Cara Black: Murder in the Bastille

In the distance she heard a dropped bottle shatter, then a disgusted “ Merde,” then laughter. Were other people coming down the passage? She saw a light, heard an intake of breath behind her. The hands let go.

Something wet seeped over her dress. She heard a ringing sound echoing off the dark walls. The last things she saw before she lost consciousness were stars peeking between the jagged roof tiles in the Paris sky.

Monday Night

RENÉ FRIANT STRETCHED HIS short legs, adjusting the tight headset while scanning the computer screen at his desk. Shadows filled the corners of the office. He wished he were home, not on the phone with a furious Vincent Csarda, who had spoken without taking a breath for at least two minutes.

“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.