“Mélanie’s not the first.” Zazie’s voice quavered. “She’s in the clinic, but she told me things, terrible things.”
“This is your friend in the article?” Aimée shuddered. “Zazie, how frightening …”
“Not just frightening. But …” Zazie hesitated. “There’s more.” She showed Aimée another clipping dated from last December. TWELVE-YEAR-OLD VICTIM OF BRUTAL SEXUAL ASSAULT DISCOVERED BY PARENTS. “It must be the same person,” Zazie said. “Shouldn’t someone do something to stop it, Aimée?”
“But you don’t know they’re related,” Aimée said, although her mind was turning. A serial rapist preying on young girls?
Her skin prickled as she remembered that long-ago afternoon, a hot, humid June just like this one, when she was eight years old. It was soon after her American mother had disappeared. On Ile Saint-Louis a man had followed her after school. He’d offered her an ice cream at Berthillon’s on the corner—she could almost taste the cassis-limon. But something in the man’s smile, the way he stroked her bare arm, had made her shiver. “Can’t I tickle you?” She backed away, ran down rue des Deux Ponts around the corner to the quai and into her courtyard.
Her mind came back to the present at the rrrrrr of Zazie’s backpack zipper, which the girl was still playing with anxiously. Two similar attacks in a short period of time, both on girls about Zazie’s age—one of them Zazie’s friend. Could Zazie be right? Could it be one man? Had the flics put it together yet, and if not, might there be other victims? Aimée’s stomach clenched.
“You have to be careful, Zazie. Never let anyone follow you home.”
Zazie chewed her lip. “I have to do something.”
“Bien s?r, support your friend, she needs you right now.”
“Don’t you get it, Aimée?” Zazie shook her head. “Mon Dieu, I want to stop him. The police aren’t doing anything. If they were, they would have caught him before he hurt Mélanie.” Her eyes shone with anger. “If the flics aren’t paying attention, then I have to find him.”
Not again.
“Playing detective, Zazie? Don’t be silly. We’ve talked about this.” She strengthened her grip on Zazie’s hand. “Attention! Do you know how dangerous someone like that can be? You can’t take on someone like that on your own.”
Zazie thrust a FotoFit, a computer-generated image culled from composite descriptions, into Aimée’s hand. “That’s what he looks like.”
Small, deep-set eyes, thin mouth, wearing a cap. He could be anyone. “How do you know?”
“Mélanie described him to the flics.”
“So the flics are working to find him, then.” Aimée shuddered. “They can’t get him off the streets too soon.”
“The flics haven’t put it together, Aimée. They made this composite, but they’re not moving fast enough. Mélanie was attacked three days ago, and they have no leads! He’s got a pattern. He’ll attack again.” Zazie’s face was set with determination. “No girl’s safe until someone finds him and brings him right to their door, but I know who he is. I recognized him from the FotoFit. Now I just have to prove it’s him.”
Alarmed now, Aimée decided she needed to reason with her. “Whether he’s the one or not, it’s the flics’ job to find him. Not yours, Zazie. If you think you know who this man is who attacked your friend, you tell the flics and then you stay away from him. Do you understand me.”
“All the parents went to the Commissariat for a meeting, even the teachers came,” said Zazie. “The flics talked about the mec’s constitutional rights, harassment without evidence. Mélanie’s mother was crying. Can you imagine?”
She could. The burden of proof wasn’t always fair. She’d seen it too many times. She looked into this child’s eyes and saw a budding young woman with the world’s weight on her shoulders. Innocent, but for how much longer?
Her eye caught on the papers in Zazie’s open SUSPECT W binder. “Wait a minute, what’s this?” She pointed to a black-and-white photo of a street scene. “This photo looks like it was shot with a telephoto lens.”
Zazie nodded. “My friend’s got a good camera. It’s surveillance, like you and René do. The suspect goes to this bar on rue Pierre Fontaine in Pigalle.”
Aimée stifled a gasp. The photo was a night shot—what had this child seen? She knew that street in Pigalle, and it was no place for Zazie after dark. In the daytime, the area below Place Pigalle was a peaceful world of families, fishmongers, boulangeries and shops; costume ateliers that supplied the vibrant theatrical scene in the thirteen theaters dotting the quartier; actresses with their children at the park. But at night it was another world entirely: drugs, prostitutes, hustlers, pimps, sex shops, massage parlors. A red-light district.
“How do you know he goes there?” Aimée said carefully.
“I followed him to the NeoCancan.”
Aimée wanted to spank Zazie, but she was too big. “Followed him, Zazie? What were you thinking?”
“He hung around outside our school.”
Goosebumps rose on Aimée’s arms. She reached out and touched Zazie’s cheek. “That’s too dangerous. No more, Zazie. Please promise me.”
“If I promise not to go myself, will you check out the bar?”
“Moi?”