The Golem of Paris (9 page)

BOIS DE BOULOGNE

16EME ARRONDISSEMENT, PARIS, FRANCE

T
he
police scientifique
had begun to pack up, affording Capitaine Théo Breton his first opportunity to think without distraction. He crouched at the center of the clearing, unwarmed by his anorak and scarf, covering the cough that kept insisting up his throat, reading the trees and tasting the emotional nature of the scene, the hole in the canopy like the roof of a pagan temple.

From his left, from his right, the obscene stare of woman and child fell relentlessly upon him.

They were markedly underdressed, she in a ruffled white shirt and a black miniskirt, the opaque tops of her pantyhose peeking out. Oily black hair draped the left half of her face. A gunshot wound marred the center of her forehead. The boy wore jeans and a Hugo Lloris jersey, and he had the same wound, as though it was an inherited trait, a black cavity standing out against the rest of his skin, which had gone a violent, chemical blue.

It disturbed Breton to realize that he had already begun to conceive of them as mother and son.

A whistle: Dédé Vallot, waving to warn him: the prosecutor had arrived.

Breton stood, knees popping. He had a backache, an auger boring into his kidney. He coughed into his elbow, smiling at the dapper man waddling over to offer a soft hand.

The prosecutor said, “
Bonjour
, Théo.”

“Bonjour
,
monsieur le procureur.”

Breton did his duty, walking him around the crime scene. Animals had mucked the area up, and the ground had since refrozen, leaving a veneer of ice and no footprints. The man who had discovered the bodies, a pensioner hunting winter mushrooms, was hospitalized with a panic attack, unable to remember if he had touched anything.

The prosecutor’s name was Lambert. He was bundled up in a cashmere coat, like a spoiled child, his cheeks bright red. He said, “I must tell you, Théo
,
I’ve had complaints that your boys are not helping the situation. ‘Tramping around like a Mongol horde’ was how the criminalist put it.”

Breton said nothing. He had gotten adept at concealing displeasure. Smart
procureurs
knew their rightful place: behind a desk. They knew what they were and more importantly what they were not. Not cops, not psychologists, not television stars.

Lambert said, “You ought to keep them on a tighter leash.”

“I’ll bear it in mind.”

The
procureur
breathed on his hands. “Press been by?”

“Not yet.”

“This sort of thing, they can be helpful for identifying the victim.”

And for getting your fat face in the paper.
“Of course.”

“You’ve begun your canvass.”

“Martinez and Berline are out as we speak.”

“I suggest that they focus their efforts on the Allée de Longchamp.”

“Most of the prostitutes scattered before we could talk to them.”

“Then come back tonight, when they’ve returned,” Lambert said. “Someone will recognize her.”

“No one has so far,” Breton said.

“You said yourself: they ran off. Keep at it.”

“I’ve never known a prostitute to bring her son to work,” Breton said.

“Maybe she couldn’t find a babysitter. Ballistics?”

“Nothing yet.”

“The bullet might be embedded in the ground. Or in a tree.”

“Mm.”

“He must have picked up the casings.”

“Or it was a revolver,” Breton said.

“Yes, as I was going to say. You know, Théo, you might consider the possibility that they were killed elsewhere.”

Breton was getting tired of this guy. He was getting tired of everything. His insides churned, his mouth felt cottony, his skin raged with itches and areas of needlepoint sensitivity.

“They were definitely shot elsewhere,” he said. “There’s no spatter.”

“And,” Lambert said, warming to his theme, “there was more than one killer. You can’t move two bodies a great distance on your own.”

You couldn’t, you slob.

Then again, Breton had to admit that neither could he, these days.

Lambert squinted through the trees in the direction of the road. “They drove up, dragged them here, drove off. Twenty minutes, maximum.”

“Longer than that,” Breton said.

The prosecutor frowned at being contradicted. “What makes you say that.”

“It’s a hundred twenty meters over rough ground. The bodies were staged carefully.”

Lambert spiked a lawyer’s finger. “Which proves my earlier point. That amount of commotion, the whores must have noticed something. It’s inevitable.”

He bent, putting his face level with the woman’s. “Any sense of how long they’ve been here?”

