Remi discovered that interrogation rooms in French police stations were almost exactly the same as those in American police stations.
They had the same bare concrete interiors, the same metal desk and chairs bolted to the floor, the same security cameras, and the same one-way mirror along one wall.
The difference this time was that she was on the interesting side of that one-way mirror, not stuck in the observation room. She wasn’t simply watching the interrogation; she got to be part of it.
She and Torsson sat opposite Jean-Baptiste Gagneux, who sat slumped and sullen, handcuffed to his chair. Daniel paced back and forth behind him.
For a moment, everyone was silent. Remi felt the actual law officers should take the lead. Torsson had done nothing except bring Gagneux a cup of coffee. All Daniel was doing was pacing back and forth, cursing quietly to himself.
Then suddenly he dove in close to Gagneux and shouted in his ear, “Two men dead! Two men dead for a couple of paintings? What’s the matter with you? Are you insane?”
Remi studied Gagneux’s face. He did not react to the insane comment. The mad hated being called mad.
No, he didn’t seem angry, or unbalanced.
He did look worried, though.
“A murder in France and a murder in New York,” Daniel went on. “Sure, here they’ll put you in some comfy cell with color TV and croissants, but in New York you’ll be the girlfriend of some 300-pound meth dealer named Bubba. At least before they fry your ass.”
Remi didn’t think there was still a death penalty in New York, but saw no reason to inform Gagneux of that.
Torsson leaned forward. “You don’t seem like a killer to me. But we need to clear this up. You flew from New York to Paris just in time to be in both locations for the murders.”
“Coincidence,” Gagneux muttered.
“Oh yeah?” Daniel bellowed. “Then why did you run?”
Gagneux didn’t answer.
“Why don’t you tell us why you ran?” Torsson said gently. “Were you scared because of your criminal record?”
This was a game Remi had learned was called “good cop, bad cop.” Daniel was playing the bad cop, an obvious role after that kidney punch. The object of the game was for the suspect to fear the bad cop and look to the good cop for help.
It worked.
Gagneux nodded.
Daniel leaned in closer, whispering into his ear. “You’ll serve a term here and a term in New York. You’ll never see the light of day again.”
“I didn’t do it.”
“Where are the paintings?”
“I didn’t do it!”
Daniel slapped his palm against the metal table with a loud bang.
“You were present in New York and Paris at the right times. You are an art thief. You had the knowledge, the opportunity, and the motive. And you ran. Only guilty people run.”
Gagneux looked at the floor, lips moving silently. He appeared to be thinking.
“Two counts of murder is a very serious charge,” Torsson said. “If you have another explanation, you better come clean with it.”
Gagneux thought for a moment more, heaved a big sigh, and looked at Torsson. “Are the police still searching my apartment?”
“Yes.”
“Have them pull aside the bureau in my bedroom. They’ll find a loose panel in the wall. Open that and you’ll find a bag of pearl necklaces. If you contact the MacPhearson family of Mt. Kisco, New York, you’ll find they were stolen a few days ago.”
Torsson got on the phone to the search team. Daniel pulled out his phone too. As the FBI agent tapped away at it, he walked over to Torsson and Remi’s side of the table and showed them his screen. He was on a New York state database of open cases. Searching under Mt. Kisco, a town Remi had never heard of, he found that Robert and Shella MacPhearson had reported the theft of several strings of pearls of a total value of $100,000 from their house the very same day Montgomery Dyson got scythed in the East Gallery of his mansion in the Hamptons.
Remi pulled out her own phone and checked on Google Maps to see the driving time between Mt. Kisco and East Hampton. Almost three hours. It was virtually impossible that Gagneux could have committed both crimes in the same night.
Remi groaned and sat back. They had been too eager. While Gagneux was an art thief who was in the right state at the right time, he wasn’t a perfect match. He had no history of violence and no connection to the paintings other than the fact that he had been accused of stealing art in the past.
They had been so desperate to catch the killer before he struck again, they had just given the killer more time.
Torsson put away his phone, a sour look on his face. “They searched behind the bureau and found the pearls.”
“Damn it!” Daniel shouted. “We keep solving the wrong damn crimes!”
Remi looked from her partner to Gagneux and back. Another dead end.
