The American Girl (30 page)

AUGUST 12, 2015

I
n a white-tiled room in the belly of the hospital lay the intertwined bodies the police believed were Émilie and Raphael Blavette. The search team had been on the point of giving up when they made a wrong turn, turned down a tunnel, and found the wooden door that hid them from view. Behind it, in a dark chamber formed in the rock millions of years ago, the two bodies were huddled.

Hushed as medieval pilgrims traveling to a shrine, Valentin and I were paying the remains a visit. A subdued mood wrapped around us like smoke as we followed the pathologist through a plastic-chaired waiting room, where a clock ticked too loudly and people sat waiting for bad news.

“When we found them, the male was lying on the female's lap,” said Valentin. “She was bent over him just like a mother bends over her child. The first thing I thought of was the pietà in the church.”

In my mind's eye, I saw the statue he was talking about, the one that dominated the apse of the St. Roch church: Mary in her veil, leaning over the prone body of the dying Christ, His head bound in thorns.

“How long have these people been dead?”

The pathologist, who must have been listening to us talk, turned around. “More or less two weeks, so it fits the time frame. They are so decomposed they must be recognized from their teeth, though, and some of the skin it has fused together. They will be hard to separate.” His hands moved to the swinging doors of the morgue.

Time slowed. The hospital bustling around us felt somehow comic and awful and wholly inadequate all at once. Inside, it was too bright.

“We think they died from inhaling poison gas,” said the pathologist as he pushed the doors open. “It is produced naturally by the rocks there and with the door shut and bolted anyone trapped inside would die within hours.”

A cold, chemical smell hit my face. “But who would have shut it?”

Both men looked at me silently, then at each other, clearly struck by some unspoken thought. I blinked against the sudden blurriness in my eyes, hearing the subtle flick of the sheet in the pathologist's hands. There was no way to avoid seeing what the sheet revealed. Lit so brightly, the two bodies looked less like a pietà and more like some bloated, leathery sculpture. The eyes bulged. The teeth were bared. I looked down at the tiled floor, hearing the pathologist's words as if underwater.

“The male was naked when he died, though the female was clothed. We don't know why. There was a picnic blanket, wine, dried grapes, a radio.”

“As if they were having a party in there,” said Valentin darkly.

“Strange as it sounds,” said the pathologist with a chuckle.

I turned around and walked through the swinging doors. They'd seen this before, who knew how many times. They could do the coffin humor thing. I couldn't. My head spun with fragments of ideas and memories. The caves. Noémie. Quinn. The section from her blog when Raphael told her the history of Les Yeux in the seventeenth century: when a Blavette who was Witchfinder General decided to kill his family by shutting them inside that terrible chamber, adding a door to make sure they could not escape. Whoever these people were, they had died the same way.

The morgue door shushed closed behind me. On the way to reception I dialed Quinn's number. It went to voice mail. I hung up and tried again. Eventually I left her a message, begging her to call me back. In reception, the TV had lost its crowd of moths. I could see the image flickering on it now: a photo of Quinn and Noémie. Running under the photo was a request that anyone who saw them call the police. Not only was Quinn wanted for murder, but everyone thought she had kidnapped Noémie.

Everyone except for me.

AUGUST 12, 2015

E
vening fell and La Gorda drew the bon vivants close. In their black leathers and drainpipe jeans, they swarmed the closed doors, reminding me of those hot summer days when the queen ant flies and the melting world suddenly crawls with winged insects, biting, mating, hunting a crack in the sidewalk to hide in.

Police had been sent to the woods, Mas d'Or, and the Blavette house to search for the girls. I'd told Valentin what Noémie had told me about her father and Raphael's involvement in La Gorda, and though we had different views about recent developments, we'd gone to the club on a hunch—my hunch—that we might find some clue to their whereabouts inside.

We sat in the car, waiting for the crowd to thin. Valentin smoked. I tapped the dashboard, hoping to glimpse a flail of blond hair, a frightened face, to see Quinn and Noémie together and safe. Valentin pointed a pack of American Spirit at me. He looked weary, older.

“Light?” he asked.

“Sure.”

