“With the exception of uniformed details at the front and rear of the building, the French police have left. Ms. Monneray has gone with them. To headquarters. They want her to see if she can pick the tall man out of photographs. If Paris is anything like L.A., she’s going to be there a long time. There are a lot of books.” McVey turned around and looked toward the furniture behind him.
“Let me tell you what I know, Doctor.” Now he turned again and started walking slowly back toward him, his footsteps echoing lightly, his eyes searching, looking for any suggestion of movement.
“Ms. Monneray was lying when she told the French police she used the gun. against the tall man. She’s a highly educated, remarkably connected woman, who’s also a physician in residence. Even if she managed to pull a gun as big as a forty-five automatic on an assailant, even if she shot at him, I rather doubt she’d .chase after him down a dingy back stairway. Or follow him out into the street, still shooting as he drove away.” McVey stopped where he was and looked back over his shoulder, then turned and continued on the way he had been going, moving slowly toward Osborn’s hiding place, talking loud enough to be heard either in front or behind him.
“She says, by the way, that she heard a car drive off but that she didn’t see it. If she didn’t see it, how did she manage to shatter its rearview minor with one shot and take the top off an iron fence post across the street with another?”
McVey would have known the French police had been all over the basement and found nothing. That meant he was taking a stab that Osborn was here. But it was only a stab, and he wasn’t sure.
“There were fresh bloodstains on the hallway door upstairs. On the floor in the kitchen and on the landing by the service door that leads to the street. The Paris Préfecture of Police tech squad is pretty good. They determined in short order that there were two types of blood. Type O and type B. Ms. Monneray was not cut or bleeding. So I’m willing to bet that between you and the tall man one of you is O and the other B. How badly either of you is hurt, I guess we’ll find out.”
McVey was directly under Osborn now. Standing, looking around. For some reason Osborn smiled. If McVey had been wearing a hat like ’40s L.A. homicide detectives, Osborn could have reached out and plucked it off his head. He pictured the expression on McVey’s face if he did.
“By the way, Doctor, the Los Angeles Police Department is doing an in-depth profile on you. By the time I get back to my hotel, there’ll be a fax waiting with preliminary stats. Somewhere on that sheet will be your blood type.”
McVey waited and listened. Then he started back the way he had come, walking slowly, patiently, waiting for Osborn, if he was there, to make the mistake that would give him away.
“In case you’re wondering, I don’t know who the tall man is or what he’s up to. But I think you should know he is directly responsible for a number of other deaths involving people who knew a man named Albert Merriman or who you might have known as Henri Kanarack.
“Merriman’s girlfriend, a woman named Agnes Denblon, burned up in a fire the tall man set at her apartment building. The fire also killed nineteen other adults and two children, none of whom probably ever heard of Albert Merriman.
“Then he went to Marseilles and found Merriman’s Wife, her sister, her sister’s husband and their five kids. He shot them all in the head.”
McVey stopped, reached up and turned out a bank of lights.
“It was you he was after, Doctor Osborn. Not Ms. Monneray. But of course, after tonight, now that she’s seen him, he’ll be concerned with her too.”
There was a dull click as McVey turned out the second bank of lights. Then Osborn could hear him start back toward him in the dark.
“Frankly, Doctor Osborn, you’re in a heckuva pickle. I want you. The Paris police want you. And the tall man wants you.
“If the police get you, you can bet the bank the tall man will find a way to take care of you in jail. And after he does, he’ll go after Ms. Monneray. It won’t happen right away, because for a while she’ll be guarded. But somewhere on down the line, while she’s shopping or maybe riding the Metro, or having her hair done or in the hospital cafeteria at three in the morning . . .”
McVey came closer. When he was directly beneath Osborn, he turned and looked back to the darkened basement.
“No one knows I’m here besides you and me. Maybe if we talked, I might be able to help. Think about it, huh?”
Then there was silence. Osborn knew McVey was listening for the slightest sound and held his breath. It was a good forty seconds before Osborn heard him turn back, cross to the stairs and start up, then he stopped again.
