Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7

P ARIS

Karine Brunelle was angry. As soon as the body of Jean-Jacques Jadot had been identified, the next call should have been to her office at the DGSI—the Directorate General for Internal Security—France's equivalent of the American FBI or the British MI5.

Instead, the Paris police—who, like most of the French public, gorged themselves on action movies depicting DGSE agents as glamorous, globe-trotting James and Jane Bonds—had called Jadot's agency, the Directorate General for External Security.

By the time Brunelle arrived at the crime scene, the place was crawling with Jadot's colleagues. There was no telling how much evidence had been disturbed. They might make good spies, but they weren't homicide detectives and they definitely weren't evidence technicians.

Flashing her creds at the door, she pushed past a burly patrol officer and called out for the lead homicide detective, "Gibert!"

As she passed the living room, she caught sight of three men in tailored suits with stainless-steel dive watches, perfectly polished shoes, and expensive haircuts who were sitting on Jadot's couch, smoking.

"I'm sorry for your loss," she said, stopping to address them. "But you can't be here. This is an active crime scene."

"You don't even know who we are," said one of the men.

"You're DGSE," she replied, working hard to keep her temper in check. "That's why I extended my condolences. Here's my card," she continued, setting it on the vestibule table. "Feel free to reach out at any time and I will share with you whatever I can. But like I said, this is an active crime scene and you're not authorized to be here."

The men looked at each other as Karine, all five feet four inches of her, held her ground and slowly tapped her foot. She was in her thirties, with a thin nose, full lips, and jet-black hair cut in a short, shaggy bob. She looked more like a graduate student you'd find reading Baudelaire or Rimbaud in some café near the Sorbonne than a federal cop.

She was an introvert who understood people. And because she understood them, they often exhausted her—especially the dumb ones.

She preferred to work alone; no partner. It wasn't that she couldn't summon the requisite social skills, she could. In fact, when she needed, she could be quite charming—though it rapidly depleted her social battery. The problem was that she'd yet to find anyone who could keep up with her mentally.

Like most humans, she was complicated. A perfect night could mean a good book, a great bottle of Burgundy, and her phone set to do not disturb. Or it could mean a little hash, an old Nouvelle Vague film from Truffaut or Chabrol, along with a warm, naked body in her bed, male or female—as long as they knew when to stop talking and when it was time to leave.

She was the embodiment of Chhinnamasta, the goddess of contradictions. And as such, she was often difficult to read.

Now, however, was not one of those times. She was radiating a total boss bitch vibe.

Finally, it had the desired effect as one of the DGSE operatives stood up, but not before moving to stub out his cigarette in Jadot's overflowing ashtray.

"Stop," Brunelle ordered. "That ashtray may contain evidence. Jesus, toss your butts out the window or throw them in the street downstairs like real Frenchmen."

The trio glowered at her as they rose and filed out of the apartment.

The patrol officer, apparently a fan of seeing people up the ladder from him get their asses chewed, smiled and flashed her the thumbs-up.

Brunelle didn't find it amusing. She found it unprofessional. "What's your name?"

"Leconte, madame."

"Officer Leconte, before I was DGSI, I was a police officer. I had the same training that you do. So, I have no problem asking you—what's your number one responsibility here?"

It had been so drilled into him that the young officer didn't even need to think about his reply. "To protect and preserve the crime scene, madame."

"Does that mean letting DGSE agents traipse through it?"

"No, madame."

"Are you going to see to it that no further unauthorized persons are allowed in?"

"Yes, madame."

"Good. Now, how many more are back in the kitchen with the body?"

"Two, but—"

Brunelle held up her hand. "No buts. I'll deal with them. You see to your post. Is that understood?"

"Yes, madame," Leconte replied.

Nodding at the young officer, she turned and headed back toward the rear of the apartment, where homicide detective Vincent Gibert was exceeding his authority by allowing two DGSE operatives direct access to the corpse.

