Last Run

by Hilary Norman

  ‘It’s me, Terri,’ Cathy said unexpectedly. ‘Sam doesn’t like talking about murders around me.’

  Grace and Sam looked at her, both startled.

  ‘It’s true,’ Cathy said. ‘He thinks he’s shielding me.’

  ‘Do you blame him, sweetheart?’ David asked gently.

  ‘Course not.’ Cathy got up, went over to Sam, and smiled up at him. ‘I love him even more for it.’

  ‘Nice.’ Terri watched them hug, felt everyone’s eyes flick towards her, checking for cynicism. ‘It’s OK, guys,’ she said. ‘I mean it.’ She shrugged. ‘I’m maybe a little jealous, but I think it’s great.’

  ‘If it’s love she’s after,’ Sam said to Grace later that evening in their bedroom, ‘she’s a lucky girl.’ He pulled his T-shirt up over his head. ‘Did you see Saul’s face when she said that? He’s just so nuts about her.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t he be?’ Grace said.

  They had covered all the reasons for Saul’s passion several times before, and Grace had grown annoyed with Sam for seeming to disparage Terri by implying that it was mostly down to her sex appeal and, perhaps, the fact that at twenty-two, Terri was more experienced. They both knew that it was her career that disturbed Sam most.

  ‘Your trouble,’ Grace had told him months ago, ‘is that you’ve typecast Saul as the gentle doctor.’

  ‘It’s what he is,’ Sam had argued.

  ‘It’s only part of what he may well become,’ Grace had pointed out. ‘And whatever that is, it doesn’t dictate who Saul’s going to fall in love with, any more than you ought to.’

  ‘Is that how you see me?’ Sam had been upset. ‘A dictator?’

  ‘You’re a protective older brother. Almost as daunting in its way.’

  Sam had done his best since then to warm to Terri, hoped he made her feel welcome in their home, but he still felt generally edgy around her, and her questions this evening about the Muller case hadn’t helped.

  ‘She should know better,’ he said now, sitting on the bed, ‘than to pump me for information.’

  ‘She didn’t exactly pump you.’ Grace sat down behind him, reached up to rub his neck, trying to ease out some of his tension. ‘Besides, Cathy was right, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Sure she was,’ Sam admitted, shutting his eyes, loving how his wife’s hands made him feel. ‘I make no excuses for trying to protect our daughter.’

  ‘Nor should you.’ Grace went on gently kneading. ‘But I think it’s natural for Terri to jump at the chance to ask you questions.’ Tired and feeling the baby shift, she stopped massaging, stood up and went across to her dressing table. ‘Not that she got any answers.’

  ‘She shouldn’t, by rights, have known about Pompano Beach.’

  ‘The cleaner?’ Grace sat down. ‘Something you were keeping under wraps?’

  Sam shook his head. ‘Probably not even connected.’

  Grace pulled a tissue from a box, eyed him through her mirror. ‘You’re not worried that Terri might be with Saul partly to get to you?’

  ‘Not for a minute.’ Sam looked shocked.

  ‘Only she’s told you she wants a transfer to Violent Crimes, and—’

  ‘And I told her first time she mentioned it there was nothing I could do for her.’ Sam’s grin was rueful. ‘Face it, if it was influential pals she was after, she picked the wrong family.’

  ‘Stupid of me, anyway.’ Grace felt ashamed. ‘Terri’s with Saul because he’s a beautiful person and she’s lucky to have him.’

  ‘Maybe I was too rough on her.’ Sam said, remembering what Terri had told them earlier. ‘Did Saul ever tell you about her father?’

  Grace shook her head. ‘He wouldn’t break her confidence that way.’

  Sam thought about his younger brother and smiled. ‘Makes her luckier than ever to have found Saul, don’t you think?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Grace said.

  Chapter Five

  August 13

  During the first three months of her potentially fragile pregnancy, Grace had cut right back on work, hardly needing, for once, to be persuaded to do so either by Sam or David or any of her team of loving, frequently nagging supporters.

