"I suppose she was sick the entire time you were."

"Yes, she was . . ."

"Know her long?"

"I met her in Geneva at the end of last week. She came with me to London. Then went to Paris. She's a resident here."

"Resident?"

"A doctor. She's going to be a doctor."

Doctor? McVey stared at Osborn. Amazing what you find out when you just poke around. So much for Lebrun and his "off limits."

"Why didn't you mention her?"

"I told you it was personal-"

"Doctor, she's your alibi. She can verify how you spent your time in London-"

"I don't want her dragged into this."

"Why?"

Osborn felt the blood start to rise again. McVey was beginning to get personal with his accusations and, frankly, Osborn didn't like the intrusion into his private life. "Look. You said you have no authority here. I don't have to talk to you at all!"

"No, you don't. But I think you might want to," McVey said gently. "The Paris police have your passport. They can also charge you with aggravated assault if they want to. I'm doing them a favor. If they got the idea you were giving me a hard time about something, they might look a little differently at the idea of letting you go. Especially now, when your name has come up in conjunction with a murder."

"I told you I had nothing to do with that!"

"Maybe not," McVey said. "But you could sit around a French jail for a long time until they decided to agree."

Osborn suddenly felt as if he'd just been pulled out of a washing machine and was about to be shoved into the dryer. All he could do was back down. "Maybe, if you told me what you were really getting at, I could help," he said.

"A man was murdered in London the weekend you were there. I need you to verify what you were doing and when. And Ms. Monneray seems to be the only person who can do that. But obviously you're very reluctant to involve her-and just by doing that you are are involving her. If you'd rather, I can have the Paris police pick her up and we can all have a chat down at headquarters." involving her. If you'd rather, I can have the Paris police pick her up and we can all have a chat down at headquarters."

Up until that moment Osborn had been doing everything he could to keep Vera out of this. But if McVey carried through on his threat, the media would find out. If they did, the whole thing-his link to Jean Packard, his and Vera's clandestine stay in London, Vera's own story and whom she was seeing-would become front-page entertainment. Politicians could do what they wanted with starlets and bimbos and the worst that could happen would be that they'd lose an election or an appointment, while their consorts would be featured on the covers of exploitation papers in every supermarket in the world, most probably in a bikini. But a woman on the verge of becoming a physician was something entirely different The public didn't like the idea of its doctors being that human, so, if McVey pushed it, there was every chance Vera would not only lose her residency but her career as well. Blackmail or not, so far McVey had kept what he knew between himself and Osborn and he was offering to let it stay that way.

"It's-" Osborn started, then cleared his throat. "It's-" Suddenly he realized McVey had inadvertently opened a door. Not only for the Jean Packard matter, but for Osborn to find out how much the police knew.

"It's what?"

"The reason I hired a private investigator," Osborn said. It was a deliberate lie but he had to take the chance. The police would have been through every piece of paper Jean Packard had in his home or office, but he knew Packard wrote almost nothing down. So they had to be looking for any lead they could find and they didn't care how they did it, even to sending an American cop to shake him down.

"She has a lover. She didn't want me to know. And I wouldn't have if I hadn't followed her to Paris. When she told me I got mad. I asked her who he was but she wouldn't tell me. So I decided to find out." As clever and tough as he was, if McVey bought his story, it meant the police didn't know a thing about Kanarack. And if they didn't know, there was no reason Osborn still couldn't go on with his plan.

"And Packard found out for you."

"Yes."

"You want to tell me?"

Osborn waited just long enough for McVey to get the idea it was painful for him to talk about it. Then he said, softly, "She's screwing the French prime minister."

McVey looked at Osborn for a moment. It was the right answer, the one he'd been looking for. If Osborn was holding something back, McVey didn't know what it was.

"I'll get over it. One day I'm sure I'll even laugh about it. But not now." Osborn's reply was reasonable, even sentimental. "That personal enough for you?"

24.

MCVEY L LEFT the hotel and crossed the street to his car with his gut telling him two things about Osborn: first, that he had nothing to do with the London murder, and second that he really cared about Vera Monneray, no matter whom she was sleeping with. the hotel and crossed the street to his car with his gut telling him two things about Osborn: first, that he had nothing to do with the London murder, and second that he really cared about Vera Monneray, no matter whom she was sleeping with.

Closing the Opel's door, McVey put on his seat belt and started the engine. Turning on the wipers against what seemed an incessant rain, he made a U-turn and headed back in the direction of his hotel. Osborn hadn't reacted any differently than most people do when questioned by the police, especially when they're innocent. The emotional arc usually went from shock, to fear, to indignation and most often ended either in anger-sometimes with threats to sue the detective, sometimes the entire police department-or in a polite exchange where the cop explains his questioning was nothing personal, that he just had a job to do, apologizes for intruding and leaves. Which is what he'd done.