“I’m staying at an inexpensive hotel called the Vieux Paris on the rue Git le Coeur. The rooms are small but they’ve got a musty French charm. Leave word where to meet you. I won’t bring anyone. It’ll be just you and me. If you’re nervous, don’t use your own name. Just say Tommy Lasorda called. Give me a time and a place.”
McVey climbed the remaining stairs and was gone. A moment later Osborn heard the service door to the street open, then close. After that, everything was silent.
62
* * *
THEIR NAMES were Eric and Edward, and Joanna had never seen such perfect men. At age twenty-four, they were seemingly flawless specimens of the human male. Both were five foot eleven and weighed exactly the same, one hundred and sixty-seven pounds.
She’d first seen them early in the afternoon when she’d been working with Elton Lybarger in the shallow end of the indoor pool in the building that housed the gymnasium on his estate. The pool was Olympic size, fifty meters long and twenty-five yards wide. Eric and Edward were doing butterfly stroke speed laps. Joanna had seen that before but usually only over short distances because the stroke itself was so demanding. At one end of the pool was an automatic lap meter that counted the number of laps whoever was in the pool was swimming.
When Joanna and Lybarger had come in, the boys had already swum eight laps, or a half mile. By the time she and Lybarger were finished, they were still swimming butterfly, stroke for stroke, side by side. The lap meter read sixty-two, exactly two laps under four miles. Four miles of butterfly stroke nonstop? That was incredible, if not impossible. But there was no doubt, because she’d witnessed it.
An hour later, as a male attendant took Lybarger off for an exercise in diction therapy, Eric and Edward had come out of the pool house and were preparing for a run through the forest, when Von Holden introduced them to her.
“Mr. Lybarger’s nephews,” he said with a smile. “They were studying at East Germany’s College for Physical Culture until it closed after unification. So they came home.”
Both were extremely polite, had said, “Hello. Very pleased to meet you,” and then they’d run off.
Joanna had wondered if they were training for the Olympics and Von Holden had smiled. “No. Not Olympics. Politics! Mr. Lybarger has encouraged them in that since their youth when their own father died. He thought then that Germany would one day reunite. And he was correct.”
“Germany? I thought Mr. Lybarger was Swiss.”
“German. He was born in the industrial town of Essen.”
At precisely seven o’clock, family and guests sat down to dinner in the formal dining room of the Lybarger estate, which Joanna had learned was called “Anlegeplatz,” embarkation point. Meaning that from there one might leave but would always return.
Joanna had come back to her room after an extended workout with Mr. Lybarger to find a formal dinner gown, picked out and fitted flawlessly, simply from a photograph of her, by the famous designer Uta Baur, to whom she’d been introduced briefly on the lake steamer the night before and who, it turned out, was a guest at Anlegeplatz. The dress was long, tight-fitting; and instead of compromising her ample figure, it complemented it by tightening and accenting. Designed to be worn without undergarments, thereby avoiding a line or bulge caused by tight elastic, it was deliberately risqué and elegantly erotic.
Black velvet, it closed several inches below the throat and had a woven, feathery pattern in gold that ran from the back of her neck across her bosom and down the other side, as if it were some kind of sleekly fitted boa. At the shoulders, a perfect nuance, hung the smallest golden tassels.
At first Joanna was reluctant. She had never expected to wear anything like it. But she had brought nothing at all dressy, and at Anlegeplatz, dinner was formal. So she had little choice but to put it on. When she did, she was transformed. It was magical. With makeup, and her hair in a French knot, she was no longer the cherubic, ordinary-looking physical therapist from New Mexico but a stylish and sexy international socialite, who carried herself with grace and panache.
The grand hall that was Anlegeplatz’s dining room might have served as the set for some medieval costume drama. The twelve guests sat in hand-carved, high-backed chairs facing each other across a long, narrow dining table that could easily seat thirty, while half-a-dozen waiters saw to their every need. The room itself was two stories high and made entirely of stone. Flags with the crests of great families hung from the ceiling like battle standards, imparting the sense that this had been a place of kings and knights.
