Last Run (36 page)

‘You’re going to be fine,’ she told him again, heard her voice sounding as if she meant it, though all the terror was still there like a boulder in her heart, the unspeakable
dread that if help didn’t arrive soon, it might be too late.

And then
it
hit her, like a great, crashing wave. Like a cramp, but more powerful, spreading from her uterus all the way into her back, rocking her on to her heels and almost toppling
her.

‘Oh God,’ she said. ‘Not now.’

‘Grace, what’s wrong?’ Cathy asked, newly alarmed.

It went away.

‘Nothing.’ Grace shook her head.

‘Was it the baby?’ Cathy looked terrified.

‘Maybe. I’m not sure. It’s gone, anyway.’

‘You should go lie down.’

‘I’m going nowhere.’ Grace looked down at Sam, thought how bad he looked, how sick, and the desire swept over her again to punish Lucia, an urge so violent it staggered
her.

The siren bleated out of the night, still a distance away, then grew steadily and swiftly more strident, more recognizable.

‘Thank God,’ Cathy said.

It came again, a breaker of pain so huge that Grace cried out in spite of herself, and she tried, but failed, to get off her knees – this couldn’t be happening, not now!

‘It’s too
soon
,’ she cried.

It was too soon and Sam needed her, had never needed her more than now. It could not happen like this, she would not
let
it happen.

Could not stop it.

Chapter Thirty-six

It was killing David.

His total inability to help
any
of them. The fact that Sam might die. That Grace was soon to give birth to their son
knowing
that Sam might die. That Saul was
still suffering, would continue to suffer for months. That Cathy was in pieces.

That while the chances of his still-unborn nephew’s survival were better than good, the greatly longed for infant might have to start out on a ventilator, might not be able to nurse, might
experience all kinds of difficulties at the beginning of his life . . .

And his father might die.

Sam was on the first floor at Miami General in the Critical Care Unit, his heart rhythms all over the place and causing great concern. He had arrested en route to the hospital,
had been pulled back from the brink, but his continuing cardiac symptoms aside, he was still suffering from gastrointestinal and neurological problems.

The doctors knew enough, at least, from what Grace had told them – and from reports from the Busseto house – to accept the high probability that Sam had ingested either leaves,
flowers or ground seeds of a plant containing cardiac glycosides – a diverse group of plants fitting that bill, ranging from foxgloves to lily of the valley. If that were true and if more
conventional methods of treatment failed to halt the potentially life-threatening cardiac symptoms, they might decide to administer digoxin antibody Fab fragments, but they would need to consult
with a toxicologist and, perhaps, the Florida Poison Information Center.

‘Ask Lucia Busseto,’ David had repeatedly and agitatedly urged every doctor and manager in earshot.

Which was easier said than done since Lucia had been taken to Mercy Hospital, and no one at Miami General seemed certain if she was even still alive, let alone in any condition to answer
questions.

‘We’ll find out what the bitch did to him.’

Al Martinez, sounding shocked and grim, had called David a while ago on his way from the new crime scene to the Busseto house.

‘You have my word, doc, believe me.’

David believed him, but he was nowhere near as certain if it would happen in time, or that even if it happened in a minute how much difference it would make, how much damage might already have
been done to Sam’s heart and other major organs.

‘Your son’s young and strong and fit,’ one of the doctors had told him.

But Sam had scarcely seemed to know that his father was there, even when he’d been standing right beside him, and David had believed, when he had first seen Saul after Kez’s
murderous attack, that he could know no greater fear than that.

He knew better now, knew that this brand of fear was a bottomless pit.

Because Sam might die.

He had left the CCU for a while because as diplomatic and kind as they were with him, he knew that no one there needed a wrecked old paediatrician underfoot. And he had wanted
to spend some time with Grace in her delivery suite on the seventh floor, but she was going nuts between contractions, refusing pain relief, insisting on trying to describe every plant she’d
seen at the Busseto house and recall the name of every poisonous plant Lucia had recited to her.

