by Allan Folsom
This was a bright, sunny Sunday after nearly a week-long rain. McVey was in a quandary. If he left to warn Lebrun about Merriman’s wife he ran the risk somebody, or a lot of people, with cabin fever would arrive at the park and inadvertently destroy evidence. Choosing, not too happily, to assume that since the French police had yet to find her, the tall man would have the same problem, McVey decided to steal the time he needed and stay where he was.
Turning back, he cautiously retraced his steps back toward the ramp, through the trees, the way he had come. The ground under the trees was a thick blanket of wet pine needles. Stepping on them, they sprang back like a carpet, which meant it would take something a great deal heavier than a man’s step to leave any kind of impression on them.
Crossing to the ramp, McVey turned back. He’d found nothing. Walking a dozen yards east of where he was standing, he made the crossing again. Still, he found nothing.
Turning west, he moved to a spot halfway between his original crossing and the one he’d just made, and started across again. He hadn’t gone a dozen paces before he saw it. A single flat toothpick, broken in half, nearly obscured by the pine needles. Taking out his handkerchief, he bent down and picked it up. Looking at it, he could see the split in it was a lighter color on the inside than on the outside, suggesting it had been broken in the recent past. Wrapping it in the handkerchief, McVey put it in his pocket and started back toward his car. This time he moved slowly, carefully studying the ground. He was almost to the edge of the trees when something caught his eye. Stopping, he squatted down.
The pine needles directly in front of him were a lighter shade than those surrounding them. In the rain they would have looked the same, but as they dried in the morning sun, they looked more as if they’d been scattered on purpose. Picking up a fallen twig, McVey brushed them lightly aside. At first he saw nothing and was disappointed. Then, continuing, he uncovered what looked like the impression of a tire track. Getting up and following it, he found a solid impression in the sandy soil just at the edge of a tree line. A car had been driven in under the trees and parked. Sometime later, the driver had backed up and seen his own tracks. Getting out, he’d gathered fresh pine needles and scattered them around, covering the tracks, but in doing so he’d neglected to note where he’d parked. Outside the tree line the tracks had washed away in the rain. But at the tree line, the overhang had protected the ground, leaving a small but distinct imprint in the soil. No more than four inches long and a half inch deep, it wasn’t much. But for a police tech crew, it would be enough.
51
* * *
“SCHOLL!”
Osborn had just finished urinating and was flushing the toilet when the name jumped out at him. Turning awkwardly, and wincing in pain as he put weight on his injured leg, he reached out and picked up the cane Vera had left from where it hung on the edge of the sink. Shifting his weight, he started back into the room. Each step was an effort and he had to move slowly, but he realized the hurt was more from stiffness and muscle trauma than from the wound itself, and that meant it was healing.
The room, as he hobbled out of the cubicle that served as a toilet and started across it, seemed smaller than it had when he was lying down. With a blackout curtain drawn across the only window, it was not only dark but felt stuffy and confining and smelled of antiseptic. Stopping at the window, he set the cane aside and pulled back the curtain. Immediately the room flooded with the bright light of an early autumn day. Straining, he gritted his teeth against the tug of his leg, pulled open the small window and looked out. All he could see was the roofline of the building as it fell steeply away and, beyond it, the top of Notre Dame’s towers glistening in the morning sun. What got him more than anything was the crispness of the morning air as it wafted across the Seine. It was sweet and refreshing and he breathed it in deeply.
Vera had come up sometime during the night and changed his bandages. She’d tried to tell him something but he’d been too groggy to understand, and had gone back to sleep. Later, when he awoke and his senses began to come back, he’d focused on the tall man and the police and what to do about them. But now it was Erwin Scholl who was in the front of his mind. The man Henri Kanarack swore, under the terror of the succinylcholine, was the person who’d hired him to murder his father. That had happened, he recalled, at almost the same moment the tall man had appeared out of the darkness and shot them both.
Erwin Scholl. From where? Kanarack had told him that, too.
Turning from the window, Osborn limped back to his bed, smoothed out the blanket a little, then turned around and eased himself down. The walk from his bed to the bathroom and back again had wearied him more than he liked. Now he sat there, on the edge of the bed, able to do little more than breathe in and out.
Who was Erwin Scholl? And why had he wanted his father dead?
Suddenly he shut his eyes. It was the same question he’d been asking for almost thirty years. The pain in his leg was nothing compared to what he felt in his soul. He remembered the feeling that had seared through his gut the moment Kanarack had told him he’d been paid to do it. In an instant the whole thing had gone from a lifetime of loneliness and pain and anger to something beyond comprehension. In stumbling upon Henri Kanarack, in finding where he lived and where he worked, he thought God had at last acknowledged him and that, at last, the suffering inside him would be ended. But it hadn’t. It had only been handed off. Cruelly. Neatly. Like a football to another player in a game of keepaway. And he was the one they were keeping if from, as they had for so many years.