He flicked on the little yellow tongue of flame and I breathed the fire deeply.

“Did Noémie tell you what her father and brother did here?” he asked.

“Worked, I guess, though judging from Raphael's journal and all the other evidence, I would have said their occupation was drugs and girls.”

“I would not have called that evidence,” he said.

“It's more than you've got on Quinn.”

“There will be solid evidence soon, I think,” he said, staring out at the stream of club-going ants. “Then it will be official.” The way he said it made it all too clear: he thinks she did it.

I took a deep drag of American Spirit and swallowed back my anger. “Don't imagine I didn't notice the police following us around even before you found the bodies, and you had your eye on her before that. If you want to know what I think, you decided it was her right from the start and you've never even considered—”

“That is unfair, Molly,” he snapped. “If you wish to know what I feel, it is that you are believing Quinn instead of me, choosing her over me.”

“If I am, it's because you say dumb things like that.” I jettisoned my cigarette and closed the window.

“I am just worried about the trouble you seem to be getting yourself into. I only want to protect you, Molly.”

I turned to face him. “By lying to me. Is that how you protected me?”

He looked confused. “What do you mean?”

“About the address, the lockup? Why did you tell me there was nothing there . . . when . . . when there was everything there?” I spat out the words, feeling sick.

He wiped the sweat off his forehead. “Jesus. I did not even check it. I did not think you actually had anything.”

“What, because I'm not a cop? Because I'm a woman?”

“Don't be absurd.” He rolled down the window, angry now, lit another cigarette, and smoked hard. “She's not who you think she is. But I guess you'll only work that out when it's too late.”

We sat in angry silence, until, like some surreal music video, I saw a whip of blond hair in the crowd, a tight red dress I thought I recognized. Like Persephone sneaking back into hell, the blond girl pushed through the black-clad crowd and into the gaping maw of La Gorda. In the time it took Valentin to exhale again, I was out of the car and at the door, squeezing between punks and into the dark.

AUGUST 12, 2015

I
nside, white lights pulsed on red walls. Punk rock crackled from the back of the room. The club hyperventilated, its denizens parting and merging in front of me, swallowing the last glimpse of the girl in the red dress. I looked around to see Valentin trailing behind me. I could hear him—just—like some French spoken word track weaving into the music, telling me to slow down, to stop.

But I couldn't. She was just ahead of me, always just out of reach, Eurydice to my Orpheus as we sank into the depths of the club, drawn to the growl of the band, the black cage mesh layered over boudoir red on the back walls, the photos of long dead stars staring down in nonchalant judgment like gods.

We were at the back of the club. The singer's raw growl shook the ground from under me. Dancers thrashed their long dreadlocked hair, showed pale bellies, metal-spiked, wild arms like
mascaraed lashes. I saw them in strobe, saw her, the red of her dress iridescent under the black lights.

“Quinn!” I called to her. The music drowned my voice. I felt Valentin's hand on my arm, whirling me around to face him.

His face was angry, anxious. “Molly, stop,” he mouthed. “Open your eyes.”

“What do you mean?”

He spun me back around. “Look.”

A door opened in the trompe-l'oeil wall in front of the blond girl, a hidden one I hadn't even seen. A man poked his head around: Bruno, the stern-faced bouncer. The girl turned then; her lips moved in profile. It wasn't Quinn, after all. Bruno beckoned her in, the red door closing over her red dress like a hungry mouth. I turned to talk to Valentin, but he was moving towards the stage, the hidden door. He looked back a couple of times, his face jowly with consternation, signaling me to stay.

As soon as he was out of sight, I pressed towards the back of the club and the door I wasn't sure I should open. When I got there, I tried the handle. It opened onto a narrow corridor. I looked one way and the other, checking for Bruno, then closed the door carefully behind me and crept down to one end, where I tried the first promising-looking door. It was locked. I stopped for a moment. It was then that I heard voices coming from the opposite end of the corridor. Raised voices, arguing.

Walking as quietly as possible, I headed down to it, finding a door marked Cagibi. Through the crack in the hinge, I glimpsed Valentin and Séverin. They were having what sounded
like a stressful conversation in French. It was too rapid for me to translate. My fingers grappled for my phone, slid to my little translator app. I flicked on the video recorder, too, and pointed the phone at the door.

