by Allan Folsom
“It has been taken care of,” Von Holden had said, and with that hung up.
An hour later, still a little hung over from the combination of jet lag, dinner, drinks and marathon sex with Von Holden, Joanna sat in the backseat of Lybarger’s Mercedes limousine as it turned off the main highway and stopped at a security gate. The driver pressed a button and the passenger window lowered enough for a uniformed guard to look inside. Satisfied, he waved them on, and the limousine moved up a long, tree-lined drive toward what Joanna would only later describe as a castle.
A middle-aged housekeeper with a pleasant smile had shown her to her quarters: a large bedroom with its own bath on the ground floor that looked out onto a sprawling lawn that ended at the edge of a thick forest.
Ten minutes later, she answered a knock at the door and was escorted by the same woman to Dr. Salettl’s second-floor office in a separate building, where she was now.
“Judging by your ongoing reports, I see you have been as impressed as the rest of us with Mr. Lybarger’s progress.”
“Yes, sir.” Joanna was determined not to be intimidated by Salettl’s manner. “At the beginning, when I first started working with him, he hardly had any control over his voluntary motor functions. It was even hard for him to follow a clear train of thought. But each step of the way, he continually amazed me. He has an incredibly strong inner will.”
“He is also physically robust.”
“Yes, that too.”
“Comfortable in a social atmosphere. Able to relax with people and converse intelligently with them.”
“I—” Joanna wanted to say something about Lybarger’s continual references to his family.
“You have reservations?”
Joanna hesitated. There was no point in bringing up something that had been wholly between Lybarger and her. Besides, each time he had made those references, he had either been tired or in the course of travel where his daily routine had been interrupted. “It’s just that he tires easily. That’s why I wanted the wheelchair for him last night on the boa—”
“The cane he uses.” Salettl cut her off, made a note, then looked back at her. “Is it possible for him to stand and walk without it?”
“He’s used to having it.”
“Please answer the question. Can he walk without it?”
“Yes, but—”
“But, what?”
“Not very far and not very confidently.”
“He dresses himself. Shaves himself. Uses the toilet without aid, does he not?”
“Yes.” Joanna was beginning to wish she had declined Von Holden’s offer and gone home today as planned.
“Can he pick up a pen, write his name clearly?”
“Pretty clearly.” She forced a smile.
“What about his other functions?”
Joanna knotted her brow. “I don’t know what you mean by other functions.”
“Is he able to have an erection? Partake in sexual intercourse?”
“I—I—don’t know,” she stammered. She was embarrassed. She’d never been asked that kind of a question about one of her patients before. “I should think that’s more of a medical question.”
Salettl stared at her for a moment, then continued. “From your point of view, when would you say he will regain all of his physical abilities and be wholly functional, as if the Stroke never occurred?”
“If—If we are talking about his basic motor functions. Standing, walking, talking, without tiring and that’s all— the other things, as I said, are not my department—”
“Just motor functions. How much longer do you think it will take?”
“I—I’m not sure exactly.”
“Estimate it, please.”
“—I—really can’t.”
“That’s not an answer.” Salettl was glaring at her as if she were a misbehaved child instead of his patient’s professional therapist.
“If—I work with him a lot and he responds like he has. I’d like to guess, maybe another month. . . . But you have to understand it’s only a guess. It all depends on how he—”
“I’m going to give you a goal. By the end of the week, I want to see him walking without a cane.”
“I don’t know if that’s possible.”
Salettl touched a button at his sleeve and spoke into an intercom. “Miss Marsh is ready to work with Mr. Lybarger.”
54
* * *
MCVEY STARED out Lebrun’s office window. Five floors below he could see the Place du Parvis, the open plaza across from Notre Dame, crowded with tourists. At eleven thirty it was beginning to warm into an Indian summer day.
“Eight dead. Five of them children. Each shot once in the head with a .22. Nobody sees or hears a thing. Not the next-door neighbors, not the people in the market.” Lebrun dropped the faxed report from the Marseilles police on his desk and reached for a chrome thermos on a table behind him.
“Professional with a silencer,” McVey said, with no attempt to hide his anger. “Eight more on the tall man’s list.”
“If it was the tall man.”
McVey looked up hard. “Merriman’s widow? What do you think?”
“I think you are probably right, mon ami,” Lebrun said quietly.
McVey had returned to his hotel from the park by the river a little before eight and immediately called Lebrun at home. In response, Lebrun had put out a countrywide alert to local police agencies warning of the life threat to Michele Kanarack. The obvious problem, of course, was that she had yet to be found. And with little more than a description of her—given, finally, to Inspectors Maitrot and Barras by residents in her apartment building—Lebrun’s alarm was a warning in the wind. Ghosts were very difficult to protect.
“My friend, how could we know? My men were out there by the river a full day before you and found nothing to indicate a third man.”
Lebrun was trying to help, but it didn’t lift the bitterness or the feelings of guilt and helplessness that were churning McVey’s stomach. Eight people were dead who might still be alive if somehow he and the French police had been just a little bit better at what they did. Michele Kanarack had been shot only a few moments after McVey had called Lebrun to alert him she was in danger. If he’d discovered the situation and made the call three hours earlier, or four, or five, would it have made any difference? Maybe yes, probably no. She was a needle who still would have been lost in the haystack.
