For one thing, he realized as the fog began to clear, he was lying in bed fully dressed. He reached back to check his pocket. The billfold was still there. The ballpoint pen remained clipped to his shirt pocket, the familiar watch on his arm. The conscious act of taking inventory quickly returned a sense of reality. As he pushed himself up, it all began to come back. The sleek, white corporate jet, the two goons holding his arms, the needle.
It was a hospital, he thought. He was lying on a hospital bed with the side rails up. But it didn't look like a hospital room, except for the bed. It was an expensive model with lots of fancy attachments. A wheelchair sat nearby. Actually, it appeared larger than the bedrooms in most houses. There was a massive old chest, a dresser with a mirror, two upholstered chairs covered in a flowery pattern and a wooden bookcase with glass doors.
He gently lowered one of the siderails and swung his legs over the side. The pull on his stomach muscles let him know he had not altogether recovered from the beating. Looking around the room, he saw a large wooden door at one end and a window at the other. There were two additional doors along a side wall. One was open, apparently leading to a bathroom. Thick beige carpet covered the floor.
He started walking toward the window and was briefly overcome by a dizziness that caused him to stumble against the chest. Whatever they had given him was pretty powerful stuff. He took a few deep breaths and moved on across to the lacy sheers that covered the window. Looking out, the distance to the ground seemed to indicate this was an upper floor, either second or third. Turning his gaze to the right, he saw a section of the structure jutting out at least ten feet farther than where he stood. It was white frame, with a peaked roof angling above the ceiling level. Judging by the two windows he could see, and the distance between them, it would have to be two stories with high ceilings. Glancing down, he saw patio furniture on a flagstone terrace that apparently adjoined the building. A broad, well-kept green lawn sloped down to a large lake. Several spacious homes could be seen across the lake in the far distance.
A walkway flanked by carefully manicured hedges ran back from the terrace, circled outward on either side of colorful flower plantings, then rejoined to continue on down to a wooden deck area that became a dock at lakeside. Two boats, one large, the other small, sat beside the dock. It might be a sanitarium, he thought. But sanitariums didn't have boat docks.
He walked unsteadily across to the bathroom. It contained a modern treatment of old style bathroom fixtures, massive tub with raised feet set into a tiled enclosure, large old sink with a vanity built around it. But something else had been added. Grab bars for a handicapped person. There was little else visible in the room but a wash cloth, towel, bar of soap and a plastic cup.
Back in the bedroom, Burke opened the door adjacent to the bath and found a large walk-in closet. A few long dresses hung on a rack. Everything else had been packed away, a few smaller gift-type boxes and several large corrugated containers bearing labels such as shoes, coats and dresses.
It suddenly hit him. This room had been occupied by an invalid. Apparently a woman, who must have died. The building was undoubtedly a large old frame house. Judging by the view toward the lake, it was a country estate, with all the seclusion and privacy that the term implied.
He closed the door and checked his watch. It was nearly one-thirty. The plane had picked him up at nine-thirty. That meant he had been out for nearly four hours. No doubt somebody would be in to check on him shortly. And this time the needle would be used to elicit answers to questions that would put Lori and Walt Brackin in jeopardy.
Somehow, he had to delay the questioning long enough to find a way out. Still a bit shaky from the dizziness, he sat back against the edge of the bed. As he did, he felt a twinge of nausea. The knock-out drug, he guessed. Then an idea began to take shape. He would play on the nausea angle. If he could induce vomiting, he would contrive a way to convince them that he needed a doctor's attention. That would give him a chance to see who he was dealing with and work to formulate an escape plan.
But what could he use to make him vomit? He might try poking a finger down his throat, but he had doubts about the feasibility of that route. Then he thought of the soap and the cup in the bathroom. He remembered once a fellow FBI agent had used soapy water to attempt recovery of evidence a suspect had swallowed. He hurried into the bathroom, ran hot water into the cup, then stirred the soap briskly until he had achieved an odious sudsy concoction. He gulped it down, nearly gagging, and tossed the cup into a wastebasket.
The reaction hit him sooner than expected. He got no farther than the middle of the bedroom before what remained of his sumptuous breakfast came spraying out onto the carpet like an erupting volcano. He stumbled back onto the bed just as the door leading out of the room banged open. Obviously someone outside had heard his retching.
Burke held his stomach and moaned as the man approached.
"Oh, shit, man! What have you done?"
Burke peeked through narrowed lids and saw a man with a wildly contorted face looking at the disagreeable mess. It was one of his fellow passengers from the jet, a stocky man with a nose that seemed a bit too much for the rest of his face. Burke moaned again and muttered, "My stomach. Something must've busted loose." He began to writhe and tremble. "On the island… beat me in the stomach." He continued to moan.
"Damn," the man said, and hurried back out the door, yelling, "Richard! Get the hell up here!"
A minute or so later, he returned with another man, the one who had wielded the needle on the plane. Burke kept up the moaning and shaking.
"What the shit?" Richard spoke in a rough, scratchy voice. "Somebody'll have to clean that up. The 'old man' said not to mess up the place." He shook his head in disgust.
"It's his stomach," said the other man. "Says they beat him in his stomach on the island. He thinks something's busted loose."
"I don't see any blood." Richard sounded skeptical.
"Ooohhh! Feels like my insides coming apart." Burke mumbled and groaned.
"Think we ought to get a doctor?"
"Hell no, I don't want to get a damned doctor," said Richard. "But the truth drug probably won’t work on him in this condition."
"What if something's ruptured? What if he's bleeding inside?"
"You and your damned 'what ifs.' You know what happened on the island. I'm not taking responsibility for any more screwups. Let's go call the 'old man.'"
Burke watched as they hurried out and closed the door. The sound of a lock clicking shut was followed by the fading away of voices. Besides an awful taste in his mouth, the soap and vomit routine hadn’t caused him any problems. Reaching the door with a few quick strides, he saw an old keyhole lock beneath the knob. The key had been left in the lock. Burke had grown up with this kind of lock at his home back in Missouri. He hesitated a moment, then raced back to the closet and dumped out the contents from one of the thin cardboard gift boxes. Tearing the sides apart, he folded them out to make a flat surface. Returning to the door, he slid the cardboard beneath it in the space cut away to clear the carpet.
With the ballpoint pen from his shirt pocket, he began poking at the keyhole, seeking to dislodge the key. He found it turned slightly in the lock. It wouldn't slide out. If only he had a paperclip. Then he had another thought, returned to the closet and found a metal clothes hanger. He twisted it apart and began digging and twisting at the key with the straight end. Finally it dropped back, hanging only by a small projection at the bottom of the key. One more gouge beneath it, and the heavy iron key plopped to the floor. Carefully, Burke pulled the cardboard with the key back under the door.