by Allan Folsom
Turning back, he recrossed the landing to the woods on the far side. He wanted something heavier, something that might begin more to approximate a man’s weight. In a matter of moments he found the uprooted trunk of a dead tree. Struggling for a grip, he hefted it, then carried it to the water’s edge, stepped into the mud once more and heaved it in. For a moment it remained still in the water, as the branch had, then the current picked it up and started forward along the shore. Once it reached the curve of the outcropping it moved swiftly and steadily out toward the main current. Once more he looked at his watch. Thirty-two seconds until it reached mid-river and was swept from view. The tree trunk had to have weighed fifty pounds. Kanarack, he estimated, weighed about one hundred and eighty. The ratio of the weight from the branch to the tree trunk was far greats than the ratio of the tree trunk to what Kanarack weighed, yet both had taken nearly the same time to be swept up and out and then be fully caught up in the current.
Osborn could feel the rise of his pulse and the sweat at his armpits as the reality of it began to set in. It would work, he was certain! Moving sideways at first, then-turning, Osborn started to run, hurrying along the riverbank and past the trees to where the land projected farthest out toward midriver. Here, he found the water deep flowing and free of obstacles. With nothing to stop him, Kanarack, physically helpless under the succinylcholine, would float off like the tree trunk, picking up speed as he reached the flow line. Less than sixty seconds after his body was shoved out from the landing it would reach midriver and be caught up in the Seine’s main current.
Now he had to make sure. Pushing through a stand of high grass, he followed the river’s edge through shrubs and thicket for a half, mile or more. The farther he walked, the steeper the embankment became and the swifter the current flowing between the shorelines. Reaching the top of a hill, he stopped. The river kept on uninterrupted for as far as he could see. There were no small islands, no sandbanks, no yawning catch-alls of dead trees. Nothing but fast-moving open water cutting through raw countryside. Moreover, there were no towns, factories, homes or bridges. No place at all, as far as he could tell, from which to see a thing rushing along with the current.
Especially if it were happening in the rain and darkness.
21
* * *
LEBRUN AND McVey had followed Osborn. and Vera to the gardens of the National Museum of Natural History. There, another unmarked police car had taken over and tailed them to Vera’s apartment on the Île St.-Louis.
As soon as they entered, Lebrun was radioed the address. Forty seconds later they had a printout of the building’s residents, courtesy of a computer cross-check with the Postal Service.
Lebrun scanned it then handed it to McVey, who had to put on his glasses to read it. The listing confirmed that all six of the apartments at 18 Quai de Bethune were occupied. Two of the surnames carried first initials only, indicating they were probably occupied by single women. One was an M. Seyrig, the other a V. Monneray. French permis de conduire—driver’s license—records disclosed that M. Seyrig was Monique Seyrig, who was sixty, and that V. Monneray was one Vera Monneray, who was twenty-six. Less than a minute later a copy of Vera Monneray’s driver’s license came over the fax machine in Lebrun’s unmarked Ford. The accompanying photograph confirmed her as Paul Osborn’s companion.
It was at that moment that headquarters abruptly called off the surveillance. Dr. Paul Osborn, Lebrun was told, was under the spotlight of Interpol, not of the Paris Préfecture of Police. If Interpol wanted somebody to watch from across the street while Osborn had dalliance with a lady, let them pay for it, the locals couldn’t afford it. McVey was all too aware of city budgets, where management cut corners and where pork-barrel politics vied for every allotted franc. So, when Lebrun apologetically dropped him off back at headquarters a half hour later, all he could do was shrug and head for the beige two-door Opel Interpol had assigned him, knowing he would have to do the legwork himself.
It took a good forty minutes, driving in circles trying to find his way back to lie St.-Louis, before McVey finally pulled into a parking space at the rear of Vera Monneray’s apartment building. The stone and stucco structure that ran the entire length of the block was well kept and freshly painted. Service entrances, at convenient intervals along the way, were secured by heavy, windowless doors, making the ground floor at the back seem like a sealed military garrison.
