Free Murder Below Montparnasse by Cara Black

usual.
    “Deal.”
    In the Institut Médico-Légal corridor, a linoleum-tiled affair, Serge looked both ways and then pushed open a nondescript brown door. “Meet me at the dissection area. Second door on your left.”
    She swallowed. Her mouth was dry as sand. “Why? Can’t you tell me here?” But the door closed with a whoosh behind him.
    The formaldehyde fumes and the sweetish smells of decomposition met her in the long white-tiled room. Cadavers in various stages of autopsy lay naked on the trough-like aluminum tables. This was the part she’d hated about her first year of medical school. The part she couldn’t take, that compelled her to drop out.
    “Is that necessary, Serge?” He had put on a mask, and was handing her one.
    She avoided looking directly at the body, which lay facedown, and focused instead on the adjoining counter and the pair of rib spreaders resting on it. Serge consulted a clip chart, his brows crinkling.
    “Intéressant.”
    “That’s all you can say?”
    “He the one?” Serge’s big eyes, behind his black-framed glasses, were wide. “Make sure, Aimée.”
    She steeled herself and looked down. Flaps of the peeled-back scalp were draped over a portion of the exposed base of the skull. Beside the head, a blue bucket held the brain. The Serb’s back was white as aspirin but his arms were covered with blue tattoos. Crudely needled Cyrillic letters. “I’d recognize that tattoo with the wolf anywhere.” And she wished she hadn’t.
    A tag hung over the dirt-ridged nail of his big toe: FELIKS .
    “I hadn’t started the autopsy yet when you called. So I drew blood prior to opening him up,” Serge said. “I sent it for an expedited analysis, ran tests for the usual drugs of choice: opiates, cocaine, amphetamines, benzodiazepines, barbiturates, and alcohol.” He consulted the clipboard again. “A slow day, so for once they expedited the tests. All negative.”
    “So he wasn’t high or stoned?”
    Serge shook his head. “Notice those incisions I made in the neck and vertebrae. Not the optimal way to remove the spinal cord.” He shrugged. “But a way to look for subtle injuries to his neck.” Serge pushed his glasses on his forehead, moved forceps out of the way. “But I found nothing.”
    Was that good? Or bad?
    “You want the good news first?”
    Hopeful, she nodded. “You found something else in the blood test, Serge?”
    “First, explain your interest in this tattooed Serb, Aimée,” he said. “And why I’m helping you out again.”
    “Saj ran over this Feliks,” she said, motioning to the toe tag. “Killed him, or so the
flics
think. I’m not so sure.”
    Serge moved the scalpels and knives to the next cutting board. “A little difficult to argue, given the tire tracks on his fractured arm.”
    “But the lack of blood bothered me,” she said. “And his expression—blank, even as he hit the windshield. Seemed so strange.” She made herself look down again at the scraped, tattooed torso. “Sounds stupid, since my closest experience to seeing someone get run over by a car was a rabbit René ran over near Charles de Gaulle once.”
    “A rabbit?” He lifted his arm. “Never mind, I don’t want to know.”
    The whole scenario from last night smelled, and she needed to air it out. “Can’t you give me the autopsy results now, Serge? I need ammo to shove in the
flics’
faces to clear Saj.”
    “Clear him?”
    Why did he pretend not to understand? His pager buzzed. After a quick glance he shook his head. “I’ve got to make a call. Let me get back to you later.”
    “Saj could sit in
garde à vue
under suspicion for involuntary homicide while.…” She took a deep breath. A nauseating sickish-sweet filled her nostrils. Bad move.
    “What if I throw in overnight babysitting,
chez moi?
You know, twelve uninterrupted hours of freedom for you and your wife.” He wouldn’t be able to turn that down. But she didn’t own a TV. Somehow she’d figure out how to