Murder Without Pity by Steve Haberman Read Free Book Online

bookcase and leaned out.
    To his right past several windows, a satellite dish was perhaps receiving some Middle East program. And five stories below visible through the mist, now slipping around the corner onto the brick street below, a sedan with a rear aerial, whipping high its owner’s importance. This sleekness in a quarter with a homeless shelter across the square?
    Alarmed, he swung around to his clerk and policewoman. “Either of you tell anyone we were coming?”
    Christophe, in a chair with his laptop on his knees, glanced up. “I told no one.”
    “Not even your wife?”
    “Not even Suzanne.”
    “I took your word, Monsieur Judge.” The policewoman answered before he had turned to her.
    He shifted to her, in no mood to indulge her few years on the force. “And what did I say?”
    “We’re working a dangerous dossier, Monsieur Judge.”
    “And someone could die from carelessness so secrecy was vital.”
    She looked too scared to reply and simply nodded.
    Then who was slipping through the mist? A slum lord, inspecting his property? A lost tourist? He limped from window to window, trying to glimpse the license plate number, but realized the height made that impossible.
    Somehow word could have leaked out from the Justice Annex. Hadn’t those friends of Boucher boasted that night they had held him captive they had inside contacts? Hadn’t they threatened him if he pursued the dossier? And here he was, at the scene that might tie Boucher to the murder. Get out, he warned himself. The driver might have accomplices. You arrived minutes ago. You found nothing. You left. That’s how it might look, if you leave immediately. Return later with backup.
    He hesitated. In the shadows between the bookcase and windowsill lay some kind of pamphlet. He grasped what turned out to be a fold-out map of Berlin. His stomach shot out pain. Berlin, he thought. Capital of Hitler’s New Europe. The darkest of cities. My grandfather’s favorite.
    Get out, he told himself. You’re risking the lives of assistants. He ignored the urgency, tried reaching the guard with his cell phone, and failed. He must have clicked his off. Stanislas ordered the photographer to rush to find him. He could duck outside and hopefully get a plate number phoned in.
    Curious, Stanislas shook the map open. “Monsieur Minh,” he said, studying it, “there’s a black limousine on the street below. See if you can tell if it’s stopped or driving along. Stay back from the windows. The driver could be armed.”
    In the map’s lower left-hand corner, he noticed an Attractions Index that listed places of interest. The guide looked like a complimentary offering from a hotel to its guests. Pincus as tourist? Could anyone merely sightsee in a city that had scarred millions? “It’s still moving along?”
    He tilted the map toward the lone overhead bulb. “It’s moving like a snail,” he heard his clerk reply. “He’s driving like he’s searching for something. He’s in a Renault, a Safrane, maybe.” Stanislas quickly ran a finger down the index’s three columns for a clue to Pincus’s interest. He spotted no markings, not even next to the Body Body Club, where a man might venture, unless he directed his passions elsewhere. Pincus as searcher? Get out! You’ve no right to risk their lives.
    “He’s pulled up in front of this building.”
    “What’s he doing?” Stanislas lowered himself awkwardly to the floor. Then he tumbled out books from the five shelves, hoping for a detailed map, marked, to explain the man’s interest in Berlin. Grammar texts mostly, he discovered. Language catalogues of teaching aids, too. The dry paraphernalia of the man’s outer life.
    “Nothing so far as I can tell,” Christophe answered at last. “He’s just idling.”
    Play it safe, his silent voice warned. Get out while you can. You’re endangering innocents over mere curiosity, and you can’t build a case on that. He clumsily pushed himself to his feet,