Last Run (20 page)

In the past now, where it belonged. Another world now, another family.

And now, Kez Flanagan.

Another drag or two of dope, she thought, might help retrieve that wonderful, suddenly elusive, relaxation.

She looked around for the small carved box, then remembered Kez bringing it out earlier from what she had called her junk room.

‘It’s supposed to be my dark room,’ she’d said, ‘but mostly I use the facilities at Trent, and everything seems to end up getting stashed in there.’

Cathy hesitated briefly, then opened the door.

Junk room was about right, clutter and dust the most noticeable features – and the broken mirror in the corner by the window, an old cheval glass with a large, jagged crack right through
it. Cathy had already noticed the absence of a real mirror in the bathroom, only a powder compact standing open on the shelf; something to do perhaps, she had supposed with a rush of
protectiveness, with Kez’s inexplicable dislike of her own appearance.

The photographic developing equipment stood on a table over to the right, bottles of fluid dusty, everything dusty, trays empty, no signs of any work having been done in a long while, and that
surprised Cathy a little, because even if Kez did use the facilities at college, she’d have expected an enthusiastic photographer to work when impulse took her. Though maybe the photography
major was more of a cover, a needs-must, because what Kez wanted most from Trent was the athletics side – which went, if Cathy was honest, for her too.

More in common all the time . . .

She went in search of the dope, not easy among the cardboard boxes and bin bags and old running shoes – a whole pile of them, and that certainly made perfect sense to Cathy who had her own
heap at the back of her closet at home.

There was no sign of the box, but in the corner opposite the mirror stood a large walnut chest carved in a similar style – a few fingerprints in the film of dust around the lid, making it
the most likely place to look. Cathy was only intending to search for the marijuana and rolling paper, but once she had the chest open and saw two silver trophies and two certificates, it was
impossible to resist. She knelt and began rummaging gently through, swiftly striking gold: old snaps of Kez as a child running in what looked like elementary school races, more at high school age
– and oh, the
intensity
of the concentration on her face, even then, and Kez had said she’d been an ugly teenager, but that was so
untrue
, and if she’d felt like
that, there must have . . .

Something else caught her eye.

A kind of a package, a curious looking long thing, wrapped in material rather than paper, and as Cathy leaned in for a closer look she realized that the wrapper was an old, stained, pinstripe
sports jersey.

Intrigued, she lifted it out of the box, felt its weight, unrolled the jersey at one end, wrinkled her nose as its strange, pungent smell reached her nostrils, then peeked inside and, more
fascinated than ever, drew out a bat.

An old baseball bat. Scuffed, scraped and badly stained in places.

The darkest stains of all at the thick, batting end.

‘What the hell are you doing?’

Kez’s voice came out of nowhere.

Cathy dropped the bat and jersey.

Chapter Twenty-one

September 12

Dozing fully clothed on a bed in a doctor’s room at Miami General, David woke with a start – his first fear for Saul – then realized that it was something
entirely different that had dragged him out of his sleep.

Something to do with Sam’s beach homicides. And to do with Saul.

He got up slowly, trying to ignore the ever-growing army of aches that seemed to assail him these days whenever he rested for more than half an hour or so, put on his shoes, went down the
corridor to check on his boy, found his condition unchanged, gave him a kiss and took the elevator down to the hospital library.

Closed.

Of course it was closed at three-twenty in the morning.

He thought about leaving it till next day, but found he could not.

He went slowly out to the parking lot, got in his old Mercury, drove out on to Biscayne Boulevard, south a little way to 192nd and over the William Lehman Causeway, then left again towards
Golden Beach and home.

He needed his own bookshelves.

Needed to look something up.

‘It’s OK,’ Kez said to Cathy for the third time.

‘But it isn’t.’ Cathy was still deeply ashamed. ‘And I did start out just looking for the box with the dope . . .’

‘Which was a good idea,’ Kez said.

She had already picked up the bat and jersey, and now she reached down behind the walnut chest and retrieved the smaller carved box.

‘One I could go for right now,’ she added.

She led the way back into the living room, set the box on the coffee table, sat on the couch and looked up at Cathy.

‘My robe suits you,’ she said.

‘Oh God,’ Cathy said. ‘I shouldn’t have borrowed it.’

‘Sure you should,’ Kez said. ‘I told you to make yourself at home.’

