The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [111]
So far they had a writ and a warrant for Osborn’s arrest but that was all they had. Tailing Vera had turned out to be nothing more than an exercise. She’d left her apartment early Sunday morning, arrived at the Centre Hospitalier Ste.-Anne at five minutes to seven and stayed there. Barras and Maitrot had taken over the shift at four and still nothing had happened.
Then at six-fifteen a taxi had driven up to the main entrance, Vera had rushed out and the cab pulled away. Barras and Maitrot radioed they were in pursuit and a second tar pulled in after them as backup.
But the chase had only taken them back to her apartment and she’d gone inside. Leaving the police to sit on their pumped-up expectations and glance every so often at the brightly lit window, waiting for whatever, if anything, happened next.
Upstairs, Vera let go of the curtain and turned away from her bedroom window in the dark. The ornamental clock on her bedside table read 7:20. She’d been gone from the hospital for just over an hour, leaving on a slow night, she’d explained, because of intense menstrual cramps. In an emergency she could be back in no time.
If it had just been the Parisian police, things would have been different. It had been confirmed the night before in Lebrun’s reaction to McVey’s pressing queries. But McVey had no such delusions. She’d seen it in his eyes the first time she’d met him. And that made him extremely dangerous if he was against you. He might be American, but the Paris police, at least the inspectors assigned here, whether they realized it or not, were fully under his spell. What he wanted them to do, in one way or another, they would do. Which was why she believed the tall man who presented the vial to Philippe was a fake. Part of a trick to frighten her into believing Osborn was in danger and thereby leading them to wherever he was hiding. And the police—she was certain the men in the car outside were police—proved she was right.
The phone rang next to her and she picked up.
“Oui?Merci, Philippe.”
Her taxi was waiting downstairs.
Going into the bathroom, Vera opened a box of Tampax. Pulled a tampon from the paper and flushed it down the toilet. Then threw the wrapper into the wastebasket under the sink. If the police checked after she’d gone and later questioned her, at least she would have left evidence that her menstrual cycle was the reason she’d come home. Considering who she was, they wouldn’t press it further than that.
Glancing in the mirror, she fluffed her hair and for a moment held there—Everything that had happened with Paul Osborn had seemed natural, even until now. The first time she’d seen him on the lectern in Geneva, a sense of change and fate had swept her. The first night she slept with him there was no more sense of cheating on Francois than if he’d been her brother. Before, she’d told herself she had not left Francois for Osborn. But it wasn’t so, because she had. And because she had, what she was doing now was right. Osborn was in trouble and legality didn’t matter.
Turning out the bathroom light, Vera crossed the bedroom in the dark, stopping to glance out the window once more. The police car was still there, and directly below was her taxi.
Picking up her purse, she went into the hallway and stopped. Shadows from the streetlight danced across the living room ceiling and into the hallway where she stood.
Something was wrong.
The light had been on in the living room. But it wasn’t now. She hadn’t turned it off and neither had Philippe. Maybe the bulb had burned out. Yes. Of course. The bulb. Suddenly the thought flashed that she was wrong. That the men outside were not policemen. They were businessmen talking, or friends, or male lovers. Maybe the tall man had not been