Hell (31 page)

And that, it seemed to him, was an even greater risk.

He left Key Biscayne early, called Martinez en route.

‘I'm taking a sick day,' he said. ‘Need you to cover for me.'

‘You're going to Naples,' his partner said. ‘You don't want to do that.'

‘I have no choice,' Sam said.

‘Call Wagner,' Martinez said again.

‘And tell him what?' Sam said. ‘I need to know why she came.'

‘Probably because she hates you, man.'

‘Of course she hates me,' Sam said, ‘but she wanted to talk.'

‘Maybe she wanted to shoot your stubborn ass,' Martinez said.

Sam smiled. ‘I don't think that's her style, though I could be wrong.'

‘Jesus,' Martinez said.

His thoughts raced all the way back along Alligator Alley, part of the same journey he'd taken with his father a couple of weeks back, and he could only hope for a better outcome. He remembered what Grace had said after he'd screwed up the last interview with Cooper; that thing about them both having lost their direction and self-control. And he wasn't sure if his judgement was any less skewed today than it had been then, only that he felt – knew – that he had no viable alternative but to try.

He was standing on the sidewalk outside the offices of the Stephen L. Jacks Foundation on 6th Avenue North, when Gina Bianchi arrived at ten to nine. She did not see him until she was about fifteen feet away.

She stopped dead, and her face froze.

And then she shook her head with real violence, and came toward him.

‘I'm sorry,' Sam said.

‘You will be,' she said.

He registered the threat, knew he had to get past it somehow, knew he had to get through to her here and now, outside on this concrete sidewalk.

‘You came to me first,' he said.

‘I did not come to you,' Gina Bianchi said.

‘I think you changed your mind,' Sam said. ‘But I had the strongest feeling that you'd come to Miami Beach because you had something to tell me.'

‘You were wrong,' she said, and started to turn.

‘My wife is going to be in court this Friday.'

She turned back. ‘Because she killed my brother.' Her voice was low, but the rage still burned.

‘And she's ripping herself apart because of it, and she is— we are both so deeply sorry for you and your parents. I nearly lost my own brother a few years ago, and words don't cover how that felt, so I can only begin to imagine your loss.'

Two men in suits passed them on their way into the building, and one of them glanced, first at Gina, then at Sam.

‘The truth is Grace believed that he was going to kill her,' Sam said. ‘Even worse, from her standpoint, she believed he was going to harm a young frightened boy.' Barely hanging on here, and he knew it. ‘And I think you came to Miami because you might have found out something important.'

‘I'm going inside,' she said. ‘I'm late.'

‘Just one more minute.' Desperate man. ‘After that, I'm gone.'

She shook her head. ‘One minute and
I'm
gone.' She raised her wrist, checked her watch.

‘Thank you,' he said.

‘You're wasting time.'

On the clock.

‘I'm not asking you to make a decision right now, Ms Bianchi, because if you have found out something disturbing, I imagine—'

The expression in her eyes halted him, was harder, angrier.

Though maybe that was good news, because if he'd been wrong about this, if she'd found out nothing, then she would surely have ended this immediately, either have slapped him again or just told him to get lost and walk away.

Clutching at straws.

‘If you don't want to tell me – and maybe I'm the last person you would tell – but if there is anything you're not sure about, just the smallest doubt, then please, I beg you, tell
someone
before it's too late for my wife, for our little boy.'

She raised her watch again.

‘I know you have every reason to hate us.' He sped up. ‘But my wife's whole life is about trying to help people, and I'm watching guilt consume her, and I am scared as hell for her. Just as you must be scared for your parents, if the truth comes out.'

He took a step back, both hands up in surrender.

‘You've listened,' he said. ‘For that alone, I'm very grateful.'

Gina Bianchi stood in silence for a moment.

‘What will happen to you,' she asked, finally, ‘when I report this to your superiors?'

‘Trouble,' Sam said. ‘A heap of it, I imagine.'