Opening the car door, McVey got out and walked the half block down the cobblestone street to the cross street at the end of the building. That it was raining and cold didn’t help. Or that the ancient cobblestones under his wing tips were slippery as hell. Pulling a handkerchief from a hip pocket, he blew his nose, then carefully folding it on the creases, put it back. It didn’t help either that he was beginning to think of a warm, smoggy day on the Rancho Park course on Pico across from the Twentieth Century Fox lot. Tee off about eight when the sun was just beginning to warm things up, and for the next few hours make light with the rest of his foursome, Sheriff’s Department homicide detectives playing hooky from domestic chores on their day off.
When he got to the cross street, McVey turned right and walked to the front of the building. To his surprise he was literally on top of the Seine. If he put a hand out he could almost touch the passing barge traffic. Across the river, the entire Left Bank hung under a blanket of clouds that rolled out left to right as far as he could see. Cranking his head back and looking up, he realized that nearly every apartment in the building must have the same remarkable view.
What the hell can the rent cost here? he thought, then smiled. It’s what he would have said to his second wife, Judy, who really was the only true companion he’d ever had. Valerie, his first wife, he’d married out of high school. They were both too young. Valerie worked as a checkout clerk at a supermarket while he struggled through the academy and his first years on the force. What mattered to Val was not work, not a career, but children. She wanted two boys and two girls, the same as her family. And it was all she wanted. McVey was into his third year on the LAPD when she got pregnant. Four months later, while he was in the field on auto theft, she had a miscarriage at her mother’s house and hemorrhaged to death on the way to the hospital.
Why the hell was he thinking about that?
Looking up, the found himself staring through the filigreed wrought-iron security gate at the main entrance to Vera Monneray’s apartment building. Inside, a uniformed doorman looked back at him and he knew the only way he was going in there was with a search warrant. Even with one, supposing he could get in, what did he expect to find? Osborn and Ms. Monneray still in the act? And what made him think either of them was still there? It had been almost two hours since Lebrun and his team had been pulled off the surveillance.
Turning away, McVey started back toward his car. Five minutes later he was behind the wheel of the Opel trying to figure out how to get off the Île St.-Louis and back to his hotel. He was at a stop sign and had made an agonizing but final decision to turn right instead of left when he saw a phone booth on the corner next to him. The idea came fast. Cutting off a taxi, he pulled to the curb. Going into the phone booth, he opened the directory, looked up V. Monneray, then dialed her apartment. The phone rang for a long time and McVey was about to give up. Then a woman answered.
“Vera Monneray?” he said.
There was a pause and then—
“Oui,” she said.
With that, he hung up. At least one of them was still there.
“Vera Monneray, 18 Quai de Bethune? A name and address?” McVey closed the open folder and stared at Lebrun. “That’s the entire file?”
Lebrun squashed out a cigarette and nodded. It was a little after six in the evening and they were in Lebrun’s cubicle of an office on the fourth floor of Police Headquarters.
“A ten-year-old kid writing a TV show could come up with more than that,” McVey said with an uncharacteristic edge to his voice. He’d spent a good part of midafternoon ille
gally in Paul Osborn’s hotel room going through his things and had come up with nothing but an array of dirty linen, traveler’s checks, vitamins, antihistamines, headache pills and condoms. With the exception of the condoms, he found nothing he didn’t have in his own hotel room. It wasn’t that he was against rubbers, it was just that he’d honestly had no interest in sex since his Judy had died four years earlier. All the years they were married he’d harbored sensational fantasies about making it with all kinds of women, nubile teenagers to middle-aged Avon ladies, and he’d met any number who were more than willing to lie down on the spot for a homicide detective, but he never had. Then when Judy had gone, none of it, not even the fantasies, seemed worth it. He was like a man who thought he was starving and then suddenly wasn’t hungry anymore.
