The Day After Tomorrow

17

8 A.M.

TODAY WAS THURSDAY, October 6. The morning sky, as predicted, was overcast and a light, cold rain was falling. Osborn ordered a cup of coffee at the counter and took it over to a small table and sat down. The café was filled with people on their way to work stealing a few moments before getting on with the routine of the day. They sipped coffee, toyed with a croissant, smoked a cigarette, looked over the morning paper. A table away, two businesswomen jabbered in high-speed French. Next to them a man in a dark suit, with a shock of even darker hair, leaned on an elbow studying the newspaper Le Monde.

Osborn had reservations on Air France Flight 003 leaving Charles de Gaulle Airport on Saturday, October 8, at 5:00 P.M., arriving nonstop in Los Angeles at 7:30, Pacific Daylight time, the same evening. The appropriate thing, as fit into the overall scheme, would be for him to contact Detective Barras at police headquarters, inform him of his reservation and time of departure and politely ask when he could pick up his passport. Once that was done, he could get on with the rest.

It was important he kill Kanarack sometime Friday night. He needed the cover of darkness not just for the act but to prevent Kanarack’s body from being discovered too soon and too near Paris. After some simple research, the Seine, his first idea, had become his chosen waterway. It flowed through Paris and then wound northwest through the French countryside for some 120-odd miles before dumping into the Bay of the Seine and the English Channel at Le Havre. Barring some unforeseen complication, if he could get Kanarack into the river at some point west of the city after dark on Friday night, it would be daylight Saturday at the earliest before his body was discovered. By then, in a good current, it should have traveled thirty or forty miles downstream. With luck, maybe more. Bloated and with no identification, it would be days before the authorities determined who he was.

To cover himself, Osborn would need an alibi, something that would place him somewhere else at the time of the killing. A movie, he thought, would be easiest. He could buy a ticket, then make some valid disturbance with the ticket-taker going in, just enough so that later, should the question arise, that person would remember his being at; the theater. His proof would be the ticket stub with the time and date of the show. Once having taken a seat in the darkened auditorium, he would wait for the film to begin and then slip out a side exit.

The timing of everything would depend on Kanarack’s daily routine. A call to the bakery had established it was open from seven in the morning until seven in the evening and that the last freshly baked goods would be available at approximately four P.M. He’d seen Kanarack it the brasserie on rue St.-Antoine at about six. The brasserie was at least a twenty-minute walk from the bakery, and since Kanarack had left the brasserie on foot after Osborn’s attack on him it was safe to assume, as Jean Packard had earlier, that he either had no car or didn’t use one in commuting to work. If the last baked goods were available at 4:00 and Kanarack had been at the brasserie at 6:00, it was also reasonable to assume that left work sometime between 4:30 and 5:30. Though it was still early October, the days were growing short. A glance at the paper predicted that the rain falling now would continue for the next several days. That meant it would be getting dark even earlier. By 5:30, easily.

Osborn’s immediate order of business was to rent a car and look for an isolated area on the Seine, west of Paris, where he could get Kanarack into the water without being observed. Afterward he would drive to the bakery and then back again to make certain he knew the way.

Finally, he would go back to the bakery and park across the street, being certain to arrive no later than 4:30. Then he would wait for Kanarack to come out and see which way he went. Up the street or down.

The first time he’d seen him, Kanarack had been alone, so hopefully he did not make it a habit to leave work in the company of co-workers. If, for some reason, he did on Friday night, Osborn’s contingency plan would be to follow him in the car until he separated from whomever he was with, and then take him at the most convenient place thereafter. If Kanarack walked with someone all the way to the Métro, then Osborn would simply drive to his apartment building and wait for him there. That was something he did not want to do unless it was absolutely necessary, because there was too much chance Kanarack would run into people he was in the habit of greeting as he came home. Still, if that was the only option, Osborn would take it. What he wished more than anything was that had more than one night for the run-through, but he didn’t so whatever happened, he’d have to make the best of.

“Hi.”

Osborn looked up, startled. He’d been in such deep contemplation he’d not seen Vera come in. Quickly he stood and pulled out a chair for her and she sat down across from him. As he went back to his own chair he saw a clock behind the counter. It read 8:25. Looking around he realized the café had all but emptied out since he’d gotten there.

