Last Run (9 page)

‘Nothing neurotic about that,’ Sam said, ‘especially not in Cathy’s case.’ He fondled the dog’s ears. ‘Gracie, just tell me what you’re thinking
– just say it.’

‘I think Kez is gay,’ she said.

‘And?’ Sam waited, looked at her face. ‘You’re kidding, right?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Cathy isn’t gay,’ he said with absolute conviction. ‘I know there haven’t been that many guys around for a while, but she’s only ever dated men—’
He broke off. ‘Unless you know something I don’t?’

‘Not at all,’ Grace said. ‘This is just some kind of instinct.’

‘Then I don’t get what your instinct is telling you,’ Sam said. ‘That Cathy might be lesbian?’ He paused, his brain working to catch up. ‘It’s never
entered my head for a second, but it would be OK, wouldn’t it?’ He shook his head. ‘It would be absolutely fine with me, so long as it made her happy.’ His brow creased.
‘Are you saying you think Kez is out to
seduce
her?’ He stood up. ‘And if she is, what makes you think Cathy couldn’t handle that?’

‘Nothing,’ Grace said. ‘She’s a survivor, after all.’

‘I think – ’ Sam sat down again, moved Woody to the end of the sofa so he could get close to Grace, take her hand – ‘you’re overreacting, which is unlike
you.’

‘I know,’ Grace agreed. ‘They’ve gone running together a few times – they both go to Trent – Cathy went to see her friend compete at a meet.’

‘But your instincts are telling you there’s more to it, and for some reason, that’s worrying you.’

‘Only a little,’ Grace said. ‘As you said, she looked happy.’

‘Which is all we want,’ Sam said.

They were both still awake two hours later.

‘Feeling OK, Gracie?’ Sam turned on his bedside lamp, propped himself up on one elbow and looked at her, lying on her side on the big maternity pillow they’d recently bought in
the hope that she might sleep more comfortably.

‘Fine,’ she said. ‘You?’

‘I’m not pregnant.’

‘No, but you’ve been lying there wide awake and scared to move in case you disturb your big, fat pregnant wife.’

‘True,’ Sam said.

Grace rolled on to her back and cuddled closer, Sam resting his hand in its new favourite place, somewhere over what he thought of as the greatest gift anyone had given him since Althea had born
him Sampson.

‘So,’ Grace said, ‘your turn to tell me what you’re thinking.’

‘OK,’ he said. ‘Do you really think Cathy’s still vulnerable enough to allow herself to be coerced into a major lifestyle decision she would not otherwise
make?’

‘I don’t know,’ Grace answered. ‘I hope not.’

They fell silent. Sam’s hand remained on her belly.

‘I take it,’ Grace went on slowly, ‘we’re both agreed that if it were to turn out that Cathy wanted to choose that path, we would support her one hundred per
cent?’

‘No doubt about it,’ Sam said. ‘A thousand per cent.’

Grace laid her own hand over his. ‘But?’

‘No buts about supporting her,’ he answered. ‘Except we both know it’s not an easy path to follow, especially when your history’s as messed up as
Cathy’s.’

‘Don’t forget I may be entirely wrong,’ Grace said.

‘I don’t know,’ Sam said. ‘I’ve grown to trust your hunches.’

‘Not a hunch,’ she pointed out. ‘Instinct.’

‘Even more powerful.’ He sighed. ‘It bothers me some, too, that Kez is older—’

‘Only by a couple of years,’ Grace said.

‘Almost certainly more experienced.’

‘We can’t know that.’

‘I guess that’s the main point,’ Sam said. ‘We can’t – we don’t – know anything about Kez, or the way Cathy may, or may not, feel about
her.’

‘And Cathy may be vulnerable, but I got the sense the other day that the same could be said for Kez.’ Grace smiled. ‘Which may just make them a good match.’

‘And probably just good friends,’ Sam said.

‘Perhaps,’ Grace said.

‘But you don’t believe that, do you?’

‘I believe that our daughter has a certain wisdom,’ Grace replied.

‘So we just better trust her,’ Sam said.

‘And be there for her if she needs us.’

‘Otherwise, butt out,’ Sam said.

‘Definitely,’ Grace said.

Sam leaned towards her, kissed her on the mouth.

‘Could you sleep now, do you think, fat, pregnant, beautiful wife?’

‘So long as you go on holding me,’ Grace told him.

