The Paris Directive by Gerald Jay

Mazarelle told Bernard to check the room thoroughly, see what else he could find. Meanwhile, he said, he was going out to look over the terrace before they went through the rest of the house. He didn’t say that what he really wanted was some fresh air. He had an urgent need to clean out his head, put a pipe in his mouth, get the dizzying smell of death out of his nose.
    Lighting up—his wooden match flaring in the summer breeze despite his cupped hands—he remembered the last time he was out here with the four of them. Clearly they were people of wealth able to afford foreign travel and rent luxury cars, houses of distinction. How civilized it had all seemed, how comfortable they were with one another despite their disagreement about the ATM pictures. He’d detected no underlying friction between any of them. But Mazarelle knew well that unlike Maigret, Poirot, or the other literary detectives, observation had never been his strength. Perhaps that was the difference between fiction and the real world. Most often, he foundhis intuition much more reliable. Martine had once told him that in some ways he was more like a woman than she was. It was a compliment, she said, and may have meant it. Martine, however, had a wicked sense of humor that on occasion truly surprised him.
    Lost in thought, Mazarelle wasn’t prepared for the scream, a sudden, loud, jagged cry that hit his ear like a chain saw. Up on the roof, a huge black crow flapped down on the red tiles and snapped its wings closed like an umbrella. High above in the seamless blue sky, a broad, cottony contrail lazily drifted apart, the plane that made it nowhere to be seen. It was a disappearing act worthy of Phillips. On the other hand, the inspector wondered, why did he leave his car and plane ticket behind? Patience, Mazarelle, patience, he cautioned. All in good time.
    It was after he’d gone through the rest of the house with Bernard that the inspector began to consider the possibility of theft more strongly. The bedrooms had not been turned upside down by any means, but it was clear that someone had been through the drawers looking for something. Of course it might have been the gendarmes, but even they wouldn’t have been so sloppy. Mazarelle, who didn’t like to carry his cell phone, asked Bernard for his.
    “My mobile? Sure, boss, you want it?”
    He dialed Dr. Langlais, the forensic pathologist in Bergerac, who handled autopsies for the police. When Langlais got on the phone, the inspector told him what he wanted. Langlais didn’t recall, but he said he’d check Reece’s pockets. It took a while until he finally came back.
    “No,” he said. “Keys but no wallet. Anything else?”
    “The murder weapon. How would you describe it?”
    “I think there were two.”
    “Huh—?”
    “One maybe a large double-edge hunting knife—very long. The other smaller, sharper, and pointed like a dagger.”
    “And the time of death?”
    “All three died about the same time. Based upon the temperature and rigor of the bodies when I examined them the following day, I’d say they probably died some time before midnight of the twenty-fourth.But I can do better than that for you after I’ve run the potassium tests on their eyes. I’ve got a lot more work to do.”
    The inspector paused. “Anything unusual about the bodies?”
    “The violence.” The doctor’s answer came back with the speed of a blistering net volley return. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Whoever killed them was right-handed and incredibly strong. A killer in complete command of his weapons. In each case, he cut through the carotid arteries and the trachea in a single blow. The murdered man’s throat was torn open so deeply that his head was nearly severed from his body. The chest wounds delivered so powerfully that four of his ribs were fractured. But that wasn’t enough for this killer. There were twenty-three stab wounds in the male victim alone. A few no deeper than pinpricks. He