‘I don’t
care
about the pain,’ she said to David and Cathy and to Barbara Walden, who had arrived –
one
piece of good news, at least – back from
Europe the previous night and had driven straight in when she’d heard. ‘I need to
think
and I don’t want to be here, I want to go be with Sam, and if they won’t let
me be with him, I want to go to Mercy and
make
Lucia tell me what she put in his coffee.’

Nuts
was the word, and Doc Walden was as much in control of the situation as Grace was allowing her to be, and Cathy was doing her damnedest to stand in for Sam – and David had
never seen that kid look so lousy, and who could blame her.

So he had left them too, because they didn’t need him either, had gone down to Saul’s floor to be with his younger son. Except now that he was here he found himself unable to muster
the emotional strength to actually
be
with him, because he knew he was no longer up to faking that things were fine.

He was beyond doing anything
useful.
Except, perhaps, praying. For Sam and Grace and the baby’s safe arrival. And for Saul – and for Terri, too.

He had almost, God forgive him, forgotten about Terri.

At three minutes to nine, the two Miami Beach police officers assigned to checking on fellow officer Teresa Suarez – having been delayed, first when an old guy had
rear-ended them, then by a burglary three blocks away on Washington Avenue – finally arrived at the mushroom-coloured house in which their colleague lived, and headed up to the second
floor.

They knocked on the door and got no reply.

Called that in and learned from the dispatcher that the perceived risk to Officer Suarez was now
high.
Got ready to bust in but found there was no need, because the Property Crimes
officer, who ought to have known better, had a front door a kid could have cracked in seconds.

They found Terri in her tiny living room, face down on the floor. Her laptop computer open on the table close by. Her coffee cup beside it, dark
cafecito
almost drained.

Saul’s fiery, dark-chocolate-eyed Teté.

All her sparkle and fire gone for ever.

Chapter Thirty-seven

Nothing had prepared Grace for this, nothing
could
have.

 She was exhausted, physically and emotionally wrung out, yet as one contraction came to an end, she knew another was already on the way and her fears for Sam were coming even thicker and
faster, only submerging briefly beneath labour pains so all-consuming that it was
impossible
to think of anything else.

Physical agony was her only respite. She felt as if she had walked miles around the room since her arrival – had used the bed mostly for brief spells of exhaustion, hardly able to bear to
lie down at other times, finding it just a little easier to stay vertical during contractions, letting gravity give a little help. She and Sam had practised her leaning back in his arms, with him
kissing the back of her neck and rubbing her back, and when they’d rehearsed that at home, Woody had kept getting involved, wanting to play.

No play now, and no Sam either.

She was taking another weary wander around the delivery suite and had just shaken off Cathy’s attempt to support her, when it came to her.

The photograph. Of Lucia with Kez as a twelve-year-old. In the frame Lucia had claimed had been broken and which had, in fact, been whole.

What Grace was remembering now, what had just come back to her sharp as a razor in the midst of her vast fatigue, was something Lucia had said when Grace had told her that she had brought the
photo with her in case she wanted it.

Lucia had told Grace to keep it.

Something about it being useful.

‘You might find a use for it.’

Grace had thought it an odd remark at the time – but then there had been so much else to think about, she’d forgotten all about it.

Chances were, of course, that Lucia might just have meant that they – perhaps the police – might have used the photograph for identification purposes, in helping establish her
relationship with Kez.

But what Grace really thought right now – so strongly that she felt
galvanized
by the idea – was that Lucia might have meant something very different.

Something desperately important.

‘The photograph,’ she said to Cathy.

‘What photograph?’

‘In my bag.’ Grace stared around the room. ‘Where’s my bag?’

‘We unpacked it,’ Cathy reminded her, ‘back in the bedroom, the postpartum room, remember?’

Before moving to the delivery suite they had been shown the room in which Grace would rest after the birth, a pretty room with a second bed, space for a bassinet and a lockable closet for
personal possessions.

