Private Paris (Private 10)

When we pushed open the wooden door there was a rush of wind. Shredded paper and several pigeons flew everywhere. The windows were wide open. Once we’d shooed out the birds and closed the windows, I could see that the place was less than five hundred square feet and completely in shambles.

Bookcases turned over. Desk drawers pulled out. Files dumped. A laptop computer lay smashed beside them. The kitchen cabinets were open. So was the small refrigerator, which smelled of rotted meat and curdled milk.

Paper was strewn across the floor and on the bed, which had been stripped of linen and blankets save a blue pillowcase. And on the wall above the headboard there was the tag again: AB-16.

Louis picked up a handful of papers and files and started going through them.

I went to th

e head of the bed, leaned over, and sniffed the graffiti paint.

“New,” I said, pulling back and crinkling my nose. “Past day or so.”

Louis said, “And it looks like he was working on an opera libretto.”

Then he looked confused and went back to reading.

I got down on my knees to look under the bed, hearing Louis grab up more files and more paper. At first glance, I saw nothing. But as I drew my head back to get up, I noticed that a section of floorboard about eighteen inches long was sticking up a half inch or so over by the wall.

I got up and moved the bed to get at that floorboard. I was able to use my fingernails to pry up the board, revealing a plastic Tupperware-style container.

I lifted it out, unsnapped the lid, and looked inside.

As I did, Louis slapped the files in his hand and said, “I sensed at the murder scene that Monsieur Richard had been playing with fire. This proves it. No wonder he got burned.”

That didn’t register for several seconds while I studied the shocking contents of the box. Finally, I looked up and said, “Come again?”

“The libretto of his opera, Jack,” he said. “It is the tale of a doomed love affair between a Catholic priest and a Muslim woman.”

I glanced back in the box, squinted one eye, and said, “Then I’ll bet this is what they were in here looking for.”

Coming over to look, Louis said, “What have you got?”

“The gas Henri Richard played with when he was playing with fire.”

Chapter 23

INSIDE THE BOX were condoms, lubricant, and sex toys. There were also raunchy porno photos of Richard in a priest’s collar having sex with a woman.

In some of the pictures she wore a flowing black robe hitched up over her hips. In others, she was naked from the neck down. But in every picture we found, she wore a black hijab and veil that hid her face except for deep-brown eyes that seemed to stare defiantly into the camera lens.

I took the pictures out, one by one, and set them on the lid, where Louis could see and make his own judgments. When I did, I realized there was something else zipped inside the kind of clear plastic case my mother used to use to protect her sweaters.

“I’ve got the priest’s collar and the hijab here,” I said. “Those could be different women in the pictures using the outfit to fulfill his fucked-up fantasies.”

Louis shook his head and said, “It is the same woman. Sans doute.”

I looked at him skeptically and then he pointed out the evidence in the pictures, and I was horrified and sickened. Setting the pictures back on the box top, my mind whirled with questions and speculations.

Was the veiled woman in the photographs also the redhead Henri Richard was seen with last night? Were these disturbing photos behind the opera director’s murder? Someone in the woman’s Muslim family seeking vengeance?

Something Louis said came back to me, and I looked over at him. “What was that you said earlier about the murder scene being more than it seemed?”

His jaw stiffened. “With these photos, I cannot see it another way now. The whole thing looked highly symbolic to me, Jack.”

“Okay.”

Louis hesitated and then said, “Remember how Richard was hanging?”