He was very serious. This was something that had to do with his life and who he was. Suddenly Vera realized I how very little she knew about him and, at the same time, how much more she wanted to know. What he believed, and believed in. What he liked, and disliked. What he loved, feared, envied. What secrets he had he'd never shared with her or anyone else. What it was that had cost two marriages.

Had it been Paul, or were the women at fault? Or was he just bad at choosing them? Or-was there something else, something inside him that festered a relationship all the way to ruin? From the beginning she'd sensed he was troubled, but by what she didn't know. It wasn't something she could point to and understand. It was deeper and for the most part he kept it hidden. But it was there just the same. And now, more than at any time since she'd known him, as he stood there under her umbrella in the rain asking her to help him, she saw him absorbed by it. All at once she felt herself overwhelmed by a wanting to know and comfort and understand. Much more a feeling than a conscious thought, it was also dangerous, and she knew it, because it was pulling her somewhere where she had not been asked, and to a place, she was certain, no one had ever been invited.

"Vera?" Suddenly she realized they were still on the street corner and that he was talking to her. "I asked if you could help."

Looking at him, she smiled. "Yes," she said. "Let me try."

19.

OSBORN S STOOD near the front counter of the hospital pharmacy trying to read get well cards in French while Vera took his prescription and walked to the pharmacist in the back. Once he glanced up and saw the pharmacist talking and gesturing with both hands while Vera stood with a hand on a hip waiting for him to finish. Osborn turned away. Maybe he'd made a mistake involving her. If he were ever caught and the truth came out, she could be charged as an accessory. He should tell her to forget it, find some other way to deal with Henri Kanarack. Fumbling, he replaced the card he was looking at in the rack and was turning to go back to her when he saw her coming toward him. near the front counter of the hospital pharmacy trying to read get well cards in French while Vera took his prescription and walked to the pharmacist in the back. Once he glanced up and saw the pharmacist talking and gesturing with both hands while Vera stood with a hand on a hip waiting for him to finish. Osborn turned away. Maybe he'd made a mistake involving her. If he were ever caught and the truth came out, she could be charged as an accessory. He should tell her to forget it, find some other way to deal with Henri Kanarack. Fumbling, he replaced the card he was looking at in the rack and was turning to go back to her when he saw her coming toward him.

"Easier than buying condoms-less awkward, too." She winked and walked past him.

Two minutes later they were outside and walking down the boulevard St.-Jacques, the succinylcholine and a packet of hypodermic syringes in Osborn's sport coat pocket.

"Thank you," he said quietly, putting up the umbrella and holding it so they could both walk under it. Then the rain started to come down more heavily and Osborn suggested they look for a taxi.

"Would it be all right if we just walked?" Vera said.

"If you don't mind, I don't."

Taking her arm, they crossed the street against the light. When they reached the far curb, Osborn purposefully let go. Vera grinned broadly, and then for the next fifteen minutes they simply walked and said nothing.

Osborn's thoughts turned inward. In a way, he was filled with relief. Getting the succinylcholine had been easier than he'd imagined. What he didn't like was that he'd lied to Vera and used her and it bothered him a great deal more than he thought it would. Of anyone he'd even known, Vera was the last person he'd deliberately use of not tell the absolute truth to. But the fact was, as he reminded himself, he'd had little choice.

Today was not every day, nor was what he doing the stuff of everyday life. Old and dark things were at work Tragic things, that only he and Kanarack knew. And that only he and Kanarack could settle. It worried him again to think that if things went wrong, Vera might be accuse of being an accomplice. In all likelihood she wouldn't go to jail, but her career and everything she'd worked for could be ruined. He should have thought of that earlier before he'd even talked to her about it. He should have but he hadn't and now it was done. What he had to think about was the rest. To make sure that nothing went wrong, to make sure that both he and Vera were protected.

Suddenly she took his hand and pulled him around to face her. When she did, he realized they were no longer on boulevard St.-Jacques but crossing the Jardin des Plantes, the formal gardens of the National Museum of Natural History, and were almost to the Seine.

