Death by Denim (6 page)

 

Ryan let go of my hand when we reached street level and slipped his arm around my waist. He leaned close again. “Try to look a little less miserable,” he said in a low voice. “People are beginning to stare.”

“Why don’t you tell me what’s going on,” I whispered back, “and then maybe I’ll
be
a little less miserable.”

He smiled at that, but whether it was real or for show, I hadn’t the slightest idea.

I tried to get my bearings as we walked. Judging from the boutiques and small cafés, we were in one of the older quarters, but I hadn’t been in Paris long enough to know which one. Buildings with ornate detailing sprouted up directly from the narrow cobblestone streets—no side-walks, no landscaping. The streets themselves wound and curved until I was completely turned around. Of course, maybe that’s what Ryan was counting on.

Finally, he stopped in front of the recessed entryway of one of the buildings. He gave me a quick once-over and then said, “Keep your head down.”

I did as I was told, but not before sneaking a quick peek at the entry in question. As with the windows above, the door was framed by elaborate molding that arched dramatically across the top. Along the right side of the door was a call box with a row of black buttons labeled with gold numbers. Above the box, a security camera pointed downward, presumably so that apartment owners could see who was ringing before they let them in. Which would be why Ryan wanted me to lower my head.

The door buzzed and Ryan opened it. He stood to the side and nodded toward the interior. “After you.”

Cast in shadow, the hallway inside looked like a prison cell. I hesitated.

“Aphra,” Ryan said. It sounded like a warning.

I stood my ground. “No. Not until you tell me what’s going on.”

For an instant a shadow passed over his face, just before the blank expression took over again. “We’ll talk about it inside, you have my word.” He swept a quick glance up the street. “Not here.”

“I just want to know what’s—”

Before I could react, his hand whipped out and grabbed my arm. He dragged me forward until our faces were literally centimeters from each other. This time, the sensation I got from his close proximity was far from pleasant. “Natalie is waiting for you,” he said through gritted teeth.

Why hadn’t he said so in the first place? A rush of relief swept over me and I allowed him to pull me inside. The door slammed heavily behind us.

The building didn’t have an elevator so we took the stairs. It was only a couple of flights up, Ryan told me as we climbed.

“We’re borrowing an apartment,” he explained. “Very temporarily.”

I nodded grimly, remembering how Mom and her partners had been “subletting” her place back in Seattle. Not for the first time, I wondered what happened to the owners when the Agency needed a place to set up shop.

In the hallway upstairs, cooking smells mingled with old-building mustiness and stale cigarette smoke. Ryan led the way down a long hallway lined on either side by dark, narrow doors. It was eerily silent except for a faint baby’s cry and the distant sound of someone practicing an intricate run on a piano. We stopped at a door with a brass 29 tacked beneath a matching peephole.

Ryan gave the door three sharp knocks, paused, and then knocked twice more. From inside came the sound of hurried footsteps and then the metallic click of locks being drawn.

The door cracked open an inch or two and then closed again. Another metallic sound—a security chain, I guessed—and then the door swung open. To my disappointment, it wasn’t my mom who stood there, but a tall redheaded woman in a stark black business-type suit. The look on her face was far from welcoming, but she motioned us inside, anyway.

“What took so long?” she snapped as she reset the series of locks on the door.

“She’d already gotten on the train,” Ryan said.

“Where’s my mom?” I asked.

“Aphra?”

I spun to find Mom crowding into the small entryway. She reached out for me and gathered me into her arms, holding me so tightly that I could barely breathe.

When she let me go, I turned to Ryan. “Now will you please tell me what’s going on?”

He exchanged a meaningful look with the red-haired lady. “I think we’d better sit down,” he said.

The redhead ushered us all into a tiny kitchen equipped with the smallest appliances I’d ever seen. Seriously. You couldn’t even fit a cookie sheet into the oven and the fridge looked like one of those little cube things you might put in a dorm room. The stainless-steel sink was about the size of something you’d find on an airplane, complete with a leaky faucet.

We settled onto uncomfortable metal filigree chairs around a small glass-topped table. Ryan clasped his hands as if he was about to pray and rested them on the table in front of him. He took a deep breath and inclined his head toward the redhead.

“This is Agent Janine Caraday.” He spoke directly to me. I supposed the introductions had already been made to my mom. “She works with the Paris Station.”

I nodded, confused. I thought no one at the Paris Station besides Lévêque knew we were there.

“She was hoping you and your mom could be of some assistance.”

“With what, exactly?”

“Lévêque sent me a message this morning,” Caraday said. “He arranged a meeting, but then he never showed.”

I looked to my mom, frowning. How much were we supposed to let on and to whom? “Lévêque? I’m not sure I—”

“Your mother has already confirmed that he was your contact,” Caraday cut in.

Was?
I didn’t like the sound of that. “What happened? Where is he?”

Ryan answered, almost apologetically. “Lévêque is dead.”

I felt like a hole opened beneath my chair. The blackness sucked and pulled at me. I flicked a look at Mom, and the grief on her face told me that she had accepted the news. I didn’t. I couldn’t. “What? No. He can’t be. He was . . . He wanted to meet with us. We just got his note and—”

Mom held up her hand to silence me and asked in a soft voice, “How did it happen? When?”

“They found him in the river this morning,” Ryan said.

The room tilted and I grasped the table for balance. We had just
been
with Lévêque that morning. He must have been killed right after he left us. I thought back to my premonition in the park and imagined Lévêque once again, sitting at a quiet table, sipping his coffee. This couldn’t be happening. Not again.

“We need your help,” Agent Caraday said.

