Murder in the Bastille

by Cara Black

  “This Incandescent fiasco could lose me the Opera Bastille marketing campaign,” said Vincent. “We’re trying to revitalize the quartier,” he said, “I cannot have it.”

  “Of course, Vincent. You know that, I know that,” René said, his tone soothing. Revitalizing took on different meanings depending on the person, René thought. Areas of the quartier had become á la page, trendy. Decaying factories with southern exposure had become pieds-à-terre and lofts for the gauche caviar. These limousine liberals of the left had followed the designer Kenzo who’d purchased a huge crumbling warehouse for his atelier, a fantastic bargain.

  “Aimée and I will work it out with the Judiciare,” he said, hoping to placate Vincent.

  From his custom orthopedic chair René noticed cobwebs on the high ceiling over the map of Paris which was sectioned into arrondissements. Where was Passage de la Boule Blanche?

  Outside, the dark shapes of the trees on rue du Louvre brushed the tall windows. In the distance, streetlights along the Seine glittered. “Vincent, Incandescent’s scandal touches each firm who’s worked with them. Guilt by association, unless proven otherwise. Your Populax is no exception. Let’s just let la Procuratrice take a look, let her see for herself.”

  “Don’t you understand . . .”

  “Vincent,” René interrupted, with a sigh. “Let me speak with the Judiciare’s assistant first thing tomorrow, see what I can do.”

  Silence. Vincent had hung up.

  René rubbed his eyes, cranked down his chair and realized he had several security backup tapes to record. And today’s data to monitor.

  Then he remembered.

  He’d left Aimée on the line.

  He clicked back to her on the phone. And heard the sounds of someone choking.

  Later Monday night

  SEARING BURSTS OF PAIN, a flashing staccato of agony and light hit Aimée. Then a heavy, hideous compression jammed her skull. Spread across her cranium, leveled her. Like nothing she’d ever felt.

  She opened her mouth with a cry that took all the air from her. Her universe, cliffs and peaks of hurt, throbbed. A shim-mery cold spiked her spine. Everything folded into dark; all was furry and fuzzy.

  And then she threw up. Everywhere. All down her Chinese silk jacket. She reached out to what felt like leaves, wet with clingy bits of vomit. Then she fell over, her nails scraping the stone. Night starlings tittered above her.

  René’s voice sounded faraway. “Aimée, Aimée! What happened? Are you hurt? Are you still there?”

  René was on the phone . . . but he was so far away. She tried to speak but her mouth wouldn’t work. No words came out. No rescue plea. No sound.

  Tuesday, 1:00 A.M.

  A MONOTONOUS BEEPING SLOWLY penetrated Aimée’s consciousness, layer by layer. It was as though her head was stuffed with cotton and her mouth full of dry gauze. Her head felt fat, smashed, swollen. Constant aching, jarring, and then a distant thudding.

  Voices boomed over a static-laced loudspeaker and something wet rubbed Aimée’s cheek. She swatted it.

  “We’ve stabilized the bleeding in your brain, mademoiselle,” a voice said.

  “What do you mean?” At least that’s what she meant to say, but her words slurred. She couldn’t focus. Everything seemed steamy and gray, blanketed by fog.

  “Good thing your friend brought you in. Any longer and you wouldn’t have made it.”

  “But where am I?”

  “L’hôpital Saint Antoine. Alors! The neurosurgeon repaired the nasty vein wall in your brain that had collapsed.”

  His words faded and blurred.

  “You have a venous malformation,” he was saying. “Congenital, not something you’d ever know you had. But pressure on your neck caused the vein to blow.”

  She’d dropped out of pre-med at the Ecole des Médecins but remembered brain hemorrhages. “What do you mean. . . . I’ve had brain surgery?”

  “It’s all done by threading the catheter up to the collapsed vein and embolizing it. No cutting. Count yourself more than lucky on this one!”

  “But doctor. . . .”

  “Shhh . . . take a little nap,” he said. “This will help the pain.”

  She felt a prick in her arm, then icy cold.

  Later

  “STOP IT OR YOU’LL throw up again.”