"What is it?" he asked, puzzled.

Vera watched his eyes find their way to hers and she knew she'd snatched him out of a dream.

"I want you to come to my apartment," she said.

"You what?" He was clearly bewildered. Pedestrians scurried past left and right and gardeners, despite the rain were preparing their work for the day.

"I said, I want you to come to my apartment."

"Why?"

"I want to give you a bath."

"A bath?"

"Yes."

A great boyish grin crept over him.

"First you didn't want to be seen with me and now you want to take me to your apartment?"

"What's wrong with that?"

Osborn could see her blush. "Do you know what you're doing?"

"Yes. I have it in my mind that I want to give you a bath, and in the thing they call a tub in your hotel you could barely wash a small dog."

"What about 'Frenchy'?"

"Don't call him that."

"Tell me his name and I won't."

For a moment Vera was silent. Then she said, "I don't care about him."

"No?" Osborn thought she was teasing.

"No."

Osborn looked at her carefully. "You're serious."

She nodded definitively.

"Since when?"

"Since . . . I don't know. Since I decided, that's all." She didn't want to examine it and her voice trailed off. '

Osborn didn't know what to think, or even feel. On Monday she'd said she never wanted to see him again. She had a lover, an important man in France. Today was Thursday. Today he was in and the lover was out. Did she really care for him deeply enough to do that? Or had the lover business been only a story to put him off in the first place, a convenient way to end a brief affair?

The breeze off the river caught her hair and she tucked a strand of it behind her ear. Yes, she knew the chance she was taking but she didn't care. All she knew was that right now she wanted to make love to Paul Osborn, in her own apartment and in her own bed. She wanted to be with him completely for as long as they could. She had forty-eight hours before her next shift began. Francois, Osborn's "Frenchy," was in New York and had not contacted her for several days. As far as she was concerned, she was free to do as she pleased, when she pleased, where she pleased.

"I'm tired. Do you want to come? Yes, or no?"

"You're sure?"

"I'm sure," she said. It was five minutes to ten in the morning.

20.

THE S SOUND of the phone woke her. For a moment she had no idea where she was. A harsh glare came in through the French doors partially open to the patio. Beyond them, over the Seine, a midafternoon sun had given up trying to push through a stubborn overcast and vanished into it. Still half asleep, Vera rose up on one elbow and looked around. Bedclothes were strewn everywhere. Her stockings and underwear were on the floor, half under the bed. Then her mind cleared and she realized she was in her apartment bedroom and her phone was ringing. Covering herself with part of the sheet, as if whoever was on the other end might be able to see her, she snatched up the phone. of the phone woke her. For a moment she had no idea where she was. A harsh glare came in through the French doors partially open to the patio. Beyond them, over the Seine, a midafternoon sun had given up trying to push through a stubborn overcast and vanished into it. Still half asleep, Vera rose up on one elbow and looked around. Bedclothes were strewn everywhere. Her stockings and underwear were on the floor, half under the bed. Then her mind cleared and she realized she was in her apartment bedroom and her phone was ringing. Covering herself with part of the sheet, as if whoever was on the other end might be able to see her, she snatched up the phone.

"Oui?"

"Vera Monneray?"

It was a male voice. One she'd never heard. "Oui . . .," "Oui . . .," she said again, puzzled. There was a distinct she said again, puzzled. There was a distinct click click on the other end and the line went dead. on the other end and the line went dead.

Hanging up, she looked around. "Paul?" she called out. "Paul?"

This time there was concern in her voice. Still there was no reply and she realized he was gone. Getting out of bed, she saw her nakedness reflected in the antique mirror over either dressing table. To her right was the open bathroom door. Used towels lay on the sink and on the floor by the bidet. The bath curtain had come down and was lying half across the tub. On the far side of it, one of her shoes perched ceremoniously on the closed lid of the toilet. To anyone entering now there would be no mistaking that long and forceful love had been made in these two rooms and God knew where else in the apartment. In her life she'd never experienced anything like the past hours. Her entire body ached, and what didn't ache was rubbed raw land sore. She felt as if she'd locked union with a beast and in so doing had unleashed a primitive fury that had built, moment by moment, thrust by thrust, into a gargantuan firestorm of physical and emotional hunger from which there was no escape or release except through complete and utter exhaustion.

