Harry – a handsome, self-possessed, ten-year-old West Highland terrier – shifted a little, tucked his white-haired compact body closer in against Grace’s right thigh, and wagged his stubby tail.
‘Is this good or is this good?’ she asked him.
The phone rang.
Grace sighed.
The machine picked up. From the deck, through the screen doors, she heard her own voice asking for name, number and message, then the high-pitched whistle and click as recording began, then a stranger’s voice, deep and unfamiliar.
She looked down at Harry. ‘Do I go listen or do we go on sitting here?’ He snuck in even closer, keeping his little dark eyes on the water, and she fondled his ears. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘But it could be important.’
Harry grunted as she got to her feet and shook the water off her toes. They’d been a good team from the start, Grace and Harry, from their Miami beginnings in the ground-floor beach apartment that they’d escaped from in a hurry after it had gotten invaded by crabs, through the plush, too swanky Miami Beach condo from which Harry had come too perilously close, more than once, to taking a dive from the terrace. But then Grace had found this little house on the island, tucked between two somewhat grander but no lovelier houses, and she and Harry had come home to pure white stone, arched windows, a red, Mediterranean-style tiled roof, their own twin palms and fiery bottle brush tree and, best of all, the deck.
Grace had known right away that the house would work out well, too, as a professional environment, and it had. The parents who brought their children to her and left them in her care appreciated, for the most part, the fact that it looked and felt safe and clean. From her standpoint Grace set great store by comfort and ease, which was why when the weather was fine – as it almost always was in south-east Florida – and unless a patient had some kind of problem with being outdoors, they could sit out in the fresh air on the deck or inside the screening on the lanai – and having Harry around tended to help relax most of the children Grace spent time with. Lord only knew many of them needed all the relaxation she could offer.
The phone message, from a detective of the Miami Beach Police Department, sounded urgent enough for her to return the call right away. The number was for a cellular phone, and Detective Sam Becket picked up after just two rings.
‘Detective, this is Grace Lucca. I just got your message.’
‘I appreciate your calling back so fast, doctor.’ His voice was rich and gentle. He sounded, Grace thought, quite illogically, very unlike a policeman.
‘No problem. What can I do for you?’
‘My father tells me you have a talent for breaking through to badly traumatized kids.’
‘Your father?’ Grace tried ransacking her memory.
‘Dr David Becket. I believe you’ve worked together.’
‘We sure have.’ The craggy face of one of the gentlest paediatricians she knew sprang into Grace’s mind, and she smiled into the receiver. ‘It’s kind of him to have said that about me.’ She paused. ‘So what’s the story, detective?’
Becket filled her in on the Cathy Robbins tragedy.
‘Cathy’s out of the hospital now,’ he told her, rounding off, ‘staying with her aunt – her mother’s sister – but she still won’t talk about what happened.’
‘Not surprising, under the circumstances.’
Becket explained that his father, Frances Dean – the aunt – two counsellors from the Child Assessment Centre and a psychologist resident at Miami General had all failed to elicit any response from the young teenager.
‘You realize there’s no guarantee she’ll talk to me either,’ Grace pointed out.
‘Of course not,’ Becket agreed, ‘but my father thinks she just might.’ He paused. ‘We have to find out what she knows.’
‘It might not be much,’ Grace said.
‘Whatever it is, however small, we need to know,’ he persisted, sounding more like a cop.
Grace took a moment, glanced down at Harry, on his back on the floor near her feet. Harry liked staying close as much as possible. She wondered, fleetingly, if Cathy Robbins liked dogs.
‘Is her aunt okay with this?’ she asked the detective.
‘She says so.’
‘This afternoon too soon?’
‘Sooner the better,’ Becket answered.
‘Any rules about what she tells me?’
Becket took a moment before answering again. ‘No rules. This is an unofficial request, Dr Lucca, and I’m making it because no one else has made any headway.’
