Fear and Loathing

by Hilary Norman

  ‘Haven’t found her mom either,’ Martinez had pointed out.

  ‘No real grounds for pestering Harper about that.’

  ‘None for saying that Harper’s a suspect, either.’

  ‘She’s barely a person of interest,’ Sam had said.

  ‘Except she is.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  Martinez had yawned. ‘We need sleep.’

  ‘Not arguing,’ Sam had said.

  Another distraction came right after lunch on Wednesday. One they couldn’t turn down.

  Mary Cutter said Laura Gomez wanted to see them.

  ‘Maybe I’m not doing a good enough job,’ Cutter said, ‘but her aunt feels that nothing but a face-to-face with you two is going to satisfy Laura. Mrs Rivera says she knows how tough your schedule is, but reassurance just isn’t helping. Laura wants a progress report.’

  ‘Jeez,’ Martinez said. ‘That’s one I’d like to wriggle out of.’

  Interrogation by a twelve-year-old orphan-by-homicide.

  ‘Can’t think of anyone with a greater right to insist,’ Sam said.

  Laura’s Aunt Carrie lived with her husband in a white single family detached home close to one of Boca’s numerous country clubs. An elegant, comfortable house with a pool and barbecue at the rear, but designed primarily for adults in their forties. The kids had grown and gone, and aside from her aunt and uncle’s kindness and love, there was little there for a massively bereaved youngster. Except, that was, for Lola, a large, amiable, champagne-colored dog with soft eyes and a curly coat.

  ‘She’s a Goldendoodle,’ Laura told the detectives.

  ‘That’s a cross between—’

  ‘Don’t tell them, Aunt Carrie,’ Laura cut in. ‘I want to see if they know.’

  A test, Sam presumed. And in other circumstances, he might have feigned ignorance and let the child tell him, but Laura Gomez probably needed to think that the detectives looking for her family’s killers were smart enough to know stuff like this.

  ‘Golden retriever crossed with poodle?’ He made it a question.

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Laura stroked Lola’s head, presently resting on her lap.

  ‘Great dog,’ Martinez said. ‘Though they should give them better names.’

  ‘Goldendoodle’s better than Cockapoo,’ Laura said.

  ‘Dogs deserve more respect,’ Sam agreed.

  ‘Do you have one?’ Laura asked him.

  ‘Sure. Woody’s a cross between a schnauzer and a dachshund.’

  ‘We never had a dog at home.’ Laura fondled the dog’s ears. ‘My brother had allergies.’

  Sam felt a pricking behind his eyes. He had been five years younger than this girl when he’d lost his family, and he still remembered the first weeks of shattering shock and grief, yet he knew that his accidental loss could never compare to what Laura Gomez was enduring.

  ‘You haven’t caught them yet,’ she said suddenly, softly.

  ‘Not yet,’ he answered her. ‘But we will.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Laura asked.

  ‘He knows,’ Martinez said, ‘because we’re good detectives, and because we’re both mad as hell about what they did, and we won’t stop till we get them.’

  ‘Really?’ Laura’s voice was still soft, but touched by hope. ‘Even if it takes a long, long time, you won’t give up?’

  ‘No way,’ Sam said.

  ‘Do you promise?’ she said.

  Oh, man.

  Sam never made promises he couldn’t keep.

  Careful.

  ‘I promise,’ he said.

  Laura Gomez’s hands kept on fondling the big dog, but her brown eyes lifted and gazed right into Sam Becket’s own eyes.

  ‘I believe you,’ she said.

  Oh, man.

  June 13

  Jay Sandhu and his girlfriend, Lorna Munro, sat motionless in the hushed moments before they began, and for the briefest of instants their eyes met.

  They had been playing together as part of Surfside Strings – Surfside being where they lived, in a small white one-story single family house on Dickens Avenue – for three years.

  They’d been a couple for four. Had been happy for all that time, their sense of union, of moving forward together, of their great good fortune in loving so many of the same things, growing with each passing year.

  Jay had played violin since he was five. Lorna had fallen in love with the cello at seven. Jay was a lawyer by profession, Lorna a kindergarten teacher; those aspects of their lives still bringing satisfaction, but nothing making them happier than this.

