Read Online Murder at the Lanterne Rouge by Cara Black - Free Book Online Page B

under his lab coat, gestured her down the hall. A lank lock of brown hair fell across his forehead and pockmarked cheeks. “I was just about to lift prints off a batch of counterfeit francs.”
    “Can you do that?”
    “Call me an optimist.”
    “Then call this slicing butter, Benoit.”
    He opened the lab door. Glanced around. Then motioned her inside. “Remind me why I’m helping you. Again.”
    “Can you spell M-O-T-L-E-Y C-R-U-E?”
    His eyes popped. “You got the tickets?”
    Scalper prices for a sold-out show at the new Stade de France next month had emptied her worn Vuitton wallet. And then some.
    “For you, Benoit, the best. Front stage section in arena seating.”
    “We’ll rock the place.”
    “Better you than me.” Not her type of music.
    The green-walled laboratory, small by some standards, housed up-to-date forensic fingerprint wonder machines, many of them British.
    “Tell me you got a good set of latents.”
    She held out her
rouge-noir
nail polish bottle. “At least he held the whole thing in his hand.”
    “Position it for me the way your perp did.”
    She donned a set of blue plastic surgical gloves from the box on the counter. Careful not to smudge the bottle, she showed him, shaping her hand around the baggie.
    He got to work dusting the glass surface with powder.
    Nothing. Her heart dropped.
    “Patience.” Benoit redusted from another pot, then flipped on a blue light. “For you, Aimée, the works. Any idea what he’d been touching before?”
    She thought back. “Plastic bags and synthetic materials.”
    “Meaning?”
    “Those faux designer bags. Fuchsia, if that helps. The shop counter, a ledger written with a ballpoint pen.”
    He pulled a swing-arm magnifier over the bag, studied it. “
Voilà
. Micro traces of blue ink, I’d say, in the index fingerprint ridges. A little smudged on the thumb whorl.”
    “You’ll run them now?” she said. “I need the works, Benoit.”
    He shrugged. “I’ll need some help.”
    “That’s on you.” She held up the tickets. “But this guarantees you a hot date.” Now she knew what it looked like when fingerprint techs salivated. “By the works,
bien sûr
you’ll include the police database registry listing all
cartes de séjour
and pending applications, business permits and licenses.”
    Government bureaucrats loved paper. Logged applications, maintained files, registries and databanks. Any official request or form left a paper trail. Even the
objets trouvés
, or lost-and-found, had ledgers corresponding with police reports dating back over a hundred years. And that was just in the on-site storeroom.
    “So how soon …?”
    “You’re in luck.” He snorted. “Demontellan’s playing the piano now.”
    Playing the piano, the old term used for checking fingerprint files.
    “He’s the best,” Benoit said. “Knows the cards by heart.”
    Her heart fell. “Don’t tell me you still match prints manually?”
    “We use three match systems in total. More than the cowboys, the Brits, or Interpol.”
    Thorough. No doubt he could do more. It never hurt to ask.
    “Impressive.” She wrote down Meizi’s name in the spilled, white fingerprint powder. “Run this name while you’re at it, eh?”
    Benoit pushed his hair behind his ears. Winced.
    She waved the tickets, still in the FNAC ticket envelope, until he nodded.
    “This way.”
    “W E GOT A HIT . Now I call this synchronicity,” said Demontellan. “My wife bought her bag in one of those places. A faux Fendi, whatever that means.” Reddish-pink keloid scars ribbed what had once been Demontellan’s ear and trailed down his neck into his shirt collar. A victim ofthe bombing, a few years earlier, in the Saint-Michel RER station, he’d been luckier than the others on the train. Demontellan wore thick-lensed, seventies-style glasses. His magnified eyes reminded her of an unblinking mackerel. His index finger stabbed a file labeled
Wu, Feng, age 29
.
    He opened it to the record