Chapter 18
1756 Words
Chapter 18The next morning Dufort spent an hour searching for Amy before going to the station, but saw nothing out of the ordinary in the alleyways and dumpsters. Before going inside, Dufort stepped into the alley and took out his blue glass bottle. He shook a few drops under his tongue and closed his eyes. Turning his face to the sun, he took several slow, deep breaths.
Just do the next right thing, he said to himself. Just do the next right thing.
The situation with Amy was beginning to take over, the pressure to solve the mystery of her disappearance pressing down on him, threatening to trigger anxiety so rampant that he couldn’t control it.
“Good morning,” he said with forced optimism to Perrault and Maron who were already at their desks. “My office,” he said, and they jumped up to follow him.
“Of course, we’re not backing off from Amy Bennett,” he said. “And we’ll get to sharing where we are with that in a moment. But first I want to go through everything else, make sure we’re on top of the rest of Castillac business. It’s always tempting with cases like Amy’s to run with them and get blinders to the rest of our responsibilities, and I want to make sure that doesn’t happen.
“Maron, you went after Monsieur Vargas, uh, was it Sunday? That taken care of?”
“Yes, sir,” said Maron. “He was not in his usual place, the bench in the cemetery behind the church. I walked all over the village looking for him and asking if anyone had seen him. Nothing. Then I thought, okay, if he usually goes to the cemetery, maybe I should look in the other ones—and sure enough, he was in that small cemetery on the edge of Salliac, sitting on the tombstone of a Monsieur Pierre Duchamp, eating a baguette with ham, happy as you please.”
“He came with you without a problem?”
“None, Chief.”
“Nice job,” said Dufort.
At that moment they heard the door to the station open, and Perrault went to see who it was.
“He’s just gone and I can’t stand it!” an old woman said, her voice loud and quavering.
Dufort went through to the front room and put his arm around her thin shoulders. “Bonjour Madame Bonnay, it’s nice to see you. Yves is missing again, eh? Run off to chase the ladies?”
Madame Bonnay let out a sob.
Maron and Perrault exchanged looks of surprise, wondering at Dufort’s brusqueness.
“I keep telling you, if you get that fellow fixed, he won’t run off so much,” said Dufort.
Maron’s eyebrows shot up.
“But I cannot mutilate him like that,” the old woman cried. “It seems so cruel! Oh Yves, where have you gone?” and she collapsed against Dufort with a fresh barrage of tears.
Dufort winked at Perrault. “Yves belonged to her husband Raimond, who was a skilled hunter,” he explained. “He has distinguished bloodlines, doesn’t he Madame Bonnay? A sought-after sire for hunting dog puppies?”
“He is a Grand Bleu de Gascogne,” she answered, drawing herself up. “He’s been very popular,” she said, wiping her nose with a lavender-scented handkerchief. “And I would hate to deprive him of that enjoyment, you understand.”
All three gendarmes laughed.
“But on the other hand, every time he gets a whiff of a b***h in heat, he’s off like a rocket. Could be any cur from the alley, you understand—selective he is not. I’m so afraid he will be hit by a car, or stolen.”
“Of course, I understand,” said Dufort. All three of us are going out in a matter of minutes, and we’ll keep an eye out for him. And he does find his way back sometimes, yes?”
“Sometimes,” Madame Bonnay said, almost managing a smile. “He’s such a sweet boy. Now that Raimond is gone, I don’t think Yves has enough to do. Well, thank you for looking for him. I’ll let you know if he turns up. I was going to make him liver for dinner, his favorite.”
“My favorite too,” Dufort said, walking her to the door. “I’m sure when he gets the smell of that in his nose, he’ll run right home.”
“All right,” said Dufort to Perrault and Maron once they were alone again. “Perrault, go over to Chez Papa and get that video from Nico. I don’t know why they’re dragging their feet but put a stop to it.”
“Yes sir,” said Perrault brightly, and left.
“You have anything?” Dufort asked, turning to Maron. “Thoughts? Ideas?”
Maron did not want to admit he did not. He put off answering, hoping something might occur to him quickly, but finally just shook his head.
“I would like for you to go out tonight, out of uniform. Chez Papa, or anyplace else you see students from Degas congregating. Obviously this isn’t exactly undercover work and I don’t mean for you to pretend not to be a member of the Castillac force, not that anyone would be fooled anyway—but I do hope that some informality might help with what I want you to do. Which is: find out what you can about Anton Gallimard. What do the students really think of him? What’s his reputation with the female students?
“Be charming,” said Dufort, with something of a brittle smile since he couldn’t exactly imagine Maron having that sort of magic in his repertoire. “See if you can get them to loosen up and tell you some stories….”
“Yes sir,” said Maron. “And for the rest of today, any particular assignment?”
