Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis by Cara Black Page A

bottom currents until they were caught in the locks downriver at Sceaux.
    She ran her fingers over the stone wall fronting the L’Institut médicolégal’s brick facade, Le Parisien under her arm, her laptop case slung over her shoulder. She had a bad feeling in her bones.
    She wondered if the young woman found in the Seine might be the baby’s mother. Her father always said, Think like the criminal, find the motive. If that didn’t work, go with the victim. Retrace her steps. In this case, she imagined a young woman looking over her shoulder, seeing the light in Aimée’s window, trusting Aimée to keep her baby safe. Safe from whom and what, she had no clue. And how had the woman known her name and phone number?
    Aimée tried to think the way she must have. Scared, running away from someone, something, she sees light, finds the digicode broken, as it had been for a week, and enters the town house through the front door. Before she can go upstairs, she hears noises; someone’s followed her. Quickly, she takes off her denim jacket—now she looks different. She wraps the baby in it. She runs through the courtyard, sees the garage, which is open late, and uses the pay phone to tell Aimée that the baby’s downstairs. Then she runs to the Place Bayre.
    But the attacker has recognized her. Did they have a confrontation on the quai? Was he the father of the baby, demanding his child?
    Questions . . . all she had were questions.
    To her right, the Ile Saint-Louis glimmered in the weak sun. Her apartment stood past the curve of the quai. She turned to face the rose-brick médicolégal building.
    If she didn’t check out her hunch, she’d kick herself later. She hated this place—the odors of body fluids that were hosed down the drains in the back courtyard, the miasma of misery and indifference surrounding the unclaimed corpses. She couldn’t forget identifying her father’s charred remains after the explosion in Place Vendôme as the bored attendant scratched his neck and checked his watch, as her tears had dropped into the aluminum trough by her father’s blackened, twisted fingers.
    She took a deep breath and opened the morgue door.

    AIMÉE STOOD ALONE in the green-tiled viewing cubicle of the morgue basement. On the other side of the window lay a young waxen-faced corpse, a white sheet folded down to her neck, livid stains appeared on the skin of her cheek and neck, but Aimée could see that her eyes were deep set and her cheekbones were prominent. Unforgiving, stark white light bathed her features; there was a bruise on her temple, a mole on her chin, and she had straw blond hair that hadn’t been completely combed back, falling in greasy strands over her temple. Her partly visible ear showed raw, jagged edges and there was a frothy blood bubble on her neck. Weren’t they supposed to clean up the corpse to protect the family’s feelings?
    Aimée didn’t recognize her. She’d had a hunch, but she’d been wrong. Why had she expected a corpse to sit up and talk, to give her a clue to the baby’s identity? Nothing tied them together.
    “I’m sorry,” Aimée whispered, her breath fogging on the glass, “whoever you are.”
    The door opened and she heard shuffling footsteps behind her. A blue-uniformed flic from whom the telltale aroma of Vicks emanated—used by new recruits to combat the odor—approached her.
    “Mademoiselle, can you identify the victim?”
    I am so sorry but I can’t help you.” “
    A young man in a zip-up sweatshirt, brown hair curling behind his ears, edged into the room.
    “Then if you’ll follow me, Mademoiselle, I’ll see you out,” the flic said.
    She turned to leave, heard a small gasp, and saw the man clap his hand over his mouth.
    “Monsieur, do you recognize the victim?” the flic asked.
    He shook his head, looking away. He had a copy of Le Parisien in his back pocket.
    “You seem upset,” the flic said, gauging his reaction.
    “It’s unnerving to see a dead