The thing was, Grace simply did not believe that. And even if she did, it was not in her province to prove Cathy Robbins’ innocence or guilt. If she was going to continue with an ugly situation that was likely to turn even uglier, Grace was going to have to stick around to help Cathy come to terms and deal with what had happened to her.
Even if what had happened to her was becoming a killer.
Chapter Eleven
FRIDAY, APRIL 10, 1998
Grace had to break through two barriers next morning in order to set up her new session with Cathy. First she had to persuade Frances that, no matter what she might be feeling about the way the investigation was being conducted, Grace was still on her niece’s side. Second, she had to obtain police permission to use the specific location she had in mind for this next meeting. The Robbins’ house on Pine Tree Drive was officially still a crime scene, cordoned off from normality, but it was where Grace felt she most wanted to speak with Cathy – provided the teenager agreed.
She did agree. Grace had been almost certain she would.
‘So long as we don’t have to go back to that room,’ she said.
‘We most certainly don’t,’ Grace assured her.
Going back to the scene of the horror was not Grace’s reason for wanting to take Cathy to the house. She was aware that one of the traumas adding to the girl’s load was the fact that she had been wrenched, from one moment to the next, out of her home. As if the manner of losing her parents had not been horrifying enough, Cathy had simultaneously lost that other major anchor. Home was where people needed to go to lick their wounds, to begin to recover. In her aunt’s house – however well-meaning Frances Dean was trying to be – Cathy couldn’t be herself. She had her aunt’s own grief and immaculate rooms to be considerate of. She had a room of her own to go to, to be alone, but it was not hers. Grace was in no way underestimating the potential trauma of making this first journey back into what had surely, in her mind, now become a house of horror. Yet that last event, that last nightmare, represented only one night; Cathy Robbins had lived within those walls for years. She needed, Grace thought, to touch base with her roots, with herself, and going back with someone sufficiently detached to let her react the way she needed to, might, Grace hoped, be good for her.
Sam Becket, too, thought it a good idea. He’d brought up the notion with her aunt at one point, in the hope that returning to the house might jog something in Cathy’s memory, but Frances Dean had rejected it ferociously. He was glad she had given her consent to Grace.
‘I guess she doesn’t consider you family enemy number one,’ he said on the phone, after giving her police permission to enter the crime scene.
‘I guess she doesn’t think I’ll just be taking Cathy home to try and trap her,’ Grace said. ‘Not that that’s why I think you would have taken her there.’
‘Why do you think I would have?’ Becket asked.
‘To get closer to the truth,’ Grace answered.
‘Isn’t that what you’re hoping to do, Dr Lucca?’
‘In a way.’
The house was a big, but not too grand, mock Tudor, with plenty of landscaped space around it. Grace noted three different kinds of palm trees, bougainvillaea, jasmine, roses, a smooth, immaculately maintained front lawn – the image of tranquillity – until the partially torn crime-scene tape and careless litter of soft drink cans and discarded coffee cups reminded her of the brutal reality.
They entered from the side, moved through the kitchen and into the hallway. Grace didn’t need to watch Cathy’s face; the tension was coming off her in palpable waves. The first pangs of self-doubt and guilt hit Grace hard.
‘Where do you want to go to feel safe, Cathy?’ she asked.
Her answer was instant. ‘The backyard.’
‘Let’s go.’
Grace followed her back through the side entrance and around to the rear of the house, and right away she understood. It was the kind of backyard any teenager would like to live with. It was big and private, its perimeters lined with shady palms and a lovely Jacaranda tree. The lawn was good-sized, there was a great, tempting pool with a diving board, a stone barbecue, table and chairs, a couple of swing-seats with canopies and a hammock. There was also a pool-house at the end of the garden with a second barbecue, and Grace guessed that Cathy had spent a lot of time down there with friends. If she had friends. Grace realized, abruptly, that she’d seen or heard no evidence of any youngsters coming to her aunt’s house, or calling. Not that that proved much; Grace knew very well that death of all kinds caused some people of all ages to keep their distance.