Breton shook his head.

“They’re very well preserved.”

“It’s been cold.”

“No nibbling, I mean,” Lambert said, straightening. “Well. You may continue to investigate it
en flagrance
, for the moment, anyway. We’ll revisit the question once we’ve heard what the pathologist has to say.”

Breton nodded. That, at least, was decent news. Once the case became an official inquiry, he would lose control.

Lambert had turned to stare at the boy. “What is he? Five?”

Breton shook his head. He lacked a point of reference, but Pierrot Martinez, who had two boys of his own, had guessed six or seven. Registering the anxiety in his voice, Breton had taken pity and sent him out to canvass.

Lambert sighed.
“Monstrous,”
he said.

Inwardly, Breton agreed, but he found the
proc
’s stage-bound tone distasteful.

“Don’t you find it uncomfortable? Why doesn’t someone shut their eyes?”

Breton said, “You’re welcome to try.”

Lambert glanced at him uncertainly.

“He sliced their eyelids off,” Breton said.

With grim satisfaction, he observed the Prosecutor’s jowls twitch.

“Is that—really . . .” Lambert fumbled for a cigarette, fired up, sucked in a breath, offering the pack to Breton as an afterthought.

“No, thanks.”

“You quit? Since when?”

Breton did not answer.

Lambert took another deep drag. His fingers still shook a bit. “Anyway. It’s . . . But—you’re well, otherwise?”

“Superb,” Breton said.

“Busy.”

“Always.”

“I understand. There’s no need to be a hero.”

Breton looked at him.

Lambert said, “We can agree that the Crim is better equipped to handle this.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,
monsieur le procureur
.”

“Don’t be so sensitive, Théo.”

Breton said, “They’re busy at the Crim, too.”

“Yes, of course. Big cases. Media. I wouldn’t want you to feel overwhelmed.”

“That’s nice of you
.
”

“Of course. I only want to help.” The
procureur
checked his watch. “My appointment book is full.
Au revoir.
”

When he’d gone, Dédé Vallot ambled over, scratching his goatee. “That guy’s a twat.”

Breton clapped him on the arm. “Go back. Start checking missing persons.”

Vallot nodded and departed.

The attendants were getting ready to remove the bodies. Breton
watched them cover the woman and place her on a stretcher. He did not watch them deal with the boy.

•   •   •

A
N HOUR LATER
, as Breton was about to leave the scene, Lambert had his revenge.

“Bonjour, Capitaine.”

She offered her ID card, presumably to show him that she, too, was a captain. Her name was Odette Pelletier, and she was young, trim, nice looking, with dyed blond hair and slanted dark eyes that parsed him like a supermarket scanner.

“The
proc
sends his regards,” she said. “He’s asked me to assist you.”

As a rule, Breton adored women. He had known a fair number of them in his day. He fancied himself something of an expert. His own mother was a woman! But he didn’t want them on his team. They complicated the dynamic he’d worked so hard to cultivate: the coffee and smoke breaks, evenings at the cinema watching American and Japanese action movies, Saturdays at his cottage outside Auxerre, kicking around a flappy football.

Your boys
Lambert had called them. And so they were. Around the division they were known as
les Bretons
, as though he had personally sired every one of them.

As far as family went, that would have to do.

Odette Pelletier tossed back a shelf of hair. She was wearing a leather motorcycle jacket and black jeans, a bright green scarf tucked in at her throat, a crescent of paper-white skin visible at her neckline. Around her wrist was an odd, chunky bracelet made of matching green rubber. Breton wondered at it before grasping that it was one of those fitness trackers, the kind that buzzed at you when you’d
completed your daily death march of ten thousand steps. He felt a mild pulse of contempt.

“So,” she said. “What do I need to know?”

“We should meet later,” he said. “You’re not dressed for the cold.”

He even disliked her teeth when she smiled. Too white, like a print ad.

“I’ll survive,” she said.

As he had done for the
procureur
, Breton led her in orbit around the scene, pointing out the location of the bodies, now gone, and describing their positioning.

She asked to see his camera. He watched her thumb through, her face placid and emotionless. It was worse than he’d realized, far worse: she was one of those women who thought she was a man.

