Gorrie frowned again. The evidence would be collected and examined, the bodies taken to the morgue for autopsy, and the child passed on to relatives or foster care, depending on who was or wasn’t out there in the world for him. Gorrie and his constables would conduct their follow-up inquiries of family, friends, and acquaintances. And when the case report was filed, his instincts told him it would be written up as an explosive domestic incident, the tale of a marriage gone as bad as they got, its last act an eternal mystery to everyone but the two who’d played it out here in the cold, violated intimacy of its setting.

Better they’d gone their separate ways indeed.

Feeling the sudden need for a breath of fresh air, Gorrie turned from the bed and went outside the house onto the lawn.

FOUR - PARIS, FRANCE MARCH 2, 2002

FOUR

PARIS, FRANCE MARCH 2, 2002

MARC ELATA FOLDED HIS ARMS SO THAT HE HELD HIS elbows in the palms of each hand. He stood still before the statue as the American couple and their four-year-old brat—a four-year-old, at the Louvre!—staggered past him on the steps. Elata held his breath, willing himself past the moment, past their babble: “Do you think the Mona Lisa will smile for us?” said the father, as if the portrait were a carnival trick. The four-year-old whined about wanting more French fries, and when were they going to see a train?

A tour group swelled up on the landing behind him, chattering in Swedish or something Nordic; Elata pushed himself to move on, following the Americans in their quest for the undying smile. If it weren’t for the fact that he wanted to see several paintings—several master-pieces —displayed in the same room as the Mona Lisa, he might have pointed them in the proper direction as they continued up the stairs. This way he would have known where they were, making them easy to avoid.

A thick knot formed in front of da Vinci’s most famous painting; the crowd was a permanent feature of the room. Elata walked past it, glancing at the equally beautiful though far less famous da Vincis alongside, but not wanting to go near the rabble to admire them. He had Ucello and Pierro in mind; he had not thought about the Renaissance masters lately, and wanted to consider their problems of shade and perspective as an antidote to Picasso, whom he’d had so much of over the past seven days.