  Surfside Strings were making a name, their agents getting them more quality gigs, though the wedding and party circuit was still their bread and butter.

  Tonight was very special.

  Playing Grieg, Mendelssohn and Borodin at the Historic Asolo Theater – a gorgeous eighteenth-century Italian playhouse dismantled in the nineteen forties and transported to the Ringling Estate in Sarasota, now wonderfully restored and housing theater, dance, music, movies and lectures.

  Jay and Lorna had never experienced such atmosphere.

  Except, perhaps, for the very different atmosphere – polar, in every sense – of the family meeting back in April when they’d broken the news to their parents.

  A rare opportunity to get both sets of mothers and fathers together, Jay’s parents now living in Fort Lauderdale, Lorna’s residing in Vermont, where they had for two generations.

  Both families wholly unsupportive of the relationship.

  And as for the news of a child on the way …

  ‘I never imagined I could be so glad to see the back of people I love,’ Lorna had said after they’d gone, and then she’d burst into tears and Jay had tried to comfort her, his own emotions translating into anger. And later that night, unable to sleep, they’d played their own version of Lloyd Webber’s Variations, and afterwards, as always, they’d felt better, ready to go on with their own lives.

  Their way. Marrying before the baby was born – parents excluded seeming by far the most sanity-saving course of action for now.

  But first, there was this amazing Thursday night.

  Gig of a lifetime.

  The forensic audio experts were confident that the message passed to them by Nick Gibson had been recorded via a telephone, but that was about all that could be concluded until they had a human suspect with whom they could run comparisons.

  More likely male than female.

  Riley was drip-feeding the media as much ‘frank disclosure’ as she could, but the sharks’ circling was relentless. Not unlike their beloved lieutenant, Martinez remarked, with Kovac riding them harder each day.

  Sam’s personal hunch scale (which he tended to parallel with the Richter) with regard to the maybe late Hildegard Benedict was running somewhere around the 4.00 mark. Nothing big enough to act on in any significant way, but still something that needed following up.

  And a 4.00 was pretty high considering it was centered on a dead woman.

  A woman who, if she were still living, would be sixty-seven years old.

  Not that old. Plenty of women ten years older than that who still swam in the ocean on winter mornings and solved the Saturday New York Times crossword puzzle.

  So not necessarily past criminal master-planning if she was alive.

  Definitely past it if she was dead – as her daughter claimed.

  ‘We ready to go talk to Harper again?’ Martinez asked Thursday afternoon.

  ‘Not yet,’ Sam said.

  Better she thought she’d been forgotten, if there was anything to this.

  And there was just something about learning of an old woman who’d admired her racist mother-in-law that would not let Sam forget about Harper Benedict or her family.

  Not just yet, at least.

  June 14

  With planning well underway for the new menu and publicity blitz, Le Rêve was buzzing. Visitors in and out of Nic’s office and the kitchen, some at the boss’s table in a
nd outside opening hours, eating, drinking, conversing, sometimes intensely.

  Gabe was still at his uncle’s and Cathy was feeling restless, unsure of him, her impulse to get out of the confines of the kitchen and go running.

  Job to do, she kept reminding herself.

  Too old now to go mooning around after a guy.

  Even if that guy was the best, the most relaxed, the most consistently interesting and fun and, for sure, the sexiest man she’d ever encountered.

  Work.

  ‘Photographers coming at lunchtime,’ Jeanne told the Friday morning shift. ‘Just looking around, maybe taking a few test shots.’

  ‘Dieu,’ Jacques Carnot said, irritated.

  ‘If I’d known,’ Aniela said, ‘I’d have worn makeup.’

  Jeanne ignored them. ‘Just test shots, as I said, but everyone please make sure that you and the kitchen are immaculate at all times.’

  Minutes later, while scrubbing Carnot’s prep table, an unpleasant memory crawled suddenly into Cathy’s mind.

  Of Thomas Chauvin, the day he’d come uninvited to her home and taken picture after picture of her, not stopping when she’d asked him to …

  And later, Sam had discovered the photos of her and Grace covering the walls of his vacation apartment.

  Weirdo.

  Arrested for stalking in the past.

  What if … ?