Aside from the ticket stubs from the Ambassadors Theatre in London that had sent up Lebrun’s antennae in the first place, the only objects of even passing interest he’d turned up in Osborn’s belongings were-restaurant receipts, tucked in the pocket of his “daily reminder.” They were dated Friday, September 30, and Saturday, October 1. Friday was Geneva, Saturday, London. The receipts were for two. But that was all. So Osborn had taken someone to dinner in both those cities. So had a hundred thousand other people. He’d told Paris detectives he’d been alone in his hotel in London. They probably never asked him about dinner. Chiefly because they had no reason. Any more than McVey had reason now to connect him to the beheading murders.
Lebrun smiled at McVey’s painful dismay. “My friend, you forget you are in Paris.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means, mon ami, that a ten-year-old kid writing a TV show . . .,” Lebrun paused just slightly for effect— “isn’t likely to be sleeping with the prime minister.”
McVey’s jaw dropped. “You’re kidding.”
“Not kidding,” Lebrun said, lighting another cigarette.
“Does Osborn know?”
Lebrun shrugged.
McVey glowered at him. “So she’s out of bounds, right?”
“Oui.” Lebrun smiled a little. Veteran homicide detectives should know better than to be surprised at “l amour,” even if they were American. Or the ramifications of how hopelessly complicated it could get.
McVey stood up. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to my hotel and then back to London. And if you have any more bright suspects, check them out yourself first, okay?”
“I seem to remember offering to do it this time,” Lebrun said with a grin. “You may recall that the idea to come to Paris was yours.”
“Next time talk me out of it.” McVey started for the door.
“McVey.” Lebrun reached over and stamped out his, cigarette. “I couldn’t reach you this afternoon.”
McVey said nothing. His methods of investigation were his own and they were not always entirely legal, nor did they always involve fellow officers—the Paris P.D., Interpol, the London Metropolitan Police and the LAPD included.
“I wish I had been able to,” Lebrun said.
“Why?” McVey said flatly, wondering if Lebrun knew and was testing him.
Pulling open his top desk drawer, Lebrun took out another manila folder. “We were in the middle of this,” he said, handing it to McVey. “We could have used your expertise.”
McVey eyed him for a moment, then opened it. What he saw were crime scene photographs of an extremely brutal murder. A man had been killed in what looked like an apartment. Separate photographs showed close-ups of his knees. Each had been destroyed by a single, and powerful, gunshot.
“Done with a U.S.-made Colt thirty-eight automatic fitted with a silencer. We found it next to him. Taped grip. No prints. No identification numbers,” Lebrun said quietly.
McVey looked at the next two photographs. The first was of the man’s face. It was bloated three times its normal size. The eyes protruded from the skull in horror. Pulled tight around the neck was a wire garrote that looked as if it was once a clothes hanger. The second phonograph was of the groin area. The man’s genitals had been shot away.
“Jesus,” McVey mumbled under his breath.
“Done with the same weapon,” Lebrun said;
McVey looked up. “Somebody was trying to get him to talk.”
“If it were me, I would have told them whatever they wanted to know,” Lebrun said. “Just in the hopes they’d kill me.”
“Why are you showing me this?” McVey asked. The First Préfecture of Paris Police had a sparkling record as far as inner-city homicide investigations went. They certainly didn’t need McVey’s counsel.
Lebrun smiled. “Because don’t want you to go running back to London quite so soon.”
“I don’t get it.” McVey glanced at the open file once more.
“His name is Jean Packard. He was a private detective for the Paris office of Kolb International. On Tuesday, Dr. Paul Osborn hired him to locate someone.”
“Osborn?”
Lighting another cigarette, Lebrun blew out the match and nodded.
“A pro did this, not Osborn,” McVey said.
“I know. Tech found a smudged print on a piece of broken glass. It wasn’t Osborn’s and we had nothing in our computer that would match it. So we sent it to Interpol headquarters at Lyon.”
“And?”
“McVey,-we only found him this morning.”
“It still wasn’t Osborn,” McVey said with certainty.
“No, it wasn’t,” Lebrun agreed. “And it might be a complete coincidence and not have a thing to do with him.”
