Last Run (27 page)

‘I did mean it.’ Guilt was already rising again.

‘It’s OK,’ Kez said, ‘you won’t have to stick to that.’

Cathy said nothing because she felt as if Kez had been reading her mind, and she didn’t know
what
to say.

‘If I turn myself in,’ Kez said, slowly, ‘and if they lock me up—’

‘They won’t,’ Cathy said. ‘You’ll get help and . . .’

‘
When
they lock me up,’ Kez said, ‘maybe in prison, maybe some institution, will you come see me sometimes, do you think?’

Prison.

Not storytelling after all.

Cathy’s heart began to break.

‘Will you come see me?’ Kez asked again.

‘Yes,’ Cathy said. ‘Of course I’ll come.’

‘I believe you,’ Kez said.

They sat in silence.

‘Want to hear the rest of it?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Cathy said. ‘Do you want to tell me?’

‘In a way,’ Kez said. ‘It might help you understand a little more.’

Cathy was silent again for a moment, and then she said:

‘Which way to the beach?’

Terri had called the hospital again, and this time they had told her that Saul was still sleeping, which was the best thing for him right now. More than ever while Cathy was
missing.

She had asked them to send her love when he woke.

She did love him, no question about that, and it had hurt so badly whenever they’d fought, but the trouble was, as much as she wanted to make a pact now with God or whoever, promise never
to fight with Saul again so long as he made it out of hospital and was able to talk again, walk again, be
him
again . . . As much as she wanted to do that, she had realized that last day
before the attack that they were too damned
different
, that as much as they loved one another, they were always going to fight.

Maybe that didn’t matter.

She certainly wasn’t going to bail out on him now. She was going to stay by his side for as long as he needed her, maybe even for ever.

Maybe. The rub. The nub.

She looked at her watch. Three fifty-seven.

Where
were
they?

‘I always knew how wrong it was,’ Kez said. ‘How wicked.’ The old Golf moved slowly south down another lovely, peaceful residential street. ‘But
they laughed at me.’

She made it sound simple. Matter of fact.

‘When people do that to me, Cathy, it feels like they’re stripping me naked. All the ugliness gets exposed when they laugh, and I hate them so much for that. I hate them more than
you could ever begin to imagine.’

Cathy knew she had to say something.

‘I know something about hate,’ she said.

‘Next right,’ Kez told her.

Directions in the midst of
this.

Cathy turned right.

‘That’s how it was with the janitor,’ Kez said.

Shock juddered through Cathy, turning her blood to ice.

The janitor. Muller.

Sam’s case.

‘And that’s how it was,’ Kez said, ‘with the woman who came into the changing rooms at the gym I used to go to.’

More to come, Cathy thought,
more,
dear Christ.

‘It was late,’ Kez went on. ‘I thought everyone else had left, so my guard was down, you know, so I came out of the shower and dropped my towel, and this woman was there
cleaning, and she snickered when she saw me, and that was it.’

Cathy stopped at a crossroads.

‘I got myself dressed and out of there. I can do that now, keep myself under control. I don’t fly into rages the way I did when I was a kid. I get away and I think about it, and if
I’m sure I’m right – if I know they
were
laughing at me, mocking me – then I keep it all together and wait for the moment.’

Cathy crossed the junction.

Her brain was hurting. One minute the pain was soothed away, bathed in the novocaine of Kez’s trust and love, and then another brand new wound shocked her back into fresh pain and
uncertainty.

Fear now, above everything.

She tried to stop listening, tried running lines in her head: ‘
The beach, then home, a run, then home . . .
’

Kez was still talking, something about an aunt who used to help her, though it was hard for her, she said, hard for anyone to understand.

‘Which is why I always try to do it near the ocean so I can wash myself after.’

Washing off the blood.

Don’t think about that.

Cathy had seen enough blood, more than enough for a lifetime.

Don’t go there.

There was a dead-end ahead, the road widening before it with spaces on both sides for two or three cars; a small, curved footbridge ahead, tall palms on either side.

The beach ahead, the ocean.

‘
The beach, then home . . .
’

She nosed the Golf into one of the spaces.

‘The woman in the mall didn’t laugh out loud – ’ Kez was still talking – ‘but she knew those jeans made me look ugly, and . . .’

