Central Park Guillaume Musso (read along books .TXT) 📖

across the second floor, the pianist dreamily followed her, watching the kids around him with a certain amusement. Some were jumping on the keys of a giant piano mat on the floor, while others begged their parents to take a picture of them next to six-foot-tall Star Wars characters made out of Lego. Another group of kids was watching a Muppet-style puppet show.

Still in Alice’s wake, Gabriel checked out the aisles, allowing himself a brief nostalgic return to childhood: plastic dinosaurs, five-thousand-piece Ravensburger jigsaw puzzles, Playmobil figures, Matchbox cars, electric trains, labyrinthine tracks.

Kid heaven.

In the costumes section, he put on a Groucho Marx mustache and an Indiana Jones hat, then joined Alice in the Science and Education area. With intense concentration, the cop was carefully examining the boxes on display: microscopes, telescopes, chemistry sets, plastic skeletons, and so on.

“Hey, if you happen to find a whip…”

She looked up at him and frowned at his getup. “Are you ever going to stop clowning around, Keyne?”

“What can I do to help?”

“Never mind,” she said dismissively.

Annoyed, he moved away. He returned a few minutes later.

“I bet this is what you’re looking for,” he said, showing her a cardboard box with the logo of a well-known TV show.

She glanced up at the toy set he was holding—CSI: Junior Investigator Kit, $29.99—then grabbed the box from him so she could study its contents more closely: a roll of yellow crime scene tape, a magnifying glass, a detective’s badge, Scotch tape, glue, fingerprint powder, evidence bags, a magnetic fingerprint brush.

“Actually, that’s exactly what we need,” she admitted.

Alice went to the back of a long line on the second floor to pay for her purchase. It was only when she took the escalator down to the first floor that she saw Gabriel again. The pianist had swapped his Indiana Jones fedora for a magician’s top hat. Wearing a black cape, he was performing tricks for a crowd of spectators whose average age was five and a half. Alice watched him for a few seconds, baffled and fascinated in equal measure by this strange man. Dexterously and with evident pleasure, Gabriel was pulling all kinds of stuffed animals from his hat: a rabbit, a toucan, a kitten, a hedgehog, a tiger cub.

Her smile soon faded, however. The presence of children was still difficult for Alice to bear, reminding her brutally of the fact that she would never give her son his bottle, never drive him to school or soccer practice or judo lessons, never teach him to defend himself and face the world.

She blinked several times to rid herself of the tears that had formed in her eyes and then took a few steps toward Gabriel.

“Stop messing around, Keyne!” she ordered, pulling him by the arm. “The police are looking for us, remember?”

With a sweeping gesture, the magician removed his cape and sent his top hat flying onto the shelf where it belonged.

“Mandrake the Magician bids you farewell!” he called out, bowing at the laughter and applause of the children.

On Madison Avenue behind St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the Pergolese Café was one of the oldest diners in Manhattan. With its Formica tables and green leatherette benches, it was like something from the 1960s. It didn’t look like much from the outside, but it was famous for its crunchy salads, tasty burgers, eggs Benedict, and pastrami in truffle oil.

Paolo Mancuso himself, the elderly owner of the establishment, brought over the dishes ordered by the young woman with the French accent and her companion: two lobster rolls, two cartons of homemade fries, and two bottles of Budweiser.

No sooner had his food been served than Gabriel dived into it, stuffing a handful of fries into his mouth—crisp and salted to perfection.

Sitting across from him, Alice took only a few bites of her sandwich before clearing a space on the table. She placed her satchel there, unfastened the two straps, and pulled out the travel bag they had found inside the briefcase. Using a paper napkin, she carefully removed the syringe from the pouch’s leather lining, then got down to work.

After tearing the plastic wrapping from the CSI kit, she chose a vial of powder, a magnetic brush, and an evidence bag.

“Um, you do realize they’re just toys, right?” the pianist said.

“They’re good enough.”

Alice cleaned her hands with a wet wipe and examined the quality of each item. The black powder, composed of carbon and thin iron filings, would work perfectly. She dipped the end of the brush into the little vial containing the powder and painted the outside of the syringe. The powder stuck to the oils left by the skin that had touched the smooth plastic, gradually revealing several clear fingerprints. Alice tapped the syringe with her nail to get rid of the excess powder, then scrutinized each print, all of them clearly recent. One of them in particular stood out: the almost whole print of an index or middle finger.

“Cut me a piece of Scotch tape,” she said.

Gabriel picked up the roll. “Like this?”

“A bit longer. And be careful not to touch the sticky side!”

She took the rectangle of tape from him and used it to cover the fingerprint, smoothing it flat to avoid air bubbles. Then she removed the tape, turned over the coaster that her drink had been sitting on, and applied the tape to the blank cardboard. She pressed down on it firmly with her thumb to transfer the pattern to the coaster.

When she removed the tape, a clear black fingerprint was visible on the coaster’s white surface. Alice squinted, examining the intertwining of grooves. Lines and ridges formed an unusual pattern: an arched print broken by a tiny cross-shaped scar.

She showed the print to Gabriel and then, satisfied, slid the coaster into an evidence bag.

“Okay, that’s very nice,” he admitted, “but what good does it do us? Wouldn’t we have to scan it into a police database to find out whose it is?”

Alice nibbled a few fries while she mused out loud: “Your friend’s apartment in