Last Run (30 page)

‘Sweetheart,’ Grace said, gently, ‘take it easy.’

‘I’m going to have to go in a minute.’

Grace said, ‘It’s been so wonderful for me to hear you.’ She thought about family then, about the emotions that bound people together. ‘Is Kez’s mother still alive,
do you know?’

‘I think so,’ Cathy answered. ‘But Kez hadn’t had anything to do with her for years, though she said something about an aunt who used to help her, and I think she meant
she helped her after she’d done terrible things. I guess because she understood that Kez was sick, that she couldn’t help what she did.’

Grace heard a sound in the background, like a door closing, and then a man’s voice – Sam’s voice – and the baby kicked hard at that instant, almost as if he’d heard
his father, and she laid her left hand over him and smiled.

First time she’d smiled for a long while.

‘Sam’s here,’ Cathy told her. ‘He wants to talk to you.’

‘Sweetheart, please try and get some rest,’ Grace said quickly. ‘Call me any time, collect if that’s easier, any time.’

Then Sam was on the line.

‘Good to hear her, right?’

‘Can she hear me now?’ Grace asked him.

‘No,’ Sam said, ‘she’s just left the room.’

‘I want you to answer me honestly,’ Grace said.

‘Of course.’

‘Does anyone there think she might have been involved with what Kez did?’

‘No one’s implied that to me,’ Sam said. ‘But the fact that Cathy was driving Kez’s car in Naples, running with her on the beach just before . . .’

‘She says Kez confessed to the killings,’ Grace said.

‘But only to her,’ Sam said. ‘Right now Cathy’s being treated simply as a witness to the shooting, and until someone digs up something solid to back up her story about
the confessions, that’s all it’s going to be, her story.’

‘Does she need a lawyer?’ Grace asked.

‘Not yet,’ Sam said. ‘Grace, you don’t need to worry about that. Even if a few people do want to sniff around Cathy for a while it’s not going to take too much time
to show that Flanagan was killing long before she ever met Cathy.’

‘But they were both at Trent for a while before they met,’ Grace pointed out.

‘It won’t come to that,’ Sam said. ‘They have another Becket to roast first. One who might deserve it.’

‘Don’t talk like that,’ Grace said. ‘Please.’

‘Can’t quite seem to help it,’ Sam said.

‘You saved our daughter’s life,’ Grace said.

‘Maybe I did,’ he said. ‘Maybe I needn’t have done what I did.’

‘Sam,
please
,’ Grace said, violently.

‘I’m sorry, Gracie,’ he said.

And hung up again.

For a long while after that call, Grace sat in the kitchen, thinking.

Claudia had rung about ten minutes later, and Grace had let the machine pick up; the breakdown of communication between them was something she knew she needed to deal with soon, but not now.

Inside her womb, the baby kicked and squirmed.

She spoke to him calmingly, lovingly, and he settled.

Not so Grace.

She stood up, finally, wandered out of the kitchen into the little hallway and into her office. As she looked at Lucia’s desk, at the dainty pots of herbs on the shelf above, then back
down at the letter and filing trays, and jars of pens and pencils, all neat and tidy beside the computer, Grace found that she was missing her again, felt that it might have brought a degree of
comfort to have Lucia here.

She thought about the photograph Cathy had talked about, thought she’d like to see it again, just so she could know what Kez’s balcony had looked like, because visualizing the place
might help her feel less cut-off from Cathy, might perhaps even make it easier, in the longer term, to help her.

She sat down on Lucia’s chair, idly slid open her top desk drawer in case the broken frame might have been tucked in there, found only a notepad, more pens, some sticky tape, general
stationery.

She tried the bottom drawer and found it locked.

Which surprised her, because aside from the filing cabinets containing patients’ confidential files, nothing in her office had ever been locked to her knowledge.

She had never regarded Lucia as the secretive type. Then again, she hadn’t ever thought of herself as nosy. Though some might say psychologists, in general, were just that.

Maybe they were right.

Grace had seen characters on TV open locked drawers like this easily enough.

She got up to get the paperknife from her own desk, came back and sat down again. She knew she had no right to do this, had no real understanding of
why
she was trying to do it, but it
wasn’t too hard at all. A little jiggling and sliding around, then just a small amount of force and – with a rush of guilt and an instant mental scramble for a suitable excuse –
the drawer was open.

