Hell (9 page)

‘She deserves all the happiness she can get,' Daniel said.

Grace came with him upstairs – up a steel and glass staircase softly lit from within – to show Sam the guest suite, which was more comfortable than any hotel they'd ever stayed in.

‘Cathy's going to be downstairs in another guest room with en-suite shower,' Grace said. ‘Saul's sharing with Mike, and Joshua's in with Robbie.'

Sam checked out the room, put away his gun and holster in a bedside drawer. ‘I thought he'd be with us.'

‘Robbie really wants to have him,' Grace said, ‘though we can always turn things around if anyone's unhappy.'

She came into the bathroom while he showered.

‘We need to talk about my patients,' she said.

‘I thought you'd have them come here,' Sam said, reaching for a towel.

‘I can't do that,' she said. ‘It's too far, and there'd be confidentiality issues with so many people coming and going – not to mention the inconvenience for Claudia and Dan.'

Sam went back into the bedroom and rummaged in his bag for shorts and a T-shirt. ‘So what's your plan?'

‘House calls?'

‘Not safe enough.' He sat on the bed, pulled on sneakers. ‘Any chance Magda would let you share her setup for a little while?'

Magda Shrike – Grace's mentor, friend and occasional psychologist – had recently relocated both home and office into a prime building in Bal Harbour.

‘Twenty-four hour doorman,' he said. ‘Decent security.'

‘I'm not sure she'd have the space, let alone the inclination.'

‘But you don't hate the idea?' Sam asked.

‘I hate all of it,' Grace said.

‘Will you call her?'

‘We'd have to look at our insurance policies.'

‘Sure,' Sam said. ‘So will you call her?'

Grace smiled at him.

‘First thing tomorrow,' she said.

The rest of the evening was almost pure pleasure. Daniel was glad to let Sam and Saul lend a hand with the cooking, while Grace and Claudia sipped wine and ate themselves to a standstill. Mike and Robbie and Cathy swam and ate and laughed a lot and everyone took turns to go upstairs to check on Joshua, and even the dogs hung out happily together.

‘It's so beautiful out here,' Grace said to Sam.

‘Sure is,' he agreed.

He was trying not to stare out past the white, alarmed, monitored fence to the dark bay beyond, trying not to imagine Cooper out there somewhere with a long-range night scope trained on them – maybe even a high-powered rifle sight – almost the entire Becket family laid out for him in one fell swoop . . .

‘Stop it, Sam,' Grace told him quietly.

Which told him it was nothing she hadn't considered too.

Both their imaginations running riot.

‘We have to live,' she said. ‘Make the most of this.'

Sam nodded. ‘Special time.'

‘And not just because it could get taken away,' Grace said. ‘OK?'

They'd spoken in the past about whether or not they might have benefited from therapy after what they'd gone through a year ago, and Sam had been offered counseling through the EAP, but had turned it down because, shaken as he was, he'd felt so damned happy to be alive. And they both knew, more than most, what damage could be done by unresolved post-traumatic issues, yet still they'd both stubbornly, perhaps foolishly, chosen to get by on the sheer relief of survival.

Lately, though, Sam had become increasingly concerned that it might have been the wrong decision for Grace. Not just because her jumpiness was so uncharacteristic – if justifiable – but also because it seemed to him that she was up and down, in and out of denial.

Which was not healthy, and not like her.

Another reason, perhaps, why working with Magda might be a good plan, because if anyone could persuade Grace to get some counseling before things got out of hand, it was Dr Magda Shrike.

Yet this evening, here and now, Grace was the one making sense.

The way she almost always did.

Sam lifted his beer bottle.

‘Damned straight,' he said.

FIFTEEN

April 29

T
hey all went about their business Thursday morning – all except Grace, who was waiting for Magda to return her call, and as things stood, she guessed it would be Monday before she could even hope to start seeing patients again.

It was all so
very
wrong, she thought, then rebuked herself, because here she was, safe in her sister's stunning home, which meant that her biggest concern right now was making sure Joshua kept away from the pool.

‘There's no way he could wander outside on his own,' Claudia had already assured her.

Biometric systems on all exits, not just the front door.

No concerns at all, then, Grace told herself, as her sister brewed fresh coffee.

Unless she counted their psycho stepbrother.

‘Hey,' Claudia said, seeing her face. ‘Can't you at least try and think of this as a vacation?'

Grace looked at her sister and gave herself a swift kick.

‘You bet I can,' she said.

Nothing had come of Cutter's and Sheldon's nightclub trawl, but Sam and Martinez were planning to continue it tonight.

With Cal the Hater's old hunting grounds in mind. Hot-Hot-Hot and Menagerie two of the killer's favorite clubs – not forgetting the promenade along which the self-styled ‘Joy Boy' had been swaggering when Mildred had first laid eyes on him two years back.

David had called this morning from Boston, had tried Sam on his cellphone because the machine had picked up at the house, and Sam and Grace had agreed that the honeymooners did not need to know what was going on until their return.

‘Everything OK, son?' David had asked.

‘Everything's peachy, Dad,' Sam had said.

‘You sure?'

Always hard to fool, Sam's father.

‘Has the bride had enough of you yet?' Sam had tried steering the conversation away.

‘The bride said I looked splendid last night, as a matter of fact.'

‘Give her our love,' Sam had told him.

‘Is Grace with you?' David had asked.

‘Of course not, Dad,' Sam had said. ‘I'm at work, and Grace and Joshua are spending the day at Claudia's.'

Which had finally appeased David Becket.

Leaving Sam free to organize the rest of the day, during which the team were going to be paying low-key visits to as many of Miami's marinas and moorings as humanly possible.

The
Baby
, Cooper's old cruiser – blown up by him before his disappearance – in their thoughts.

