Last Run (26 page)

‘How could I forget?’ Cathy said, filling the jug for the coffee maker.

‘Wasn’t quite the whole truth.’

‘No?’ Cathy opened the refrigerator, took out the packet of coffee.

‘The sex happened the way I said it did. And my father’s heart attack, too.’ Kez fingered the handle of the bat. ‘But I didn’t just stay outside watching through
the keyhole.’ She paused. ‘What actually happened was I did watch for a while, watched them fucking. And then I opened the door real quietly, and Mrs Jerszinsky saw me first, before
Joey.’ Kez looked up at Cathy. ‘You’d think she’d have been ashamed, right?’

‘I’d think,’ Cathy agreed quietly.

Kez shook her head. ‘Not her. Not a bit of it.’

Cathy had stopped making coffee.

‘She saw me standing there, saw the way I was looking – and I guess I must have looked shocked.’

Cathy stood quite still, wanting the story to stop.

‘But that cow, with her great big tits and ass – ’ Kez’s fingers curled around the handle of the bat – ‘looked right back at my face, and then she looked down
at my skinny kid’s body. And she smirked.’

The room was very silent.

‘But not for long,’ Kez said.

The unease came back again.

‘You’ve never really talked,’ Cathy said quickly, ‘about your mother.’

‘What about her?’ Kez asked.

‘Is she still alive?’ Cathy asked.

‘I’ve never heard otherwise.’ Kez shrugged. ‘Though she might just as well be dead for all the difference she’s ever made to me.’

The shrug did it, changed things again. The sad, wan little gesture.

That and the expression in Kez’s eyes of utter loneliness.

Suddenly all Cathy wanted to do was weep for her.

She went back to making coffee.

Terri and Sam had split up again, searching out on the streets, showing Kez Flanagan’s photograph around like relatives looking for a missing loved one, neither getting
any response so far.

Sam had decided not to bother with the high-priced areas and had come to Crayton Cove, partly because it was where Saul and Terri had chosen for their ill-fated weekend, but also because it
seemed to him that if Cathy was being allowed a say in where she and Kez spent their time – if they were out and about at all – she’d probably find this dockside area
attractive.

He had taken a look around the bar at The Dock, talking the bartender into promising to call him if anyone fitting Flanagan’s or Cathy’s description came in, and was just coming out
of the Naples Ships Store when Martinez called.

‘Give me something, please, Al,’ Sam said. ‘Anything.’

‘I’m sorry, man,’ Martinez said.

‘Motor vehicles?’

‘Not yet.’

Sam swallowed his frustration, thanked his friend, told him to keep trying, to share with Angie if he thought it might help, and then he called home, his greatest need now to talk to Grace, his
greatest wish to get back home to her with Cathy.

‘No news yet,’ he told her right off. ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart.’

‘Don’t be sorry,’ Grace said. ‘Just find her, please.’

The helplessness in her voice jolted him. ‘You feeling all right? Cathy aside?’

‘I’m fine.’ She gave a small wry laugh. ‘Cathy aside.’

‘The baby?’ Something, he felt, was wrong. ‘Any pain?’

‘Nothing,’ Grace told him firmly. ‘Sam, you have more than enough to take care of without worrying unnecessarily about me. Do you believe me?’

He told her he did, told her to be careful and rest, told her he was checking in regularly with the hospital so he knew Saul was still peaceful; told her that what he was hoping for was that
come late afternoon or evening, if not before, when people started emerging from their homes, hotels and work places to come out to bars and restaurants, they would happen upon the two young women
and get Cathy away from Kez without any significant problems.

‘What if they don’t come out?’ Grace asked. ‘What if Angie’s friend can’t trace Kez’s phone and Cathy doesn’t use her credit card and you and
Terri aren’t enough?’

‘Then I guess I’ll call in the troops,’ Sam said.

‘You will, won’t you?’ Grace said. ‘We can’t just leave Cathy with her.’

‘I know that,’ Sam said. ‘Trust me, please.’

‘I do,’ Grace said.

Small mercies.

‘One of the things,’ Kez told Cathy, ‘I knew made you special, soon as we met, was I felt you respected me. That you weren’t the type of person who
would ever try to ridicule me or laugh at me.’

‘No,’ Cathy said. ‘I’m not. I wouldn’t.’

