part0043

“Havilah! Havilah!” Thierry Gasquet was fast in pursuit of his charge, who despite what he knew she had been thinking, had become more to him than the job he’d been entrusted to do.

Their past entanglements kept ensnaring them and complicating his professional obligations. She wouldn’t turn around. Instead her gait turned to a run-walk. He pushed forward through the crowded boardwalk. And then he heard the shot and the crowd scatter and shriek. He saw that a man had been shot. A hot stream of blood jetted from his neck, but he kept moving until he appeared to push Havilah into a boutique called the Blue Moon. His jacket flew up and Thierry saw his hand on a gun. That’s when he pulled out his service weapon and squeezed off a shot that struck the man in the side. He heard a third shot, which made the man’s body fall back and then lurch forward into the boutique.

He managed to call for the polizia and an ambulanza while still running towards the boutique. His heart was beating so loudly in his ears he could barely hear the roaring boats and sirens of the police and ambulance boats in the lagoon, or the screaming in distance, as a small crowd gathered near the body.

Excusez -moi ! Excuse me! Scusate! Polizia francese ! Thierry pushed past the crowd, excusing himself in several languages and announcing his presence as French law enforcement. The assailant was face down, near Havilah’s legs. She too was face down; blood had splattered across her legs and shoes. Thierry kicked the assailant’s gun across the store’s floor before holstering his firearm. He didn’t bother to check his pulse. He’s dead. He noticed the three shots, one to the neck and back of the head. His shot had been aimed towards the pelvis— the vital organs. He stepped over the unidentified man to Havilah.

“Havilah,” he whispered. He took her pulse and examined her for gunshot wounds, before carefully turning her over. He noticed the contusion on her forehead. There was no blood. Her chignon had loosened. Her hair now formed a halo of red-gold curls on the floor. The assailant’s shove had caused her to fall and hit her head on the multicolored stone, rock, and marble flooring.

He noticed a shopkeeper emerging from the back with ice and a cloth, understandably kvetching in Italian about the assailant.

“Grazie. ” Thierry applied the cool cloth against Havilah’s wound and then moved it over her eyes, cheeks, and neck before reapplying it against her forehead. She began stirring.

When the police entered the boutique they knew who he was, since he’d registered with them before coming to Venice. He told them two shots came from across the lagoon and that the dead man was after Havilah. He pointed them towards the gun.

The medics arrived shortly thereafter. Two of them moved Havilah to a stretcher. He heard her whisper that she had an awful headache. One of the medics turned over the dead man.

“Merde ! Shit! ” Thierry placed a call to the Silver Fox.

“What were you thinking? Our travels were to be kept under wraps.”

“Oui, Oui. But she was blackmailing me. She said she would reveal my histoires de cul . My affairs! She knows Amalie, it seems, quite well, and was going to tell her about Estelle. I couldn’t have that. I know Amalie likes younger men but she makes me feel young and virile. And Estelle. There is something sexy about a sophisticated, self-assured older woman. C’est ta faute, vachement ! Really, it’s your fault! It is! Had you not brought that scheming salaupe to our private club to give your father the keys to your apartment before departing for Malta last October with that sale ingrate , none of this would have ever happened.”

Thierry narrowed his green eyes. He looked over at Havilah, who was still slightly discombobulated. Claire? Claire! Hervé Simone had just called her a bitch and a dirty ingrate for threatening to expose his indiscretions to his younger mistress.

He lowered his voice. “We have a much bigger problem than Claire Hansson.” After eighteen-months together, Thierry and Claire had parted ways a month before he met Havilah. The break-up had been made easier, he believed, because Claire, a journalist, had been assigned overseas for three months. It seems she returned with a renewed sense of purpose and used Simone’s proclivities as leverage.

“We do not have time for this. We have a rogue agent on our hands. Or at least we had. And the gunman is here as well. I can’t be sure if it is the same one from Paris. But he follows the same modus operandi. Picking targets off in the distance. The shooter is very skilled. Military training of some kind, I’d imagine.” Thierry talked as he walked out towards the ambulance, following Havilah’s stretcher.

“What are you talking about?”

“Gerard Louis is dead. He tried to kill Havilah. I think Louis may have been directly responsible for the Lemieux and Amri-Gilbert murders as well. We need to send the police to find Réda Halimi. And we need every shred of intel on Louis so as to determine his motive. Louis was at the reception so he could not have killed Carpentier. The gunman from last night in Paris appears to have shown up here in Venice and clipped Louis. Unless we have a copycat of the Carpentier killing. Havilah is the connection in all of this. She is next. I am certain of it.”

“Gerard Louis!” the judge shouted, “I gave him time off after Carpentier’s shooting. He seemed positively distraught. He was in my office when you called to tell me your whereabouts.”

“Distraught? Check to see if there is a connection between Carpentier and Louis that goes further than his SPHP duties. Send his files to me on a secure server. And send someone to his apartment. Perhaps he left something behind to explain all this.”

“How do you know the gunman was not protecting her? By the way, we sent someone to Saint Denis this morning. After the Carpentier shooting. We suspected Halimi and FBB might have killed Carpentier in revenge for Didier Gilbert. Especially after that press conference he gave yesterday morning. That hypothesis seemed to fit then. Halimi has not been located as yet. Perhaps he is the gunman in Venice? And I still haven’t located Agent Belami. You don’t think he was angry enough about being removed from Carpentier’s detail to have killed him? It is all so complicated.”

He could hear the older man tapping his fingers against his desk. “A bit like your love life, Hervé,” Thierry remarked, dropping the formality, as there was no one else around. He too though became deeply concerned about Belami’s whereabouts. He wondered if Louis killed him. He couldn’t bring himself to accept Belami might be the gunman.

“Attends ,” the judge said.

Thierry heard the cellphone chiming. He wondered if the old judge had different cellphones to carry on his complicated life.

“Thierry,” the normally silver-tongued Fox stuttered, “Réda Halimi is dead. His body was discovered on the metro. He was shot in the back of the head.”