The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [45]
“No.”
“John Cordell?”
“No.” Osborn was completely puzzled. He had no idea what McVey was talking about.
“Friedrich Rustow?” McVey crossed his legs. White, hairless calves showed between the top of his socks and the bottom of his pants legs.
“No,” Osborn said again. “Are they suspects?”
“They’re missing persons, Doctor Osborn.”
“I never heard of any of them,” Osborn said.
“Not one?”
“No.”
Hossbach was German, Cordell, English, and Rustow, Belgian. They were three of the beheaded corpses. McVey tucked it away in his mental computer somewhere that Osborn hadn’t flinched or even paused at the mention of any of them. A recognition factor of zero. Of course he could be an accomplished actor and lying. Doctors did all the time if they felt it was in the patient’s best interest not to know something.
“Well, it’s a big world and a lot of things cross in it,” McVey said. “It’s my job to find that thread where everything meets and try to sort it out.”
Leaning over to the side table, McVey set his glass down beside Osborn’s keys and stood up. There were two sets of keys. One was to Osborn’s hotel room. The other Set were automobile keys with the figurine of a medieval lion on the key chain. They were keys to a Peugeot.
“Thank you for your time, Doctor. Sorry to have bothered you.”
“That’s all right,” Osborn said, trying hard not to show relief. This had been nothing but routine questioning on the part of the police. McVey was only helping the French cops, nothing more.
McVey was at the door and had a hand on the knob when he turned back. “You were in London on October third, isn’t that right?” he said.
“What?” Osborn reacted with surprise.
“That was—” McVey took a small plastic card from his wallet and looked at it. “Last Monday.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You were in London?”
“Yes—”
“Why?”
“I—I was on my way home from a medical convention in Geneva.” Osborn suddenly found himself stammering. How did McVey know that? And what did it have to do with Jean Packard or missing persons?
“How long were you there?”
Osborn hesitated. Where the hell’s this going? What’s he after? “I don’t understand what this has to do with anything he said, trying not to sound defensive.
“It was just a question, Doctor. That’s my business. Questions.” McVey wasn’t going to let go until he had an answer.
Finally Osborn relented. “A day and a half, about—”
“You stayed at the Connaught Hotel.”
“Yes.”
Osborn felt a trickle of sweat run down under his right armpit. Suddenly McVey wasn’t looking like anybody’s grandfather anymore.
“What did you do while you were there?”
Osborn felt his face redden with anger. He was being put into a corner he didn’t understand and didn’t like. Maybe they do know about Kanarack, he thought. Maybe this was some way to trap him into talking about it. But he wasn’t going to. If McVey knew about Kanarack, it would be he who brought it up, not Osborn.
“Detective, what I did in London is my personal business. Let’s leave it at that.”
“Look, Paul,” McVey said, quietly. “I’m not trying to pry into your private affairs. I’ve got some missing people. You’re not the only person I’m talking to. All I’d like you to do is account for your time while you were in London.”
“Maybe I should call a lawyer.”
“If you think you need one, by all means. There’s the telephone.”
Osborn looked off. “I got in Saturday afternoon and went to a play Saturday night,” he said, flatly. “I started feeling ill. I went back to my hotel room and stayed there until Monday morning.”
“All Saturday night and all day Sunday.”
“That’s right.”
“You never left your room.”
“NO.”
“Room service?”
“Ever have a twenty-four-hour bug? I was full of chills and fever, diarrhea, alternating with antiperistalsis. That’s vomiting, in English. Who would want to eat?”
“You were alone?”
“Yes.” Osborn’s reply was quick, definitive.
“And nobody else saw you?”
“Not that I know of.”
McVey waited a moment, then asked softly, “Doctor Osborn, why are you lying to me?”
Tonight was Thursday evening. Before he’d left London for Paris, Wednesday afternoon,