#les mis crossover

Chapter 3

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The police were there quickly, almost quicker than the civilians that came jogging from nearby apartments with their robes half-tied and blankets still wrapped around their shoulders. In moments I was no longer alone with my terror, instead surrounded by a dozen questioning bodies and a few dozen more curious faces, hung in windows above like cherub-faced Christmas ornaments. It was one of these sudden companions that had called the police, and the police had come with cars and a small rowboat to go and fetch what I had found.

One of the officers tried to take my shoulder, tried to lead me to a safe back seat where they could wrap a blanket around my shaking and ask me a few questions, but I refused. I wanted to stay at the wall and see them pull the man from the police boat, had to stay and make sure that drowned face really was who I believed it was.

“C’mon, go back inside, nothing to see,” the officer was calling into the crowd, but I didn’t hear any windows close or footsteps shuffle any further back than the street.

How could I explain to the police about the man on the metro, who told me without telling me about the man in the boat? A sob climbed up my throat as I realized, oh God, someone had to have put him in that boat.

But how could I know for sure? What would I give the police for evidence? The tears on my shirt? The chill in my spine? Just those words, about death and its misery?

The police down below on the bank of the Seine had drawn straws for who would row out to the wreck, and two men complained as they heaved into the little craft they had brought along. They scattered the lights on the surface of the water as they rowed, reaching the police boat in a few efficient strokes, pulling up alongside the porthole where a mournful, long-forgotten prisoner tapped pleadingly against the glass. When one officer lifted a hammer to break that glass, it was suddenly more than I could bear. I pulled away from the wall and fell to the curb, allowing the grief at last to come choking up out of my chest.

Somewhere behind me was the sound of breaking glass, followed by the sound of the shards splashing into the water as the police emptied the porthole of remnants. Then the groans of men moving something heavy, immensely heavy. Then the sound of oars against water.

The officer beside me took my shoulder again, this time in a silent request to please, stand up, come tell us if the man is who you think he is. I allowed him to gather me off the sidewalk, to tuck me safely under an arm, and lead me steadily towards the stairs that would bring us down to the riverbank.

From the stairs, I watched the officers lift the cold shape out of their rowboat and lay him, tenderly, on a tarp on the riverbank. They bent over him, flashlights brushing over their faces as they discussed.

“Adult male, gone about 24 hours I’d say.”

“Any wallet or ID in his pockets?”

“We’ll get someone to check. The witness thinks she can ID him.”

“That’s the girl lost her father a few months back, yeah?”

“Jesus, you think it’s him?!”

By now I had reached their sides. All of them stood up to shine their flashlight my way save for an older officer, a detective with a fierce, ugly sort of sneer, who was methodically searching every pocket on the body, even feeling alongside the lining of its coat.

A flashlight hit my eyes, causing me to look up with a painful blink. Another, younger officer was searching my face.

“Mademoiselle, I’m sorry to ask you this, but the neighbors above say they heard you screaming that you knew this man. Is that true? Do you recognize him?”

I glanced away from him, back towards the body. The sneering detective had pulled a wallet from a pocket and was rifling through it distractedly. I pulled away from the circle of questioning lights and approached the body slowly, slowly, and dropped to my knees beside him.

And it wasn’t him. It wasn’t Papa.

Still, I began to cry again. The face was so similar; they could have been brothers, twin brothers. I cried because this stranger wasn’t Papa, thank goodness, and I cried because he was so much like Papa, and still dead no matter who he was.

My weeping shocked the detective out of his reverie, and he snapped upright to look at me. If I hadn’t already been so wretchedly sad, I might have been frightened by his shadowed eyes, by the old-fashioned way he wore his sideburns, by his frightening smile. But it was a smile I recognized on his face, and in a horrible mixture of relief and pain I reached out and grabbed hold of his sleeve.

He nearly leapt out of his skin at my touch, but quickly came forward again and took my hand, all dark eyes and bared teeth.

“Do you know this man?” he growled softly.

