The Day After Tomorrow

she was staying on a little while longer to help him adjust to his new surroundings. It was then that he had drawn her close and asked her what he had asked before.

“Where is my family?” he said. “Where is my family?”

“They’re here, Mr. Lybarger. They met you at the plane. They’re here tonight, Mr. Lybarger, all around you. You’re home, in Switzerland.”

“No!” he said, emphatically, staring at her with angry eyes. “No! My family. Where are they?”

It was then the men in tuxedos had come back. It was time for Mr. Lybarger to be taken to his car. She’d told him to go with them and not to worry, that they would talk about it tomorrow.

Von Holden had put his arm around her and smiled reassuringly as they’d watched Lybarger being wheeled down the gangplank and gently-helped into the limousine. She must be very tired, he said. Still on New Mexico time. “Yes, I am,” she’d smiled, grateful for his caring.

“May I see you back to your hotel?”

“Yes. That would be nice. Thank you.” She’d never met anyone as genuinely sincere or warm or kind.

After that she vaguely remembered the ride up from the lake and back through Zurich. Colored lights came to mind, and she remembered hearing Von Holden say something about sending a car for her in the morning to take her and her luggage to Lybarger’s estate.

For some reason she recalled opening the door to her hotel room and Von Holden taking the key from her and closing the door behind them. He’d helped her off with her coat and hung it neatly in the closet. Then he’d turned and they’d come together in the darkness. His lips on hers. Gentle, and at the same time, forceful.

She remembered him undressing her and taking her breasts one after the other into his mouth, his lips encircling her nipples, making them grow harder than they ever had. Then, he’d lifted her up bodily and put her on the bed. Never taking his eyes from her, he’d undressed. Slowly, sensuously. His tie, then his jacket, his shoes, socks, then his shirt The hair on his muscular chest was as light colored as that on his head. Her breasts ached and she could feel her own wetness as she watched him. She hadn’t meant to, as if it were rude or something, but her eyes locked on his hands as they opened his belt and deliberately lowered the zipper on his fly.

Suddenly Joanna threw her head back in the dark and laughed. She was alone but she laughed loudly, raucously. If anyone in the room next to hers could hear, she didn’t care. It was the old dirty joke the girls had told since junior high school, come true.

“Men come in three sizes,” it went. “Small, medium and OH MY GOD!”

50

Paris, 3:30 A.M.

Same hotel, same room, same clock as the last time.

Click.

3:31.

* * *

IT WAS always three-thirty, give or take twenty minutes. McVey was exhausted but he couldn’t sleep. Just to think hurt, but his mind had no “off’ switch. It never had, not from the day he’d seen his first corpse lying in an alley with half its head shot away. The million details that could lead from victim to killer were what kept you wired and awake.

Lebrun had sent inspectors to the Gare Montparnasse to try to pick up Osborn’s trail. But it was a wasted operation and he’d told that to Lebrun. Vera Monneray had lied about dropping him off at the train station. She’d taken him somewhere else and knew where he was.

He’d argued they should go back later that morning and tell her they’d like to continue the discussion at headquarters. A formal interrogation room worked wonders in getting people to tell the truth, whether they wanted to or not.

Lebrun said an emphatic “no!” Osborn might be a murder suspect, but the girlfriend of the prime minister of the Republique Francaise most certainly was not!

His sensibility factor strained to overload, McVey had slowly counted to ten and countered with another solution: a polygraph test. It might not make an untruthful suspect reveal all, but it was a good emotional setup for a second interview immediately following it. Especially if the polygraph examiner was exceptionally thorough and the suspect had been the slightest bit nervous, as most were.

But again Lebrun said no, and the best McVey had been able finally to waggle out of him was a thirty-six-hour surveillance. And even that had been a tooth pull because it was expensive and Lebrun had to go on the hook for three, two-man detective teams watching her movements around the clock for a day and a half.

Click.

This time McVey didn’t bother with the clock. Shutting off the light, he lay back in the dark and stared at the vague shadows on the ceiling wondering if he really cared about any of it: Vera Monneray, Osborn, this “tall man,” if he existed, who had supposedly killed Albert Merriman and wounded Osborn, or even the deep-frozen, headless bodies and the deep-frozen head some invisible, high-tech Dr. Frankenstein was trying to join. That that physician could possibly be Osborn was also incidental because, at this point, there was only one thing McVey knew for certain he did care about—sleep—and he wondered if he was ever going to get it.

Click.

Four hours later, McVey was behind the wheel of the beige Opel heading for the park by the river. Dawn had broken clear and he had to flip down the visor to keep the sun out of his eyes as he drove along the Seine looking for the park turnoff. If he’d slept at all, he didn’t remember.

Five minutes later, he recognized the stand of trees that marked the entryway to the park. Pulling into it, he stopped. A grassy field was circumvented by a muddy road that ran around its periphery and was lined with trees, some of which were just beginning to turn color. Looking down, he saw the tire prints of a single vehicle that had entered the park and then left the same way.

He had to assume they belonged to Lebrun’s Ford, because he and the French inspector had arrived after the rain had stopped; any new vehicle entering the park would have left a second set of tracks.

Accelerating slowly, McVey drove around the park to where the trees met the top of the ramp leading down to the water. Stopping, he got out. Directly in front of him two sets of washed-over footprints led down the ramp to the river. His and Lebrun’s. Studying the ramp and the landing at the bottom, he imagined where Agnes Demblon’s white Citroen would have been parked near the water’s edge and tried to think why Osborn and Albert Merriman would have been there. Were they working together? Why drive the car to the landing? Was there something in it they were going to unload into the water? Drugs maybe? Or was it the car itself they had designs on? Trash it? Strip it for parts? But why? Osborn was a reasonably well-off doctor. None of it made sense.

Theorizing the red mud here was the same red mud he’d seen on Osborn’s running shoes the night before the murder, McVey had to assume Osborn had been here the day before. Add to that the fact that three sets of fingerprints had been found in the car, Osborn’s, Merriman’s, and Agnes Demblon’s, and McVey felt reasonably certain it was Osborn who had picked the river location and brought Merriman to it.

Lebrun had established that Agnes Demblon had worked at her job in the bakery the entire day on Friday and had still been there late in the afternoon, the time Merriman had been killed.

For the moment, and even before ballistics gave Lebrun a report on the bullet Vera Monneray said she had taken out of Osborn, McVey was willing to believe her story that a tall man had done the shooting. And unless he had worn gloves and had both Osborn and Merriman under his control, friendly or unfriendly, it was safe to assume he had not come to the park in the same car with them. And since the Citroen had been left at the scene, he would either have had to come in a separate car—or, if by the off chance he had ridden out with Osborn and Merriman, have had another car pick him up afterward. There was no public transportation this far out, nor would he have been likely to walk back to the city. It was possible, but very unlikely, that he’d hitched a ride. A man who used a