Murder in the Latin Quarter (19 page)

Thursday Evening

AIMÉE RAN UP the winding street in the pelting rain. Blocks away from the Cabinet de Curiositiés, she noticed an open grocery and ducked inside. Shaking and wet, her heart thumping, she joined the line to purchase an umbrella.

Huby’s last words played over again in her mind: he hadn’t gotten her messages, he wanted to meet, then his nervous manner as he put off their meeting. She remembered his grandfather’s words about badgering, and phone calls. Perhaps Huby hadn’t leaped from that window, he’d been pushed!

“Ten francs, Mademoiselle,” said the smiling woman at the register.

“Merci.”
Aimée paid, took the umbrella, and went back into the street.

Now she’d never know what had changed Huby’s mind. Or how Benoît’s work was involved. But, then again, Dr. Severat might know.

Shielding herself from the rain with the umbrella, she reached the Ecole Normale Supérieure five minutes later. She shook the umbrella and stepped inside.

“Where do you think you’re going?” said an evening guard in the lobby of the laboratory wing.

“Bonsoir,
Monsieur. The lab on rue Buffon’s flooded. I believe Dr. Severat’s working here.”

He snapped his fingers. “Your ID?”

She flashed her Sorbonne student ID card, covering the date with her thumb.

“Not so fast.” He stared at it. “Your card has expired. It’s not even from the ENS.”

She slapped her forehead. “Silly me, my other one’s—”

“At home?” said the guard. “Then you’ll have to go get it, won’t you?”

Several people in white lab coats were conferring near the chipped pillars. She noticed a woman among them, the only one: Dr. Severat, standing deep in conversation, holding a briefcase. Her hair was wet; a wet raincoat hung over her arm, dripping onto the floor.

“But there’s Dr. Severat,” Aimée said. “I have to speak to her.”

“Regulations forbid entry without a proper ID,” he said, crossing his arms over his stocky chest.

The group was walking away.

“Dr. Severat,” Aimée called out.

No response. And then Aimée remembered Severat was hard of hearing.

“I’m afraid you’ll need to leave, Mademoiselle.”

“Dr. Severat!” she called out again, more loudly.

One of the men tugged Dr. Severat’s arm and pointed to Aimée.

Aimée waved her arm. A moment later, Dr. Severat approached, her eyebrows raised.

“Sorry that she’s bothered you, Doctor,” the guard said, gripping Aimée’s arm. “I’ll escort her out.”

Aimée hoped Dr. Severat would recognize her.

“Non,
Pascal,” Dr. Severat said. “She’s with Dr. Rady’s department. It’s all right.”

The guard released Aimée’s arm and let her pass.

“I’m en route to a department meeting,” Dr. Severat said. “I’ve already helped you all I could, Mademoiselle.”

At least she’d remembered her. Had word of Huby’s death reached the department yet?

“Then you know?”

“Know what? Listen, I’m sorry, but—”

“Benoît’s assistant, Huby, promised to furnish me with some of the results of his work,” Aimée interupted. “Some samples to give to the next professor. But they told me he’s dead. What’s happened?”

Dr. Severart stared at the group of waiting men. Then back at Aimée. “No wonder they’ve called an emergency meeting! I have to go.”

“I’m in trouble if I don’t get those samples.”

“
You,
Mademoiselle?” Dr. Severat adjusted the flesh-colored knob in her ear and leaned forward. “What about
us?
Who’s next?”

* * *

AIMÉE PUSHED THE salad on her plate around with a fork. She was in a cheap student canteen, one of many in the
quartier.
Garlic aromas and steam rose from the hot platters amid the clatter of trays and conversation. She sat at the long crowded refectory table, a
pichet
of rosé and a half-finished
plat du jour
in front of her, trying to make sense of what had happened.

Three days ago, Mireille, claiming to be her sister, had appeared at her office door, asking for help. She’d discovered the ENS professor who’d sheltered Mireille, murdered. The lab guard had been pushed in front of a car near the Pantheon. And now the professor’s part-time assistant was dead. An academic scandal? But with Benoît’s connection to Hydrolis, Castaing’s firm, and the rumors Martine had passed on about the World Bank and privatization, she doubted that it was as contained as that.

“Alors,
going to answer it?” A pockmark-faced student jerked his thumb at her cell phone resting by her plate. Lost in thought, she hadn’t heard it ringing.