  The dense grey fog shifted. “René?” Aimée asked.

  “Who else?” he said.

  She had to get up, get out from under this dark heavy thing.

  “Take the blanket off me, René,” she said. “Please, it’s too dark.”

  No answer. She reached out to pull it off, but all she felt was skin, arms . . . short arms.

  “René!”

  “Quit moving,” he said. “You’ve puked your guts out on the linoleum, which deserves it, and on me, who doesn’t.”

  “Desolée, but I can’t see where you are,” she said.

  A pause.

  “Take it easy,” he said.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked. Her fingers traveled his arm to his shoulders.

  “You’re on a gurney. Stay still.”

  “Where are we?”

  She felt his large, warm hands grip hers.

  “In the clinic at l’hôpital des Quinze-Vingts, Aimée.”

  “But that’s . . . that’s,” she said, struggling to sit up, “the eye hospital. . . .” It was too dark. She couldn’t see. “Take these bandages off my eyes, René.”

  Silence.

  She felt her eyes. No bandages.

  Footsteps stopped in front of them. “Monsieur Friant, is this Mademoiselle Leduc?”

  René must have nodded. “Please help us escort her to Dr. Lambert in Examination.”

  That would be hard since she towered over René, a stocky dwarf of four feet. “I don’t need anyone’s help,” she said. “I can walk!”

  “Stay still.”

  But she sat up, then didn’t know where to turn, not even where her feet were when she thought she’d stood up. All she knew was she’d landed on something hard and slippery and then she threw up again.

  When they’d cleaned her up, she promised herself she wouldn’t cry. In the dark fog where all she knew were sounds and textures, at least, she resolved, she wouldn’t let them see her cry.

  Tuesday

  “MADEMOISELLE LEDUC,” SAID DOCTOR Lambert, “there’s a knot on your head the size of . . .”

  Aimée reached and missed. Felt her spiky hair, then air. Then tried again. This time she hit it and winced. “A large grapefruit?”

  “Close enough,” he said. She felt the examining table shift with the weight of someone. A smell of antibacterial soap, the crinkle of what she imagined was a starched lab coat. Then a cold, metal disk on her chest. She shivered.

  “Doctor, I can breathe,” she said, pushing it away. “Please, do something about the darkness.”

  She felt air on her cheeks, heard the slight tinkle of a loose metal watchband. The room seemed filled with gray light. She saw nothing but little static swirls on the inside of her lids that made her dizzy.

  “Any shadows?” he asked.

  She felt a breeze in front of her.

  “No. But you’re waving your hand in front of my face, aren’t you?”

  “Don’t treat this like a quiz, mademoiselle,” he said. “You must feel angry. I would, too.”

  She wanted to say that anger didn’t quite cover it. But after all, he was just doing his job.

  “When will I see again?” She hoped her panic didn’t come across in her voice. “Why can’t I see?”

  “We’ll run tests, analyze the fluid buildup, see if the pressure on your optic nerve dissipates.”

  Aimée took a deep breath. “And if the pressure continues?”

  “Complications occurred after the procedure in l’hôpital Saint Antoine,” he said. “Let’s talk after the tests.”

  Complications? He sounded young. . . . What if he was an intern? Or some médicastre, a qua
ck?

  Would she ever see? Or would she be stuck, depending on others, the rest of her life? She tamped her fear down, tried to make sense of the future.

  Her business was at stake. Not to mention her life, her dog, and her apartment. She’d lose everything if she couldn’t pay her bills. The little windfall she’d gotten in the Sentier had been eaten up by the contractor and plumber. Every time they opened a seventeenth-century wall, they’d shaken their heads and held out their hands.

  “Doctor, no offense, but I’d like more explanation. Perhaps I could talk with the specialist or department head?”

  She felt a distinct pinch on her arm. Hard. From the level of where René’s arm would rest.

  “No offense taken, Mademoiselle Leduc,” the doctor said. “But that’s me.”

  Was that a glimmer of amusement in his tone?

  “We specialize in trauma-related optic injuries. I manage the department,” he said. “Your partner specifically requested me. Had you brought over from surgery in Saint Antoine. Highly unusual, but I consented.”

