Last Run (2 page)

Happy family.

Not so happy as they might have been, because they had lost Judy Becket – Sam and Saul’s greatly loved chicken-soup-and-steel mom – to bone cancer last year, and so Judy had
never known that Grace was pregnant again, had come to fear that Sam (who had, almost fifteen years ago, endured the agony of losing his baby son) would never be blessed with another child.

‘I was trying – ’ Saul, Sam’s nineteen-year-old brother, had said at one of their family dinners a month or so back – ‘to work out the many parts of my
nephew-to-be.’

‘Racially, you mean?’ David Becket, their paediatrician father – Sam’s by adoption – had raised a grey eyebrow. ‘Too magnificent a mix to waste on
calculation.’

They had tried it though, wading through their respective inheritances; Cathy attempting the math and failing. Hardly surprising, they all discussed, laughing, with Sam, an African – 
Bahamian-Episcopalian barmitzvahed Jew, descendant of a runaway slave, married to Grace, daughter of a third generation Swedish-American-Protestant mother and a second-generation
Italian-American-Catholic. Both David and his late wife, Judy, were children of Jewish refugees from Nazism, David’s roots in Russia, Judy’s in Poland, and Cathy had Scottish and French
blood back along her own family line.

‘Though that doesn’t count for the baby.’ She smiled. ‘Just as well.’

‘More important ingredients than genes – ’ Grace’s hand lay over her swollen abdomen – ‘are going into this particular pot.’

‘Whole lot of love,’ Sam said, covering her hand with his own.

Mocha on cream.

Happy family.

Chapter Two

August 11

By Thursday morning, most of the summer students on Trent’s small but lovely, sun-baked campus near Elaine Gordon Park in North Miami were talking about the murder; the
majority, so far as Cathy could tell, with more than a degree of morbid curiosity.

None, Cathy could almost guarantee, had a clue what they were talking about. The true horror, the ugly brutality of violent killing. She knew. So much that she sometimes felt as if her mind had
become infused with the blood and agony of her memories, as if they had become a part of her.

Grace – back when she had not been her adopted mom; when she had still, to Cathy, been Dr Grace Lucca, kiddie shrink – had tried to help Cathy believe that though the memories were
irrevocably hers she would, in time, be able to move forward; be able to push the ugliness farther away and draw strength from her own survival.

Nothing had come easily, for all their kindness and patience. Cathy had found a real sense of belonging with Grace and Sam, had long ago ceased feeling the need to unload daily secrets into the
computer journal she’d confided in during the bad times. Yet she still harboured private fears that loss might strike again, and her ongoing insecurities had made it an uphill battle to
achieve adequate grades to get accepted at Trent. She had managed it though, and she was now hoping to put her own experiences to good use in social work.

Running still did it for Cathy – better than drink or dope or Tony Roma’s baby back ribs, better even than dancing to
Born to be Wild
, better than sex
– not that sex had ever come
close
to Steppenwolf. Running had always been Cathy’s greatest release, the loss of it during her time in prison had been her greatest deprivation,
and any time things got her down or terrified her, she put on her Pumas and got flying.

The news of the Trent janitor’s murder had not exactly freaked her out since she’d never met the poor guy. But the fact remained that a man had been slain, a human being with family
and friends whose worlds were presumably now being ripped apart. Which was something else Cathy knew too much about; and the
last
thing she wanted to do was think about it. So this morning
she’d driven into school, parked her Mazda (Grace’s car until Sam had bought his wife a new Toyota), struggled through an hour’s study in the library, and then got out on the
track.

She was unaware until she had finished running, had done her cool-down stretching exercises and was stepping into her track-suit pants, that she was being watched.

Photographed.

The glint of the lens was what alerted Cathy. And then the camera was lowered, and she saw who had been taking her picture. Kez Flanagan, of all people. If Cathy had a heroine at Trent, it was
Kerry – Kez – Flanagan, the twenty-one-year-old powerhouse of the Tornadoes.

Flanagan was standing under a jacaranda tree.

‘Hi,’ she said.

‘Hi,’ Cathy said back, pulling on her jacket despite the heat.

‘Hope you don’t mind?’ Kez Flanagan indicated the camera strung around her neck – the kind Cathy thought of as ‘real’, not one of the dinky digital numbers
the whole world carried around these days. ‘I was finishing a roll, and—’

‘And I got in the way,’ Cathy said quickly, embarrassed.

