Private Paris (Private 10)

“What’s she been doing?”

“Showering, crying, sleeping, and now showering again.”

“Perhaps she is a compulsive obsessive?” Louis asked before taking a big bite of the croissant that melted his face into pure contentment.

“You ask her that,” I said before tearing off a piece of croissant and popping it in my mouth. The taste was simply incredible, not like the stuff you get back in the States, even in the best of bakeries.

“You like these, yes?”

“Extraordinary,” I said, chewing and then taking a long sip of perfect café au lait. “God, how is it possible that the French eat like this every day and don’t weigh three hundred pounds?”

“That is a cultural secret I am bound to keep,” Langlois said. He laughed and then sobered after glancing at the door to Kim’s room. “I suspect she has been abused.”

“Why would you think that?”

Louis drank more coffee and then said, “Many times when I have interviewed poor victims of such abuse, I have found that we could not collect evidence from their bodies because they had scrubbed them so clean.”

I looked at the closed door, wondered if that was the case. It would certainly explain why she’d been so reluctant to talk to us.

“Maybe we should bring in one of the women in your office,” I said. “Make her more comfortable.”

Louis shook half a croissant at me and said, “A good idea. I’ll see to it at once.”

He finished the pastry, drank down more coffee, got out his cell, and punched in the number for Private Paris. Interested to see what was going on back in the States on CNN, I turned on the television, getting instead a commercial for cheese on TF1, a French station. I was about to change the channel when the commercial ended and the screen switched to a Paris street scene at night. A crowd watched firemen spraying the roof of a smoking building.

“Garde will be here in half an hour,” Louis said. “She’s excellent.”

“What’s going on here?” I said, gesturing at the television.

He stepped up beside me, listened, and then said, “A fire last night at the Galeries Lafayette. No one was injured. Must be a slow news day.”

I looked from the television back to the closed doors to Kim’s bedroom. The shower was still going.

Walking to the doors, I knocked lightly and called, “Kim?”

I waited and then knocked louder, and called, “Kim, we have breakfast out here for you. Could you come out?”

Hearing nothing in return, I glanced at Langlois, who squinted and then made a twisting motion with his right hand. I found the door locked, so I knocked loud enough to be heard easily over the falling water. Nothing again.

“God help me if she’s cut her wrists in there,” I said, pulling out my electronic key card and jimmying the lock.

It took me less than fifteen seconds to pry back the hasp and push open the door to find a rumpled bed, an open window, and a closed bathroom door. I almost went to the door to knock again, but I noticed a note on a piece of hotel stationery sitting on the dresser.

Scrawled in big letters, it said, “Tell my grandfather I’m sorry to have bothered him in troubles of my own making. I’m sorry to everyone.”

Chapter 14

“SON-OF-A-BITCH,” I groaned, sure that she’d gone and done it—committed suicide on me.

I wrenched open the bathroom door and was enveloped in steam. The bathtub was empty. So was the shower.

“She’s running,” Louis said behind me.

“Impossible,” I said, rushing out. “How could she have gotten out of here?”

“The window?” He was already heading that way.

But we were eighty feet up. She’d have to be a human fly.