  “But Doctor, will I be blind . . . ?” She couldn’t say it. Couldn’t say forever. Not as a prognosis. She’d never even used the word forever in the same breath with a relationship.

  “Let’s get you back on the gurney for an MRI and CAT scan.” He must have leaned forward, because she smelled espresso on his breath. “Anger’s essential to your recovery, mademoiselle. Don’t let up.”

  His warm hands helped her onto a gurney.

  “I’ll meet you there,” said the doctor.

  She felt helpless all the way through the echoing corridors and during the elevator ride. The rubber wheels squeaked on what sounded like freshly waxed linoleum. “René?”

  “Right here,” he said, from somewhere near her elbow.

  “You should have told me if the doctor was a geek, René,” she said. “What does he look like, eh . . . glasses and overweight? Is he really any good?”

  René made a sound she’d heard when he’d choked on a chicken bone once. “Look, Aimée . . .”

  “Well, you’re right about the glasses,” said Dr. Lambert.

  Why couldn’t the earth open up and swallow her?

  “Sorry, my big mouth . . .”

  “Excuse me, sir,” a deep voice interrupted. “Only hospital staff allowed from here on. You can return to see the patient in a few hours.”

  Then she heard the ping of the swinging doors, felt the wheels wobbling. No more René.

  Fear took over. She sat up, struggling to get off the gurney. They had to tie her down to the CAT scan table.

  Tuesday night

  “A FLIC’S WAITING TO speak with you,” the nurse said to Aimée. The nice nurse who rolled her r’s and tried to hide her Burgundian accent. Typical of new arrivals in Paris. “He’s waited a while. Do you feel up to it?”

  Aimée fingered the bandages on her neck. She didn’t want anyone seeing her like this. How could she speak with someone she didn’t know and couldn’t see? She wanted to burrow into a hole and die.

  “I told Sergeant Bellan you might be up to it,” the nurse said. “He mentioned he was a family friend.”

  Loïc Bellan . . . a family friend! That lowdown snake who had accused her and her father of graft. Calling them dirty and accusing them of being on the take!

  Before she could answer, the nurse’s footsteps clattered away.

  “We meet again, Mademoiselle Leduc,” Loïc Bellan said, his steps on the linoleum accompanying his words. His voice sounded low and gravelly, as usual. He’d been a protegé of her father’s, until her father left the force. Once, Bellan had idolized him.

  The last time she’d come across Bellan, he’d been reeling drunk and abusive, in front of the Commissariat. But she’d turned the tables in the Sentier, proving him and the others wrong. She learned his wife had given birth to a baby with Down Syndrome. Last month she’d heard from her godfather that Bellan was falling apart.

  “Care for a Gauloise?”

  “I quit. Smoking’s not allowed anyway,” she said. “But I’m sure you know that.”

  She smelled a stale whiff of Paco Rabanne cologne and tobacco on his clothes. He must have lit up in the hallway.

  “There are just a few questions I need to ask you about the attack.”

  No mention of the baby, just born when he’d last seen her, nor any word of sympathy for Aimée’s condition. And no apology for the drunken abuse he’d heaped on her the last time they’d met.

  She wished she knew where he was standing. Most of all she wished she could see him, fix him with a steely stare. And then she had a semblance of coherent thought.

  “Wait a minute, Bellan, you’re stationed in the second arrondissement, not the Bastille,” she said. “Off your turf, aren’t you?”

  “Good memory,” he said. “I’m racking up overtime. But I appreciate your concern. Now, tell me what happened,” he said, his voice businesslike.

  “You must be on special assignment if you’re out of your arrondissement.”

  “I can’t say anything about it,” he said. “But if you cooperate, I’ll take your statement.”

  Flics didn’t travel between arrondissements. At least they hadn’t before.

  “Something else going on, Bellan?”

  Silence again.

  “Or does it have to do with my father? Guilt by association.” He must enjoy seeing her blind and squirming.

  “Like I said, take it easy,” Bellan said.

