Last Run (25 page)

Which was when it had occurred to him to call his old pal Angie Carlino. She was based in Tampa, not Naples, but they’d always had a soft spot for each other, and Angie had a history of
helping Sam when push came to shove. Today was no exception; no questions asked, but Angie said she had a pal in Naples she could ask to keep an eye out for the young women, though without a
license registration there wasn’t too much hope.

‘Soon as I get it, you’ll have it,’ Sam had told her.

‘And I’ll pass it straight on, kiddo.’

‘Off the record,’ Sam had reminded her.

‘Gotcha,’ Angie had assured him.

‘I have a cell number that might be Flanagan’s,’ Sam had remembered. ‘Any chance you could do something with that unofficially?’

‘As a matter of fact,’ she’d said, ‘I do have another friend with access to Triggerfish, so if she’s willing and has time, we might just be able to track that. But
she’s not one of us so it could cost.’

‘Anything,’ Sam had said.

‘Maybe we should go out for a while?’ Cathy suggested again.

She had decided not to believe the story of the cat, thought it was probably just a grisly fairy tale spun, or at worst exaggerated, by Kez because of the dope.

Kez shook her head, rolling a fresh joint. ‘I’m fine here.’

‘I’d like to go running soon,’ Cathy said.

And find a phone, she added silently.

‘We can run any time.’ Kez’s fingers moved nimbly, her whole demeanour excitable now, a woman in a rush. ‘I need to go on talking.’

‘OK,’ Cathy said. ‘So long as—’

‘Did I tell you about the kids?’ Kez went straight on. ‘The ones who poked fun at me when I was around thirteen because of the way I looked, all legs and no breasts – no
big change there then.’ She didn’t wait for Cathy to speak. ‘I showed them too, and I was stronger than they were, so showing them was a cinch.’

Cathy didn’t want to hear another tale.

‘I’m really going to have to think about going back soon,’ she said.

‘I know,’ Kez said. ‘Am I making you uncomfortable, telling you this stuff?’

‘I think you’re smoking too much weed,’ Cathy said. ‘And you know I want to get back to see—’

‘Maybe I have this relationship wrong,’ Kez cut in again. ‘Only I thought you meant it when you said you wanted to share.’

Cathy felt instantly guilty, supposed that another half an hour or so wouldn’t make any difference, especially with Saul doing better.

‘You don’t have it wrong,’ she said.

‘How are you doing, sweetheart?’

David called Grace at eleven fifteen.

‘Fine,’ she said.

Only half a lie, because the cramps had gone a while back, and the backache and weariness she was experiencing now were, in her opinion, nothing unexpected in her particular circumstances.

‘I managed to dig out some of the Flanagan records,’ David told her.

‘Anything useful?’

‘Afraid not.’ He sounded glum. ‘Dad’s name Joseph, mother Gina, dates of vaccinations, that kind of thing.’

‘How’s Saul doing?’ Grace asked.

‘Sleeping,’ David answered. ‘Anything from Sam?’

‘Nothing yet,’ Grace said.

‘You’re looking very tired,’ Cathy told Kez. ‘Maybe you could use a nap.’

‘No time,’ Kez said.

She got up, found her duffel bag and foraged in it, took out a foil-wrapped tablet and swallowed it instantly, without water.

‘That’ll do it,’ she said.

‘What was that?’ Cathy was afraid it might have been speed or maybe E, hated the idea of either, especially on top of all the dope.

‘Don’t stress.’ Kez came to sit beside her on the couch.

‘I’m just worried about you,’ Cathy said. ‘Because I care.’

‘Me too. That’s why I took it. I don’t want to waste our time together sleeping.’

‘But what was the tab?’ Cathy persisted.

‘Don’t make a big deal,’ Kez said.

‘I’m not,’ Cathy said. ‘But I think it’s time I went home.’

‘Soon,’ Kez said. ‘Know what I’d like first. More than anything?’

Cathy did know, could read it in her eyes, but she didn’t answer.

‘Don’t you want to make love again?’ Kez asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Cathy said. ‘Not if it’s just because of the pill you took.’

‘I didn’t take anything last night, did I?’

Cathy looked at her, saw that she seemed more amused than pissed off, wondered again what the pill had been.

‘It’s OK,’ Kez said. ‘I understand.’

‘Do you?’

‘Cathy, I told you I’d never push you into that.’

