“Earlier, when you were questioned by the police you denied having seen Doctor Osborn.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Vera looked from McVey to Lebrun, then back to McVey. “I’ll be honest and tell you I was frightened, I didn’t know what to do.”
“He was here in the apartment, wasn’t he?” McVey said.
“No,” Vera said, coolly. “He wasn’t.” That was a lie it would be hard for them to catch. If she told the truth, they would want to know where he went from here and how he got there.
“Then you won’t mind if we look around?” Lebrun said.
“Not at all.” Everything in the guest room had been Cleaned and put away. The sheets and bloody towels she’d used when she pulled the bullet from Osborn’s leg had been folded and stored in the attic hiding place, the instruments sterilized and put back in her medical bag.
Lebrun got up and left the room. In the hallway he stopped to light his cigarette, then walked off.
“Why were you frightened?” McVey sat down in a straightbacked chair across from Vera.
“Doctor Osborn was hurt. He’d been in the river most of the night.”
“He killed a man named Albert Merriman. Did you know that?”
“No, he didn’t.”
“Is that what he told you?”
“Detective, I told you he was hurt. It was not so much by the river, but because he’d been shot. By the same man who did kill Albert Merriman. He was hit in the back of “the thigh.”
“Is that so?” McVey said.
Vera stared at him a moment, then got up and went to a table near the doorway. As she did, Lebrun came back. Glancing at McVey, he shook his head. Pulling open a drawer, Vera took something from it, closed the drawer and came back.
“I took this out of him,” she said, and laid the spent bullet she’d recovered from Osborn’s thigh in McVey’s hand.
McVey rolled it around in his palm and then held it up between his thumb and forefinger. “Soft point. Could be nine millimeter—” he said to Lebrun.
Lebrun said nothing, only nodded slightly. The nod was enough to tell McVey he agreed, that it could be the same kind of slug they’d taken out of Merriman.
McVey looked at Vera. “Where did you do the surgery?”
Say whatever comes into your head, she thought. Don’t flinch. Make it simple. “By the side of the road, on the way back to Paris.”
“Which road?”
“I don’t remember. He was bleeding and almost delirious.”
“Where is he now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t know that, either. . . . You seem to not know more than you know.”
Vera looked at him but didn’t back down. “I wanted to bring him here. More truthfully, I wanted him to go to a hospital. But he wouldn’t. He was afraid whoever tried to kill him would come after him again if they knew he was alive. It would be easy enough in a hospital, and if he was here, he was afraid I might get hurt. That’s why he insisted we do what we did. The wound wasn’t deep. It was a relatively simple operation. As a doctor, he knew that. . . .”
“What did you use for water? You know, to keep everything clean?”
“Bottled water. I carry it with me in the car almost all the time. These days many people do. Even in America, I think.”
McVey stared at her but said nothing. Lebrun did the same. They were waiting for her to continue.
“I left him at the Gare Montparnasse about four this afternoon. I shouldn’t have, but he would have it no other way.”
“Where was he going?” McVey asked.
Vera shook her head.
“You don’t know that, either.”
“I’m sorry. I told you he was concerned about me. He didn’t want me involved any more than I already was.”
“He could walk?”
“He had a cane, an old one that was in the car. It wasn’t much, but it kept the pressure off his leg. He’s healthy. That kind of wound will heal quickly.”
Vera watched McVey get up and cross the room to look out the window.
“Where were you this evening? From the time you went out until now?” he said with his back to her, then turned to face her.
To this point, McVey had been direct, but for the most part he’d kept it friendly. But with this question his tone changed. It was hard, even ugly, and decidedly accusatory. It was something Vera had never encountered. This was no Hollywood movie cop he was the real thing, and he scared the hell out of her.
McVey didn’t have to look at Lebrun to know what his reaction would be. Horror.
