11

Holding two coffees, David Kriven made his way up the stairs and through the obstacle course of the top-floor halls. The floor creaked underfoot. Kriven felt like he was walking through an old, decaying hotel. He glanced at his mugs to make sure the steaming liquid hadn’t spilled.

Finally, he reached the criminal psychologist’s office. The door was half open. Before he could open it all the way, he spotted a spider hanging by its thread from the ceiling. A spider in the morning: a sure sign of impending sorrow, his grandmother had once told him. She had died at a fairly young age. Apparently the janitors weren’t superstitious, because they hadn’t cleaned this particular corner.

“Dominique?” he asked. “It’s David.”

“Come in!”

He opened the door with his foot and set the mugs on the desk. The room was so small, squeezing in more than two people would have been quite a feat. A narrow window with bars added to the cell-like feel. Not the most pleasant place to work. Only the poster for Men in Black II lent any cheer to the room.

“You should update your poster,” Kriven said.

Dominique Kreiss smiled. She was a curvaceous brunette with green eyes that twinkled roguishly. These days she was in a much better mood than she was a year ago, when she was living with a creep. She had finally gotten rid of him. Evidently, even shrinks made mistakes.

“Thanks for the coffee,” she said as she grabbed a tissue to wipe a few drops off her desk. “Got any news?”

“Anya Sirsky’s alive,” David said as he sat down. “That’s all I know, really.”

“That’s good. So what brings you here?”

“You mean, aside from you?” he asked. It was no secret that he was attracted to this psychologist.

“I met Mrs. Cassian,” he said. “Her son vanished thirty years ago, but his room is in exactly the same state as it was when he left. And she talks about him as though he were still alive.”

“For some people, it’s more complicated to accept a loved one’s disappearance than his death. Questions remain unanswered, and the hope that the loved one is still alive strips away regular points of reference. Believing that he’s dead would be a betrayal. It’s a terrible place to be in. What you’re telling me makes perfect sense.”

“That’s not all. Almeida found wrapped presents crammed in the closet. It just seems crazy.”

“The loss of a child—whether it’s a death or a disappearance—is a blow. A parent with a fragile psychological makeup could develop a defense system just to cope and hold onto the belief that the child is still alive. It’s not uncommon for a parent to keep cooking meals for the child, setting a place at the table, or washing his clothes. Perhaps in this case, the mother kept buying birthday and Christmas gifts for her son.”

“That’s morbid.”

Dominique Kreiss held her tongue. She knew that Commander Kriven and his wife had lost their newborn child some time back and it had taken a toll on their relationship.

“It’s a traumatic experience,” she said after a pause. “Fortunately, most people who suffer this kind of tragedy survive and deal with the loss. Although they’re never the same again, they can go on and lead full lives.”

“How should we behave around Mrs. Cassian?”

“It’s not a good idea to appeal to logic with her or to force her to face the reality that her son is gone. I recommend going along with her belief system.”

“That’s exactly how we were able to obtain our evidence, but I’m concerned about the ethics.”

“You did the right thing.”

“Chief Sirsky and I have to interview Samuel Cassian today. He doesn’t know that the bones we found in the pit are actually his son’s or that his son was buried there after his disappearance.”

“I’d advise you talk to him and his wife separately. And don’t forget that Samuel Cassian has returned to the site of the banquet several times. He’s going to realize all at once that he’s been walking over his son’s grave. He’s in for a nasty shock.”

Kriven got up, unnerved by the thought.

“How about we grab a bite to eat tonight?” he asked offhandedly.

“No, I’ve got work to finish for the juvenile delinquency division. Michel Cohen wants my report on his desk before midnight.”

“I’ll order a pizza. We’ll make it quick, I promise. You can’t wait till midnight to eat.”

