Chapter 14

CHAPTER 14

DGSI H EADQUARTERS

P ARIS

"Kebab, falafel, and couscous," said Brunelle as she set the plastic bag filled with to-go containers on her colleague's desk.

It was amazing to her that a man so slim could eat so much food and never put on an ounce of weight.

Mohammed Motii, or MoMo for short, was a digital forensic specialist for the DGSI's Computer Analysis Response Team. CART's job was to crack, extract, and preserve any and all digital evidence during DGSI computer investigations.

MoMo had agreed to keep on working on the key fob Brunelle had given him, in exchange for her going out in the rain and picking up dinner from the Moroccan restaurant around the corner.

"You didn't let them forget my fries, did you?" he asked.

"They're in the box with the falafel. And here's your Fanta," she replied, pulling the bottle from her bag, which contained her own dinner of chicken tagine. "Any luck with that flash drive yet?"

MoMo shook his head. "Whoever did the encryption on this thing, it's first-class."

"I'll be in my office. Let me know when you break it."

Eyes glued to his screens, MoMo gave her a thumbs-up and she continued down the hall.

In her office, Brunelle closed the door behind her, kicked off her shoes, and hung up her coat before sitting down at her desk. A muted TV on the wall, tuned to a 24/7 cable news channel, was showing scenes from Oslo.

Unwrapping the plastic utensils, she tore off a piece of khubz bread and tucked into her tagine as she checked her emails.

There was plenty of the bureaucratic nonsense that clogged her inbox on a daily basis, along with a reminder that she had a pistol and submachinegun requalification coming up, and an RSVP for a counterterrorism seminar in London. Buried at the very bottom was an update from Inspector Vincent Gibert. She opened it.

The email included his case notes thus far, a handful of witness statements, and links to the CCTV footage his officers had pulled from cameras around Jadot's apartment building, which had been uploaded to the cloud.

According to a brief note Gibert had written, they were still working on getting access to the phone. If it was encrypted nearly as thoroughly as the flash drive, they were going to have their hands full. La Crim's specialists were good, but none of them were at MoMo's level.

As she ate, she scrolled through the witness statements. All of Jadot's neighbors had been contacted, but none of them had seen or heard anything. The staff at Robert et Louise, the restaurant across the street, said that Jadot was a regular, and had come in last night for a nightcap, shortly before closing. There was nothing in his speech or his behavior to have given any of them cause for concern.

When he left, the barman remembered watching him cross the street in the rain and enter his building. He didn't recall seeing anyone else follow him inside. Brunelle decided to check for herself.

Clicking on the link for the cameras with the best views of Jadot's building, as well as the entrance to Robert et Louise, she toggled back and forth, fast-forwarding and rewinding until she had what she wanted.

She was able to pinpoint the exact moment Jadot arrived at the restaurant and the exact moment he left. The barman's witness statement was correct. Judging by the CCTV footage, no one had followed Jadot into his building.

No one had come out either. At least not until the next morning, when residents, or what she assumed were residents, began leaving. One man exited with his dog. A young woman with two children departed not long after that. Then a smartly dressed couple stepped outside, only to realize that the man had forgotten his umbrella. He reappeared several moments later with it and they departed.

She kept watching until the woman identified as the housekeeper arrived, followed shortly after by uniformed police officers.

According to the housekeeper, she had found the door fully locked, and she had used her own set of keys to gain entry. She was unaware of anyone else who might have keys of their own.

Wanting to be completely thorough, Brunelle rolled the security footage back a full twenty-four hours and took note of everyone who had come and gone via the front door of Jadot's building. According to Gibert's email, his team had done the same. Everyone had been contacted, identified, and accounted for.

As she reviewed the footage, she kept thinking about Jadot's pistol and what must have happened to cause him to pull it from its hiding place.

By all appearances, he was winding down; relaxing. He had returned home, had taken off his shoes at the front door, hung his coat, and was pouring himself a drink back in the kitchen. At some point, he had pulled his gun from under the sink.

The only logical answer was that something had spooked him. He had grabbed the gun because he sensed a threat. And then what? What would she have done in his position?

That answer was simple—she would have gone looking for the threat. She would have searched her entire apartment until she was satisfied the threat no longer existed. Was that what Jadot had done?

It would explain why he might have tucked the gun into his waistband. After searching the apartment, maybe he was confident enough that the threat had passed, but not so confident that he was ready to return the gun to its original hiding spot. Or perhaps he wanted to have his drink first. Either way, he let his guard down.

Judging by the partially opened freezer door, he had probably gone for some ice and that was when the killer had struck.

She was content with the credibility of that scenario. It made sense. It also allowed her to eliminate Jadot's murder as a crime of passion. When someone was angry enough to go for a gun, the odds normally remained in their favor.

Which left assassination or a crime of opportunity—and this was where it got tricky.

By definition, a crime of opportunity was not premeditated. A burglar, for example, gets caught in the middle of a home invasion, picks up an ice axe, and kills the homeowner. That could very well have been what happened to Jadot. The fact that the murderer hadn't stolen anything didn't make the scenario any less plausible. The killer might have fled in a panic.

In whatever state the killer had fled, it wasn't via the front door. That much was clear. The murderer had entered and exited Jadot's fifth-floor apartment via some other means. This took the degree of difficulty and therefore the sophistication of the crime up a notch.

There was no back door to the apartment, no rear stairwell. Pulling up recent satellite imagery of Paris, Brunelle drilled down on Jadot's building.

The killer would have had to have accessed the enclosed courtyard behind the building and then climbed up, or made their way across the adjacent, steeply pitched rooftops and dropped down. This person would have also had to have done so during inclement weather. It seemed to her that a burglar that determined wouldn't have left empty-handed. Which begged a totally new question. How did she know they hadn't?

Just because the killer hadn't taken his gun, or his cash, or his phone, it didn't mean that they weren't there to steal something else. Jadot was a spy after all and that was exactly what Gibert had been driving at; what his "intuition" and his "gut" had been telling him. The killing had been "work-related."

Despite keeping her mind open—and hating to admit it—Brunelle was beginning to move in his direction. Paris was full of much easier apartments to rob. This wasn't random. Jadot's had been targeted for a reason—because someone either wanted to get to him, or get to something he had in his possession. Once MoMo cracked the encryption on the flash drive, she'd hopefully have that answer.

In the meantime, Gibert and his team needed to widen their net—beginning with interviewing the residents of the surrounding rooftop apartments to determine if they had seen or heard anything unusual, and following up with an investigation of the walled courtyard.

Finally, they needed to expand their search cordon and scoop up a lot more neighborhood CCTV footage. The killer might have been clever and might have been determined, but they were human, and humans made mistakes; they all left clues. Brunelle only needed one.

She was about to reply to Gibert's email when her phone rang. Looking down, she saw his name on her caller ID.

"Brunelle," she said, answering the phone.

"I think I may have something," the inspector replied.

"I'm listening."

"No. Not over the phone. In person."

She glanced out the window. It was still pouring outside. There'd be no taxis available. "It's pissing down rain, Vincent. If you want to do this in person, you'll have to come here."

"I'll meet you halfway," he offered.

Then, before she could utter the one place in Paris she would not agree to meet him at, he said it, and disconnected the call.

"Botaniste. Forty-five minutes."