Elton Lybarger sat at the head of the table, with Uta Baur directly to his right, conversing with him in her animated style as if the two of them were the only creatures present. She was dressed entirely in black, which Joanna later learned was her trademark. Knee-length black boots, skintight black trousers, and black, single-breasted blazer, closed only by its button at the breast plate. The skin on her hands, face and neck was taut and iridescent, as if it had never been touched by sunlight. The cleavage of her smallish breasts, pushed upward by an underwire bra, was the same milk white, lined with surface veins of light blue, like tiny cracks in fine china. Under her extraordinarily short white hair the only accent was her plucked eyebrows. She wore no makeup or jewelry of any kind. She made a statement without it.
The dinner itself was long and leisurely and, despite the other guests—Dr. Salettl, the twins, Eric and Edward, and several people Joanna had been introduced to but didn’t know—Joanna spent most of it talking with Von Holden about Switzerland, its history, its rail system and its geography. Von Holden seemed to be an expert, but he could have been talking about the dark side of the moon for all the difference it made. His cold, abrupt phone call that morning asking her to be ready to be picked up from her hotel had made her feel cheap and ugly, as if she’d been used the night before. But when he’d met her in the garden that afternoon, he’d been as warm and generous as he had been the night before and that behavior continued here at dinner. And as the evening wore on, and as much as she tried not to show it, the truth was, she was melting for his touch.
After dinner, Lybarger, Uta, Dr. Salettl and the other guests retired to the second-floor library for coffee and a dual piano recital by Eric and Edward.
Joanna and Von Holden, as employees, were not invited and excused for the evening.
“Doctor Salettl told me he expects Mr. Lybarger to be able to walk without a cane by this Friday,” Joanna said as she watched Uta take Lybarger’s arm and help him up the stairs.
“Will he?” Von Holden looked at her.
“I hope so, but it depends on Mr, Lybarger. I don’t know what’s so important about Friday. What difference would another few days make?”
“I want to show you something,” Von Holden said, ignoring her question and leading her to a side door near the far end of the dining room. Entering a paneled hallway they walked to where a small door opened to a flight of stairs. Offering his hand, Von Holden led Joanna down a few stairs to another door, which in turn opened on a narrow passageway that led under the front drive and away from the house.
“Where are we going?” she asked quietly.
Von Holden said nothing and Joanna felt a quiver of excitement as they walked on. Pascal Von Holden was a man who could attract and have nearly any woman he wanted. He lived in a world of extremely rich and beautiful people, who were nearly royalty. Joanna was nothing but ordinary, a physical therapist with a southwestern twang. She’d had her foray with him last night and she knew she couldn’t have been anything special. So why would he come back for more? If that’s what he was doing.
At the far end of the corridor, steps led up. At the top was still another door, and Von Holden opened it. Standing aside, he ushered her in, then closed the door behind them.
Joanna stood open-mouthed, looking up. They were in a room taken up entirely by an enormous waterwheel driven by the flow of a deep and fast-running stream.
“The system provides independent electric power for the estate,” Von Holden said. “Be careful, the floor is quite slippery.”
Taking her arm, Von Holden led her across to another door. Opening it, he reached inside and turned on the light. Inside was a room made of wood and stone, twenty feet square. In the middle was a pool of churning water, a cutout from the stream, with stone benches all around. Pointing to a wooden door, Von Holden said, “In there is a sauna. All very natural and good for the health.”
Joanna could feel herself blush and at the same time feel the heat rise within her.
“I didn’t bring anything to change into,” she said.
Von Holden smiled. “Ah, but you see, that’s the marvel of Uta’s designs.”
“I don’t get it.”
“The dress is form-fitting, and made to be worn without underclothing, is it not?”
