Cara Black - Murder at the Lanterne Rouge

She grabbed the railing. Held on and righted herself.

“What’s so important? What are you doing here?” Prévost ground out his cigarette with his heel. His muffler whipped his face.

“You didn’t know my father in the force,” she said. “He was before your time. Liar, you didn’t owe him.”

The words came out before she could stop them. Before she could ask why he’d avoided her.

“So you came to accuse me?” He shook his head. “That’s what this is about? But true, oui , your father was before my time. He left the force disgraced.”

“Cleared years later, Prévost, due to me,” she said, the wind catching her words. “No thanks to the department.”

“I would have left in disgrace, too,” he said, “without a way to support my family. But I didn’t have a father with a detective agency to slide into.”

She held up her hand. “So you’re vindictive against my father?” Her jaw trembled. “My dead father? And for some strange reason—”

“He helped me,” Prévost interrupted. “We never met. Never even talked. But your father consented, years after his discharge, to return and verify to Internal Affairs that I wrote a report routed to his department. Crucial to his investigation.” Prévost shrugged. “He could have refused. But as one officer to another he did a hard thing. He did the right thing.”

Aimée’s jaw dropped.

“I kept my job thanks to him. You probably don’t understand,” Prévost said. “Or want to understand. I detailed men to watch you. For your safety.”

Her shoulders stiffened. She doubted that. Where were they when Samour’s killer stretched plastic over her head?

“Too convoluted for me,” she said. “I don’t understand.”

“The DST’s tailing you,” he said. “But I couldn’t be seen to be involved with you.”

Tell me what I don’t know, she almost said.

“I don’t know what in hell’s going on, but for your father’s sake I’ve tried to keep minders on you. To give the DST notice that other eyes watched. To keep their toes clean.”

That’s what all this was about, why she felt watched all the time—the DST and the flics ? Yet she’d still been attacked.

“Wait a minute. If the RG’s involved, it’s a pretty crowded field …”

“Let me finish. The RG set up the Chinatown surveillance six weeks ago. Six weeks of their ass in my face. Then the DST horn in.”

“Like your turf war’s my business, Prévost?”

Prévost’s coat whipped in the wind. He grabbed at his wool hat. “Look, I quit the cards, what you heard was a sting,” he said. “But your father would never let me repay him. Just passed on the word that he had to do the right thing. So I wanted to do the right thing, to help you.”

Prévost’s jaw shook. It meant a lot for him to say it.

“But the DST want me to lead them to Samour’s murderer,” she said. “It’s what Samour worked on, don’t you see?”

But this triggered a new thought. She shut her mouth. What if it flipped the other way around, in a ploy to lead them to her mother?

“Samour was a adult trade school teacher, for God’s sake.” Prévost shook his head. He was shaking. He’d felt an obligation, tried to help her. Even if he’d barked up the wrong tree.

“If it means so much, you knowing my father was a good man,” she said, “pay it back by protecting Meizi Wu. Can you do that for me?”

“A person of interest? She’s a homicide suspect.”

“More like a witness who ran away scared,” Aimée said. “You think she could shrink-wrap a man taller than herself?”

Prévost shrugged. “The investigation’s widened. I can’t talk about that. But no guarantee I’ll find her before the raid at nine P.M.”

Less than two hours. Right now she didn’t know how else to make good her promise to Meizi and protect her family in China.

“Play it so the snakehead Tso and Ching Wao hear Meizi’s in custody. On the deportation list back to China. You give me your word?”

“Then consider your father repaid.”

“Deal.” She smiled. “I promised you Clodo’s cell phone in return, didn’t I? Rumor goes he picked this up near Samour’s body. That’s why he was pushed in front of the Métro.”

She put the phone into a surprised Prévost’s gloved hand.

Prévost’s hat flew off in the wind. Like a fluttering black crow dancing over the slanted rooftops. They both watched it until it disappeared.

“Clodo didn’t make it.”

Sad. “That’s why you need this to find the killer, Prévost. This should help.”

“So you just happened to tap into the homeless network?”

“ Mais non , I just asked my weatherman for help.”

Sunday, 7:30 P.M.

WITH THE RAID less than two hours away, and no answer on René’s phone or word from Meizi, she turned the corner heading to Pascal’s atelier. At least she’d get Saj started on isolating sounds in the microcassette recording. One step closer to finding the killer.

Her phone vibrated in her pocket. She looked at the incoming number. Unknown.

Her hope rose. If this was Meizi on the pay-as-you-go phone, she could give her the specifics about the raid, what disinformation to feed Tso. Assure her that her friends and family were safe.

“Meizi?” she said.

A man’s throat cleared. “You gave me your card.”

She recognized Cho from the metal store. “Monsieur Cho?”

“I think the symbols in the diagram …” He paused, choosing his words.

“ Oui , go on.”

“I think they represent a fiber-optic cable, one like I read about.”

“And you’re telling me now?”

“No repeaters, which would give it very high bandwidth. Triple what’s in use right now.”

What did that mean? “So you’re saying what?”

“A pipe dream so far, but single fiber-optic cables like these could stretch the length of the Atlantic without a relay system.”

“That’s a good thing?”

“Revolutionary.” Another pause. “The girl showed it to me.”

“A girl?” She stepped back and bumped into the dripping wall. “Wait a minute, you mean the diagram I showed you …”

“Not that. Another one. The girl didn’t know what to do with it. She was afraid.”

“What does she look like, Monsieur Cho?”

“She found this by accident in the sweatshirts she sewed. The dead man put them in her pile.” He went on to describe Meizi. “She didn’t realize until the other night.”

“And you didn’t tell me?” There was silence on the other end. “Where’s the diagram, Monsieur Cho?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who else knows?”

“No one.” Pause. “I’m telling you because Monsieur Colles helped me. And I think you’re the only one who can protect her.”

“Why?”

“Tso’s men are on the streets looking for her.”

IN THE TOWER, she handed Saj the microcassete. “Can you clean this up and try isolating a voice from the background sounds?” Tired, her shoulders heavy, she stood in Pascal’s tower atelier. “It’s a garbled recording from either Samour’s or the killer’s phone. We need to hear it.”

“René’s grabbing a scanner at the office,” Saj said, sitting up and punching his cell phone. “I’ll tell him to pick up a sound-tracking program.”

While he did that, she scanned the laptop screens. “But that was on Coulade’s screen saver.” She cleared the papers and diagrams aside on the trestle table.

“Samour used the trebuchet picture for his screen saver,” Saj said. “Hiding his message under multiple layers of encryption. See how the computer assigns every pixel three numeric values? They correspond to the amount of red, green, or blue in the color the pixel displays. By changing those values by a shade, Pascal hid the ones and zeroes of computerese in the picture’s pixel numbers, but without altering the picture’s appearance.”