Bones of Paris (9780345531773) by Laurie R. King Page B

past the limits of theory and decide to commit murder as an artistic expression. Will decide not simply to honor Landru and de Sade, but to emulate them. I tell you this, Monsieur, to explain my alarm over the disappearance of a young woman with connections to the art community.
    “I have thought about what you told me this afternoon, and I admit, I was wrong, to accept the word of a voice on the telephone. We should have sent a man to see that the young lady was at home. We will change the way we do this.”
    Stuyvesant stared across the tiny table. An official police detective, admitting a mistake? Impossible.
    The
flic
dropped his cigarette and slid his hand into his breast pocket. He held out an unsealed envelope. Something in the way he held the thing made Stuyvesant hesitate.
    But he took it, and lifted the flap, seeing the edges of two photographs.
Only two
, he tried to tell himself as he slid a pair of fingers in. Tried.
    Two women, one a pretty blonde in her early twenties, standing in the shade of a tree with a wide-brimmed hat in her hand. The other, in her thirties, had dark hair, and sat on a carousel horse looking a bit horsey herself, long of face and teeth. But she was having a good time, and it had been a sunny day. He turned that one over, and read:
    Alice Barnes
    née 23 April 1905, Chicago, États Unis
    vue le 19 juin 1928
    And on the back of the younger, prettier girl:
    Ruth Ann Palowski
    née 2 July 1908, San Francisco, California vue (?) octobre 1928
    “These are two missing women we have confirmed did not go home to Mama,” the policeman told him, “and the dates they were last seen here. Mlle. Barnes had been here for three weeks. She spent much of that time in museums and galleries, meeting any number of artists, buying several paintings and sculptures. Mlle. Palowski came to do a course in art at the Sorbonne. She lived in the VI arrondissement for a year, and was an habituée of the Dôme and the Select.”
    At the center of the Montparnasse art world.
    “As I said to you, much of my … attention in my job lies in watching for patterns. Several of my missing persons have links to the art world—mostly tenuous, but not with these two women.
    “I have begun inquiries into a number of others whose cases are still open, to see if perhaps your Miss Crosby shares any characteristics with them. I hope to God they are with their families.” He took the photographs from Stuyvesant and put them back in his breast pocket. “M. Stuyvesant, it is not my habit to bring outsiders into the business of the police department. I do so now because of the other thing your friend said to me.”
    “He’s not exactly a friend.”
    “This I could tell. In addition to describing you as honorable, he made it quite clear that if I did not wish to have you underfoot, the only way to make you abandon a case would be to jail you or deport you. And even then, he would not bet on my being able to keep you away.
    “I am pleased to find that you are not ‘milking’ Miss Crosby’s family by failing to bring your information to the attention of the police. Nonetheless …”
    He leaned forward across the table, locking onto the American’s gaze. “M. Stuyvesant, I will permit you to continue working in my city only if you stay in communication with me. If you withhold information,
any
information that might help me locate these girls, if you try to act the cowboy, I will come down on you with all the weight of the Sûreté Nationale. Do we understand each other?”
    “Absolutely. I wouldn’t want your Sergeant mad at you.”
    The weak joke fell on deaf ears. “You may keep that Man Ray photograph, Monsieur. I expect to hear from you regularly.”
    And he got up abruptly and left, an impressive, untidy, curiously likable cop with a bum leg.
    Stuyvesant watched him go, and then signaled the waiter for another drink.
    Jesus Christ
, he thought.
How’d we go so fast from a girl on a yacht to a maniac