  Her parents had been troubled when she’d told them she was coming to France, but then Sam had learned that Chauvin was living in England, and they’d both relaxed.

  Cathy knew she was being absurd.

  There were thousands of infinitely more experienced professional photographers in France, so the probability of Nic considering employing that jerk was zero.

  Yet still, for just a few moments there, it had creeped her out.

  Lunchtime came and went.

  The photographers too.

  Three of them.

  Not Chauvin.

  Of course not.

  ‘You OK, Cath?’ Luc asked a little later.

  She told him she was fine.

  ‘You seem distracted,’ he said. ‘Is it Gabe?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Cathy said. ‘I guess I wish he was here.’

  Luc put his arm around her. ‘He’ll be back soon, and it’ll be fine.’

  ‘I hope so,’ Cathy said.

  And wondered why that creepy feeling had not entirely gone away.

  Lorna and Jay had spent most of Friday in Sarasota, setting off on those parts of the tourist trail that most interested them. They visited the opera house, vowed to be in the audience on their next trip, then made their way around Ca’ d’Zan, John and Mable Ringling’s Venetian Gothic mansion, and Mable’s famous rose garden, before taking a cab to Siesta Key and eating seafood tacos at the Oyster Bar, finishing up with a barefoot stroll through the pure quartz sandy beach.

  After that, it was back to collect their instruments from the hotel in time to catch the shuttle bus to Tampa and their flight back to Miami.

  ‘Back to reality,’ Jay said, on the plane. ‘That brief to prepare.’

  ‘Not for me.’ Lorna snuggled against his shoulder. ‘I’m just going to laze.’

  ‘You’re allowed.’ Jay kissed his fingertips, touched them to her belly.

  ‘Best twenty-four hours ever,’ she said.

  ‘Plenty more to come,’ he said.

  ‘Will we take her travelling, do you think?’ Lorna asked.

  ‘Sure we will, when we have bookings all over the world.’

  ‘Not too many bookings,’ she said. ‘I want her to love home, have friends.’

  ‘Love,’ Jay said. ‘The biggest thing.’

  ‘And good health,’ Lorna said.

  ‘And a great sense of humor,’ Jay said. ‘She’ll need it with her grandparents.’

  ‘Oh,’ Lorna said, and her hand went to her bump.

  ‘You OK?’

  ‘I think she’s laughing.’

  They were home and sleeping when they came.

  Out of the dark.

  Rubber soles almost silent on the hardwood floor.

  Moonlight coming through the open windows, tree branches rustling in the breeze.

  The couple cuddled up. Cute-looking.

  Leon spoke first. Line from Kill Bill, as he recalled, and he’d have preferred to be more original, but using Tarantino just felt so right.

  He bent over the guy. ‘Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey,’ he called.

  Jay groaned softly and opened his eyes.

  ‘Lights,’ Jerry said.

  Jay blinked in the glare of four flashlights, put a hand up to shield his eyes.

  Saw the guns before he took in the men.

  Four of them.

  ‘Jesus,’ he said.

  He felt Lorna stirring beside him, pulled her closer.

  ‘What’s—?’ She saw them, opened her mouth to scream, no sound emerging.

  ‘Hi, guys,’ Leon said. ‘Real sorry to disturb you.’

  ‘Where’s your safe?’ Andy asked.

  ‘I hit the panic button,’ Jay said, his mind fumbling.

  ‘You don’t have one,’ Leon said.

  ‘Where’s your safe?’ Andy said again.

  ‘We don’t have one of those either,’ Jay said.

  ‘But we’ll give you what we have.’ Lorna’s voice was thready, stunned. ‘Just please don’t hurt us.’

  ‘Right you are,’ said Leon. ‘Let’s move this thing along.’

  Jerry edged away, gun still raised, moved over to the windows and closed them, pulled down the blinds, then hit the light switch.

  Jay and Lorna stared at the gunmen. All weirdly golden-haired and blue-eyed, all black-gloved, their weapons fat, solid, hideously real.

  ‘Let me show you where we keep our money,’ Jay said.

  ‘Not necessary,’ Leon said.

  ‘What does that mean?’ Lorna asked.

  ‘It means we can help ourselves,’ Jerry said.

