The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [38]
“Done with a U.S.-made Colt thirty-eight automatic fitted with a silencer. We found it next to him. Taped grip. No prints. No identification numbers,” Lebrun said quietly.
McVey looked at the next two photographs. The first was of the man’s face. It was bloated three times its normal size. The eyes protruded from the skull in horror. Pulled tight around the neck was a wire garrote that looked as if it was once a clothes hanger. The second phonograph was of the groin area. The man’s genitals had been shot away.
“Jesus,” McVey mumbled under his breath.
“Done with the same weapon,” Lebrun said;
McVey looked up. “Somebody was trying to get him to talk.”
“If it were me, I would have told them whatever they wanted to know,” Lebrun said. “Just in the hopes they’d kill me.”
“Why are you showing me this?” McVey asked. The First Préfecture of Paris Police had a sparkling record as far as inner-city homicide investigations went. They certainly didn’t need McVey’s counsel.
Lebrun smiled. “Because don’t want you to go running back to London quite so soon.”
“I don’t get it.” McVey glanced at the open file once more.
“His name is Jean Packard. He was a private detective for the Paris office of Kolb International. On Tuesday, Dr. Paul Osborn hired him to locate someone.”
“Osborn?”
Lighting another cigarette, Lebrun blew out the match and nodded.
“A pro did this, not Osborn,” McVey said.
“I know. Tech found a smudged print on a piece of broken glass. It wasn’t Osborn’s and we had nothing in our computer that would match it. So we sent it to Interpol headquarters at Lyon.”
“And?”
“McVey,-we only found him this morning.”
“It still wasn’t Osborn,” McVey said with certainty.
“No, it wasn’t,” Lebrun agreed. “And it might be a complete coincidence and not have a thing to do with him.”
McVey sat back down.
Lebrun picked up the folder and put it back in his drawer. “You’re thinking things are complicated enough and this Jean Packard business has nothing to do with our headless bodies and bodyless head. But you’re, also thinking you came to Paris because of Osborn, because there was the slightest chance he might have had something to do with it. And now this happens. So you’re asking yourself if we look far enough, for long enough, maybe there is a connection after all. . . . Am I correct, McVey?”
McVey looked up. “Oui,” he said.
22
* * *
THE DARK limousine was waiting outside.
Vera had seen it pull up from her bedroom window. How many times had she stood in that window waiting for it to turn the corner? How many times had her heart jumped at the sight of it? Now she wished it had nothing to do with her, that she was watching from another apartment and that the intrigue belonged to someone else.
She wore a black dress with black stockings, pearl earrings and a simple pearl necklace. Thrown over her shoulders was a short jacket of silver mink.
The chauffeur opened the rear door and she got in. A moment later he got behind the wheel and drove off.
At 4:55, Henri Kanarack washed his hands in the employee sink at the bakery, stuck his time card into the clock on the wall and punched out for the day. Stepping into the hallway where he kept his coat, he found Agnes Demblon waiting for him.
“Do you want a lift?” she asked.
“Why? Do you ever give me a lift home? No, you don’t. You always stay until the day’s receipts are in.”
“Yes. But, tonight I . . .”
“Tonight, especially,” Kanarack said. “Today. Tonight. Nothing is different. Do you understand?”
Without looking at her he pulled on his jacket, then opened the door and stepped out into the rain. It was a short walk from the employees’ entrance down the alley to the street in front. When he turned the corner, he pulled his collar up against the rain, then walked off. It was exactly two minutes after five.
Across the street and two doors down, a rented dark blue Peugeot was parked at the curb, the rain beading up in little knots on its freshly waxed exterior. Inside, sitting in the dark behind the wheel, was Paul Osborn.
At the corner, Kanarack turned left onto