Mind Games

by Hilary Norman

  Even so, breaking a few ornaments, taking cannabis from some outside influence – and even decapitating her mother’s goldfish – were all still light years from the murders of her parents and former therapist.

  The telephone rang just as she was climbing into bed and Harry had burrowed down, as he did every night, into the base of her duvet.

  ‘Grace, it’s Sam.’

  ‘What’s happened?’ She felt a jolt of alarm.

  ‘Nothing. Nothing’s happened.’ He paused. ‘Ah, shit, I’ve woken you, haven’t I? I knew I should have left it till morning.’

  Grace glanced at her clock and saw that it was almost three o’clock.

  ‘It is morning, Sam,’ she said. ‘And you only left an hour ago. Anyway, I wasn’t sleeping. Too busy thinking.’

  ‘Me too. About Cathy?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You still don’t think she did it, do you?’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ Grace said.

  ‘Me neither,’ Sam said. ‘Though things could look better for her.’

  ‘I guess they could.’

  ‘Actually I didn’t really call to talk about Cathy – I called to thank you. For the Cacciucco and the hospitality.’

  ‘It was no trouble. The soup was made. It was a pleasure sharing it.’

  ‘For me, too.’

  Grace smiled into the dark. ‘It’s nice of you to call.’

  ‘Must be my mother’s training.’

  ‘Must be.’

  ‘I’ll let you get some sleep then,’ Sam said.

  ‘What about you?’ She realized suddenly that he sounded anything but tired. In fact, he sounded wired. ‘It was my coffee, wasn’t it? I knew I made it too strong.’

  ‘It was great. But I am wide awake, so I thought I’d spend a little quiet time trying to nail down some other connection between the Robbinses and Beatrice Flager.’

  ‘That would be good,’ Grace said.

  ‘Up until the therapist was killed, there was a fair chance that the Robbins’ deaths might have been business or money-related – maybe something heavy that Arnold Robbins got into through his Arnie’s chain.’

  ‘But Beatrice Flager getting murdered put paid to that?’

  ‘I’m not ready to stop looking yet,’ Sam said.

  Grace hesitated for a moment. Late as it was, there was still an unasked question gnawing away at her. ‘You mentioned, after the first killings, finding some burned fabric that might have been Cathy’s nightgown.’ She tried to pick her words carefully. ‘Was there anything else?’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘I don’t know. Anything the police surgeon found on her.’

  Another brief silence crept between them.

  ‘You’re asking about the Band-Aid on her arm, aren’t you?’ he said.

  Grace winced at his acuteness. ‘Yes, I am.’ Her face grew warm. She was grateful he wasn’t here to see it.

  ‘Cathy said she stumbled against a tree trunk the day before the killings, scraped her arm.’ Sam paused. ‘We confirmed that, Grace. It wasn’t a cut from a scalpel. Nor anything to do with the broken window, if that’s what you were thinking.’

  Grace hadn’t even considered the window.

  ‘If it was bothering you,’ he asked, ‘why didn’t you ask me about it before?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she lied.

  She knew he didn’t believe that; he realized that she had, in some confused way, been reluctant to stir up more trouble for the teenager – or that, maybe, she simply hadn’t wanted to risk having to contemplate another possible strike against Cathy.

  She also felt that – as a man rather than as a cop – he understood.

  Chapter Thirteen

  SUNDAY, APRIL 12, 1998

  It had been an almost perfect family weekend on Islamorada until Grace had checked her messages on Easter morning and heard Frances Dean telling her that the police had taken Cathy in for questioning, and that Sam Becket had as good as told her it was time to get her niece a lawyer. Grace didn’t know exactly when the message had been left, but when she had tried calling back there was no answer.

  ‘She wouldn’t be calling me if she weren’t desperate,’ she told Claudia – physically so much like their father, with her pale olive skin, brown eyes and smooth, dark hair, cut in a bob that swung with every movement.