  The ‘team’ reduced, in fact. Teddy Lopez, her former housekeeper and good friend, had moved to Los Angeles with a new lover eighteen months ago. Dora Rabinovitch, her part-time office manager, had taken early retirement six months prior to that. And Claudia Brownley, her sister, had upped sticks with her family and relocated to Seattle where Daniel, her architect husband, had chosen to set up his new practice.

  That last departure had left by far the greatest void. She and Claudia still spoke at least once a week, which was little different to when her sister had lived down in the Keys, except in those days Grace had known she could hop in the car and go visit with Claudia, Daniel and their boys. Five thousand-plus miles and a three-hour time difference, however, had made Grace feel not only cut off, but also, more disturbingly, almost remote.

  Especially disturbing because she knew, whatever Claudia said to the contrary, that she had failed to settle happily in her new home. That something about her new life reminded her of their lousy childhood and teens in Chicago; that Claudia missed sunshine and palm trees and the ocean and, most of all, the sister who had instigated their escape to Florida all those years ago.

  ‘Any time you feel like making the trip,’ Daniel had said before they’d left, ‘you know your room’s going to be ready and waiting.’

  Grace knew her brother-in-law had meant it, but the reality was that even before this pregnancy she had found being Cathy’s mother a full-time responsibility. Not to mention being the wife of a frequently overworked police detective and a psychologist with a still busy practice.

  ‘You don’t charge them enough,’ Dora had chastised her before she had been diagnosed with glaucoma and decided to quit. ‘Their parents take advantage.’

  ‘This isn’t a business,’ Grace had reminded her, and Dora had picked up a folder of bills due for payment and given her boss a glare to remind her that she might be the doctor, but it was Dora who kept the ship afloat.

  Things were different with Lucia Busseto running the office. Another mature, nurturing woman – Italian mama instead of Jewish mother – but less outspoken than Dora and decidedly more respectful of Grace’s patients’ privacy, even around the practice.

  Every bit as vocal, though, when it came to nagging her employer about taking proper care of herself, which meant that now, in her seventh month, ‘Team Grace’ was still pretty solid, though the mother-to-be was allowing herself to feel more optimistic and generally available to her patients.

  ‘At least,’ Lucia had reasoned with her last month, ‘keep your weekend rule.’

  Office hours, Mondays to Fridays only.

  ‘Barring emergencies,’ Grace had said.

  ‘If they’ve survived weekends without you till now, Dr Lucca,’ Lucia had insisted, ‘they can carry on till you and the baby are over the birth.’

  Grace had to admit that she liked the sound of that.

  Sam, too.

  He helped his wife every way he could, rubbed her back, carried for her, cooked for her when she let him, reassured her. He kissed and stroked her belly, spoke to the boy-child within her every day, sang lullabies to him at night in his softest baritone, which Grace loved because Sam’s other off-duty passion was amateur opera, something he’d managed in the past to squeeze into his spare time, regularly singing with S-BOP, a South Beach group.

  They’d offered him Figaro in their next production, and ordinarily he’d have grabbed it, but he’d turned the role down this time because home was where he wanted to be right now as much as possible, taking care of his wife, fretting silently about the baby’s safety, always quietly fearful too of letting them down some way.

  One child, his sweet baby boy, long dead and gone and not his fault, whatever his ex-wife Althea had believed, yet that searingly painful boomerang of blame still regularly
looped its way back to Sam, forcing him to relive and examine the tragedy over and over.

  Not the same.

  He reminded himself of that frequently, too, because this was his new life and Grace was the antithesis of Althea; he told himself that this son, once healthily – God willing – delivered into their arms, their care, would be kept as perfectly safe as humanly possible.

  Not like Sampson. Not the same. Please God.

  Grace had always agreed with the maxim that rules were made to be broken.

  Lucia Busseto’s idea that weekends be kept for family and rest was a fine one that she had no argument with. But there were always exceptions.

  It was three months since Grace had seen young Gregory Hoffman, and in the two or so years that he had been her patient, his mother Annie had never struck Grace as overdramatic or hysterical. On the telephone at a minute after nine that Saturday morning, however, Annie Hoffman had sounded near the end of her rope because not only had Gregory – now fourteen – woken screaming from nightmares for the past two nights, but he was also, according to Annie, jittery and wrecked.