And he was right. Lebrun was horrified. McVey was asking her point blank if she’d been having a clandestine rendezvous with Francois Christian. The trouble with his reaction was that Vera saw it too. It told her they knew about her relationship with François. It also told her they didn’t know about the breakup.
“I’d rather not say,” she said without expression. Then, crossing her legs, she looked at Lebrun. “Should I get an attorney?”
Lebrun was quick to answer. “No, mademoiselle. Not now, not tonight.” Standing, he looked at McVey. “Already it is Sunday morning. I think it is time we go.”
McVey studied Lebrun a moment, then gave in to the Frenchman’s deep sense of propriety. “Just let me finish a thought.” He turned to Vera.
“Did Osborn know who shot him?”
“No.”
“Did he tell you what he looked like?”
“Only that he was tall,” Vera said politely. “Quite tall and slim.”
“Had he seen him before?”
“I don’t think so.”
Lebrun nodded toward the door.
“One more question, Inspector,” McVey said, still looking at Vera. “This Albert Merriman or Henri Kanarack as he called himself. Do you know why Doctor Osborn was so interested in him?”
Vera paused. What harm would it do to tell them? In fact, it might help if they understood the pressure Osborn had been under, make them realize he’d only been trying to question Kanarack, and had nothing at all to do with the shooting. On the other hand, the police had taken the succinylcholine from Osborn’s hotel room. If she told them Kanarack had murdered Osborn’s father, instead of being sympathetic, they would assume he’d been out for revenge. If they did and connected the drug, and then discovered what it was used for, they might go back over Kanarack’s body and discover the puncture wounds.
Right now, Osborn was only a fugitive but if they had reason to go back and found the puncture wounds, they could, and probably would, charge him with attempted murder.
“No,” she said, finally. “I really have no idea.”
“What about the river?” McVey pressed.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Why were Osborn and Albert Merriman there?”
Lebrun was uncomfortable and Vera could have turned to him for help, but she didn’t.
“As I said before, Detective McVey—I really have no idea.”
Sixty seconds later Vera closed the door behind them and locked it. Walking back into the living room, she turned out the lights, then went to the window. Below, she saw them come out and cross to the white Ford parked across the street. They got in, the doors closed and they drove off. When they did, she let out a deep sigh. For the second time that evening she’d lied to the police.
49
* * *
JOANNA LAY in the dark, trembling. She’d never imagined sex could be like that. How she could feel, how she could still be feeling. Pascal Von Holden had been gone for nearly an hour, but the smell of him, his cologne, his perspiration, was still on her and she didn’t want to lose it, ever. She tried to think back on how it happened. How one thing led to another.
The steamer was docking and the men in the tuxedos had gone to make sure the gangway was secure and that Elton Lybarger’s limousine was waiting at the bottom of it. She and Pascal had finished dancing and she had gone to tell Mr.
Lybarger the good news, that she was staying on to continue with his physical therapy.
When she’d reached him, he’d motioned for her to take him aside in his wheelchair. She’d looked to Von Holden waiting on the deck outside. She hadn’t wanted to leave him, even for a moment, but he’d nodded and smiled and Joanna had wheeled Lybarger off. When they were safely away, Lybarger had suddenly reached out and taken her hand. He seemed tired and confused, even a little afraid. Looking at him, she’d smiled gently and told him she was staying on a little while longer to help him adjust to his new surroundings. It was then that he had drawn her close and asked her what he had asked before.
“Where is my family?” he said. “Where is my family?”
“They’re here, Mr. Lybarger. They met you at the plane. They’re here tonight, Mr. Lybarger, all around you. You’re home, in Switzerland.”
“No!” he said, emphatically, staring at her with angry eyes. “No! My family. Where are they?”
It was then the men in tuxedos had come back. It was time for Mr. Lybarger to be taken to his car. She’d told him to go with them and not to worry, that they would talk about it tomorrow.
