The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [103]
“To protect and to serve” was the slogan lettered on the LAPD black-and-whites. Every day people laughed at it or scorned it or ignored it. “Serve?” Who knew what that meant. But protecting people was something else. If you cared, like McVey did. If they got hurt because you or your partner, or the department, wasn’t up to the demands put on it, you hurt too. Real bad. Nobody knew it and you didn’t talk about it. Except to yourself or maybe to the face in the bottom of a bottle when you tried to forget about it. It wasn’t idealism— that went out the first time you saw somebody shot in the face. It was something else. Why you ended up, after how many years, doing what you did, and were still there. Michele Kanarack and her sister’s family weren’t a broken VCR that could be fixed. The people in Agnes Demblon’s apartment building hadn’t been a car that was a lemon and could be fought over at an auto dealership. They were people, the commodity policemen dealt in, for better or worse, every working day of their lives.
“That coffee?” McVey nodded toward the thermos in Lebrun’s hand.
“Oui.”
“I’ll take it black,” McVey said. “Just like the day.”
By 9:30, Lebrun had had a tech crew at the park making a plaster cast of the tire track and sifting through the pine forest for anything McVey had missed.
At 10:45, McVey met Lebrun in his office and together they went to the lab to check on the tire imprint. They’d come in to find a technician working the hardening plaster with a portable hair dryer. Five minutes later,” the cast was dry enough for an ink impression on paper.
Next came the collection of tire tread patterns provided the Paris police by tire manufacturers. Fifteen minutes later, they had it. The ink impression taken from the plaster cast made at the park clearly matched an Italian-manufactured Pirelli tire, size P205/70R14, and made to fit a wheel rim fourteen by five and a half inches. The following morning, Monday, a Pirelli factory expert would be called to examine the cast to see if further specifics could be determined.
On the way back to Lebrun’s office, McVey asked about the toothpick.
“That will take longer,” Lebrun said. “Maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day. Frankly, I doubt it will reveal much.”
“Maybe we’ll get lucky. Maybe when he was picking his teeth he nicked a gum and bled on it. Or maybe he has some kind of infection or other disease that would be carried in the salivary tract. Anything will be more than we have, Inspector.”
“We have no way of knowing it was the tall man who used the toothpick. It could have been Merriman or Osborn or someone wholly anonymous.” Lebrun opened the door to his office.
“You mean a possible witness,” McVey said as they entered.
“No, I hadn’t meant that at all. But it is a thought, McVey. A good one. Touché.”
It was then the knock had come at the door and the uniformed officer had entered with the fax from the Marseilles Police.
McVey swallowed his coffee and walked across the room. On a bulletin board was posted a copy of Le Figaro, on it was a quarter-page picture of Levigne as he gave his story to the media. Clearly frustrated, McVey jabbed his finger at it.
“What gets me is this guy from the golf club is afraid we’d release his name to the media, then he goes ahead and does it himself. And what’s that do but tell our friend that he’s got an eyewitness out there who’s still alive.”
McVey turned away from the clipping, tugging at an ear. “All the king’s horses, Lebrun. We don’t find her, but he does.” Turning back, he looked at the French detective directly.
“How did he know to go to Marseilles when nobody else did? And when he got there, how did he know where to find her?”
Lebrun pressed his fingertips together. “You’re thinking, the Interpol connection. Whoever it was in Lyon who requested the Merriman file from the New York police may have had similar