“Oui?
”

“We’ve been getting strange faxes, Aimée,” René said.

“I know.”

“Then you want to explain them?” René said.

She couldn’t stop marshaling her thoughts. Did the person who had murdered Benoît assume that Mireille was his accomplice? Her mind went back to her conversation in the lab with Huby. He had known that Mireille was staying in the gatehouse.

“Aimée, are you there?” René asked angrily. “Don’t pretend you can’t hear me. Is this some kind of kinky hide-and-seek?”

She snapped to attention. “What?”

“The last fax says ‘If you want to see her again look in the quarry under Hôpital Val de Grâce.’”

The hair on the back of her neck rose. The traffickers must be holding Mireille in the quarry under the military hospital, a popular cataphile haunt.

“How long ago did you get this message, René?”

“You mean you don’t know? Aren’t you working at home?”

Her mobile fax machine was in the room at the Collège des Irlandais.

“Please, René, check the time.”

“Where are you?”

She pushed her plate away and grabbed her bag. “I’ve just finished dinner.”

“The fax came an hour ago.”

Already an hour had passed!

“What’s going on, Aimée?”

No time to give a long explanation. “Later, René.”

“But we’ve got a report due—”

“I’m on it.” Still holding the phone to her ear, she raced up the canteen steps and searched for a taxi on rue Lhommond.

“Let me come by and we’ll go over it together.”

She couldn’t involve him any more. He’d already been injured because of her.

A taxi’s blue light signaled that it was free. She raised her arm to hail it. “I’ll call you later, René.” She clicked off before he could protest and jumped into the back seat.

“Hôpital Val de Grâce, emergency entrance,” she said.

“In a hurry, eh?” said the taxi driver.

“You could say that.”

Her Beretta was sitting in her hall drawer. All she had with her was her Swiss Army knife. And a plan.

“Fifty francs if we get there in under ten minutes.”

The taxi driver thrust the meter handle upright. “Hold on.”

* * *

AIMÉE PUSHED OPEN the Emergency Wing swinging door of Hôpital Val de Grâce and found herself in an institutional green-tiled corridor, smelling of antiseptic under fluorescent lights. She hated these places.

An orderly rushed past, pushing a gurney to the ambulance bay. Nurses scurried by, opening plastic curtains to reveal a moaning patient. An ordered chaos reigned.

“Lucien?”

Lucien looked up from the chart he was filling out in the emergency room near the triage station. His blond curls, round cheeks, and athletic build had earned him the nick-name “Cherub” in her anatomy class. He stuck a pen in the shirt lapel of his blue scrubs. “Believe it or not, there’s a method to our madness.”

She’d phoned Lucien from the taxi, and he’d agreed to take her down to the quarry at the end of his shift. But he didn’t look prepared for the quarries. A sinking feeling engulfed her.

“Ready?”

“Sorry, they pulled me for the next shift.” Lucien shrugged. “Ambulances routed us the overflow casualties from a twenty-car pileup on the
periphérique.
A mess. And they’re coming in any minute.”

More than an hour had passed since the fax. She’d have to forget her plan; now she had no help. No backup. She’d have to do this herself.

“Where’s the entrance, Lucien?”

Lucien shook his head; his curls bobbed. “It’s not safe without a guide or proper equipment. The tunnels run on for kilometers, there are dead-ends, sinkholes, cave-ins—”

“Just tell me, Lucien.”

“What’s your rush? I’m off tomorrow. We’ll go then. You need a guide.”

“Too late. I can do this alone.”

“You’re impatient, as always, Aimée,” Lucien said. “What’s this woman to you, anyway?”

“No time to explain.”

His brow creased. “She’s one of the illegals, right?”

“Trust me, Lucien. Just point me to the tunnel entrance and the quarries.”

Lucien eyed her outfit. “Dressed like that? No chance. If you got lost, there’s no telling how long you’d wander without water or food. Forget it, Aimée.”

“Someone tried to shoot her last night,” Aimée said. “They’re holding her down there. And she’s my sister.”

He dropped his pen.

Aimée bent and picked it up.

“You never told me. . . .”

“I didn’t know.” She rubbed her forehead. “I just discovered it myself. Long story. Please, Lucien. Don’t you have some kind of map?”

He averted his eyes. Of
course
he had a map.

“But, Aimée, even with a map. . . .” He rocked on his feet. “If the hospital administration knew, I’d get in trouble. They’re tightening security.”

