Last Run (6 page)

‘I have people I could run with, sure,’ Kez said.

Cathy heard a note of something beneath the briskness, looked up to try to gauge her expression, found it impossible with her eyes masked by the Wileys.

‘Not many I want to, though.’ Kez pulled a black baseball cap out of a pocket and put it on.

Cathy thought for a moment that she had identified that note, then realized almost as quickly that she couldn’t be right.

Neediness. That’s what she’d
thought
she’d heard.

Crazy.

Cathy looked at Kez Flanagan, at her lean, narrow frame, watched her beginning to move away on to the track, swinging her arms, flexing, bouncing gently, saw the long, supple, strong yet quite
thin legs common to many runners, muscles and tendons clearly definable, even in semi-repose. She remembered seeing her run at Tampa – ‘
Tampa was special
’, Kez had said the
other day, hadn’t she? – and she remembered her supreme confidence, the respect and acclaim of her fellow Tornadoes, the applause of the spectators.

Nothing needy about Kez.

Running, for Cathy, had always been, at its very best, a lone experience. It was good in many ways to run with a group or be a part of a team, but her fundamental lack of
self-confidence had prevented her from becoming a valuable team member, had blocked her full potential. When Cathy ran alone and unobserved, her legs felt stronger, her body indefatigable, her
heart pumped blood more effectively, spread vitality around her body right down to her toes. As a lone runner, she
felt
like a real competitor, capable of winning, but whenever Coach Delaney
had attempted to stretch her ability, the winner in Cathy had disappeared until finally the coach had all but given up.

Running with Kez felt different.

Watching her from a distance had been great, but running shoulder to shoulder with a fine and powerful athlete, close enough to hear the sharp, steady rasps of her breathing and feel the heat
fanning out from her made everything seem more intense. Cathy could hear the pounding of Kez’s spikes in a kind of counter-rhythm to her own thump, felt as if she were almost flying, as if
running was
effortless.

‘Doing OK?’ Kez slowed them down to a jogging rest after the first quarter mile.

‘Great,’ Cathy panted back.

‘I’m going for it,’ Kez said suddenly, and broke away.

Cathy considered for about a half second trying to go with her.
No way.
She watched her go, start to fly, cut loose from her running companion’s dead weight, saw the
red-black-orange blurring with speed and distance, began to slow her own pace, a peculiar kind of sorrow expanding to fill her chest until, finally, she realized it was her own overexertion forcing
her to stop. She doubled over, fighting to control her breathing and pulse till she could look up and pinpoint Kez again, watch the end of her solo flight while she, a lesser mortal, reduced again
to third-rate, commenced her own warm-down exercises.

‘Feel like doing it again?’ Kez asked after they’d downed water and rested for a while beneath the jacaranda where they’d first spoken the previous week.

‘God, yes,’ Cathy said. ‘If you’re sure.’

‘Why not?’ Kez said. ‘I had fun. Makes a change from training solo.’

She was running, she said, in the 800 and 1500 meter events at the Trio Club meet up in West Palm Beach next weekend.

‘Must be a bunch of guys you could train with,’ Cathy said, casually.

‘I already told you I don’t want to train with them,’ Kez said.

Cathy liked the compliment. ‘Beach OK?’ she suggested. ‘Next time?’

‘Good for me,’ Kez said.

Chapter Seven

August 15

‘I see Gregory Hoffman’s been back,’ Lucia Busseto said on Monday morning, bringing Grace a cup of one of the homegrown herbal teas that were her particular
speciality.

Lucia called this one ‘pregnancy tea’, and Grace had long since forgotten much of what was in it; recalled, vaguely, camomile and nettle and alfalfa, had checked with Barbara Walden
before trying it and had grown accustomed to its taste.

‘Is he doing OK?’ Lucia knew that although she had access to some patient files, whatever Gregory Hoffman and Grace had talked about on Saturday was not up for discussion.

Forty-one years old, widowed for a decade, a petite, slim, physically fit and attractive brunette with just a few strands of silver in her curly short hair, Lucia lived alone in the Key Biscayne
home she had formerly shared with her husband, Phil. Her greatest regret, Lucia had once told Grace, was not having had children of her own – though she spoke animatedly about Phil’s
niece, Tina, a trainee nurse over in Naples and the apple of her eye, and told Grace regularly that working for a person whose
raison d’être
was helping troubled youngsters had
made all the difference to her life.