She was a detail person and took in everything as she walked. She paid special attention to the framed photos on the walls of Jadot in different exotic locales. The ones of him mountain climbing were where he appeared happiest. He wore a broad smile that stretched from ear to ear. It was hard to believe that a man filled with so much vitality had just been discovered by his housekeeper dead on the kitchen floor.

She peeked briefly into each room she passed, developing a better feel for the victim and the scene. Arriving at the kitchen, she paused and registered it all in one chaotic snapshot—the partially open freezer door, the keys on the counter, the empty glass next to the bottle of bourbon, Jadot's corpse, the gun lying on the floor next to him, and the three additional men gathered in the room.

Gibert, a sinewy cop in his mid-forties with a buzz cut and permanent bags under his eyes, was a senior inspector with the Brigrade Criminelle, also known as the BC or "la Crim." His department was in charge of homicides, kidnappings, bombings, and investigations of personalities "of mention," which could be anyone from a politician to a celebrity actor. He stood chatting with two rough-looking guys whom she didn't recognize.

They were in casual clothes—jeans, dark T-shirts, and boots. The men were about Gibert's age, fit, and also sported short, military-style haircuts.

One of them was using his personal phone to take pictures of Jadot's corpse, leaning down to get close-ups of the ice axe embedded in the dead man's skull.

Sensing her presence, the man taking pictures turned and looked up.

"Have budgets gotten so tight that forensics specialists now use their own iPhones?" she asked.

"Agent Brunelle," Gibert replied, trying to keep things cordial, "I thought I'd heard your voice. How are things at the DGSI?"

"Nice try, Vincent. I thought we had more respect for each other. Why is this crime scene crawling with DGSE operatives?"

"If one of your colleagues was murdered, wouldn't you want to receive a call from me?"

"I would expect it. I would also expect you to preserve the crime scene until representatives from my agency had arrived. Under the Ministry of the Interior, the murder of a federal officer makes us the oversight authority."

Gibert pursed his lips and shot her a look that clearly indicated he thought she was being unreasonable. "Contacting DGSE was a small professional courtesy."

Brunelle didn't want to argue. She knew she was right and, more important, so did Gibert. Jurisdiction over this case was not in question.

Shifting her attention to the casually dressed men, she asked, "Who are you two?"

Neither spoke.

"They're old colleagues of mine," Gibert answered for them. "We served in the army together. They're with DGSE now."

It was starting to make sense. Pointing at the men, she said, "But you're not just DGSE, are you? You're from Action Division."

Action Division was the DGSE's covert operations unit. They recruited from elite French military units and handled some of the nation's most sensitive black ops—up to and including assassinations.

Again, neither man responded.

"I'll take that as a yes," Brunelle went on, piecing it together. "So, three suits in the living room, a couple more milling around downstairs, and two operators from Action Division. Obviously, DGSE doesn't think this is some random act of violence.

"That's why you're here," she said. "It takes a thief to catch a thief and all that. You guys are not unfamiliar with assassinations. You're here looking to rule it in or rule it out, right? How am I doing so far?"

The men remained silent.

"What exactly did Jadot do for the DGSE?"

More silence.

"Judging by the photos in the hallway, he wasn't some lowly paper pusher in the Paris office. He got around. Pretty global. What kind of stuff was he working on?"

No reply.

"Who do you think might want him dead? Any clue? No? Nothing at all? C'mon, guys," she chided, shaking her head. "This isn't how it's supposed to work. Help me out here."

The men were a brick wall.

Gibert could see this was going nowhere.

Shaking their hands, he chatted with them for a brief moment and then sent the operatives on their way. "I'll let you know if anything develops," he said as they exited the kitchen and headed for the front door.

"Great talking with you guys," Brunelle quipped.

Once the men were down the hall, she rounded on Gibert. "What the actual fuck, Vincent? The scene hasn't even been processed yet. Now thanks to your pals, we've got extra hair, fibers, and God-knows-what-else all over the place. Is this how la Crim rolls these days?"