“Lambert feels we should be looking for a missing prostitute,” he said.

“And you feel differently.”

“The women don’t recognize her as one of their own.”

Pelletier peered at the camera. “She’s not dressed like a hooker.”

Now that she was agreeing with him, Breton felt compelled to adopt the opposite stance. “That depends on what you want in a hooker,” he said.

“Looks like a uniform to me. A maid, or something.”

“Some men like that,” he said.

“Do they.”

“It’s a type of fantasy.”

“If only I had you with me all the time,” she said. “To help me navigate the tangled jungle of the male mind.”

He smiled thinly.

“If you’d like,” she said, “I could have a word with the girls along
the Allée de Longchamp. They might be more forthcoming with a woman.”

“They’re not shy,” he said.

“Not while doing business. They might be in this situation.”

“My men know how to seduce a witness.”

She raised an eyebrow, returned to the camera.

“It’s personal,” she said. “Don’t you think?”

He shifted to see what she was looking at: the boy.

“The
proc
called them mother and son,” she said. “Do we know that for a fact?”

“DNA will tell us.”

She handed him the camera. “I’m not any happier about this arrangement than you are, Capitaine
.
”

“I doubt that.”

“Think whatever you want. It’s not a promotion for me.”

Wind blasted through the trees, shattering branches. Breton hunched into his anorak—a reflex he regretted when Pelletier did not flinch.

“Here,” she said.

She was offering him a tissue.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not,” she said. “You’ve got a nosebleed.”

His face had gone numb; he didn’t feel it running down his lip, but then it reached his mouth and he tasted the liverish tang. He grabbed the tissue and pressed it to his nose.

“Tilt your head back,” she said. “Pinch.”

“I know,” he said irritably.

“Maybe you want to step aside,” she said. “To avoid contaminating the scene.”

He gave a grunt but moved to the edge of the clearing. Thinking
that it was an accurate, if unsubtle, symbol. How long before he was completely marginalized?

Odette Pelletier said, “It’s the dryness. I get them, too.”

The blood was slowing to a trickle. Breton waved off a second tissue.

“Anyway, I’m here,” she said. “You may as well make the most of the opportunity. Or whatever it is to you.”

He gestured haphazardly at the acres of snow and dead wood. “Why don’t you take a walk? See what you can find. It’s a big park.”

“Very well.” Giving him a mock salute, she tramped off, a bright green anomaly in the monochrome. Then she vanished altogether, and Breton felt minimally better.

He pressed the pad of his thumb to his nose, checked for blood. Negative.

He cupped his hands and yelled to Sibony that he was heading out.

He hiked back through the trees and up the road to his unmarked. It would have been just as easy to walk from the commissariat, but he was exhausted.

He drove a kilometer south from the scene, pulling over near a barren copse. From the glove compartment he took a beige vinyl case with a zippered top. He opened it and shook out a disposable lighter and a plastic bag containing seven marijuana cigarettes.

He selected the fattest one and lit up. He adjusted the seat back, shut off the police radio, and switched on France Musique. They were broadcasting live from the Umbria Winter Jazz Festival. Abdullah Ibrahim was playing “Damara Blue.”

D
olly Duvall met Jacob at the door to her house, an outlier on an otherwise ramshackle block of 113th Street. Fresh paint along the trim; flower beds brimming with bright winter annuals to match her yellow floral-print skirt suit, which in turn matched yellow lizard-skin pumps.

“Please come in, Detective.”

Jacob stepped into the living room, where the same level of order prevailed, not a doily askew. Ceramic doodads lined up in height order. A wall tiled with photographs of children and grandchildren—Marquessa and TJ at its center.

“Punctual,” Dolly said. “I appreciate that.”

He’d arrived early in order to knock at noon on the dot. He was operating on stolen time. The weekend was over, his extracurricular activities—that’s what Marquessa and TJ were, a side project—eating into the massive task that awaited him at the archive.

It felt good to stick it to Mallick, however trivially.

Sinking into a champagne-colored brocade sofa, he accepted a cup of coffee, reaching for a slice of crumb cake out of politeness; then reaching for seconds.

