Murder in the Bastille (3 page)

Tuesday Evening

AIMÉE HEARD FRANCE 2 news blaring from somewhere in the ward. A hoarse voice declared: “The Beast of Bastille may have claimed another victim late Monday night in a Bastille passage. Confusion reigned as investigators discovered Patric Vaduz, the twenty-eight-year-old alleged serial killer awaiting charges in the Commissariat, had been released due to incorrect procedure in the Procès-Verbal. Vaduz, rumored to be attending his mother’s funeral, has not been located.”

Stunned, Aimée grabbed for the bed rail. Where was the télé? Disoriented and dizzy, she pulled the hospital robe around her. When she located the source of the sound, she slid her feet onto the cold floor. She heard coughing, then a request for medication from somewhere behind her.

Was she in a ward or a room? She bumped into something, got caught on what felt like a plastic tube . . . an IV hookup?

Merde!

Or maybe it was a radio cord. Somehow she disentangled herself. She groped her way along the bed rail, barefoot, toward the source of the broadcast.

The newscaster continued

“France 2’s informant close to the investigation revealed that the female victim, discovered mid-afternoon rolled up in an old carpet in a courtyard, appeared to have been murdered in circumstances similar to those surrounding other victims of the Beast of Bastille. Though the particulars have not been released, rumor has it another victim was attacked in nearby Passage de la Boule Blanche. This victim remains in stable condition in the hospital. Names will not be released pending investigation and until next of kin are notified. Police offer no comment at this time other than that the investigation is proceeding.”

Conversation at the nurse’s station, interrupted by the pinging of bells, obscured the rest of the broadcast.

Aimée froze, terrified. Could that be her? She had to hear more. “Please could someone help me. . . .”

Her arm was gripped and someone steered her forward. “I’m a volunteer. Like to hear the evening news, eh? I’ll help you to the TV lobby.”

By the time Aimée reached the
télé
she’d controlled her shaking. The announcer continued: “Our correspondent spoke with an inhabitant of the passage who said ‘I saw this bloody shoe behind my neighbor’s old rug,’ said a quavering voice, ‘near my cat’s dish . . . bothered me, but then I saw the twisted leg of a woman sprawled in the corner. I thought she was Chinese. But it was just her bloodied jacket.’ ”

“I’m wanted downstairs, but if you need help, clap your hands to get the nurse’s attention,” the volunteer said. “Looks like you’re new here. The staff’s run off their feet with patients, but I’m sure rehab will organize an orientation.”

“An orientation?”

“To help you navigate the ward on your own.”

Of course. But she really didn’t want one, or a white cane or a guide-dog. She wanted to
see
.

She pushed that out of her mind. Time enough to worry. Maybe she could find someone with a newspaper who’d read it to her.

The woman mentioned in the broadcast had to be her!
So Bellan had questioned her because the Beast of Bastille had murdered a woman in the next passage.

She clapped her hands.

No answer. She stood. What sounded like the ding of an elevator came from behind her. She edged forward, bumped into a wall, and felt her way along it to what sounded like the nurse’s station. The smooth counter and rustling papers seemed familiar. She’d made some progress. Maybe she was getting better at this. A loud beeping came from near her.

“Excuse me, but can a nurse help me read a newspaper . . .”

“Doctor’s on rounds, mademoiselle,” said a brisk voice. “And two new admits must be processed. Can it wait?”

“Of course.” Now she was stuck.

“I’ll find the volunteer coordinator,” the nurse said, guiding Aimée to a hard plastic chair with sticky armrests. “Have a seat. It might take some time.”

“Where’s my room?”

“Second door on the left. But wait until we can show you, mademoiselle. We follow rules in this ward. It’s for your safety.”

Footsteps slapped over the linoleum.

No way would she wait, it could take hours. Might as well find her own way back.

She stood, felt her way along the smooth wood hall railing, guiding herself by the low drone of the TV from rooms and the muffled beep of machines.
So far so good,
she thought. But as she rounded a corner and felt the second door, she smelled bleach and soap.

Then she ran into something with ridges that crinkled like cellophane. She stepped on a soft foamlike substance that yielded. Something hard whacked her cheek. Clanging noises came from her feet and then they were cold and wet. She grabbed what felt like a pole. Her feet stung.

Great.