‘You realize that my concern will be for Cathy, not your investigation?’
‘I do. But I’m hoping whatever you learn may help us all.’
‘So Cathy Robbins is not a suspect?’
‘Not at this time,’ the detective answered, and Grace knew he was being careful. ‘Right now, so far as you’re concerned, she’s strictly a victim.’
She grabbed a pen from the Donald Duck mug on her desk.
‘I’ll need an address.’
Becket gave it together with Frances Dean’s phone number, and thanked her. Grace wrote down the details, replaced the phone on her desk and looked out of the window. Outside it was still sunny, but the warmth and ease had drained out of her afternoon. She had dealt with victims of rapes and violence and all kinds of terrors, both real and imagined, but this was her first homicide.
Down by her feet, Harry rolled off his back and grumbled.
‘You said it,’ she agreed.
Chapter Four
Marie Robbins’ widowed sister lived on Granada Boulevard in the heart of Coral Gables, the Spanish-styled city that was one of Dade County’s oldest neighbourhoods. It was a single-storey, handsome, grey and white house with shutters at the windows and a front garden lush with palms, banyans, and a pair of beautiful floss silk trees.
Frances Dean looked much as Grace had expected her to. Wrecked. Silver-grey hair that was probably normally elegantly coiffed, was today straggly; what make-up she’d made the effort to apply had been smudged again through weeping. A black dress that might, in better circumstances, have made her look a sleek and quite attractive fifty-something, today gave her a sallow, shrunken appearance. Grace wondered how Mrs Dean had lost her husband. It seemed unlikely that any disease, sudden collapse or accident, however harrowing, could have been quite as shattering a mind and body blow as the one that had now wiped out her sister and brother-in-law.
‘Cathy’s resting,’ Frances Dean said soon after Grace had arrived, offered deep sympathy and been offered, in return, a seat on a soft white couch in her living room. ‘Or meant to be.’ She shook her head. ‘Poor child. I don’t think she’s really slept, as such, since it happened.’
‘How about you?’ Grace asked, gently.
‘I don’t sleep very well at the best of times.’ Frances Dean remembered her manners. ‘May I bring you some coffee, Dr Lucca?’
‘I’d love some.’ Grace didn’t really want coffee, but she was aware that any activity, however trivial, was often preferable to the newly bereaved than just sitting and staring. ‘If it’s not too much trouble?’
‘No trouble at all.’ She rose from her armchair and walked unsteadily towards the tall, generously proportioned doorway that led to the hallway and, presumably, the kitchen and sleeping areas of the one-storey home. She paused, just short of the door, and turned back.
‘Would you like me to fetch Cathy right away, doctor? Or would you prefer to talk to me for a while first?’
‘Whichever you prefer,’ Grace said. ‘Whichever may be easier.’ She knew that nothing was easy, nor going to be.
‘I’m here, Aunt Frances.’
The voice came from directly behind Mrs Dean, its owner invisible to Grace from where she sat. It was a young voice, soft and even.
Mrs Dean turned around. ‘Cathy, honey.’ She extended her right hand to touch her niece but – though Grace felt it was probably not a deliberate snub – the girl, wearing a white
T-shirt and blue jeans, kept her own arms by her sides and walked around her aunt into the living room.
Grace stood up. Her heart was beating fast and she felt unusually nervous.
‘Hello, Cathy,’ she said. ‘I’m Grace Lucca.’
The girl stopped three feet away. ‘The shrink.’
‘That’s me.’ Grace smiled at her.
‘They kept sending shrinks to talk to me in the hospital. I didn’t feel like talking, so they all went away again.’
‘Cathy —’ Frances Dean stopped, looking uncomfortable.
Cathy turned her face towards her aunt. ‘It’s okay, Aunt Frances.’ Her tone was kind, as if she felt that the older woman needed more gentle handling than she did. ‘I think I’m ready now.’ She looked back at Grace. ‘Maybe it was the hospital. I just couldn’t seem to say anything much there.’ She gave a strange, jerky little shrug. ‘I tried, but I felt like I was going to choke.’