‘I know,’ Cathy said.

‘That’s something at least,’ Kez said.

She took hold of Cathy’s hand, folded it in her own and held it against her heart, and all Cathy’s agitation melted away.

‘That’s lovely,’ she said.

‘I love you, Cathy.’

Cathy heard the words and was startled.

‘You don’t have to say anything,’ Kez said. ‘Only would you mind if we just rest here together for a little while, and then we can go out and you can call home
again.’

‘I’d like that,’ Cathy said.

Kez leaned back against the cushions and put her feet up, and Cathy curled against her and thought, with sudden, overwhelming sleepiness, that this was the warmest, most comfortable place
she’d ever been.

‘Where are you?’ Sam asked at eleven twenty-five.

‘Still on 75,’ Terri answered.

Lying.

Because she was already in Naples, but if she told him that Sam would start issuing orders, and while she accepted that he
appeared
to be keeping his side of their bargain he still
hadn’t given her a single new scrap of information, and
maybe
that was because he didn’t have anything, but she couldn’t be sure of that. Besides, whatever he said and
meant now, if something did go down in Naples it would be the local cops that Sam Becket would ultimately trust in, not the
rookie
, and even if he did ask for her to be involved, the Naples
PD weren’t going to take any real notice of what the Miami Beach detective wanted.

So for now she had to go on playing it her own way, take any crumbs he might toss to her, but go on working solo, drive around for a while, get her bearings, check out the place in a way she
hadn’t had time to do while Saul had been in hospital here, try to figure out the possible districts someone like Flanagan might be drawn to.

She had called Miami General a while back, asked one of the nurses on Saul’s floor how he was doing, and she’d acted a little weird, asking if she was family. They’d stopped
doing that with her after day one, and this new attitude had not only bugged her, but
scared
her. And what Terri wanted, desperately, was to go back to Saul with the news that
she
had
brought in Kez for his sake.

That was what Teresa Suarez wanted now more than anything.

Except for Saul to get up out of that hospital bed and come home to her – to
her
, not to his daddy or his brother or the rest of his doubting family.

‘No news at all?’ Grace asked Sam.

‘I wish I had something for you,’ he told her.

‘Not just for me,’ she said.

‘I know,’ Sam said. ‘How you holding up?’

‘I guess I’m doing as well as you,’ Grace said, ‘except at least you’re out there trying to find them, and all I can do is sit here and try not to go out of my
mind. And please don’t tell me to relax or take it easy, because I can’t.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘Is Lucia taking care of you?’

‘She will,’ Grace said, ‘if I need her to.’

It wasn’t exactly a lie, though Lucia had not been here since Grace had returned from the hospital, and Grace was on the whole content to be alone, but it would have been good right now to
have her comforting presence about the house. Except she couldn’t summon the energy to try calling her, and anyway Lucia must have had a good reason for leaving, so she didn’t want to
hassle her.

‘Will you do something for me, please?’ Grace changed the subject. ‘Take care.’

‘I promise,’ Sam said. ‘You too.’ He paused. ‘Give the baby a kiss from me.’

‘Doing it right now.’ She kissed her own fingertips, pressed them against her abdomen.

Then he was gone again, and though he had been kind, almost loving, she still felt that he had not been quite his normal self. And Grace couldn’t remember ever feeling quite this needy of
him before. She supposed she liked thinking of herself as being fairly self-sufficient, a sounding board for others, remembered hoping in the early weeks that advanced pregnancy might have an
empowering effect upon her.

‘I wish,’ she said wanly to the dog.

Woody thumped his tail.

Judgment shot to pieces, and energy too, Grace thought with a heavy sigh.

Heavy was the right word.

‘I’m in Naples,’ Sam told Terri at ten to noon, ‘so it stands to reason you’ve been here a little while.’

‘I guess it does,’ she said.

‘Want to get together?’

‘Soon,’ Terri said.

‘You have a good reason for playing hard to get?’ he asked pleasantly.

‘You have a good reason for wanting to get together?’ she countered.

‘I have a photograph of Flanagan,’ Sam told her, ‘that I plan to get copied at the first print shop I see. At least we could both have something to hand out.’

‘The beach where Saul was attacked,’ Terri said. ‘Near the pier.’

‘Give me a half-hour,’ Sam told her.

On the pretty couch in the pretty sitting room in the pretty apartment in the peaches and cream house, Cathy and Kez slept on.

