Vengeance. Mystery Writers of America Presents B00A25NLU4

tourists gawked. Just after the cops entered the tunnel, the great grilled gates, the ones that closed the park off from the bridge each evening, began sliding shut.
    The tourists scattered in confusion. I could still hear noise from the gardens, but it was a muffled rumble. I was locked outside. This was not convenient: I’d have to drag my stuff along the quay and around the west side of the Tuileries to get to the Metro if I couldn’t cross the park. Where was Tatiana? I had never before seen the gates close early. I began packing up.
    There was a rat-a-tat, and one more set of racing footsteps sounded from the bridge. I turned and saw that they weren’t being made by a late cop. The Mother, her face streaked with tears, coat hanging open, lipstick smeared, a cell phone in one hand, ran across the cobblestones in high heels and threw herself against the barred gate.
    “My baby! My baby!” It was more a howl than a scream, a noise like no sound I had ever heard. “Let me in!” She hung on the bars as if without them she would melt to the ground.
    Two uniformed policemen trotted down the stairs on the other side of the gate and came toward her. I could hear more shouts; someone was ordering that the gates be opened. The cops reached out through the grille and touched her hands. And I could hear some of the words they said to her:
    “So terribly sorry.”
    “He says he only looked away for a second.”
    “We will find the villain who did this, madame.”

    M USIC WAS THE only thing that ever filled me up inside. Even before the memories from my childhood came back and stopped my voice, even before the stairs and the tunnel and the broad river became my only horizons, nothing but music touched the hollow core inside me. That’s why I learned so many instruments. Each one — not just my one-man-band ensemble, but the violin, the piano, the plaintive oboe — gave me a different facet of what others get from normal life. When I played, I felt complete.
    But on this day, the day after the child, the day after the Mother stopped being a mother, I was just blowing air and whacking drums. The voice my instruments gave me was an ugly, blaring thing.
    I had gone back to the bridge to work. What else was there to do? I played the most melancholy songs of my Edith Piaf repertoire. No polkas. I didn’t even touch the trombone. It seemed unfair that the park was open as usual and that the beret filled up, even though I wasn’t twirling, or bobbing, or smiling. How could those tourists be unaware that my music was crying, not singing? But I couldn’t leave, couldn’t go away from the last place I had seen her.
    Around midday, a hard, thin man with steel-gray hair stepped up to where I was playing. He wore an impeccably pressed navy suit with a tiny square of yellow silk handkerchief poking from the jacket pocket. With him were a chubby sergeant in uniform and a thuggish lieutenant in a leather jacket. The small crowd around me dissipated as soon as they approached.
    “I am Commander Bassin,” the suited man said. “Are you acquainted with a Tatiana Plevneliev?” He pronounced the name as if his lips had never had to speak such horrible syllables before.
    I had assumed the police would question me about the child. But why were they asking about Tatiana?
    He got a nod of the head. It was tempting to deny our acquaintance, but the park cops had seen us together too many times.
    “How does she make her living?”
    I held out my hand, palm upward.
    Bassin raised an eyebrow. The sergeant murmured something in his ear.
    “They say you don’t speak.”
    I shook my head.
    “Are you physically incapable of speech or do you choose not to speak?”
    I shrugged.
    “I have to tell you, Monsieur . . . Baptiste, this is a very serious matter.”
    I put my arm to my side, palm out flat.
    “Yes, it’s about the child. Did you ever see her with Madame Plevneliev?”
    Enthusiastic shake no. It was true. There was nothing in children’s pockets to pick. Tatiana would have focused only on Romeo.
    “When did you last see her?”
    When was it? Had she come by yesterday morning? I shrugged and jerked my thumb over my shoulder in a a-while-ago gesture.
    “Monsieur Baptiste, you must search your memory. We know she was in the park yesterday. We want to know if she came this way.”
    Bassin was standing motionless, looking straight at me as the sergeant took notes. I wondered what you wrote down if the person being interrogated