Murder on the Champ de Mars Read Online Free PDF Page A

a plane crashin Libya took care of everyone involved, and there was no one left to ask.
    Aimée felt her heart pounding. “Your mother knows who killed him? Did she give you a name?”
    “No name.”
    She fought back the image flashing into her head, his charred limbs on paving stones, one lone shoe with a foot still inside. The horror flooded back. A sob erupted from deep inside her.
    “Proof,” Nicu said, “you need more proof that I’m telling you the truth, right?” He thrust his hands into his pockets and pulled out a crinkled black-and-white photo, tucked it in her hand. “Keep it.”
    A scene of her in knee-highs, looking up at a younger version of her father, smiling; behind them a market stall with a woman in a long skirt with a young boy holding a model airplane. Nicu looked about eight, Drina a little older than Aimée now. What year could this have been?
    “Tell me more, Nicu.”
    “That’s all I know. She needed to tell you herself. She insisted.”
    A trio of nurses assembled hurriedly around Aimée and Nicu as a thirty-something male doctor strode toward them. “Who unplugged the Ward C patient from the machines?” said the doctor, his brow furrowed. “Why did you take her off the medication drip? I want her chart.”
    “We have no record of her being moved,” said the nurse with the green hair clip. She didn’t look stern anymore.
    “I don’t understand how this patient could have been disconnected without my approval and knowledge. Check the wards, the whole floor.”
    “
Tout de suite
, Doctor Estienne,” said the nurse, mobilizing the others with a wave of her arm.
    “My mother was here an hour and a half ago,” said Nicu. “Why didn’t someone stay with her? How was it you didn’t notice she was gone?”
    Dr. Estienne stuck his stethoscope in his coat pocket. He put his hand on Nicu’s shaking shoulder. “As soon as I find her chart—”
    “What good will that do?” Nicu interrupted.
    “
Ne t’inquiète pas
, young man,” said Dr. Estienne, his voice measured and reassuring. “We’ll sort this out.”
    Sort this out? But Aimée knew that tone—they taught it in med school, for use with hopeless cases.
    “Doctor, when’s Drina due her next medication?”
    “I don’t have her chart at the moment, Mademoiselle,” he said, looking her in the eye before turning to Nicu. “I checked on your mother an hour ago, after her last meds. I wanted to monitor her pain level. She will most likely be due another dose in a few hours or so, and we will have found her and everything will be back to normal by then.”
    “Her situation’s critical,” Aimée said. “As you should know. Didn’t you run tests today? Her son deserves to know her prognosis.”
    “Mademoiselle, we don’t receive crystal balls on graduating from med school.”
    “I learned that in my first year of med school, Doctor,” she said, neglecting to add that it had also been her last year of med school. The formaldehyde smell of the dissection-lab fridge, with its human organs sitting side by side with student lunches, had cured her of any aspirations to a medical career. “What’s her prognosis?” she repeated.
    “We’re concerned about possible renal failure,” he said finally. “The hemodialysis was keeping her electrolytes out of the critical range. And I’m worried that with a heightened potassium level, she’s facing a fatal heart-rhythm disturbance.”
    Good God. A hemodialysis patient yanked from the machine.
    “You gave her meds an hour ago.” Nicu seized the doctor’sarm. “How long does she have if she doesn’t get her next medication dose?”
    “Young man, we’ll have this under control soon,” he said, in that smooth voice again.
    “And if you don’t?”
    But the doctor was nodding at the arriving orderlies. “Search the X-ray center and lab wing,” he said to them, pointing down the corridor.
    He turned away from them to consult with an arriving doctor. Aimée strained to