The Sorbonne Affair Read online

  “We agree on that,” Hugo said.

  “You think you can catch who did it? And about the guy who was killed there—did the same person do both?”

  Lerens spoke up. “That’s why we’re here, Monsieur Silva. Since you know Ms. Hancock better than we thought, do you now have any ideas that might help us solve one or both of these crimes?”

  “I said I was sorry.” Silva frowned. “And no, I don’t know of anyone who’d murder someone. It sure as hell wasn’t me, I can promise you that.”

  “And you’re sure you didn’t know the victim, Andrew Baxter?” Hugo pressed.

  “Positive. Never hung out with him, never even said a word to him. Nothing.”

  “What about your roommate, Michael Rice?” Lerens asked.

  “What about him?” Silva shrugged. “Quiet guy, harmless, keeps to himself.” He smiled. “Now I’m making him sound like a serial killer, which I’m pretty sure he isn’t.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Hugo asked. “Do you know him well?”

  “Never met him before coming here. And, yeah, you’re right, maybe he is a serial killer, but I’ve not seen any of the bodies. Nor any packing tape, plastic bags, or sharp knives.” Silva stood, and Hugo was again aware of the man’s size. “I need a beer, you guys want anything?”

  “On duty,” Lerens said.

  “Yeah, but this is Paris. Wine’s allowed on duty, surely.”

  “Only after we’ve caught the killer,” Lerens replied.

  “And the bastard who posted that video,” Silva added. “Although it’s probably the same person, don’t you think?”

  “Could be,” Hugo said. “Well, you have my card if anything else comes to mind. Thanks for your time.”

  Hugo and Lerens shook hands with Silva and walked down the front steps to the street. Once they were a few feet away from the apartment, Hugo turned to Lerens. “Did you get all that?”

  “I think so. What do you think?”

  “He seems genuine enough.” Hugo shrugged and gave her a small smile. “But, then again, he used to be an actor, didn’t he?”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Lerens bought Hugo a sandwich as they walked back to the hotel, stopping for a moment to answer her phone. When she hung up, she said, “Lionel Colbert is back. Apparently he drowned his sorrows last night and is a little worse for wear.”

  “He’s at the hotel?”

  “Sleeping it off. Jameson is there; he’ll make sure Colbert doesn’t leave again.”

  “Good.” Hugo took a bite of his ham and Gruyère baguette as they started walking again. “I really don’t think I can leave this city, Camille, I’m going to have to retire here.”

  “The food’s too good?”

  “Everything is too good. The food, the history, the architecture.”

  “The police force.”

  “Not bad,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. “But back to food, I’ve heard that the street food is great back home in Austin nowadays, fancy food trucks serving more than just tacos. What you’d call nouvelle cuisine, perhaps.”

  “I think I’d like to see Texas. Does everyone have a horse and a gun?”

  “These days, I think it’s a pickup truck and a gun.”

  “How long since you’ve been back?” Lerens asked.

  “Two years.” Hugo pointed at his feet with his free hand. “Had to get my boots fixed.”

  “Vraiment? We have shoe repair in Paris.”

  “Oh, I know. But these aren’t shoes.”

  “Do you miss it?”

  “My mother used to tell me I was never a true Texan, whatever that means. Even as a kid I wanted to travel and see new places, and my parents encouraged it, even though they didn’t really have the travel bug.” He thought for a moment. “But I think maybe she was wrong, my mother. When I retire it probably will be in Austin, maybe a little ranch in the Hill Country just outside the city.” He finished another bite of his sandwich. “That’s assuming I can get food this good over there, of course. Otherwise, I’m staying.”

  “How about the FBI life, do you miss that?”

  “It’s a lot more paperwork than people imagine, although, yeah, it was fun, too. But I don’t think I do miss it all that much. No, being in the Behavioral Analysis Unit for those years, I was neck-deep among the worst of the worst, and it’s not healthy for anyone to be immersed in that for too long.”

  “Is that why you left? Sick of the death and destruction?”

  Hugo thought about that old house in Houston, with the heat pressing in on him, a dead man on the ground and another one swearing vengeance.