Chapter Ten

August 21

Annie Hoffman heard her husband’s scream, and
knew.

Just another gorgeous Sunday morning in Sunny Isles. Jay showering and getting dressed before making coffee, then telling her he was going to see if Greg was up and ask him if he wanted to come
buy the papers and pick up bagels and lox.

 ‘Greg?’

She heard that first. The last shred of normality, her husband calling his son’s name as he knocked on his bedroom door.

Then the door opening – and for a few more seconds, maybe as many as ten, she was still herself, still Annie Hoffman, wife and mother of two.

And then she heard Jay’s scream, primal and terrible, filling the sweet Sunday morning, filling her ears, her brain,
all
of her.

And she knew. Was already picturing Gregory hanging, had never realized until this instant that it was an image she had been harbouring in her mind for a long time; that this was what she had
been so terrified of since the time of her beautiful boy’s first depression.

Stay here.

A voice in her head was telling her, even as she was already moving, that if she stayed in this room, turned on the TV, volume up high, maybe even locked the door, she need never know, not for
sure.

But she was already on her way, had already crossed the hallway, taken a swift, wild look into five-year-old Janie’s room, and her daughter was still in bed, just stirring, and swiftly
Annie closed the door again and locked it.

The door to Greg’s room was open.

She stepped inside.

No one – nothing – bed empty, room empty – not there, not
hanging –
the glass door to the deck open, the sounds of the bay, sweet water sounds, flowing in.

And then another sound.

Her husband, keening.

Annie stopped, stood motionless for one more instant, then walked outside.

Jay was sitting on the deck, turned, saw her.

‘No, Annie,’ he said, ashen-faced, ‘don’t look.’

She looked.

At her boy,
their
boy.

The picture in her head had been nothing compared to this.

‘Mommy!’

Janie’s voice, from inside, frightened by her locked door and the awful sounds her daddy was making.

And her mommy now, too.

Sam was at the department and Cathy – still giving her ankle a rest from running – had gone for a swim, and so Grace was home alone when David called with the news
that Gregory had died, most probably of a drug overdose.

‘I’d have liked to spare you this,’ he said, ‘but Jay thinks you might possibly be able to help Annie in some way, maybe just persuade her to take something. I’ve
tried, but she’s . . .’ His voice was weary. ‘You can imagine.’

‘No,’ Grace said, deeply shaken. ‘Thank God, I can’t begin to imagine.’

As Gregory’s doctor, David had been the first person Jay Hoffman had called, aware there was nothing the paramedics could have done for his son. David had told Jay that of course he would
come, but that he needed to call the Sunny Isles police right away, because from what Jay had said this was not a natural death, which meant the cops would have to bring in the medical
examiner.

‘Do you know what he took?’ Grace asked David now.

‘I can’t say,’ he replied. ‘I didn’t examine him, but—’

‘But what?’

‘There’s no point in speculating, Grace. But if you can stand going—’

‘David, please.’ Grace persisted. ‘You know me well enough to know I won’t repeat a syllable of anything you tell me.’ She paused. ‘It might make a tiny
difference to how I try to help Annie.’

‘Not a word, OK? This is the ME’s territory, not mine.’

‘Goes without saying.’

‘Definitely drugs of some kind, possibly cocaine – I’m no expert, thank God. But I saw some silver paper and one of those damned little plastic bags near the boy, and . .
.’ He hesitated again. ‘And this probably means nothing, but it looked to me as if maybe whatever he took was bad.’

‘Dear God.’ Grace’s horror was intensifying.

‘I’m very likely wrong.’ David sounded very upset. ‘Gregory’s face was very contorted, probably from some kind of convulsion, which could have been caused by any
number of things, but—’

This time, Grace waited for him to go on.

‘But it wasn’t just his face,’ David added. ‘His whole body looked contorted. I think the drugs might have been cut with something toxic. It happens all the time,
doesn’t it? Drugs adulterated for a bigger “high”. Rat poison added or insecticide, God alone knows what else.’ The doctor’s sigh was heavy and sad.
‘Craziness.’

Grace summoned up the courage to ask the question that seemed, at that moment, to be the most unbearable of all.

‘Not suicide then?’ She felt the baby kick, laid her free hand over her stomach.

‘I can’t commit myself to that, Grace.’

‘I don’t know if Jay told you,’ she said, ‘that I saw Greg twice last week.’

