Cara Black: Murder at the Lanterne Rouge

“Someone reported this incident,” the pompier medic shouted, his blue anorak crunching with snow. “Was that you?”

Aimée shook her head.

His colleague brushed past her with his resuscitator equipment. He pulled on latex gloves, took out clippers and snipped the plastic away, revealing that the man’s wrists were bound behind him. The medic felt the man’s carotid artery. A formality. He shook his head.

A shout erupted. A bedraggled figure came down a side staircase shaking his fist. He wore a matted fur coat, a sleep mask on his forehead, and orange slippers. “I’m trying to sleep.”

Aimée hadn’t noticed the crumbling stairs, the bricked-up windows. Or the Permis de Demolir sign on the building. Condemned.

“How many times have we told you to stay in the shelter, Clodo?” said the second medic.

“They took my wine,” the homeless man said in a rasping voice.

She wondered why the rats hadn’t chewed him, too. “Did you hear anything? Or see this man attacked, Clodo?”

“Every night I hear the angels sing. Then the devils come. Like you.” A loud burp.

“ Clochards .” The medic shrugged. “Guess this is one for the flics .” His partner packed away the resuscitator.

“You’re going to leave him like that?” René shivered beside her in the footprinted snow. Aimée scanned the ground, but the wallet with Meizi’s picture had disappeared.

“ Alors , it’s not like he’s going to spoil in the heat.” The words came from an arriving blue-uniformed flic with a roll of crime-scene tape. “What’s this kid doing here?”

René blinked. His snowflaked eyelashes quivered. He hated being mistaken for a child.

“Need your eyes checked?” Aimée glared at the flic .

The flic gestured to his partner, who was approaching from the street. Behind him she saw the blue van. The crime-scene unit piled out.

“You two,” said the flic , “in the van for questioning.”

AT THE REAR counter in nearby Café des Arts et Métiers, Aimée squeezed René’s arm. On edge, she tapped her stiletto boot heel on the mosaic tile. She wanted to discover where the hell Meizi had disappeared to. And get René home.

Still, if they had to be questioned, the café beat the frigid police van. They’d allowed her to clean up in the café’s WC. Two blocks from the scene of the murder, in the warm café by the Métro station, felt like another world.

Several flics and plainclothes hunched over espresso at the counter. Their wet coats dripped on the floor. Little pools formed at their feet among scattered sugar wrappers and cigarette butts. Odd, so many flics here at this hour.

A clearing throat interrupted her thoughts. “Mademoiselle Leduc, you were saying …”

“My partner’s in shock.” Aimée turned to Prévost, the chef de groupe of the Police Judiciaire. Late thirties, stocky and sallow-faced, a permanent downturn to his thin lips. He stood ramrod straight, his close-set eyes not unlike those of the rat that had gnawed the corpse.

“This is a formality, you said,” she reminded him. “My partner’s got nothing to hide.”

Prévost tilted his head and leaned in. She could feel his hot breath on her face. “Do you?”

She slammed her hand on the counter, and Prévost flew back. “Just the run in my stocking,” she said.

“Witnesses need to cooperate, Mademoiselle.”

Her taxes paid his salary and she didn’t care for his attitude. “Witnesses? Talk to whoever called this in. There was a whole crowd in the walkway before we got there.”

“Like usual in Chinatown, everyone’s disappeared.”

Disappeared?

Aimée had an uneasy feeling Prévost had defaulted to them as suspects. Meizi’s photo in Samour’s wallet didn’t make her feel any better. Best to go to the head honcho. “I want to speak with le Proc.” She straightened, crossing her arms.

Le Proc, Procureur de la République , the investigating magistrate, attended crime scenes and referred the investigations either to the local Police Judiciaire or Brigade Criminelle, the elite homicide branch. Murder usually went to la Crim . But before it got shoved on someone’s desk tomorrow, Aimée would prefer to explain her presence at the scene of the crime to le Proc .

“We go by chain of command,” Prévost said, managing to look bored and tired at the same time.

“I know,” she said. “My father was a flic . He worked at the commissariat at Place Baudoyer.”

“ Et voilà , you know procedure. And I know your relationship with Commissaire Morbier. I wrote it all down,” he said with a little yawn, a hooded look behind his eyes. “Le Proc’s come and gone.”

Great. Time to get René home. Chilled and pale, he slumped on a high stool.

She reached for her bag.

“I’m afraid there’s a few more things to clear up.” Prévost consulted his notebook. “Convenient, non , Monsieur Friant, parking your car near where the body was found? How do you explain that?”

Aimée leaned forward. “ Alors , ever tried to park here at night?”

“Where’s the receipt for your meal at Chez Chun?”

She’d paid cash and run like everyone else. But she felt in her damp coat pocket. The jewelry box.

Prévost’s mouth turned down. “You do have a receipt, don’t you?”

“ Phfft . I paid cash.”

René averted his eyes.

Prévost balled a sugar wrapper and downed his espresso.

Aimée shoved her empty demitasse across the counter. “Why are you treating us like suspects? Like we told you—”

“Dining with Madame and Monsieur Wu, a nice meal, Monsieur Friant,” Prévost interrupted. “Know them well, do you?”

Egging René on, Aimée thought. Pursuing the wrong link, while he should be trying to find the murderer. Typical.

René shook his head.

Prévost jerked his chin toward Aimée. “And you, Mademoiselle?”

“I met them once. Tonight.”

“But I’m disappointed.” Prévost’s brows furrowed. “Weren’t you going to tell me about this birthday celebration for Meizi Wu?”

Aimée stiffened. They’d questioned the waitress in the resto . How much did Prévost know?

“We’d like to talk with her,” Prévost said.

Did he regard Meizi as a suspect? She squeezed René’s thigh under the counter. René caught her look.

“So would I,” René said, his lips compressed. “ Alors , during the soup course Meizi took a phone call and left.”

“So you know this man, the victim?” Prévost was quick.

René’s large green eyes widened. “But I never saw that poor man before.”

“Didn’t Meizi talk about him? His mistress, lover?”

Aimée’s hands trembled. The flics had found the wallet and alerted Prévost. Or he was fishing for information.

“What?” René glared. “A man wrapped in plastic doesn’t point to an affair of the heart.” René’s eyes filled with pain, and something else.

“But who’s the victim?” Aimée asked. His library card had told her his name and that he’d lived in the quartier. She wanted more from Prévost.

Prévost ignored her question. “Where did the Wus go, Monsieur Friant?”

René shook his head. “Like I told you, I don’t know.”

“Shouldn’t you question the woman from the tofu shop, the people in apartments overlooking the area, the shop owners?” Aimée shook her head. “Someone noticed. Called it in.”

A long-suffering look filled Prévost’s eyes. “We’re talking to all persons of interest.”

Wasting time, more like it.