The kill-site during his last known rampage.

All the way through to matricide.

Though with the incalculable number of boats and vessels of all shapes and sizes docked and traveling through Miami's waterways, Biscayne Bay and the ocean beyond, the chances of finding the bastard and some new boat without any kind of hard intelligence or a tip-off were almost nil.

All the more reason for Sam to be grateful for Névé.

Safe haven.

SIXTEEN

May 3

S
am and Martinez had worked through the weekend, keeping their own trawl through the marinas downbeat, aware of the risks of Cooper upping anchor and disappearing again.

A master of that, Cal the Hater.

And no new leads to point the detectives in any other direction.

Open minds needed, eyes and ears – their own, the rest of the squad's, and their regular street informants' – trained on
anything
that might lead them to the ‘Heart Killer', as the media had tagged the perp.

Magda had come better than good, had welcomed Grace on Sunday afternoon with open arms, a spare bedroom already transformed into a consulting room, even a waiting room ready for her patients' use.

‘But it's your dining room,' Grace had protested.

‘I don't give dinner parties,' Magda had said. ‘This will be the first time the room has been used since I moved in.'

‘It's such an imposition,' Grace had said.

‘You're paying rent.'

‘Not enough.'

‘Take it or leave it,' Magda had said.

They had agreed little more than a token payment, just enough to keep things on a professional footing, because Magda refused to countenance profiting from their troubles.

‘It makes me wonder,' the older woman said now on Monday morning, regarding the setup again, ‘why we've never thought of joining forces before.'

‘You were in California,' Grace pointed out. ‘And then Joshua came along.'

‘And one of these days he'll be at real school and have a bunch of friends he'll want to have visit or sleep over, and maybe you and Sam will enjoy the idea of having one more room at home.' Magda's smile was touched with regret. ‘It's different for me – my empty spaces feel like a reproach.'

She had divorced her unfaithful orthopedic surgeon husband almost a decade ago and their only son, a plastic surgeon, lived in DC with a family she rarely got to see.

‘Sharing's a tempting thought in some ways,' Grace said. ‘Though my home office has always suited us.'

‘I know,' Magda said, easily. ‘Just something to mull over.'

Only three patients for Grace to see this first day (the mother of the fourth put off by the change of location, though the Shrike apartment was less than a mile from their house), but enough for her to realize, as the morning progressed, that there might be something efficient, even calming about this kind of compartmentalization.

Although the den and deck where she saw her patients at home had always seemed to relax them, and Grace firmly believed she could do a better job for troubled youngsters in an easygoing environment.

Easygoing, relaxed and stable.

Unlike her mind, currently.

The move had been easy to organize, files brought across, phone calls diverted, and she'd contacted the parents of two of her more critical patients – Sara Mankowitz, for one – to let them know where she'd be in case of emergency.

Her organization not
quite
infallible, though, she realized after lunch, finding she'd left a file at home that she would need first thing Tuesday. Which meant she'd have to go to the house to fetch it, and the deal she'd agreed with Sam was that she would drive herself to and from Bal Harbour so long as she stuck to daylight hours, and call if anything out of the ordinary occurred.

A swift visit to their house just after five p.m. definitely did not necessitate a call, Grace decided. And while she was home, she could take another swift scan around to make sure there was nothing else they might have left behind.

Everything seemed OK when she walked through the front door.

No warning prickles of intuition – just sadness because the house felt so empty, because they'd chosen to abandon it.

Not
chosen
, she reminded herself.

And went about her business.

She located the file, added two others, slipped them into her attaché case, then went upstairs to the bedroom and into the walk-in closet – where nothing sprang to her attention – then back to her dressing table.

An extra lipstick, maybe, she decided, and some perfume, and maybe some headache pills . . .

She wandered into the bathroom.

And
knew
instantly.

Someone had been in here.

She could
smell
it.

She took a step forward, her heart hammering, palms damp.

And saw it.

‘
Holy Mary
' – all the way from early childhood and her late mother's influence – flew into her mind.

She stared down into the bathtub for an interminable moment.

And then she turned, one hand covering her mouth, the other stretched out to steady herself as she went out through the bedroom and back down the stairs.

Carefully
– she couldn't afford to fall, not now.

Not here all alone, with no one knowing where she was . . .

She waited until she was outside on the sidewalk before letting herself turn to look back again at the house. The home she'd made a long while before she'd met Sam. Lovely small white house with its red-tiled roof and the old familiar bottle brush tree and twin palms in the yard.

Perhaps this, finally, of all that had happened here over the years, might be what drove her and Sam away for good.

And then, suddenly aware of how violently she was trembling, she went to the Toyota, got inside, locked the doors.

And called her husband.

‘How in
hell
could he have gotten in without anyone seeing him?'

Sam's anger and frustration were at boiling point.

He had already erupted at Grace for going to the house alone – getting no argument from her because she knew that he was right.

‘Though if I hadn't gone,' she had said, lamely, ‘we wouldn't have known it was there.' She'd seen his expression. ‘I know you'd have come with me if I'd asked, but you were working on the case.'

He'd been at the Starr Banking Corporation, talking to former colleagues of the late Andrew Victor, had left the office of the dead man's manager within seconds of receiving Grace's call.

About
it.

A third heart.

Carved out of Lord only knew what poor person.

‘Oh, man,' Martinez said now, regarding the
thing
in his friends' bathtub. ‘I've said it before and I'll say it again, but if there is a sicker fuck in this world than this total shitbag, I sure as hell don't want to know about him.'

‘Goes double for me,' said Sam.

‘Make that a triple,' Elliot Sanders said.

The ME had come in person as soon as he'd gotten word of the find, primarily because of his involvement in the two other heart cases, but also because this one had been left inside the Becket house.