“Can I get you something?”

“Espresso, oui.” She smiled.

Getting up, he crossed to the counter, ordered an espresso and stood there while the counterman turned to make it. Glancing back at Vera, he looked past her and then away, concentrating on why he was there, why he’d asked her to meet him when she got off her shift at the hospital.

The succinylcholine.

Twice already that morning he’d tried to have his own prescription for it filled at local pharmacies, but both times he’d been told the drug was available only at hospital pharmacies, and both times he’d been warned he would need authorization from a local physician to get it. A call to the closest hospital pharmacy confirmed it. Yes, they had the succinylcholine. And yes, he would need authorization from a Parisian doctor.

Osborn’s first thought was to call the hotel doctor, but asking for succinylcholine was not like asking for an everyday prescription. Questions would be asked; it could become awkward. A nervous doctor might even call the police to report it. There might be other ways, but finding them would take time and time was now his enemy. Reluctantly, his thoughts turned to Vera.

Right away he dialed the pharmacy at the Centre Hospitalier Ste. -Anne where she was a resident. Yes, the succinylcholine was available, but again, not without local authorization. Maybe, he thought, if he played it right, Vera’s verbal okay at the pharmacy would be enough. He didn’t want to involve any doctor she knew because that person would want to know why. He had a story for Vera, but making anyone else buy it would be complicated and risky.

Hesitating, thinking it through once more, he’d called her at the hospital at 6:30 and asked if she would meet him in a café nearby for coffee when she got off work. He’d heard her pause, and for a moment he was afraid that she was going to make up an excuse and tell him she couldn’t see him, but then she’d agreed. Her shift finished at 7:00 but she had a meeting that wouldn’t be over until just after 8:00. She would meet him after that.

Osborn watched her as he carried the espresso back to the table. After a thirty-six-hour shift without sleep and an hourlong meeting following that she was still pert and radiant, even beautiful. He couldn’t help staring at her as he sat down, and when she caught him she smiled back, lovingly. There was something about her that put him some of where else, no matter what he was thinking or what else he was involved in. He wanted to be with her and consume her and have her consume him, always and forever. Nothing either one of them could ever do should be more important than that. The trouble was he first had to take care of Henri Kanarack.

Leaning forward, he reached across to take her hand. Almost immediately she pulled it away and slid it into her lap.

“Don’t,” she said, her eyes darting around the room.

“What are you afraid of? Somebody might see us?”

“Yes.”

Vera looked away, then picked up her cup and took a sip of the espresso.

“You came to me, remember? To say goodbye . . . ,” Osborn said. “Does he know about that?”

Abruptly Vera put down her cup and stood up to leave.

“Look, I’m sorry,” he said. “That wasn’t the right thing to say. Let’s get out of here and go for a walk.”

She hesitated.

“Vera, you’re talking to a friend, a doctor you met in Geneva who asked you to meet him for a cup Of coffee. Then you walked up the street together. He went back to the U.S. and that was that. Shoptalk between doctors. Good story. Good ending. Right?”

Osborn’s head was cocked to the side and the veins stood out on his neck. She’d never seen him angry before. In a way she couldn’t explain, it pleased her and she smiled. “Right,” she said, almost girlishly.

Outside, Osborn raised an umbrella against a light drizzle. Dodging around a red Peugeot, they crossed the street and walked up rue de la Santé in the direction of the hospital.

In doing so they passed a white Ford parked at the curb. Inspector Lebrun was behind the wheel; McVey sat in the passenger seat beside him.

“I don’t suppose you know the girl,” McVey said as he watched Osborn and Vera walk away from them. Lebrun turned the key in the ignition and he eased the car off in the same direction.

“You are not asking if I know her, but if I know who she is—correct? French and English expressions do not always mean the same.”

McVey was incredulous that a man could talk with a cigarette always dangling from the corner of his mouth. He’d smoked once, for the first two months after his first wife died. He had taken up smoking to keep from drinking. It didn’t do much good but it helped. When it stopped helping, he quit.

“Your English is better than my French. So yeah, I’m asking if you know who she is.”

Lebrun smiled, then reached for his radio microphone. “The answer, my friend, is—not yet.”