“I thought I did,” I gasped, “But no.”

“Then why do you cry?” he asked, eyes narrowed.

“Because I thought-,” I replied, and the distant screech of the metro rang through my mind. I almost finished, “He was murdered,” but couldn’t.

“-thought I knew him,” I finished lamely.

He stared at me a moment longer, his expression unreadable. Then the flashlights waved over his face, and abruptly the beast I had been speaking to was turned back into just a particularly strange old detective, just an old man who helped me stand carefully and led me back to the circle of officers.

“What does the wallet say?” one of them asked, plastic bag opened outwards for the detective. He took one last look at something inside the fold, then dropped it into the evidence bag.

“ID says Ultime Fauchelevent, the, ah, gentleman who went missing a few months ago,” he coughed, “You’ll recognize the young lady here as his daughter.”

The detective’s use of Papa’s full name stunned me. What was his ID doing in this stranger’s pocket?

“So it is him, then? She recognized him?” someone asked.

“No,” I blurted out, glancing from face to face around me, “No, it’s not Papa. That can’t be his wallet. There has to be something wrong.”

Another officer came trotting over from the body to join us, “It definitely looks like the fellow from the newspapers. I was afraid something like this had happened.”

“Poor old fellow,” the first officer agreed, then bent to look me in the eye, “Look, mademoiselle, sometimes the water can make a face look different, after a day or so. Are you sure that isn’t your father?”

His tone was exceedingly gentle. Suddenly, I was insulted. I turned pleadingly to the detective, but he was not looking toward me. He was looking back, towards the body, beyond that, to the Pont Au Change, and did not see me look to him.

“The papers give a positive ID,” the condescending officer was muttering to an underling, taking notes, “But alright, give her a day to calm down. Let’s case the scene. We have her contact information? We’ll call on her tomorrow…”

I didn’t wait for them to dismiss me. I simply started walking, quickly, up to the street, my head spinning. So the man wasn’t Papa. But he was dead, and somehow, I knew who had done it to him. And in that moment I was sickened by the thought of trying to speak even one more word to the police, because they believed the dead man was Papa.

I didn’t even realize I had begun running until, a block from my apartment, a police car pulled up alongside me and caught my attention. I slowed as the passenger side window rolled down, revealing the strange detective from before.

“Take it easy,” he called out, the careful words sounding ill at ease in his gruff tone. But I slowed down all the same, catching my breath against a street sign.

“Everyone has been telling me that tonight.”

“Get in. I want to speak to you.”

“My apartment’s only-“

“I said, get in!!”

I didn’t much like to be barked at but I was tired, and out of breath, and in the brief pause the trembling that had shaken me by the river had come back full force. I climbed in and allowed him to drive me the last block to the apartment I used to share with Papa. Exiting, I could barely keep my feet under me.

“My name is Javert,” the detective said through the window to me as I turned to thank him, “Inspector Javert. And I know that man isn’t your father.”

A shudder passed over me, and for a long and quiet moment, the detective and I did nothing but stare at one another. I guess I was waiting for an explanation of how he knew the drowned man wasn’t Papa, but I didn’t get one just then, because when Javert spoke it was only to say, “Now get along home and don’t pay it any mind. That man in the river isn’t anybody, just-“

“He was somebody,” I interrupted, and Javert seemed startled by the outburst. He narrowed his eyes at me, the same searching look he’d given me down by the river. Eerily, I felt as though it was because he recognized me.

“He was somebody,” I insisted again, then gathered my courage to finally finish it, “And he was murdered. And I think I know who did it. And… and I’ll come and find you when I figure it out.”

The full terror of what I had said seemed just then to unfold. A man had been murdered. I knew the murderer. What other horrors would the night unleash on me from here on out?

Javert said nothing, just let out a bitter sounding noise that I suppose might have been a laugh, then gunned the engine into a roar. I leapt out of the way as the car sped away from the curb, retreating down the street until the taillights were just another set of flashes in the city full of lights.