  They were sitting on the porch drinking Cokes while Claudia’s husband Daniel Brownley barbecued on the deck, their boys horsed around in the water and Sadie – the wire-haired dachshund who had come to the Brownleys three years before – flopped in the shade, her brandy-coloured eyes darting back and forth between the youngsters and the chicken legs on the barbecue. (Harry and Sadie got along famously, and Harry liked to travel and thoroughly disliked Grace’s packing any size bag and leaving home without him, but she had to attend a seminar on Key Largo that Monday – and Lord only knew that a hotel banqueting suite filled with shrinks was no place for Harry – and so he’d been left in the tender care of Teddy Lopez.)

  ‘Do you want to go home?’ Claudia asked, keeping an eye out for Robbie, her youngest at six, who tended to overstretch himself in every activity in the vain hope of keeping up with Mike, his eight-year-old brother.

  ‘I would if I thought there was much I could do to help,’ Grace said. ‘But if Cathy’s in custody, I won’t be allowed to talk to her, and though of course I’ll try Frances again later, I don’t think it’s a psychologist she either wants or needs.’

  ‘What does she want?’

  ‘An ally. Someone to prove that her niece is innocent.’ Grace gave a small sigh of regret. ‘I’m no miracle worker. I wish I were.’

  They had gritted their teeth that morning and tried calling their parents’ home in Chicago to check on Ellen’s condition, but there’d been no answer, and for a while the sisters had sat quietly – too quietly – allowing irrational guilt to ebb and flow, until Daniel had put a finish to it, at least for the time being.

  ‘You want to go to Chicago?’ he’d asked them, straight out.

  As an architect, Daniel Brownley – a tall, angular man with myopic green eyes and slightly rounded shoulders from years spent hunched over plans – tended towards straight, clear lines in thought and deed as well as in his designs. It wasn’t that he didn’t fully comprehend and empathize with the convolutions of hearts and souls, but for Daniel, if there was a true, linear approach to a problem, then that was what he chose to try first.

  ‘Not really,’ his wife had answered.

  ‘Not in the least,’ Grace had said, for her own part.

  ‘Do you figure you ought to be helping Frank out?’

  ‘No.’ Grace led that time.

  ‘Ditto,’ Claudia followed.

  ‘Is there something you could be doing for your mother?’

  ‘Hard to tell, unless we talk to Papa again.’ Claudia, for one, had no more clear-cut answers.

  ‘So you’ll try calling him again later or tomorrow,’ Daniel had concluded, practical as always, ‘and in the meantime you can help me hide the boys’ Easter eggs.’

  ‘How about we hide them in the house this time?’ Claudia suggested.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ her husband disagreed. ‘They’ll smash things, we’ll get mad and then we’ll feel guilty and they’ll hate us.’

  ‘But they already know all the hiding places outdoors,’ Claudia pointed out. They’d been playing the same game since Mike’s third Easter.

  ‘So they’ll feel smart for finding them so easily,’ Grace had said.

  She left next morning without having reached either Cathy’s aunt or Frank Lucca, but arrived at the Westin Beach Resort on Key Largo with enough time to spare before the start of the seminar to try calling Sam Becket in Miami.

  To her surprise, she got him first time.

  ‘Glad you called,’ he said.

  ‘How come you brought Cathy in?’ Grace got straight to the point. ‘Has something happened since Friday night?’

&nb
sp; ‘Not really,’ Sam answered, ‘except for my sergeant, captain and chief all deciding that her recent history was grounds for asking her a few more questions.’

  ‘That’s it?’ Grace was angry and sounded it.

  ‘That was the reason for wanting to talk to her some more.’

  ‘And you still don’t have a shred of hard evidence against her?’

  Sam’s sigh came across the phone line. ‘She hasn’t been charged with anything, Grace.’

  ‘Not yet,’ she said, coolly. ‘I take it she’s been released?’

  ‘She was never arrested.’ He paused. ‘She’s in the hospital right now.’

  ‘What happened?’ Grace gripped the phone more tightly. ‘She’s okay,’ Sam said hastily. ‘She got sick to her stomach during questioning, then passed out, so we got her over to Jackson Memorial right away.’ He paused. ‘Her aunt got very upset, wanted to move her to a place in Coral Gables, but we compromised on a private room at Miami General.’