  “Kind of, yes. Close enough.” Hugo took a last bite and dropped his sandwich bag in a trash can outside the hotel, then held the door for Lerens. In the moment it took for his eyes to adjust to the dim interior, he heard Wendy Pottgen’s voice, urgent and angry. She was at the reception desk, talking to Jill Maxick, and Hugo hesitated for a second, unsure whether to hang back or intervene. Curiosity got the better of him, and he moved toward them, Lerens in tow.

  “Everything all right?” he asked when he reached them.

  “No, it most definitely is not,” Pottgen said. “She won’t let me see Helen. Talk to her even.”

  “I’m sorry,” Maxick said calmly, “but she asked not to be disturbed. Gave us explicit instructions. She’s a guest, and I intend to respect that request.”

  “Where was that respect when you put a spy camera in her room?” Pottgen snapped.

  “Now hold on,” Hugo said gently. “We don’t know who put that there; best not to be accusing people.”

  Pottgen held up a hand. “No, you’re right, and I don’t mean to be losing my temper. But I paid a lot of money to come over here and learn from her. I appreciate what she’s going through right now—I saw the video, so I really do—but no one here is judging her. It’s just sex, for crying out loud. And here in Paris, where everyone’s supposed to be sleeping with everyone else.”

  “And that might be her perspective in a few days,” Hugo said. “Right now, she’s had her privacy violated in the most extreme way possible. And then pasted all over the Internet for the world to see.”

  Pottgen sighed. “I know. And I don’t mean to be insensitive, I really don’t. I’d just like the chance to talk to her, figure out whether I should stay here in Paris or go home.”

  “Well, let’s do this,” Hugo said. “We’re going to need to talk to her again, Lieutenant Lerens and I.” He glanced at Maxick and gave her a little smile. “Whether the hotel staff like it or not. When we do that, I’ll ask her to call you. In the meantime, as you pointed out, you’re in Paris. That can’t be so bad, can it?”

  “If I had a lover of my own,” she said, holding Hugo’s eye for a few seconds.

  “Mike Rice seems nice,” Hugo said. “And you have the literary thing in common.”

  “Not my type.” She glanced past Hugo. “Speak of the devil.”

  Rice had just stepped through the main doors, and when he spotted them he ambled over. “Is there a meeting I didn’t know about?”

  Hugo wasn’t sure if he was joking. “Buzzy here was just looking for a lunch date.”

  She glared at him, but Rice didn’t seem to notice. “I ate already.” He turned to Maxick. “Can I call up to Helen Hancock’s room, please? I need to talk to her.”

  “Good luck with that. I’m out of here,” Pottgen said. She flashed them all a smile, but fixed her gaze on Hugo. “You know where to find me if you need me.”

  When she’d gone, Hugo turned to Rice. “Sorry, Helen’s out of commission right now.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Rice looked back and forth between Hugo and Maxick. “She’s sick?”

  Hugo studied his face for a moment, then said, “No. More like an emotional time-out. You haven’t seen the video, heard about it?”

  “What video?”

  “Someone posted one on the Internet,” Hugo said. “Of Helen having sex with Ambrósio Silva
.”

  “What?” The cool façade cracked for a moment. “You gotta be kidding me.”

  “I’m not.”

  “And she didn’t know about it? In advance, I mean.”

  “No, of course not. She’s pretty rattled.”

  “No fucking doubt,” Rice said. He shook his head. “That son of a bitch.”

  “Who?” Hugo asked.

  “Ambrósio Silva. Man, I thought when we first met we’d be good friends, but then I got the sense that there’s something shifty about him.”

  “Shifty?” Lerens repeated.

  “Like he was hiding something, or knew something you didn’t.”

  Like his past in pornography? Hugo wondered. “So you’re not friends?”

  “We’re not gonna be after this,” Rice said emphatically.

  “You think Silva posted that video himself?”

  “Of course he fucking did!”

  “Please keep your voice down,” Hugo said firmly. “Why do you think that?”

  Rice looked at Hugo and Lerens as if they were crazy. “Who the hell else would?”