“Take a stroll through the village and see if you can find Yves,” said Dufort. “Black and white mottled coat, long black ears sort of like a Basset hound.”
Maron showed no expression but nodded and softly said, “Yes sir,” as he left the station.
Dufort stood by his desk staring out of the window, his eyes glazed. Well, she may be able to help with the investigation, he rationalized, pulling out his cell, and tapping in the number for L’Institut Degas.
“Marie-Claire,” he said, and his voice had a little of that charm he disparaged in others. “This is Ben. I wanted to thank you for helping me track down Gallimard—I found him in his office just when you said I would.”
“I’m so glad. Anything I can do to help.”
“And also I wondered—would you like to have lunch with me? Perhaps the day after tomorrow, Friday? I have a few questions for you about Amy,” he added.
There was a slight pause that Dufort started to interpret but stopped himself.
“That would be fine,” said Marie-Claire.
“I’ll come for you at noon,” said Dufort, and they said their goodbyes and hung up.
He slid his cell onto his desk, still looking out of the window, but in his mind he was seeing Marie-Claire, with her slim waist and intelligent dark eyes.
Perhaps this is a mistake, he thought. But sometimes making a mistake can be the best thing you can do.
Dufort ran a shorter route than usual on Friday morning. He was in a hurry to get to the station, hoping that the day was going to bring some news in the Amy Bennett case.
He was not disappointed.
Nico finally came by with the streetcam video from Chez Papa. He was apologetic, it kept slipping his mind, he was busy, he couldn’t figure out how to send a digital copy—a boatload of excuses, none of which was at all convincing to Maron, who knew Nico to be anything but scatter-brained or inept.
Nico explained that finally he had made a copy off the DVR with his phone, and then copied that onto a CD since the file was too large to send by mail. He had contacted the security company that serviced the camera, but according to him, they were unresponsive apart from telling him to manage it himself if all he wanted was a copy and there was no break-in or evidence of wrongdoing.
“I tried to tell them that evidence of wrongdoing is exactly what you guys are looking for,” said Nico with a shrug. “But eh, they didn’t want to bother. Customer service isn’t what it used to be.”
Maron flexed his shoulders and said nothing.
Cold fish, thought Nico.
“All right then, if there’s nothing else I can do for you?”
“Not at the moment. We may want to question you at some point,” said Maron, although he knew of no plans to do so. He liked putting people off-balance.
Nico nodded. “See you later then,” he said, and left the station.
Thérèse Perrault came in just as Dufort and Maron were slipping the disc into Dufort’s desktop.
“Bonjour, Perrault,” said Dufort. “Whatever you said to Nico must have had an effect—he finally got himself over here with the video. Good job. It’s the last one we know of, and the others have been useless as you know. I will admit, my expectations are low.”
Perrault squeezed in next to her co-workers and they waited for the image to appear. First the sound came on—the sound of a rollicking party, with someone singing, pop music playing, shouting in the background, the clinking of dishes and glasses—all happy enough, the sound of people cutting loose and having fun.
They did not have to wait long. “There she is!” said Perrault, pointing to a corner of the screen.
From the back, you could just make out the head and shoulders of a young woman, standing in a group by the bar.
“Are you sure that’s her?” said Maron.
“I’m sure,” answered Perrault. I’ve been looking at those photographs her roommate sent pretty much every minute. I feel like I practically gave birth to her at this point.”
Dufort shot her a look and Perrault looked back at the screen.
The noise of the video was loud and it was impossible to distinguish what anyone was saying, but every thirty seconds or so, someone let out a loud whoop. It all sounded very celebratory. And then the people in Amy’s group clapped, and someone moved into the frame and put his arm around her.
“Looks like Lapin,” said Perrault. “Always got his mitts on somebody.”
They kept watching. The tape was twenty minutes long; it was not entertaining to watch a party’s slow progress that way, unable to hear what anyone was saying, and only seeing the blurry drunkenness of everyone increasing as more drinks were ordered, more drinks thrown back.
“What were they celebrating, I wonder?” said Perrault.
All three officers were studying the video intently, watching Amy, and also scanning the rest of the frame for anything, anything at all that might be helpful.
At about seven minutes in, Amy turned towards the camera. You could see her blurry face, and all three of the officers were struck with how strange it was to see her there, smiling, and throwing her head back laughing—when almost certainly she was dead.
Because this many days out, what other options were really possible? You can’t ignore the percentages, Dufort would always say.
The camera was just over the door to Chez Papa, so it recorded the tops of heads as people came and went. At about seventeen minutes in, the eyes of all three gendarmes widened as they saw Amy Bennett put on a sweater and walk unsteadily toward the door.
They saw the top of her head disappear as she left the restaurant, with Lapin Broussard’s arm firmly around her waist.
- Writer