Joanna blushed again. “Yes. But—”
“Form always follows function.” Von Holden reached up, gently fingering one of the golden tassels at Joanna’s shoulder. “This decorative tassel.”
Joanna knew he was doing something, but she had no idea what. “What about it?”
“If one were to give it the slightest pull . . .”
Suddenly Joanna’s dress undraped and slid as elegantly to the floor as a theatrical curtain.
“You see, ready for bath and sauna.” Von Holden stood back and let his eyes run over her.
Joanna felt desire as she never had, more—if it was possible—than the night before. Never had the presence of a man felt so devastatingly erotic. At that moment she would have done anything he asked, and more.
“Would you like to undress me? Turnabout is fair play, isn’t that how it goes?”
“Yes . . . ,” Joanna heard herself whisper. “God, yes.”
Then Von Holden touched her, and she came to him and undressed him and they made love in the pool and on the stone benches, and afterward in the sauna.
Love spent, they rested and touched and caressed, and then Von Holden took her again, slowly and purposefully, in ways beyond her darkest imagination. Looking up, Joanna saw herself reflected in the mirrored ceiling and then again on the mirrored wall to her left, and those visions made her laugh in joy and disbelief. For the first time in her life she felt attractive and desired. And she savored it and Von Holden let her. The time was hers, for as long as she wanted.
In a dark-paneled study on the second floor of Anlegeplatz’s main building, Uta Baur and Dr. Salettl sat patiently in armchairs and watched the exercise on three large-screen, high-definition television monitors receiving signals transmitted by remote cameras mounted behind the mirrored glass. Each camera had its own monitor, thereby providing full coverage of the action being recorded.
It’s doubtful either was physically stirred by what they saw, not because they were both septuagenarians, but because the observance was wholly clinical.
Von Holden was merely an instrument in the study. It was Joanna who was the focus of their interest.
Finally, Uta’s long fingers reached over and pressed a button. The monitors went dark and she stood up.
“Ja,” she said to Salettl. “Ja,” then walked out of the room.
63
* * *
BY OSBORN’s watch it was 2:11 Monday morning, October 10.
Thirty minutes earlier he’d climbed the last stai
rs and taken the hidden elevator to the room under the eaves at 18, Quai de Bethune. Exhausted, he’d gone into the bathroom, opened the spigot and drunk deeply. After that he’d removed Vera’s bloodsoaked scarf and cleaned the wound in his hand. The thing throbbed like hell and he had a lot of trouble opening his hand. But the pain was welcome because it suggested that as badly as he’d been cut, neither the nerves nor crucial tendons had been severely damaged. He’d taken the tall man’s knife between the metacarpal bones just below the joint of the second and third fingers.
Because he could open the hand and close it, he was relatively certain no permanent damage had been done. Still, he would need an X ray to tell for sure. If a bone had been broken or splintered, he’d need surgery and then a cast. Left untreated, he ran the chance it would heal misformed, thus converting him to a one-handed surgeon and all, “but ending his career. That is, if there would be a career left to resurrect.
Finding the antiseptic salve Vera had used on his leg wound, he rubbed it into his hand, then covered it with a fresh bandage. After that he’d gone into the other room, eased down on the bed and awkwardly taken his shoes off with one hand.
He’d waited a full hour after McVey’s exit before sliding off the furnace and climbing the darkened service stairs. He’d gone carefully, a step at a time, half expecting to be surprised and challenged by a man with a gun in uniform. But the moment hadn’t come, so it was evident that whatever police were still on guard were outside.
McVey had been right. If the French police caught him and put him in jail, the tall man would find a way to kill him there. And then he would go after Vera. Osborn was caught, with McVey the third and final part of the triangle.
Loosening his shirt, Osborn shut out the light and lay back in the dark. His leg, though better, was beginning to stiffen from overexertion. The throbbing in his hand, he found, was less if he kept it elevated, and he arranged a pillow under it. As tired as he was, he should have fallen asleep immediately, but too many things were alive in his mind.