The river, at least, had carried him somewhere conclusive. Had that place been death it would have been preferable to the one to which he’d been returned; the one that allowed him no rest, that kept him forever enraged, that made it impossible for him to love or be loved without the awful fear he would destroy it. The monkey had not gone away at all. Only changed form. Henri Kanarack had become Erwin Scholl. This time with no face, just a name. What would it take to find him—another thirty years? And if he did have the courage and strength to do it and finally, after everything, found him, what then?
—another door leading somewhere else?
A sound on the far side of the wall snatched Osborn from his reverie. Someone was coming. Quickly he glanced around for a place to hide. There was none. Where was Kanarack’s gun? What had Vera done with it? He looked back at the door. The knob was turning. The only weapon he had was the cane next to him. His hand closed around it and the door swung open.
Vera was dressed in white for work.
“Good morning,” she said, entering. Once again she carried the tray, this time with hot coffee and croissants, and a plastic refrigerator box with fruit, cheese and a small loaf of bread. “How are you feeling?”
Osborn let out a sigh and set the cane on the bed. “Fine,” he said. “Especially now that I know who was coming to visit.”
Vera set the tray on the small table under the window and turned to look at him. “The police came back last night. An American policeman was with them, he seemed to know you quite well.”
Osborn started. “McVey!” My God, he was still in Paris.
“You seem to know him too . . . .” Vera’s smile was thin, almost dangerous, as if in some crazy way she liked all this.
“What did they want?” he said quickly.
“They found out I picked you up at the golf course. I admitted I’d taken a bullet out of you. They wanted to know where you were. I said I left you off at the railway station, that I didn’t know where you were going and you didn’t want me to know. I’m not sure they believed me.
“McVey will have you watched like a hawk, waiting for you to get in touch with me.”
“I know. That’s why I’m going back to work. I’m on for thirty-six hours. Hopefully, by the time I’m through, they’ll be bored and assume I was telling the truth.”
“What if they don’t? What if they decided to search your apartment and then the building?” Osbor
n was suddenly frightened. He was in a corner with no way out. Never mind the condition of his leg; if he tried to get out and they were watching, they’d nab him before he’d gone a half block. If they decided to search the building, eventually they’d find their way up to where he was and he was done for anyway.
“There’s nothing else we can do.” Vera was strong, unruffled. Not only on his side and protecting him, but very much in control. “You have water in the bathroom and enough to eat until I get back. I want you to start exercising. Stretching and leg lifts if you can, otherwise make sure you walk back and forth across the room for as long as you can, every four hours. When we do leave, you’re going to have to walk.
“And make certain you keep the window curtain pulled when it gets dark. The dormer is hidden in the roofline, but if someone’s watching, the light would give you away in a moment. Here—”
Vera pressed a key into his hand.
“It’s to my apartment—in case you have to get in touch with me. The telephone number is on a pad next to the phone. The stairs open into a closet on the floor below. Take the service stairway to the second floor.” Vera hesitated and looked at him. “I don’t have to tell you to be careful.”
“And I don’t have to tell you you can still walk away from this. Go to your grandmother’s and deny you had any idea of what went on here.”
“No,” she said, and turned for the door.
“Vera.”
She stopped and looked back. “What?”
“There was a gun. Where is it?”
Vera reacted, and Osborn could see she didn’t like the sound of what he’d said.
“Vera—” He paused. “If the tall man finds me, what am I supposed to do?”
“How could he find you? He has no way to know about me. Who I am, or where I live.”
“He didn’t know about Merriman, either. But he’s dead just the same.”
She hesitated.
“Vera, please.” Osborn was looking directly at her. The gun was to defend his life, not shoot policemen.
Finally, she nodded toward the table under the window. “It’s in the drawer.”
52
* * *
Marseilles.
MARIANNE CHALFOUR BOUGET reluctantly left eight o’clock Mass only ten minutes after it had begun, and only because her sister’s weeping was causing other parishioners, most of whom she knew well, to turn and look. Michele Kanarack had been with her less than forty-eight hours and in the entire time had been unable to control her tears.
Marianne was three years older than her sister and had five children, the oldest of whom was fourteen. Her husband, Jean Luc, was a fisherman whose income varied with the season and who spent much of his time away from the family. But when he was home, as he was now, he wanted to be with his wife and children.
Especially with his wife.
Jean Luc had a voracious sexual appetite and was not ashamed of it. But it could be problematical, even embarrassing, when his urges overcame him and he suddenly swept his wife off her feet or out of her chair and carried her bodily into the bedroom of their tiny three-room apartment, where they made wild, and loud, love, for what seemed hours at a time.
Why Michele had suddenly come to live with them and for how long he couldn’t understand. All married people had problems. But usually, with the help of a priest, they worked them out. Therefore, he was certain that Henri would show up at any moment, begging Michele to forgive him and go back to Paris.
But Michele, through her tears, was just as certain he would not. She had been there two nights, trying to sleep on the couch in their minuscule living room/kitchen, trampled by the children as they crowded around the small black-and-while television, fighting over programs. While in the other room, husband and wife made uproarious love to no one’s attention but Michele’s.
By Sunday morning Jean Luc had had enough of her tears and told Marianne so, directly and to the point in front of Michele. Take her to church and, before the eyes of God, make her stop crying! Or if not God, at least the monseigneur.