‘I mean my handbag,’ Grace told her.

‘I think it was locked away,’ Cathy said.

Barbara Walden walked back into the suite wearing green scrubs, looking fresh as a daisy, not a hint of jet-lag.

‘How’re you doing?’

‘I need you to get it,’ Grace told Cathy, ignoring the doctor.

The next flood of pain was already beginning, starting in her back, spreading swiftly down into her legs and all points in between, and Grace was struggling to hold on to her thought processes,
because this was more important than the pain.

‘I
need
it.’ She cried out with pain. ‘For Sam – I need it
now
.’

‘I don’t want to leave you,’ Cathy said.

‘It’s OK,’ Barbara Walden told Cathy, coming to Grace’s side. ‘You go.’

The contraction was past and Grace resting, when Cathy came back in with the bag.

‘Thank you.’ Grace’s hands were trembling. ‘Thank you, sweetheart.’

‘Let me.’ Cathy fished around inside, found the photograph right away and pulled it out. ‘Here.’

‘Open the frame.’ Grace’s voice shook. ‘Look behind the picture.’

‘All right.’ Cathy turned the frame over, saw that the back had a velvety cover, the type that slid in and out of grooves at both sides.

‘Hurry.’ Impatient in case the next contraction overtook her, Grace snatched it out of Cathy’s hands, slid the back out, let it fall to the floor.

Brown corrugated card backed the photograph.

Grace began to cry.

‘Here.’ Cathy took the frame back, lifted the brown card.

There. What they needed.

Written in clear blue ink letters on a lined index card.

‘I’ll get it to CCU and call the cops,’ Cathy said, adrenalin coursing.

‘Thank you.’ Grace was weeping harder. ‘
Thank
you.’

Dr Walden gave her a moment and then came over, put her arms around her, rubbed her back gently.

‘That’ll do it,’ she said quietly.

‘Think so?’ Grace whispered, still weeping.

‘It’s bound to help,’ the doctor told her. ‘Which means that you can start helping yourself and your little one.’

‘I can’t seem to care too much about myself right now,’ Grace said.

‘You should,’ Barbara Walden said. ‘Your baby and your husband are both going to need you soon enough.’

Grace nodded.

‘For them then,’ she said.

She lay back for a moment, closed her eyes, let herself think about her child, their son, labouring so hard to be born, and felt a wave of shame because he had been struggling on this first,
dark journey without even so much as the aid of his mother’s properly focused thoughts.

Not any more.

She’d be with him now, for as long as it took. With him for ever.

It’s all right,
she told her child.
I’m all yours.

Her mind moved away again, back down to the CCU, to Sam, but with an effort almost as great as the physical labors of birth itself, she dragged it back again.

It’s all right
, she told her son again.
You can come now.

Chapter Thirty-eight

The discovery had helped Sam, though not, of course, poor Teté.

They felt such
guilt
about the loneliness of her death, though even if Sam’s own collapse had not temporarily wiped David’s concern for Terri from his mind, it would have made
no difference, because her heart had given out before she could even call for help. The post-mortem might reveal some cardiac weakness, something congenital, perhaps, not picked up in a standard
physical exam, but for whatever reason, Terri had stood no chance.

If Cathy had not been at Sam’s side so swiftly that, too, might have ended in tragedy, but as it transpired, though he had not been present at or even aware of the birth – on
Wednesday, September 14 – of his son, he had, forty-eight hours later, been well enough to meet him.

Joshua Jude Becket.

Four pounds five ounces, breathing on his own, even suckling. The most beautiful, perfect child in the world, bringing joy with him, and healing, too, at least for his father.

His Uncle Saul’s wounds, as much spiritual, perhaps even more than physical, would take much longer to heal. Months of pain and rehab and uncertainty, without the solace of his love to
come home to at the end of it.

Lucia was still alive, they heard, but fading by inches.