Osborn wasn't his man. Vera Monneray he might put in his book as a long shot, someone with medical training; and along with it probably some surgical experience. In that respect she fit the profile and she had been in London; when the last murder had taken place, but she and Osborn would be each other's alibi for what they'd done there. They might have been sick, as Osborn said, or they might have spent the entire time diddling each other, and if she'd gone out for an hour or two, no one at the hotel had seen her, and Osborn, because he thought he loved her, would: cover for her even if she had. Moreover, he was sure if he: ran her she'd almost certainly come up clean with no pOlice record at all. Pushing it any further it would only serve to put Lebrun in a bad light and could end up embarrassing not only the entire department but probably the whole of France.

The rain came down harder and McVey worried that he knew no more about the headless slayings now than he did when he'd started more than three weeks ago. But unless you got a break fast, that was usually the way. It was the thing about homicide. The endless details, the hundreds of false, leads that had to be followed, gone back over, followed again. The reports, the paperwork, the countless interviews that intruded on strangers' lives. Sometimes you got lucky; mostly you didn't. People got angry with you and you couldn't blame them. How many times had he been asked why he did it? Gave his life to this kind of ugly, infuriating and morbidly gruesome job? Usually he just shrugged and said that one day he woke up and realized that's what he did for a living. But inside he knew, and that's why he did it. He didn't know where it came from in him or how he got it. But he knew what it was. The sense that the murdered had rights, too. And so did their friends and the families who'd loved them. Murder was a thing you couldn't let somebody get away with. Especially if you felt that way and had the experience and the authority to do something about it.

Taking a wide lefthand turn, McVey found himself crossing a bridge over the Seine. It wasn't what he meant to do. Now he was all turned around with no idea where he was. The next thing he knew he was in a stream of traffic going past the Eiffel Tower. That's when one of those little things that always nagged him after an interview or interrogation started jabbing tiny pins in that certain corner of his conscience. The same kind of thing that had made him dial Vera Monneray's apartment that afternoon just to see who answered.

Moving into the left lane, he watched for the next side street, took it and doubled back. He was moving along the far edge of a park where, between the trees, he could see the distant lighted ironwork mass that made up the base of the Eiffel Tower. Just ahead, a car pulled out from the curb and drove off. Slowly he passed the spot, then backed in and parked. Getting out, he pulled up his jacket against the rain, then rubbed his hands together to warm them. A moment later he was walking down a pathway that ran along the edge of the Pare du Champ de Mars, with the tower looming in the distance.

The park grounds were dark and it was hard to see. Overhanging trees lining the path gave some protection from the rainy weather, and he tried to stay under them as he walked. He could see his breath in the raw night air and he blew on his hands only to jam them finally into the pockets of his raincoat.

Gingerly dodging some sidewalk construction, he walked another fifty yards in the direction of the lighted area to where he could clearly see the tower reaching into the night sky. Suddenly his feet slid out from under him, and he nearly fell. Recovering, he walked on a little farther to where a street light shone on a park bench. The light from the tower spilled onto the grassy area where he'd just been. Most of it had been dug up, and was in the process of being replanted. Leaning against the bench with one hand, he lifted a foot and looked at his shoe. It was wet and covered with mud. The other was the same. Satisfied, he turned and started back for the car. It was why he had come. A simple follow-up to a simple answer to a simple question.

Osborn had told the truth about the mud.

25.

MICHELE K KANARACK had never seen her husband as distant and cold. had never seen her husband as distant and cold.

He was sitting in his underwear, a worn T-shirt and American jockey shorts, looking out the kitchen window. It was ten minutes after nine in the evening. At seven o'clock he'd come home from work, taken off his clothes and immediately put them in the washer. The first thing he'd reached for after that was wine, but he stopped abruptly after drinking only half a glass. After that he'd asked for his dinner, had eaten in silence, and said nothing since.

Michele looked at him without knowing what to say. He'd been fired, she was sure of it. How or why, she had no idea. The last thing he'd told her was that he was going to Rouen with Monsieur Lebec to look over a possible site for a new bakery. Now, little more than twenty-four hours later, here he was, sitting in his underwear and staring out at the night.

The night, that was a thing Michele had inherited from her father. Forty-one when his daughter had been born, he'd been a Parisian auto mechanic when the German army overran the city. A member of the underground, he spent three hours every evening after work on the roof of their apartment building clandestinely watching and recording Nazi military traffic on the street below.

