The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [9]
A homicide detective for the LAPD since 1955, he’d buried two wives and put three kids through college. The day he turned sixty-five he tried to retire. It didn’t work. The phone kept ringing. “Call McVey, he knows every way there is to cut up a hooker.” “Get McVey, he’s got nothing to do, maybe he’ll come over take a look at it.” “I don’t know, call McVey.”
Finally he moved to the fishing cabin he’d built in the mountains near Big Bear Lake and had the phone taken out. But he’d barely stored his gear and had the cable TV hooked up when old detective pals started coming up to fish. And it wasn’t long before they got around to asking the same questions they asked over the phone. Finally he gave up, padlocked the cabin and went back to work full time.
He’d been at his old nicked steel desk, sitting in the same chair with the squeaky caster at robbery/homicide for less than two weeks, when Bill Woodward, the chief of detectives, came in and asked if he’d like a trip to Europe, all expenses paid. Any of the other six detectives in the squad room would have jumped for their Samsonite. McVey, on the other hand, shrugged and asked why and for how long. He wasn’t crazy about traveling and when he did it was usually to some place warm. It was early September. Europe would be getting cold and he hated cold.
“The ‘how long,’ I guess, is up to you. The ‘why’ is because Interpol has seven headless corpses they don’t know what to do about.” Woodward stuck a file under McVey’s nose and walked off.
McVey watched him go, glanced at the other detectives in the room, then picked up a cup of cold coffee and opened the file. On the upper righthand corner was a black tab, which, in Interpol circulation, indicated an unidentified dead body and asked for any possible help in identifying it. The tab was old. By now the corpses had been identified.
Of the seven bodies, two had been found in England, two in France, one in Belgium, one in Switzerland and one, washed ashore, near the West German port of Kiel. All were males and their ages ranged from twenty-two to fifty-six. All were white and all, apparently, had been drugged with some sort of barbiturate and then had their heads surgically removed at precisely the same place in the anatomy.
The killings had occurred from February to August and seemed completely random. Yet they were far too similar to be coincidental. But that was all, the rest was completely dissimilar. None of the victims were related or appeared to have known one another. None had criminal records or had lived violent lives. And all were from different economic backgrounds.
What made it even stickier were the statistics: more than fifty percent of the time a murder victim is identified, headless or not, the murderer is found. In these seven cases not a single bona fide suspect had been uncovered. All told, police experts of five countries, including Scotland Yard’s special murder investigations unit and Interpol, the international police organization, were batting an even zero, and the tabloid press was having a field day. Hence the call had come to the Los. Angeles Police Department for one of the best in the singular world of homicide investigation.
Initially, McVey had gone to Paris, where he’d met with Inspector Lieutenant Alex Lebrun of the First Section of the Paris Préfecture of Police, an impish rogue of a man, with a big grin and an always-present cigarette. Lebrun, in turn, had introduced him to Commander Noble of Scotland Yard and Captain Yves Cadoux, assignment director for Interpol. Together the foursome examined the crime scenes in France. The first was in Lyon, two hours south of Paris by Très Grande Vitesse, the TGV bullet train; and, ironically, less than a mile from Interpol headquarters. The second,