  Feet shifted on the linoleum. Good, she made him uncomfortable.

  “You don’t believe anything I say. My father crumbled from the pedestal you put him on. But he wasn’t dirty, I proved it. The rest is in your head, Bellan.”

  “I’m harsh sometimes,” he said, “That was a bad time for me.”

  “You mean when your baby was born,” she said. Tactless again. “Sorry . . .”

  “Can it,” he interrupted, his voice rising. “I am on special detail, if you need to know. Feel better?”

  “Concerning what?”

  “I’m not at liberty to discuss that,” he said. “Tell me what happened.”

  And she did for the most part. Even her stupidity in going down a dim passage. But this was Paris, and it was a passage she’d walked a hundred times. She’d never felt afraid before. Not like now.

  “So would you say someone might have followed you from the resto?”

  “If so, I didn’t hear him.”

  “This client, Vincent Csarda, did he know where you were going?”

  “Csarda left before me,” she said.

  Though vindictive in business, she doubted Vincent would physically attack her. He’d coerce her and René in other ways.

  “The person behind me was tall; Vincent’s shorter than I am.”

  “Just checking all leads,” he said.

  A slow throbbing achiness filled her head. All this thinking and concentrating hurt. At least it took her mind off the stinging bruises ringing her swollen neck.

  “Someone strangled me and smashed my head against the wall. But I’m no retard, Bellan.” As soon as she’d said that, hot shame flushed over her. She remembered the baby.

  Silence.

  “Look, I didn’t mean. . . . That woman was the target, not me,” she said.

  “Want to explain that to me?”

  “I was meeting a man . . . to give him a woman’s cell phone. She’d left it behind and I answered it. . . . It’s too complicated.”

  “Take it easy; you’ve been hit on the head,” he said. “Hard.”

  From Bellan’s tone she sensed mockery. But she couldn’t be sure. If only she could see his face.

  “Well, we could tell more if we had this phone,” he said. “Check the numbers.”

  Of course, her bag . . . she’d forgotten about that. What happened to her laptop and the Populax file?

  “Where are my things?”

  “The nurse said your papers showed you were admitted with no persona
l belongings,” said Bellan.

  So the attacker had stolen her bag. Everything was gone. Thorough, Bellan was a thorough flic. That’s what she remembered her father saying about him. He and some young Turks had been brought in to fight corruption in the department.

  She felt something being wedged into her clutched fist. “My number’s on here,” said Bellan. “Have the nurse help you call me if you think of anything else.”

  Long after he’d gone, she fought back tears of frustration.

  LOÏC BELLAN went to the parking lot, his head down.

  “I’ll walk,” Bellan said to the driver in the dented police Peugeot awaiting him. He walked down the narrow rue Char-enton hoping his mind would empty. But it didn’t.

  Why did Aimée’s words make it all come back? All the past; how her father, Jean-Claude Leduc, left the force and later received a pardon. But the rumors in the Commissariat were never silenced. How Jean-Claude had called one day, asking to meet for coffee, “For old time’s sake,” he’d said. Loïc had spit into the phone and refused. Two days later Jean-Claude had died in a terrorist explosion in Place Vendôme. Sometimes, at night, he’d lay awake imagining what Jean-Claude had wanted to say. And all the things he could have said.

  He pushed it away. And all the questions he couldn’t answer about the attack on Aimée. Yet his gut feeling bothered him. He’d check the file at the Commissariat once more, even though the Préfet wanted to close it. Somehow he felt he owed that to Jean-Claude.

  But he couldn’t push away Marie. No matter how he’d tried.

  He remembered his wife Marie’s blonde hair on the pillow, hearing his older daughter Danielle’s snoring from her room and the rumble of the hot water heater while he shaved.

  That terrible day. And he asked himself why it had happened like it had. Why he hadn’t controlled himself.

  But it all came back. Vivid. And his fault.

  How he’d tried squirting Teracyl tooth gel on his toothbrush. Not even a dribble. He’d squeezed again. Nothing. Why hadn’t Marie gone shopping? He’d worked overtime every night that week.

  Funny how small things could build up, cause an explosion.