The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [117]
McVey stepped outside into the glare of blue-white police worklights and saw the tech crew measuring rubber tire marks in the street, parallel to and almost directly across from the door he’d just exited.
Easing off the curb, he walked into the street and looked off in the direction the car had gone, then followed the line of the car’s escape route until he was out of the spill of the worklights and in darkness. Another fifteen yards and he turned back. Squatting down, he studied the street. It was blacktop over cobblestone. Lifting his head, he brought his eyes level with the worklights farther down. Something glinted in the street five yards away. Standing, he walked over and picked it up. It was a sliver of shattered mirror, the kind of exterior mirrors that are on automobiles.
Slipping it carefully into the breast pocket of his jacket, he walked back toward the lights until he was exactly opposite the service door, then looked over his shoulder. Across the street, the windows of other apartments were ablaze with light, and the silhouettes of residents watching what was going on in the street.
Keeping in line with the service door, he crossed to the building on the far side of the street. The only illumination here was from a streetlight, a dozen paces away. Avoiding a freshly painted iron spike fence, McVey walked up to the building and studied its brick and stone surface as carefully as he could in the available light. He was looking for a fresh chip in the stone or brick, a spot where a bullet fired from across the street at a passing car might have hit. But he saw nothing and thought maybe he was wrong, that maybe the piece of mirror hadn’t been shattered by a gunshot after all; maybe it had been lying in the street for some time.
The tech crew in the street had finished their measurements and were going back inside, and McVey was turning to join them when he noticed the top of one of the decorative iron spikes on the freshly painted fence was missing. Walking behind the fence, he hunched over and looked at the ground behind the missing spike. Then he saw it, lying in the shadow of a rainspout at the edge of the building. Moving over, he picked it up. The front half of the spike had been crushed and bent by some heavy impact. And where the object had struck it, the fresh black paint was shiny steel.
61
* * *
BERNHARD OVEN’s decision to retreat had been correct. The American’s first shot, thrown off because of the knife in his hand, had seared a bloody path along the base of his saw. He was lucky. Had it not been for the knife, Osborn probably would have shot him between the eyes. Had Oven had the Walther in his hand instead of a knife, he would have done the same to Osborn, and then killed the girl.
But he hadn’t, nor had he chosen to stay and fight it out with the American because the police waiting outside would have, and no doubt did, come in very quickly at the sound of the gunshots. The last thing Oven Wanted was to be pitted against an enraged man with a gun with the police coming in the front door behind him.
Even if he’d killed Osborn, there was every chance he would have been caught or wounded by the police. If that had happened, he might survive, at best, a day in jail before the Organization found a way to eliminate their problem. Which was another reason why his withdrawal had been timely and correct.
But his leaving had created another problem. For the first time, he had been clearly seen. By Osborn and by Vera Monneray, who would describe him to the police as quite tall, six foot four at least, with blond hair and blond eyebrows.
It was now almost 9:30, little more than two hours after the shooting. Getting up from the straight-backed chair where he’d been musing, Oven went into the bedroom of the two-room flat on the rue de I’Eglise, opened the closet door and took out a pair of