Mind Games (45 page)

But she also knew that she hadn’t heard him sing better than he did that night, when it really counted, and that she had never experienced such excitement and sheer personal
heat
in any theatre. Of course, she accepted, they were probably all pretty great – but from Grace’s own, rather more intimate, point-of-view, Sam was simply greater.

She told him so afterwards, when they were partying with the others.

And then she told him again, back up on his roof, when they were partying alone.

He seemed to like the way she told him.

When Hector Hernandez called Sam early next morning, Sam and Grace were still asleep in bed. Sam got his act together swiftly enough to make it through the conversation, but
Grace was still fuzzy when he put down the phone.

Sam leaned over and kissed her on the mouth.

‘That was the captain.’

‘What’d he want?’

‘To talk to me off-the-record.’

Grace was waking up now. ‘About what?’

‘Seems that Phil Kuntz – remember Phil Kuntz, Grace?’ Sam’s eyes were very dark and unreadable. ‘Sure you do. He was the guy who helped fish you out of the ocean
back in May, the guy who owned the
Delia
.’

‘Of course I remember him.’

‘Anyway, it seems that Phil Kuntz phoned up the chief last week to tell him that he ought to give me my badge back because the
Snowbird
capsizing was nothing to do with me, and
all I did was save your life and risk my own – I’m just quoting now, okay? – and risk my own life to try and save Hayman.’

Grace sat up, pulling the top sheet up over her breasts. ‘That’s good news, isn’t it? And it’s all true.’

‘So anyway,’ Sam went on, ‘the chief called Hernandez and talked to him, and then the cap called up Kuntz and asked him how come he was suddenly proclaiming Sam Becket –
that’s me – a hero? And guess what Kuntz told the captain?’

‘Beats me,’ Grace said, quietly.

‘Kuntz told Hernandez that the cute blonde shrink – ring any bells? – had come down to the Keys to see him, told him what had happened to me, reminded him what a big hero I
was.’

He stopped. Grace said nothing.

‘So?’ Sam waited. ‘Grace?’

She looked him in the eye. ‘So are you going to make a big deal of this, Sam? Are you going to tell me I did something bad?’ She dropped the sheet that had been covering her.

‘Dirty pool, Grace.’

‘All’s fair.’

Sam looked at her for a long moment.

‘Oh, my,’ he said.

‘Okay?’ Grace asked, still very softly.

‘Guess so,’ Sam said.

‘So what’s the situation now? What else did Hernandez say?’

‘That though I’m still a much bigger sapbrain than he gave me credit for, I’m also a halfway decent detective and he’d rather not lose me permanently if he can help
it.’

‘That’s wonderful,’ Grace said, waves of pleasure coursing through her.

Sam held up his right hand, palm forward. ‘Don’t get too excited. He also said that if –
if
– I do get my badge back, I’ll probably be reassigned to desk
duty for a while.’

‘Which means what exactly?’

‘What it sounds like. I won’t be allowed out on the street – I’ll have to sit in the office, man the phones and do everyone’s dirty work.’

‘But that wouldn’t be forever?’

‘I hope not,’ Sam said.

‘Of
course
it won’t be forever – not after what Hernandez said about not wanting to lose a fine detective.’

‘He said halfway decent, not fine.’

‘Oh, Sam!’ Grace flung her arms around him and squeezed tight. ‘It’s going to be all right – I’m so happy for you.’

Sam hugged her back, then drew back just far enough to kiss her mouth. ‘He said I’d have a letter of reprimand on my file.’

‘Is that terrible?’ Grace said, her lips still hovering close to his.

‘It’s not good, but it’s not permanent suspension either.’

‘So how long is all this going to take?’

‘Hernandez wasn’t saying.’ Sam shrugged. ‘My guess is they’ll make me sweat until something goes down and they need all hands on deck.’

Grace laid her index finger over his mouth.

‘No sailing jargon, please.’

On the Hayman/Broderick front, there was no big news. Martinez told Sam that he’d learned, after the event, that the Monroe County officers had found a stash of
prescription drugs in the study of the Key Largo house – nothing that would have been out of keeping for a practising psychiatrist. Except that Peter Hayman had told Grace that he seldom saw
patients. And since there was every likelihood that he’d never qualified, if he ever
had
treated patients, he had not been legally entitled to do so.