"Don't bust my balls, Karine."

"Don't give me a reason to."

"Fine."

"No, it's not fine, " she replied. "What were you thinking?"

"What was I thinking? I was thinking that whatever this is, it runs straight through DGSE. Look around. If this was a robbery, how come nothing's missing? They didn't even take his gun. Do you know what that would fetch on the black market?"

"How do you know that's Jadot's gun and not the killer's?"

"We ran the serial number. He also has about five hundred euros, cash, in his left front pocket. They didn't take his phone either."

"Where is it?"

Gibert pulled a clear plastic evidence bag from his jacket pocket and showed it to her. "I'm going to take it back to Trente-Six," he said, using the slang term for his office, which corresponded to its address at 36 quai des Orf èvres, "and have my people go to work on it right away."

"And anything you come up with, you're going to share it with me and only me, correct? No more of this old-boy network with the DGSE. You need to respect the chain of command."

"What could it hurt? Why not give them a taste?"

"Because they're not permitted to work inside France. They work exterior of the country—that's literally the E in DGSE."

"I know what the E stands for," he said, pivoting to her animosity. "Are you still angry with me? Is that what this is all about?"

"Don't flatter yourself, Vincent."

"I'm just saying, if you don't want to work with me, if you can't put our personal stuff aside, you can hand this case off to someone else."

"First," Brunelle replied, "anything personal between us is in the past. And—"

"Are you sure?"

"And second," she pressed, not allowing him to derail her, "I wasn't angry until I walked in here and saw that you'd turned this crime scene into an open house for your buddies from the DGSE. That's unprofessional. I won't have that. Am I clear?"

"Crystal," Gibert responded. "But I'm telling you, Jadot's murder is work-related. That's why I said it runs straight through the DGSE. We're not going to solve this without them. Anything we can do to keep them cooperative, benefits the investigation."

"What if it's not work-related? What if this was a crime of passion or opportunity?"

"That's not what my gut's telling me."

Brunelle looked at him.

"I've been a homicide inspector for over two decades," he continued. "You learn to trust your intuition. And mine tells me this is work-related."

"And what did your intuition tell you about me?"

"Fuck off, Karine."

"No, tell me. I'd like to know."

"Honestly?" he asked.

"Honestly," she replied.

Gibert traveled back in his mind, back to when they had first worked together, before their relationship had crossed the line.

"I thought you were smart," he said. "Maybe a little too smart. And weird. You were standoffish. The other cops thought you were cold, bitchy even, but that wasn't it."

"No?"

"No. You were lonely. You probably still are. You push everybody away. Of course every time you do, you've got a perfect excuse why, but somewhere, deep down, you know you're lying to yourself. You're a misanthrope. And until you truly learn to like yourself, you're going to be incapable of liking, much less loving other people."

After a long pause, Brunelle began to clap, slowly. "Well said. It's like having the great Molière himself right here in the kitchen imparting his wisdom."

"Go ahead, make jokes," Gibert responded. "Deflect. I should've washed my hands of you a lot sooner."

She could have let that go, but she was still angry. "Speaking of hands," she replied, needling him, "I see you've started wearing your wedding ring again. Was that your idea? Or your wife's?"

"Fuck you, Karine. I mean it. Fuck you to hell. I don't know why I bother with you."

At that moment, patrol officer Leconte approached the kitchen to let them know that the evidence technicians had arrived.

Whatever this was between them was, for the moment, over.

"You know the rules," said Gibert as he left to go talk with the techs. "Look all you want. Just don't touch anything."

If only you had obeyed that rule, she thought to herself, we could have saved each other a lot of heartache.

Tired of the back-and-forth, she nodded. No additional venom. No more witty rejoinders. Just seeing him again had taken a lot out of her. She needed some air.

She glanced around the kitchen one last time, committing everything to memory, looking for anything unusual or out of place.

Her eyes landed on the set of keys sitting on the counter. There wasn't anything strange about them per se, but attached to the ring was a car's key fob. It gave her an idea.