Get out of the car, run, find a cop.

She couldn’t do that to Kez, not when she was so sick.

You can walk away though, leave her behind.

But then what would Kez do? Abandoned, betrayed, what would she
do?

What would Grace do if she were here? Forgetting about love, focusing on friendship and decency and what was
right.

Grace would probably go on listening.

Angie called Sam at ten after four.

‘Martinez got a license number for Flanagan, and we just got a sighting. Eighth Avenue South, heading for the beach. Green VW Golf, two young women.’

His pulse rate soared as he grabbed a pen, wrote down the number.

‘Blessings on you both.’

‘Blonde driver,’ Angie went on, ‘so probably Cathy.’

Good and bad news. Cathy safe for now, but no easy way, if things got ugly, to persuade the Naples PD she’d been with Flanagan against her will.

He called Terri thirty seconds later. ‘Meet you there?’

‘I’d say we start where we met before,’ she suggested. ‘Move up that way from there. Flanagan might be revisiting the scene.’

‘They might just be going for a run,’ Sam said. ‘It’s what they do.’

‘What they
did
,’ Terri said. ‘Could all be different now.’

‘You see them first,’ Sam warned, ‘keep your distance.’

He was conscious of
not
asking if she’d brought her firearm along for the ride, thought he probably knew the answer, was maybe better off
not
knowing for sure, could hardly
castigate her for something he was equally guilty of.

‘You’ll be there before me,’ she said. ‘Traffic’s pretty snarled up.’

‘On my way,’ Sam told her.

Kez got out of the car, the jersey over her left shoulder, the bat in her left hand, and came around to the driver’s side, waited while Cathy locked the door and tucked
her right arm through hers.

They strolled over the tiled paving and up on to the footbridge.

‘Hey,’ Kez said softly, stopping halfway across. ‘You going to leave me?’

Cathy looked into her face, her lover’s eyes, saw the plea.

Nothing matter of fact now. Nothing simple.

She knew that the answer was no, even now. She was not going to run out on her. She was going to stay by Kez’s side for as long as she could, as long as they let her. And it wasn’t
at all like novocaine now, not a numbing of judgment or common-sense; it was something else entirely, something wholly devoid of sense . . .

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ she said.

They walked on to the other side of the bridge and down past the long grasses on either side on to the beach. The sand was whiter, seemed softer underfoot than in Miami; the ocean looked and
sounded and smelled wonderful, and the wind was high, whipping through their hair, a warm, sandy wind; there were people around living real, normal lives, and it felt just a little like being on
vacation, except that Cathy had to keep forcing herself not to think about those dark stains on the bat that was still in her lover’s left hand.

Trying to forget that Rudolph Muller had been killed on a beach.

And then suddenly she realized where they were.

On the beach not far from Naples Pier.

Where Saul had been attacked.

Stamped on. Bludgeoned. Almost destroyed.

Cathy stopped walking, pulled her arm out of Kez’s and stared at her.

Kez looked right back at her.

Knew that Cathy had realized.

She knelt down on the sand, laid the bat down on the ground before her like a samurai laying down his sword.

‘Come sit with me, Cathy.’ She dropped the 44 jersey by her side. The sleeveless black T-shirt she’d put on hours before was stuck to her skin with perspiration, her arms and
shoulders and the tiny dragonfly tattoo glistening with it. ‘Come sit with me one last time.’

Cathy sat, her movements very slow, and now this
was
numbness, and dumbness too. Though something that felt like a great scream of anguish was building deep inside her mind, walled up by
disbelief.

‘I’ve never forgotten the cat,’ Kez said, ‘but I’ve never felt bad about it either. I’ve grown to hate it more over the years because it was the first to mock
me, to make me feel like that, and even if it all was just up here – ’ she tapped her head – ‘I’m not a fool, Cathy, I know most of my problems are in
here
, but
even so, even so, it was that cat made me see I was ugly and ridiculous.’

Cathy looked away from Kez, gazed out at the ocean, thought about its power, thought that if the Gulf of Mexico were to rise up now and swallow them it might feel welcome to her. And then a man
and his small child crossed her line of vision, the boy in a too-big white T-shirt that billowed in the breeze, the man holding his hand as they walked through the surf – and Cathy felt
ashamed of the thought she’d just had.