Dolly regarded him with amusement. “You like my baking.”

“Yes, ma’am. Outstanding.”

“I’m glad. You should be, too. It’s a privilege not many people get to enjoy.”

“I appreciate it.” He wiped his mouth. “And, Mrs. Duvall, thanks for seeing me. I know revisiting this has to be tough.”

Dolly shifted, looked away, as if readying herself for an injection. “Go on, then.”

He opened his notebook. “First off, let me ask if there’s anything you’d like to share with me about Marquessa.”

She didn’t answer.

“Unless that’s too—”

“I’m thinking, Detective. It’s not easy to sum up your own child.”

Jacob nodded.

“She was my baby,” Dolly said. “I didn’t
baby
her, mind. Everyone else did, though. She had a way about her that made you want to sweep her up. Her brothers and sisters used to pass her back and forth like she was a rag doll. They called her Dolly Two, because she took after me.”

Dolly Duvall had smooth skin, regal bone structure, elegant calves—a glimpse of Marquessa’s uprooted future.

“How many in the family?” he asked.

“Five boys and four girls, and I raised them on my own after my husband passed. Marquessa was eighteen when she had TJ. He was like one of my own. Then they moved all the way across town.”

Dolly took a sip of coffee. “I taught my children to choose their own paths. My other girls live up the corner. My boys, too. Their children. Everyone comes over on Sundays.” She pressed her lips together. “Marquessa chose to leave.”

“Did you get to see them much?”

“I don’t drive.”

“I’m wondering why they moved. TJ’s father—”

Dolly cut him off with a shake of the head. “He never came around. I wouldn’t let him in the house.”

“Were he and Marquessa in touch?”

“I was given to believe that Thomas Sr. wasn’t considered a suspect.”

“No, ma’am, he’s not. I ask because romantic relationships can be relevant in different ways.”

She snorted. “There’s nothing romantic about a silly young girl falling for an older boy with a fancy car. I never understand about cars. A fellow comes into some money, that’s the first thing he runs out and spends it on, a new ride.”

Her scorn put
I don’t drive
in a new light—staking out the moral high ground.

She said, “I don’t see how he could’ve hurt her, though. He was incarcerated.”

People had friends. Nasty guys had nasty friends. He said nothing, though.

“No,” Dolly said, “I never will believe it was him. He was lazy and crude, but I never saw him show a temper.”

Having checked Thomas White Sr.’s record, Jacob tended to agree. A whole mess of drug offenses, but nothing violent. On top of that, both Ballard and Krikorian had worked the personal angle exhaustively. Still, Jacob knew that a neglected question could prove disastrous.

He said, “How come Marquessa moved away?”

“She couldn’t get what she wanted living here with me. I told her, ‘Fine, then, you go and get it your own self.’”

“What did she want?”

“Money. She always had an eye for nice things. She’d cut out pictures from her sisters’ fashion magazines and strut around the house. Everybody laughed and gave her attention. It was cute when she was four. Then she grew up, and we started rubbing up against each other. Do you know how you get to be after you raise nine kids?”

Jacob shook his head.

“Tired,” Dolly said. “You get bone-tired. Marquessa, I loved her, but she was an arguer, and I was done arguing. More coffee?”

“Please.”

She was gone longer than necessary, and when she came back from the kitchen, he noticed retouched lipstick.

“Marquessa talked about wanting to be an actress,” she said, sitting down. “I asked why she needed to move so far, and she told me she had to get close to the action.”

“Action, meaning . . . ?”

“Movie people, I guess. And she did work, I’ll grant her that. She never asked me for help. She paid her own bills.”

“Acting.”

“Mostly it was modeling. Nobody could say she wasn’t something to look at. That was the trouble.”

He waited in vain for her to expand. “Besides TJ’s father, were there men in her life?”

Dolly stiffened. “I’ve talked about all this before to those other detectives.”

“I know, ma’am.”

“Once she left my house, she could do as she pleased.”

“What about an agent? A manager?”

“She didn’t discuss it with me. Her sister might know. They were close. I can call her if you’d like.”

“Would you mind? It’d be helpful.”

Dolly left the room again, allowing him to sneak a third piece of coffee cake.

