Burke nodded again. An operation?
Then he drifted off.
When he awoke, he felt like he was floating, but he was able to focus better. He was in a different room. Not so many shapes or bright lights. He managed to turn his head slightly and saw a wall. By the wall was some machine that made odd humming and beeping sounds. He couldn’t distinguish what it was.
He closed his eyes to focus his mind.
He remembered the doctor in the large room telling him he was in a hospital and had been operated on.
The doctor had told him he would live.
There were voices, this time farther away. Maybe from a nearby hallway. He couldn’t understand the words. Too distant.
He dug into his brain. What had happened? He had been riding his bike. Hills, lots of hills. People telling him he was fast and strong. Distant villages, stone farmhouses.
A speeding car behind him.
A car that meant to hit him.
To kill him.
Then the tree, the crash, the pain, the darkness.
Burke could remember. He felt fortunate. Next, he wanted to see if he could talk.
His tongue was still thick, but Burke, with a steely effort, managed to mutter, “Bonjour,” although he sensed he was alone in the room. It was enough to know he could speak. His brain, while still groggy, seemed to be working.
Next, it was time to take inventory of his body.
He lifted his head a centimeter or two and instantly felt a jab of pain in his torso. He slumped back again. He rolled his head slightly and saw his left shoulder and arm were wrapped up and stabilized in some kind of contraption.
He wondered about his legs. He told himself to wiggle his toes. He felt them move. Bloody good, he thought. Not paralyzed.
But something was wrong. There was some kind of packing against his left leg, right up to the hip. There was also some kind of contraption at the end of the bed. His eyesight was still blurry, and he couldn’t identify much beyond a meter or two.
Exhausted from this brief self-assessment, Burke closed his eyes again. He was thankful to be alive. He remembered the moment just before he collided with the tree. He had expected to die.
“Monsieur Burke, I see you’re awake,” came a new voice.
Burke fought off sleep and looked up to see the face of a pretty young woman bending over him. He gave her a weak smile.
“That’s good, that’s very good, Monsieur Burke,” she said. “I’m Nurse Peplinski, and I’ll be looking after you tonight. I’m going to put a small control panel in your right hand. If you need me, you just push this button.”
She showed him a small remote connected to a cable, identified the button and then placed it into his right hand.
“You have some very bad injuries, and you need to stay still,” she said, gently rubbing his right forearm. “Your surgery went well. You just have to rest and get your strength back. If you feel too much pain, just push that remote. I will be in and out to check your vitals. Now, get some sleep.”
Before she was out of the room, Burke was asleep—and dreaming about birds and gardens and the sea.
WHEN BURKE AWOKE AGAIN, he felt slightly more alert. His eyes took less time to focus, and his brain didn’t struggle as much to establish his whereabouts.
“I’m here, chéri,” said a soothing voice at his side.
There was a welcome familiarity to it. He rolled his head toward the sound.
Hélène. Yes, it was Hélène.
Even though she was smiling, tears slipped down her cheeks.
“I’m here, chéri, I’m here,” she whispered into his ear. “You’re safe, and you will get better.”
Burke smiled at Hélène and teared up as well. She was the person he most wanted to see. The world wasn’t so bad. She could rescue him.
“I love you,” she said.
“I love you,” Burke mumbled.
“OK, that’s enough,” said another voice.
It, too, was familiar. A figure stepped closer—a man. André Rousseau. Burke’s friend wore a strained smile, and he wondered just how bad he must look.
“You scared the shit out of all of us with this accident,” Rousseau said.
Burke smiled back and then closed his eyes to concentrate. Had it been an accident? Had he screwed up on a ride? Then, in a rapid-fire series of flashbacks, he remembered the black car and having to ride off the road to avoid being run down. Then the crash into the tree. And then the waves of pain. Crushing, unbearable pain.
“No accident,” he said, opening his eyes and looking at Rousseau.
Rousseau’s eyebrows shot up. Hélène looked equally surprised.
“No accident,” Burke repeated, feeling more tired by the second. His reserves were low, and this minor interaction was depleting them. “A car tried to run me over.”
“Really? We all thought it was an accident,” Rousseau said. “Are you sure? I mean, you’ve been badly hurt.”
Burke nodded. “It’s true. I don’t remember much after, but that driver tried to kill me.”
“Maybe the driver wasn’t paying attention,” Rousseau said.
Burke’s mind filled with the last moments before he hit the tree.
“No accident,” he repeated.
“Did you see who was driving?” Rousseau asked, sounding like he was beginning to believe Burke.
Once more, Burke replayed the incident.
“No, I couldn’t see the face,” he said.
Hélène held up a hand to Rousseau. “Paul’s exhausted, André,” she said. “He’ll tell us later what he remembers.”
“But the police…” Rousseau said.
“Later,” Hélène said.
André nodded. He smiled at Burke and then said, “While you’ve been away—so to speak—hardly anything has happened, except Léon Petit and his mother are in jail and supposedly have pled guilty, him to murder and manslaughter and her to attempted murder. Lots of stuff about it on the TV and in the papers.”