‘And now?’ Grace asked.
‘I’d like to try.’
It was more than Grace had expected, but she knew that her relief had to be premature.
‘I was getting some coffee for Dr Lucca,’ Frances Dean said, still over by the doorway. ‘Would you like something, Cathy?’
‘Uh-uh.’ Cathy shook her head. ‘No, thank you, Aunt Frances.’
Her aunt left the room. Grace sensed she was glad to escape.
‘Shall we sit down in here?’ she asked. ‘Or would you rather go outside?’
‘I’d like to stay here, if that’s okay?’
‘Of course it is.’
Grace sat first, allowing Cathy the opportunity to choose her distance. Many patients, younger or more mature, liked to sit as far away from her as possible at their first encounter. Cathy chose the other end of the same couch. It seemed to Grace a reserved, but not unconfident action.
‘What do I call you?’ Cathy asked.
‘Whatever you’re comfortable with. My name’s Grace.’
‘Not doctor?’
‘Not unless you prefer it.’
‘Okay.’
Cathy settled down, tucking her legs under her, and Grace allowed herself a first close look. She was quite lovely, the untouched kind of loveliness that only young teenage girls – very young women – often possess for just a brief time. She was very slender, almost fragile, though her arms looked taut, perhaps well-muscled from sport, and she had long, straight golden hair and clear blue eyes, the left iris flecked with a dot of melanin. It was a pretty, yet somehow bland face, one that, under normal circumstances, Grace might have assumed had yet to be touched by significant life experiences. Given what had happened to Cathy Robbins in the past forty-eight hours, however – whatever, exactly, that was – the psychologist’s immediate assumption was that it was the face of someone blocking out, or even concealing, the truth.
Someone. Daughter of slain parents. Witness of unimaginable horror.
‘I don’t have much to tell you, doctor.’
Grace found that she had, inadvertently, been holding her breath, and exhaled. ‘Grace,’ she reminded, gently, easily.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. It doesn’t matter what you call me.’ Grace paused. ‘Tell me what you can, Cathy.’
‘About what happened?’
‘If you can. Or how you feel. Whatever you want. Anything.’
‘There really isn’t much,’ she said.
Grace waited. The blue, clear eyes regarded her for a long moment, then turned away and gazed into nothingness. The young lips parted, then closed again. No words came out. Cathy shifted a little, exposing her right forearm. There was a Band-Aid on it.
‘Would it help if I asked you some questions?’
‘I don’t know.’ The eyes remained averted. ‘Maybe.’
Grace’s brain, well trained in the posing of simple, key questions, scrambled and came up blank and oddly panicky. She thought perhaps she’d made the mistake of indulging in satisfaction because Cathy had agreed to try and confide in her, and now she felt afraid of failing the girl.
‘I was asleep,’ Cathy said suddenly, rescuing her. ‘In my room.’
Saved from her own vacuum, Grace came to attention.
‘Something woke me.’ Cathy frowned, wrinkling her smooth forehead. ‘I don’t know what.’
‘A sound?’
‘Maybe. I don’t know.’ The eyes showed the strain of recall. ‘I remember the time. It was just before four. It was still dark.’
Grace heard a stirring from outside the room, looked across and saw Frances Dean standing in the hall, the coffee tray in her hands. For a moment or two, she remained there, indecisive, torn, perhaps, between not wanting to interrupt and wanting – or not – to hear. She turned away, vanished out of sight. If her niece had noticed her, she gave no indication.
‘I lay in my bed for a while – I’m not sure how long.’ Cathy paused. ‘I was scared.’ She looked back at Grace. ‘Don’t you want to know why I felt scared?’
‘Do you know why?’
‘No.’ Cathy swallowed. ‘Or I didn’t know then, anyway.’ She paused again. ‘I guess I know now.’