Von Holden had put his arm around her and smiled reassuringly as they’d watched Lybarger being wheeled down the gangplank and gently-helped into the limousine. She must be very tired, he said. Still on New Mexico time. “Yes, I am,” she’d smiled, grateful for his caring.
“May I see you back to your hotel?”
“Yes. That would be nice. Thank you.” She’d never met anyone as genuinely sincere or warm or kind.
After that she vaguely remembered the ride up from the lake and back through Zurich. Colored lights came to mind, and she remembered hearing Von Holden say something about sending a car for her in the morning to take her and her luggage to Lybarger’s estate.
For some reason she recalled opening the door to her hotel room and Von Holden taking the key from her and closing the door behind them. He’d helped her off with her coat and hung it neatly in the closet. Then he’d turned and they’d come together in the darkness. His lips on hers. Gentle, and at the same time, forceful.
She remembered him undressing her and taking her breasts one after the other into his mouth, his lips encircling her nipples, making them grow harder than they ever had. Then, he’d lifted her up bodily and put her on the bed. Never taking his eyes from her, he’d undressed. Slowly, sensuously. His tie, then his jacket, his shoes, socks, then his shirt The hair on his muscular chest was as light colored as that on his head. Her breasts ached and she could feel her own wetness as she watched him. She hadn’t meant to, as if it were rude or something, but her eyes locked on his hands as they opened his belt and deliberately lowered the zipper on his fly.
Suddenly Joanna threw her head back in the dark and laughed. She was alone but she laughed loudly, raucously. If anyone in the room next to hers could hear, she didn’t care. It was the old dirty joke the girls had told since junior high school, come true.
“Men come in three sizes,” it went. “Small, medium and OH MY GOD!”
50
* * *
Paris, 3:30 A.M.
Same hotel, same room, same clock as the last time.
Click.
3:31.
* * *
IT WAS always three-thirty, give or take twenty minutes. McVey was exhausted but he couldn’t sleep. Just to think hurt, but his mind had no “off’ switch. It never had, not from the day he’d seen his first corpse lying in an alley with half its head shot away. The million details that could lead from victim to killer were what kept you wired and awake.
Lebrun had sent inspectors to the Gare Montparnasse to try to pick up Osborn’s trail. But it was a wasted operation and he’d told that to Lebrun. Vera Monneray had lied about dropping him off at the train station. She’d taken him somewhere else and knew where he was.
He’d argued they should go back later that morning and tell her they’d like to continue the discussion at headquarters. A formal interrogation room worked wonders in getting people to tell the truth, whether they wanted to or not.
Lebrun said an emphatic “no!” Osborn might be a murder suspect, but the girlfriend of the prime minister of the Republique Française most certainly was not!
His sensibility factor strained to overload, McVey had slowly counted to ten and countered with another solution: a polygraph test. It might not make an untruthful suspect reveal all, but it was a good emotional setup for a second interview immediately following it. Especially if the polygraph examiner was exceptionally thorough and the suspect had been the slightest bit nervous, as most were.
But again Lebrun said no, and the best McVey had been able finally to waggle out of him was a thirty-six-hour surveillance. And even that had been a tooth pull because it was expensive and Lebrun had to go on the hook for three, two-man detective teams watching her movements around the clock for a day and a half.
Click.
This time McVey didn’t bother with the clock. Shutting off the light, he lay back in the dark and stared at the vague shadows on the ceiling wondering if he really cared about any of it: Vera Monneray, Osborn, this “tall man,” if he existed, who had supposedly killed Albert Merriman and wounded Osborn, or even the deep-frozen, headless bodies and the deep-frozen head some invisible, high-tech Dr. Frankenstein was trying to join. That that physician could possibly be Osborn was also incidental because, at this point, there was only one thing McVey knew for certain he did care about—sleep—and he wondered if he was ever going to get it.
Click.
Four hours later, McVey was behind the wheel of the beige Opel heading for the park by the river. Dawn had broken clear and he had to flip down the visor to keep the sun out of his eyes as he drove along the Seine looking for the park turnoff. If he’d slept at all, he didn’t remember.
