Fear and Loathing

by Hilary Norman

  The young couple had been unofficially identified by their friend, Susan Cohen – friend and agent, she’d told the patrol officers, because the murdered couple were musicians, wonderful musicians, beautiful people, and she couldn’t believe it, couldn’t bear it, and she’d come for breakfast, eager to hear about their gig in Sarasota …

  Jay Sandhu and Lorna Munro.

  Five months pregnant.

  ‘Oh, dear Jesus,’ Sam said.

  He saw it reflected in the faces of others around him as the machinery ground into action. Martinez looking mad enough to kill, given half a chance. Duval deeply saddened. Doc Sanders’s face implacably set.

  ‘Virginia’ at work again.

  ‘Her’ message once again addressed to Sam.

  For the Personal Attention of Detective Samuel Becket,

  Miami Beach Police Department

  You are a reasonably educated man, Detective Becket. If you were to sit with me and debate, say, polygenesis v monogenesis, you would probably be equipped to argue your personal case, or perhaps you’re a preadamite or …

  But I’ve digressed. If you and I do ever sit down together, it will likely be in an ugly room with a table between us and a recording device, and the questions

  you pose won’t be about theories of human origins, but on the manner in which I have chosen to play my paltry part in the uprooting and exterminating that a great American offered up to our country’s House of Representatives one hundred years ago.

  Better job this time, I feel. Removing the spawn in time.

  I can’t stop you all.

  But my piece still has a way to go.

  Love Virginia

  ‘Something’s changed,’ Sam said as they sat in his old Saab with Martinez and Duval, coffees and Danish to fortify them. ‘Not as crisp.’

  ‘Almost rambling,’ Duval said.

  ‘On something, maybe?’ Martinez suggested.

  ‘Or off something,’ Sam said. ‘Like medication, maybe.’

  ‘Sounds more like it’s come from a disordered mind than the others,’ Duval said.

  ‘Maybe an age thing?’ Martinez said.

  ‘You’re thinking Hildegard,’ Sam said.

  ‘I am and I’m not,’ his partner said. ‘Because it’s nuts, right?’

  ‘Our first demented serial killer, maybe,’ Duval said, and shrugged.

  ‘We need to recheck the final year’s copies of The Beach for mentions of the new victims,’ Sam said. ‘Harper edited till the final edition. December 2010.’

  ‘How long did the agent say they’d been playing together?’ Duval asked.

  ‘Three years,’ Martinez said.

  ‘Get Sheldon on it,’ Sam said. ‘And the agent’ll know about any publicity they’ve had. I’ll talk to her.’ He paused. ‘Then we go see Harper again.’

  Harper Benedict was eating eggs Florentine at the News Café, had been on her way out when they’d called, and she hadn’t been willing to stay home, but had said they were welcome to come join her for brunch.

  ‘Not what it used to be,’ she told them, ‘but I still like it here.’

  Sam and Martinez both ordered espressos.

  ‘We have some questions,’ Sam said.

  ‘I saw the news,’ she said. ‘How can I help?’

  ‘Did you ever publish anything about Jay Sandhu and Lorna Munro or their quartet, Surfside Strings? Either in The Beach or any other publication you or your company were connected with?’

  ‘Not to my recollection, and I’m sure you’re checking, but if it helps, I’ll take a careful look. I might have forgotten an ad for a performance, something minor. Definitely no interviews or features.’ She paused. ‘And I’ve never edited any other publications.’

  ‘OK, thanks,’ Sam said. ‘Second question.’

  ‘Shoot.’ She dipped a piece of bagel into yolk, ate it.

  The music and constant buzz of the place was incongruous with the question, but Sam asked it anyway.

  ‘When did your mother pass away?’

  ‘I told you. Several years ago.’

  ‘When exactly, ma’am?’ Martinez said.

  ‘Why the interest?’

  ‘We can’t find any record of her death,’ Sam said.

  ‘How odd.’

  ‘Can you give us the date, please,’ Martinez said.