  ‘And I don’t think he’s been using,’ Annie had answered Grace’s unspoken question. ‘Though there’s no way to be sure, is there?’

  ‘You’ve both tried talking to him?’

  ‘Jay sat down with him after dinner last night,’ Annie said. ‘Greg hardly said a word. He’s been that way for days, Grace, almost as if he can’t speak, except he can, at least to tell us to leave him alone.’

  ‘Normal teenager,’ Grace said, gently.

  ‘Not this,’ Annie said. ‘He looks sick, Grace.’

  ‘You sure he isn’t?’

  ‘Not in the sense that your father-in-law could deal with,’ Annie said.

  It was David who had first recommended Grace to the Hoffmans.

  ‘Has Greg said he’d like to speak to me?’ Grace asked.

  ‘Not exactly,’ Annie admitted. ‘But he’s always confided in you in the past.’

  ‘Not always,’ Grace reminded her. ‘And even if he does tell me what’s wrong, no quick solutions, remember, Annie?’

  ‘We know the score,’ Annie said. ‘Grace, will you see him, please?’

  ‘Of course I will,’ Grace said.

  ‘Today?’ the other woman said quickly. ‘I know it’s the weekend, and I hate imposing, but something is terribly wrong with him, I just know it.’

  Grace took a second. Sam was already out working the homicide, and Cathy was planning a run followed by a trip to the Aventura Mall.

  ‘Noon,’ she said.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Annie’s voice was loaded with gratitude.

  ‘I just hope I can help,’ Grace said.

  She was dismayed when she saw the teenager get out of his mother’s Mercedes, nod a farewell to her and walk up the short white stone path between the palms to her front door.

  His walk was the first thing that troubled her. Nervy body language with hunched shoulders, yet not in a belligerent teen manner; something different, odder, about it.

  ‘Hi, doc,’ he said as she opened the door.

  Closer up, he looked sick. He was tanned enough, but the pallor beneath was noticeable and he was gaunter than she could remember ever having seen him.

  Annie had made a point of saying, though, that her son was not sick.

  ‘Hello, Greg.’ Grace had a sudden impulse to embrace him, but gave him her hand instead. His grip was firm enough, but his skin felt cold, and he did not, as usual, meet her eyes, and she realized as Woody trotted up to greet him that the boy was using the dog as an excuse to look away from her.

  Afraid, perhaps, she felt, of what she might see in his face.

  Grace waved at Annie, just driving away, and closed the front door.

  ‘Deck?’ She knew Gregory had always felt more peaceful by the water.

  ‘Sure,’ he said.

  His voice had broken since the last time she’d seen him professionally.

  A young man now.

  ‘Something to drink?’ she offered.

  He shook his head.

  They left Woody inside, in the air-conditioning, and made themselves comfortable out on the deck on brightly cushioned cane chairs.

  ‘Still no Sunfish,’ Gregory said, after a moment.

  ‘No.’ Grace smiled. ‘Not sure I’d squeeze into one right now.’

  ‘When’s your baby due, doc?’ he asked.

  ‘A few months to go,’ she said.

  She had mentioned to him once, in their early days of therapy, that she’d often had a fancy for one of those tiny sailboats, offering it to Gregory as evidence of at least one pleasure in common. She hadn’t told him about a man named Hayman, who had once taken her on a terrifying sailboat ride, more than taking the edge off her appetite for the open seas, but Grace was aware that the troubled boy loved spending time out on the Pegasus, the Catalina yacht his parents kept moored outside their home on Dumfoundling Bay.

  Common ground between therapist and patient by no means a requirement, but with some more reticent youngsters, Grace had found over the years that it could sometimes assist the opening up of communication.

  ‘Have you guys taken the Pegasus out much this summer?’ she asked now.

  ‘Some,’ Gregory answered.

  He was a good-looking boy, brown-haired with long-lashed eyes and a wide, sensitive mouth. Grace had witnessed the gradual return of those looks – lost for a time to the ravages of drugs – and had shared the Hoffmans’ tentative relief as the joint forces of rehab, counselling and love had won that battle and returned the nice, sweet-faced kid to his bewildered parents and baby sister, Janie.

