Only almost.
At six p.m., Sam called to say that he was going to be late. Paper work, he growled into the phone, that was all Sergeant Kovac had him working on: reports, statistics and more damned reports. All part of the chief’s rich disciplinary tapestry, Sam told Grace, and Kovac loved it – it was probably the departmental version of a dozen Hail Marys, but who the hell knew if Sam Becket was ever going to get absolution.
‘You okay, Gracie?’
‘I’m great. How’s the back holding up?’
‘Sore from too much deskwork.’
‘You’re just itching for action,’ she told him.
‘I know what I’m itching for,’ Sam said. ‘I gotta go – Kovac’s looking for any excuse to get the cap to chew my ass some more. If I don’t watch out, they’ll give me the graveyard shift.’
‘Don’t worry about us,’ Grace said. ‘Cathy and I are fine. She’s been for her run and we’re going to have some supper and hang out.’
‘I’ll be home soon as I can, but don’t wait up.’
‘So long as you promise to wake me when you do get in,’ Grace said.
Less than a half-hour later, Grace’s line rang again, and it was the admissions clerk over at Miami General telling her that one of her patients, Joey Miller, whom she and his parents already knew to be a pyromaniac in the making, had been admitted with third-degree bums, and was asking to see her.
Grace told Cathy what had happened.
‘I won’t go if you’d rather I stayed home with you,’ she said.
‘You have to go,’ she said.
‘I don’t if you’re not happy with being alone,’ Grace told her firmly. ‘There are other people who could see this boy, and I could catch up with him tomorrow.’
‘But he asked for you, didn’t he?’
‘Yes, he did.’
‘Then you have to go,’ she said again. ‘Anyway, I won’t be alone – I’ll have Harry for company.’
‘Are you sure, Cathy?’
‘I know what that’s like,’ the girl said, softly. ‘I remember how glad I was to see you when I was in that place.’
Grace reached for her hand, and Cathy let her squeeze it, though she didn’t squeeze back. Grace let her go again.
‘I’ll write my cellular number on the pad by the phone in the den,’ she said, ‘and if you can’t reach me on that, the hospital number’s in the book. Call me if you want me.’ Grace paused. ‘And you can get Sam, too, any time.’
‘He’s busy,’ Cathy said.
‘He’ll be there for you if you need him, Cathy.’
Cathy didn’t answer.
Chapter Seventy-five
Cathy was heating up a bowl of home-made minestrone in Grace’s microwave oven when she heard the doorbell, followed by Harry’s barking.
‘Who is it, guy?’
She went to the front door, looked through the spy-hole, recognized her caller and opened the door. ‘This is really weird, you know – I was just thinking about you.’
Eric Parés stood on the threshold, tall, trim and elegantly casual in chinos and, in spite of the warm night, a navy blue blazer. ‘Hello, Cathy. May I come in?’
‘Sure you can.’ Cathy stepped back to let him through, and closed the door. Harry trotted forward, sniffed at the visitor’s slacks and loafers.
‘Is this an inconvenient time?’ Parés asked. ‘Is Dr Lucca preparing dinner for you? I smell cooking.’
‘It’s just some soup I was heating up,’ Cathy told him. ‘Dr Lucca had to go out on an emergency. There’s no one else here.’
‘You’re all alone?’
‘That’s no problem,’ she said.
‘You shouldn’t be alone in the evenings,’ the doctor said.
‘I never have been till tonight,’ Cathy reassured him. ‘Grace has been fantastic – when the hospital called, she said she didn’t want to go, but I told her she had to.’ She paused. ‘I wasn’t expecting you, was I? I mean, I hadn’t forgotten you said you were coming or anything?’
‘Not at all,’ Parés told her. ‘I was in the neighbourhood, and I wanted to bring you some new vitamins.’
‘Really?’ Cathy was surprised. ‘I still have plenty left.’