‘This is a great backyard for parties,’ she said, softly, watching Cathy’s face, glad that here, at least, the memories seemed to be happy.
‘My parents threw a few,’ she answered, ‘when Arnie wasn’t working at the restaurants. He loved parties.’
‘What about your mother?’
‘Not so much. Mom was quieter, you know?’ Cathy paused. ‘No, I guess you don’t.’
‘I’d like to hear, if you want to tell me.’
‘Can I take off my shoes, dunk my feet in the pool?’
‘It’s your pool,’ Grace said. ‘You don’t need permission.’
‘I feel like I need to ask before I do anything these days.’
‘Not with me.’
Cathy took off her sneakers without untying her laces. Grace did the same, and they both sat down on the edge of the pool. Cathy was wearing shorts and a halter neck top; Grace wore tan slacks, but wished she’d put on a pair of shorts instead. The water felt great. Cathy gave a long sigh. It sounded like relief.
‘What?’ Grace asked.
‘It feels the same,’ she said.
‘It is the same.’
‘Nothing’s the same,’ she said.
Grace couldn’t argue.
They sat silently for a while.
‘I would like to hear about your mother,’ Grace said, at last.
‘What do you want to know?’
‘Anything.’ Grace knew better than that. ‘Were you good friends?’
‘I guess.’ Cathy stared into the blue water. ‘Mom wasn’t really fun, you know? Though she could be, sometimes, when she let herself go. Arnie was fun. Mom was quieter.’ She paused. ‘I said that already, didn’t I?’
‘That doesn’t matter.’
‘She worried a lot,’ Cathy said.
‘What about?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Didn’t she confide in you?’
‘Did your mom tell you private stuff?’ It was the same kind of retaliatory question she’d come back with near the start of their last session, before she’d started to settle down a little.
‘My mother only told me private stuff when it suited her.’ Grace was still sure that straight was the only way to go with Cathy. One of her first tutors had taught her that it was okay to refer to her own life experiences with a patient so long as the focus remained firmly on them.
‘Is that why you became a shrink?’
‘It may have been part of the reason.’
Grace had told Sam Becket that Cathy was an intuitive person. Fourteen going on twenty-four, the psychologist thought now, and wondered if that acuteness was going to help or hinder her position with the Miami Beach Police Department.
‘I think my mom just wanted to protect me,’ Cathy said, abruptly.
‘From what?’
‘From bad stuff.’
There it was again. Years of misery, her aunt had referred to briefly, cryptically. And the flashes that Cathy hadn’t wanted to talk about. Or had thought she ought not to talk about.
They sat quietly again for a few minutes. Cathy drew circles in the water with her big toes. Grace felt the sun on her face, the slight breeze in her hair, and let herself relax a little. They had time.
‘You heard what happened to the therapist, didn’t you, Grace?’
Grace had decided not to refer to the Flager killing unless C
athy brought it up first. She had anticipated that Cathy probably would.
‘Was Beatrice Flager the therapist you told me about?’ she asked, carefully. ‘The one who taped you.’
‘Yes.’ Cathy hesitated. ‘I didn’t kill her.’
‘I didn’t imagine you did,’ Grace said, matter-of-factly. ‘Detective Becket and one of the other officers wanted to know if I’d been in Aunt Frances’ house all night Tuesday.’
‘I know,’ Grace said.
‘Did you tell him what I said about Ms Flager?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘For one thing, I didn’t think it was relevant.’
Cathy hit the surface of the pool harder with her left heel, making a splash and sending droplets flying over them both. Grace didn’t mind.
‘Is what I tell you the same as stuff I might tell a priest?’ Cathy asked. ‘I mean, don’t you have to tell, if the police ask you?’