She’d walked smack into a mop, upsetting a pail of soapy ammonia by the stink and the burning of her toes. Or something worse. She’d stumbled into a broom closet.

A total liability! She couldn’t even find her room. Useless! She fought back tears welling in her useless eyes.

What was that other smell . . . familiar and jarring? And it came back. That awful odor as hands gripped her neck from behind, squeezing tighter and tighter. Her choking gasps for air. She trembled.

Tar.

“Found something interesting, mademoiselle?” asked a voice she recognized.

Why had he sneaked up on her?

“Dr. Lambert,” she said, taking a deep gulp, “what’s tar used for in the hospital?”

“Besides tarring the roof?” he said. “Who knows?”

“That wouldn’t be kept in a closet, would it?”

“Mademoiselle Leduc, I planned to run more tests on you,” he said, before she could ask more. “But now I need to finish my rounds.”

“Go ahead, Dr. Lambert.”

“First, you need help.”

Strong arms grasped and lifted her up. A stethoscope hit her arm. Her wet, bare feet dangled in the air. She felt frightened and disoriented.

“Look I can walk . . . put me down.

“Not if you’ve got a chemical burn.”

Her feet stung and a big lump wedged in her throat. Hugging her to his warm chest, the doctor carried her back to her room, sat her down, stuck her feet in a tub of water, and paged the nurse. “Do me a favor,” he said, an edge in his voice. “Try to stay out of trouble until I get back.”

“
ZUT!
TH I S looks like a nice mess,” said a nurse with a soft Provençal accent. Embarrassed, Aimée let the nurse clean her up. The doctor hadn’t answered her question about the tar. The nurse remained silent when Aimée asked, and scurried off before she could press the question.

In the hospital bed, Aimée fumbled for the room phone. After two tries she got the operator. But Leduc Detective had the message machine on. She tried René’s apartment. No answer. Then she tried his cell phone, and got his voice mail.

“Please René, I’m sorry, but can you bring me clothes?” she said. “Makeup. My boots. Everything’s gone. Unless it’s scattered in the passage. And can you check on Miles Davis?”

She knew how to do two things well, smoke and park at an impossible angle. Now she could do only one. If only she could have a smoke!

What was she thinking? How could she apply makeup? And her apartment, she’d have to reach the contractor and put the work on hold.

All she got was their answering machine. She left a message to call her at the hospital. Would they have started the work?

She dialed the operator again and had him try Commissaire Morbier, her godfather, at the Préfecture.

“Groupe R,” said an unfamiliar voice.

“Commissaire Morbier, please.”

“What’s this regarding?”

“I’m his goddaughter, Aimée Leduc.”

“He’s working out of the Commissariat in Bastille. Hold on, I’ll transfer your call.”

For someone approaching retirement, she thought, Morbier moved around the force a lot. He’d cut back his hours to spend more time with his grandson Marc . . . or so he said. But she wondered if his back gave him more trouble than he let on.

“Commissariat Principal at Place Léon Blum,” he answered.

“Back on the beat, Morbier? Hitting the cobblestones again?”

She heard him suck in his breath. In her mind she saw him—his mismatched socks, suspenders, and shock of thick salt-and-pepper hair. She wondered if he’d kept off the weight he’d lost over the summer and if he still wore patches to help him stop smoking.

“They call it special detail, Leduc.”

That meant several things. Damage control was one of them. Since he was working out of the Bastille area, was he involved with the serial killer . . . had she found what she was looking for?

“Look Morbier, I need to know about the victims and anything else you feel like sharing about the Bastille serial murders.”

“Leduc, I’m busy.”

Maybe he didn’t know she’d been attacked.

“Something tells me you have the information I need.”

“What’s it to you if I do, Leduc?” he said. She heard a metallic ratcheting, as if he had turned in an unoiled swivel chair.

Something in his voice told her he knew.

“Leduc, I just got in,” he said. “I haven’t had time to read the update file. Or finish my espresso.”

She sensed another presence in her hospital room. Something she couldn’t explain. The hair stood on the back of her neck. Wariness overtook her; she covered the phone with her hand.

“Who’s there?”

No answer. And then footsteps moved away. Was it a nurse, the doctor, or a volunteer?

