The Day After Tomorrow

24

MCVEY LEFT the hotel and crossed the street to his car with his gut telling him two things about Osborn: first, that he had nothing to do with the London murder, and second that he really cared about Vera Monneray, no matter whom she was sleeping with.

Closing the Opel’s door, McVey put on his seat belt and started the engine. Turning on the wipers against what seemed an incessant rain, he made a U-turn and headed back in the direction of his hotel. Osborn hadn’t reacted any differently than most people do when questioned by the police, especially when they’re innocent. The emotional arc usually went from shock, to fear, to indignation and most often ended either in anger—sometimes with threats to sue the detective, sometimes the entire police department—or in a polite exchange where the cop explains his questioning was nothing personal, that he just had a job to do, apologizes for intruding and leaves. Which is what he’d done.

Osborn wasn’t his man. Vera Monneray he might put in his book as a long shot, someone with medical training; and along with it probably some surgical experience. In that respect she fit the profile and she had been in London; when the last murder had taken place, but she and Osborn would be each other’s alibi for what they’d done there. They might have been sick, as Osborn said, or they might have spent the entire time diddling each other, and if she’d gone out for an hour or two, no one at the hotel had seen her, and Osborn, because he thought he loved her, would: cover for her even if she had. Moreover, he was sure if he: ran her she’d almost certainly come up clean with no pOlice record at all. Pushing it any further it would only serve to put Lebrun in a bad light and could end up embarrassing not only the entire department but probably the whole of France.

The rain came down harder and McVey worried that he knew no more about the headless slayings now than he did when he’d started more than three weeks ago. But unless you got a break fast, that was usually the way. It was the thing about homicide. The endless details, the hundreds of false, leads that had to be followed, gone back over, followed again. The reports, the paperwork, the countless interviews that intruded on strangers’ lives. Sometimes you got lucky; mostly you didn’t. People got angry with you and you couldn’t blame them. How many times had he been asked why he did it? Gave his life to this kind of ugly, infuriating and morbidly gruesome job? Usually he just shrugged and said that one day he woke up and realized that’s what he did for a living. But inside he knew, and that’s why he did it. He didn’t know where it came from in him or how he got it. But he knew what it was. The sense that the murdered had rights, too. And so did their friends and the families who’d loved them. Murder was a thing you couldn’t let somebody get away with. Especially if you felt that way and had the experience and the authority to do something about it.

Taking a wide lefthand turn, McVey found himself crossing a bridge over the Seine. It wasn’t what he meant to do. Now he was all turned around with no idea where he was. The next thing he knew he was in a stream of traffic going past the Eiffel Tower. That’s when one of those little things that always nagged him after an interview or interrogation started jabbing tiny pins in that certain corner of his conscience. The same kind of thing that had made him dial Vera Monneray’s apartment that afternoon just to see who answered.

Moving into the left lane, he watched for the next side street, took it and doubled back. He was moving along the far edge of a park where, between the trees, he could see the distant lighted ironwork mass that made up the base of the Eiffel Tower. Just ahead, a car pulled out from the curb and drove off. Slowly he passed the spot, then backed in and parked. Getting out, he pulled up his jacket against the rain, then rubbed his hands together to warm them. A moment later he was walking down a pathway that ran along the edge of the Pare du Champ de Mars, with the tower looming in the distance.

The park grounds were dark and it was hard to see. Overhanging trees lining the path gave some protection from the rainy weather, and he tried to stay under them as he walked. He could see his breath in the raw night air and he blew on his hands only to jam them finally into the pockets of his raincoat.

Gingerly dodging some sidewalk construction, he walked another fifty yards in the direction of the lighted area to where he could clearly see the tower reaching into the night sky. Suddenly his feet slid out from under him, and he nearly fell. Recovering, he walked on a little farther to where a street light shone on a park bench. The light from the tower spilled onto the grassy area where he’d just been. Most of it had been dug up, and was in the process of being replanted. Leaning against the bench with one hand, he lifted a foot and looked at his shoe. It was wet and covered with mud. The other was the same. Satisfied, he turned and started back for the car. It was why he had come. A simple follow-up to a simple answer to a simple question.

Osborn had told the truth about the mud.