Nico set down the preliminary report. Deputy Chief Jean-Marie Rost had summarized the events and carefully described each step of the investigation. The only parts left were Samuel Cassian’s interview and the DNA identification, which would come the next morning. The DNA analysis was just a formality. They had enough evidence, including Professor Vilars’s dental identification. After thirty years of uncertainty, Jean-Baptiste Cassian’s disappearance was no longer a mystery. He had been murdered and buried in a location that was deeply significant for his family—and probably for the criminal too, even though they still didn’t know the murderer’s motives.

Captain Plassard’s interviews hadn’t uncovered any leads. Witnesses at the banquet-performance, the dig, and the discovery of the bones had nothing of note to add, although they all expressed respect for Samuel Cassian’s work, appreciation for his friendship, sadness over the disappearance of his son, and admiration for the young man.

Within forty-eight hours, Christine Lormes, the public prosecutor, would have everything she needed to close the preliminary investigation, open a criminal investigation, and name an investigating magistrate. Questions about the statute of limitations and the nature of their intervention would inevitably arise; these points of law would have to be resolved as quickly as possible. In any case, they would have to make a miracle happen; the crime was three decades old.

Nico looked at the pictures Lieutenant Almeida had found in Jean-Baptiste Cassian’s room. In most of them, Jean-Baptiste was with friends. One, in particular, caught his eye. In it, he had his arm around a young woman. Was she his girlfriend? Nico went through the rest of the pictures. Then he held up a few of the victim alone. These weren’t ordinary photos, like the others. They were portraits of Jean-Baptiste. They looked like they had been taken by someone who wasn’t just a casual friend. This photographer seemed to be more than that. Who was this person?

Nico got up from his chair and stretched. He had gotten only a few hours of sleep. Maurin’s group had started the investigation immediately, and the body found in the Leitner Cylinder would be autopsied that day. They would soon know more. That wasn’t foremost in his mind, though. He was thinking of his mother lying in that hospital bed, hooked to machines. He wanted to tell himself that everything would be okay, but he was scared stiff. Like Dimitri, who had insisted on going to school even though he had spent most of the night worrying, Nico knew he had to stay focused.

At the end of the fourth-floor hallway, Nico knocked on an ordinary-looking door that led directly to the prosecutors’ offices and was one of the building’s best-kept secrets. He greeted the secretaries, walked into another hallway, and knocked on the door of Christine Lormes’s office. She was now officially in charge of what they were now calling the Skeletor case.

“Please come in. Have a seat,” Lormes said. “I heard about your mother. This can’t be the easiest time for you. But we have to keep going, don’t we?”

“Thank you. The next few days will be critical. Fingers crossed.”

Lormes gave him a sympathetic smile. “Where are you with the preliminary report on the Cassian case?”

“It should be in your hands tomorrow morning. I’m still waiting for the DNA analysis. Our suspicions of murder have been confirmed. As you know, the victim, Jean-Baptiste Cassian, disappeared thirty years ago. An investigation into his disappearance was opened three weeks after the burial of the tableau-piège in the Parc de la Villette. His parents had reported him missing. We’ve combed that file for every detail.”

“You’re probably already aware, Chief Sirsky, that we have a problem. The statute of limitations for criminal cases begins on the day a crime is committed, according to article seven of the Criminal Procedure Code. In the past, whenever we’ve tried to date the statute of limitations from the day a homicide is discovered, arguing that ignorance of the crime de facto called for the suspension of said period, the court of appeals has never agreed. So even though murderers usually do everything they can to conceal their crime, the ten-year limit has been repeatedly upheld. That said, I’ve been knee-deep in legal research to find a work-around.”

“But there was the missing-persons investigation,” Nico said. “We might have that going for us.”

“No, apparently not. The time limit is ten years, and it can be suspended only if there’s an intervening investigation or prosecution during that time period. If there was, as is the case here, the clock starts ticking with the last official act. It appears that we’re roughly twenty years past the time limit.”

“You’ve been looking for a loophole?” Nico asked hopefully.