Burke recalled talking to Fortin and Côté the same day of his accident. And doing blogs for François Lemaire. And then he’d finished his work and gone for a ride.
“How long have I been unconscious?” he asked.
“The accident was Wednesday, and this is Saturday,” Hélène said. “The doctor and nurses said you were awake for a couple of minutes the other day, before the surgery. Do you remember that?”
Burke shut his eyes and shook his head.
“Chéri, we’ve tired you out,” Hélène said. “You need to sleep now.”
With his eyes closed, Burke nodded. Just before he gave himself over to the overwhelming need to drift away, he heard Rousseau tell Hélène, “We have to talk to the police about what happened.”
Then Burke returned to his dark world.
WHEN BURKE OPENED HIS eyes, he looked about his room. He was alone. Had Hélène and André really been there? Had it all been a dream? He recalled their faces and what they had talked about. And he remembered how Hélène had cried and said she loved him. And how he had said he loved her.
But how long ago was that? The room seemed darker. Maybe it was night. Maybe it was a totally different day.
He tried to move, but a bolt of pain shot up his left side, and he froze. It took a half minute before he was relaxed again.
He lay there, his eyes taking in the machines beside him, the two chairs at the end of the bed, the TV to the side and the half-closed curtain.
Burke figured he was going to be in the hospital for a long time.
“I see you’re awake, Monsieur Burke,” came a voice from the door.
Burke focused and found a face that seemed slightly familiar. He thought he should know her name, but he couldn’t find it. He shook his head. He knew the drugs were helping him handle the pain, but they were also preventing him from grasping a full thought.
“I’m Nurse Peplinski,” she said with a smile. “We met last night, but I think you probably don’t remember.”<
br />
“Sorry,” Burke said.
She took his pulse and blood pressure, and then examined the plastic bags hooked up to the machines. As she did, she told him about the remote control he could use to summon her.
“Is it night?” he asked.
“Yes, it’s almost nine o’clock,” she said.
“What day?”
“Sunday,” she told him.
“How badly am I hurt?” Burke asked.
Nurse Peplinski looked around. Behind her appeared a man—tall, thin, a stethoscope around his checkered shirt. She introduced him as one of Burke’s doctors, providing his name, though Burke instantly forgot it.
With Nurse Peplinski at his side, the doctor checked the information on a chart. Then he pulled up a chair.
“You’re more alert than last time,” he said.
Burke couldn’t recall meeting this man “last time.”
“First, I want to assure you that your surgery went well, and we expect you to make a good recovery,” the doctor said. “But your injuries are extensive and serious, and it will take time to recuperate. I expect you will be with us for a while.”
Burke prepared himself.
The doctor listed the injuries almost like reading a grocery list: a broken collarbone, a separated shoulder, two broken ribs, a badly bruised sternum, a broken hip and a broken femur.
“Damn,” Burke said.
“Indeed, it’s a long list,” the doctor said. “The worst were the hip and femur. We had to put in some rods to keep the leg in place. The shoulder is back in place, and the sternum should heal quite quickly. As for the other broken bones, they were not as severely damaged as the hip and femur. Unfortunately, given that your entire left side has been essentially incapacitated, you will not be moving much at all for several weeks.”
Burke couldn’t believe how badly injured he was. He had suffered broken bones during his racing career, but nothing like this. Still, he was alive, and that’s what counted. It could have been much worse.
“An average person would not have survived such damage, but you have,” the doctor said. “I think your past as a professional cyclist gave you the strength and determination to get through. You’ll need it in the future, but I expect you’re a strong individual and will manage.”
He explained how the medical staff would use drugs to ease the pain but wanted to keep the dosages away from becoming addictive. There would be discomfort, but he expected Burke could handle it. “Mild therapy” would begin in a day or two. Later, once Burke’s bones were relatively healed, more extensive therapy would take place.
Then there was a knock on the door. The doctor added that he or another doctor would be back in a few hours to see how Burke was coping. Then he stood and left, nodding at the two people by the door.
Fortin and Côté.
AFTER A QUICK WORD with Nurse Peplinski, Fortin and Côté approached Burke’s bed. Burke noticed how they scanned his injuries, exchanged raised eyebrows and then turned their focus on him.
“You’re a mess, Monsieur Burke,” Fortin said. “It seems you’ve broken most of your body, but we understand you will recover, given time.”
Burke managed a small smile.
“However, we’re not here for a social call,” Fortin said. “It has come to our attention you are claiming someone deliberately ran you off the road.”
Burke nodded, thinking Rousseau had likely contacted the police.
“Normally, this matter would go to someone else, but since we’ve been dealing with you on a couple of other matters and heard you were the cyclist who smashed into a tree, we thought we should talk to you,” Fortin said.
Burke wished Fortin would get to his questions; following long explanations was tiring.
“I understand you did not recognize the driver,” Fortin said.
So, Rousseau had passed on the gist of Burke’s few comments about the accident.
“No time to see a face,” Burke said.
“And the license plate?” Côté said.
Burke shook his head.