Cathy looked down at her. ‘You look nice too.’

Kez had pulled on a man-sized grey vest with My Camel’s In Bed printed on it in maroon. Her legs, maybe not classically beautiful, made Cathy want to kiss them. But she wasn’t done
apologizing yet, felt that despite Kez’s reassurances, damage had been done, trust lost, and she couldn’t stand to think she’d done that.

‘I’m not normally a snoop – I
hate
it when people invade my privacy, and I am really so sorry, and if you do feel like kicking me out I’ll be miserable as hell,
but I’ll understand.’

‘I don’t feel like it,’ Kez said.

She was calm and kind, but Cathy still felt something else beneath the kindness, something that told her Kez
did
mind her snooping – and why wouldn’t she, why wouldn’t
anyone? Yet Kez was already rolling a joint, patting the couch for Cathy to sit beside her, and Cathy was starting to hope that maybe things were all right after all, maybe she hadn’t screwed
up irrevocably.

‘I want to know,’ Kez said suddenly, ‘if I can trust you with something else.’

‘You can.’ Not OK. ‘Kez, I promise I won’t ever—’

‘Forget that,’ Kez interrupted her. She lifted the joint to her lips, licked the edge of the paper, finished rolling it, shaped the tip and put it down. ‘I’m asking if I
can trust you with something very important to me. Very private.’ She paused. ‘What do you say?’

‘I say,’ Cathy said, ‘it would mean a lot to know you still trust me that much.’

She waited while Kez lit the joint and inhaled deeply.

‘The bat you found belonged to my dad, Joey,’ Kez began. ‘He was in the garment trade, but he was crazy about baseball, always talking to me about it, taking me to games,
watching them with me on TV.’

‘He sounds nice,’ Cathy said.

Kez passed the joint to Cathy, who took a drag and gave it back.

‘When I was six,’ Kez went on, ‘a year before he died, I had a fancy dress party to go to and I told my dad I wanted to go as Reggie Jackson – you know?’ She saw
Cathy nod. ‘My father laughed, said Jackson was a guy and I was his little girl, and I got upset, told him not to laugh at me, because even back then I guess I had a problem with what I
looked like, felt like people were laughing at me.’

‘But he wasn’t,’ Cathy said quietly.

‘Joey told me he’d make me a Reggie Jackson jersey.’

Kez had been holding the bat and jersey close, but now she laid the bat down on the couch beside her, took a long drag from the joint, handed it to Cathy and smoothed the jersey out on her
knees, and Cathy saw now that it was a kid-sized Yankees pinstripe with a big black
44
on the back.

‘He told me too – he was very serious, I remember – that he would never, ever laugh at me, that I could depend on that. That if anyone ever did, I could just come and tell him
and he’d deal with them for me.’ Kez’s smile was ironic. ‘Only when it came to it, he wasn’t there to do that, was he?’

‘Can I hold it?’ Cathy looked at the jersey.

Kez gave it to her in exchange for the joint, saw Cathy’s nose screw up as she caught the odd chemical smell again. ‘That’s just some dry-cleaning stuff I used on it once.
However often I wash it, it still lingers.’

‘I understand,’ Cathy said, handing back the jersey, ‘about keeping precious stuff safe. There weren’t many things I took from our old house after my parents were killed,
but I did keep my old Raggedy Ann chair, wouldn’t throw it out for anything.’

‘I knew you’d understand,’ Kez said. ‘I knew first time we spoke you were going to be someone I could really share with.’

‘Thank you,’ Cathy said.

Kez put down the jersey, twisted around and stretched out on the couch, her feet in Cathy’s lap.

‘Oh,’ Cathy said. ‘The last tattoo.’

Two small, intricate designs on the sole of Kez’s right foot.

‘Chinese characters?’ Cathy asked. ‘What do they mean?’

‘
Lieh gou
,’ Kez said.

‘You speak Chinese?’

‘Not a word.’

‘So what do they mean?’ Cathy asked again.

Kez smiled.

‘Come to bed.’

‘Don’t worry,’ David told Sam when he called him on his cell phone – hoping to avoid waking Grace – at six a.m. ‘Nothing’s
happened.’

‘Something must have happened,’ Sam said, ‘or you wouldn’t be calling.’