“Professor Vilars said the death occurred twenty-five to thirty-five years ago. At this point, we have no definitive proof that the death and the disappearance happened at the same time. In addition, there’s still some uncertainty as to the actual cause of death.”

The prosecutor paused. Professor Vilars’s conclusions gave them some leeway. She was a precise and sharp medical examiner, and Nico suspected that she had deliberately made her conclusions somewhat ambiguous. He would have to thank her the next time he saw her.

“I believe the appeals court wouldn’t be opposed to opening an investigation into the date and cause of death. However, any indictment for murder, if you find the culprit, is uncertain, at best.”

“Many things could happen in the meantime,” Nico said. “I also wanted to talk to you about the archaeological dig.”

“Yes?”

“Only a quarter of the site has been exhumed. We need to check the entire site.”

“I was hoping we could avoid that,” Lormes replied. “The bigwigs are pressuring us about the press coverage. The Ministry of Culture has a lot hanging on this.”

“It’s crucial to our investigation.”

“I understand, but what guarantees can you provide that this won’t turn into CSI La Villette? We’d have the entire culture and art set making a big fuss, and we all know how creative they can get about fusses.”

“The Society for the Disinterment of the Tableau-Piège could modify its plans and organize a complete dig under the eyes of the forensics investigators, couldn’t they?”

“That would be a good compromise,” Lormes said. With his son’s murder, I doubt Cassian will be that invested in what becomes of his final banquet. It’s all very complicated. I’ll keep you updated. Please do the same for me.”

“I’ll be meeting with Cassian later this morning.”

“Good. Now let’s talk about the Mathieu Leroy murder. At this rate, I’ll have to put together a crisis team for the Parc de la Villette.”

“I’m afraid there isn’t much to say. My team has been working on it, and they know it’s a priority.”

“Fine. As with the Cassian case, keep me in the loop,” the prosecutor said.

Back in his office, Nico called Caroline. She picked up immediately.

“Any news?” he asked.

“I talked to Dr. Fursac. They took her off the sedatives this morning. Anya’s been moving a bit.”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s a good sign. It means she’s waking up. But let’s not jump to conclusions yet. We still have to wait. I’ll call you early this afternoon.”

“Thank you, my love.”

He could almost hear her smiling.

He ended the call and went to find Kriven in the Coquibus room. Together, they left the building. They took Nico’s car, driving along the Seine toward Saint-Germain-des-Prés and Cassian’s apartment. The artist had returned home after two nights in the hospital. He was probably exhausted, but the meeting couldn’t be delayed any longer.

Mrs. Cassian opened the door. They followed her into the sitting room, where her husband was stretched out on the couch with two pillows and a comforter. His face was pale, and there were purplish rings under his eye. Distress was sucking the energy right out of him.

Samuel Cassian pushed away the cover and got up slowly.

“Good day, sirs,” he said in a raspy voice. Nico made out a slight accent. Cassian’s heritage was Romanian, and despite his international stature, he clung to his roots. Cassian held out a hand and Nico shook it with a firm grip, not wanting to treat him like a sick old man.

“I’m Chief Sirsky, in charge of Paris’s Criminal Investigation Division, and this is Commander Kriven.”

“You’re from 36 Quai des Orfévres? One of those Simenon cops?”

“Yes, just like Inspector Maigret,” Nico said.

Cassian’s eyes twinkled. They’d connected.

Nico smiled and then realized that Mrs. Cassian was in the room too. She hadn’t said a word. She was staring at Kriven, who was holding her son’s dental X-rays. Seeing the agony of loss in her eyes, Nico felt a pit in his stomach. For half a second he saw his mother lying in that hospital bed, hooked to an IV and monitoring lines. He turned back to Mr. Cassian.

“Dear, could you get us something to drink?” her husband asked, lowering himself back onto the couch and gesturing to the officers to sit down.

The woman wrung her hands, looked at the X-rays again, and went off to the kitchen.

“So you have things to tell me and questions to ask,” Samuel Cassian said.