‘It’s been a while,’ Grace answered now, ‘since I last saw Gregory.’

‘Sip your tea, doctor,’ Lucia told her, and sat down at her own desk, with the pretty miniature herb pots she’d brought from home over time. ‘I’m not asking
questions as such – I know better – but I’d so hoped he was doing better, and I just want to say that if you think it appropriate at any time, please would you send him my
love.’

‘Of course I will,’ Grace said.

‘Damned drugs,’ Lucia said, darkly. ‘Lovely boy like that, nice family.’

‘Yes,’ Grace said.

Lucia changed the subject. ‘I thought you’d promised to stop working weekends.’

Grace smiled. ‘You’re very like Dora at times.’

‘Because we both care about you.’

‘And I’m grateful,’ Grace assured her, ‘but I’ve already had Sam and Cathy on my case about Saturday, and the only person who doesn’t drive me just a little
nuts on a daily basis is my father-in-law, and he’s the doctor.’

‘Maybe he doesn’t see you overdoing things on a daily basis,’ Lucia pointed out, then changed topics again. ‘So how are things going for Detective Becket with the new
murder?’

‘You know I couldn’t talk about that either,’ Grace said, ‘even if I knew anything.’

‘I know it,’ Lucia said easily. ‘But I can’t help being interested. We’re all going to rest a whole lot more comfortably in our beds when the killer’s behind
bars.’

‘Mr Muller wasn’t killed in his bed,’ Grace said, knowing that wasn’t the point.

‘On the beach. Just as bad.’ Lucia put on her spectacles to commence some work, then took them off again. ‘Cathy runs on the beach a lot, doesn’t she?’

‘In daylight,’ Grace said, though she’d worried about that too since the murder.

‘She often runs at sunset,’ Lucia said.

‘Plenty of people around at sunset,’ Grace said. ‘I thought you were trying to lower my stress levels.’

‘Yes,’ Lucia agreed. ‘I’m sorry, doctor.’

‘No problem,’ Grace said. ‘And are you ever going to start calling me Grace?’

‘Professional women should be respected,’ Lucia said.

Grace smiled, knew it was true that Lucia – who did not, so far as she knew, need to work for a living – had a fondness for the idea of working for a
doctor
, even if she was
just a psychologist.

The spectacles were raised halfway to Lucia’s curved nose. ‘Does Detective Becket still think there’s no connection with Trent?’

‘Lucia,’ Grace reproached.

‘All right,’ Lucia said. ‘Sorry.’

Grace relented. ‘I’m sure the police are checking things out at Trent,’ she said, ‘but that poor man’s just as likely to have been killed by a stranger as by anyone
who knew him, at work or anyplace else.’

‘God rest his soul,’ Lucia said.

No murderous strangers coming out of the woodwork.

No witnesses making themselves known, despite the televised re-enactments on TV. No calls, anonymous or otherwise, to the police tips hotline or to the
Herald
or any of the local radio
stations.

Not an inch more common ground between the Pompano Beach and Muller killings. Carmelita Sanchez had been a homely mother of four, dressmaking when she hadn’t been cleaning or taking care
of her family. No new information about the janitor’s past or private life to nudge Miami Beach’s investigation in any specific direction. No convictions or arrest record. No evidence
of drug-taking – though with the usual backlog, it was going to take a long while till the full toxicology report was in. No recent or even distant relationships, straight or gay, that anyone
appeared to know of; and although it was generally agreed at his gym and at Trent that Muller had liked taking care of his body, no one seemed of the opinion that he had been obsessive.

The ransacking of a murder victim’s life was an aspect of his work that Sam had never become comfortable with. The sifting through of everything from bank statements to dirty underwear was
distasteful to him, however vital it was to an investigation.

‘Victim’s past caring,’ Martinez regularly reminded him, but Sam felt that made it worse, particularly when, as in this case, the deceased seemed to have been beyond
reproach.

Not that
anyone
deserved to have most of the bones in his face smashed and his throat cut, no matter what they’d done. Unless maybe they were child killers, Sam had to allow
–privately, as a man, not a cop.

