Cara Black - AL07 - Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis

MURDER ON THE

ILE SAINT-LOUIS

Cara Black

ALSO BY THE AUTHOR Murder in the Marais

Murder in Belleville

Murder in the Sentier

Murder in the Bastille

Murder in Clichy

Murder in Montmartre

Copyright © 2007

All rights reserved

Published by

Soho Press, Inc.

853 Broadway

New York, NY 10003

In memory of the deportees on Auschwitz-Birkenau convoys 37 and 38, September, 1942, the real Stella, and all the ghosts.

Immense debts of gratitude go to Leonard Pitt; Dorothy Edwards; Max; Stephen; Grace Loh for opening my eyes; Manon Noubik; Jessie; Barbara; Jan; Maggie, midwife extraordinaire; Stacy; Lt. Bruce Fairbarn, Special Investigative Unit, SFPD; George Fong, FBI; Dr. Terri Haddix; Roland Fishman above and beyond, in Sydney.

In Paris, Chris and Colette Vanier, for their generosity; Daniele Nangeroni, who told me her story; Captaine de Police Michel Constant of Brigade Fluviale; Jacques Valluis-Avocat; Alain Dubois; Bella and John Allen; Gilles Fouquet; Jean-Damien; Anna Czarnocka of the Société Historique et Littéraire Polonaise; Flora Pachelska; Pierre-Olivier; Madame Wattiez; Jean Caploun; Paris Historique; Cathy Etile, little Zouzou; toujours Sarah Tarille; little Madelaine; and Anne-Françoise Delbegue.

And nothing would happen without James N. Frey; Linda Allen; Laura Hruska; my son, Tate; and Jun.

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.

—Voltaire

Paris, February 1995, Monday Night

AIMÉE LEDUC SENSED the scent of spring in the air rising from the Seine and spilling through her open balcony doors. A church bell chimed outside; leaves fluttered in the breeze and couples ducked into a nearby brasserie . It was a beautiful night on the Ile Saint-Louis, the island in the heart of Paris.

She ran her chipped gigabyte green fingernails over the laptop keyboard; she had to finish system maintenance and get her client’s network up and running online by nine-thirty. Only twenty-seven minutes to go and she was exhausted, but she knew she’d manage it. All she had to do was concentrate, but after five straight hours, her brain rebelled. She rubbed her black-stockinged calf with her foot. One more system to check, then voilà.

From somewhere under the papers piled on her desk the phone trilled. Miles Davis, her bichon frise, who was nestled at her feet, awoke with a bark.

“Allô?” she said.

She heard someone panting and the sound of a wailing siren in the distance.

An obscene phone call?

“Oui?” she asked, in a brusque tone of voice.

“You have to help me!” a strange woman said.

“Who’s this?”

“Go to the courtyard. If they catch—”

“Wrong number, désolée ,” Aimée said, about to hang up.

“They want to kill me.” It was a young woman’s voice, rising in panic. “They want my—” Static obscured the rest of her sentence. “Please, now!”

“What do you mean?” Aimée leaned forward, shoulders tensed.

“I can’t explain. . . . There’s no time and they’ll hear me.”

“What kind of joke . . . ?”

“Please, Aimée.”

She still didn’t recognize the voice.

“Do I know you?”

“They’ll kill—I trust you.”

Aimée gripped the phone harder. “ Me? Look, if you’re frightened, call the flics .”

A car engine started. “No flics , no hospital.”

“Who is this?”

“You’re . . . you’re the only person who can help me now. . . . Go to the courtyard. It’ll just be for a few hours. Please! And don’t tell anyone.”

The line went dead.

The hair on Aimée’s neck rose. She hit the callback symbol and got a recorded message saying that the public phone she’d reached couldn’t accept calls.

Twenty-four minutes to her work deadline. But the call had unnerved her; she couldn’t concentrate. It would only take a moment to reach the courtyard. She pressed Save and slipped her feet into the black kitten heels under her desk.

The parquet floor of the long hall in her seventeenth century town-house apartment creaked under her feet. She rooted through take-out Indian menus in the drawer of the secrétaire near the front door, found her Beretta, and checked the cartridge. She went downstairs to the courtyard, shivering as she kept to the shadows, gripping the pistol in her pocket. The glint of the half-moon spread a luminous glow over her building’s ivy-covered walls. The soft air was almost palpable; it was a rare, clear night, with stars thick in the sky. An aroma composed of algae mingling with wet stone wafted from the Seine, which was swollen with melted snow. They had endured freak Level 3 snowstorms in January, and now, courtesy of El Niño, a seductive February warmth had forced half the population into tank tops and the cherry trees in Jardins du Luxembourg into early bloom.

Apprehensive, she paused to scan the courtyard.

Who was her unknown caller and why had she been picked, Aimée wondered.

She made out the shapes of the green garbage containers in the corner and edged closer to them, treading warily over the damp cobblestones. By the light of her pocket flashlight, she looked around for someone hiding in the courtyard.

“Allô? Anyone there?” she called.

There was no answer. No movement in the shadows. No one was concealed behind the gnarled pear tree encased by a circular metal grille that stood near the bins. Then something behind the containers moved.

She raised the Beretta, stepped closer, and took aim. A denim jacket with a collar embroidered with blue beads was wrapped around a bundle of some sort. The jacket trembled; a mewling sound came from it. She shook her head. A sick joke? Kittens? Had the roaming orange tabby that the concierge fed produced another litter? Like the one the concierge left scraps for in the rear garden of Notre Dame across the footbridge? She’d been stupid to take the telephone caller’s bait with her deadline looming! Most likely she’d been lured here by a rival, a competitor who knew what was at stake. Her fingers relaxed their grip.

She leaned down and parted the lapels of the beaded denim jacket. A tiny, pinched red face stared up at her.

A baby.

The baby’s eyes blinked; the oval mouth widened. Its cry wavered, echoing off the stone walls. She slipped her hands under the baby’s neck, wondering how to hold it. The head lolled back and she pulled it to her, cradling the infant in her arms, amazed at how light it was. No heavier than her laptop.

Pink mottled skin, a russet fuzz of hair. Yellow scallop-edged shirt. But no diaper. She peered closer. A girl, with the stump of a cylindrical, pinkish umbilical cord still attached. A newborn.

The cries mounted; the little mouth now wailing with all its might. She rocked the baby and the cries subsided.

Aimée looked around again, wondering why the mother had picked her, how she could entrust her baby to a stranger.

Tiens, she couldn’t take care of a baby. She was on deadline. She ran a computer security firm, dealt with viruses, deciphered encrypted code. She knew nothing about babies; she couldn’t take on such a responsibility. Half the time she missed Miles Davis’s appointment at the dog groomer. No one, no one who knew her, would peg her as maternal.