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With that in mind, he moved, quickly and quietly, blending into the crowd, vanishing into the shadows. Just a runner, with a hood low over his face, spindly pale legs, and a stooped demeanor so unlike the imposing stance of the statue.
And then, he was gone.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
"Who's yours?" Juliette asked Lucien, feeling surprised and enthused, that they'd both hit on such a strong lead at the same time.
"It's a man called Giorgio Patron. He's not a performer, and was warned by police the day before yesterday, that he must not masquerade as one. He got angry and violent in response, so they arrested him and gave him an official warning. However, I've just called the local police, and they said he was lurking around yesterday, dressed as a juggler. I asked if the outfit included black gloves and he said yes, it was a clown's outfit with black boots and gloves."
That sounded extremely promising, Juliette thought.
"What area?"
"Half a mile from the Eiffel Tower, in the direction of the Arc de Triomphe," Lucien said.
Juliette and Wyatt exchanged glances. This was definitely a lead worth following up.
He showed them a few photos of Giorgio on the screen. He was a serious looking man with a lean face and narrow eyes. Juliette took note that in the first photo, his face was daubed with white paint, and his hair was slicked back under a big, colorful trilby hat in red and green.
"And where is he likely to be now?" Juliette asked.
"Probably, the same place. That seems to be his chosen area for setting up shop and trying to make a few quick euros," Lucien said, then hesitated. "Although maybe that's not the reason. Money, I mean."
"Maybe not," Juliette said.
Lucien glanced at her. "So, who's your lead?"
"My lead is a licensed performer who's caused problems in the past, getting violent and aggressive toward tourists, and women in particular," Juliette said, reading from the screen. "His name is Charl Dupont, and he seems to like performing in the Palais de Chaillot Plaza most often. He's a mime artist and he wears a silver suit and a black hat. I don't know about gloves."
"The Palais de Chaillot Plaza is a public square that overlooks the Trocadero Gardens and the Eiffel Tower some distance away," Lucien clarified.
"I see here that he was given an official warning by police three months ago. Since then, there's a note to say he's disappeared from circulation. But there's another, more recent note to say that he turned up again, the day before yesterday. He was seen in his old territory, and causing trouble again."
"Now that is interesting timing," Wyatt said, and from the meaning in his tone, Juliette knew he was thinking of the recent kills in New York. The disappearance of this suspect from Paris coincided with the timing of the murders in the U.S.
"We should probably split up and look for them separately," Juliette said. Time was not on their side here. The spring days were warm, but they were not long, and by the time they had searched the streets for these two suspects, it could already be getting close to evening.
"I will go to Giorgio Patron," Lucien said. "I know that area well. There are lots of side streets that a suspect could use to disappear, and it’s not far from the plaza."
"In that case, we'll go after Charl Dupont," Juliette agreed.
Even though she knew that searching for these performers was going to be like looking for a needle in a haystack, she hoped that Sierra might be able to run a search on her software without taking too much time.
“We can track their phones, if they have them open,” she suggested. “Do the two of them have valid cellphones? That would make it easy.”
“I think they do,” Lucien said, looking into the case file and the report. He showed her the numbers. “Not sure if they are valid, but they should be up to date, since both were in trouble recently.”
Quickly, she called their tech expert to update her on the situation.
"Hello, Juliette." Sierra sounded upbeat and alert, as if she was focusing hard on her job at hand.
"We've got two suspects we need to follow," she said. "They're in different areas. We have cellphone numbers. Could you log into the system and triangulate the numbers, or else track them some other way, and let us know if you pick them up?"
"Sure," Sierra said. She sounded glad of the job to do. "I haven't been getting anywhere with the paint suppliers yet, and I'm wondering if it's a dead end. He seems to have hidden his tracks very carefully. So, at least this will give me something else to do."
"I'll send them now," Juliette said.
She sent both the cell numbers through to Sierra.
