French Kiss by James Patterson

do something for you.”
    My forehead wrinkles, and I say, “What?”
    “We tracked down Dalia’s father. He’s in Norway shooting a film.”
    “I was going to call him soon,” I say. “But I was building up courage. Thank you.” And just thinking about father and daughter begins to break my already severed heart.
    “How did he accept the news?” As if I needed to ask.
    “It was awful. He wailed. He screamed. He put his assistant on, and he eventually…well, he sort of composed himself and got back on the line.”
    My eyes begin filling with tears. My chin quivers. I rub my eyes. I am not trying to hide my emotions. I am merely trying to get through them.
    “He sends you his love,” K. Burke says. I nod.
    “He is as fine a man as Dalia was a woman,” I say.
    “He asked me to tell you two things.”
    I can’t imagine what Monsieur Boaz wanted to tell me.
    “He said, ‘Tell Luc that I will come to America tomorrow, but he should bury Dalia as soon as possible. That is the Jewish way.’”
    “I understand,” I say. Then I ask, “And the other?”
    “He said, ‘Tell Luc thank you…for taking such good care of my girl.’”
    This comment should make me weep, but instead I explode with anger. Not at Menashe Boaz, but at myself.
    “That’s not true!” I yell. “I did not take good care of her.”
    “Of course it’s true,” K. Burke says firmly. “You loved her totally. Everybody knows that.”
    “I…let…her…die.”
    “That’s just stupid, Moncrief. And it smells a little of…” K. Burke abruptly stops talking.
    “What? Finish your thought. It smells of what?” I say.
    “It smells of…well…self-pity. Dalia was murdered. You could not have prevented it.”
    I walk to the floor-to-ceiling windows of the loft. I look down at Gansevoort Street. It’s this year’s chic hot-cool place to be—the expensive restaurants and expensive boutiques, the High Line, the cobblestone streets. It is packed with people. I am disgusted with them because I am disgusted with me. Because Dalia and I will never again be among those people.
    I turn and face Detective Burke, and suddenly I am more peaceful. I am truly grateful that she is here. She has stopped by to offer the “personal touch” and I was hesitant at first. Afraid I would feel nervous or embarrassed. But K. Burke has done a good thing.
    I walk back toward her and speak slowly, carefully.
    “There is one thing we need to discuss very soon. You must realize that these two murders had nothing to do with prostitutes or Brazilian drug dealers or…well, all the things we have been guessing at.”
    “I realize that,” she says. I continue speaking.
    “The first murder, at a rich man’s home, was to confuse us. The next murder, at a school where people learn to be police professionals—that was to torment us.”
    K. Burke nods in simple agreement.
    “These murders have to do with me, ” I say.
    “In that case,” K. Burke says, “these murders have to do with us. ”

Chapter 31
    “What the hell is the story with these two murders?”
    This question keeps exploding off the walls of NYPD precincts. It is the commissioner’s question. It is Nick Elliott’s question. And—obsessively, interminably, awake or asleep—it is my question.
    The question is asked a thousand times, and a thousand times the answer comes back the same.
    “No idea. Just no goddamn idea.”
    Forensics brought in nothing. Surveillance cameras showed us nothing. Interviews at the scene turned up nothing.
    So it is now time for me to do the only thing left to do: turn inward and rely entirely on my instincts. They have helped me in the past, and they have failed me, too. But instinct is all I have left.
    I confront Nick Elliott. I tell him that the answer to the murders is obviously not in New York. The answer must be in Paris.
    “Paris?” he shouts.
    Then I say, “I need to go to Paris—look around, nose around, see if I can find something there.”
    Nick