‘Not like these.’ The doctor took an envelope out of his blazer pocket. ‘These are new and enriched – a great improvement on what I gave you before.’ He stooped to look into her face. ‘You’re looking strained, Cathy.’
‘I’m okay,’ she said.
‘Are you really?’ Parés looked concerned. ‘I would be very upset to think you were slipping back.’ He held up the envelope. ‘All the more reason for you to start on these new capsules immediately.’
‘You mean now, before dinner? I’ve been taking the others at bedtime and first thing.’
‘These can be taken now, before food,’ the doctor told her. ‘And then, if you have a little time, perhaps we could do a little more deep relaxation, and you can show me how well you’re managing your self-hypnosis.’
‘Oh,’ Cathy said. ‘Okay.’ She remembered the soup. ‘Would you like some minestrone? It’s Grace’s own, homemade – it’s really good.’
Parés shook his head. ‘Not for me, Cathy. But you go ahead – take two of the capsules first, though.’
‘No, it’s okay,’ Cathy said. She didn’t much like the idea of eating the soup while the doctor waited so they could do the relaxation exercises afterward. She’d really been looking forward to having the house to herself for once – she’d planned on eating in front of the tube with Harry – he was the best company, and he didn’t expect anything of her . . . Still, maybe if she got the hypnosis stuff over and done with, she could get rid of Doc Parés and then have a while alone before Cathy or Sam got home.
‘Where can we go that’s comfortable?’ the doctor asked her.
‘There’s the living room or the lanai,’ Cathy suggested.
‘Or maybe we should go to your room and you could lie on the bed,’ Parés said, ‘and then perhaps when we’re through, you could go straight off to sleep.’ He looked at her face again. ‘You look as if you could use some early nights, too, Cathy.’
She shrugged. It was no skin off her nose where she did his exercises, though if Parés thought she was going to go right off to sleep when he was gone like some little kid, he was mistaken. She’d had enough of obeying orders, and more than enough of lock-down and lights-out to last her a lifetime.
Still, the hypnosis was usually pretty cool, and the doc had been right when he’d told her she’d feel really calm and in control afterwards. She always did.
They went upstairs.
Chapter Seventy-six
When Grace got home, a little after ten-thirty, she found Cathy sound asleep in bed.
Harry seemed even happier than usual to see her, bouncing up and down, following her up the staircase and making the small, piercing sounds of joy that were generally reserved for when Grace had been away on a trip without him.
‘What’s up with you?’ She picked him up, but he wriggled, so Grace put him back down again. ‘Did you think I was leaving you?’
She went to her bedroom – now, of course, or at least for the time being, their room, hers and Sam’s – to take off her clothes and run the shower so it would be hot when she stepped in. Some people swore by cold showers, especially in the humid Florida climate, but hot water still worked best for Grace.
She was drying off when, from downstairs, she heard the front door close. For just a second Grace froze – and then, just another split second before she heard Sam’s voice, she remembered that she’d given him a spare key.
‘Gracie, I’m ho-ome!’ he sang out in his best Ricky Ricardo style as he came up the stairs.
Grace came out of the bedroom wearing her towel.
‘Great outfit.’ Sam wrapped her in a major bear-hug.
‘You’re earlier than I thought you’d be,’ she told him.
‘Is that a complaint?’
‘
Are you kidding?’ They kissed, long and hard. ‘I only just got home myself.’
She told him in the kitchen, over a glass of red and a couple of omelettes, about the call from Miami General, and about Joey Miller, who’d been in pretty bad shape when she’d gotten there to see him, though awful as it was to find a young boy in so much pain and terror, a part of her had registered that an early burning accident – one that might have been infinitely worse, as it turned out – might just possibly be the kind of chastening experience that could stop Joey’s career as an arsonist before it really got started.
‘Your back’s bad, isn’t it?’ She could see him shifting around, trying to get comfortable. ‘What’s your chair like at the office?’