Turning away, she saw herself again in the mirror and came closer. She wasn't sure what she saw, exactly, except that somehow it was different. Her slim figure, her small breasts were the same. Her hair, though completely disheveled, hadn't changed. It was something else. Something had gone from her, and in its place something else had come.

Abruptly the phone rang again. She looked over at it, provoked by the intrusion. It continued to ring and finally she picked it up.

"Oui . . .," she said distantly. she said distantly.

"One moment," a voice came back.

He was calling. was calling.

"Vera! Bonjour!" Bonjour!" Francois' voice bounded at her over the phone. He was up, bright, demanding. Francois' voice bounded at her over the phone. He was up, bright, demanding.

It was a moment before she replied. And in that moment, she realized that what was gone from her was the child in her, she'd crossed a brink from which there was no turning back. Whoever she had been, she was not anymore. And her life, for better or worse, would never again be what it had.

"Bonjour," she said, finally. she said, finally. "Bonjour, "Bonjour, Francois." Francois."

Paul Osborn left Vera's apartment at a little after noon and took the Metro back to his hotel. By two o'clock, dressed in sweatshirt, jeans and running shoes, he was driving a rented dark blue Peugeot down the avenue de Clichy. Carefully following the rental agency's street map, he made a right off the rue Martre onto the highway that led northeast along the Seine. In the next twenty minutes he made three stops at pull-outs and side roads. None showed promise.

Then at two thirty-five he passed a wooded road that seemed to lead toward the river. Making a U-turn, he came back and turned down it. A quarter of a mile later he came to a secluded park situated on a hill directly along the river's eastern banks. From what he could see, the park itself was little more than a large field surrounded by trees, with a dirt road around its periphery. Taking it, he drove along until the road began to curve back toward the highway. Then he saw what he was looking for a dirt and gravel ramp leading down to the water. Stopping, he got out and looked back. The main highway was a good half mile away and obscured from, view by the trees and heavy undergrowth.

In summer, the park, with its access to the river, probably saw heavy use, but now, at nearly three o'clock in the afternoon on a rainy Thursday in October, the area was completely deserted.

Leaving the Peugeot, Osborn walked to the top of the ramp and started down. Below, through the trees, he could just make out the river. The dark sky and drizzle closed everything in, making it seem, almost, as if he alone existed. The ramp was steep and had been worn into ruts by vehicles using it as a portal to a landing at the bottom that no doubt served as a launching place for small boats.

As he neared the bottom and the incline leveled out, he saw a line of old pilings rotting at the water's edge and assumed the site had served as a much larger entry to the river years before. When, or for what reason or in what years, who knew? How many armies, over how many centuries, had passed this way? How many men had walked where he walked now?

A dozen or more feet from the water's edge, the gravel gave way to a gray sand that quickly became a reddish mud just as it reached the water. Venturing out, Osborn tested the firmness. The sand held, but the moment he reached the mud his shoes sank into it. Pulling back, he kicked what mud he could from his shoes, then looked again toward the water. Directly in front of him the Seine flowed lazily, lapping gently in tiny wavelets against the shoreline. Then, less than thirty yards down, an outcropping of rock and trees jutted sharply, turning the flow abruptly and sending it off into the main current.

Osborn watched for a long moment, all too conscious of what he was doing. Then, turning purposefully, he crossed the landing to a stand of trees at the base of the hill leading up from the water. Finding a large branch, he picked it up, crossed back, and tossed it into the water. For a moment nothing happened and it just hung there. Then slowly, the current nudged it forward, and in a few short seconds it was swept down toward the trees and then out toward the main current. Osborn glanced at his watch. It had taken ten seconds for the branch to move away and get caught up in the predominant flow. Another twenty and it disappeared from sight around the outcrop of rock and trees. All told, just about thirty seconds from the time he tossed the branch in until he lost sight of it.