  ‘I hope that wasn’t too much trouble?’ Grace said coldly. ‘No one was anything but gentle with her,’ Sam said. ‘My dad went in to see her, and he tells me she’s going home tomorrow. Check with him if you don’t believe me.’

  ‘I wasn’t suggesting you got out the rubber hoses, Sam.’

  ‘I know you weren’t,’ he said, quietly. ‘Believe me, I hated every second of that questioning. No one enjoys this kind of case – no one on our team, anyway.’

  Grace believed him.

  In the knowledge that David Becket would most assuredly be taking good care of Cathy and that there was no purpose to be served by her speedy return to Miami, Grace headed for the conference room on the first floor, and the first session of the day – a lecture and debate on Factitious Disorder by proxy. The disorder – also commonly known as Münchhausen’s Syndrome by proxy, or MSBP – was a highly complex, emotive syndrome for all concerned, not least for the psychiatrists and psychologists confronted with both the sufferers and their young victims; in the past five years Grace had personally encountered two children abused and endangered by their mentally sick mothers.

  ‘Grisly stuff,’ a male voice said just behind her during the recess as she grabbed a much-needed cup of coffee.

  She turned around. A tall, slim man of around forty-five, in a rumpled beige linen suit, stood looking at her. His name tag read Dr Peter Hayman.

  ‘As often as I hear the stories,’ he said, ‘they still give me the chills.’ His eyes, behind slightly tinted spectacles, were brown and couched in sun, laugh or frown wrinkles. ‘Peter Hayman,’ he said.

  She put down her cup and saucer and shook his hand. ‘Grace Lucca.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘How come?’ She hadn’t pinned on her name tag. She’d never liked being labelled unless there was a good reason.

  ‘You’ve been seeing the child in the Robbins murder case, Dr Lucca.’ Hayman caught the wariness in her eyes and explained: ‘Your name was in one of the newspapers.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Could have been the Herald.’

  ‘It wasn’t.’

  ‘Maybe the Sentinel.’

  ‘I’d be mad if it was in either,’ she said.

  ‘I know.’ Hayman spoke quietly, with implicit understanding. ‘Poor kid has more than enough on her plate without that kind of intrusion.’

  ‘Yes, she does.’ Grace paused, frowning. ‘Was there a photograph of me?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the newspaper. You seem to have recognized me.’

  ‘You’re very cautious, Dr Lucca.’ Hayman smiled.

  ‘Where privacy is concerned, yes, I am.’

  ‘There was no photograph,’ he said. ‘I noticed your name on the registration list when I collected my name tag, and made it my business to ask about you.’

  ‘Why did you do that?’

  Peter Hayman glanced around. ‘Could we go somewhere a little less jammed?’

  ‘Where did you have in mind?’

  If Hayman found Grace’s continuing caution offensive, he didn’t show it.

  ‘Just a swift stroll – get out of the air conditioning for a few minutes, maybe? Someplace less noisy where we can talk without being overheard.’

  ‘What is it you want to talk about, Dr Hayman?’

  He took a moment before he answered. ‘An old case of mine.’ He seemed to search for the appropriate words. ‘One that’s thrown up a few possible parallels with the Robbins case that I think you might find interesting.’

  ‘What kind of parallels?’ Grace was suddenly off-balance.

  ‘This is something that might help,’ Hayman said.

  ‘Help who?’

  ‘Cathy Robbins.’

  As it turned out, there was no time left for further conversation before the end of the coffee recess, so it was lunchtime before they took their stroll outside the hotel, through shady mangroves down to a boardwalk overlooking Florida Bay. It was a perfect Keys afternoon, warm and balmy with a light breeze, the shallow water a tranquil vivid blue; a setting infinitely more suited for day-dreaming or siesta than for discussions about murder.

  Peter Hayman came to the point. In his capacity as a psychiatrist, he explained, he had, a few years back, been asked to see a young patient on the Florida west coast – somewhere in the vicinity of St Petersburg, he said with careful vagueness – accused of shooting his parents.