“To protect and to serve” was the slogan lettered on the LAPD black-and-whites. Every day people laughed at it or scorned it or ignored it. “Serve?” Who knew what that meant. But protecting people was something else. If you cared, like McVey did. If they got hurt because you or your partner, or the department, wasn’t up to the demands put on it, you hurt too. Real bad. Nobody knew it and you didn’t talk about it. Except to yourself or maybe to the face in the bottom of a bottle when you tried to forget about it. It wasn’t idealism— that went out the first time you saw somebody shot in the face. It was something else. Why you ended up, after how many years, doing what you did, and were still there. Michele Kanarack and her sister’s family weren’t a broken VCR that could be fixed. The people in Agnes Demblon’s apartment building hadn’t been a car that was a lemon and could be fought over at an auto dealership. They were people, the commodity policemen dealt in, for better or worse, every working day of their lives.
“That coffee?” McVey nodded toward the thermos in Lebrun’s hand.
“Oui.”
“I’ll take it black,” McVey said. “Just like the day.”
By 9:30, Lebrun had had a tech crew at the park making a plaster cast of the tire track and sifting through the pine forest for anything McVey had missed.
At 10:45, McVey met Lebrun in his office and together they went to the lab to check on the tire imprint. They’d come in to find a technician working the hardening plaster with a portable hair dryer. Five minutes later,” the cast was dry enough for an ink impression on paper.
&nb
sp; Next came the collection of tire tread patterns provided the Paris police by tire manufacturers. Fifteen minutes later, they had it. The ink impression taken from the plaster cast made at the park clearly matched an Italian-manufactured Pirelli tire, size P205/70R14, and made to fit a wheel rim fourteen by five and a half inches. The following morning, Monday, a Pirelli factory expert would be called to examine the cast to see if further specifics could be determined.
On the way back to Lebrun’s office, McVey asked about the toothpick.
“That will take longer,” Lebrun said. “Maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day. Frankly, I doubt it will reveal much.”
“Maybe we’ll get lucky. Maybe when he was picking his teeth he nicked a gum and bled on it. Or maybe he has some kind of infection or other disease that would be carried in the salivary tract. Anything will be more than we have, Inspector.”
“We have no way of knowing it was the tall man who used the toothpick. It could have been Merriman or Osborn or someone wholly anonymous.” Lebrun opened the door to his office.
“You mean a possible witness,” McVey said as they entered.
“No, I hadn’t meant that at all. But it is a thought, McVey. A good one. Touché.”
It was then the knock had come at the door and the uniformed officer had entered with the fax from the Marseilles Police.
McVey swallowed his coffee and walked across the room. On a bulletin board was posted a copy of Le Figaro, on it was a quarter-page picture of Levigne as he gave his story to the media. Clearly frustrated, McVey jabbed his finger at it.
“What gets me is this guy from the golf club is afraid we’d release his name to the media, then he goes ahead and does it himself. And what’s that do but tell our friend that he’s got an eyewitness out there who’s still alive.”
McVey turned away from the clipping, tugging at an ear. “All the king’s horses, Lebrun. We don’t find her, but he does.” Turning back, he looked at the French detective directly.
“How did he know to go to Marseilles when nobody else did? And when he got there, how did he know where to find her?”
Lebrun pressed his fingertips together. “You’re thinking, the Interpol connection. Whoever it was in Lyon who requested the Merriman file from the New York police may have had similar means of tracking her down.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking.”
Lebrun set his cup down, lit a cigarette and looked at his watch. “For your information, I’m taking the rest of the day off,” he said quietly. “A short, one-man holiday. A trip by train to Lyon. Nobody knows where I’m going, not even my wife.”
McVey frowned. “Pardon me if I don’t understand. But you show up in Lyon and start asking questions, you think whoever did it is just going to raise his or her hand and say,. ‘It’s me’? You might as well call a press conference first.”
“Mon ami.” Lebrun smiled. “I said I was going to Lyon. I didn’t say it was to Interpol headquarters. Actually, I’ve asked a very old friend to a very quiet supper.”
“Go on,” McVey said.
“As you know, Group D, to which your investigation of the headless bodies was assigned, is a subgroup under Interpol Division Two. Division Two is the police division revolving entirely around case tracking and analysis. Whoever made the request for the Merriman file will be a member of Division Two, quite possibly a high-ranking member.
“Division One, on the other hand, is general administration, which manages finances, staff, equipment procurement, custodial services and things like personnel, accounting, building maintenance and other everyday activities. One of those everyday activities is subgroup Security and is responsible for headquarters security. The individual in charge of this subgroup will have access to data records identifying the employee who requested the Merriman file.”
Lebrun smiled, pleased with his plan. McVey stared at him.
“Mon ami, I don’t mean to sound like a cynic, but what if that individual you’re so nicely taking to supper turns out to be the one who made the request? Don’t you realize you’re the guy they were keeping the information from in the first place? So they’d have time to locate Merriman. You asked me before if I thought these guys would kill a cop. If you were uncertain before, look at the Marseilles report again.”