* * *
In the hall outside the interrogation room, Daniel paced back and forth. They had decided to take a break. Gagneux was still in the interrogation room. They’d question him a bit more later, although there didn’t seem much point. He looked like he was an innocent man.
Well, innocent of the murders, anyway.
And now they were stuck at a dead end, and he had just received an email from Assistant Director Ochiai asking for a progress report. Maybe he wouldn’t send a report since there was no progress.
Damn it! He’d never get back to the Behavioral Affairs Unit at this rate.
Although it looked like the Behavioral Affairs Unit had followed him. This had all the makings of a serial murder. The guy had killed twice in two creative ways and would probably do so again. Remi was right, he was collecting the paintings. The question was—how many more did he need? There was no record of one of the previous owners being killed for it. They’d have found out about that already. So did the killer need to kill for two more paintings, or did he already obtain one or two by more honest means?
If he already had the complete set, he might go to ground, and they’d never find him.
Daniel couldn’t let someone like that get off the hook. He prided himself on always getting his man.
And if he didn’t get this man, not only would a killer go free, but Daniel’s career would be on the ropes. He had already been demoted to this Podunk division as punishment for being a bit too “assertive” in his handling of suspects, and for talking back to his superiors. If he couldn’t produce results, consistently and quickly, he’d end up as a filing clerk at Quantico.
And then there was this place …
The cafés, the architecture, the sound of the language, it all reminded him of when he was a kid.
Ever since his trips with his mother and “Uncle” Ray, he’d avoided going to Europe. His ex-wife had nagged him about coming here. “You know so much; why don’t you want to go back?” He kept his silence and insisted on going to Mexico instead.
Uncle Ray had never taken him to Mexico. He hadn’t been interested in Latin America.
He sure had been interested in young Daniel, though.
Mom had been an academic, spending more time in museums and archives than with her son. She always had an excuse for disappearing into some dusty old place for a whole afternoon.
“Not a problem,” Uncle Ray would tell her, putting an arm around Daniel, who would plaster on a smile and try not to squirm. “We’ll keep ourselves entertained with guy stuff.”
Daniel shuddered. All over Europe—France, Germany, Italy, the Low Countries—it had been the same. Mom ditching him and Uncle Ray wanting to do “guy stuff.”
The sound of Torsson running up to him snapped him out of his reverie. The Swede was waving his phone, his eyes lit up. “I’ve got it! I know where Pestilence is.”
“That was quick.”
The Interpol agent had only set someone on that task a few hours before.
“It has only been sold three times in the past forty years, first to a private buyer right here in Paris who died a few years later. Then to a buyer in Rome, an ex-member of the Opus Dei in Rome, some defrocked priest who got kicked out of the church for performing what were called Satanic rites. It was a bit of a scandal. He just died and it was sold on to Pier Paolo Manetti in Florence.”
Torsson said this like he expected Daniel to know who he was talking about.
“Who?”
Torsson looked surprised. “Pier Paolo Manetti? Misterio 2000?”
“Nope.”
“It was a hugely popular television show. I know it made it to America.”
“I don’t watch much TV. You can’t catch serial killers that way.”
Torsson shook his head. “Don’t you ever stop working?”
“Not really, no.” What else would I do with myself?
“You have to take time off, you know.”
“Don’t start talking like my ex-wife,” Daniel snapped. When he saw the Swede’s expression, he continued in a more level tone. “Try to get us on a plane as soon as possible. There must be plenty of flights between Paris and Florence. We’ll grab Remi and you can tell me all about this guy on the way to the airport.”
“You think he’s the murderer?”
“Or a potential victim.”
“Maybe we should warn him.”
“If we warn him and he’s the murderer, we’ll lose him.”
“But if he’s the next victim …”
Daniel thought a moment. “You only found out this guy has the painting of Pestilence by using a court order to see sales records. It’s unlikely our killer has the same access. He’s obviously good at tracing these paintings, but chances are he won’t be able to find the location as quickly as your team did. On the other hand, he might. How about this—we don’t tell this TV show guy, but we inform the Italian police and have them keep an eye on him.”
“All right,” Torsson said with a nod, already getting on his phone. “I’ll give them a call and then get us the first plane out.”