McVey sat back down.
Lebrun picked up the folder and put it back in his drawer. “You’re thinking things are complicated enough and this Jean Packard business has nothing to do with our headless bodies and bodyless head. But you’re, also thinking you came to Paris because of Osborn, because there was the slightest chance he might have had something to do with it. And now this happens. So you’re asking yourself if we look far enough, for long enough, maybe there is a connection after all. . . . Am I correct, McVey?”
McVey looked up. “Oui,” he said.
22
* * *
THE DARK limousine was waiting outside.
Vera had seen it pull up from her bedroom window. How many times had she stood in that window waiting for it to turn the corner? How many times had her heart jumped at the sight of it? Now she wished it had nothing to do with her, that she was watching from another apartment and that the intrigue belonged to someone else.
She wore a black dress with black stockings, pearl earrings and a simple pearl necklace. Thrown over her shoulders was a short jacket of silver mink.
The chauffeur opened the rear door and she got in. A moment later he got behind the wheel and drove off.
At 4:55, Henri Kanarack washed his hands in the employee sink at the bakery, stuck his time card into the clock on the wall and punched out for the day. Stepping into the hallway where he kept his coat, he found Agnes Demblon waiting for him.
“Do you want a lift?” she asked.
“Why? Do you ever give me a lift home? No, you don’t. You always stay until the day’s receipts are in.”
“Yes. But, tonight I . . .”
“Tonight, especially,” Kanarack said. “Today. Tonight. Nothing is different. Do you understand?”
Without looking at her he pulled on his jacket, then opened the door and stepped out into the rain. It was a short walk from the employees’ entrance down the alley to the street in front. When he turned the corner, he pulled his collar up against the rain, then walked off. It was exactly two minutes after five.
Across the street and two doors down, a rented dark blue Peugeot was parked at the curb, the rain beading up in little knots on its freshly waxed exterior. Inside, sitting in the dark behind the wheel, was Paul Osborn.
At the corner, Kanarack turned left onto boulevard de Magenta. At the same time Osborn twisted the key in the ignition, then pulled out from the curb and followed. At the corner h
e swung left in the direction Kanarack had gone. He glanced at his watch. Seven after the hour and with the rain, already dark. Looking back, all Osborn saw were strangers and for a moment he thought he’d lost him, then he caught sight of Kanarack on the far sidewalk, walking deliberately but apparently in no hurry. His easy manner made Osborn think that he’d given up on the idea he was being followed, that he had taken the other night’s attack and foot chase as an obscure incident done by a crazy man.
Ahead, Kanarack stopped for a traffic light. So did Osborn. As he did, he could feel the emotion rise up. “Why not do it now?” an inner voice was saying. Wait for him to step off the curb and into the street. Then gun the accelerator, run him down and drive away! No one will see you. And who cares if they do? If the police find you just tell them you were about to go to them. That you thought you might have run over someone in the dark and the rain. You weren’t sure. You looked but you saw no one. What can they say? How could they know it was the same man? They had no idea who it was in the first place.
No! Don’t even think it. Your emotion nearly ruined it the first time. Besides, kill him like that and you will never have the answer to your question, and having that answer is every bit as important as killing him. So calm down and stick to your plan and everything will be all right.
The first shot of succinylcholine will have its own effect, putting his lungs on fire for lack of oxygen because he doesn’t have the muscle control to breathe. He’ll be suffocating and helpless and more afraid than he’s ever been in his life. He’d tell you anything if he could, but he won’t be able to.
Then, little by little, the drug will start to wear off and he’ll begin to breathe again. Grateful, he’ll smile and think he’s beaten you. Then suddenly he’ll realize you are about to give him a second shot. Much stronger than the first, you’ll tell him. And all he’ll think about is that second shot and the horror of repeating what he’s just been through, only this time with the knowledge that it will be worse, much worse, if such a thing were possible. That’s when he’ll answer your question, Paul. That’s when he’ll tell you anything you want to know.