“That doesn’t explain the FotoFit,” René said.
“Zazie said Mélanie was able to give some description to the composite artist,” she said. “She must have glimpsed him somehow.”
Aimée paged through Zazie’s grid-lined Claire-Fontaine notebook: notes on Bar NeoCancan, the list of schools. An unfinished map sketched in pencil with Xs. No street names, Métro stations or recognizable landmarks.
René looked over her shoulder. “Could be anywhere,” he said.
She hiked up her black linen agnès b. shift from last summer’s sales, glad of the Citro?n’s roof between her and the pounding rain. All they needed was AC.
“Zazie mentioned a pattern. So far, there’s their age, the fact they were latchkey kids, the same arrondissement,” she said.
René pulled out his large-format navy blue Paris plan, the kind used by taxi drivers. Thumbed through. “Et voilà.” He stabbed his finger on the page of the ninth arrondissement. “The two schools are here. And rue de Rochechouart, where Sylvaine was attacked, borders the ninth, which makes a triangle. Each school’s on the edge of the arrondissement: northwest, southeast … and if Sylvaine attended Collège-Lycée Jacques-Decour, the northeast.”
She nodded. “A pattern the flics didn’t notice? But the school parents, from what Zazie told me, had gone up in arms at the Commissariat.”
“What do the girls have in common?” said René. “A special type, a look? The fact he knew no one was at home?”
“We need more,” she said. “But I know Sylvaine took music lessons. The violin.”
René nodded. Excitement in his large, green eyes. “I’ll get on it. What if the others took lessons, too?”
Aimée traced her finger on the fogged-up windshield. “Why did the others survive and Sylvaine didn’t?” she said.
“He’s amped up?” René said. “Something’s thrown him off.”
Her heart fluttered as she realized something. “Say his timing was off when he attacked Sylvaine. She wasn’t alone—Zazie was there. He didn’t know, she surprised him, which made him even more violent this time. Or …”
“Or she really wasn’t there,” said René. “Keep that possibility in the mix.”
What if Zazie had lied?
But what if she hadn’t? Time was slipping by as they hashed this out. René hit the defroster, and she thought hard, watching as the fog began to clear from the car’s windshield. She wanted to act. Do something. Now.
“Why hasn’t Zazie come home, called, met me when she said she would? That’s not like her, René. She wanted my help.”
“Don’t you remember being thirteen? What if she … Let’s say with all this World Cup fever, she goes to a party. She’s afraid to come home, knows she’ll get in trouble.”
Excuses. He didn’t want to face it. Neither did she. But something niggled at her.
“True, it feels off,” she admitted. “What if she’s hiding from him because she witnessed something? Or …” Or he’d got her, but she couldn’t say it.
A burst of techno music blasted from the window of a car, reverberating off the Haussmannian apartment buildings.
René’s lips pursed. Then he grabbed Aimée’s arm. “Where did Zazie get this night photo?” asked René. “What if one of these is the man from the FotoFit?”
He held up the black-and-white photo from Zazie’s notebook, with the night street scene taken from above: several men, a few wearing hoodies, stood near a Wallace fountain. Boys from the lycée, it looked like.
Now she remembered. “Taken with a telephoto lens. Zazie mentioned she needed to use her friend’s camera.”
René pointed to the Wallace Fountain in the picture. “I’ll drive around until I find it.”
“Every quartier has them, René. It could be anywhere. It’s hard to tell the location from this angle.” Tall, cast iron and forest green, the Wallace fountains had been donated by a philanthropic Englishman after the ravages of the Commune. They were once the only safe public drinking water.
“Bon,” he said, pulling on his driving gloves. “I’ll use Zazie’s map to identify the streets. You can ask Virginie if any of her friends live on them.”
Thank God she had his help. At almost six months pregnant, feeling like a whale in slow motion, she appreciated his taking on this legwork. Meanwhile she’d see if Mélanie had heard from Zazie.
“I’ll take you to the office first,” he said.
As if she were an invalid.
“Drop me at the clinique on rue de la Grange-Batelière, René,” she said. “Zazie’s friend Mélanie should be able to shed more light on this.”
A few blocks away at the clinic, she hefted herself up and out of the car. The downpour had stopped. Rain-freshened air layered with lime blossom greeted her. She breathed the scent deep into her lungs. Her neck unknotted.
But the evening duty nurse at the clinic shook her head. “Discharged,” she said, checking her screen in the darkly lit reception.
To Aimée’s further questions, she shrugged. “Patient confidentiality precludes my giving information.”
Great. A wasted trip.
She called the café. Virginie had left to meet with the Brigade des Mineurs, but Pierre, after a breathless search of the kitchen, tracked down Mélanie’s address.
Aimée would question the girl at home, hoping against hope that Zazie had contacted her. Figuring it counterproductive to score a taxi in the snarled traffic on the tree-lined Grands Boulevards, she took the Métro. Changed once and exited on the platform at Liège, her favorite station, joining crowds scurrying by the blue-and-white, mosaic-tiled scenes of the old Flemish city.
Near a teeming café terrasse, she found the bus stop. Just in time to catch the 68 uphill toward Clichy. It was chock-full of passengers, standing room only. An elder whiskered gentleman offered her a seat, and she didn’t refuse.