The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [221]
“Schneider.”
Remmer opened the door and Schneider stepped in, followed by a handsome brunette in her early forties. She was taller than Schneider and wider. Pale lipstick emphasized a mouth that was turned up at the corners in a perpetual smile. Tucked under her arm was a large manila envelope.
“This is Lieutenant Kirsch,” Schneider said, adding that she was a member of the BKA computer-enhancement team. Nodding at Remmer, she looked to the others and spoke in English. “I am happy to report the identity of the man driving the BMW. His name is Pascal Von Holden and, he is director of security for Erwin Scholl’s European business operations. We are running a profile on him now.” Opening the envelope, she took out two 8 x 10 black-and-white glossy photographs from the enhanced video taken of the house at 72 Hauptstrasse. The first was of Von Holden I as he got out of the car. It was grainy but clear enough to make out his features. The second was grainy as well and less exact. Still, it was enough to define a youngish, dark-haired woman, standing by the window looking out.
“The woman was a little more difficult, but a positive I.D. came back from the FBI just as I was leaving to bring you the photographs,” Lieutenant Kirsch said. “She is American. A licensed physical therapist. Her name is Joanna Marsh. Her residence is Taos, New Mexico.”
“Elementary police work, eh McVey?” Noble raised an eyebrow in admiration.
“Luck,” McVey smiled. The BKA had sent a fax of both computer-enhanced photos to the police departments in Berlin and Zurich, and, at his request, the photo of the woman to Fred Hanley at the L.A. office of the FBI. It was a long shot, but he’d had a hunch that if Lybarger was in Berlin and staying at the house in Hauptstrasse, there was a very good chance his physical therapist would be there as well. And now, with her identification confirmed, the reversal of the same ought to hold true. To wit: if she was there, so was Lybarger.
“Danke,” Remmer said, and Lieutenant Kirsch and Schneider left together.
There was a dull banging as the building’s heat came on. McVey stared at first at one photo, then the other, memorizing them, then handed them to Noble and walked over to the window. He tried to imagine himself in Joanna Marsh’s position. What was she thinking as she stood staring out from that window? How much does she know about what’s going on? And what could or would she tell them if they could get to her?
Lybarger, he agreed with Osborn, was the key. What was ironic, as well as maddening, was that although they now had a clear photo of Lybarger’s therapist, computer-enhanced from a videotape and identified literally in a matter of minutes by an organization halfway around the world, the only photograph Bad Godesberg had been able to rouse of Lybarger himself was a four-year-old blackly and-white passport picture. And that was it. Nothing else. Not even a snapshot of him. Which was crazy. A man as important, or as seemingly important, as Lybarger should have had his picture published at least once. Somewhere. Some magazine, some newspaper, or, at the very least, some kind of investment journal. But as far as anyone could tell, he hadn’t. It was as if the harder they looked, the fainter he became. Fingerprints would have been a gift from all that was holy, if for nothing else than to run them and, in all likelihood the way things were going, discount them. Clearly, Elton Lybarger had to be the most secretive, most protected man in the civilized world.
McVey looked at his watch: 4:27.
Barely thirty minutes before they were to meet Scholl. The one prayer they’d had, or hoped to have anyway, was Salettl, who McVey had desperately wanted to interview before they encountered Scholl. Maybe Karolin Henniger could have helped reach him. Who knew? But Salettl, of anyone, might have given them some insight into Lybarger, the man. Not to mention the possibility that Salettl himself was involved in the murders of the headless men. But unless things changed dramatically