  The battle but not the war, apparently.

  She saw what Annie had meant. There was a haunted look in Gregory’s eyes that Grace found quite alarming, that made her wonder if Gregory might not have graduated to something far more mind-altering than marijuana or cocaine.

  ‘Your mom is worried about you,’ she said.

  Up front, the way she preferred it. Beginning again.

  ‘I know,’ Gregory said.

  Grace waited, watched his face turn away, the eyes appearing to gaze out over the water, but not really seeing, she thought.

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ he said.

  ‘Take your time,’ Grace said. ‘You know the score.’

  ‘I did,’ Gregory said. ‘This isn’t the same.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t want to be rude, doc’ He was still facing the water.

  ‘I don’t take offence, Greg. You know that.’

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘But like I said, this is different.’

  Grace waited again. ‘Why is it different, Greg?’

  He shook his head. ‘I’m tired.’

  ‘I can see that,’ Grace said. ‘Not sleeping?’

  Gregory looked at her for a second. ‘She told you about the dreams.’

  ‘Your mother told me you’ve been waking up very upset.’

  He exhaled briefly, a sound that might have been cynical or impatient or despairing, hard to be sure which.

  ‘It might help if you tell me,’ Grace said.

  ‘I can’t,’ Gregory said.

  She said nothing, sat still, felt the baby move, controlled the impulse to lay a hand over her abdomen, wanting nothing to disturb the pause.

  ‘Aren’t you going to ask me if I’m back on dope?’ he asked.

  ‘Are you?’

  He shrugged.

  In the silence, the baby moved again, pressing on her bladder.

  Not now, Grace told herself and her son.

  ‘I don’t want to be here,’ Gregory said.

  ‘OK,’ Grace said.

  The baby wriggled again, the pressure relieved.

  ‘So can I go?’ Gregory asked.

  ‘Of course,’ Grace answered. ‘We can call your mom.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I can take the bus.’

  ‘I’ll have to call,’ Grace said
.

  ‘It’s OK,’ he said, resigned. ‘I’ll stay. So long as you know I’m not going to tell you anything.’

  ‘It’s up to you,’ Grace said evenly.

  ‘It isn’t just the dreams,’ Gregory said. ‘I can cope with them. It’s the waking stuff I can’t take.’

  Hope surged in Grace of a real beginning, but then, abruptly, he stood up.

  ‘I’m sorry, doc,’ he said. ‘I wish I could tell you, but I can’t.’

  ‘I hope you know you can trust me, Greg,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said.

  Hope melted away.

  Chapter Six

  A little wariness, even prickliness at first, had emanated from Detective Dave Rowan from the Broward County Sheriff’s homicide unit when Sam had first made contact about the Pompano Beach killing, though things had eased up when he and Martinez had gone up there to talk.

  Sam understood cops who preferred to protect their more challenging cases, guessed he’d been guilty of that too a couple of times in the past when the FDLE – the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the agency with state-wide jurisdiction – had first stepped in to help and then taken over a Miami Beach investigation. He had known at the time that it was probably the right thing, but still, when a team had run with a case for a while, had done all the donkey work and was anticipating actually getting someplace, it could be a little hard to take.

  No suspects in the Pompano Beach killing, nothing to convincingly tie the murder of Carmelita Sanchez to that of Rudolph Muller. Nothing, that was, other than the beach setting, which meant little, and the bludgeoning before cutting.

  ‘With a baseball bat,’ Martinez said later.

  No sports fan, neither as a player nor spectator, he had long regarded bats as potential weapons, had set his sights on the missing bat as the piece of proof they most needed to locate in order to link these two cases.

  ‘Possible baseball bat.’ Sam had reiterated Sanders’s report.

  A few minute fragments of wood had been embedded in Carmelita Sanchez’s forehead. Of ash, the Broward County ME had reported, but since most wooden baseball bats in the US were made from ash, that had rendered the evidence of minimal use to the sheriff’s office. The same applied to the finding of alcohol and linseed oil residue, both of which simply meant that the owner of the bat had – at least until it had been used as a club – liked to take care of it.