Or . . . ? That tar smell near the broom closet? For an awful moment she was struck by the thought of the attacker, lurking, waiting to finish his task. It would be so easy to don a uniform, wear a mask, and search the corridors. Her heart clenched with fear. She took a deep breath.

“Call me curious, Morbier,” she said. “Please, we need to talk.”

“I’m tied up,” he said. “Staff meeting in five minutes. The unit has to come up with some answers. And I still haven’t read the file.”

“Answers to why Patrick Vaduz was released due to incorrect procedure? And why a woman got murdered in the passage? Well France 2 news put it together and blamed the bungling on . . .”

“Got to go,” Morbier interrupted. In the background, chairs scraped the floor, murmuring voices rose.

“But they’re wrong. I don’t think Vaduz killed that woman,” she said. “Meet me in room 312, l’hôpital Quinzes-Vingts.”

“Investigating something?” he said. “Leave the serial killers to us, Leduc. Stick to computers.”

“I can’t, it’s personal.” She wanted to confront him face to face.

Morbier’s voice betrayed no surprise. “Leduc, you know hospitals bother me.”

True. He hadn’t even come to see her after the terrorist bombing in Place Vendôme, the one that killed her father and put her in the burn unit. She’d been lucky; the skin graft on her palm was the only visible scar.

“I can help you,” she said, lowering her voice. “But not over the phone.”

“
Tiens!
We know Patric Vaduz did it.”

She had to make Morbier interested enough to come. This needed to be said in person. “Well, there’s a witness who thinks otherwise.”

A siren wailed below Aimée’s window as an ambulance pulled into the hospital courtyard.

“So this witness has proof?”

She heard an edge of interest in his voice.

“You might say living proof.”

Wednesday Noon

“
ATTENTION, PETIT
!” SHOUTED A perspiring delivery man wheeling a dolly loaded with beer crates. “Didn’t see you.”

René, carrying Aimée’s bag, sidestepped the man on the pavement. He ignored the stares from passersby in rue Fau-bourg St-Antoine. Born a dwarf, now just four feet tall, he was used to people staring. Most of the time.

He’d heard Aimée’s message on his voice mail and gathered things from her apartment. Now he turned into the Passage de la Boule Blanche, a narrow half-covered alleyway lined with old storefronts and doorways to courtyards housing craftsmen, upholsterers, and furniture makers. Wide enough for a small car. Once the site of the crimes of the notorious poet-criminal, Lacenaire, guillotined in 1836.

René retraced his steps to the place where he’d found Aimée sprawled on the cobbles. Not far from the metal waist-high barricade with a
Piétons barrés
sign. He wondered if there was anything he hadn’t found last night.

Green garbage bins, emptied and waiting, hugged the narrow stone wall. Too bad, anything left behind would have been cleaned up by the
ébouers
. Nothing there to indicate the horror of Aimée’s attack last night. What had she said . . . she remembered a light?

He looked around and in the October sunshine saw the imposing entrance of the Quinze-Vingts hospital at the end of the passage. The Quinze-Vingts—fifteen times twenty—was the number of beds the hospital’s founder, Louis XV, had needed for his knights blinded by Saracens on the Ninth Crusade; the name had endured. Had she meant a light from the hospital?

The Passage de la Boule Blanche, in the throes of construction, lay deserted. The young designer’s shop was closed. Ahead on the right lay the courtyard of the
Cahiers du Cinéma
, their former client. He walked over but the gate was chained. On it hung a sign saying CLOSED FOR REMODELING. Too bad, he would have felt comfortable asking questions of people he knew there. He could have ferreted out whether anyone had been in the office late.

He gazed up. A mossy stone wall lined a good part of the passage. The network of passages in the Bastille once connected the wood shipped down the Seine and the woodworkers and furniture makers in the faubourg’s courtyards. After Louis XI licensed craftsmen in the fifteenth century, this Bastille
quartier
grew into a working-class area; cradle of revolutions, mother of street-fighters and artisans, home of the Bastille prison.

Later tinsmiths, blacksmiths, mirror-makers, gilders, and coal merchants joined them, occupying the small glass-roofed factories and warehouses. Now, many of these were gentrified, and the rest had been bulldozed.

Then he heard hammering from the nichelike entrance on his left.

René didn’t feel much like a detective even though the sign where he worked read LEDUC DETECTIVE. They shared the computer security jobs, but only Aimée had a criminal investigation background.