‘You've been a detective a long time.'

‘Yes, I have.'

‘You like your work.'

‘I love my work.' Sam paused. ‘Most of the time.'

‘Then perhaps you should have thought twice,' she said.

And she turned, and walked into the building.

Sam waited another moment, and then he headed slowly back to the parking lot beside the building, got into the Saab.

He started the engine.

Grace's face came back to him, the way she'd looked in court at her arraignment. The whiteness of her face, the fear in her eyes.

The fear he'd seen too many times since then.

‘Oh, God,' he said, softly.

And then he put his hands on the wheel, laid his face against them.

He'd achieved nothing, had only made it worse.

Nothing more to do now than wait.

FORTY-SIX

June 11

‘
A
ll rise. Court is now in session. Judge Arthur Brazen presiding.'

Last night, for the first time, Grace had asked Sam what he knew about the judge, and Sam had said that he was reputed to be a fair man.

The same word Wagner had used when she'd asked him. ‘Fair.'

A fair judge would have to find against a woman who had run down a man in cold blood.

Grace had thought she was trembling inside when she'd got out of bed this morning.

Forget trembling.

This felt more like 7.5 on the Richter scale.

It had begun.

Grace, sitting beside Wagner, looked around the courtroom, trying to still the buzzing in her ears, to slow the pounding of her heart.

The room seemed larger and more impressive than the one in which she'd been arraigned. The wood more highly polished, the judge more loftily elevated, presiding over the court.

Over her.

She took in the area where a jury would sit at her actual trial, suppressed a shudder, looked away; took in the two witness boxes, one on either side of the judge's bench, one presently occupied by the court clerk.

A court reporter sat at a table below the bench.

Grace looked up at the two flags behind Judge Brazen. The state flag, emblazoned with its large red ‘X' and the state seal with its brilliant sun, palmetto tree, steamboat sailing, and Seminole woman scattering flowers. She thought about all that Florida had done for her and Claudia, the freedom that their escape into sunlight had brought them.

She looked away, past the judge, to the American flag, tried to recall the symbolism of red, white and blue, could remember only blue for justice and . . .

Panic seized her, and she tore her gaze away, and now she was searching for her family on the public benches, but there were so many more people here today than at the arraignment, more strangers . . .

She found them, the ones she needed, and Cathy looked scared, but Sam's eyes were on her, loving and supportive, and suddenly she wanted to weep, so instead she stared down at her hands in her lap, but they felt numb, as if they did not belong to her, and panic surged again . . .

‘You're OK,' she heard Jerry Wagner say, very quietly.

Her eyes traveled, at last, to where she was most afraid to look.

At a blonde woman and a dark-haired man, both in black.

Josephine and Robert Bianchi.

No one with them who looked like their daughter, Gina.

Sam had told her on Tuesday evening about his visit, and Grace had seen his wretchedness and had consoled him, had told him she understood that he had felt he needed to try. And if Gina Bianchi had reported him to the department, the repercussions had not yet been forthcoming, though maybe Captain Kennedy was being kind, waiting till today was over.

Richard Bianchi's parents looked back at her now, their hatred searing.

No forgiveness in them.

Or in herself.

More shame from the bottomless well.

‘Grace,' Wagner said, softly. ‘Focus.'

She looked back at him, at his eyes, not piercing now, but calm and kindly, and she knew she had to grab on to that, knew there was no escaping from this process, and someone was speaking, though she could not quite hear because of the pounding in her ears.

She thought of Pete Mankowitz and his panic attacks.

‘Breathe,' she'd always told him.

When she was still his psychologist.

Breathe.

Easier said.

She knew that now.

Poor Pete.

Judge Arthur Brazen was speaking.

‘For those of you unfamiliar with what goes on at pretrial hearings, the way I sometimes like to look at it is as a last chance saloon for both sides to find a way to reach a resolution before we go forward for a long, torturous and costly trial.' He paused. ‘There's no jury, so I get to make all the decisions, the most important of which is whether or not there's sufficient probable cause to go ahead.'

