The Day After Tomorrow

27

OSBORN SAT on the edge of the bed and listened to Jake Berger complain about his watery eyes and runny nose and the ninety-degree heat, that was pressure cooking Los Angeles into a first-degree smog alert. Berger was rattling on from his car phone somewhere between Beverly Hills and his opulent Century City offices; it didn’t seem to matter that Osborn was six thousand miles away in Paris and might have problems of his own. He sounded more like a spoiled child than one of Los Angeles’s top trial lawyers, the one who had turned Osborn onto Kolb International and Jean Packard in the first place.

“Jake, listen to me, please—” Osborn finally interrupted, then told him what had just taken place: the murder of Jean Packard, McVey’s sudden visit, the personal questions. He left out the lie, the hiring of Jean Packard to uncover Vera’s boyfriend, just as he’d dodged around the reason he needed a private investigator the first time he’d called Berger.

“You’re sure it was McVey?” Berger asked.

“You know him?”

“Do I know McVey? What lawyer who ever defended a murder suspect in the city of Los Angeles doesn’t know him? He’s tough and thorough, with the tenacity of a pit bull. Once he gets into something, he doesn’t let go until it’s finished. That he’s in Paris is no surprise—McVey’s expertise has been sought by baffled homicide departments all over the globe for years. The question is: Why is he interested in Paul Osborn?”

“I don’t know. He just showed up and started asking questions.”

“Paul,” Berger said directly. “McVey. He’s not questioning you for the hell of it. I need a straight answer. What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” Osborn said. There was no hesitation in his voice. For a moment Berger was silent, then he warned Osborn not to talk to anyone else, and if McVey came back to have him call Berger in Los Angeles. In the meantime he’d try to get someone in Paris to find a way to get his passport back so that he could get the hell out of there.

“No,” Osborn said abruptly. “Don’t do anything. I just wanted to know about McVey, that’s all. Thanks for your time.”

Succinylcholine—Osborn studied the bottle under the bathroom light, then, abruptly putting it into his shaving kit alongside the sealed packet of syringes, closed the kit and tucked it away under several dress shirts in the suitcase he’d never unpacked.

Brushing his teeth, he swallowed two sleeping pills, doublelocked the door, then went to the bed and pulled back the covers. Sitting down, he realized how weary he was. Every muscle in his body ached from the tension.

There was no doubt McVey had unnerved him, and his call to Berger had been a cry for help. But then, as he spilled everything out in a rush, he’d suddenly realized his call had been made to the wrong person, the wrong professional, to someone eminently qualified to counsel law but not the soul. The truth of it was he’d been pleading for Berger to get him out of Paris and off the hook, just as earlier he’d tried to solicit Jean Packard to kill Kanarack. Instead of Berger, he should have called his psychologist in Santa Monica and asked for guidance in handling his own emotional crisis. But he couldn’t do that without confessing homicidal intent, and if he did that, by law, the psychologist would have to inform the police. After that, the only person left he could talk to was Vera, but he couldn’t without incriminating her.

In reality it made no difference whom he confided in because the ultimate decision was and only would be his. Either walk away from Kanarack or kill him.

McVey’s showing up had tightened the screw. Crafty and experienced, he’d never once mentioned Kanarack, but how could Osborn be certain he didn’t know? How could he be sure that if he followed his plan, the police wouldn’t be watching?

Reaching over, Osborn clicked off the bedside lamp and lay back in the darkness. Outside, the rain drummed lightly on his window. The lights from avenue Kléber below illuminated the droplets running down the glass and magnified them on the ceiling overhead. Closing his eyes, he let his thoughts drift to Vera and their lovemaking that afternoon. He could see her naked above him, her head thrown back and her back arched so that her long hair touched his ankles. The only movement at all was the slow, sensuous, back-and-forth thrust of her pelvis as she rode the length of him. She seemed like a sculpture. The marrow of everything female. Girl, woman, mother. At once solid and liquid, infinitely strong, and yet fragile to the point of vanishing.

The truth was he loved her and cared for her in a way he’d never experienced. It made sense only if you came at it from far inside, filled with the want and hunger and sense of wonder that the ultimate love between two people can really be. And he knew beyond doubt that were they both to die that moment, that in the same instant they would be reunited in the vastness of space, and taking on whatever form or shape required, they would continue on intertwined, forever.

If that vision was romantic or childlike or even spiritual, it made no difference, because it was what Paul Osborn believed was true. And he knew that in her own way Vera felt the same. She had proved it earlier that day when she had taken him to her apartment. And that in itself had clarified the next. And that was that if he and Vera were to go on, he could not allow the demon inside him to do what it had done to every other caring relationship he’d had since he was a boy. Destroy it. This time it i was the demon that must be destroyed. Inexorably and forever. No matter how difficult, how dangerous or at what risk.

Finally, as the pills at last played their game and sleep began to overtake him, Paul Osborn’s demon materialized before him. It was hunched over and menacing and wore a dusty coat. Though it was dark, he saw it raise its head. Its eyes were deep-set and staring, and its ears stuck out at sharp angles. The head was turned and he could not see the face clearly, yet he knew instinctively that the jaw was square and that a scar ran across the cheekbone and down toward the upper lip.

And there was no doubt. None at all.

The thing he saw was Henri Kanarack.