“Ah, the man loves to warn via the bloody metaphor.” Lebrun smiled and squashed out his cigarette- “My friend, I appreciate your concern. And were circumstances different, I would wholeheartedly agree with you that my approach was careless. However, I rather doubt the supervisor of interior security would harm his eldest brother.”
55
* * *
A NEW, dark green Ford Sierra with Pirelli P205/70R14 tires and fourteen- by five-and-a-half inch wheels, drove slowly past the apartment building at 18 Quai de Bethune, turned the corner at the Pont de Sully and pulled in behind a white Jaguar convertible parked on the rue St.-Louis enl’Île. A moment later, the door opened and the tall man got out. It was a warm afternoon but he wore gloves just the same. Flesh-colored surgical gloves.
Bernhard Oven’s train arrived at Gare de Lyon at twelve fifteen. From the station he’d taken a cab to Orly Airport, where he retrieved the green Ford. By 2:50 he was back in Paris and parked outside Vera Monneray’s building.
At 3:07, he slipped the lock and stepped into her apartment, closing the door behind him. No one had seen him cross the street, or use the newly minted key that fit the security door to the service entrance. Once inside, he’d climbed the service stairs and entered the apartment through the rear hallway.
To most of France, the story first broadcast on Antenna 2 television and, soon after, repeated by every other media, about the mysterious, dark-haired woman who’d driven away the American murder suspect from the golf club after he had climbed out of the Seine, was a juicy, romantic intrigue. Just who she was and who the American might be were the subjects of reckless speculation—from a major French actress, film director and author, to an international tennis star, to an American rock singer, dressed in a black wig and speaking French; the doctor was whispered to be no doctor at all, the picture given the press a fake, but a famous Hollywood actor, currently in Paris promoting a film; darker stories vouched it was a veteran United States senator, his star diminished by still another tragedy.
Vera Monneray’s identity and address, handprinted on a card, as well as the keys to the service door and her apartment, were in the glove box of Bernhard Oven’s car when he’d picked it up at Orly. In the five plus hours since he’d left Marseilles, the Organization had proven itself meticulously efficient. As it had with Albert Merriman.
The ornamental clock on the table beside Vera Monneray’s bed read eleven minutes past three in the afternoon.
Ms. Monneray, Oven knew, had gone to work that morning at seven o’clock and would not be through with her shift until seven the following night. That meant, factoring the possible unknown intrusion of a maid or handyman, he would not be disturbed as he searched her apartment. It also meant that if, by chance, the American was there, he would have him alone.
Five minutes later Oven knew the American was not there. The apartment was as empty as it was spotless. Letting himself out, carefully relocking the door, he retraced his steps down the service stairs, stopping at the landing where the service door opened onto the street. But instead of going out, he continued on down the stairs, descending into the basement.
Finding a light switch, he turned it on and looked around. What he saw was a long narrow hallway leading back under the building, with numerous doors and darkened storage areas off it. To his right, tucked back under a low ceiling of heavy timbers, were the trash receptacles for the building’s tenants.
How innocently accommodating the upper-class Parisians, each apartment having its own refuse containers, and each painted with the apartment’s number. A closer scan of the area quickly turned up the four trash bins allocated to Vera’s apartment, only one of which was filled.
Removing
the cover, Oven spread open a day-old newspaper and went through it piece by piece. Finding, in turn, four empty cans of Diet Coke, an empty plastic bottle of Gelave, hair conditioner, an empty container of Tic Tac mints, an empty box of Today contraceptive sponges, four empty bottles of Amstel light beer, a copy of People magazine, an empty and partially bent can of beef bouillon soup, a yellow plastic squeeze bottle of “Joy dish soap and—Oven stopped, something rattled inside the bottle of Joy.
He was about to unscrew the cap when he heard a door above and someone start down the stairs. The footsteps stopped briefly at the landing where the service door opened to the street, then continued down. Turning out the light, Oven stepped into the shadows behind the low overhang of the stairs, at the same time lifting a .25-caliber Walther automatic from his waistband.
A moment later, a plump maid in a starched black-and-white uniform clumped down the steps carrying a bulging plastic trash bag. Snapping on the light, she lifted the lid to one of the rubbish cans, dropped the bag inside, then closed the lid and turned back for the stairs. It was then she saw the mess Oven had spread out on the newspaper. Muttering something in French, she walked over, scooped it up and plunked it into Vera’s trash bin. Replacing the cover, she abruptly shut off the light and tromped back up the stairs.
Oven listened as her footsteps retreated. Satisfied she was gone, he slipped the Walther back into his waistband, then clicked on the light. Lifting the lid from the trash barrel, he took out the plastic soap bottle and unscrewed its cap, then turned it upside down and shook it. Whatever . was inside rattled, but didn’t fall out. Pulling a long, thin knife from his sleeve, he opened the blade and coaxed out a small bottle covered with soapy slime. Wiping it off, he held it up to the light. It was a medical vial from Wyeth Pharmaceutical Products; the label read, 5ML TETANUS TOXOID.