Breathe
, Grace instructed herself again.

The judge looked at Elena Alonso, the prosecuting attorney, a stocky woman with short, wavy highlighted hair, dressed in a dark suit.

‘Go,' he said.

Testimonies began.

A police officer was first, one of those who'd come to the scene on the evening of Richard Bianchi's death.

Then Sara Mankowitz, who did not once look at Grace.

Poor Sara
, Grace thought, knowing that Pete's mother had no alternative but to tell it as she had seen it.

Then one of the people Sara had brought back with her from the highway: the husband of the woman who'd looked after Pete while Richard Bianchi had lain, dying . . .

All of them telling what they had witnessed, none of them meaning her any special harm, just speaking the truth. Enough truth, Grace supposed, to put her away for years, more years than she could bear to imagine.

Time passed. Her left foot prickled with pins and needles and she tried to wiggle her toes, but her shoe was too close-fitting, so she pushed its leather sole into the floor, trying to ease it that way.

Somewhere behind her a door opened and closed again and someone entered. A woman Grace did not recognize.

Another witness, she supposed.

The young woman sitting on Wagner's other side rose to acknowledge the newcomer, and Wagner turned too, nodded at her.

Someone for their side, apparently, maybe an expert witness, a psychologist, perhaps, hoping to lend credence to their case.

Elena Alonso stood.

‘The prosecution rests,' she said.

Wagner rose.

‘May I approach, Your Honor?' he asked the judge.

Alonso rose again, too, walked with Wagner to the bench.

They talked for a while, too quietly to be overheard.

Grace looked at her family – everyone here but David and Mildred, who were taking care of Joshua again – and at Magda, too, who'd insisted on coming, and she thought again how kind they all were, how loyal. And that, at least, was some comfort, knowing that Joshua would never go short of love and care . . .

She glanced back at the newcomer in the courtroom.

She was dark-haired, slim, wearing a dark-blue suit, and she seemed uneasy, nervous, even pale.

Not an expert witness, after all.

Wagner and Alonso were disagreeing over something.

If this were a movie, Grace thought, it would probably be an attempt to introduce new evidence, perhaps too late in the day, though this was not a trial . . .

Nor was it a movie.

Her stomach lurched and her heartbeat sped up again.

She looked at Sam, saw that his eyes were on the newcomer.

And suddenly she knew who she was.

Had to be.

She found herself praying that Arthur Brazen was an open-minded judge who might consider bending rules, who would allow whatever this woman had brought into the courtroom.
His
courtroom, his interpretation of law. Grace absolutely in his hands.

The lawyers returned to their tables and sat down.

Wagner shuffled papers around for a moment or two, scribbled a note, then put away his pen, nodded and rose again, with nothing in his hands.

‘I call Gina Bianchi to the stand,' he said.

Sam and the others were sitting rigidly upright.

Grace felt as if life was happening around her, as if she were experiencing an out-of-body experience, observing the courtroom remotely.

Gina Bianchi had been sworn in.

The dead man's – Grace's victim's – sister. The woman who had slapped Sam when he had gone with David to visit her parents.

Those parents now sitting in court, new devastation in their eyes.

Gina Bianchi, who had totally rejected Sam's plea when he had gone to talk to her three days ago in Naples, still had every reason in the world to wish Grace in jail.

Or worse.

Jerry Wagner had begun his questioning.

‘Can you tell us, Ms Bianchi, why you didn't come forward earlier?'

‘I've been in mourning,' she said. ‘And I didn't realize until quite recently that I had any information to give that might be relevant to this case.'

‘And you didn't want to do anything to harm your brother's memory.'

‘Objection.' Elena Alonso stood.

‘Sustained,' the judge said. ‘Though since this is not a trial, let's just get on with finding out why Ms Bianchi is here.' He smiled at her. ‘In your own words.'