched in the wood slats nailed over the window. Crutches lay uselessly on the floor. Her fingernails were broken and jagged. Like a cornered animal, Aimee thought, she'd tried to claw her way out.

Aimee carefully put her fingers on the blue-veined wrist. She pulled out the envelope with the photo image and touched it to Lili's cold hand, not yet stiff with rigor mortis.

In that moment she felt the murderer hovering in this dank room. Foreboding washed over her. She became aware of the nasal-voiced radio announcer. In a prerecorded message yesterday to the labor unions at Lille, Cazaux, the French trade minister and expected appointee for prime minister, had promised strict foreign immigration quotas. "French industry, French workers, French products!" Cazaux's familiar voice ranted as crowds roared.

Just what France needed, she thought, more fascism.

"Maman?" A man's deep voice came from the hallway.

Startled, she stood up too quickly and knocked into the bedroom's rolltop desk. The angelfish tank swayed, and she reached out to steady it. That's when she saw the torn photo under the tank, barely visible through the black gravel. She pulled it out, quickly aligning the encrypted photo next to this torn piece. They matched. Shaken, she realized she held the missing corner of the photo that this woman might have been murdered for.

"Maman, ca va?"

She slid the photos into the envelope and stuffed it down the calf of her leather boot.

"Monsieur, don't come in here," she said loudly, summoning authority in her voice. "Call le Police."

"Eh? Who…" A middle-aged man, rail thin and tall, walked in. He stooped as if apologizing for taking up space. His forelocks were worn long in the Hasidic style under a black felt hat with an upturned brim.

She blocked his view. "Is Lili Stein your mother?"

"What's happened?" He stiffened. "Maman is ill?" He peered over Aimee's shoulder before she could stop him. "No, no," he said shaking his head.

She edged toward this man, trying to help him.

"Who are you?" Fear registered in his eyes.

"I'm working with…" She caught herself before she mentioned Hecht. "Temple E'manuel. I'm a private detective, we had an appointment." She guided him towards an alcove hung with rolled scriptures. "Sit down."

He shook her off. "How did you get in here?" His eyes grew wide in terror.

"Monsieur Stein?" She kneeled at his eye level, willing him to meet her gaze.

He nodded.

"I'm sorry. The door was ajar. I found her a few minutes ago."

He collapsed, sobbing. She pulled out her cell phone, punched in 15 for SAMU, the emergency service, and gave the address. Then she called 17, Police Centrale.

"Yisgaddal v'yiskaddash shmey rabboh." He began the Hebrew prayer for the dead. Then he broke off. She put her arm around his thin shoulders, made the sign of the cross, whispering, "May she rest in peace."

By the time the SAMU van screeched to a halt in the courtyard, waves of the Brigade Criminelle then the Brigade Territoriale had already tramped through. The Police from the 4th arrondissement came next. A rotund figure puffed up the stairs, a droopy mustache above the half smile on his face. Aimee blinked in surprise. "Inspecteur Morbier!"

She hadn't seen this old friend of her father's for several years. Not since the day of the explosion. Everything came flooding back to her: the reek of cordite and TNT, the hiss and pop of cold rain falling on twisted hot metal, her palm burning on the surveillance van's door handle. She had watched as the force blew her father into a smoking hulk.

"Aimee…!" Then Morbier quickly corrected himself in the presence of the Brigade members. "Mademoiselle Leduc."

He'd changed little. His blue suspenders strained over his wide belly. He flicked a kitchen match, lit up a Gauloise, and inhaled deeply. She could almost taste the tobacco in the stuffy hallway.

"Smoking at a murder scene, Morbier?"

"I'm supposed to ask the questions." He flicked ash into his cupped palm.

Crime-scene technicians, their lab coats drooping under short yellow rain jackets, glided efficiently amid muffled conversations up and down the stairs.

"Don't tell me you're involved in this dog and pony show," he said.

"I'm not involved." She wasn't really lying. She looked away, unable to meet his gaze. When she was little he'd always caught her out faster than her father.

The threadbare Turkish carpet in the hall was already tracked with mud. Stein rocked back and forth on a chair, dazedly shaking his head.

Aimee and Morbier sidestepped the crime photographer loaded with camera equipment, heading for the kitchen down the hall.

Stein sputtered to life. "I'm Abraham Stein. This woman was here when I found Maman."

Morbier's eyes narrowed. "Explain how you happened to find the body."

She shook her head, indicating she wouldn't speak in front of Stein and tugged Morbier's sleeve, nodding her head towards the kitchen. He rolled his eyes, then lumbered after her.

"Temple E'manuel hired me to trail her." She kept her voice low, remembering that the best defense is a good offense. "Explain to me why Brigade Criminelle arrived and secured the scene before"-loud banging erupted in the hallway as the stretcher hit the door frame and she stared at him-"you did."

"Inspecteur Morbier!" A hoarse-voiced detective beckoned to him. "Forensics needs you. Now."

Morbier growled and left.

She turned away to hide her relief.

He stopped a few steps away and jerked his thumb at the nearby pockmark-faced sergeant. "Investigating officer, check the contents of her bag."

Her shoulders sagged. "Why?"

He blustered, "A possible suspect at a homicide should cooperate."

She attempted to check her anger, keep her tone even. "I have nothing to hide."

She dumped her cell phone, expired Metro pass, extra modem cable, two tubes of ultrablack mascara, business cards, pack of Nicorette stop-smoking gum, mini-tool set, and a well-thumbed manual on software encryption smudged with red nail polish.

At Lili Stein's bedroom door Morbier turned to her, his expression masked. "I want you at the Commissariat. First thing in the morning." He nodded to the sergeant. "Escort her home."

A S THE PILOT ANNOUNCEDdescent into Charles de Gaulle Airport, Hartmuth Griffe, the German trade advisor, felt an acid taste, drier than the cabin atmosphere, fill his mouth.

Fifty years and now he was back. His heart raced. Despite the surgery, he feared recognition even after all these years. And the past. What if somehow she'd survived?