She felt, suddenly, as if she needed to tread carefully, and disliked the feeling.

‘He did,’ Kez said. ‘This man.’

The blood flowing through Cathy’s veins felt suddenly colder.

‘He was watching me run one evening,’ Kez went on. ‘He had this grin on his face that reminded me of the kids at school who poked fun of me, and the boy who laughed at me when
he found out I was a virgin.’

There was more coming, and Cathy knew she didn’t want to hear it.

‘All trying to make me feel the same way,’ Kez said. ‘Inferior, stupid, different. What they didn’t get was that I
was
different. He learned that the hard way,
same as they all did.’

He.

‘They laughed at me,’ Kez said, ‘but I laughed louder.’

Cathy’s mouth was dry.

‘I screamed louder too,’ Kez said, ‘because I hated what I was doing,
hated
it. Do you believe that, Cathy? Can you understand that?’

‘I don’t know,’ Cathy said.

‘I hated it, but I needed it, too,’ Kez said. ‘More than anything.’

‘Kez.’ Cathy tried again. ‘I have to go back soon.’

‘To your mom, the shrink,’ Kez said.

‘To Saul,’ Cathy said.

‘I know,’ Kez said.

She began rolling another joint.

Sam and Terri were exchanging periodic calls, the afternoon moving uncomfortably swiftly. Sam had already been in Naples for three hours with nothing to show, and Martinez had
been doing as well as he could with Kovac almost glued to him, but everything he’d learned about Flanagan thus far, Sam had already pretty much learned from David.

‘Sad stuff, mostly,’ Martinez had told him a while back. ‘Only child. Joseph Flanagan, her dad, died of a heart attack when she was seven; Gina, her mom, seems to have dropped
the parenting ball, there when she had to be, but no frills.’

Kez, it seemed, had been no great shakes academically, but the running had made up for that, all kinds of prizes, and no major failures on that front, no serious injuries. Nothing, Martinez
said, to grievously shake young Flanagan or wreck her confidence.

‘Relationships?’ Sam had asked.

‘Getting nowhere on that score,’ Martinez had answered.

No big affairs or painful break-ups; no known discrimination because of her gay lifestyle.

‘Fuck’s sake,’ Sam said, ‘there has to be
something.’

‘There always is,’ Martinez agreed. ‘Doesn’t mean we’re going to find it.’

Stealing a glance at the front door it occurred to Cathy that Kez might, perhaps while she’d been asleep, have locked it.

There was no key in the bottom lock now, and she
thought
– though she wasn’t certain – that Kez had left a key there after they’d first come in.

If it was locked, that meant the only other way out was over the veranda.

She told herself to calm down, that there was no need to think that way, not if this was all story-telling, all dope-induced.

Except she wasn’t as certain of that as she had been. And one of the many curious things about this was that Kez had been telling these disjointed and incomplete tales as if she believed
them commonplace, as if she believed that Cathy could listen to them and then say: ‘Hey, that was interesting, now let’s go get some food.’ As if there was no risk at all in
telling Cathy – or at least
implying –
that she had done things to people who had ridiculed her.

Unless she didn’t consider it a risk because Cathy was in love with her.

Cathy was finding it harder by the minute to know how she felt about Kez, about her stories, about anything.

Just one thing she was certain of.

She wanted to get out of this place. The sooner the better.

‘Why don’t we go out,’ she said, ‘get something to eat?’

‘I thought you wanted to go home,’ Kez said, and took a drag of her joint.

‘I meant – ’ Cathy amended – ‘on the way home.’

‘You hate me now, don’t you?’ Kez said, suddenly flat.

‘Of course I don’t,’ Cathy said, stomach clenching.

‘So what, you love me?’ Kez asked.

The irony alarmed Cathy.

‘Maybe,’ Cathy said. ‘I think I do.’

‘I’m glad you said “maybe”,’ Kez said. ‘I’m glad you can still be honest. It’s one of the reasons I chose you to share with.’

Chose you.

‘Can I ask you another question?’ Kez said.

‘Sure.’

‘Are you going to tell anyone what I’ve told you?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Not quite as honest there,’ Kez said.

‘I am being honest,’ Cathy said. ‘And you haven’t really told me anything.’