  “That’s what we plan to find out,” Hugo said. “But a lack of suspects isn’t evidence that it was him.”

  “No—Ambrósio did it. Of course he did.”

  “So you keep saying. But why?”

  “For his writing career, of course. I bet he’s in the apartment right now, writing an article or essay, hell, maybe a book, about his secret love affair with the great Helen Hancock, about the humiliation of it being revealed to the whole world. Even if he’s not, he’ll forever be known as the guy having sex with her on YouTube.”

  “You think that’d help rather than hurt his writing career?” Lerens asked.

  “Look, he’s a nobody right now. Unpublished, unknown. But in a day or two everyone will know his name, and trust me when I say there’s no such thing as bad publicity in the literary world. I mean, the guy can sell any romance book he wants now. He’ll be publishing gold. Name recognition is everything in this business. Even bad reviews don’t much matter because the reading public forget the substance of the review; they just remember the name of the writer—and when they’re floating around a bookstore, looking for something to buy, and see that name, bingo.”

  “Except he doesn’t have a book on the shelves yet,” Hugo pointed out. “I think your theory would make more sense if he was promoting a new novel or something, but even if he got a publishing deal tomorrow because of this, he’d be a year or so away from hitting the bookstores, wouldn’t he?”

  “Well, that’s true,” Rice conceded. “But the hardest part is getting an agent and then a publisher, and this is bound to help him do that.”

  “Possibly,” Hugo said. “But we talked to him, and he seemed pretty shocked by it.”

  Rice rolled his eyes. “Of course he did. Did you know he used to be a porn star?”

  “We do know that,” Hugo said.

  “There you go, then. He’s not going to mind performing for the camera, he’s used to it. More to the point, he’s got nothing to lose.”

  “We have no proof that he’s the one responsible for the video and its distribution,” Hugo said. “If he says anything to you, though, please let us know.”

  “I will,” Rice said. “I guess Buzzy should be lucky he didn’t do it to her. Although she’s not famous, so why would he bother?”

  “What do you mean?” Lerens asked.

  Rice looked at them and smiled. “Oh, I guess he didn’t tell you about that, either. He and Buzzy had a fling when they first met.”

  Hugo tried not to show his irritation. Not at the pleasure Rice took in breaking that news, but at Pottgen and Silva’s deception. If nothing else, it meant they’d have to reinterview both of them to see if they’d left out any more pieces of the puzzle. Hugo was particularly annoyed because he saw no reason why they’d hide that information; he couldn’t know if it’d be relevant to either Baxter’s murder or the spy camera. But when people lied to law enforcement, or neglected to share key information, in Hugo’s experience, it was usually for a good—or bad—reason.

  “Well, thanks for the information,” Hugo said. “We’ll be talking to Helen soon and will let her know that you’d like a word.”

  “Thanks, I’d appreciate that,” Rice said. “Well, I’ll leave you guys to investigate. I guess I have a video to go watch.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Lionel Colbert lay on his bed, staring up at the ceiling, as Hugo and Camille Lerens found places to sit in his room, pulling up chairs as they had during Prehn’s interview. As Lerens turned on her recorder, Colbert sighed deeply and rolled onto his side to face them.

  Hugo judged him to be in his early thirties, a good-looking man, and Hugo guessed him to be around six feet tall, but slender. He wore his dark hair in a ponytail, and his eyes seemed to radiate both sadness and intelligence as he looked back and forth between his guests, quiet, waiting for them to break the ice.

  Hugo did, remarking on the three pairs of shoes atop Colbert’s locker. “Brand-new, or you polish them a lot?”

  “Just spent a month’s salary on them.” He shrugged. “My weakness, shoes, and I’m in Paris so sometimes I can’t resist.”

  “Paris will do that to you,” Hugo said with a smile, one that Colbert didn’t return.

  Lerens spoke up. “Monsieur, vous parlez français?”

  He nodded, and replied in French. “I’m fluent. In Spanish, too. My German’s a little weak, as is my Arabic.” He gave a small smile. “So you can ask me questions in French, no problem.”