‘He did tell me,’ David said gently.

‘I couldn’t help him,’ Grace said. ‘Didn’t help him.’

‘You tried,’ David said.

Not hard enough
came into her mind, and she dismissed it, angry at herself, because this was most certainly not about her, this was about a fourteen-year-old boy and his parents and
little sister.

‘I’ll go,’ she said. ‘Right away.’

She drove the familiar route up Collins, passing Haulover Park, dozens of apartment blocks and hotels, steeling herself all the way for the questioning likely to come –
if not now, then later – from the distraught, grieving parents.

Some years ago a severely depressed patient of hers had committed suicide, and Grace had never forgotten the agony of that girl’s mother and father, nor her own anguish and
self-recrimination.

And Cathy, don’t forget Cathy.

Who’d cried for help once a long time ago, had tried . . .

Not now.

Fiercely, Grace pushed that terrible memory away, concentrated on Gregory.

Accidental, please.
Her desperate need for this boy’s death not to be suicide was, of course, primarily for his family’s sake, but there was undeniable selfishness in it too
as she trawled back and forth through her mental log of those last two sessions with the teenager.

Disturbed, damaged, haunted; above all, scared. Not suicidal. At least not when Grace had seen him, but that didn’t preclude a deterioration.

If, say, the unknown cause of his terrors had in some way tightened its grip, Gregory might have found it intolerable. Unbearable enough, at least, to use whatever substance had been in the bag
David had seen near the body.

The closing stages of her final appointment with Greg came back to her. Those two words she’d had to strain to hear.

‘Saw me.’

He had looked so frightened when he’d said that. More than frightened. Terrified.

Had that perhaps been nothing more real than the product of a drug-disordered mind, something reaching out of his nightmares to grab him by the throat, the awful dreams that had driven his
mother to bring him back to Grace for help?

No help given.

Horrors on horrors beyond the palms and begonias in the pretty front garden of the Hoffman family home on North Bay Road.

The body had been taken away, but Miami Dade police and crime-scene technicians were all over the house, coming in and out of the teenager’s bedroom, moving to and fro from the deck;
evidence bags being sealed, cameras flashing, marine patrol officers visible on the
Pegasus
, all the peace of the bay sickeningly destroyed.

More like a homicide, Grace thought, than accident or suicide, then remembered what David had said about the drugs maybe being adulterated.

Toxic. Enough to kill.

‘Oh dear God, Annie,’ she said when she saw the other woman.

Ravaged already, the pretty face changed for ever.

‘Grace,’ she said. ‘Thank you for coming.’

Grace stood there uncertainly, wanting to embrace her, but half expecting Annie to strike out at her, rage at her, the person she had come to for help.

It was Annie who put out her arms to her.

‘I know, Grace,’ she said, weeping softly. ‘I know.’

‘They can never get over this,’ Grace told Sam later, at home. ‘I’ll never forget what Annie told me, so how will she ever be able to bear
it?’

It seemed ineradicably etched in her mind, the description of Gregory’s poor body, arched back, the dark colour of his face, the blood from his nose. His terrible grimace. Unbearable.

‘There were photos of him everywhere,’ Grace went on. ‘All his belongings strewn around, as if he was still right in the middle of things, alive and
there,
and Annie and
Jay were both extraordinary to me.’

It was early evening and they had come out on to their own deck, letting the sorrows of the day wash over them.

‘So kind, I could hardly believe it,’ she said.

‘They’re good people,’ Sam said.

‘I was expecting them to lash out at me,’ Grace went on, ‘because maybe they might feel I’d failed Greg, which is true, of course.’

‘No,’ Sam said firmly. ‘It is not true.’

‘I saw him twice last week.’ Grace didn’t bother to wipe away the angry tears in her eyes. ‘Two hours, and I achieved nothing.’

‘They’re not always ready,’ Sam said. ‘You’ve told me that.’

‘I could have pushed harder.’

‘And risked driving him away altogether.’

‘I managed that anyway, didn’t I?’ She tried to get up swiftly, but the baby’s weight seemed to pin her down, so instead she slumped back in her chair and covered her
eyes with both hands. ‘Sorry.’

‘Gracie.’ Sam was out of his own chair and on his knees, taking her in his arms. ‘Don’t do this to yourself. You did your best, like you always do, with all your
patients.’ He prised her hands from her face, and looked at her. ‘This must be the hardest thing in the world for you.’