The war had been over for seventeen years when he'd brought four-year-old Michele back to the apartment house and up onto the roof to show her what he'd been doing during the occupation. The traffic on the street below magically became German tanks, half-tracks and motorcycles. The pedestrians, Nazi soldiers with rifles and machine guns. That Michele hadn't understood the purpose behind his actions didn't matter. What did matter was that in taking her to that building and leading her up to the roof in the darkness to show her how and what he had done, he had shared a secret and dangerous past with her. He had included her in something very personal and very special and, in remembering him, that was what counted.

Looking to her husband now, she wished he could be like her father. If the news was bad, it was bad. They loved each other, they were married, they were expecting a child. The darkness outside only made his distance more painful to understand.

Across the room the clothes washer stopped, its cycle finished. Immediately Henri got up, opened the washer door and pulled out his work clothes. Looking at them, he cursed out loud, then crossed the room to pull open a closet door angrily. A moment later he was stuffing the still-wet laundry inside a plastic garbage bag and sealing it with a plastic tie.

"What are you doing?" Michele asked.

Abruptly, he looked up. "I want you to go away,' he said. "To your sister's house in Marseilles. Take back your family name and tell everyone I've left you, that I'm a louse, and you have no idea where I've gone."

"What are you saying?" Michele was flabbergasted.

"Do what I tell you. I want you to leave now. Tonight."

"Henri, tell me what's wrong, please."

In answer, Kanarack threw down the garbage bag and went into the bedroom.

"Henri, please . . . Let me help . . . ." Suddenly she realized he meant it. She came into the room behind him scared half to death and stood in the doorway as he dug two battered suitcases from under the bed. He pushed them toward her.

"Take these," he said. "You can fit enough into them."

"No! I am your wife. What the hell is the matter? How can you say these things without explanation?"

Kanarack looked at her for a long moment. He wanted to say something but he didn't know how. Then, from outside, an automobile horn sounded once, then twice. Michele's eyes narrowed. Pushing past him, she went to the window. In the street below she could see Agnes Demblon's white Citroen, its motor running, its exhaust drifting upward in the night air.

Henri looked at her. "I love you," he said. "Now go to Marseilles. I will send money to you there."

Michele pushed back from him. "You never went to Rouen. You were with her!"

Kanarack said nothing.

"Get the hell out of here, you bastard. Go to your goddamn Agnes Demblon."

"It's you who has to go," he said.

"Why? She's moving in?"

"If that's what you want to hear. All right, yes, she's moving in."

"Then go to hell, for all time. Go to hell, you son of a bitch, and God damn you!"

26.

"I SEE," Francois Christian said quietly and without emotion. A glass of cognac was in his hand; swirling it lightly, he looked off into the fire.

Vera said nothing. Leaving him was difficult enough, she owed him a great deal and would not insult him, or them, by simply getting up and walking out as if she were a whore, because she wasn't, It was a little before ten. They had just finished supper and were sitting in the large living room of a grand apartment on the rue Paul Valery between avenue Foch and avenue Victor Hugo. She knew Francois also kept a house in the country where his wife and three children lived. She also suspected he might have more than one apartment in the city, but she never asked. Any more than she'd asked if she were his only lover, which she suspected she wasn't.

Taking a sip of coffee she looked up at him. He still hadn't moved. His hair was dark, neatly trimmed, with a touch of gray at the temples. In his dark pin-stripe suit, crisp white cuffs protruding in tailored precision from the sleeves of his double-breasted jacket, he looked like the aristocrat he was. The wedding band on his left hand glinted in the firelight as he absently sipped at his drink while still staring into the flames. How many times had his hands caressed her? Touched her in a way only he had been able to touch her?

Her father, Alexandre Baptiste Monneray, had been a ranking career naval officer. In her early life, she, her mother and her younger brother had traveled the world following his variety of commands and naval postings. When she was sixteen her father retired to become an independent defense consultant and they settled permanently into a large home in the south of France.

It was here that Francois Christian, then an undersecretary in the Ministry of Defense, became, among others, a frequent guest. And it was here that their relationship began. It was Francois who talked to her at length about the arts, about life and about love. And, one very special afternoon, about the direction of her studies. When she told him medicine, he was astounded.