The photograph was there, right at the back.

The frame not broken, after all – or maybe it might have been fixed, there was no way of knowing, except then why would it have been put away?

The picture was, as Grace had vaguely recalled, of Lucia, taken about ten years ago with Tina, her niece, who must, she guessed, have been around twelve or so at the time.

Tall for her age, long-legged, fair-haired – unlike her Aunt Lucia – her smile for the camera a little strained, looking the way many youngsters do when forced to pose.

Grace realized suddenly, guiltily, that she had never taken time to look as closely as she might have at the girl who had always, after all, been so special to her aunt.

There was, now that she did look, something familiar about her. Which was what Cathy had said about the balcony. She looked away from Tina Busseto to the background, saw the flowers –
clematis, perhaps, though flowers had never been Grace’s strong suit – and thought that they might have been standing on any balcony anywhere the sun shone.

She looked back again at the young girl.

And felt her heart miss a beat.

Chapter Thirty

September 13

‘It really is all over, son,’ David told Saul.

He had been there when Saul had wok en again just after midnight, had seen agitation resurface almost immediately, had thanked God that he was able to reassure him without resorting to lies.

Almost. No reason he could see to give him the whole ugly picture.

‘Cathy’s safe and sends her love, and your brother, too. And your Teté is fine, but she’s still with them in Naples, and Grace is resting, but she’s doing fine,
and they’ll all be back here to see you soon as they can.’

No reason on earth to tell his suffering boy that Kez was dead because Sam had shot her. And David had not yet been quite able to establish what part exactly Terri had played in the whole tragic
fiasco, but it sounded to him as if she might have fired her weapon, too. Both out of their jurisdiction, in a public place, and it didn’t take a legal brain to know they were almost
certainly in all kinds of a jam. And Sam had been suspended before, six years ago, after he’d gone down to the Keys to rescue Grace from Peter Hayman, and a man had ended up dead then. And it
cut David right to his
soul
to think that anyone might regard his tough, brave, but fundamentally gentle and decent son as some kind of rogue cop.

But shit happened, didn’t it, and that was the likely outcome.

And David would be damned if Saul was going to hear about it from him.

Grace hardly slept.

She called the hospital just after one a.m., heard that Saul was comfortable, thanked God for that and for Cathy’s safety, and Sam’s, and sent up a prayer for Cathy’s broken
heart and  strength. And then a little later she surprised Woody by clipping on his leash and taking him for a walk around the quiet island roads.

Thinking.

It couldn’t be, she must be wrong.

Yet Cathy had recognized the balcony.

And Grace thought, just
thought
, that she might have recognized the girl in Lucia’s photograph.

Which had disappeared, if she ransacked her brain, at around the time Cathy had first met Kez Flanagan. Around the time when Cathy had brought Kez home to meet her.

No Lucia that day, Grace remembered.

It couldn’t be. What she was thinking couldn’t possibly be right.

Phil Busseto’s niece. Tina, the apple of Lucia’s eye, the daughter she’d never had, as she had once told Grace.

Cathy had said, hadn’t she, that Kez had told her something about an aunt?

An aunt who used to help her.

Kez Flanagan. Given name Kerry Flanagan.

Tina Busseto?

Couldn’t
be.

She struggled through the rest of the night, slept a little out of pure exhaustion, a fitful, useless kind of sleep, knowing already the call she was going to make as early as
possible come Tuesday morning.

‘Grace, what’s up?’ Martinez asked.

‘A hell of a lot,’ she said, ‘as I’m sure you know.’

‘Own worst enemy, our Sam,’ his friend said. ‘But there’s no guy in this world I’d rather have looking out for me, and I’ll testify to that till hurricanes
stop blowing.’

‘Thank you, Al,’ Grace said. ‘Let’s hope you don’t have to.’

‘Me, too.’ He surmised from her tone that nothing bad – at least nothing worse – had happened, and waited to hear what she did want from him.

‘I’m looking for a little help with something,’ she told him. ‘And I apologize, in advance, because I know how burdened you must be.’

‘True enough,’ Martinez said, ‘but if I can help, I will.’

‘I was hoping you might be able to run a check on someone for me.’

