Murder in the Bastille Read Online Free PDF

Bastille. Hold on, I’ll transfer your call.”
    For someone approaching retirement, she thought, Morbier moved around the force a lot. He’d cut back his hours to spend more time with his grandson Marc . . . or so he said. But she wondered if his back gave him more trouble than he let on.
    “Commissariat Principal at Place Léon Blum,” he answered.
    “Back on the beat, Morbier? Hitting the cobblestones again?”
    She heard him suck in his breath. In her mind she saw him—his mismatched socks, suspenders, and shock of thick salt-and-pepper hair. She wondered if he’d kept off the weight he’d lost over the summer and if he still wore patches to help him stop smoking.
    “They call it special detail, Leduc.”
    That meant several things. Damage control was one of them. Since he was working out of the Bastille area, was he involved with the serial killer . . . had she found what she was looking for?
    “Look Morbier, I need to know about the victims and anything else you feel like sharing about the Bastille serial murders.”
    “Leduc, I’m busy.”
    Maybe he didn’t know she’d been attacked.
    “Something tells me you have the information I need.”
    “What’s it to you if I do, Leduc?” he said. She heard a metallic ratcheting, as if he had turned in an unoiled swivel chair.
    Something in his voice told her he knew.
    “Leduc, I just got in,” he said. “I haven’t had time to read the update file. Or finish my espresso.”
    She sensed another presence in her hospital room. Something she couldn’t explain. The hair stood on the back of her neck. Wariness overtook her; she covered the phone with her hand.
    “Who’s there?”
    No answer. And then footsteps moved away. Was it a nurse, the doctor, or a volunteer?
    Or . . . ? That tar smell near the broom closet? For an awful moment she was struck by the thought of the attacker, lurking, waiting to finish his task. It would be so easy to don a uniform, wear a mask, and search the corridors. Her heart clenched with fear. She took a deep breath.
    “Call me curious, Morbier,” she said. “Please, we need to talk.”
    “I’m tied up,” he said. “Staff meeting in five minutes. The unit has to come up with some answers. And I still haven’t read the file.”
    “Answers to why Patrick Vaduz was released due to incorrect procedure? And why a woman got murdered in the passage? Well France 2 news put it together and blamed the bungling on . . .”
    “Got to go,” Morbier interrupted. In the background, chairs scraped the floor, murmuring voices rose.
    “But they’re wrong. I don’t think Vaduz killed that woman,” she said. “Meet me in room 312, l’hôpital Quinzes-Vingts.”
    “Investigating something?” he said. “Leave the serial killers to us, Leduc. Stick to computers.”
    “I can’t, it’s personal.” She wanted to confront him face to face.
    Morbier’s voice betrayed no surprise. “Leduc, you know hospitals bother me.”
    True. He hadn’t even come to see her after the terrorist bombing in Place Vendôme, the one that killed her father and put her in the burn unit. She’d been lucky; the skin graft on her palm was the only visible scar.
    “I can help you,” she said, lowering her voice. “But not over the phone.”
    “ Tiens! We know Patric Vaduz did it.”
    She had to make Morbier interested enough to come. This needed to be said in person. “Well, there’s a witness who thinks otherwise.”
    A siren wailed below Aimée’s window as an ambulance pulled into the hospital courtyard.
    “So this witness has proof?”
    She heard an edge of interest in his voice.
    “You might say living proof.”

Wednesday Noon
    “ ATTENTION, PETIT !” SHOUTED A perspiring delivery man wheeling a dolly loaded with beer crates. “Didn’t see you.”
    René, carrying Aimée’s bag, sidestepped the man on the pavement. He ignored the stares from passersby in rue Fau-bourg St-Antoine. Born a dwarf, now just four feet tall, he was used to