“Farrah will be by shortly,” Dolly said, returning. She glanced at the half-empty plate. “I can see you’ve got a healthy appetite. Take another.”

“Thanks. I really shouldn’t.”

“Well, you do what you do.”

He let her ease into talk of simpler things—the weather, gardening. Ten minutes later, the front door opened and a woman stepped in. Farrah Duvall was heavier than her sister but still striking. Three small boys scurried in behind her. They saw Dolly and came to attention.

“Hello, Gram.”

“Hello, Gram.”

“Hello, Gram.”

Dolly inspected them, fussed with them, gave them each a piece of cake on a napkin, and sent them to the backyard. Once they’d gone, she aimed a scowl at Farrah. “You didn’t say nothing about bringing them kids.”

“Mama. What’m I supposed to do? Leave them so they can destroy my house?”

Dolly shook her head. “Have some cake.”

“I’m not hungry,” Farrah said.

Dolly rolled her eyes.

Farrah sat in an armchair. “My mother said you asked about an agent,” she said, handing Jacob a wrinkled silver business card.

A
2
TALENT

A URL but nothing more. Commerce in the Internet age.

“Can I hang on to this?” he asked.

Farrah nodded.

“Thanks. Any idea what sort of modeling Marquessa did?”

“Clothing,” Dolly said. “I have some of her catalogs.”

“In the file it says she also did some hostessing,” he said.

“I guess,” Farrah said.

“We’re talking parties?” He was thinking of the limousine Jorge Alvarez had described. “Events?”

“She made sure I knew she was living the good life,” Dolly said. “Getting paid for standing around and looking nice. ‘That’s all I have to do, Mama. Look hot.’”

“Was she dating anyone?” he asked Farrah.

She gave a noncommittal shrug, but Jacob noticed her squirm. He wished Dolly would go outside to supervise the boys—he could hear them raising hell—so he could speak to Farrah unchaperoned. But when one of the boys began to wail, she sighed and got up and went to check.

Dolly said, “More cake?”

•   •   •

H
E LEFT WITH A FULL STOMACH
, but unsatisfied. Started the Honda, began to back out.

Farrah came hustling out of the house, carrying a plastic shopping bag.

He rolled down the window.

“She wants you to have the rest of the cake,” she said.

Despite himself, Jacob laughed. “Thanks.”

Farrah smiled nervously, shifting from foot to foot. “I don’t like to talk about it in front of my mom, cause it makes her upset. But a couple of months before it happened, Marquessa started acting strange.”

“Strange how?”

“Not strange,” Farrah said. “Erase that. More like—okay, she always liked to brag, this and that. But all of a sudden, she’s got bank to back it up. Don’t ask me where she got it from. I’d tell you if I knew.”

“A neighbor of hers told me a limo used to come pick her up,” Jacob said.

“Wouldn’t surprise me. She used to work those events, like you said. She told me about it. Like, they put her in a string bikini and she stands up on a table, sticking her butt out. I remember one time she brought me this bag they gave her, and it had a ton of stuff in it, gift certificates, and a three-hundred-dollar pair of headphones. And it was like a
nice
bag, not some piece of plastic. I still have it. The card I gave you, that was in there, too. I was like, ‘They just give you this? For
free
?’ She told me all the models get them. And I was like, ‘Damn, I need to lose me twenty-five pounds.’”

“Running with a rich crowd.”

“Absolutely.”

“Did she mention any names?”

“I asked her sometimes—like, did she know anybody famous? But she just got all high and mighty about it. ‘I can’t tell you that.’”

A breeze stirred. Farrah hugged herself. “I’m sorry. I know how I sound. I used to feel angry. I thought it was her fault she got herself into trouble. Now I’m just sad.”

Jacob nodded.

“My sister,” she began, before falling silent.

She said, “My sister had dignity. She expected people to treat her like a princess, so they did.”

A curtain parted in the front window. Dolly’s face appeared. She rapped sharply.

“I need to go,” Farrah said, and she double-timed it up the front walk.

Jacob held up the shopping bag, mouthed, “Thank you,” at the window.

Dolly let the curtain fall back into place.