"Monsieur Stein?" She kneeled at his eye level, willing him to meet her gaze.

He nodded.

"I'm sorry. The door was ajar. I found her a few minutes ago."

He collapsed, sobbing. She pulled out her cell phone, punched in 15 for SAMU, the emergency service, and gave the address. Then she called 17, Police Centrale.

"Yisgaddal v'yiskaddash shmey rabboh." He began the Hebrew prayer for the dead. Then he broke off. She put her arm around his thin shoulders, made the sign of the cross, whispering, "May she rest in peace."

By the time the SAMU van screeched to a halt in the courtyard, waves of the Brigade Criminelle then the Brigade Territoriale had already tramped through. The Police from the 4th arrondissement came next. A rotund figure puffed up the stairs, a droopy mustache above the half smile on his face. Aimee blinked in surprise. "Inspecteur Morbier!"

She hadn't seen this old friend of her father's for several years. Not since the day of the explosion. Everything came flooding back to her: the reek of cordite and TNT, the hiss and pop of cold rain falling on twisted hot metal, her palm burning on the surveillance van's door handle. She had watched as the force blew her father into a smoking hulk.

"Aimee…!" Then Morbier quickly corrected himself in the presence of the Brigade members. "Mademoiselle Leduc."

He'd changed little. His blue suspenders strained over his wide belly. He flicked a kitchen match, lit up a Gauloise, and inhaled deeply. She could almost taste the tobacco in the stuffy hallway.

"Smoking at a murder scene, Morbier?"

"I'm supposed to ask the questions." He flicked ash into his cupped palm.

Crime-scene technicians, their lab coats drooping under short yellow rain jackets, glided efficiently amid muffled conversations up and down the stairs.

"Don't tell me you're involved in this dog and pony show," he said.

"I'm not involved." She wasn't really lying. She looked away, unable to meet his gaze. When she was little he'd always caught her out faster than her father.