“Tell us everything you can remember,” Fortin said, sitting down in one of the chairs. As usual, Côté remained standing, her notebook in hand.
In halting sentences, Burke gave them a rundown of his route, how he had seen virtually no traffic until he heard a car come out of a country lane on the descent, and how he had sped downhill but found the car accelerating until, finally, he had to ride off the road to avoid getting run down.
“Is it possible the driver misjudged a turn and accidently got too close?” Fortin asked.
Burke replayed the last few seconds before the crash. The memory was surprisingly fresh, right up to his crash into the tree.
“The driver was in control of the car,” he told the two detectives. “I have no doubts about that.”
“And you didn’t spot the vehicle before?” Côté asked.
Burke shook his head.
Nurse Peplinski came over and studied Burke’s face.
“Are you getting too tired, Monsieur Burke?” she said.
Burke liked her. He had heard complaints from some people that the new generation of French nurses tended to be cold and distracted. Nurse Peplinski was the opposite.
“I’m fine,” he said.
“We won’t take too much more time,” Fortin told her.
Then he switched his attention back to Burke and asked him about the last few seconds before the crash. How fast had Burke been going? Had Burke hit any gravel or other debris on the edge of the road? Had the driver honked his horn? Had there been any oncoming traffic? Which direction was the sun shining from?
Burke sensed the two detectives believed his claim. They just had to ask all the appropriate questions. He managed to provide the answers.
Burke had a question of his own.
“Who found me?”
“A truck driver noticed the sun reflecting off something metal by the roadside and then spotted a damaged bike leaning against a large rock not far from the road,” Fortin said. “He stopped and found you a few meters away. He checked to see if you were still alive, and then he called it in. I understand that if you had lain there much longer, you could have been in real trouble. You’re lucky that driver spotted your bicycle and that he stopped.”
Burke didn’t remember anything involving the driver or the ambulance or even the next two days, but he felt fortunate to be still around. If the sun hadn’t reflected off his bike at that moment, he might not have been found for hours or even days—and that would have been the end of his story.
“I owe him a beer,” Burke said.
“I would say you owe him several beers, monsieur,” Fortin said.
With a quick nod to Nurse Peplinski that suggested he was almost done, Fortin asked if Burke had recognized the car.
“No, I didn’t get much chance to look at it,” Burke said. “It was black or maybe a dark blue. A sedan. Dirty in the front.”
“Dirty?” Côté said.
“It had mud on the grill,” he replied.
“And on the license plate?” Côté said. “Is that why you didn’t notice any numbers?”
Burke closed his eyes and dug once more into his memory. It took a couple of moments before he returned to that near-fateful scene and the split second when he had glanced down at the front of the advancing car.
“Yes, a license plate where the numbers weren’t visible, like they’d been blacked out,” he said, surprised he had noticed it, but sure about what he had seen.
Just like the license plate of the car that he and Antoine had seen run over Yves Vachon and his minder.
A dark sedan. Maybe black or deep blue.
“Damn!” he muttered.
FOR ALL HIS EXHAUSTION, Burke was alert.
“Monsieur Burke, do you remember something?” Fortin asked, leaning closer.
Clearly, Fortin had caught him recalling something important, and he knew the detective well enough to know he wouldn’t be put off
.
“Maybe,” Burke said, stalling while trying to consider what to say next. He didn’t want to admit to hacking into the city’s network, and he definitely didn’t want to repay Antoine’s assistance by landing him in jail.
“The faster we act, the better our chance of identifying the person who was driving that car,” Fortin said. “It’s already getting late in the case.”
Burke nodded but said nothing.
“Monsieur, I believe you’re stalling,” Fortin said. “I don’t know why, but you need to answer the question.”
Nurse Peplinski jumped in, saying, “Please, Monsieur Burke is very tired. We must be careful.”
“I understand, Nurse, but this is crucial,” Fortin said. He looked back at Burke with a frown. “What do you remember?”
Burke took a big breath, winced in pain and began.
“I remember the way the license plate was covered up, the style of the car and the car’s color, and I believe I’ve seen that vehicle before.”
“Where did you see it before?” Fortin said.
“I think maybe you’ve seen the same car, too, Inspector,” Burke said, half expecting to surprise Fortin.
But Fortin’s gaze never wavered, and Burke wondered if the flic was somehow ahead of him.
“Where would I have seen it?” Fortin asked quietly.
“I think it might have been the car that ran over Yves Vachon and his minder,” Burke said.
“How do you know about that car?”
“I heard a general description in the news,” said Burke, hoping that would satisfy the detective.
“Your description is more detailed than what was provided to the media,” Fortin said. “So, how do you know about the covered-up license plate and style of car?”
Checkmate. He had nowhere to go—except to the truth, or his version of it anyway.
“I have my sources,” Burke said.
“Not true,” Fortin said. “I think you’ve seen the video of that hit-and-run that killed Vachon and his bodyguard. In fact, I think you know more than you’ve told me.”
Burke was trapped. He also felt ready to slip into sleep. If he did, he could at least escape for a little while.
The Bastard is Dead Page 27