‘Forget it,’ Sam said, cutting off the thought. ‘If you think Hernandez is about to fork over for special needs furniture for me right now, you’re crazier than I thought you were.’
‘I didn’t know you thought I was crazy.’
‘Did you or did you not let me move in with you?’
‘I guess I did,’ Grace said.
‘Crazy,’ Sam diagnosed.
‘For the time being,’ she qualified.
‘And then what? You figure I’m going to be easy to get rid of?’ He shook his head. ‘Definitely crazy.’
They took Harry for a walk, then got ready for bed.
‘Don’t forget your medication,’ Grace reminded Sam just before he climbed in beside her.
‘I don’t need medication – I have you to rub my back.’
‘You can have both. You need both.’
‘You sound like a wife,’ Sam remarked on his way to the bathroom.
‘You sound like a big kid.’
He came back a couple of moments later. ‘Now you get to rub my back.’
‘Only if I get a massage, too,’ she told him.
‘Any time,’ he said, and got in bed with her.
‘Where’s Harry?’ Grace asked, suddenly.
‘Probably boycotting me.’
‘Shall I go find him?’
‘Only after you’ve healed my back,’ Sam said.
They thought they were going to make love. As it turned out, halfway through rubbing Sam’s back, Grace realized he was already two-thirds asleep and that she wasn’t far behind him.
‘Sweet dreams, Sam,’ she said, softly.
‘You, too, Gracie.’
Chapter Seventy-seven
He had watched, listened and waited.
It had taken forever for them to finish their food and wine and wash their dishes and take the damned dog for his walk, and then it had taken another eternity for them to get themselves into their bed.
Black and white.
Black Jew cop, white Guinea shrink. The kind of people who were allowed to take charge of young girls. Instead of their own father.
Another obscenity.
He’d gotten very good at waiting. He’d gotten good at a whole lot of things over the years, had refined many useful skills, but maybe the ability to wait, patiently, stoically, was his greatest gift. He could wait out a tortoise in a marathon if he wanted to.
He could wait forever for the right payback.
It wasn’t as if he hadn’t had fun along the way. Oh, he’d had heaps of fun. It hadn’t been what they’d had in mind for him – not that bitch and her daughter. Bitch kitty and baby kitty. One dead now, the other having it tough.
About to get tougher.
Nothing she didn’t deserve.
She’d screwed it all up for him, after all. From conception through to rejection. Her doing, as much as her mother’s.
Bitch kitty’s sister had called him a power maniac. Because he liked being in control of his wife and child. He showed her who was in charge when the time was right.
He’d had plenty of time to think about power. Everyone wanted it. Not just the strong or rich or wicked. You saw it everyday, everyplace, in all shapes and sizes. The infant, controlling its mother. The adolescent tyrant. The raging teenager. User of sexuality. Hungry lion flexing his jaws in the cities. Workaholic exec driving her staff to breakdown. Bus driver slamming his door on a latecomer. Judge dispensing justice. So-called justice. Moaning wife. Sick patient.
The desire for control was a human need. No one was too young or too old. They all craved it, all used it. It was just that some were better at using it than others.
Control. Power.
He loved it all right.
He’d watched, listened and waited some more.
And now they were all sleeping.
Even the mutt, thanks to him.
He began to move, quietly, from his hiding place, into the main body of the house. Even in the dark, he knew his way. He’d been here a few times now, and he’d always had a razor-sharp memory for detail. So he knew where the kitchen table was and the chairs, and the doorknobs and handles, knew where each creaking floorboard was on the staircase.
His heart was pumping. He was sweating just a little.
It felt great.
His feet were silent on rubber soles as he passed the sleeping dog and entered the girl’s room.
She was dreaming, eyelids, arms and hands moving.
Bad dreams. He knew that for sure. Awful nightmares. The kind of wild, crazed, violent dreams likely to assault an individual who’d taken a large enough dose of methylphenidate mixed with diazepam.