“We have information about the skeleton that was found at the archaeological dig,” Nico said carefully.

“It’s fine, Inspector. We both know where you’re headed.”

His look of absolute despair contradicted his seeming sangfroid.

“It belonged to a young adult who died thirty years ago, about five and a half feet tall, with a broken tibia.”

Samuel Cassian nodded, his eyes full of tears.

“How did he die?” His voice was becoming even raspier.

“A blow to the head. He died instantly and didn’t suffer.”

There was silence. Cassian slumped, engulfed in grief. Nico couldn’t take his eyes off him. The man’s troubled breathing sounded like the machines keeping Anya alive. Nico had that sinking feeling again, the man’s pain resonating with his own uncertainty about his mother’s future.

Samuel Cassian looked up. “You’re going to find who took my son, aren’t you?”

“We’re working on it,” Nico said in his most professional tone. Then he went quiet again. He looked Cassian in the eye and said, “I’ll find the person who did this. I promise.”

Nico heard Kriven clear his throat. He had gone too far. They never made promises to victims’ families. What was he doing? But this man, this death, and the timing were affecting him in a way that he had never been affected before. He had to give the Cassians some peace of mind. He had to do this for them. And for his mother.

Cassian was the one to break the silence. “Are you absolutely sure it’s our son?”

“The dental records match. We’re still waiting for a DNA analysis,” Kriven said, setting the X-rays on the coffee table.

“Mr. Cassian, you said you had lunch with your son the day he disappeared. Do you know what kind of watch he was wearing?”

“A Rolex Explorer II. I’d given it to him not long before the banquet. It was a sort of early thank you for all the work he had put in.”

“Do you remember what he was wearing?”

“Very clearly. Jeans and Adidas. He loved those shoes. They were all the rage.”

Samuel Cassian had had time to think through all these details—three decades. Thirty-one years. They were the same details recorded in the police report that they had retrieved from the archives.

“These items were found in the pit, close to the skeleton,” Nico said to quash any false hopes.

“So what do you want to know?” Cassian asked.

“Did your son have any enemies?”

“He was twenty-two years old! He grew up in a free country at a time when kids like him didn’t have a worry in the world. How could he have had any enemies? I lived through the war in Romania, and believe me, Jean-Baptiste’s life was a far cry from that.”

“Was anybody jealous of him? There had to be someone. People must have thought his success in the art world wasn’t earned, that you helped him get a foot in the door.”

“They’d be idiots. Jean-Baptiste had real talent. He would have been better than me if he’d lived.”

Parents always hoped their children would be better than they were, especially if they followed in their footsteps. Nico knew this all too well. Dimitri had told him on Christmas Eve that he wanted to go to the police academy. Nico would worry every day his son was on the job, but he was proud of the boy.

“You know that it takes more than talent,” Nico said.

“But talent is key. If my son hadn’t had the skill and passion for painting, I wouldn’t have been able to help him.”

“Is there any chance you were the target? Could someone have been angry with you and taken vengeance in this way?”

Samuel Cassian took a deep breath. “I don’t see how. I’ve always thought it was important to support others in the arts and bring people together.”

Nico spread the photos from Jean-Baptiste’s bedroom on the table. Their host looked at them carefully. Nico could see the wistfulness on his face.

“He was so happy to be alive. He smiled all the time. A good boy, really. The son I’d always dreamed of.”

As Dimitri was for him, Nico thought. And he owed Sylvie on that score. Sylvie was the reason he had a son. And for that gift alone, she would always be able to count on him.

“That’s Lara,” Cassian said. “His fiancée. She was so charming. They met in art school.”

Nico looked at Kriven, who took the signal and asked, “What’s happened to her?”

The man shrugged. “At first, we stayed in touch. Then we gradually stopped seeing each other and writing. I pushed her away. She needed to move on with her life.”

“Lara what?”

“Lara Krall, like Diana Krall, the jazz singer.”

“Did they really love each other?”