Now he had to take up the slack. Help figure this out. Aimée, his best friend, had suffered a brutal attack outside this atelier; maybe someone inside had seen or heard something.

He walked into a small, damp courtyard. A sign, styled like a coat of arms, read CAVOUR MASTER WOODWORKERS, EST. 1794. Low strains of a Vivaldi concerto floated through the doorway.

“Pardon,” René said, raising his voice. He walked through a narrow entrance opening into a large atelier illumined by skylights. The sharp tang of turpentine reached him. “Anyone here?”

A middle-aged man, wearing a blue workcoat, glasses pushed up on his bald head, stood at a work table. With delicate strokes he rubbed the gilded legs of an antique lacquered chair. Small and exquisite, it looked to René as if anyone sitting on it would snap it in pieces. In the middle of the large room stood a heater, its flue leading to the roof, a water cooler, and more worktables filled with furniture in various stages of repair. From the walls hung every type of antique wooden chair René had ever seen—and many he hadn’t.

“Forgive me, monsieur,” René said, “for disturbing your work.”

The man looked up, took in René’s stature, but showed no surprise. He had dark pouches under his eyes and a sallow complexion. His pursed mouth gave him a harried look.

“Tiens
! I’ve done all I can with this,” the man said, setting down a mustard-colored chamois cloth. “I’m Mathieu Cavour. How may I help you?” he asked René, picking up several cracked Sèvres porcelain drawer knobs, and slipping them into his pocket. “My showroom’s in the front, off the other courtyard, if you’d like to see our finished work.”

Should he show him the detective badge, the one Aimée left in the drawer, that he’d slipped in his pocket?

“Monsieur Cavour,” he said, flashing the badge. “A woman, my friend, was attacked outside your shop last night. Were you here?”

René thought Cavour cringed. But maybe it was just his silhouette shifting under the skylight as René looked up.

“Attacked . . . here?”

“I found her outside in the passage,” René said. “Did you see or hear anything unusual?”

“I live above the shop. I have trouble sleeping,” Cavour said. “Music helps me. I wouldn’t have heard anything outside.”

“So your light was on?”

Cavour’s brow creased. “Is this woman, your friend, all right?”

Why didn’t Cavour answer his questions?

“The attack was so vicious it blinded her,” said René.

“
Je regrette
. . .” he said.

René saw sadness in Cavour’s eyes.

“Do you remember if you had your light on?” he asked again.

Cavour rubbed his brow with the back of his hand, “Sorry, I drift in and out of sleep, I can’t remember.”

Did he have some medical condition?

“Lived here long, Monsieur Cavour?”

“Long? I was born upstairs. But the
quartier
has changed. The conniving developers want to take over.”

“More and more,” said René, nodding in sympathy.

The telephone rang. No one answered and Cavour looked flustered, as he ignored it.

“Here’s my card. In case you think of something that might help,” René said. On his way out, he saw a broom and rusted dust pan by a full garbage bin. Might Cavour have found something of Aimée’s?

“Did you sweep this morning?”

“As always. The shop, the courtyard. Some of these people don’t care if the
quartier
’s run down, no pride.”

He stood, René thought, like a stubborn island in sea of slick renovation.

In Cavour’s waste bin, topped off by sawdust and Malabar candy wrappers, René saw a crumpled sheet of music, the black notes faded on the yellowed page.

“Look at what they leave in the passage, even in my courtyard,” he said, following René’s gaze. “That’s not the half of it. Condoms. Once a broken guitar.”

And René heard voices, a chorus. Then a lone soprano. Their timbre softened by the stone. Timeless.

“Where’s that coming from?” René asked.

“Opera rehearsal,” said Cavour. “We’re behind the Opera, you know. A chorus from
Le Barbier de Seville,
would be my guess.”

Cavour was an interesting mix, René thought. A blue collar craftsman with a knowledge of opera who worked on antique furniture. He liked Cavour, and yet, without knowing why, he felt uneasy about him.

As he walked down the passage, he realized this detective business was harder than he’d imagined. He’d gotten no real information from Cavour. Cavour hadn’t answered his questions. Would Cavour have told him if he had seen anything? He wished he had Aimée’s knack for getting information out of people.

And then René realized he’d forgotten to pack all of Aimée’s things. The cell phone.