“But we used to go to parties in the catacombs after class, remember? People go down there all the time to party. I’ll fol-low your map.”

It couldn’t be that tough! At least, she hoped not.

“Can’t you help me, Lucien?”

Lucien glanced around the tiled hall.

“I shouldn’t do this.” Lucien leaned forward and pulled out a prescription pad. “The entrance to the tunnel underneath the hospital’s vacant wing is here.” He drew a diagram on the prescription pad. Made an X. “It’s the quickest way. The tunnel leads to the limestone quarry. Don’t tell anyone or let anyone see you. Here’s my map.” He pulled out a much-folded paper. “Stay on the marked routes. And don’t lose this.”

A maze of X’s and zigzagging lines confronted Aimée.

“Write messages on the walls along the way.” He pressed something cylindrical into her hand. A stick of chalk. “Always preface it with ‘Gorgo,’ then your message.”

“But why?”

“That’s my cataphile moniker. Otherwise it will be erased. There are codes of behavior, you know,” Lucien said, grabbing a clipboard. “By the way, my friend heard of some illegals near the lake.”

“A lake?”

“Feeding the reservoir. If you hit the Medici aqueduct, you’ve gone too far. Keep alert for the IGC.”

“Who?”

“IGC, the
cataflics.
They’re clamping down now, after some newspaper article made them a laughingstock. If you’re caught, it means a night in the Prefecture.”

Maybe she could use that to her advantage. She could point the
cataflics
to the traffickers and help Mireille escape while they were occupied with the cops. She didn’t know how, exactly, but she’d figure it out on the way. She squared her shoulders.

“Just remember, any operational exit is marked by an orange day-glow circle.”

“You mean I can’t get out back here?”

“Not if you get lost, or if the
cataflics
show up.”

An orderly tugged at Lucien’s sleeve. “Doctor, a bleeder in three!”

Lucien said “Got to go.” He gestured to her outfit. “But you need boots, overalls. . . .”

And here she was, wearing a beaded Schiaparelli jacket! “Can I grab some scrubs?”

Lucien pointed to a sign: SURGERY DRESSING ROOM. He paused, leaned forward, and whispered, “Be careful.”

AIMÉE KEPT TO the shadows in the weed-choked court-yard of the vacant wing. The light of a fingernail of a moon was reflected by tall jagged broken glass windows. She inserted the long iron key into the door’s old-fashioned lock, left it under the mat, and entered the abandoned operating theater.

A rusted metal gurney stood to one side. Medical charts of skeletal systems curled from the walls. She was in a rotunda-like space with a circular balcony. This was the old military teaching-hospital section. She remembered hearing of secret surgeries performed here to save Mitterand’s life. They hadn’t worked. She shivered. If the ghost of the Socialist president, the darling of the rich leftists, hovered, she wanted no part of it.

Behind the suction machine, lime-green graffiti covered a crumbling hole in the wall. The entrance. She felt currents of cool air tinged with the smell of limestone. As she felt her way along the wall, her hands became covered with the flaking chalky stone. Subterranean Paris was connected in a vast web of more than four hundred kilometers of tunnels, sewers, quarries, and catacombs. The perfect place to hide.

She took out her penlight. The narrow yellow beam traced walls bearing ancient graffiti. The date 1775 was carved in the limestone. She studied Lucien’s map, figuring out a route through the maze of tunnels. If she veered left. . . .

A low growl, and a dog’s bark made her jump almost out of her skin. She backed up, dropping the penlight. Shaking, she searched the gritty beaten earth, miraculously found it, and shone the beam ahead of her. Instead of a growling canine, the light revealed a pair of motorcycle boots. She lifted the penlight higher to see leopard-print skin-tight leggings and a face with kohled eyes wreathed by long black hair. The tight bustier didn’t quite hide the hair on the man’s chest.

“You have a reservation?” he asked formally.

“Do I need one?” The snarls and barks were louder now. “Call your dog off, please.” Her voice trembled.

He blocked her way. “Without a reservation, you’ll have to turn around—”

She said the first thing that came in her mind. “Gorgo made it. I forgot.”

He took a pencil from behind his ear, checked the book in his hand. A massive mountain of a man? Woman? Had Aimée stumbled into a gender-bender affair?

“Aaah, the cataphile. No reservation required, then. Welcome.”