“I’d say they did, but not in a showy way.”

“And they didn’t fight?”

“Not as far as I knew.”

“Did you know where her family lived?”

“Her parents had property in Tours. Her father owned a business, and her mother was a teacher.”

Mrs. Cassian came back in and set a tray on the table with tea, fruit juice, liqueurs, and a bottle of premier-cru Montagny wine. She turned around quickly and left the room.

“Was Lara a photographer?” Nico asked.

“Hmm, not that I remember.”

“Who took these?” Kriven asked, pointing to the pictures of Jean-Baptiste.

“No idea. Our son was twenty-two. He had a life of his own.”

“But he lived with you,” Kriven said.

“He spent some time at Lara’s place and some at ours. She had a studio apartment in the Latin Quarter.”

“And the group pictures?” Nico asked.

Phase three of questioning was now under way. They were pressing the witness to draw out more information or bring additional memories to the fore.

“A friend, probably.”

“But who?”

“I have no idea!”

His Romanian accent was becoming more pronounced as the tension rose.

Mrs. Cassian came back with a plate of petits-fours.

“Dear, can you bring me the invitation to Jean-Baptiste’s exhibition in New York? I want to show it to our guests.” It seemed that Samuel Cassian was used to telling his wife what to do.

“Oh yes! You should have seen it. His canvases were wonderful. That’s what the critics said. Such a young boy and already a great artist,” she said as she left the room once again.

“Could you give us his friends’ names?” Kriven said. “You must remember at least a few of them, especially now that you’re seeing their faces.”

“Give me your notebook,” the artist said to Kriven. “These young men in particular and my son were inseparable. I’ll write down their names while you open that bottle of Burgundy. It’s an excellent vintage from the Chalon coast.”

Kriven poured three glasses as their host moved the pen over the paper.

“Have a taste, Chief.”

Nico brought the glass to his lips, breathed in the aromas, and took a sip. It was fresh and fruity. Cassian handed him the notebook and picked up his own glass.

“Excellent,” Cassian said, with a refined smack of the lips. “Life has its little pleasures. They don’t chase away our troubles, but they help us keep going. I presume you’ll take up a fresh investigation of Jean-Baptiste’s disappearance. When we reported him missing, your colleagues came up blank, although I’m sure they put in a good-faith effort. I kept hounding them but finally gave up, realizing it wouldn’t change anything.”

Yes, Nico thought, they had given up, and at that moment, the clock on the statute of limitations had started ticking, making it highly unlikely that they could prosecute the murderer, even if they found out who did it.

“There’s something else,” Nico said quietly. “We’ll be questioning everyone who was at the banquet and examining more of the site. We don’t want to miss something crucial to the investigation.”

Samuel Cassian froze.

“We can solve this mystery while seeing to it that your work progresses in a systematic and controlled way. The Society for the Disinterment of the Tableau-Piège and the police will work hand in hand. What do you think?” Nico was asking out of respect for the artist. The man’s approval or disapproval would not change the investigation.

“I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t need to be involved. It’s your choice. But the organization probably will reach out to you.”

Mrs. Cassian came in again, excited and happy, waving the invitation to the opening of their son’s exhibition, New York, New York.

“‘Start spreading the news.’” Cassian’s voice cracked when he got to the next line. “‘I’m leaving today.’”

On their way back to headquarters, Kriven was quieter than usual. He was shifting in his seat.

“What is it, David? Spit it out.”

“Um, well, it must be hard for you, boss, with your mom and all. You know you can count on me if you need some time off with your family.”

Nico looked over at Kriven. “We have a job to do, and I have a promise to keep.”

“About that,” Kriven said. “You see, you made a promise to Cassian, Chief, and, um, we never do that.”

Nico kept his eyes on the road. He didn’t have a response.

“I’m just worried, boss, that it’s becoming personal for you.”

There was a long moment of silence. Nico pulled into his parking spot and turned to Kriven. “David, fighting crime is always personal.”