  ‘No one’s accused Cathy Robbins of any crime,’ Grace asserted crisply.

  ‘Not yet,’ Hayman said, calmly. ‘But reading between the lines, there seems every possibility that they might, given time.’

  ‘I think you’ve read too much between the lines.’

  ‘Maybe. I still see no harm in sharing a few facts with you that strike me as salient. Taking confidentiality into account, that is,’ he added.

  Grace kept silent.

  ‘Would you like to sit down?’ Hayman asked.

  ‘I’m happy to stand,’ she said. ‘We’ll be sitting all afternoon.’

  ‘I often wonder why they don’t take seminars like ours out to the beach,’ the psychiatrist mused. ‘All those cold, air-conditioned rooms, everyone uncomfortable as hell, with paradise right outside the window.’

  ‘Too comfortable. Hard chairs and cold air keep us awake.’

  ‘Not always.’ Hayman smiled.

  ‘You had something to tell me?’

  He wasted no more time. The young man in his case, he told Grace, had fallen under suspicion because of general behavioural problems and because he was known to have taken illegal drugs, but as Hayman had come to know him, he’d come to the conclusion that those violent acts – even taking drugs into account – were completely at odds with his character.

  ‘The two obvious major differences between that case and what I know about the Robbins case,’ Hayman said, ‘are that my patient’s parents both survived, and that the father was affluent and locally influential enough to keep the affair out of the public arena.’

  ‘I’m puzzled that you seem to feel you know so much about the Robbins case.’ Grace’s antennae were bristling with fresh suspicion. ‘I don’t believe that too many details about the family have appeared in any newspaper.’

  ‘No, they haven’t,’ Hayman agreed. He registered her cold expression. ‘I’d better come clean.’

  ‘I’d say so, if you want to continue this conversation.’

  ‘I’d like to.’ The psychiatrist paused. ‘It’s very simple. I read and saw and heard just enough about the case and the young woman concerned to strike some chords in me. On the strength of that, I made a few calls to Miami, asked the right people a few questions.’

  ‘Which people?’

  ‘I can’t answer that.’ He shrugged. ‘I can confess to you that my interest is in part quite selfish, inasmuch as it relates to a subject I’m currently researching in some depth – in fact, if you hadn’t shown up here today, Dr Lucca, I was thinking of getting in touch anyhow.’

>   ‘Go on.’ Grace’s curiosity, if nothing else, was piqued.

  ‘Obviously I can’t give you any precise details about what I did, ultimately, come to learn about those west coast shootings.’ Hayman paused again. ‘But I can tell you that I came to realize that what I was dealing with was a very strange variant of Factitious Disorder by proxy – MSBP, as I still tend to call it.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘A mother who – rather than creating symptoms of physical illness in her child so that he might have to undergo tests and treatments – deliberately fabricated her son’s psychosis.’ Hayman saw from her fascinated, horrified expression that he’d more than captured Grace’s attention. ‘It took me a while, too, I assure you, Dr Lucca.’

  ‘But what are you saying about the shooting?’ she asked, confused and appalled. ‘That the son was driven by his mother to attack her and his father? Or that the mother pulled the trigger herself and set it up to look as though her son had done it?’

  ‘I can’t really answer those questions,’ Peter Hayman said, ‘other than to tell you that the MSBP element started long before the shootings.’

  ‘The mother making it look as if her son was mentally sick?’

  ‘In that instance, yes.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m not saying that it necessarily has any relevance at all to your Miami scenario – just that something about the case rang some warning bells in my head.’ He paused. ‘There was a great deal of suffering for that family – the teenager involved went through all kinds of hell. I just felt it wouldn’t hurt to share my experience with the psychologist caring for Cathy Robbins.’

  ‘Except, of course, that in her case both her parents are dead.’

  ‘Doesn’t make it impossible,’ Hayman said.

  Chapter Fourteen

  ‘Your mother’s mad at you,’ David Becket told Sam when he dropped by for a cup of coffee on Sunday evening.

  ‘Ma’s always mad at me,’ Sam said easily.

  ‘Your father’s the one who’s really mad at you,’ Judy Becket said.