The Day After Tomorrow

haunting him had only become more complex and elusive. As if, after all his years of horror, such a thing were possible.

His insides screamed NO! in a hundred languages. Do not begin the pursuit again. Because this next door emblazoned with the name Erwin Scholl can only lead to what? Another door still! And by then, if you live that long, it can only open onto madness. Recognize instead, Paul Osborn, there will never be an answer. That this is your karma, to learn in this life that what you seek answers to, there may not be answers that are acceptable to you. It is only by understanding this that you will have peace and tranquility in the next life. Accept this truth and change.

But he knew that argument was nothing but avoidance and therefore not true. He could not change today any more than he had been able to change since he was ten. Kanarack/Merriman’s death had been a terrible, emotional, blow. But what it had done was clarify and simplify the future. Before, he’d had only a face. Now he had a name. If this Erwin Scholl, if he found him, led to someone else, so be it. No matter the cost, he would go on and on until he knew the truth behind his father’s death. Because if he did not, there would be no Vera, no life worth living. As there had been none since he was a boy. Peace and tranquility would come in this lifetime or not at all. That was his karma and his truth.

Outside, he could see the Notre Dame towers in full shadow. Soon the city lights would come on. It was time to pull the blackout curtain over his window and turn on his lamp. Having done that, he hobbled to his bed, and lay back. As he did, his resolve of the moment before faded and the pain flooded back, as raw as it had ever been.

“Why did this happen to my family—and to me?” he said out loud. He’d said it as a boy, as an adolescent, as a grown man and a successful surgeon. He’d said it a thousand times. Sometimes it came as a quiet thought, or part of a lucid conversation during a therapy session; other times, as emotion suddenly overwhelmed him, it had been thundered out loud wherever he stood, embarrassing ex-wives, friends and strangers.

Lifting the pillow, he brought out Kanarack’s gun and hefted it in his hand. Tipping it toward him, he saw the hole where death came out. It looked easy. Even seductive. The simplest way of all. No more fear of the police, or of the tall man. Best of all, his pain would be instantly gone.

He wondered why he hadn’t thought of it before.

56

FIFTEEN MINUTES later, at a quarter to six, Bernhard Oven rang the front bell to 18 Quai de Bethune and waited. He’d chosen to begin his search for the American with Vera Monneray’s building, eliminating it first and then going on from there if necessary.

There was a click of the latch and Philippe, buttoning the top button of the tunic to his green uniform under double chin, opened the door.

“Bonsoir, monsieur,” he said, apologizing for keeping the gentleman waiting.

“I have a delivery from the pharmacy at Sainte Anne hospital, sent by Doctor Monneray. She said to relay that it was urgent,” Oven said in French.

“To whom?” Philippe was puzzled.

“To you, I suppose. The doorman at this address. That’s all I know.”

“The pharmacy, are you certain?”

“Do I look like a deliveryman? Monsieur, of course I’m certain. It’s medicine, needed urgently. That’s why I, the assistant manager, was sent all the way across town on a Sunday evening.”

Philippe paused. The day before he had helped Vera bring Paul Osborn up the service stairs to her apartment from a car parked on the back street. Later in the day he’d helped her take him, heavily sedated after an operation, up to the hidden room under the eaves.

Osborn, he knew, had needed medical attention. Undoubtedly he still did, otherwise why would this delivery have come from the hospital pharmacy on a Sunday evening at Vera’s request?

“Merci, monsieur,” he said, and Oven handed him an official receipt book and a pen.

“Sign for it, please.”

“Oui.” Nodding, Philippe signed.

“Bonsoir,” Oven said, then turned and walked away.

Closing the door, Philippe looked at the package, then quickly walked to the desk. Picking up the phone, he dialed Vera’s private number at work.

Five minutes later, Bernhard Oven lifted the steel cover from the telephone panel in the basement of 18 Quai de Bethune, plugged a tiny earphone into a microrecorder connected to the front-desk phone line and hit “play.” He heard the doorman’s explanation of what had happened, followed by an alarmed female voice that had to be Mademoiselle Monneray’s.

“Philippe!” she said. “I sent no package, no prescription. Open it, see what it is.”

There was a rustling of paper followed by a grunt, then the doorman’s voice once more.

“It’s messy.... It—it looks like a medicine vial. Like doctors use when they give you a—”

Vera cut him off. “What does it say on the label?” Oven took note of the concern in her voice and smiled at it.

“It says . . . Excuse me, I have to get my glasses.” There was a clunking sound as Philippe put down the phone. A moment later he came back on the line. “It says—’.5ml tetanus toxoid.’ “

“Jesus Christ!” Vera gasped.

“What is it, mademoiselle?”

“Philippe, did you recognize the man? Was he one of the police?”

“No, mademoiselle.”

“Was he tall?”

“Tres”—Very.

“Put the vial in your own kitchen trash and do nothing. I’m leaving the hospital now. I’ll need your help when I get there.”

“Oui, mademoiselle.”

There was a distinctive click as Vera hung up, then the line went dead.

Calmly, Bernhard Oven unplugged the earphone from the microrecorder and unhooked the recorder from the phone line. A moment later he replaced the cover to the telephone console, turned out the light and retraced his steps up the service stairs.

It was 6:15 in the evening. All he had to do was wait.

Less than five miles away, McVey sat alone at a table at an outdoor cafe on the Place Victor Hugo. To his right, a young woman in jeans leaned on her elbows, staring off at nothing, an untouched glass of wine in front of her, a small dog dozing at her feet.

To his left, two elderly, very well dressed and obviously very rich matrons chattered in French over tea. They were cheery and animated and looked as if they’d been coming here every day at this hour for half a century.

Cradling a glass of Bordeaux, McVey found himself wishing that was the way he would go out. Not rich necessarily, but cheery and animated, and comfortable with the world around him.

Then a police car flew past with its emergency lights flashing, and he realized his last and final exit wasn’t as much on his mind as was Osborn. He’d lied about the mud on his shoes because he’d been caught. He was a man in love, a tourist who had probably walked near the Eiffel Tower recently enough to know the gardens had been dug up and were muddy, and had been quick enough to make up a cover story for himself when asked about it. The trouble was, the mud there was gray-black, not red.

Where Osborn had been that Thursday afternoon— barely four days ago—was at the riverbank by the park. The same place Merriman had been murdered and Osborn shot a day later.

What had Osborn planned that had gone sour? Was he going to kill Merriman himself, or had he set him up for the tall man? If the idea had been to kill him himself, where did the tall man tie in? If he had set him up for the