‘I like your style.’ Flanagan’s voice was husky and a little brusque.

‘Really?’ Cathy heard the surprise in her own voice, and felt even more flustered.

‘Nice smooth action,’ Flanagan said.

‘Thank you.’ Thankful, too, that exercise had already flushed her cheeks.

‘I’m Kez Flanagan.’ The woman held out her hand.

‘I know.’ Cathy felt the powerful squeeze of the tanned hand, glanced down as it withdrew from hers, noticing its long fingers and intricately painted nails – almost like the
late great Flo-Jo’s, but very short, the way guitarists cut their nails. ‘I’m Cathy Becket.’

Close up, Flanagan’s short, semi-spiky hair was almost the colour of the fiery bottlebrush tree in their yard at home on the island, her eyes green-flecked hazel, her chin pointed, mouth
straight and even, her nose small but aggressive, like an arrow-head.

‘I know,’ Kez Flanagan said. ‘I’ve seen you run a few times.’

‘You have?’ Cathy was finding it hard not to stare at her.

A pair of runners rounding the bend to their right raised their right hands in a salute to Flanagan, who waved back, watched them for a moment or two, then turned back to Cathy.

‘You’re really not bad.’

‘I’m nothing.’ Cathy felt a thrill. ‘I mean, I don’t really compete.’

‘Maybe you should,’ Flanagan said. ‘With some work, a little harnessing, you could be pretty good.’

The huskiness was almost like a smoker’s, though Cathy could scarcely imagine a dedicated athlete like Flanagan, her body every bit as hard and lean close up as from a distance, putting
crap of any kind into her lungs.

‘You run,’ Flanagan went on, ‘like you’re trying to escape.’ She saw wariness spring into the younger woman’s eyes. ‘Which is cool, so long as
you’re in charge.’

‘I guess,’ Cathy said.

‘Not my business,’ Flanagan said.

‘No.’ Cathy felt flustered again. ‘I mean, I don’t mind. Not coming from you.’

‘I’m no expert, mind.’

‘You’re the best.’ Cathy heard the awe in her own voice, couldn’t help it.

Kez Flanagan shrugged. ‘Big fish, small pond.’

‘You got us gold at Sarasota.’

‘Because Jackson busted her ankle and Valdez screwed up.’

‘What about the silver at Tampa?’

Flanagan smiled. ‘Tampa was special.’

‘You’re special,’ Cathy said.

‘I guess I have my moments.’ Flanagan paused. ‘What I meant, before, about the way you run—’

Cathy waited.

‘Sure you don’t mind me talking about it?’ Flanagan checked.

‘No way,’ Cathy said. ‘I need all the help I can get.’

They left the track, walked together away from the athletic building along one of the palm-shaded pathways, heading for the parking lot. Two tracksuited athletes – red-haired Flanagan an
inch-and-a-half taller; Cathy, blonde hair tied back and a slighter build – both walking easily and unconsciously in matching rhythmic strides.

‘I’m no coach,’ Flanagan said in her matter-of-fact manner. ‘But I do know that being in charge of yourself matters. Running away may feel great, but when you’re
racing it’s where you’re headed that counts.’

‘The finish.’

‘And how you get there,’ Kez Flanagan said. ‘Taking care of your body on the way. Not hurting yourself.’

‘OK,’ Cathy said.

‘You could use someone,’ Flanagan said.

‘We have Delaney,’ Cathy said.

Mike Delaney was the Trent track coach, an all-round nice guy, but not reckoned by some of the students as the man to take the Tornadoes any place higher than two-thirds up the team
rankings.

‘Delaney’s OK,’ Flanagan said. ‘And he’s been good to me.’

‘He calls you his star,’ Cathy said.

‘I’ve heard him call me other things.’ Flanagan shrugged again. ‘And he’s been right.’ They were close to the lot now, less than half filled by vehicles
belonging to summer students and teaching staff. ‘If you’re interested,’ she said casually, ‘we could run together sometime.’

More than interested.

‘I’d like that,’ Cathy said.

Chapter Three

‘We got a two-year unsolved homicide on Pompano Beach,’ Martinez said, midway through Thursday afternoon. ‘Could be something, maybe.’

‘Actually
on
the beach?’ Sam checked.

