The Day After Tomorrow

38

VERA HAD tried unsuccessfully to reach Paul Osborn since nearly three o’clock in the afternoon. She’d called four times without response. The fifth time, she called the hotel desk and asked if by some chance Mr. Osborn had checked out. He had not. Did anyone remember seeing him that day? The clerk put her through to the concierge desk, where she asked the same question. An assistant to the concierge volunteered that he’d last seen Mr. Osborn earlier that afternoon when he passed through the lobby to the elevators, presumably on his way to his room.

It was then a concern that Vera had been consciously. keeping in the back of her mind became a distinct fear. “I’ve rung his room several times since midafternoon with no response. Would you please send someone up to make certain he’s all right?” she asked deliberately. She’d tried not to think about the succinylcholine, or Osborn’s intended experiments with it, because she knew he was a very competent physician who understood precisely what he was doing and why. But anyone could make a mistake, and a drug like succinylcholine was nothing to fool with. An accidental overdose and a person would suffocate very quickly.

Hanging up, Vera looked at the clock. It was 6:45 in the evening.

Ten minutes later her phone rang. It was the hotel concierge calling back to report that Mr. Osborn was not in his room. There was a hesitancy in his voice and then he asked if she were a relative. Vera felt her pulse quicken.

“I’m a close friend. What’s wrong?” she asked.

“There seems to . . .,” the concierge said haltingly. He was looking for the right word. “. . . have been some—‘difficulty’—in Monsieur Osborn’s room. Some of the furniture and furnishings have been abused.”

“Abused? Difficulty? What are you talking about?”

“Mademoiselle, if I could please have your full name. The police have been called; they may want to question you.”

Inspectors Barras and Maitrot of the First Paris Préfecture of Police had taken the call when hotel management reported that evidence of a physical disturbance had been discovered in the room of a hotel guest, an American doctor by the name of Paul Osborn. Neither knew what to make of it. The inside doorjamb to Osborn’s room had been torn from the wall, apparently by someone breaking in from the hallway outside. The room itself was in wild disarray. The big double bed was shoved hard to one side, a table had been knocked over. A nearly empty bottle of Johnnie Walker Black was on the floor beside it, amazingly still intact. A bedside lamp hung precariously Inches above the floor, having been knocked off the bed table but stopped short by its cord just before it hit the floor.

Osborn’s clothes were still in the room, as were his toiletries and his briefcase containing his professional papers, traveler’s checks, plane ticket and a hotel notepad with several telephone numbers written on it. On the floor under the television was a copy of today’s newspaper open to the entertainment page with the name of a movie theater on the boulevard des Italiens circled in ink.

Barras sat down with the notepad and looked at the phone numbers. One he recognized immediately. It was his own at headquarters. Another was for Air France. Another for a car rental agency. There were four other numbers that had to be traced. The first was to Kolb International, the private investigation firm. The second was for an English-language movie theater on boulevard des Italiens, the same one that was circled in the newspaper. The third was for a private apartment on Île St.-Louis and listed as belonging to a V. Monneray, the same name and number provided by the hotel concierge. The last number was that of a small bakery in the section of Paris near the Gare du Nord.

“Know what this is?” Barras looked up. Maitrot had just come in from the bathroom and was holding a small prescription bottle between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. Even though there was no evidence a felony had taken place in the room, the room belonged to Paul Osborn and there was enough disarray to evoke suspicion on the part of investigating officers. As a result, both men were wearing disposable surgical rubber gloves to avoid disturbing fingerprints or adding their own physical body presence to whatever was already there.

Taking the bottle from Maitrot, Barras looked at it carefully. “Succinylcholine chloride,” he said, reading the label. Handing it back, he shook his head. “No idea. Local prescription, though. Check it out.”

Just then a uniformed patrolman showed the hotel concierge into the room. Vera was with him.

“Messieurs. This is the young lady who placed the call.”

Darkness and wet was all Paul Osborn knew. He was lying somewhere facedown in a spongy sand. Where he was or even what time it was, he had no idea. Somewhere nearby he heard the rush of water and was thankful he was no longer in it. Exhausted, he felt sleep begin to descend and with it came a darkness blacker than that around him and it came to him that it was death and if he didn’t do something quickly he would die.

Picking his head up, he cried out for help. But there was only silence and the rushing water. Who would have heard him anyway in the pitch-black and in the middle of God knew where? But the fear of death and the effort of calling out had picked up his heart rate and sharpened his senses. For the first time he felt pain, a deep throbbing toward the back of his left thigh. Reaching down, he touched it lightly and felt the warm stick of blood.

“Damn,” he cursed hoarsely.

Pulling himself up on his elbows, he tried to ascertain where he was. The ground beneath him was soft, moss on top of mushy sand. Putting out his left hand, he touched water. Shifting to his right, he was surprised to find something that felt like a fallen tree only inches from his face. Somehow he’d come ashore, either under his own power or pushed there by the current. His mind flashed to the horrid sight of Kanarack’s mutilated body clinging to him in midriver, then being rushed off by the force of the water. As quickly he thought of the man on the embankment. The tall man in the hat who had obviously shot them both.

Suddenly it occurred to him that he might have somehow followed him and be waiting close by for daylight to finish what he had started. Osborn had no way of knowing how badly wounded he was, how much blood he’d lost or if he could even stand. But he had to try. He couldn’t stay where he was even if the tall man was near, because if he did there was every chance he would bleed to death.

Inching forward, he reached for the fallen tree. Grasping it with one hand, he pulled himself toward it. As he did, searing pain stabbed through him and he cried out without thinking. Recovering, he lay still, his senses alert. If the tall man were near, Osborn’s cry would bring him straight toward him. Holding his breath, he listened but heard only the moving river.

Unbuckling his belt, he pulled it from his waist, looped it around his left thigh above the wound, and buckled it. Then, finding a stick, he put it through the belt and twisted it several times until the strap tightened around his leg in a tourniquet. Nearly a minute passed before he could begin to feel the numbness. As it did, the pain eased a little. Holding the tourniquet tight with his left hand, Osborn pulled against the tree with his right. Struggling, he got his good leg under him and in a minute he was standing. Again, he listened. Again, he heard nothing but the rushing water.

Reaching out in the darkness, he found a dead branch the width of his wrist and broke it off. As he did, he felt a weight in his jacket pocket. Balancing himself against the tree, he reached in and felt his fingers close around the hard steel of the automatic he’d taken from Henri Kanarack. He’d forgotten about it and was amazed it hadn’t come loose on his journey downriver. He had no idea if it would work or not. Still, just pointing it would give him advantage over most men. It might even give him a moment against the tall man. Picking up the tree branch, he used it as half crutch, half cane, and started off in the darkness, away from the sound of the river.