She wondered what would happen if she walked to the front door right now and tried to open it.

‘Food sounds good,’ Kez said abruptly.

She put down the joint, stood up, went into the kitchen and picked up the bat and jersey. And then she walked out of the room over to the front door, slid the latch sideways and opened it.

No key needed.

The tension drained out of Cathy like air from a decompression chamber.

The door had not been locked, and they
were
leaving this apartment. Which meant that Kez truly trusted her, had no hidden agenda. Had been sharing her deepest secrets with her, the woman
she loved.

Relief and warmth filled Cathy as they walked together downstairs and out into the warm, humid air.

They turned towards the garage.

Cathy looked at the jersey and the baseball bat under Kez’s left arm.

Thought about the dark stains.

Kez took the remote control from her pocket. ‘You do know, don’t you,’ she said, ‘that I’d never hurt you?’

The door opened and Cathy looked into Kez’s eyes. The sun turned the irises almost golden, exposing the intensity of the hope behind them, making Cathy feel almost overcome by the enormity
of her trust.

They went into the garage and got back in the Golf.

‘You OK?’ Kez asked.

Gentle and caring.

‘I’m OK,’ Cathy answered.

More confused than she had been in a very long time.

But with the woman she loved.

Who loved her.

Chapter Twenty-six

At a quarter to four, Grace was making herself a late lunch. Not that she was hungry, but she owed it to the baby to eat, and anyway Lucia had called a little while back,
apologetic for taking time out for an electrical problem at home.

‘I’ll bet you haven’t eaten anything,’ Lucia had said.

‘Not much,’ Grace had admitted.

‘You have to eat, Dr Lucca, you know that, for the baby’s sake.’

Grace had made herself a small pasta salad, but now that she’d sat down to eat it at the kitchen table, Woody by her feet, she found she could hardly see the food for tears.

Too much.

Their son had been meant to come into the world with a young doctor-to-be for its uncle, and God only knew what would become of Saul’s plans now, his study on hold for many months, at
least. The baby’s big sister was out somewhere with the person who had
done
that to Saul, who might even, it seemed possible, be a multiple killer.

And what had happened to her own judgment skills? After this, after her awful, shameful suspicions of Terri, and even worse,
much
worse, her inability to help poor Gregory, maybe it was
time she considered taking down her shingle and concentrating on full-time motherhood – and who was to say she was remotely fit for
that
?

Grace pushed away her salad, unable to imagine being able to eat anything until Cathy was safely home, Saul through all his operations and Sam back here with her.

Not just
with
her. Able to look her in the eye when he told her he loved her.

Kez had relented, had let Cathy take over at the wheel.

‘You really can’t drive,’ Cathy had told her as soon as they were out of the garage, ‘not with all that junk in you.’

And to her great relief Kez had said that she was right, and just being in the driver’s seat had made Cathy feel even better, more in control, and her thoughts were starting to clear a
little.

Whatever Kez might or might not have done in the past, Cathy felt they would find a way to cope with it together. Grace would help her, she was certain, or maybe David was the one they should
approach first because he had, after all, once been Kez’s doctor, had said how much he had liked her. And once they saw how far back her problems had started, Grace and David would both want
to help, and if not entirely for Kez’s sake, then for hers. And yes, it would be hard for Kez, but she would have Cathy standing by her, proving her love for her.

Now if she could just find the way to get back to I-75 . . .

‘I know you want to go home,’ Kez said suddenly.

‘I have to,’ Cathy said. ‘You know that.’

‘I know,’ Kez said, ‘and it’s cool, but . . . ’

Cathy glanced at her. ‘But what?’

‘I have one more thing to ask of you, just one more, before we go.’

The dashboard clock read 3.54, and Cathy was acutely aware that she still hadn’t called home or the hospital, and she figured there was little point stopping to use a payphone now if they
were on their way, but . . .

‘Let’s go to the beach,’ Kez said. ‘The sand here is amazing and we could run – we don’t have to go far, just run together one more time before . . .
’

‘There’ll be plenty more times to—’

‘No,’ Kez said. ‘There won’t.’

Cathy sighed, checked the mirror, pulled over to the right.

‘I know,’ Kez said, ‘that what I’ve told you has to change things. And I know you meant it when you said you’d keep my secrets.’