  ‘Sure you can,’ Jay said. ‘Just—’

  ‘Shut up,’ Andy said.

  ‘Let’s do it,’ Leon said.

  One of the men reached into a duffel bag, pulled out cut lengths of cord, handed them to the others.

  ‘Oh, dear God,’ Lorna said.

  ‘Please,’ Jay said. ‘Don’t hurt my wife. She’s pregnant.’

  ‘Get up,’ Leon told him.

  ‘Oh, sweet Jesus,’ Lorna said.

  ‘Get the fuck up.’ Jerry bent over, grabbed Jay’s left arm and yanked him out from under the covers. ‘Come on, man,’ he said to CB. ‘Give me a hand.’

  Andy moved around to Lorna’s side and, as she cried out, he took a roll of tape from a pocket, ripped off a length and silenced her.

  ‘Bastard,’ Jay spat.

  CB, his own jaw aching, did the same for him.

  ‘Arms,’ Leon ordered.

  Jay saw the dark muzzle of the gun pointed against Lorna’s temple and knew that any attempt at a struggle was pointless.

  They looked at each other while their wrists were tied behind their backs.

  All they could do now, as they were dragged out of the bedroom. And it was only when they saw where they were being taken that they both realized who these men were. They’d seen the black-and-white shots of the four men sought in connection with the murder of those poor people just a few miles from here; and then, a week ago, there’d been the dentist and his family on Emerson Avenue – just around the corner …

  Their eyes filled, weeping for their unborn child.

  ‘Wait,’ one of the men said suddenly.

  The one who’d been silent until now, the one who’d taped Jay’s mouth.

  They were inside the garage, the air cooler, their old Dodge Magnum – the vehicle they’d both chosen partly because it was easy to get the cello into – standing silent; and if they were right, then before long its motor would be started and their trusty station wagon would become their coffin.

  ‘I don’t think
I can do this,’ CB said.

  ‘Why the fuck not?’ Jerry said.

  ‘Look at her,’ CB said. ‘There’s a baby.’

  Hope reached up through Lorna and Jay, grabbed their hearts.

  ‘Doesn’t matter if there’s fucking triplets,’ Leon said.

  ‘It’s too much,’ CB said. ‘It’s too wicked.’

  ‘Wicked is what she wants,’ Andy said.

  ‘But it isn’t her doing it,’ CB said.

  ‘Just grow a pair, man,’ Jerry said.

  The hope let go, flew away, and despair took its place again.

  Another Tarantino quote hovered on Leon-the-Man’s lips. One about quitting barking and starting biting. Except this wasn’t a movie. This was the real thing.

  ‘We’re doing it,’ he said instead. ‘Now.’

  June 15

  Just after ten on Saturday morning, as Joshua was pedaling his tricycle on the sidewalk, Sam and Woody moseying alongside, father and son singing ‘The Wheels on the Bus’, Sam’s phone rang.

  Martinez.

  ‘We got another one.’

  Sam got the details, arranged to meet, kept his voice flat.

  Joshua had stopped singing and pedaling, was looking up at him. ‘What’s up, Daddy?’

  Sam hunched down beside the tricycle, looked into his son’s beautiful, enquiring dark eyes and wanted to scream.

  Such obscenity, less than a mile away.

  Surfside again. Dickens Avenue. One block away from Emerson.

  ‘Do you have to go to work?’

  No reproach, no complaint, no ‘again’, this child all too accustomed to his father’s lousy work schedule.

  ‘I’m really sorry, sweet cheeks.’ He ruffled his boy’s hair, kissed him, straightened up.

  ‘That’s OK,’ Joshua said, then laughed. ‘Woody pooped.’

  Sam sighed, took a bag and wipe out of his pocket, did the necessary.

  ‘Good boy,’ Joshua said.

  ‘Yes, he is,’ Sam said, turning back. ‘I got two good boys.’

  Joshua chuckled again.

  Best sound his father was likely to hear for the rest of that day.

  ‘Oh, dear Christ,’ Sam said when he heard.

  And when he saw, he choked up – couldn’t help himself.

  The woman was pregnant.

  Not sufficiently far on to have made a postmortem C-section viable. And the thought of the possible effects on an unborn of carbon monoxide poisoning was too hideous to bear.