Left To Die

Adele had the freckled boy repeat the phrase in French a couple more times, just to be sure, and each time he mimicked the voice of the killer, the elation in her chest only grew.

It’s a private thing. You’re being rude. A simple enough phrase. But a very telling pronunciation.

“Thank you,” she said, quickly. “Thank you very much. I owe you.”

Then she turned sharply on her heel and jogged over to where John was. Her heart thrummed in her chest, and she could practically hear her blood sluicing through her ears.

“Renee,” she snapped, gaining the attention of the tall agent. He glanced over the head of the smaller gendarmerie in front of him and raised an eyebrow. His eyes were bloodshot, and his cheeks puffy, but Adele didn’t have time to worry about her partner’s drinking habits. “You need to call that friend of yours at the lab.”

John frowned, wincing against the loud sounds in the park. “I didn’t know you were good with children. Have some of your own?” He raised an eyebrow.

Adele ignored the question. “You friend at the lab—call him.”

“Call him? It will take some time, like I said. There won’t be results.”

“No, I know. But I have a way for him to narrow it down. It should speed things up a ton.” Adele motor-mouthed her way through the sentence, propelled by her own excitement, her fingers tapping against her thigh in impatient spurts.

“How?” said John.

“The accent,” Adele said, trying to keep her calm.

“I don’t understand? What accent?”

“I spoke to the kids, and they heard his accent! You know how kids are, like parrots, they can mimic anything back. Well, I was insecure about how I spoke when I was younger, when I first moved to France. My mother was kind enough to hire someone to help me. They did strange tricks, even including chocolate chips placed on the tip of my tongue to help me learn how to stretch my consonants. But, most importantly, I learned about aspirated stops.”

John was staring at her now like she was crazy, but she pressed on. “The attacker clipped his aspirated stops. He dropped the ‘s’ instead of a ‘t.’”

“I really don’t—”

“He’s German!” Adele cried. “It’s dialectical. He’s not American. He’s not French. He’s German. Call your lab tech, tell him to narrow down the tox reports based on German companies, both private and public. Understand?”

John frowned, shaking his head. “You can’t know for sure based on the mimicking of a child—”

But Adele shook her head again. “I’m sure. I feel it. The pronunciation is like a fingerprint to me; I’ve heard the differences in language my whole life. I know he’s German. Just do it. Please.”

Renee sighed, but then shrugged and reached for his pocket, pulling his phone out. He pressed it to his ear and then waited, peering out into the park, toward the dark trees and leaves, along the abandoned trail with scattered dust.

Adele also turned, glancing back toward the children, her eyes settling on the girl. She did look quite a bit like Marion.

“…Yes. German companies,” John was saying behind her in a murmur.

Adele continued staring out into the park, allowing herself the faintest of smiles.

They had him now.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Gasping, hands jammed into his jacket pockets, cap pulled low over his forehead, the man stumbled through the streets. He resisted the urge to curse with every shuffling step. He had to stay calm, stay collected. He could already hear the sirens in the distance, tolling like wedding bells announcing his marriage. But he was a runaway bride. They were here for him, but they wouldn’t catch him.

The tourist forced his breathing to calm, willing his pounding chest to still. He rounded a corner, curling past a shuttered newsstand and ducking beneath one of the safety lights, keeping his head low.

He bumped into someone and nearly lashed out with his knife. managed to glance up just in time. He noticed the blue and black uniforms of gendarmerie.

Immediately, he smiled politely, suppressing the tingle of excitement creeping up his spine. Fear was not for him. Fear was for others. No, he was in control.

He tried not to look at their rifles, nor did he glance past them toward the flashing sirens of their parked vehicles.

“Good evening,” he said, politely, and then continued on his way, not moving too quickly nor too slowly.

He could feel their eyes boring a hole into his back. Any moment now, they would call out after him. He was sure. But he was smarter than them. So instead, he turned, facing the officers.

As he suspected, one of them had a hand half-raised, his mouth open in preparation to cry out in the nighttime street. But at the sudden about-face, the gendarmerie frowned.