Three

First point on the agenda: sharing all the information we have on the man called Laurent Lambert and on the three murders.

Manon, of course, can’t actually tell us much, since she doesn’t remember the day of her murder. She can tell us that the man worked for several members of the Regional Council and that she’d been sent his way when she threatened to go to the media if they didn’t at least allow her a meeting to discuss her organization.

Clothilde growls at the mention of the Regional Council but doesn’t comment. “What’s your organization about?”

“We wanted to help with student housing,” Manon says. “Everything in the city center kept getting bought up by the big contractors, and they only make apartments for rich doctors and engineers. Students have to live way outside of the city and then commute every morning, because the university is, of course, smack in the center.”

She shrugs. “It’s not going to change the world or anything, but we found it worth our while to pool our resources and try to at least be heard by the people with the means to do something about it.” Blowing out a breath, she seems to deflate. “It was working, too. People were starting to listen.”

“What about you?” I ask Lise, who seems to have checked out for a moment. Her gaze is distant and her lips pursed into a severe frown.

“Oh, I’m seeing a pattern,” Lise replies coldly. “And I remember everything from the murder.”

Things hadn’t gone as planned with Lise’s murder.

She was supposed to be as heavily drugged as Manon, but her distaste for tap water “saved” her. I say “saved” because it was far from being a blessing.

She met with Laurent Lambert in a hotel room not far from the airport. She thought the location a little odd for such a meeting, but Lambert argued he had an early flight in the morning, so it really was a lot simpler, and he didn’t want anybody to overhear what they said, so he preferred to avoid the hotel bar.

Lise, who had a black belt in karate on top of being very tall for a woman, had never had any compunction about finding herself alone with a man. She could take them. Especially an old man like Laurent Lambert.

When she arrived, he offered her a little snack, a specialty from his hometown, a place Lise had never heard of before.

Not wanting to seem impolite, Lise accepted.

The thing was dry like sand, clearly made out of mostly flour and something to make it all hold together.

“Would you like a glass of water with that?” Lambert asked.

Not even able to talk, Lise nodded, and took the glass he offered.

She took a sip. Realized immediately it was tap water. And did her best to clean out her mouth with only that mouthful.

It was stupid, really. But her mother had been a bit of a maniac when it came to water for her babies and had only ever given them bottled water. When Lise found herself alone and managing her own finances as a student, she realized she could save a lot of money by moving over to tap water like all her student friends, but by then it was too late. Her body didn’t know how to handle tap water, and whenever she tried it, she spent the next two days bent over the toilet.

So she continued buying bottled water.

And when offered a glass of water to wash down a biscuit dryer than the desert, she prayed that just one mouthful wouldn’t be enough to upset her stomach.

“Go ahead,” Lambert urged her. “Drink up. I know those things can be a little on the dry side.”

Lise refused. And kept refusing as Lambert kept insisting. To the point where she started getting suspicious.

It was too late, of course.

The powerful drug was in her system and when the attack comes from the inside, a black belt doesn’t help. At all.

She collapsed to the floor before she could reach the door and Lambert let out a relieved, “Well, thank God.”

Lise lost control of her body, but not her mind.

As her body slowly—all too slowly—shut down, Lise watched as Lambert was joined by another man, this one just as old but a lot taller and stronger, and they moved her to the bed.

They both wore gloves, and Lambert cleaned everything he might have touched in the room, including the glass, while the other man checked Lise’s pockets for any link to the meeting. He found her phone and used her thumb to unlock it, opened her calendar, and removed any trace of the rendezvous. He went through her emails, deleting some of them.

Then Lambert left the room, telling the other man, “You have fifteen minutes. Don’t forget to put her clothes back on after.”

Luckily, if such a word can be used in this setting, Lise’s body gave up a minute later, and her mind went with it.