Still, posing as a doctor might be illegal, Martinez pointed out to Sam, but it was hardly in the same league as multiple homicide.

‘Answer me this,’ Sam said. ‘Aside from the incident in Dania, have there been any more scalpel attacks in doctors’ officers or anyplace else since Hayman fell
overboard?’

‘Not that I know of,’ Martinez answered.

‘So all we need is a little goddamned luck.’

‘Not to mention a lot of goddamned proof,’ Martinez said.

It took another two weeks of investigation and reports – by two independent forensic adolescent psychologists, by the governor of the Female House of Detention, by Dr
Parés and by Dr Khan – before Jerry Wagner got the powers-that-were to agree to listen to his submission: that even at this early stage in the search for the truth about the so-called
Dr Peter Hayman, there were more than enough grounds for believing that the wrong person had been charged with the murders of Marie Robbins, Arnold Robbins, Frances Dean and Beatrice Flager, and
with the attempted murder of David Becket.

The last-named victim gave evidence in the form of a magnificently persuasive letter written from his perspective as the physician who’d taken care of Cathy, first in the immediate
aftermath of her parents’ murder, and again after her collapse during police questioning following Beatrice Flager’s death. Given Grace’s previously given guarantee that she was
prepared to act as Cathy’s temporary guardian, her report as the prisoner’s psychologist was not admissible, though Grace, too, had been permitted to write a letter affirming her
absolute continuing belief in Cathy’s innocence.

The judge agreed with Jerry Wagner.

Cathy was released into Grace’s care just before five in the afternoon of Friday, the seventeenth day of July.

They both wept as she walked out of the courtroom straight into Grace’s arms, and after they’d run the gauntlet of reporters and photographers, it was straight home
to the house on Bay Harbor Islands for Cathy’s requested dinner: a thin and crispy pizza with roast chicken and caramelized onions from Liberty Pizza in South Beach – with her own tub
of whatever was the
most
obscene ice cream in Grace’s freezer. Harry, always a perfect gentleman, greeted Cathy like a longlost lover, and even pretended, when she dropped tiny
pieces of chicken on the floor, that he was hanging around her feet for her company rather than food.

Sam stayed away that first evening. He telephoned and talked to Cathy for a couple of minutes, but though she tried hard because Sam was Grace’s friend and because she’d always said
that Sam seemed pretty cool – and because she had now learned that he was currently on suspension from the police department – he was, when the chips were down, still the cop who had
arrested her right after Harry had dug up the murder weapon in her own backyard.

‘Did Grace tell you’ – Cathy said to Harry right after the call was over – ‘that I said to say I didn’t blame you for digging up that thing?’

Harry wagged his short tail and licked her hand. Cathy looked up at Grace, and her eyes were shining.

‘He knows I’m innocent, too, doesn’t he?’

‘No doubt about it,’ Grace said.

Grace soon realized that David Becket had been right about the disruption to her everyday life. A judge had been persuaded to order the media to keep away from Cathy, but
still, it was
not
easy having her to stay. Perhaps that was part of the problem – they were both so aware that she was with Grace as a short-term guest, not really to
stay
,
not to live. If they had been able to say that Peter Hayman’s guilt had been proven beyond a reasonable doubt, that this was now
absolutely
the start of Cathy’s new life, then
maybe she might have been better able to set about the business of settling down, of re-establishing herself and some tenuous new roots. But neither she nor Grace could safely see any further than
a few weeks into the future, and frankly Grace thought they were both badly affected by the uncertainty in different ways.

Sam was great about it.

‘This is a really shitty deal for both you ladies,’ he told them one evening while they were all waiting for a table at Hy-Vong in Little Havana, mouths watering as they caught the
aromas of spicy Vietnamese food. ‘You’re both scared about what’s going to happen.
You’re
scared,’ he said to Cathy, ‘because it’s you it’s
just possibly going to happen to all over again – and Grace is scared because she wants so much for this all to be over for you – and you’re both spending most of the time
skirting around how scared you really are because you want to spare each other’s feelings.’

The line of waiting people shifted a little.

