Murder in the Latin Quarter Read Online Free PDF Page B

know the location of her office?
    Needing information, she punched in the number for Morbier, her godfather and a Police Commissaire. She heard a series of clicks, then a low buzz. She’d called on his direct line at the Commissariat.
    “Group R,” answered a disembodied voice.
    She didn’t like this. Morbier worked one day a week in Group R at the Brigade Criminelle. He’d never explained what he did there.
    “Commissaire Morbier?”
    “Unavailable. You have a message?”
    She hung up before the system could trace the call. At least she hoped the tracer still needed fifteen seconds. Not smart, considering that she’d fled a murder scene. Talking to Morbier person to person was one thing, leaving a message that could raise questions another.
    She debated calling her father’s former police colleague, Nenert, in the robbery detail. Nenert liked to talk over a glass of wine; after several he grew voluble and disregarded regulations and confidentiality. If he didn’t know an answer, he’d find out.
    “Nenert’s retired,” said a woman’s voice, too pert for this time of the morning. “What’s this regarding?”
    She thought quickly. “A robbery on rue Buffon,” she said, “but this morning someone said a murder had occurred. . . .”
    “You have information, Mademoiselle?”
    ”The murder alarmed me, I live nearby,” she said. “Who—?”
    “The Brigade Criminelle handles homicide.”
    She knew that. And no one in the Brigade would reveal a word.
    She hung up and scanned this morning’s Le Parisien. The continuing investigation into Diana’s death filled most of the front section, along with the annual article warning mush-room hunters taking to the forests this season to beware of the poisonous varieties. The sidebar listed the past ten years’ statistics as to deaths due to poisoned mushrooms, proving that few paid attention.
    She locked the office door, sat down to work, and slipped off her heels. Every time the phone rang, she’d answer at the first ring, anticipating Mireille’s call. She looked up from her desk whenever she heard footsteps on the landing and went to check outside. It never was Mireille.
    After an hour, her client calls all returned and several monitoring systems reviewed on René’s terminal, she pulled out her checkbook. Leduc Detective barely broke even, in part due to clients who paid them for their service, like other independent firms, last. But this month, at least, they were not in the red. And if René’s meeting at La Défense netted a contract. . . .
    A sense of hollowness pervaded her. Mireille had been scared. So scared, according to Zazie, that she’d run out of the café. What if Mireille had discovered the man’s body and run away before Aimée arrived?
    She wouldn’t learn about Mireille’s connection to the murder by sitting here. Or uncover the victim’s identity. Time mattered in an investigation her father always said. Witnesses forgot, leads grew stale. She glanced at her watch, shouldered her bag, and locked the office door.

    IN THE BRIGHT daylight, Osteologique Anatomie Comparée at Number 61 appeared even more dilapidated than it had last night. Cracks fissured the crumbling soot-stained wall, weeds sprouted in the gravel of the courtyard. This ungentrified slice of the quartier opposite the Jardin des Plantes consisted of a maze of passages leading to eighteenth-century buildings.
    Beyond the building’s open portal, blue-uniformed flics stood in the courtyard. Yellow crime-scene tape fluttered in the warm air.
    It brought back the image of the man’s bloodied temple, his matted hair and severed ear. That circle of salt on the wooden floor. She shuddered.
    She saw no place from which to observe without calling attention to herself. She leaned down, as if to wipe something off her shoe. From the corner of her eye she saw a figure in a doorway a few meters away. A man pressed numbered buttons on the digicode keypad. Several minutes passed.