I found it highly unusual that a bunch of cop-killing murderers roamed safe and free, rampaging for a month without fear. If I were in their place I’d be on a different continent by now. Therefore I had to assume they’d been hired and protected by someone, or a group of people.

And furthermore that these were people capable of offering protection from the investigating authorities. Sounded more like Iraq than France.

Chapter Thirty-Four

The police station was another hike. But I like walking and thinking.

I walked and I ruminated. And after walking for the better part of an hour, I arrived in front of the police station. I had a bunch of questions and ideas that I wanted to test out. But I didn’t want to test them out there; I wanted to get far away from there.

Because inside the police station was at least one bent cop who had been more than willing to feed Police Chief Rigalle to the axe man.

* * *

I walked in the front door of the little Alencourt police station at six pm. I asked for Nazari at the reception desk. A big guy was sitting on the blue bucket seats. Seats, plural, because he was spread out across three or four of them. The guy was speaking Spanish into a cell phone. I didn’t want to stare, so I looked at the carnivorous plant.

A couple minutes later, Nazari came out. I said, “Let’s get out of here, but keep the uniform.”

“Why? I usually get changed.”

“I’ll tell you why later, but we need you to look like a cop.”

“I see.” She patted the butt of her Sig-Pro. “I need to check the weapon. I’ll be back in a minute.” She went inside the station.

She came back in uniform but without the gun. “Where are we going?”

I said, “One hundred yard rule.”

“What’s that?”

“Let’s get a hundred yards from here before we talk.”

She quit speaking and we walked to her car. She started the engine and backed out of the parking spot. She kept the car in reverse and backed all the way to a spot on the side of the road, about a hundred yards from the station. She looked at me. “Okay. So tell me what happened.”

I gave her a recap of the day. Minus the part where we had passed the cleaners on our way out of her place the night before. I felt that was a little too close to home and fanning the flames of fear wasn’t what I had in mind. Quite the opposite. I wanted her to feel safe and confident, able to think clearly and rationally. I also withheld the part about the two Berettas I was carrying in the backpack. She was still a cop. I didn’t tell her where I’d parked the refrigerated meat truck and she didn’t ask.