the seventh. In front of him a man opened a door and set out a room service tray of dirty dishes. Looking up, he saw Osborn, then closed the door again and Osborn heard the chain lock slide closed.
Now he and the man were the only ones in the hallway. A danger alarm went off. Abruptly he stopped and turned.
“What do you want?” he said.
“A few minutes of your time.” McVey’s reply was quiet and unthreatening. “My name is McVey. I’m from Los Angeles, the same as you.”
Osborn looked at him carefully. He was somewhere in his mid-sixties, about five feet ten and maybe a hundred and ninety pounds. His green eyes were surprisingly gentle and his brown hair was graying and beginning to thin on top. His suit was everyday, probably from The Broadway or Silverwoods. His pale blue shirt was a shiny polyester and the tie didn’t match any of it. He looked more like someone’s grandfather or what his own father might have looked like, had he lived. Osborn relaxed a little. “Do I know you?” he said.
“I’m a policeman,” McVey said and showed him his LAPD shield.
Osborn’s heart shot up in his throat. For the second time in a very few minutes he thought he might faint. Finally he heard himself say, “I don’t understand. Is anything wrong?”
A middle-aged couple dressed for the evening came down the hallway. McVey stepped aside. The man smiled and nodded. McVey waited until they passed, then looked back at Osborn.
“Why don’t we talk inside.” McVey nodded toward the door to Osborn’s room. “Or, if you’d rather, downstairs in the bar.” McVey kept his manner low-key and easy. The bar was as good as the room if it made Osborn more comfortable. The doctor wouldn’t bolt, not now anyway. Furthermore, McVey had already seen all there was to see in Osborn’s room.
Osborn was anxious and he had to work not to show it. After all, he’d done nothing, not yet anyway. Even using Vera to get him the succinylcholine hadn’t really been illegal. Bending the law a little, but not criminal. Besides, this McVey was from the LAPD—what jurisdiction could he have here? Just be cool, he thought. Be polite, see what he wants. Maybe it’s about nothing.
“This is fine,” Osborn said. Unlocking his door, Osborn ushered McVey in.
“Please sit down.” Osborn closed the door behind them, putting his keys and the newspaper on a side table. “If you don’t mind, I’ll wash the city off my hands.”
“I don’t mind.” McVey sat down on the edge of the bed and glanced around, while Osborn went into the bathroom. The room was the same as he’d left it earlier that afternoon when he’d shown his gold shield to a housekeeper and given her two hundred francs to let him in.
“Would you like a drink?” Osborn said, drying his hands.
“If you are.”
“All I have is scotch.”
“Fine.”
Osborn came back in with a half-empty bottle of Johnnie Walker Black. Picking up two sanitary wrapped glasses from an enameled tray on top of a replica French writing table, he pulled the plastic off and poured them each a drink.
“No ice, either, I’m afraid,” Osborn said.
“I’m not picky.” McVey’s eyes went to Osborn’s running shoes. They were caked with the dried mud.
“Been out for a jog?”
“What do you mean?” Osborn said, handing McVey a glass.
McVey nodded at his feet. “Shoes are muddy.”
“I—” Osborn hesitated, then quickly covered with a grin. “—was out for a walk. They’re replanting the gardens in front of the Eiffel Tower. With the rain, you can’t walk anywhere around there without stepping in mud.”
McVey took a pull at his drink. It gave Osborn a moment to wonder if he’d picked up on the lie. It wasn’t a lie really. The Eiffel Tower gardens were torn up, he’d remembered that from being out the day before. Best to get him off it quickly.
“So?” he said.
“So.” McVey hesitated. “I was in the lobby when you went into the gift shop. I saw your reaction to the paper.” He nodded at the newspaper Osborn had put on the side table.
Osborn took a drink of the scotch. He rarely drank. It was only after that first night when he had seen and pursued Kanarack, and then was picked up by the Paris police, that he’d called room service and ordered the scotch. Now, as he felt it go down, he was glad he had.
“That’s why you’re here . . .” Osborn locked eyes with McVey. Okay, they know. Be straight, unemotional. Find out what else they know.
“As you know, Mr. Packard worked for an international company. I was in Paris doing some unrelated work with the Paris police when this came in. Since you were one of Mr. Packard’s last clients . . .” McVey smiled and took another sip of the scotch. “Anyway the Paris police asked me to come by and talk to you about it. American to American. See if you had any idea who might have done it. You realize I have no authority here. I’m just helping out.”
“I understand that. But I don’t think I can help you.”
“Did Mr. Packard seem worried about anything?”
“If he was, he didn’t mention it.”
“Mind my asking why you hired him?”
“I didn’t hire him. I hired Kolb International. He was the one they sent.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
“If you don’t mind, it’s personal.”
“Doctor Osborn, we’re talking about a murdered man.” McVey sounded as if he were addressing a jury.
Osborn set his glass down. He’d done nothing and felt he was being accused. He didn’t like it. “Look, Detective McVey. Jean Packard was working for me. He’s dead and I’m sorry but I haven’t the slightest idea who might have done it or why. And if that’s the reason you’re here, you’ve got the wrong guy!” Angrily, Osborn jammed his hands into his jacket pockets. When he did he felt the bag containing the succinylcholine and the packet of syringes Vera had given him. He’d meant to take it out earlier when he’d come back to change to go out to the river, but he’d forgotten. With the discovery, his demeanor changed.
“Look—I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to snap like that. I guess the shock of finding out about him being killed like that . . . I’m a little on edge.”
“Let me just ask if Mister Packard finished his job for you?”
Osborn wavered. What the hell was he going for? Do they know about Kanarack or not? If you say yes, then what? If you say no, you leave it open.
“Did he, Doctor Osborn?”
“Yes,” Osborn said finally.
McVey looked at him a moment, then tilted his glass and finished the scotch. For a moment he held the empty glass in his hand as if he didn’t know quite what to do with it. Then his eyes came back to Osborn.
“Know anyone named Peter Hossbach?”
“No.”
“John Cordell?”
“No.” Osborn was completely puzzled. He had no idea what McVey was talking about.
“Friedrich Rustow?” McVey crossed his legs. White, hairless calves showed between the top of his socks and the bottom of his pants legs.
“No,” Osborn said again. “Are they suspects?”
“They’re missing persons, Doctor Osborn.”
“I never heard of any of them,” Osborn said.
“Not one?”
“No.”
Hossbach was German, Cordell, English, and Rustow, Belgian. They were three of the beheaded corpses. McVey tucked it away in his mental computer somewhere that Osborn hadn’t flinched or even paused at the mention of any of them. A recognition factor of zero. Of course he could be an accomplished actor and lying.