  She shook her head. ‘I can’t imagine how it could be relevant.’

  ‘Would you rather come to the station?’ Sam asked. ‘Answer more questions. Start accounting for your whereabouts during the weeks of the recent killings?’

  She laid down her fork, her appetite apparently gone. ‘This is becoming absurd, gentlemen. Do I need a lawyer?’

  ‘It’s your prerogative, ma’am,’ Martinez said.

  ‘You’re not under arrest,’ Sam clarified. ‘You can refuse to speak to us. But you did ask how you could help, and the most helpful thing you could do now would be to talk to us about your mother.’

  Harper muttered something, then shrugged assent.

  ‘Is your mother alive?’ Sam asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘OK,’ Sam said. ‘Ms Benedict, might you be more comfortable talking about this someplace more quiet?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m perfectly comfortable right here. No one’s listening, and there isn’t too much for me to tell you. My relationship with my mother was at rock bottom for a while a few years back. Then we cut off altogether. When you asked about her, it just seemed easier to say she’d died. She’d told me I was dead to her, so I guess I was just returning the compliment.’

  ‘Where was she, when you were last in touch?’ Martinez asked.

  ‘Living in our family house on La Gorce Island.’ Harper paused. ‘Which has been sold. I don’t have any information to give you on that, but I can let you have the address.’

  Martinez said it would be helpful and wrote it down.

  ‘I have to say I’m baffled as to your interest in Hildy.’ Harper smiled. ‘Now, if my grandmother were still living, that might be a different story, but she’s long gone, and though my mother was a bitch to me, she was quite a philanthropist and pretty modest about it.’

  ‘Did she ever talk to you much about her past?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Especially about her mother-in-law?’ Martinez added.

  Harper shook her head. ‘You’re on the wrong track, and I’m about ready to leave.’

  ‘Just a couple more questions,’ Sam said. ‘How did you learn that the house had been sold?’

  ‘On the grapevine.’

  ‘And was it your mother who sold it?’

  ‘As far as I know.’

  ‘So she was still living at that time?’ Sam persisted.

  ‘As far as I know,’ she repeated.

  ‘If she had passed away before that,’ Martinez said, ‘who would have owned the house?’

  ‘Not me.’ Harper’s impatience was starting to show. ‘If you’re wanting to know if I’d have benefited if she had died, then the answer is I doubt that very much.’

  ‘But you seem comfortably off, if you don’t mind the observation,’ Martinez said.

  ‘My father left me well provided for. I have no worries on that score.’

  ‘Did your mother object to that?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Harper said.

  ‘Just one more question,’ Sam said. ‘What is it that you’re writing about now?’

  ‘I’m not prepared to tell you that.’ Colder now, as at their last meeting. ‘Except to assure you that it could not possibly have the slightest bearing on your investigation.’ She paused. ‘As I said before, you’re on the wrong track with my family.’

  Sam put down ten bucks for their espressos and stood up. ‘Thank you for your time, Ms Benedict.’

  Martinez drained his cup and got up too. ‘You have a nice day.’

  ‘We’re going to need legal on this before we start investigating the mother,’ Duval said back at the station, getting ready
for another tough press conference. ‘Need to be real careful about harassing a family like that.’

  ‘If Hildegard Benedict is still alive,’ Sam said, ‘she might be rich enough to be bankrolling the killings.’

  ‘No mention of the latest victims in The Beach,’ Duval said.

  ‘OK,’ Sam said.

  Martinez looked at him. ‘What’s your gut telling you about Hildy?’

  ‘What’s yours telling you?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Something crazy, like Hildy’s sitting in some wheelchair, her brain maybe on the fritz, spending all her dough on hitmen.’ Martinez looked at Duval. ‘I told you it was crazy.’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ Sam said.

  Things were starting to get almost as interesting in Miami as they were on this side of the pond, Chauvin thought, watching Sam on his laptop.

  So impressive.

  More deaths. Another mariage mixte.