His sigh was audible. ‘What kind of a check?’

‘Nothing complicated,’ Grace said. ‘At least, I don’t think so. The kind I might want to run on, say, a future nanny.’

‘OK.’ Martinez was relieved. ‘Name?’

‘It’s Lucia Busseto,’ Grace said.

‘Your Lucia?’ He sounded surprised.

‘I know it’s a little strange, but we never ran any checks when she first began working here because she came through Dora.’ Grace hesitated. ‘Al, I don’t want to
tell you why I need this, but it would just put my mind at rest.’

‘And your mind can’t be getting too much of that right now,’ Martinez said. ‘No problem.’

‘Her niece, too,’ Grace added quickly. ‘Her late husband’s niece, in fact. Tina Busseto. She’s a nurse, living in Naples, that’s about all I know. And Lucia
lives in Key Biscayne.’

‘And you still don’t want to tell me why.’ Martinez didn’t wait for a reply. ‘Anything special I should be looking for?’

‘Nothing in particular. Just family stuff, I guess, anything unusual.’

‘Criminal records?’ The surprise came through again.

‘As I said, the kind of thing we’d do for a nanny.’

‘No problem.’

‘One more thing,’ Grace said. ‘If you talk to Sam—’

‘Let me guess.’ Martinez cut her short. ‘Don’t mention it to him.’

‘Only because he’s got too much to handle as it is, and this really is just something I need to do because I work with Lucia every day. And, of course, the most important thing is
that
she
does not find out, because that might be really hurtful.’

‘How urgent is this?’

‘Very,’ she said. ‘I’m really sorry, Al.’

‘Leave it with me,’ Martinez told her. ‘I’ll do what I can.’

The bat was found by a surfer just after eight a.m.

Something, maybe, to help Sam’s case a little. Proof, at least, that there had
been
a baseball bat – though none of the witnesses who had mentioned it, even the two
who’d seen Kez swinging it, had felt the action had in any way justified her being shot.

The ingrained stains were still there, though only time and testing would tell if the ocean, and Kez’s multiple cleanings, had left behind any conclusive matches with blood or DNA of any
of the victims. Certainly something to compare with the fragment left in the mess of Carmelita Sanchez’s forehead.

Not that helping prove Flanagan’s guilt was necessarily going to save Sam from losing his job or, conceivably, from a civil suit that might be brought against him by some, as yet unknown,
member of Flanagan’s family, maybe her long lost mother. Or even from going to jail.

But at least now they
had
the bat.

Sam had just called – a snatched couple of moments – when Martinez phoned Grace at nine twenty-five.

‘No record and no skeletons,’ he said, getting right to it, ‘if that’s what you were nervous of. Husband Philip Busseto died of heart disease way back, not too long after
they lost their daughter.’

‘Daughter?’ Grace, sitting in her office, was startled.

‘You didn’t know?’

‘Tell me.’

‘Could be too hard for her to talk about,’ Martinez said. ‘Little girl named Christina, drowned in their bathtub. No suspicious circumstances. The coroner was very clear on
that, no blame attached to her mom or dad. But Lucia had a breakdown afterwards. Guess you didn’t know about that either?’

‘Not a thing,’ Grace said, her heart already aching for Lucia.

‘The niece is going to take a little longer to track down,’ Martinez told her. ‘Unless you know different, I figure I’ll check out Christina Busseto, too, in case this
Tina was named for the dead child.’

‘Sounds sensible,’ Grace said.

Though her mind was wandering. She remembered David saying that Kez’s mother had been named Gina.

By no means necessarily an Italian name, but. . .

Kez in the photograph with Lucia.

Perhaps
Kez – hard to say, for sure; so young and with fair hair.

But Grace had looked again and again, then shut her eyes, trying to pull Kez back to the forefront of her mind, remembering a sharp nose, greenish-hazel eyes and a pointed chin, and then
she’d opened her eyes again and seen those features in the girl in the picture.

Which was utterly bewildering, but
seemed
to say that Kez was Lucia’s niece. Daughter of Joey and Gina Flanagan. Gina
perhaps
then being Phil Busseto’s sister.

‘Grace?’ Martinez’s voice, sharper than usual, jolted her. ‘Anything else?’