‘Like the sanctity of the confessional, you mean? Yes, more or less,’ Grace answered. ‘It’s called doctor-patient confidentiality. That means that I’m not allowed to disclose things you’ve told me, unless you give me permission to talk about them.’ Or unless you’re likely to harm yourself or anyone else, she added silently.
‘Even if you think I’ve done something really bad? Like killing three people?’ Cathy’s voice was hard, but the fear beneath the bravado was audible. She stood up suddenly. ‘I think we should go back inside again.’
‘Are you sure you want to?’ Grace got up, too.
‘No.’ Cathy shrugged. ‘But now I know I can escape out here, I’m willing to risk it.’
‘And we can just leave anytime, too.’
They went back the way they’d come, into the kitchen. Cathy wanted to look in the refrigerator. She said that she wanted something cold to drink, but Grace felt she was probably hoping for a quick fix of the way things had been. Ice boxes were personal things, favourite foods laid out in specific ways. Grace wasn’t sure what might be worse for the bereaved teenager: finding that her family refrigerator had been emptied by strangers, or finding it much as it had been.
It was well-stocked, and visibly tough on Cathy. There was a whole bunch of stuff in there that Marie or the housekeeper had probably brought back from the market not long before the killings; and there were plastic containers of soup and pasta sauces with stickers labelled Arnie’s that Grace supposed had been brought back from one or other of the restaurants.
Cathy stared at the contents for about a minute. Grace wondered what it was she was seeing in her head. Her mother taking out eggs and milk and bread and making French toast? Arnie opening one of those bottles of white wine that stood in the ice box door? The family sitting round the kitchen table, eating brunch? Maybe she was replaying an argument, or maybe she was thinking that she’d never seen Marie cooking breakfast or any other meal, that maybe the housekeeper had done all the cooking – or maybe Arnie had brought his restaurant skills home with him each night? Under different circumstances, Grace might have asked Cathy to tell her what she was seeing in her family ice box, but at that moment it just didn’t seem like the right thing to do.
Cathy closed the door quietly. ‘I need to get out of here.’
‘Okay,’ Grace said. ‘Out of the house, or just the kitchen?’
‘I’d like to go to my room.’
‘Alone or with company?’
‘Not alone.’ She said that fast, fearfully.
‘Let’s go.’
The problem was she had to pass her parents’ bedroom to get there. Grace didn’t need to be told which room it was – it was obvious from Cathy’s body language, by the way she stopped breathing and averted her face and accelerated past the tall, white door, that that was the place she was not ready – might never be ready – to go back into.
Her own room was at the end of the corridor. She opened the door, went in fast and sank down on the single bed.
‘Want the door closed or open?’ Grace asked, standing just inside.
‘Could you close it, please?’
Grace shut it quietly. ‘If you do want some time alone, I could wait right outside.’
‘No,’ Cathy said. ‘Maybe next time.’
It felt like an intrusion. That was curious, Grace thought, considering that her entire professional life was exactly that, an ongoing invasion into other people’s privacy, a gradual process of worming her way into a patient’s mind. Frankly, though, no matter how skilled at that she might have become, what she achieved at the end of the day was mostly edited highlights – the parts that the patient chose to show her. Cathy Robbins might have just invited her into her bedroom, but the visit to the house had still been at Grace’s suggestion, and she was acutely aware that she was now treading on intensely intimate territory.
It was a fairly typical fourteen-year-old girl’s bedroom. Remnants of childhood. A Raggedy Ann doll in a small chair. A collection of cuddly animals. A set of Laura Ingalls Wilder books. Evidence of growing teenage influence. Two posters, one of Brad Pitt, another from the movie Titanic with Leonardo di Caprio. A stack of CDs that seemed to embrace ballet, rock and rap. The running trophies that Sam had mentioned. Photographs. Of Marie and Arnold and of herself. One of her with a dark-haired, pretty girl.
‘Who’s that?’ Grace asked.