It was a little late for help. At least for Lévêque. Besides, what could we possibly do? They already seemed to know more than we did.

“We believe his death is connected to his contact with you,” she continued. “He . . .” Her voice broke and she let her gaze stray to the window. She pressed her lips together. Hard. Finally, she spoke again. “Forgive me. Gérard Lévêque was a friend.”

“I’m very sorry,” my mom said gently. “He was a good man.”

“Yes, he was,” Caraday’s voice wasn’t soft and mournful anymore. She practically bit off each word.

Mom leaned forward, laying her hands on the table. “He sent an urgent note to the hotel this morning, asking me to meet him. I didn’t receive the note for several hours after it arrived. And now . . .” Her words trailed off and it took her a moment to find them again. “What can we do to help?”

Caraday didn’t hesitate. She stood and retrieved a boxy leather attaché case and brought it to the table. From the case, she withdrew three plastic evidence bags and laid them on the glass.

“These were found on his body.” She pushed forward a bag that contained deep blue strips of cloth that showed white in the frayed edges. Denim. “His hands and feet were bound with this. The same fabric was used as a gag.”

I stared at the bag, my stomach turning. The edges of the plastic were foggy with condensation. The denim was still wet. They must have collected the samples right after they pulled him from the river.

And it was about to get worse.

Caraday picked up another bag and removed about a dozen Polaroid photos. She fanned them onto the table and selected one that showed a close-up of a man’s wrist. The skin was gray except for a shadowed ribbon of purple punctuated by claret-colored scrapes. “These ligature marks indicate signs of struggle. Notice how the skin is rubbed raw here and here.”

She tapped the photo to indicate where we were supposed to look, but I couldn’t make myself focus on the picture at all.

“Here you will see the image from a computed tomography that shows sediment in his paranasal sinuses. We also found frothy liquid in his airway and fluid in his ears, all indicative of drowning.”

That meant Lévêque had been alive when his killer threw him into the river. Bile rose in my throat and I had to swallow hard to keep it down.

“You can see indications of struggle here,” she continued, pulling out a partial headshot of Lévêque, only you wouldn’t know it was him because the face was all puffy and ashen and the mouth was distorted, pulled into a perpetual grimace by a band of cloth stretched tight like a horse’s bit. “It appears he tried to bite through the cloth, but was unsuccessful. At first we assumed that the gag was simply that, a gag, but when we removed it, we found this.”

She slid the third baggie forward. It contained another piece of cloth, this one white—perhaps a handkerchief. Someone had written on it with black marker. “We’re hoping you can tell us what it means.”

My mom glanced up. “What is it?”

“A note we found stuffed in his mouth,” Caraday said matter-of-factly.

I could feel the blood drain from my face as my head went light.

Ryan slid a worried look to Caraday. “Maybe we shouldn’t do this with her in the room.”

His concern comforted and riled me at the same time. I wasn’t a baby. I had seen the effects of murder before. But this . . . I couldn’t shake the awful feeling that Lévêque had died solely because he had met with us that morning. Otherwise, why would Caraday be talking to us?

Ryan gave me what I thought was an encouraging nod. “If you want to wait in the other room . . .”

“No. I’m fine. Thanks.” I straightened in my seat, mimicking Caraday’s detachment. “What does the note say?” My voice shook only a little.

Caraday smoothed the edges of the plastic bag and read aloud: “
The fourth will find where they hide deliver the children lest he should ride 07060800
.”

I scrunched my brows in confusion. “What does it mean?”

Ryan shifted on his chair and looked to my mom. “We were hoping you could tell us.”

I glanced at Mom. She was studying the note with a perplexed look on her face.

“Clearly the note is a warning meant for you,” Caraday said impatiently. “You notice that Lévêque was not killed near his home or workplace, but near the park where you were supposed to meet.”

“I don’t understand. . . .” Mom said.

“Someone knew your plans! And they wanted us to know they knew. Every detail of the murder was planned to send a message. We even ran tests on the fabric. Vintage Italian denim.
Cimosati
selvedge. Used in the Parades collection last season.”

“Where was it manufactured?” The strain in Mom’s voice caught my attention. I turned to stare at her. Though her face revealed nothing, her hands were clasped so tightly together in her lap that her knuckles were turning white.

Caraday didn’t miss a beat. “Northern Italy. Lombardy region. Lakeside town by the name of Varese, just north of Milan. But the mill’s been closed for years.”

Mom closed her eyes for a long moment and drew a deep breath before speaking. “I know what the note means.”

W
e all sat silent; the only sound in the room was the steady
drip, drip, drip
of the leaky faucet. Mom stood up and broke away from the table, pacing across the room. She turned to face us. “The Mulo family have recently . . . relocated to Varese,” she said, her voice hollow.

I blinked at her, not wanting to comprehend the significance of that statement. If every detail of Lévêque’s murder had been planned to send a message, then using fabric made in the very city where the Mulos were hiding meant only one thing. They, also, had been found.

Caraday nodded slowly, turning the new information over in her head. She watched my mom with interest. “What do you make of the note?”

“Nothing that you haven’t already thought of, I’m sure.”

“Perhaps,” Caraday said, “but I’d like to hear your interpretation.”

Mom folded her arms and shrugged. “‘The fourth’ refers to the fourth horseman of the apocalypse, as described in the Book of Revelation. ‘I looked and there before was a pale horse,’” she quoted. “‘Its rider was named Death.’”

A shiver passed through me at those words, but Caraday only nodded. “And the numbers?”

“The numbers indicate a date and time. July sixth at 0800 military time—eight o’clock in the morning. Our deadline, perhaps.”