Five minutes later, he recognized the stand of trees that marked the entryway to the park. Pulling into it, he stopped. A grassy field was circumvented by a muddy road that ran around its periphery and was lined with trees, some of which were just beginning to turn color. Looking down, he saw the tire prints of a single vehicle that had entered the park and then left the same way.
He had to assume they belonged to Lebrun’s Ford, because he and the French inspector had arrived after the rain had stopped; any new vehicle entering the park would have left a second set of tracks.
Accelerating slowly, McVey drove around the park to where the trees met the top of the ramp leading down to the water. Stopping, he got out. Directly in front of him two sets of washed-over footprints led down the ramp to the river. His and Lebrun’s. Studying the ramp and the landing at the bottom, he imagined where Agnes Demblon’s white Citroën would have been parked near the water’s edge and tried to think why Osborn and Albert Merriman would have been there. Were they working together? Why drive the car to the landing? Was there something in it they were going to unload into the water? Drugs maybe? Or was it the car itself they had designs on? Trash it? Strip it for parts? But why? Osborn was a reasonably well-off doctor. None of it made sense.
Theorizing the red mud here was the same red mud he’d seen on Osborn’s running shoes the night before the murder, McVey had to assume Osborn had been here the day before. Add to that the fact that three sets of fingerprints had been found in the car, Osborn’s, Merriman’s, and Agnes Demblon’s, and McVey felt reasonably certain it was Osborn who had picked the river location and brought Merriman to it.
Lebrun had established that Agnes Demblon had worked at her job in the bakery the entire day on Friday and had still been there late in the afternoon, the time Merriman had been killed.
For the moment, and even before ballistics gave Lebrun a report on the bullet Vera Monneray said she had taken out of Osborn, McVey was willing to believe her story that a tall man had done the shooting. And unless he had worn gloves and had both Osborn and Merriman under his control, friendly or unfriendly, it was safe to assume he had not come to the
park in the same car with them. And since the Citroën had been left at the scene, he would either have had to come in a separate car—or, if by the off chance he had ridden out with Osborn and Merriman, have had another car pick him up afterward. There was no public transportation this far out, nor would he have been likely to walk back to the city. It was possible, but very unlikely, that he’d hitched a ride. A man who used a Heckler & Koch and had just shot two men was not the kind of man who stuck out his thumb, thereby providing a witness who could later identify him.
Now, if one followed the Interpol, Lyon, trail to New York Police Department records, it would make Merriman, not Osborn, the tall man’s target. If that was so, did that mean there was a connection between Osborn and the tall man? If so, did the tall man, having killed Merriman, then double-cross Osborn and turn the gun on him? Or, had the tall man followed Merriman, perhaps from the bakery, to wherever he’d met Osborn, and then followed the two here?
Taking that theory further and assuming the fire that destroyed Agnes Demblon’s apartment building was designed primarily to terminate her, it seemed reasonable to assume the tall man’s orders were to take care not only of Merriman, but anyone else who might have intimately known him.
“His wife!” McVey suddenly said out loud.
Turning from the trail, he started back under the trees toward the Opel. He had no idea where the closest phone would be, and he cursed Interpol for giving him a car with no radio and no phone. Lebrun had to be alerted that Merriman’s wife, wherever she was, was in serious danger.
Reaching the edge of the trees, McVey was almost to the car, when abruptly he stopped and turned around. The path he’d just taken, in a rush from the murder scene, was through the trees. Exactly what a gunman leaving a shooting might have done. The way McVey and Lebrun had walked to the ramp the night before had been around the trees, not through them. Lebrun’s Inspectors and tech crew had found nothing to indicate the presence of a third man the night of the killing. Hence they assumed Osborn had been the gunman. But had they searched up here, under the trees, this far back from the ramp?