‘My friend, Jill.’ Cathy paused. ‘She came to see me on Sunday, after you left. She stayed about a half-hour, and then her dad came to take her home.’ Bleakness touched her eyes. ‘We’ve talked on the phone a few times since then, but I don’t think her parents want her seeing me right now.’
‘That’s a pity.’
Cathy shrugged.
Grace looked back at the photographs. ‘Do you have a picture of your first father?’ She recalled that was how Cathy had referred to him.
‘No.’ She was still sitting on the bed, staring around the room. ‘They took my diary.’
Grace stayed where she was. She had hardly moved since closing the door. It was enough that she was in here with Cathy, ruffling the atmosphere a little; she didn’t want to stir it up too much, not at this time, anyway.
‘Why would they want my diary, Grace?’
‘I don’t know.’ Grace paused. ‘Was there much private stuff in it?’
‘Not really,’ Cathy said. ‘I keep my journal on my computer.’
‘Is that here?’ Grace couldn’t see any computer equipment.
She shook her head. ‘I took it with me to my aunt’s house. It’s a notebook model.’
‘I’m sorry they took the diary,’ Grace said.
‘No big deal.’ Cathy stood up, wandered over to the window, looked out over the backyard. ‘I guess I’ll never get to live here again, will I?’
‘I don’t know. Would you like to?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Do you think your aunt might be willing to move?’
‘No.’ Cathy was still looking out of the window. ‘I asked her. She said she couldn’t bear it.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Grace said again.
‘Maybe she’s right. I don’t know if I could stand it either.’
Grace looked back at the photographs of Cathy with her mother and Arnie. They looked happy. She wondered about the absence of a photograph of her biological father, and decided he was a subject worth trying to address again.
‘You told me you don’t remember much about your first father.’
‘I don’t.’
‘Did your mother talk much about him to you?’
‘My mother never talked about him.’ Cathy turned around, looked straight at Grace. ‘He made her unhappy, I know that.’
‘What about you? Did he make you unhappy?’
‘I don’t think so.’ Cathy bent down and picked up Raggedy Ann. ‘Aunt Frances told me about Mom being miserable. She never said anything to me herself.’
‘Didn’t you ask her?’
‘A couple of times.’ She tugged idly at a few strands of t
he doll’s stringy red hair. ‘Mom said she wanted to forget about it.’
‘What else did your aunt tell you about it?’
‘Not much.’ She dumped Raggedy Ann back on her chair, and the doll tilted over to one side. ‘I’d like to leave now.’
‘This room or the house?”
‘Can we just go, please, Grace?’ She looked at her pleadingly.
‘Of course we can.’
Grace realized suddenly that she was standing in front of the door, and that maybe Cathy might feel trapped. Quickly, she stepped to one side and opened the door. Cathy started out past her, then stopped and turned, went back to the doll, bent down and straightened her. As she passed Grace again, already bracing herself for the walk back through that corridor, there were tears in her eyes.
Grace wondered, as they left the house, got into her Mazda and buckled up, if the visit had helped or hindered Cathy. She was always questioning her own ideas and decisions, especially during the difficult early weeks of getting to know her patients. She asked loaded questions, raised taboo subjects, watched new walls go up, saw all kinds of distress, and frequently experienced dreadful guilt. There was no escaping the fact that bringing Cathy home had, at least temporarily, made her feel a whole lot worse rather than better. And yet Grace knew, just as decisively, that it had had to happen sometime, and she also knew that this was probably just the beginning. Not your fault, Lucca, she could almost hear that old tutor telling her, in one of her gentler moments. You didn’t create the unhappiness in Cathy’s family. You didn’t murder her parents. No, of course Grace had not done those things. But she had chosen her profession. She had chosen to meddle in people’s lives and minds.
She didn’t waste much time these days questioning her motives for having become a psychologist. She did know, absolutely, that there was not even a hint of prurience in her curiosity about people – but she was, undoubtedly, a deeply curious woman who wanted very much to help.
There were times, however, when Grace was not at all sure that she succeeded.
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