Turning back, he recrossed the landing to the woods on the far side. He wanted something heavier, something that might begin more to approximate a man's weight. In a matter of moments he found the uprooted trunk of a dead tree. Struggling for a grip, he hefted it, then carried it to the water's edge, stepped into the mud once more and heaved it in. For a moment it remained still in the water, as the branch had, then the current picked it up and started forward along the shore. Once it reached the curve of the outcropping it moved swiftly and steadily out toward the main current. Once more he looked at his watch. Thirty-two seconds until it reached mid-river and was swept from view. The tree trunk had to have weighed fifty pounds. Kanarack, he estimated, weighed about one hundred and eighty. The ratio of the weight from the branch to the tree trunk was far greats than the ratio of the tree trunk to what Kanarack weighed, yet both had taken nearly the same time to be swept up and out and then be fully caught up in the current.

Osborn could feel the rise of his pulse and the sweat at his armpits as the reality of it began to set in. It would work, he was certain! Moving sideways at first, then-turning, Osborn started to run, hurrying along the riverbank and past the trees to where the land projected farthest out toward midriver. Here, he found the water deep flowing and free of obstacles. With nothing to stop him, Kanarack, physically helpless under the succinylcholine, would float off like the tree trunk, picking up speed as he reached the flow line. Less than sixty seconds after his body was shoved out from the landing it would reach midriver and be caught up in the Seine's main current.

Now he had to make sure. Pushing through a stand of high grass, he followed the river's edge through shrubs and thicket for a half, mile or more. The farther he walked, the steeper the embankment became and the swifter the current flowing between the shorelines. Reaching the top of a hill, he stopped. The river kept on uninterrupted for as far as he could see. There were no small islands, no sandbanks, no yawning catch-alls of dead trees. Nothing but fast-moving open water cutting through raw countryside. Moreover, there were no towns, factories, homes or bridges. No place at all, as far as he could tell, from which to see a thing rushing along with the current.

Especially if it were happening in the rain and darkness.

21.

LEBRUN A AND McVey had followed Osborn. and Vera to the gardens of the National Museum of Natural History. There, another unmarked police car had taken over and tailed them to Vera's apartment on the ile St.-Louis. McVey had followed Osborn. and Vera to the gardens of the National Museum of Natural History. There, another unmarked police car had taken over and tailed them to Vera's apartment on the ile St.-Louis.

As soon as they entered, Lebrun was radioed the address. Forty seconds later they had a printout of the building's residents, courtesy of a computer cross-check with the Postal Service.

Lebrun scanned it then handed it to McVey, who had to put on his glasses to read it. The listing confirmed that all six of the apartments at 18 Quai de Bethune were occupied. Two of the surnames carried first initials only, indicating they were probably occupied by single women. One was an M. Seyrig, the other a V. Monneray. French permis de conduire permis de conduire-driver's license-records disclosed that M. Seyrig was Monique Seyrig, who was sixty, and that V. Monneray was one Vera Monneray, who was twenty-six. Less than a minute later a copy of Vera Monneray's driver's license came over the fax machine in Lebrun's unmarked Ford. The accompanying photograph confirmed her as Paul Osborn's companion.

It was at that moment that headquarters abruptly called off the surveillance. Dr. Paul Osborn, Lebrun was told, was under the spotlight of Interpol, not of the Paris Prefecture of Police. If Interpol wanted somebody to watch from across the street while Osborn had dalliance with a lady, let them pay for it, the locals couldn't afford it. McVey was all too aware of city budgets, where management cut corners and where pork-barrel politics vied for every allotted franc. So, when Lebrun apologetically dropped him off back at headquarters a half hour later, all he could do was shrug and head for the beige two-door Opel Interpol had assigned him, knowing he would have to do the legwork himself.