‘I guess maybe that’s why I’ve never much liked animals,’ Kez said.

‘Woody.’ Cathy was unsure if the word had escaped her lips, not that it mattered now, nothing mattered except . . .

‘Except the
real
thing, you know, the stronger, wilder kind, like jaguars and hyenas.’ Kez was speaking softly now. ‘Jaguars are shape-shifters, Cathy. They hunt in
water and they’re so beautiful; and people think hyenas are ugly and cowardly, but they’re not, and they don’t let anything get in their way, they fight to get the last laugh, and
I admire that in them, don’t you?’

It was getting harder to hear her over the wind and waves, or maybe Cathy didn’t
want
to hear her any more, and anyway Kez was rambling on now about animals, and maybe soon, Cathy
thought, she might find the strength to stand up and walk away, but right now all she could seem to do was sit, half listening, and gaze out to sea.

‘That’s where Saul saw me,’ Kez said.

Cathy heard
that.

‘That’s where he did it,’ Kez went on. ‘At the zoo, here in Naples.’

Cathy turned and stared at her again.

‘I was just sitting minding my own business, taking a little time out with the hyenas because I like watching them, being near them. And then I looked up and there he was, standing there,
doing what they do. Laughing at me.’

‘No,’ Cathy said. ‘Saul wouldn’t do that.’

‘Maybe not out loud,’ Kez said, ‘but I saw his eyes, knew what he was thinking.’

‘What was he thinking?’ Cathy felt very ill.

‘That I was a weirdo,’ Kez said. ‘Sitting there on the ground talking to animals.’

‘Saul wouldn’t think like that,’ Cathy said faintly.

‘Don’t you get it yet?’ Kez’s voice and eyes were suddenly sharp and clear. ‘This isn’t about Saul, Cathy, this is about
me.
My confession. This is
what I’ve known I needed for a long, long time, so I can finally stop. So I can
be
stopped.’

‘That’s all I know,’ Sam told Grace. ‘Will you pass it on to Dad?’

‘Right away,’ she promised, heart racing.

‘She’ll be OK,’ he said, then honked his horn at an old guy meandering serenely ahead of him up Tenth Avenue South.

‘Sam, please take care.’ Grace had heard the horn, knew how desperate he must be to get to the beach.

‘Don’t worry.’ He winced at the foolishness of that. ‘At least try not to make yourself crazy.’

‘I’m fine,’ she told him. ‘Your son and I are both fine, but we want you – we all want you and Cathy home, safe and sound.’

‘I want that, too,’ Sam said.

‘No risks,’ Grace said. ‘Please.’

‘Kid gloves all the way,’ he told her. ‘I love you, Gracie.’

‘Me, too,’ she told him back.

‘I don’t want you thinking I’m not sorry about Saul. I hate what I did to him more than any of the others, because no matter what he did to me first, I know
you care for him.’

‘He didn’t do
anything
!’ A tiny, sharp hammer had started pounding painfully in Cathy’s head, like the kind that struck the inside of a bell, but the faintness was
gone and she scrambled up from the sand. ‘And I don’t just care for Saul, I
love
him, we all do.’

‘I know,’ Kez said, still on her knees. ‘And maybe I’ll never be able to make myself care about him, but I do care about you.’

‘
Screw
your care!’ Cathy bent down and shoved her as hard as she could, and Kez fell sideways, made no move to defend herself. ‘And if you think by
confessing
to
me there’s going to be any kind of forgiveness for
that,
any absolution, you’re—’

‘Crazy?’ Kez finished it for her.

A family walking by heard their raised voices, saw the small violence and moved away, giving them a wide berth.

‘I don’t
understand
.’ Cathy’s hands were up in her hair, pulling at it as if the pain might help her, ground her. ‘I don’t understand any of it.’
She’d pushed away the other parts of the
confession,
the killings, couldn’t begin to think about them. ‘Why were you at the zoo anyway? You told me you were in Jacksonville
– so that was a lie, like everything else has been a goddamned lie!’

‘Not everything,’ Kez said, her voice flat and calm. ‘Not my feelings for you.’