Sleeping, which was once second nature to Mazarelle, had become a lost art, and the death of Ali Sedak hadn’t made it any easier. Not to mention how much he’d been drinking lately. He was glad he still had a major murder case to unravel or he might be seriously depressed. The inspector pulled out his passkey and went in through the McAllisters’ back door, turned on the lights, and glanced around. Everything looked just the way it had the last time he’d been there. Yet he couldn’t help feeling something was out of place, and as he tried to pin down what it was, he heard someone upstairs. Motionless, Mazarelle listened hard, but the footsteps had ceased. Had he imagined them? Lately he was more and more jumpy. He searched for his pipe but must have left it in his office.
Then he heard the sound of the car pulling up outside. It was Lambert, who had made good time and brought everything he’d asked for. Mazarelle hurried into the kitchen with Lambert in tow and, after irritably rummaging through a couple of drawers, found the key that McAllister had mentioned.
“Come on.” Mazarelle limped quickly into the living room and opened the gun case.
“Nice smell,” said Lambert, placing the rolls of canvas, wrapping paper, and tape he was carrying down on the floor.
“Cedar,” the inspector said. “That’s odd.”
“How so?”
“That’s usually used for hope chests, not guns.”
They both slipped on their latex gloves. Mazarelle took out the double-barreled shotgun first, cracked it open to make sure it was unloaded, then looked it over from butt to barrel, and sniffed the muzzle.
“Has it been fired recently?”
“It’s been fired, but I’ve no idea how recently. Could have been ten years, ten months, or only ten hours ago. More important is whether it’s the gun that murdered Schuyler Phillips. For that, we’ll have to wait to hear what they say in Toulouse after they run ballistics and we find out if we have a match. As for me, I’m feeling lucky, so take it.” He handed him the gun. “Wrap it up carefully, and guard it with your life.”
The other gun—a Mannlicher-Carcano—was also unloaded. To Mazarelle, who was no small arms expert, it appeared to be in good shape, as if it hadn’t been used very often.
But even if it had never been fired, which was highly unlikely, this one in the hands of an accomplice who left prints still might have played a part in the murders.
Lambert packed up the rifle and laid it down gently beside the other one on the table. The inspector’s plan was for Lambert to take his car and express the guns down to PTS, where Lambert was to personally hand them to Didier for testing. And if Mazarelle didn’t get the test results by the next day, he swore he’d come down there himself to get them.
“Not to worry. I’ll tell him, boss. But first,” he asked, looking around, “where’s the toilet?”
“Try upstairs. And step on it. Meanwhile give me the keys to your car and I’ll load up the trunk.”
By the time the impatient Mazarelle had locked the guns in the police car’s trunk and checked out the garage, which was empty except for what looked to him like fresh tire tracks, he’d expected Lambert to be ready to go. What the hell was keeping him? Was he shitting his brains out? There was no sign of him when he went back inside the house. Mazarelle, pulling himself along the banister, went up the stairs two at a time in search of his missing squad member. The hallway was deserted.
“Come on, Lambert!” he trumpeted. “Move your ass and let’s go.” Mazarelle had heard strange tales about constipated people sitting on a crapper for as long as half an hour who had fainted dead away, suffered heart attacks. He went down the hall peering into the empty rooms and banging his fists on the closed doors.
“A minute, boss. I’m coming.”
There was a loud rushing of water followed by Lambert stepping out from behind a door with a newspaper in his hands. He waved it in Mazarelle’s face.
“Did you ever see this article? It’s a piece on the Taziac murders, our task force, Sedak’s suicide, and all about you and the big murder cases you handled in Paris and how you tracked Sedak down. It makes a good story.”
The inspector snatched the copy of Sud Ouest out of his hands. There was a large photograph of L’Ermitage on the front page. His eyes dashed nonstop over the article’s opening paragraph, but that was enough.
“Where did you get this?” He returned the paper.
“It was over there on the stool.”
“Did you happen to notice that it was dated yesterday? That’s when I read it in the commissariat. Whoever left it here was in this house—probably sitting exactly where you were just now. And might still be in here for all we know.” The full impact of his realization galvanized Mazarelle into action. “There’s a room upstairs. Make sure it’s empty. I want you to check all the hiding places up there no matter how small, even mouseholes, and leave nothing to chance. After that, see if you can get into the attic. I’ll take care of the rest of the house. Hurry, Lambert, but watch yourself.”
Mazarelle sped through the rooms, flew down the halls like a heat-seeking missile. There were no surprises. “How about you?” he asked, when his man returned.
“Nothing.” Lambert brushed the cobwebs off his jacket with the newspaper he was holding as he came downstairs. “By the way, did I show you this?” He flipped the pages until he found where the article he’d been reading was continued. Holding it up in front of his boss, he poked his face playfully through the hole. “Somebody removed part of the ending.”
The inspector turned the page around and felt a chill go through his bones. There had been something printed there that had been ripped from the page. “It was a picture of me,” he recalled.
“One of your many fans, no doubt.” Lambert was enjoying his boss’s discomfort.
“No. No fan.”
The edgy Mazarelle’s lips barely parted as he dismissed the idea, his angular jaw tense. Holding the paper up by its corners, he examined the jagged hole in the page. The eye of the house seemed to be watching every move he made. It gave him one of the most peculiar feelings that he’d ever had. It felt as if suddenly, after a long and difficult hunt, he himself had become the hunted.