The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [97]
This was a bright, sunny Sunday after nearly a week-long rain. McVey was in a quandary. If he left to warn Lebrun about Merriman’s wife he ran the risk somebody, or a lot of people, with cabin fever would arrive at the park and inadvertently destroy evidence. Choosing, not too happily, to assume that since the French police had yet to find her, the tall man would have the same problem, McVey decided to steal the time he needed and stay where he was.
Turning back, he cautiously retraced his steps back toward the ramp, through the trees, the way he had come. The ground under the trees was a thick blanket of wet pine needles. Stepping on them, they sprang back like a carpet, which meant it would take something a great deal heavier than a man’s step to leave any kind of impression on them.
Crossing to the ramp, McVey turned back. He’d found nothing. Walking a dozen yards east of where he was standing, he made the crossing again. Still, he found nothing.
Turning west, he moved to a spot halfway between his original crossing and the one he’d just made, and started across again. He hadn’t gone a dozen paces before he saw it. A single flat toothpick, broken in half, nearly obscured by the pine needles. Taking out his handkerchief, he bent down and picked it up. Looking at it, he could see the split in it was a lighter color on the inside than on the outside, suggesting it had been broken in the recent past. Wrapping it in the handkerchief, McVey put it in his pocket and started back toward his car. This time he moved slowly, carefully studying the ground. He was almost to the edge of the trees when something caught his eye. Stopping, he squatted down.
The pine needles directly in front of him were a lighter shade than those surrounding them. In the rain they would have looked the same, but as they dried in the morning sun, they looked more as if they’d been scattered on purpose. Picking up a fallen twig, McVey brushed them lightly aside. At first he saw nothing and was disappointed. Then, continuing, he uncovered what looked like the impression of a tire track. Getting up and following it, he found a solid impression in the sandy soil just at the edge of a tree line. A car had been driven in under the trees and parked. Sometime later, the driver had backed up and seen his own tracks. Getting out, he’d gathered fresh pine needles and scattered them around, covering the tracks, but in doing so he’d neglected to note where he’d parked. Outside the tree line the tracks had washed away in the rain. But at the tree line, the overhang had protected the ground, leaving a small but distinct imprint in the soil. No more than four inches long and a half inch deep, it wasn’t much. But for a police tech crew, it would be enough.
51
* * *
“SCHOLL!”
Osborn had just finished urinating and was flushing the toilet when the name jumped out at him. Turning awkwardly, and wincing in pain as he put weight on his injured leg, he reached out and picked up the cane Vera had left from where it hung on the edge of the sink. Shifting his weight, he started back into the room. Each step was an effort and he had to move slowly, but he realized the hurt was more from stiffness and muscle trauma than from the wound itself, and that meant it was healing.
The room, as he hobbled out of the cubicle that served as a toilet and started across it, seemed smaller than it had when he was lying down. With a blackout curtain drawn across the only window, it was not only dark but felt stuffy and confining and smelled of antiseptic. Stopping at the window, he set the cane aside and pulled back the curtain. Immediately the room flooded with the bright light of an early autumn day. Straining, he gritted his teeth against the tug of his leg, pulled open the small window and looked out. All