But it hadn’t worked. And now as they left the church and walked out into the warm Mediterranean sunshine, turning onto the boulevard d’Athens toward Canebiere, Marianne took her sister’s hand.
“Michele, you are not the only woman in the world whose husband has suddenly walked out. Nor are you the first pregnant one. Yes, you hurt and I understand. But life goes its merry way, so that is enough! We are here for you. Find a job and have your baby. Then find someone decent.”
Michele looked at her sister, then at the ground. Marianne was right, of course. But it didn’t help the hurt or the fear of being alone or the sense of emptiness. But thinking never took away tears. Only time did.
Having said what she had, Marianne stopped at a small open-air market on the Quai des Beiges to pick up a boiling chicken and some fresh vegetables for dinner. The market and the sidewalk, even at this hour, were crowded, and the sound of people and passing traffic kept the noise level high.
Marianne heard a strange little “pop” that seemed to rise above the other sounds. When she turned to ask Michele about it, she saw her sister leaning back against a counter packed high with melons, looking as if she’d been genuinely surprised by something. Then she saw a spot of bright red appear at the base of the white collar at Michele’s throat and begin to spread. At the same time she felt a presence and looked up. A tall man stood in front of her and smiled. Then something came up in his hand and again she heard the “pop.” As quickly, the tall man vanished and suddenly, it seemed as if the day was getting dark. She looked around her and saw faces. Then, curiously, everything faded.
53
* * *
BERNHARD OVEN could have flown back to Paris the same way he’d come to Marseilles, but a round-trip ticket bracketing the hours of a multiple murder was too easily traceable by the police. The Grande Vitesse TGV bullet train from Marseilles to Paris took four and three-quarter hours. Time for Oven to sit back in the first-class compartment and assess what had happened and what would come next.
Tracing Michele Kanarack to her sister’s home in Marseilles had been a simple matter of following her to the station the morning she’d left Paris and observing what tram she’d taken. Once he had a train and a destination, the Organization had done the rest. She’d been picked up as she got off the train and followed to her sister’s home in the Le Panier neighborhood. After that, she’d been carefully watched and inventory taken of those she might confide in. That information in hand, Oven had taken an Air Inter flight from Paris to Marseilles and picked up a rental car at Provence Airport. Inside its spare tire casing was a Czechoslovakian CZ .22 automatic, supplemental ammunition and a silencer.
“Bonjour. Ah, le billet, oui.”
Giving his ticket to the ticket collector, Oven exchanged the kind of meaningless pleasantries that would take place between a ticket collector and the successful businessman he appeared to be, then, sitting back, he watched the French countryside as the train moved rapidly north through the green of the Rhone Valley. Estimating, he judged they were traveling in the neighborhood of one hundred and eighty miles per hour.
It was just as well he’d taken care of the women where he had. If somehow they’d eluded him and gotten home, well, hysterical people were always cumbersome targets. And the sight of Marianne’s husband and five children shot to death in their own apartment, no matter how neatly he’d done it, would most certainly have sent both women over the edge, bringing the neighbors and anyone else within earshot.
Of course the husband and children would be found, if they hadn’t been already, and the reverberations would bring police and politicians scrambling out of the woodwork. But Oven had had no choice. The husband had been about to leave to join his cronies at the local café and that would have meant waiting until later in the day when everyone had gathered back at home. And that would have caused a delay he could not afford because he had even more pressing business in Paris; b
usiness in which the Organization, so far, had been unable to assist.
Antenna 2, the state-owned television network, had carried an interview with the manager of a golf clubhouse on the Seine near Vernon. A California doctor the police suspected in the murder of an expatriate American named Albert Merriman had crawled out of the river early Saturday morning and spent time recuperating in the manager’s store before being picked up and driven off by a dark-haired Frenchwoman.
To date, everyone intimately involved with Albert Merriman Bernhard Oven had quickly and efficiently eliminated. But somehow, the American doctor, identified as a Paul Osborn, had survived. And now a woman was involved. Both had to be found and accounted for before the police got to them. Not so difficult, if time had not suddenly become the enemy. Today was Sunday, October 9. The agenda had to be cleared no later than Friday, October 14.
“Have you ever worked with Mr. Lybarger while he was in the nude, Ms. Marsh?”
“No, Doctor, of course not,” Joanna said, surprised at the question. “There would be no reason.”
Joanna liked Salettl no more in Zurich than she had in New Mexico. His shortness with her, his distant manner, were more than intimidating. He frightened her.
“Then you’ve never seen him undressed.”
“No, sir.”
“In his underwear, perhaps.”
“Doctor Salettl, I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying.”
At 7:00 sharp that morning, Joanna had been wakened in her room by a call from Von Holden. Instead of the warm and affectionate lover of the night before, he’d been abrupt and to the point. A car would be by to pick up her and her things for transport to Mr. Lybarger’s estate in forty-five minutes; he knew she would be ready. Puzzled by his distance, she said nothing more than yes, she would. Then, as an afterthought, had asked what she should do about her dog in the kennel in Taos.