  Not actually married, but a child on the way, making it the most wicked crime in the series to date. The male victim – Jay Sandhu – had been hogtied, torture-style. His partner, Lorna Munro, pregnant, also hogtied, then gassed with CO with Sandhu in their car.

  Too ghastly to think about.

  Though he did see it in his mind, the way any photojournalist would.

  He froze the video on Sam for a moment and tried to penetrate his expression, wondered if he felt vulnerable. It was only now, after this third outrage, that Chauvin understood that Sam and Grace might actually be in danger, and it was hard to contemplate that, the idea of something bad happening to them.

  He unfroze the video. Saw that they were all there, the whole gang from two years back – he knew them, for Christ’s sake. The slim FDLE guy, Duval, who’d come in on their very own murder scene, gun ready to blaze. And Martinez, of course, Sam’s sidekick, so gratuitously nasty to him in Miami.

  Sam looked magnificent. Catherine’s beloved père-noir.

  Catherine.

  He froze the action again, lay back on his pillows.

  Mostly, these days, he thought about her from his bed.

  Here, and in the other place, the secret one almost ready now.

  He rarely thought about her with her so-called boyfriend. Gabriel Ryan, a waiter with a part-interest in a market stall. A nobody, and Catherine would soon see that he was of no greater significance to her future than Luc Meyer, the round-faced cook.

  Almost ready now, his web of strategies for all eventualities, for he was, he had come to realize, an imaginative, self-sufficient man.

  Almost ready.

  He looked up at the blow-up on his ceiling, felt love expand within him.

  It was impossible for him to express his innermost feelings to anyone – his parents least of all, however often they claimed to want to understand him.

  He locked this room now whenever he went out, in case they managed to enter the apartment. He’d changed the locks, but his father was a clever man and his mother incurably nosy, so he couldn’t be certain they might not have stolen a key and had it copied.

  He was sorry if he disappointed them, but it wasn’t his fault he wasn’t more like them; rather it was their fault for being so stifling, so unimaginative …

  He stared up at Catherine, at her amazing, seductive pose, leaning toward him.

  He was hard – she made him hard – and he reached down, began to masturbate, his eyes never leaving Catherine, her mouth, and oh, Christ, but he longed for the time he would be able to put himself into her, into that mouth, and she would want him to, she would want him as much as he did her, and he could feel her now, he could feel her …

  He climaxed into his hand, then spread it onto his flat stomach.

  If she were here, she would probably want to lick it off him.

  He sighed, started to drift off.

  When he woke, he could unfreeze Papa Sam, then concentrate again on his own plans, and maybe his mind would feel clearer after a sleep, because he sometimes felt it was tearing in two, his need for Sam’s approval almost as strong as his need for Catherine.

  Though of course once he had her, he realized, sleepily, he would have Sam too, and Grace, and all the Beckets would become his family, and his heart contracted with the joy of that thought.

  Not long now. Not long at all.

  He slept.

  She was satisfied with the way Number Three had been executed.

  Her boys had done well. Her Virginians. Her Crusaders. Her Knights.

  They were getting edgier, she felt. She was no psychologist – though some might think her psychotic, were probably already calling her a psycho.

  Which she was not. She was just making a stand, a tiny attempt to restore order.

  Not that they would understand.

  Number Two had seemed easier for the boys, after the success – security camera notwithstanding – of the first act. She’d told them the second would be easier, and it had been – except, of course, for CB, her little wimp.

  Not a total wimp, to be fair, given that he’d now participated in the murders of nine people. Ten, including the fetus – in some ways the most important of her victims. She had known that CB would find that very hard, that it might even have created a problem – in which case, Leon had known what to do.

  Leon had what it took, though there was too much braggart in him for her to trust him for the long term. Jerry was a true psycho. Andy was an avaricious, untrustworthy man who would agree to anything. She would never put her faith in any of them except, perhaps, CB, who feared her more deeply than the others and had scruples; he’d taken payment from her, would soon be taking a larger sum, had made an agreement with her, and was, she thought, probably a wimp of honor.

