Chapter Seven

The Père Lachaise cemetery had opened for business again, the Paris police having been informed that its value as a tourist attraction was greater than its value as a crime scene. A brief afternoon conversation between Hugo, Taylor, and Tom had resolved to keep the matter as low-key as possible, temporarily, despite the terrorist connection. Tom’s theory, which both men agreed with, was that publicly treating Maxwell’s death as an ordinary homicide might keep Al Zakiri’s defenses down. As a result, Ambassador Taylor had called Hugo early Wednesday morning and asked him to meet a detective at the cemetery, a public relations and political gesture as much as it was a matter of criminal investigation.

“One other thing,” the ambassador had told Hugo. “We’re playing this terrorism very close to our chests.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning we’ve only shared what information we have with some very senior people in the French government. The rank and file doesn’t know and doesn’t need to know just yet. So be your usual polite and friendly self because, in theory, if this is plain old murder, we’re on the outside looking in.”

The ambassador was right on that point, Hugo knew. The Holmes boy wasn’t an embassy employee and, other than professional courtesy, nothing required the French to even communicate with his department, let alone give them a role in a murder investigation.

Hugo took the metro to the cemetery, the eight o’clock rush forcing him to stand. He held onto a metal rail with one hand and looked around the car at his fellow commuters, playing the old game, looking for clues or oddities.

Facing him, two young men sat quietly, their faces grimy, their bodies slumped in the plastic seats as if exhausted from a long night’s work. Yet despite their body language, their expressions were not those of overworked minions; rather, there was contentment in their tiredness, in the way their elbows and shoulders brushed and their bodies rocked languidly to the rhythm of the train. He drew a story around them, even more curious when he realized that, under the dust and dirt, these faces belonged to boys, not men, and were surely too young to have jobs that would keep them up all night in dirty conditions. So where had they been that left them looking so tired but happy? And where were they going?

He was starting to ponder this conundrum when he felt a hand on his arm. He turned and saw a familiar round face looking up at him, eyes twinkling and white teeth visible under a perfectly manicured mustache. Hugo smiled.

“Capitaine Garcia, what a coincidence. Comment ça va?”

“Bien, mon ami. And not such a coincidence.”

“No?” Hugo thought for a moment. “Don’t tell me that you’re the policeman meeting me at Père Lachaise?”

“Exactement. When I heard the US Embassy was involved, I asked to be assigned the case.” Garcia winked. “I hoped to work with my friend Hugo again.”

“Merci,” Hugo smiled. “That’s good news. And you are too kind.” Hugo patted the smaller man’s shoulder and held him steady as the train slowed at their stop.

It was good news, he wasn’t merely being polite. They’d worked a case together recently, one that had put a bullet in Raul Garcia’s shoulder and seen the disappearance of Hugo’s good friend, Max, a bookseller who’d plied his trade beside the Seine. The relationship between Hugo and Garcia had been prickly at first, the Frenchman jealously guarding his territory and skeptical of Hugo’s profiling techniques and experience. But he’d looked at the evidence as Hugo had explained it, opened his mind, and together they’d captured one of Paris’s most cold-blooded killers.

When they walked out of the metro onto Boulevard de Ménil­montant, Hugo was surprised at the warmth of the air, the July heat already rousing itself from a short night, warming up to bake the city’s streets and buildings for another day. They walked slowly together, as if it were the height of noon already, and Garcia filled a brief silence with the question Hugo knew had been coming.

“And Claudia, how is she? I trust you two are still . . .”

“A long story, mon ami. But we are still good friends and do see each other when time allows.” It was an accurate, if superficial, answer. He’d met Claudia while looking for his friend Max, and they’d bonded quickly. Claudia, the hard-nosed investigative reporter, at once helped Hugo and pushed him for the story of Max’s disappearance. For whatever reason—her green eyes, her willing body, her honest smile—he’d let her get too close to the action and she’d nearly been killed. She’d never blamed him, she was too independent to even think it was his fault, but the incident had scared them both and a distance had crept between them, one they’d not bridged in the months since.

“Ah, that is good. She is a special lady,” Garcia said, and left it at that.

 

 

 

They entered the cemetery on the west side, Garcia leading the way. They walked side by side, slowly, both men eyeing the names on the monuments lining the wide cobbled walkway. It was not as Hugo had imagined, nothing like the sprawling grassy cemeteries of home or the higgledy-piggledy graveyards he’d seen in England. Neat rows of tombs lined sweeping pathways, some simple slabs of marble, others like narrow stone houses with their own front doors. Angels and the faces of those who lay in repose sat atop many of the grave sites, and the cemetery had the feel of a small city, carefully platted and maintained, neat, tidy, and clean.