She’d said she had little to tell, and Grace supposed that from the Miami Beach Police Department’s point-of-view it was precious little. From a psychologist’s stand-point, however – from Cathy’s stand-point – it was everything and more. Too much more.
She said she remembered going into her parents’ bedroom and finding them dead. They were already dead, she told Grace, her voice dull, almost a monotone. It was a quality Grace had encountered several times before in badly traumatized patients, as if they felt that by keeping all the feelings and reactions suppressed, jammed down tight, they might be able to keep control of them.
‘I don’t remember any more after that,’ Cathy went on. ‘Until Anita woke me up and started screaming.’ She looked right at Grace. ‘How could I have gone to sleep?’ she asked, and for the very first time a glimpse of horror showed through the blandness. ‘How did I get into that bed? How did I do that?’
Grace saw that she badly needed an answer. It wasn’t the first time she’d had none to give a patient crying out for help, but that made it no less painful or frustrating.
‘I don’t know,’ she said.
Chapter Five
Sam Becket was a surprise to Grace. His father, the doctor, was a middle-aged, stockily built Caucasian Jew of no more than five feet ten who tended to wear even fine clothes as if he’d crawled straight out of bed into them. The detective was at least six-three, African-American, rangy but noticeably powerful even in his conservative dark suit. Intrigued as Grace was, however, origins and family backgrounds were not on the agenda for either her or Becket that afternoon. The late Marie and Arnold Robbins and their daughter were of much more pressing concern.
‘It’s only a first impression, of course,’ Grace said, ‘but I think that Cathy may genuinely not know anything that’s going to be particularly helpful to your investigation.’
It was just after seven p.m. and she was facing the detective across a file-stacked desk in one corner of the large open-plan office that housed the Person Crimes unit inside the attractive, modern white Miami Beach Police Department building on Washington Avenue in South Beach. It was a small, overcrowded but workmanlike space, its only real colour splashing out of a Florida Grand Opera poster for Aida.
‘I realize that you’re going to have to talk to her yourself again,’ she went on, ‘and maybe you will get more details from her in time. But as to whether they’ll help you find the person who did this, I don’t know.’
‘At least she’s started talking.’
‘So far as that goes,’ Grace qualified carefully. ‘She’s still in deep shock.’
‘Do you think she’s blocking?’ Becket asked.
‘Of course she is.’ Grace took a long look at his lean face, trying to gauge what she was up against, wondering how much she was going to have to spell out. She’s blocking
the way her mother looked with her throat cut, or what it felt like to lie down between her butchered parents and to hold their bloody bodies . . .
‘How can she not?’ Becket asked.
His voice was soft, his dark brown eyes bleak. Policeman or not, maybe he was his father’s son after all. Grace let herself relax just a little.
‘When will you talk to her again?’ she asked. In her ideal world, a victim like Cathy Robbins ought not to have to confront a single police officer unless she elected to, but, not entirely unlike Chicago – Grace Lucca’s home town – Miami was a million gruesome miles away from Utopia. She might not like it, but she had to accept that before this was over, Cathy would face any number of inquisitors; so better, perhaps, that she should at least begin with the son of a gentle, caring, clever man.
‘Tomorrow,’ Becket answered. ‘Can’t hold off any longer.’
It was still Sunday, but the unit was a fairly busy place. There were three other men coming and going, sometimes working at desks, sometimes speaking to each other, occasionally coming to have a swift word with Becket or simply to drop papers under his nose. In his capacity as lead investigator on the Robbins case, he explained to Grace, it was vital that every grain of gathered information should come to him as soon as possible, and although it was only Day Three of the investigation, tension was clearly visible in his eyes and in the frown lines creasing his forehead. Still, busy as he was, Detective Becket still seemed ready to fetch coffee for the two of them and to tell Grace all that – and more than – she wanted to know about the murders.
Mind Games Page 2