‘Uh-huh.’ Martinez sat on the outside edge of Sam’s paper-jammed desk in his corner of the big open-plan Violent Crimes office and looked at his notes. ‘Victim Carmelita
Sanchez, bludgeoned with a blunt instrument, probably a baseball bat, then facially disfigured.’ His face puckered with disgust. ‘Bastard sliced off her lips.’

Sam took a second or two to force himself to mentally confront that image, then tried to file it in one of the mental cabinets in the back of his brain; he turned his gaze briefly to one of the
Florida Grand Opera posters on his section of wall, then went back to business.

‘Muller’s throat was cut,’ Sam said. ‘Ugly, but not weird like this.’

‘Still in two stages, the bat first,’ Martinez said. ‘Something else too. Same kind of screaming reported by residents.’ He looked down at a sheet of paper in his hand.
‘ “Crazed”, one guy said.’ He looked back down at Sam. ‘ “Like an animal”.’

‘Close enough to go talk to Broward.’ Sam was already on his feet.

Chapter Four

August 12

In his dream, Gregory Hoffman saw it all again. Blurred around the edges by his semi-sleeping brain’s unwillingness to process too accurately, too realistically.

The terror, though, was undiminished.

The thing looming out of the night, or maybe not really
looming
, too fast for that, more like a whirlwind, but solid; a figure, a person, he guessed, except it was too dark and too fast
to get a real look at, but the
thing
was flying at the other guy and one minute he was running, the next he was down on the sand.

But in the middle of that, in the middle of the guy getting knocked down, there were the sounds, terrible, sickening sounds, and Greg knew, even in the depths of his dream, that they were the
sounds of small bones being crunched in the man’s face, and of his cry, cut off real fast too, because he
couldn’t
make any more noise, and anyway, the ocean got louder after
that, the roar of the surf drowning it out, and that was good, that was better.

Except then the damned moon came out from behind the clouds and that was when he saw the knife blade glinting wet-red-black, and that wasn’t
so
bad, he could take that more than the
sounds of pulverized bones. Except that wasn’t all he saw, was it? He wished it was, wished it with every fibre, every goddamned molecule of his body and soul.

He saw the face.

The killer’s face. Except it wasn’t really a face, at least not one you could recognize or describe, because, like the knife blade, it was wet-red-black, shining in the moonlight,
and Greg thought it looked like it was
made
of blood, so much blood that he had to squeeze his eyes shut to try and block it out.

That was when he heard the other, final sound, louder than the ocean.

The screaming. Awful, hideous, crazy,
nutso
screaming that made his own blood, still safely shut in his veins under his skin, thank Christ, run cold enough to freeze.

And he woke.

At two o’clock on Friday morning, in his nice safe bedroom in his nice safe house in North Bay Road in Sunny Isles Beach, Gregory Hoffman woke from his dream, sweating and crying out and
shaking and more afraid, more
terrified
, than he had ever been in his whole fourteen-year-old life.

But this wasn’t like most nightmares, where things looked better after you were awake, after you got over it. This one was worse, much, much worse, because he knew why he’d dreamed
it, knew exactly why he was so frightened.

Because he had seen the killer with the blood-soaked head.

Because if he had seen the killer, then the killer had seen him.

And because he couldn’t tell anyone, not his mom or dad or the cops, because of what he’d been doing before it had happened. Because if he told them that then they’d send him
back to rehab again, and Greg knew he couldn’t stand that; he remembered it too clearly and it had been too bad, much too bad, and he couldn’t bear it, and so he didn’t know what
to do.

Except go on dreaming it again, over and over. Go on waiting for the killer to come for him.

Three in the morning.

Quiet time in Surfside. Nice, peaceful community, predominantly young professional families and retirees. Sleeping now, most of them. Visitors, too, nearing the close of their summer vacations,
getting set to take their kids home.

Not a whole lot of traffic on Collins.

One car, already slow, braked to a crawl near 88th Street. Driver taking a look down the side street, towards the beach. Scene of the Muller killing. Thinking about making a right. Seeing
another car, in the side road, lights switched off, a woman in the driver’s seat, a street lamp illuminating her face. Young, pretty, possibly Hispanic.

Waiting for someone, maybe. Or watching.

Cop, perhaps, the first driver thought.

And drove on more quickly, heading north.