It was exactly as he’d calculated.
Soon, very soon now, she would wake up, and if he’d got the dosage right – and he always did, didn’t he? – she would be someplace between a trance and a full-blown, paranoid psychotic state.
He bent over and whispered into her left ear.
A little something he’d prepared earlier. Courtesy of good old Aesop.
‘Enemies’ promises are made to be broken.’
She stirred. Her eyelashes fluttered.
‘Grace and Sam don’t believe in you anymore,’ he told her. ‘It’s just a matter of time now until they put you back in jail.’
She moaned, stirred again.
‘Unless you stop them,’ he said into her ear. ‘You can stop them, Cathy. You know you can.’ He paused, one more time. ‘You have to stop them, Cathy, before they destroy you.’
With his latex-gloved right hand, he took the scalpel out of his blazer pocket, and placed it in her hand, closed her fingers around it.
And stepped back into the shadows.
Cathy woke up, shuddering, sweating, heart hammering.
She sat up. Slid her feet out of bed and on to the floor.
Stood up.
The scalpel fell out of her hand. She stared down at it.
‘Pick it up, Cathy.’
The voice came out of the darkness, out of the night.
‘Pick it up, Cathy.’
She picked it up. It felt cool in her hand. Smooth.
‘Now go and do what you have to, Cathy.’
She couldn’t tell if the voice was in her head or coming out of the walls. Her heart was pounding so hard it was hurting her. There was a great pressure inside her skull, in her brain.
‘It hurts,’ she whimpered.
‘They’re your enemies, Cathy,’ the voice told her.
She put her hand, with the scalpel, up to her temple. She thought her head was going to burst. ‘But it hurts.’
‘Go and finish them, Cathy, and the pain will stop.’
‘But I—’
‘Now, Cathy. Do it to them before they do it to you.’ Pause. ‘It’s your last chance, Cathy. Your only chance.’
He watched as she lowered her hand from her head, still gripping the scalpel, and turned towards the door.
She moved slowly. He could see her trembling from where he stood.
Watching.
Waiting.
Chapter Seventy-eight
Grace didn’t know what woke her.
It could have been the door opening, or the movement towards the bed.
It might have been the small whisper of
wind fanning her face as the scalpel drove down in a perfect arc towards her naked throat.
The brain works in mysterious ways.
She felt the air, saw the blade in the light from the window, jerked her head to the right as she registered the danger. The blade missed her neck and sliced into her shoulder instead.
She screamed.
Sam, lying beside her, groaned but didn’t move.
Grace screamed again.
And managed to hit the light switch.
Cathy was standing motionless beside the bed, a scalpel covered in Grace’s blood still in her right hand.
‘Cathy?’
Grace could see from the immense pupils and confusion in the young woman’s blue eyes that she was drugged. Not sleepwalking, Grace registered for the record, and wasn’t that nuts, slipping into shrink-mode now?
‘Sam.’ She pushed at his back with her right elbow, not taking her eyes off Cathy’s face for a second. ‘Sam.’
‘Don’t stop now, Cathy.’
A man was walking into the room. A stranger.
Tall, slim, dark-eyed, with receding black hair and a tidy beard.
‘You have to go on, Cathy,’ he told her. ‘You have to finish it now. You’ll never have another chance if you don’t do it now, believe me.’
Cathy wasn’t looking at him, but Grace could see her eyes reacting, moving rapidly, the irises flicking wildly back and forth.
They’re your enemies, Cathy,’ the man told her in his soft, husky, compelling voice.
Grace knew who he was.
The accent was gone, but she knew this was Eric Parés, purveyor of vitamins and relaxation therapies – and that had to be why Sam wasn’t waking up, because Parés had been in the house and had put something in Sam’s anti-inflammatory pills – and Christ knew what he’d given Harry, too, because otherwise the terrier would have been barking his head off by now.
Mind Games Page 38