“You have found them, then?” Séverin said.

“You have known where they were all this time, Séverin,” Valentin spat. “You must have. You have been using that place to get rid of people for years.”

Séverin shrugged. “And you police, you have been turning a blind eye to it for years. Why are you surprised about it this time?”

“Because these were not your rivals or your clients . . . this was a normal family.” Valentin banged a fist on the table Séverin sat behind.

Séverin laughed. “There was
nothing
normal about that family, believe me.”

“They still did not deserve to die.”

“Listen,” said Séverin. “If you wish to protect bad people like that, simply offer them the same kind of arrangement you make for me. Though if I were you, I would not bother. Whatever has happened to them, I wasn't personally involved. In fact, you have been far more involved, stealing papers from this annoying journalist, following her, removing evidence from the house of the Blavettes. It seems you are in up to your neck.”

“If you say so,” said Valentin, “but these are only small things.
You
are the one who knew they were in that chamber.”

“Perhaps,” Séverin said amiably. “Who can say? For a long
time now, I have tried to pry my money out of Raphael Blavette's greedy hands.”

A hand closed over my mouth. I smelled cigarettes and meat and beer. I bit at the fingers but they just squeezed harder, yanking me against a barrel chest. My neck screamed pain. I saw spots of color. The man forced my arm around my back, pushing me into the storage room.

“This woman!” Séverin exclaimed. “She seems to follow on our heels like some small dog.”

“Let her go,” Valentin spat. “She has nothing to do with this.”

Séverin turned to him angrily. “If that is true, you should not have brought her in here. But I do not think you are telling the truth, or she would not be here.”

“Let her go,” Valentin shouted, banging the desk again. “Or you'll find the custom of silence around here will end very quickly.”

“Very well,” snapped Séverin. “Bruno, let the new Madame Valentin go.”

AUGUST 12, 2015

I
n the middle of the writhing crowd, I stood stunned, feeling everything I thought I knew fall away. Valentin had hold of my arm and was maneuvering me through the crowd. Valentin had been involved in this the whole time. No wonder he couldn't solve the case. Not couldn't. Wouldn't.

A dancer slammed into me. With all my strength, I flung Valentin towards her. She spun around and punched him, flooring him. He lay like a grounded fish, panting hard breaths while the DM-booted, spike-toed feet of headbangers jumped around him. Nobody offered to help him up, including me. I just let the world reel angrily around us until the song stopped and the feet fell silent.

“Molly . . .” he said, struggling to get up.

“I heard everything, Valentin,” I said, my foot poised to kick
him in the balls if he dared to make a move. “I understood everything.”

“Dieu . . .”
He turned his head away. His hand moved to his stomach and he groaned, breathing hard.

“You hurt? Because you deserve it,” I said. “I can't believe I let myself like you . . . love you even. It makes me feel sick.”

His eyes turned to me. “Be careful, Molly. You are in danger,” he said.

I let out a bitter laugh. “Do you really think there's anything you'll say that I'll believe?” I said. “All that time you were pretending to investigate, to actually find the Blavettes, and you knew all along. You knew and you were covering up for Séverin. Did you know about the girls, too?”

He shook his head. “No. Of course not . . .”

“I don't believe you.” I took him by the lapel and shook him. “Why d'you do it. Why'd you lie?”

“Tradition.” He half smiled. “Or perhaps habit. Same as you perhaps.”

“No,” I said, “I may be a jerk sometimes but there's a difference. I would never lie like that.”

I left him lying there and pushed my way through the crowd, shaking so hard I could barely walk straight. When I got outside, I sent the video and translation to Bill with a new subject line:
Police corruption in St. Roch area leads to Blavette murders
. I didn't know if that was the whole truth, but it would get his attention.

The moment the pinwheel stopped turning and the message
was sent, a text popped into my phone. I didn't recognize the number, but one of the words in it jumped out at me straightaway. Quinn.

Take out one thousand euros in notes and come to the Old Schoolhouse if you don'
t want Quinn to get hurt.