It took a good forty minutes, driving in circles trying to find his way back to lie St.-Louis, before McVey finally pulled into a parking space at the rear of Vera Monneray's apartment building. The stone and stucco structure that ran the entire length of the block was well kept and freshly painted. Service entrances, at convenient intervals along the way, were secured by heavy, windowless doors, making the ground floor at the back seem like a sealed military garrison.

Opening the car door, McVey got out and walked the half block down the cobblestone street to the cross street at the end of the building. That it was raining and cold didn't help. Or that the ancient cobblestones under his wing tips were slippery as hell. Pulling a handkerchief from a hip pocket, he blew his nose, then carefully folding it on the creases, put it back. It didn't help either that he was beginning to think of a warm, smoggy day on the Rancho Park course on Pico across from the Twentieth Century Fox lot. Tee off about eight when the sun was just beginning to warm things up, and for the next few hours make light with the rest of his foursome, Sheriff's Department homicide detectives playing hooky from domestic chores on their day off.

When he got to the cross street, McVey turned right and walked to the front of the building. To his surprise he was literally on top of the Seine. If he put a hand out he could almost touch the passing barge traffic. Across the river, the entire Left Bank hung under a blanket of clouds that rolled out left to right as far as he could see. Cranking his head back and looking up, he realized that nearly every apartment in the building must have the same remarkable view.

What the hell can the rent cost here? he thought, then smiled. It's what he would have said to his second wife, Judy, who really was the only true companion he'd ever had. Valerie, his first wife, he'd married out of high school. They were both too young. Valerie worked as a checkout clerk at a supermarket while he struggled through the academy and his first years on the force. What mattered to Val was not work, not a career, but children. She wanted two boys and two girls, the same as her family. And it was all she wanted. McVey was into his third year on the LAPD when she got pregnant. Four months later, while he was in the field on auto theft, she had a miscarriage at her mother's house and hemorrhaged to death on the way to the hospital.

Why the hell was he thinking about that?

Looking up, the found himself staring through the filigreed wrought-iron security gate at the main entrance to Vera Monneray's apartment building. Inside, a uniformed doorman looked back at him and he knew the only way he was going in there was with a search warrant. Even with one, supposing he could get in, what did he expect to find? Osborn and Ms. Monneray still in the act? And what made him think either of them was still there? It had been almost two hours since Lebrun and his team had been pulled off the surveillance.

Turning away, McVey started back toward his car. Five minutes later he was behind the wheel of the Opel trying to figure out how to get off the ile St.-Louis and back to his hotel. He was at a stop sign and had made an agonizing but final decision to turn right instead of left when he saw a phone booth on the corner next to him. The idea came fast. Cutting off a taxi, he pulled to the curb. Going into the phone booth, he opened the directory, looked up V. Monneray, then dialed her apartment. The phone rang for a long time and McVey was about to give up. Then a woman answered.

"Vera Monneray?" he said.

There was a pause and then- "Oui," she said. she said.

With that, he hung up. At least one of them was still there.

"Vera Monneray, 18 Quai de Bethune? A name and address?" McVey closed the open folder and stared at Lebrun. "That's the entire file?"

Lebrun squashed out a cigarette and nodded. It was a little after six in the evening and they were in Lebrun's cubicle of an office on the fourth floor of Police Headquarters.

"A ten-year-old kid writing a TV show could come up with more than that," McVey said with an uncharacteristic edge to his voice. He'd spent a good part of midafternoon illegally in Paul Osborn's hotel room going through his things and had come up with nothing but an array of dirty linen, traveler's checks, vitamins, antihistamines, headache pills and condoms. With the exception of the condoms, he found nothing he didn't have in his own hotel room. It wasn't that he was against rubbers, it was just that he'd honestly had no interest in sex since his Judy had died four years earlier. All the years they were married he'd harbored sensational fantasies about making it with all kinds of women, nubile teenagers to middle-aged Avon ladies, and he'd met any number who were more than willing to lie down on the spot for a homicide detective, but he never had. Then when Judy had gone, none of it, not even the fantasies, seemed worth it. He was like a man who thought he was starving and then suddenly wasn't hungry anymore.