  “Merci,” Lerens said. “First of all, as you can see, I’m recording this interview. You are Lionel Colbert, roommate of Andrew Baxter and Thomas Prehn, and you are speaking to myself and Hugo Marston from the US Embassy voluntarily. Is that all correct?”

  Colbert nodded. “Oui.”

  “Bien, merci.” Camille stated the date and time for the record. “Alors, how long did you know Andrew Baxter?”

  “As long as I’ve been at the hotel, about a year and a half, I think. Andy was here longer.”

  “And you were roommates for that whole time?” she asked.

  “Yes. It was just the two of us for a while, then Thomas got hired and moved in.”

  “I see. Monsieur Colbert, let me ask, do you have any idea who might have wanted to hurt your friend?”

  Colbert’s eyes started to slide away, but he caught himself, and his face remained impassive. “Non.”

  Lerens continued. “Were there any problems between the two of you?”

  “Not at all. We were good friends. I don’t think we ever disagreed, about anything.”

  Again, Hugo noticed the slightest flicker in the young man’s eyes, but he let it go, for now.

  “What about Thomas Prehn?” Hugo asked.

  “Non.” Colbert shook his head. “They weren’t the best of friends, and Andy annoyed him pretty much every day, but I don’t see Tom as the murdering type. And even if he was, it was just annoyance, nothing more. I’ve never even heard Tom raise his voice.”

  “Perhaps he was bottling it all up, then exploded,” Hugo suggested.

  “If that were the case, he’d have strangled him in here, not stabbed him in the stairwell.” He shook his head again. “You’re wasting your time if you think Tom had anything to do with it. Or me, for that matter.”

  “We have to look at everyone Baxter knew, or at least ask about them,” Lerens said. “Do you know if Andrew had any dealings with, or was friends with, Wendy ‘Buzzy’ Pottgen, Ambrósio Silva, or Mike Rice?”

  “None of them, that I know of. I’ve heard of Ambrósio Silva, but not the others. Don’t think I’ve met any of them, and Andy never mentioned knowing them. Who are they?”

  “How have you heard of Ambrósio Silva?”

  “I don’t know.” He furrowed his forehead in thought. “I really can’t tell you, but the name’s familiar.”

  “Those three are friends of Hel
en Hancock,” Hugo said, “if that helps jog your memory.”

  “What does . . . Oh. That whole camera business.”

  “You know about that?” Hugo asked.

  “Of course, who doesn’t? I mean in the hotel, that is. Word gets around real fast—this place can be like a high school sometimes.”

  “What are your thoughts?” Hugo asked.

  Colbert smiled. “I think you’re trying to connect Andy’s death with what happened, and that’s why you’re asking about Ms. Hancock’s friends.”

  “I meant, what do you make of Andy putting that camera in her room?”

  “He didn’t.”

  “Really?”

  “No way.”

  “You seem sure about that.”

  “I am.” Colbert pushed himself upright and sat on the bed, his legs dangling over the edge. “Andy’s faults related to him being the stereotypical loud American and blowing too much money on gambling. Definitely not that kind of failure of morality.”

  “You are a loyal friend,” Lerens said. “But you may or may not know that we found recordings from her room on his computer.”

  “Then someone planted that computer in his stuff. Or planted that stuff on his computer.”

  “In your room?” Lerens asked pointedly.

  “I wouldn’t know. I guess it’s possible.”

  “Apart from you, Tom, and Andy, did anyone have a keycard to get in here?”

  “No. I mean, I guess the hotel management could get in if they needed to; they could make themselves a key. But room-service people don’t clean in here, and we all signed a piece of paper promising not to share our keys with other people. Plus they only gave us one each.”

  “You ever lose yours and get a replacement?” Lerens asked.

  “No.”

  “Did Andrew or Thomas, to your knowledge?”

  “Not that I know about.” Colbert thought for a moment. “In fact, if they had, I’m sure the hotel would have deactivated the lost card.”

  “Maybe,” Hugo said. “Not suggesting either of them would do this, but is there anything to stop Andy or Tom from making their own duplicate key?”