And in here the air was noticeably cooler. Stands of oak, ash, and maple trees draped their greenery over the monochrome of the tombs, providing relief for the eyes as well as protection from the sun, breathing fresh air into a city of the dead and sustaining the cemetery’s weary visitors.

“You’ve been here before?” Garcia asked.

“No,” Hugo said. “Actually, never. I think it’s the most famous Paris tourist site I’ve never seen.”

“Let me guess,” Garcia said. “You’ve seen too much death in your job, you have no place for it in your leisure time.”

“Something like that. I guess I’ve never really seen the appeal of a few acres of stone, marble, and hidden-away bones.”

“Fair point,” Garcia said. He angled them down a narrower path. “Most who come see more than that, though. To them, this place holds not just the mortal remains of people they love and admire, but their spirits. A place where so many gifted people, so many . . .” He waved his hands as he sought the right word. “So many geniuses lie sleeping. It’s as if death could not possibly destroy all they have to offer, as if a reduction to mere bones in a tomb is impossible.”

“So the ghosts of the famous roam these little streets by night?” Hugo tried not to sound mocking.

“Non, mon ami, I don’t mean ghosts. I mean the essence of these people, all who are gathered here, can exert a powerful influence on those who visit. Ask yourself, why else would so many come? As you point out, there is nothing to see, just stone graves. So perhaps they come here to feel.”

“Perhaps,” Hugo said. “And you?”

Garcia shrugged. “I like the quiet. It is a place where no one hurries, a place where no one tries to talk to you or sell you something. In my humble opinion, it is a place where everyone can find peace and solitude. A few minutes for the living, an eternity for the dead.”

They stopped, Garcia directing Hugo’s attention to a monument on their right. It was a concrete square, head-high and topped with the reclining sculpture of a man lying on his side and holding a paintbrush. His legs extended across the tomb languidly as if he were watching over the cemetery, keeping an eye out for someone to paint, his palette at the ready. Set into the front of the block was a low-relief panel of a picture that Hugo recognized.

“The Raft of the Medusa,” he said. “So the gentleman up there must be Theodor Géricault.”

“I’m impressed,” Garcia said.

“Don’t be. I told you I’ve been to all the other tourist places in the city. This one’s in the Louvre, right?”

“Oui.” Garcia studied the bronze form for a moment. “I like it because it’s less formal than most of the statutes and busts you see on top of crypts here. He looks like he’s enjoying himself a little.”

“He does.” Hugo nodded, and for that same reason he liked it, too.

They walked on in silence, Hugo more interested in watching the couples and small groups winding their way through the cemetery, his curiosity in the dead aroused only when their tombs attracted the gazes of others.

In the shadow of a plane tree, Garcia stopped and turned to Hugo. “Tell me something.”

“Sure.”

“Is there anything else I should know?”

“What do you mean?”

“Is there more to this than meets the eye?”

Hugo hesitated. “I don’t think so. I really don’t.”

“But others do?”

Hugo shrugged. “He’s the son of a senior US senator. She’s a foreigner. Others are concerned, yes.”

Garcia nodded, then said: “Here. Follow me.” The Frenchman stepped off the path at a gap between two head-high, white crypts. Hugo followed and they found themselves standing on a patch of worn ground, with half a dozen other people, all in their twenties or thirties, half of them smoking and all of them silent.

Hugo followed Garcia’s gaze to a row of four low tombs, one of which had drawn these people to Père Lachaise, maybe even to Paris. He looked past two women who stood arm-in-arm, their attention focused on what looked to be a small patch of earth framed by a rectangle of stone and headed by a block that bore a weathered plaque that he couldn’t read from here. A dozen bouquets and the gaggle of tourists were all that set this site apart from the most ordinary gravesite in the cemetery.

“That’s it?” Hugo said, his voice louder than he’d intended.

Garcia smirked and the two women in front of him looked over their shoulders and glared for a moment, before returning to their quiet admiration of Jim Morrison’s final resting place.

After a moment, they moved back to the main path. Hugo walked slowly up and down, eyes glued to the worn bricks and cobbles. Garcia appeared at his shoulder and handed him two crime scene photos showing the precise location of the bodies when they were found. Hugo took a couple of steps to his right and looked down at the spot where Maxwell Holmes had fallen. There was nothing left to see. Much of the spilled blood had soaked into the earth and the rest was impossible to discern; the path itself was stained and discolored from a hundred years of tramping feet. New blood meant nothing here.