Rudolph Muller appeared to have been something of a loner, appeared to have hurt no one, angered no one, stolen from no one, had never committed a crime. Yet
someone
had done that to him,
and maybe it had been a random killing, a psycho’s fuse lit and ready to blow the next person they encountered, but Sam doubted that. It was too personal and angry a crime, he thought, though
probably not a
crime passionel
because most lovers who killed in the heat of the moment balked at facial destruction precisely
because
of the feelings left in them.

This killing had been intensely violent.

‘Rage-fuelled,’ Sam said to Martinez.

‘Lotta fruitcakes about,’ the other man maintained.

Whole
lotta fruitcakes, if Carmelita Sanchez had been slain by a separate killer. The thought made Sam feel no better.

Gregory Hoffman came for another session on Wednesday afternoon, half an hour after Lucia had left for the day.

When he had first been brought to Grace, he had come burdened by undiagnosed dyslexia and an accompanying lack of self-confidence, all his problems magnified – though it had taken him
months to admit to that – by his marijuana habit.

‘But he’s just a
child
,’ Annie Hoffman had protested when Grace had, with Gregory’s agreement, broken the news to her.

Gregory and thousands of others, Grace had told the distraught mother, tens of thousands, probably more. Maybe in big cities, Annie had argued – meaning not in Sunny Isles Beach, not in an
affluent, loving, Jewish home from which a twelve-year-old boy got driven to school by his dad and collected by his mom and taken to temple Sunday mornings so he could study for his bar
mitzvah.

Grace had never found out when Greg’s habit had begun or who had sold him his marijuana; she was his psychologist, not a police officer, and all she had cared about was getting through to
him,
helping
him, and she had helped, they all had.

But here he was again, back down in the dark. Yet it was not, she felt, the same.

This was different, seriously so. Annie thought so, and Greg had said as much himself at the weekend.

He looked a little less freaked out, less haunted, this afternoon, but he was still patently disturbed and also physically worn, indefinably
damaged.
It would be easy, Grace realized, to
pin this sudden downturn on some new chemical being pumped into his system, and she knew that a bad acid trip, for instance, might still be affecting him long after the stuff was out of his
bloodstream – but still, all her instincts warned her that something else was at work here.

She had wondered, ever since Gregory had left on Saturday, what he had meant when he had said that he could cope with his nightmares, but that it was the ‘waking stuff’ he
couldn’t take.

‘What did you mean by that, Greg?’ she asked him now, out on the deck again.

He closed his eyes, and shuddered.

‘Take your time,’ Grace said.

The eyes remained shut, and his mouth worked for a moment.

‘Saw me,’ he said, so softly she had to strain to hear.

‘Who saw you, Gregory?’ Grace leaned forward as far as the baby would allow.

He said it again, the same two words.

‘Saw me.’

He opened his eyes, and seemed, for a second, startled, disoriented.

‘Greg?’ Grace was gentle. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I can’t do this.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, doc’

‘You said someone saw you,’ Grace persevered. ‘Did someone see you doing something, Greg? Is that what you’ve been dreaming about?’

‘I can’t tell you,’ he said.

‘I just want to help,’ Grace said. ‘You know it would be in confidence.’

He shook his head again. ‘Uh-uh,’ he said. ‘Sorry, doc’

There was an air of regretful finality about those last words, a sense of giving up.

The thought made Grace shiver.

She had just watched him climb into his mother’s car, having agreed to speak with Annie and Jay later that evening, when Cathy’s Mazda pulled up.

Grace guessed, the instant she saw the stranger climbing out of the passenger seat, that this was Kez Flanagan. Not just because of the short, vibrantly red hair that Cathy had described to her,
but because of the way she moved.

An athlete, definitely, a runner like Cathy, but tougher, leaner, less feminine.

‘Hi, there,’ she said to them both from the doorway.

‘Hi, Grace.’ Cathy’s cheeks were flushed. ‘This is Kez Flanagan.’ She smiled at the young woman. ‘Kez, this is my mom, Grace.’

‘Hello, Dr Becket.’ Kez put out her hand.

‘It’s Dr Lucca,’ Cathy said a little awkwardly.

‘Grace is fine,’ her mother said easily, and looked down at Kez’s hands. ‘Love the nails,’ she said.

They all came inside and Cathy shut the door. ‘She paints them herself.’