Read Online Murder in the Palais Royal by Cara Black - Free Book Online
Authors: Cara Black
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Who would shoot him? Or implicate her?
She had to start at the office. Go through their clients’ files, their work calendar, René’s daily agenda, his address book.
This woman dressed like her, knew where she lived, as well as the address of her office. She’d shot René and framed her. Calculated, and chilling.
Leaves crackled under her feet as she headed toward Pont Neuf. Sirens whined. The smell of oil from a barge, chugging below on the Seine, floated on the wind.
She squared her shoulders and noticed the kiosk headlines: TRANSPORT UNION NEGOTIATIONS REACH IMPASSE. STRIKE THREATENED.
Another strike, a typical autumn.
But not for her.
She’d pick up her scooter from the garage repairing it. No use battling for taxis this week, with an impending Métro strike.
An hour later, she parked her faded pink Vespa in an alley off rue du Louvre. Diffuse, vanilla light filtered down from the mansard rooftops, but it did not dispel the chill emanating from the worn limestone. She snapped her denim jacket closed, knotting her scarf, wishing she’d worn her high boots instead of the pointed mid-calf vintage Valentinos.
Time to face the office, an office without René, and a daunting search through their files. Then she had to figure a way to force Mathieu to rescind his statement.
She headed to her building, an eighteenth-century soot-stained edifice with scrolled wrought-iron balconies and the thirties’ neon sign: Leduc Detective.
Maurice, the one-armed Algerian war veteran who manned the newspaper kiosk, handed her the evening’s Le Soir.
“Controversy over inquest—was Princess Diana pregnant?” Maurice read. Shook his head. “The stuff that sells papers!”
More than a month had passed since Diana’s crash in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel, but the press hadn’t quit.
“They put this on the back page!” Maurice pointed to a six-line article reporting grave desecration in the Jewish section of Père Lachaise cemetery. “Skinheads defaced the star on my mother’s grave. Again.”
“ Désolée, Maurice.” She’d had no idea.
“There’ve been vicious attacks in the Métro, outside the Orthodox school in Belleville,” he said. “These crimes go unpunished. You’d think, after Bergen-Belsen, they’d done enough. But it never stops.”
She set a franc on the counter.
“Weren’t you going to New York?” Maurice asked.
Would she ever get there? “My plans changed.”
A line formed behind her. She walked the few steps to her building.
Viaggi Travel’s door was dark. The crime-scene tape had been removed from Leduc Detective’s door. Inside, the rooms lay deserted and silent, without René. And to carve out time for her trip, she’d finished her work, for once.
Past the office partition, she viewed René’s desk. His laptop, files, his empty workspace. The stain left on the floor by his blood.
She felt adrift on a rough sea of lies. But she had to concentrate. The answer must lie here. Somewhere.
René’s laptop held sensitive data, clients’ files, operating systems, the works. Had a competitor broken in and shot René? Or was it an attempt to taint their firm and the computer security of the companies they monitored?
At her desk, she booted up her computer and checked network sharing and hardware, and looked for a break in the firewall. Nothing. Relieved, she accessed René’s e-mail for threats or ambiguous messages. Apart from a confirmation of the upcoming Nadillac hearing, there was nothing.
Nadillac, a short, overweight, twenty-something whiz nerd, had turned to his hobby—black-hat hacking—for revenue. He did what a growing number of hackers did: he’d employed “0days” or “zero days,” information and code enabling the penetration of the software run by governments, private citizens, and, in his case, the corporation Nadillac worked for. He’d deployed 0days, resulting in minor disruption of his company’s Web site, and then he’d paralyzed it. But she and René
She had to start at the office. Go through their clients’ files, their work calendar, René’s daily agenda, his address book.
This woman dressed like her, knew where she lived, as well as the address of her office. She’d shot René and framed her. Calculated, and chilling.
Leaves crackled under her feet as she headed toward Pont Neuf. Sirens whined. The smell of oil from a barge, chugging below on the Seine, floated on the wind.
She squared her shoulders and noticed the kiosk headlines: TRANSPORT UNION NEGOTIATIONS REACH IMPASSE. STRIKE THREATENED.
Another strike, a typical autumn.
But not for her.
She’d pick up her scooter from the garage repairing it. No use battling for taxis this week, with an impending Métro strike.
An hour later, she parked her faded pink Vespa in an alley off rue du Louvre. Diffuse, vanilla light filtered down from the mansard rooftops, but it did not dispel the chill emanating from the worn limestone. She snapped her denim jacket closed, knotting her scarf, wishing she’d worn her high boots instead of the pointed mid-calf vintage Valentinos.
Time to face the office, an office without René, and a daunting search through their files. Then she had to figure a way to force Mathieu to rescind his statement.
She headed to her building, an eighteenth-century soot-stained edifice with scrolled wrought-iron balconies and the thirties’ neon sign: Leduc Detective.
Maurice, the one-armed Algerian war veteran who manned the newspaper kiosk, handed her the evening’s Le Soir.
“Controversy over inquest—was Princess Diana pregnant?” Maurice read. Shook his head. “The stuff that sells papers!”
More than a month had passed since Diana’s crash in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel, but the press hadn’t quit.
“They put this on the back page!” Maurice pointed to a six-line article reporting grave desecration in the Jewish section of Père Lachaise cemetery. “Skinheads defaced the star on my mother’s grave. Again.”
“ Désolée, Maurice.” She’d had no idea.
“There’ve been vicious attacks in the Métro, outside the Orthodox school in Belleville,” he said. “These crimes go unpunished. You’d think, after Bergen-Belsen, they’d done enough. But it never stops.”
She set a franc on the counter.
“Weren’t you going to New York?” Maurice asked.
Would she ever get there? “My plans changed.”
A line formed behind her. She walked the few steps to her building.
Viaggi Travel’s door was dark. The crime-scene tape had been removed from Leduc Detective’s door. Inside, the rooms lay deserted and silent, without René. And to carve out time for her trip, she’d finished her work, for once.
Past the office partition, she viewed René’s desk. His laptop, files, his empty workspace. The stain left on the floor by his blood.
She felt adrift on a rough sea of lies. But she had to concentrate. The answer must lie here. Somewhere.
René’s laptop held sensitive data, clients’ files, operating systems, the works. Had a competitor broken in and shot René? Or was it an attempt to taint their firm and the computer security of the companies they monitored?
At her desk, she booted up her computer and checked network sharing and hardware, and looked for a break in the firewall. Nothing. Relieved, she accessed René’s e-mail for threats or ambiguous messages. Apart from a confirmation of the upcoming Nadillac hearing, there was nothing.
Nadillac, a short, overweight, twenty-something whiz nerd, had turned to his hobby—black-hat hacking—for revenue. He did what a growing number of hackers did: he’d employed “0days” or “zero days,” information and code enabling the penetration of the software run by governments, private citizens, and, in his case, the corporation Nadillac worked for. He’d deployed 0days, resulting in minor disruption of his company’s Web site, and then he’d paralyzed it. But she and René
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