He was in the kitchen drinking his first espresso of the day, had already taken Woody for his morning stroll, trying his best to relax before his first day back at work. He’d figured on
leaving in a few minutes and running into the hospital to check on Saul before heading on down to the office; hoping – probably in vain – to be allowed to ease back into the job,
knowing that Lieutenant Kovac would probably consider that the time already taken in Naples amounted to more than enough compassionate leave.

‘I think I may have come up with something,’ David said, ‘that might just possibly be a link between your beach killings and the attack on Saul.’

‘Jesus,’ Sam said.

‘Can you spare me fifteen minutes?’

Sam glanced at the clock on the wall, thought how badly he wanted to look in on his brother, do all he could to make sure Saul was never left unobserved for long. ‘Can’t you just
tell me now?’

‘I need to show you one of my books,’ David told him. ‘I guess I could bring it down to your office, or—’

‘Dad, it’s fine.’ Sam was up on his feet. ‘I’m on my way.’

‘The physiological production of laughter.’

David had brought the book into the living room and Sam was sitting on the old battered sofa, staring at the page his father had pointed to.

‘Like me to précis for you, son?’

‘Always,’ Sam said.

‘OK.’ David sat down heavily beside him. ‘This is probably off the wall, so just shoot me down any time, right?’

‘Go on, Dad.’ Sam glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece, hating the idea of being late first morning back but knowing at the same time that his father would never have brought him
here if he had not believed it important.

‘A lot of that – ’ David gestured at the book – ‘is too complex to get into and probably irrelevant, but did you know that fifteen facial muscles get involved when
you lift your lips just to smile? And that when a person laughs the epiglottis half shuts off the larynx, which results in that kind of
gasp
you get with laughter? And so on . . .’

‘OK.’ Sam’s concentration was sharper already.

‘So it came to me in the middle of the night, you’d had
lips
in the case of Mrs Sanchez, and the
throat
in the janitor’s case—’

‘And teeth in Maria Rivera’s case,’ Sam came in.

‘So there’s the smiling connection, too,’ David said. ‘And all kinds of facial bones smashed in all three murders.’

They both fell silent, thinking on the same lines.

Saul’s larynx.

No facial injuries though.

It was, in Sam’s experience, relatively uncommon for an intimate assailant to damage the face that they loved – even if hate had come to outweigh that love.

Another possible strike against Terri?

‘It could be nothing at all,’ David said, ‘but just in case, I . . .’

‘You did right, Dad,’ Sam said.

The phone began to ring, and David got up to answer. ‘Dr Becket.’ He listened for a moment or two, then said: ‘On our way.’

Sam was already on his feet. ‘Saul?’

‘They’re letting him wake up,’ David said. ‘They want us there.’

Chapter Twenty-two

‘You’re dressed already.’

Cathy, having woken again at six thirty to find the bed empty, had dragged Kez’s grey vest over her head and emerged to find her out on the porch dressed in a sleeveless black T-shirt and
chinos, a plate of toast, jug of juice, freshly cut melon slices and a pot of coffee laid out on the small table before her.

‘Wow, that looks so good.’ Cathy bent and kissed Kez on the mouth. ‘Why didn’t you wake me?’

‘It was early and you looked peaceful.’ Kez picked up a slice of melon. ‘I figured you needed some rest after what you’ve been through.’

Cathy tweaked at the vest. ‘Is this OK?’

‘It’s great. Looks better on you.’

‘No, it does not.’ Cathy sat down beside her, poured herself some of the purplish juice and drank a little. ‘Mmm . . . Pomegranate.’

‘Healthy start before we go somewhere,’ Kez said.

‘Where?’ Cathy picked up a melon slice.

‘A place that’s special to me.’

‘I’d like that.’ Cathy bit into the slice.

‘It’s something else I’ve never shared with anyone else.’ Kez drank some coffee and stood up. ‘But we need to go now.’

‘Right now?’ Cathy looked at the breakfast. ‘What’s the rush?’

‘It has to be now,’ Kez said.

‘OK.’ Cathy drained her juice. ‘Do I have time to shower?’

‘Sure.’ Kez sat down again.

‘And I’d really like to swing by the hospital first,’ Cathy said.

‘Can that wait till later?’ Kez looked up at her. ‘Please?’

‘I just want to see Saul for a moment or two.’