A tall, gaunt man in a Doors T-shirt, his long hair pulled into a ponytail, stopped next to Hugo. “American?” he asked.

“Yes,” Hugo said.

“Cool. Which site you looking for, man? I got a better map than—” He looked over Hugo’s shoulder and recoiled at the picture. “Jesus man, what the hell is that?”

“A dead man in a cemetery,” Hugo said, clutching the photo to his chest. “Isn’t that why you’re here?”

“Yeah, but . . . shit, not like that.” The man wandered off, shaking his head, glancing over his shoulder at Hugo.

“A friend of yours?” Garcia asked.

“No. Just some guy who likes his dead a little more seasoned.”

“Ah.” Garcia waved a hand at the scene. “Bien, there is not much to see here.”

“Non. Do they not have security cameras in here?”

“Normally they do. In fact, especially for Jim Morrison’s grave. But those were vandalized a week ago and weren’t working that night.”

“Of course not. So either our man got very lucky or he’s sounding more and more organized. How did he get into the cemetery, can we tell?”

“Non.” Garcia held up a finger. “And there is another mystery. There are cameras at every entrance and covering almost every square inch of the walls. We have looked at those, twice in fact, and do not see anyone coming in. Except Monsieur Holmes and his lady friend, they hopped a wall. We found their rope ladder, too, if you want to see it.”

“Not really. Is it possible he came in during the day and hid somewhere until the gates closed?”

“They try to make sure it’s empty before they lock up every evening, but anything is possible.”

“And the murder was discovered at night.”

“There is a night watchman, he’s the one looking at all the video cameras.”

“Why did it take him so long to get in here?”

Garcia grimaced. “We asked him the same thing. We wondered about some sort of conspiracy, if maybe the couple had paid him to look the other way.”

“And?”

“And it was nothing more than good old fashioned laziness. He told us he would take a long nap while on duty, then rewind the video tapes and watch them on fast forward, to catch up. Then take another nap.”

“Nice system.”

“If you’re not a watchman,” Garcia said.

“Anyway, I assume the cemetery was still closed when the police got here?”

“Oh yes. And I know what you are thinking. But the cameras didn’t catch anyone leaving, and we did a very thorough sweep of the cemetery as soon as we could. That included checking for open crypts he might have been hiding in. Nothing. Nothing at all.”

“So we have no idea how he got in or out?”

“That is correct,” Garcia said. His eyes twinkled. “You don’t suppose . . .”

“No, I don’t,” Hugo smiled. “I don’t think we need to consider the possibility that the killer rose from one of these tombs to seek mortal flesh, and then tucked himself back into bed.”

“A zombie,” Garcia said, raising his eyebrows. “Now that would be something.”

“It would.” Hugo patted his pockets at the buzz of his phone. “Excuse me a moment, Capitaine.” He answered as Garcia drifted a polite distance away. It was Tom, and Hugo listened closely. There was no need for follow-up questions, Tom was too thorough for that. When his friend had finished, Hugo asked: “Have you told the ambassador? Or Senator Holmes?”

“Nope,” Tom said. “Thought I’d run it by you first. If I tell them, they’ll have questions I can’t answer.”

“You think I can answer them?”

“No, but if we tell them together I’ll have someone else to look like a dumbass beside me.”

“That’s what friends are for.”

“Damn straight. Sandwiches at Chez Maman first?”

Hugo hesitated. “Sure. I can be there in an hour.” He put away his phone and walked to where Garcia stood with his back to a chestnut tree, resting.

“News you can share?” asked Garcia.

“Yes. The autopsy confirmed that the girl’s skin, the part that was hacked, had traces of ink on it.”

“A tattoo? Interesting. Anything else?”

“No, not really.”

“A long conversation for ‘not really.’” Garcia’s eyes held Hugo’s, but showed more amusement than annoyance. He was letting Hugo know that he knew, that was all.

“It was Tom,” Hugo shrugged, playing the game. “He likes to talk.”

“He is well?”

“Sometimes.”

“A good man, Tom,” Garcia said. He took a deep breath and surveyed the cemetery. “Still works for the CIA, does he?”

Hugo smiled. “Sometimes.”

“That’s what I thought. So if there’s anything else, you’ll let me know?”

“Just as soon as I can, I promise.”

“Bon,” Garcia said. “Because I’d much rather work on this with you than, say, a horde of outsiders.”

“I know what you mean,” Hugo said. “And I feel the same.”