  She pondered again the aliases she’d allocated them, each representing a man she had admired. Leon M. Bazile, the trial judge in the Loving v. Virginia case in Caroline County Court in 1958, who had declared that the Almighty, having placed the differently colored races on separate continents, showed that He had not intended for the races to mix. Jerry Falwell, who’d passed away in 2007, and who had once stated: ‘When God has drawn a line of distinction, we should not attempt to cross that line.’ Andy named for Andrew King, the first congressman, in 1871, to propose a constitutional amendment to ban interracial marriage nationwide. And CB had come from Seaborn Roddenbery, a man who had once said that he found intermarriage between whites and blacks repulsive, abhorrent and repugnant. ‘Seaborn’ too unwieldy for any of her Crusaders, so she’d dumbed it down to a phonetic CB.

  He’d accepted the alias, as they all had, along with her directions and rewards, but still, she could see problems ahead. Not everyone could kill with impunity. Causing terror and suffering could have repercussions, psychological and physical, especially if children were among the victims.

  And she was seeing signs. Andy had jumped at a backfire the other day. Jerry was hyper too much of the time. Leon was putting on weight and beginning to strut. And CB had fear in his eyes, constantly.

  She’d felt reasonably confident about them until now. None had a record, none were in the system, and at this point they needed her more than she needed them.

  It had occurred to her, of course, that she might, in time, need to replace them. Though in order to do that, she would have to have them terminated too. Which made her a little sad.

  But only a little.

  Later this evening, she would give them what she owed, and then she would pause. No need to rush. The list was long, but there was time.

  ‘Ceteris paribus,’ she said out loud. All other things being equal.

  ‘Mutatis mutandis.’ Another Latin phrase, translating roughly as ‘changing what needed to be changed’, or, as her English dictionary informed her, ‘the necessary changes having been made’.

  She might enjoy that as her epitaph.

  ‘Gone to her rest, the necessary changes having been made’.

  The list was long, and she might never reach the end, but she was, at least, getting the bal
l rolling, and she hoped with all her might that it would gather momentum, as all the finest snowballs did.

  The purest, whitest snowballs.

  June 16

  Sunday evening at Le Rêve, the restaurant full, service smooth, good spirits in the kitchen. Nic not working tonight, but eating at his table with a TV producer. Jeanne, walking by, nodding at the boss, letting him know all was fine. And then …

  First, a woman at table five on the ground floor, where coffee was being served, gave a sudden cry and passed out, falling sideways from her chair, her husband unable to catch her before she hit the floor.

  Ten seconds later, a man on the far side of the room clutched at his head, let out a curious, high-pitched sound, and began to laugh.

  Crazy laughter. Not a good sound.

  Jeanne and Gabe were already attending to the fallen woman, an emergency call to SAMU made, and Nic was on his feet, moving toward the second diner, a bad feeling gripping him.

  From upstairs, he heard another commotion.

  A woman’s voice, high and uncontrolled.

  Then a man yelling.

  Nic’s eyes met Jeanne’s across the room.

  What the hell?

  ‘It’s a disaster,’ Aniela said later in the upper dining room, where all staff had been instructed to wait until further notice. A crowded, depressing scene: waiters, chefs and kitchen staff, some sitting, others pacing, everyone restless.

  ‘It’s far worse than that,’ Jacques Carnot said.

  ‘Hey,’ Gabe said. ‘It won’t be that bad.’

  ‘I think Jacques is right,’ Sadi said bleakly. ‘Lord knows when they’ll let us reopen.’

  ‘Maybe never,’ Aniela said.

  ‘Never for sure,’ Carnot said.

  ‘Don’t even think that,’ Cathy said.

  And then she realized that Luc was alone at a corner table, his head in his hands.

  She got up, went over. ‘You OK?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘It’ll be all right. Nic and Jeanne will take care of this and things will be fine.’

  ‘Not for me,’ Luc said from behind his hands.

  ‘Why not?’ Cathy said.