The deeper their sleep, the more entwined.

Faces peaceful, cares left behind.

Innocence personified.

The former crime scene on the beach was, Sam and Terri both agreed, probably the last place Kez would come with Cathy.

‘But not necessarily without her,’ Sam said, basing it on the old chestnut about killers returning to the scene, scanning around, searching for long blonde hair and a short spiky red
head, but almost certain that nothing so simple was going to happen in this case. Certainly not Kez Flanagan offering herself up to them on a plate with Cathy safely out of the way.

‘I talked to Detective Martinez,’ he told Terri. ‘He’s been tied up all morning, but he’s finally stolen some time, has a friend at DHSMV trying to get a license
number for Flanagan’s car. Nothing else yet.’

It was overcast, sticky and very warm, with a whole lot less people around than there would have been before Labor Day. Still plenty of blonde heads walking, none of them Cathy.

No one even vaguely resembling Kez on the horizon.

‘I could kill,’ Terri said, ‘for a decent cup of coffee.’

‘Two things we have in common,’ Sam said. ‘Espresso’s my poison.’

‘
Cafecito
,’ she said. ‘Strong and sweet.’

They settled for a couple of Cokes and sat for a while on the sand, exchanging thoughts and possible theories about why Flanagan should have wanted or needed to attack Saul, of all people.

‘I can’t see the laughter connection working in this case,’ Sam said.

‘Me neither,’ Terri agreed. ‘I’ve presumed that Flanagan takes her running seriously, and maybe her victims were people who didn’t, who maybe laughed at
her.’

‘Or maybe Kez just perceived them as laughing at her,’ Sam suggested.

‘Neither would fit with Saul,’ Terri said.

Sam shook his head, agreeing. ‘Saul doesn’t laugh
at
people, just with them.’

‘Except,’ Terri thought on, ‘if Flanagan is nuts, maybe she imagines people laughing at her.’

They got up, began to walk away from the pier, both continuing the constant search, eyes darting back and forth, pausing whenever they passed the walkways and small footbridges that connected
the beach to the streets. Sam wondered which of them Saul might have crossed on his way to disaster, wondered if Kez had been following him, how long before the attack she had targeted him as her
next victim, if it had been impulse or part of some as yet unknown plan.

‘Maybe,’ he hypothesized, ‘Saul found out something about her.’

‘But when?’ Terri shook her head, the notion too painful for her. ‘If he’d known something before we argued, he’d have told me.’ She glanced at Sam, saw the
doubt on his face. ‘And even if he didn’t want to tell me, he’d certainly have called you right away because he’d have been afraid for Cathy.’

‘Unquestionably,’ Sam agreed. ‘And I think you’re right, by the way. Saul wouldn’t have kept something that huge, that frightening, from you.’

Terri stopped walking. ‘Which means if he did find out something, see something maybe, it happened after our fight. While he was out looking for me.’

Sam said nothing, saw the bleak guilt deepening in her dark eyes, felt conflicting sympathy and anger, and was unsure if he was ever going to be able to help her with that guilt, or if he even
wanted to.

‘There’s another possibility,’ he said. ‘Saul might have unwittingly seen something before that weekend. Flanagan might have followed you both to Naples, struck lucky
because of your fight just because it made Saul an easier target.’ He paused. ‘Not your fault, after all.’

‘Nice try,’ Terri said. ‘No cigar.’

They went on walking.

‘First time,’ Sam said after a few minutes, ‘we’ve worked together.’

‘How was it for you?’ Terri asked ironically.

‘I liked it,’ Sam said gently.

Found it to be true.

When Cathy woke Kez was already up, smoking again, sitting at the small, white, fake marble-topped table in the little kitchen, her father’s old bat and the jersey laid
out in front of her.

‘I can’t believe I slept so long.’ Cathy glanced at her watch, saw it was after two. ‘I must look wrecked – I used the bathroom, but there’s no
mirror.’

‘Never use them if I can help it,’ Kez said.

No mirror, no phone.

No big deal, either, Cathy decided.

‘Mind if I make some coffee?’ She stooped, kissed the red hair. ‘I wish you wouldn’t smoke so much weed.’ She went to the sink, turned on the cold tap. ‘You
put far too much crap in you for an athlete.’

‘Remember when I told you how my dad died?’ Kez said.