‘He’s right,’ Cathy said to Grace. She had, by now, forgiven, if not forgotten Sam’s role in her arrest and arraignment.

‘I know,’ Grace said.

‘What’s up?’ Sam asked her.

‘Nothing.’

‘I can see something’s up,’ he said. ‘What did I say wrong?’

‘Not a thing.’ Grace winced. ‘That’s what’s wrong. I’m supposed to be the psychologist, but you’re absolutely right, Sam – I haven’t been
allowing either Cathy or myself to face up to our feelings.’

‘That’s because you can’t shrink your own head,’ Cathy said.

‘She’s right,’ Sam said to Grace.

‘I know,’ Grace said again.

They moved a little closer to the head of the line.

‘Do you want to see another psychologist?’ Grace asked Cathy suddenly. ‘Maybe Dr Khan – you liked him, didn’t you?’

‘He was okay,’ Cathy said, but her face had fallen.

‘It doesn’t have to be Dr Khan,’ Grace said swiftly. ‘It could be anyone.’

‘I don’t want to see anyone.’ Cathy’s voice had grown suddenly loud, too loud, and her cheeks were hot. ‘I don’t want anyone but you, Grace.’

‘But I’m not sure I can be any real use to you as a therapist right now.’

‘I don’t
want
you as a therapist – I want you as my
friend.
’ There were tears in her eyes. ‘I know things can’t be normal, I
know
that, but I want us just to be ordinary, even if it’s only for a while.’

Grace felt Sam’s hand touch her right arm, gripping her gently but firmly. She understood his message, wanted to go with his instincts. She wanted nothing more than to give Cathy a big
hug, hold her close,
be
the friend she wanted, maybe more. But she was still scared: of crossing a border she had no right to cross, into the territory that had belonged to Marie
Robbins.

‘Okay,’ she said, praying that the simplicity of the word would be enough.

‘Is it?’ Cathy searched her face. ‘Do you get it, Grace?’

‘Of course I get it.’ Grace compromised, reached for her hand, held it, not too tightly. ‘I want that too. Normality.’ She glanced at Sam, saw that he was conscious of
her predicament, knew that he thought she’d failed, or at least that she’d copped out.

‘Well, I know what I want, guys,’ he said, helping out again. ‘I want spring rolls and fish with
nuoc man
sauce.’

‘What’s that?’ Cathy asked.

‘Lime and garlic.’

‘You better have that, too, Grace,’ Cathy said, grinning.

‘Why’s that?’

‘You know.’

‘Do I?’ Grace was all innocence.

Cathy giggled. It felt great to hear and watch. Grace knew they were back to game-playing, to skirting around things, but suddenly part of her – the regular woman part, not the
psychologist part – felt that maybe it wasn’t such a wrong way to go. After all, she wasn’t really sure what the hell
point
there was in analysing their feelings right
then. Yes, they were both scared, but they both knew that. Sam was right on the button about reminding them to admit to it now and again, but even if the worst happened and this period did turn out
to be all too brief, it might – if it was handled in as relaxed a way as it could be – at least provide a comparatively happy interlude for Cathy, another good time for her to hold on
to.

She fascinated Grace more and more. Some of the time she was so grown-up, made grimly streetwise by her losses and by her time in prison; other times she seemed to revert to
being much younger than her years. And yet, beneath it all, Grace could still see the nice, highly intelligent, perfectly
normal
young person who had both impressed and touched her the
first time they’d met.

Grace remembered that first time. She remembered Cathy’s composure, the slightly bland expression that Grace had soon realized was part of her blocking mechanism. Cathy still did the same
thing now and again, but with Grace, at least, it happened less and less. If one positive thing had come out of the last several roller-coaster months, it was, Grace thought, that Cathy had come to
trust her.

It did disturb her that Cathy was so up and down. Her moods were mercurial and extreme, with explosions of rage and bravado, followed by longer periods of depression, followed, thankfully, by
times of contentment and optimism. Sam was good with her,
for
her, when he was around – though he and Grace were still, despite Cathy’s clear encouragement of their
relationship, being circumspect about intimacy. Over and over again, Grace saw what a great father he must have been, would have been, had Sampson lived. Would, God willing, be again some day in
the future.