Page 63

CHAPTER 62

Brunelle had ignored the first call from Gibert, as well as the second, letting them both go to voicemail. She was too busy and couldn’t be distracted right now. Whatever he was calling about could wait.

Then a text had come in telling her that it was urgent and that she needed to stop sending him to voicemail and to take his call.

Stepping out of the conference room she was in, she phoned him back. “What is it, Vincent?”

“I’ve got six dead Russians in the Bois de Boulogne. All embassy employees.”

“Jesus,” she replied, lowering her voice. “What happened?”

“A huge gunfight. Multiple calibers. Based on the corpses and the vehicles, our people are guessing hundreds of rounds were fired.”

“Who were the other shooters?”

“We don’t know yet. But get this, one of the Russians was found with a long gun, a couple of hundred yards away in the woods. We think he was a sniper of some sort.”

“What the hell is going on?”

“Could be any number of things,” Gibert responded. “All the Russian diplomatic outposts are crime hubs. This might have been a drug deal gone bad.”

“Are you guys in la Crim seeing a lot of drug deals involving snipers?”

“Plenty of gangs and cartels have been recruiting vets. They pay a lot for their expertise. Small unit tactics and all that.”

“Okay,” Brunelle conceded, “but you’re not calling me because you think this is some drug deal gone bad. What is it about your crime scene that made you dial my number?”

“The cars,” Gibert stated. “There are four in total. All shot to shit. Two trace back to the embassy. The other two are a bit more interesting.”

“Interesting how?”

“Both were stolen. A blue Renault sedan and a blue Renault panel van. Guess where they were stolen from?”

“I have no idea,” said Brunelle.

“The same neighborhood as our burned-out Peugeot from Jadot’s murder.”

“That’s one hell of a coincidence.”

“Yeah, I thought so too. But it gets even more interesting. Each of the Renaults was outfitted with lights and sirens. The van had strobes mounted behind the grille and, in the sedan, we found a gumball.”

“They were made to look like police vehicles?” she asked.

“Correct. They were found on the side of the road in a cutout, not far from the Allée de Longchamp.”

“How are they parked?”

“In a straight line,” Gibert stated. “Fake police van, embassy car, embassy car, fake police sedan.”

“Were the Russians trying to make it look like they had a police escort?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not?” Brunelle asked.

“Because the Renaults had bigger bullet holes than the embassy vehicles. We think those shots came from the sniper.”

“So, based on that, we can assume the fake police vehicles belonged to the opposing party.”

“Right now, I’d say that’s safe to assume,” the cop stated. “Which leaves us with two possible options. One, posing as police vehicles, the Renaults pulled the Russians over.”

“To what end?”

“To rip them off. They posed as cops to get the upper hand, shot all six of them, and then took the money or the drugs—depending on who was on what side of the deal.”

“Which doesn’t track,” said Brunelle, “because to have a sniper positioned in the woods, the Russians would have had to have known ahead of time where they were getting pulled over.”

“Agreed. And that brings me to option two. This was a prearranged meeting. The Russians, however, had decided to double-cross their fake police friends and staged an ambush, but got outgunned.”

“That’s much more believable, but why was the other party posing as cops and what does this have to do with the Russians who stole the burned-out Peugeot?”

“Now you know the real reason why I called you. I need your help.”

She was shocked, but surprisingly pleased, to hear him admit it. “I appreciate you calling me. Listen, I’m going to tell you right now that the Russians will want to control this internally. You’re likely to receive little to no cooperation from the embassy.”

“No kidding. None of the victims were carrying identification. Cell phones, yes, but ID no. As we don’t have all the scary Big Brother tools that you do, we could only use facial recognition from airport entries to identify them.”

“Send me whatever you have and I’ll get MoMo on it.”

“Speaking of which,” said Gibert. “Still nothing on the getaway car?”

“No,” Brunelle replied. “But something tells me that we have just gotten one step closer.”