The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [95]
She remembered him undressing her and taking her breasts one after the other into his mouth, his lips encircling her nipples, making them grow harder than they ever had. Then, he’d lifted her up bodily and put her on the bed. Never taking his eyes from her, he’d undressed. Slowly, sensuously. His tie, then his jacket, his shoes, socks, then his shirt The hair on his muscular chest was as light colored as that on his head. Her breasts ached and she could feel her own wetness as she watched him. She hadn’t meant to, as if it were rude or something, but her eyes locked on his hands as they opened his belt and deliberately lowered the zipper on his fly.
Suddenly Joanna threw her head back in the dark and laughed. She was alone but she laughed loudly, raucously. If anyone in the room next to hers could hear, she didn’t care. It was the old dirty joke the girls had told since junior high school, come true.
“Men come in three sizes,” it went. “Small, medium and OH MY GOD!”
50
* * *
Paris, 3:30 A.M.
Same hotel, same room, same clock as the last time.
Click.
3:31.
* * *
IT WAS always three-thirty, give or take twenty minutes. McVey was exhausted but he couldn’t sleep. Just to think hurt, but his mind had no “off’ switch. It never had, not from the day he’d seen his first corpse lying in an alley with half its head shot away. The million details that could lead from victim to killer were what kept you wired and awake.
Lebrun had sent inspectors to the Gare Montparnasse to try to pick up Osborn’s trail. But it was a wasted operation and he’d told that to Lebrun. Vera Monneray had lied about dropping him off at the train station. She’d taken him somewhere else and knew where he was.
He’d argued they should go back later that morning and tell her they’d like to continue the discussion at headquarters. A formal interrogation room worked wonders in getting people to tell the truth, whether they wanted to or not.
Lebrun said an emphatic “no!” Osborn might be a murder suspect, but the girlfriend of the prime minister of the Republique Française most certainly was not!
His sensibility factor strained to overload, McVey had slowly counted to ten and countered with another solution: a polygraph test. It might not make an untruthful suspect reveal all, but it was a good emotional setup for a second interview immediately following it. Especially if the polygraph examiner was exceptionally thorough and the suspect had been the slightest bit nervous, as most were.
But again Lebrun said no, and the best McVey had been able finally to waggle out of him was a thirty-six-hour surveillance. And even that had been a tooth pull because it was expensive and Lebrun had to go on the hook for three, two-man detective teams watching her movements around the clock for a day and a half.
Click.
This time McVey didn’t bother with the clock. Shutting off the light, he lay back in the dark and stared at the vague shadows on the ceiling wondering if he really cared about any of it: Vera Monneray, Osborn, this “tall man,” if he existed, who had supposedly killed Albert Merriman and wounded Osborn, or even the deep-frozen, headless bodies and the deep-frozen head some invisible, high-tech Dr. Frankenstein was trying to join. That that physician could possibly be Osborn was also incidental because, at this point, there was only one thing McVey knew for certain he did care about—sleep—and he wondered if he was ever going to get it.
Click.
Four hours later, McVey was behind the wheel of the beige Opel heading for the park by the river. Dawn had broken clear and he had to flip down the visor to keep the sun out of his eyes as he drove along the Seine looking for the park turnoff. If he’d slept at all, he didn’t remember.
Five minutes later, he recognized the stand of trees that marked the entryway to the park. Pulling into it, he stopped. A grassy field was circumvented by a muddy road