Searching the neighborhood for Jadot's vehicle would allow her to get out of the apartment and away from Vincent while continuing to move the investigation forward.

Pulling a pair of latex gloves from her pocket, she put them on and walked over to the counter. Picking up the keys, she studied the fob.

It was black, with chrome accents, and had three buttons—door lock, door unlock, and trunk release. Pretty standard stuff. Separating the fob from the key ring, she slid it into her pocket and texted a colleague back at the office to run Jadot's name through their vehicle registry database.

Crouching down, she inspected the revolver. It was a Manurhin MR 73, chambered in .357 Magnum. The wooden grips were worn and the weapon itself was scratched up. It was an old gun that had been around. Parts of it appeared to have some sort of gunk on it. She didn't have to touch it to know what it was. She had a pretty good idea what she was looking at.

Straightening up, she withdrew her flashlight and opened the cabinet doors beneath the sink. It only took a moment to find it. Underneath the counter were the strips of duct tape that had been used to hold the weapon in place.

Jadot had obviously known he was in trouble, but whatever had gone down, he hadn't been able to get the upper hand.

Examining the corpse, she saw the same tacky tape residue from the pistol where Jadot's shirt met the top of his trousers. At some point, he must have tucked the revolver into his waistband.

After taking one last look around, Brunelle exited the kitchen. At the front of the apartment, she saw Vincent chatting with the evidence techs.

For a moment she thought about letting him know what she was up to, but then decided against it. The last thing she wanted was him trying to accompany her.

She took the stairs to the ground floor, crossed the vestibule, and pushed the electronic door release, which allowed her to step out onto the sidewalk. The moment she did, she was reminded why owning a car in Paris was such a pain in the ass. Parking, especially in some of the older neighborhoods like the Marais, was almost nonexistent.

Jadot's street was too narrow for parking, so she'd have to try some of the wider streets nearby, like the Rue des Francs Bourgeois and the Rue des Archives. If she didn't get lucky on any of the immediate streets, she'd have to google the neighborhood parking garages. To make things even more difficult, the break they had been granted in the weather was going to end soon. More rain would be moving in.

She was noting the position of security cameras outside the apartment building, wishing she'd packed an umbrella, when her phone chimed. It was a text from her colleague back at the DGSI. The vehicle registry search had been a bust. According to their records, Jean-Jacques Jadot didn't own a car.

After texting back a thank you, Brunelle made a mental list of possibilities. The most likely was that it was a rental or might belong to a friend. The lack of a plastic tag wired to the fob with the details of the rental agency made her lean toward the latter. Either way, she was going to have to walk up and down the streets, and in and out of parking garages, pressing the unlock button until she heard a chirp and saw a pair of headlights blink.

It would help if she at least knew what make of car she was searching for. Renault? Peugeot? Mercedes? Nissan?

Removing the fob from her pocket, she turned it over in her hand. That's weird, she thought. There was no logo.

She didn't own a car herself, but she had driven plenty of them. Automakers branded everything. She couldn't recall ever seeing a fob without a car company's logo.

Looking at it some more, she wondered if maybe it was a replacement—something from a third-party vendor. Taking her phone back out, she snapped a photo, opened her browser, and did a reverse image search. A fraction of a second later, the results loaded.

It turned out not to be a remote key fob at all. It was only designed to look like one. In reality it was a USB flash drive. She had a decision to make. It took her less than a second.

Since Vincent had already laid claim to Jadot's phone, she had no qualms about "liberating" the fob. A healthy division of labor, she told herself, was good in any high-profile investigation.

While she understood that it was important that they share information, she also understood what kind of a man Vincent was. She'd be as forthcoming with him as he was with her. And she'd do it on her timetable.

The sooner she figured out who had murdered Jean-Jacques Jadot, the better. She just hoped Vincent was wrong. If the killing was related to the intelligence officer's work, there was no telling what kind of a Pandora's box they might be opening.