When I reached the landing before my apartment door, I paused a moment by the payphone in the hallway. My hand crept to the change in my pocket, thinking, Marius. I’ll call him in Venice, wake him up, tell him about the dead man that looks like Papa, and…

And scare him to death, and do nothing to help anyone. I knew what I really had to do was listen to the detective.

Chapter 4

~

The apartment still didn't feel like home. Whether that was because Papa was gone or because even before he left our move here had been sudden and tumultuous, I couldn't tell.

It was modest, which had amazed Marius the first time he saw it. The door opened into the living room: pale blue pre-war wallpaper, heavy curtains pinned back with serious-looking brass pegs, heavy bookcase looming in the corner over a few brocade armchairs Papa had bought because I insisted we have a place to read together each night. The one out of place element in the room was the mantle: ornately carved white marble, probably the oldest remaining part of the building, upon which stood a pair of silver candlesticks, which Papa once said were an old family heirloom.

The fireplace itself had been boarded up to keep a draft out, and it was against these board I had tacked all the records of my search. In a folder taped to one side were copies of newspaper articles: "Local Philanthropist Missing; Reward For Tips" and "Daughter of Missing Man Still Determined" and "Recent Developments in Mysterious Disappearance." In the beginning, plenty of newspapers had been eager to help drum up publicity for the case. But with no new developments in a month, the articles had stopped reporting. Papa's disappearance was moved from front page to second, then to the columns, where he was mentioned in single lines alongside recent arrests and fundraising announcements.

The rest of the board was cluttered with scraps of paper: addresses, phone numbers, lists of people to speak to, much of it crossed out with red pen. Throwing my bag down by the door and collapsing to sit in front of the fireplace, I was reminded again of a wry comment I had made to Marius about needing a roll of twine to string between the parts to properly play the roll of paranoid conspirator. He hadn't gotten the joke.

I shivered, still shaken by the scene down at the river, and huddled closer to the board as though it would warm me like the fireplace underneath. How often had I done this, late into the night, trying to puzzle the pieces together? At first it had seemed easy: the whole city was in on the search and information seemed to pour in and assemble itself into tidy little paths, but now nothing came, or if it did it was wrong or misinformation. I could feel the warmth slowly leaking out from the case as it fell cold.

I think my discouragement had a lot to do with Marius being so far away in Venice, leaving me feeling lost and cold, with all the sun gathered there to beam down on the sparkling canals, with nothing left in Paris except fog and rain and murdered men in rivers. He had been my constant companion since Papa grew so distant, and he had been indispensable throughout the search. It was me who told him to go to Venice, lest he lose the internship he had worked so desperately for, even though in his absence loneliness became my most frequent bedfellow.

He called, when he could, the payphone in the hall, which I listened to constantly, hoping each ring was either Marius or a break in Papa's case, and which was hardly ever either.

My hands groped for a sheet of paper and a pen. I wondered whose hands they were, so pale and trembling, like I had been the one fished out of the river instead of the man who looked like Papa. I hadn't sketched portraits in years, had given it up back at the convent, but now my memory of the hour before seemed to huge for words. I watched my hands scribble, watched the drawing emerge.

I first I thought I would draw the man on the boat, but something else began to take shape. It started somewhere in my ribs, rocking like the police boat in the tide, a rocking that quickened until it became the speeding sway of the metro. I felt, again, the swimming of a stranger's tears down my neck and choked, about to be sick.

But I didn't throw up. I forced my hands to stop and gazed, in awe, at the half-finished sketch on the page before me:

A shadowy figure hunched in a seat on the metro, his face obscured but the lines of the scribbling coming together to shape something somehow menacing, yet sorrowful. And in heavy print above his head: DEATH and IS A followed by MISERABLE and finally, BUSINESS.

With a grimace, I pinned the picture to the center of the board, then whipped out a new sheet of paper and didn't stop writing until I had covered all the details I could remember about the man on the metro and Papa's poor unnamed twin, all washed in black water in the womb of the abandoned boat.