It was true, she'd argued. Not only did she wish wish to become a physician, she was determined to become one, if for nothing more than a defiant promise she'd made to her father at age six around a Sunday dinner table, when her parents had been discussing suitable careers for women. Out of the blue she'd announced she was going to be a doctor. Her father had asked her if she was serious and she'd said she was. She even remembered the slight smile he'd given to her mother when he accepted Vera's choice. The smile she'd taken as a challenge. Neither of her parents believed she could do it or would do it. Right then she determined to prove them wrong. And at that moment of resolve something had happened and a white light rose up around her and held there glowing. And though she knew no one else could see it, she felt warm and comforted and sensed a strength greater than anything she'd ever experienced. And she took it as an affirmation that her promise to her father was real and that her destiny was resolute. to become a physician, she was determined to become one, if for nothing more than a defiant promise she'd made to her father at age six around a Sunday dinner table, when her parents had been discussing suitable careers for women. Out of the blue she'd announced she was going to be a doctor. Her father had asked her if she was serious and she'd said she was. She even remembered the slight smile he'd given to her mother when he accepted Vera's choice. The smile she'd taken as a challenge. Neither of her parents believed she could do it or would do it. Right then she determined to prove them wrong. And at that moment of resolve something had happened and a white light rose up around her and held there glowing. And though she knew no one else could see it, she felt warm and comforted and sensed a strength greater than anything she'd ever experienced. And she took it as an affirmation that her promise to her father was real and that her destiny was resolute.

And, that same afternoon, as she told her story to Francois Christian, the same glow appeared, and she told him it was there. Smiling as if he understood completely, he'd taken her hand in his and fully encouraged her to follow her dreams.

At age twenty she graduated from the University of Paris and was accepted immediately into the medical school at Montpellier, at which time her father relented and gave her his full blessing. A year later, after spending the Christmas holidays with her grandmother in Calais, Vera stopped in Paris to visit friends. For no reason, she suddenly had the idea to visit Francois Christian, whom she had not seen in nearly three years.

It was a lark, of course, with no purpose other than to say hello. But Francois was now leader of the French Democratic Party and a major political figure, and how to reach him through a battery of underlings she had no idea, except to go to his office and ask to be seen. To her surprise, she was shown in almost immediately.

The moment she entered the room and he rose from his desk to greet her, she'd sensed something extraordinary happening. He called for tea and they sat on a window seat overlooking the garden outside his office. He'd met her when she was sixteen; she was how almost twenty-two. In less than six years, a pert teenage girl had become a strikingly beautiful, extremely intelligent and wholly alluring young woman. If she did not believe it herself, his manner confirmed it and no matter what she did she could not take her eyes from him, nor he from her. That same evening he had brought her here to this apartment. They'd had dinner and then he'd undressed her on the couch by the fire where he now sat. Making love to him had been the most natural thing in the world. And continued to be, even as he became prime minister, for the next four years. Then Paul Osborn had come into her life, and in what seemed like only a matter of moments, everything changed.

"All right," he said softly, turning in his chair, his eyes, as they met hers, still holding the greatest love and respect for her. "I understand." With that he set the glass down and stood up. As he did, he looked back to her, as if to fix her image in his mind forever. For a long moment he just stood there. Then, finally, he turned and walked out.

27.

OSBORN S SAT on the edge of the bed and listened to Jake Berger complain about his watery eyes and runny nose and the ninety-degree heat, that was pressure cooking Los Angeles into a first-degree smog alert. Berger was rattling on from his car phone somewhere between Beverly Hills and his opulent Century City offices; it didn't seem to matter that Osborn was six thousand miles away in Paris and might have problems of his own. He sounded more like a spoiled child than one of Los Angeles's top trial lawyers, the one who had turned Osborn onto Kolb International and Jean Packard in the first place. on the edge of the bed and listened to Jake Berger complain about his watery eyes and runny nose and the ninety-degree heat, that was pressure cooking Los Angeles into a first-degree smog alert. Berger was rattling on from his car phone somewhere between Beverly Hills and his opulent Century City offices; it didn't seem to matter that Osborn was six thousand miles away in Paris and might have problems of his own. He sounded more like a spoiled child than one of Los Angeles's top trial lawyers, the one who had turned Osborn onto Kolb International and Jean Packard in the first place.

"Jake, listen to me, please-" Osborn finally interrupted, then told him what had just taken place: the murder of Jean Packard, McVey's sudden visit, the personal questions. He left out the lie, the hiring of Jean Packard to uncover Vera's boyfriend, just as he'd dodged around the reason he needed a private investigator the first time he'd called Berger.

"You're sure it was McVey?" Berger asked.

"You know him?"

"Do I know McVey? What lawyer who ever defended a murder suspect in the city of Los Angeles doesn't know him? He's tough and thorough, with the tenacity of a pit bull. Once he gets into something, he doesn't let go until it's finished. That he's in Paris is no surprise-McVey's expertise has been sought by baffled homicide departments all over the globe for years. The question is: Why is he interested in Paul Osborn?"

"I don't know. He just showed up and started asking questions."