He had tried, on the first and second anniversaries of the accident, to reopen some small channel of communication between them, and he’d tried it again, last year, on what should have been Sampson’s eleventh birthday, but Althea hadn’t wanted to know. Where Sam Becket was concerned, she just wanted to hate. It was, Sam had grown to suppose, what kept her going.
Which was why he was there this afternoon, so late in the day and entirely alone. Because he had wanted to avoid seeing his ex-wife and her family. What he wanted, today, nine years exactly after that drunk had wiped out all his and Althea’s hopes and dreams, was to be alone with his son.
He was safe. They had come and gone. The flowers testified to that. White roses for purity. Delphiniums and cornflowers, because Sampson’s favourite colour was blue.
Sam never brought flowers. He brought seashells. Right from the start of his brief life, Sampson had loved water. Sam could still close his eyes and recall the feel of his baby son in his arms as he sat with him on the beach, right up close to the water, so that Sampson could feel the splashes and watch the rippling waves and hear the ocean’s voice. Sampson had loved seashells, so from time to time during the year his father wandered the beaches looking out for shells of special beauty or colour, and collected them for the next time he could bring them here to his son’s grave.
‘Look what I brought for you today, son.’ He fished around in his pockets. ‘I got two nice tulips and a crown conch.’ He squatted beside the grave and laid the shells down.
He had bought a book years ago to help him identify shells for Sampson, and the hollowness inside him that never entirely went away was a stark reminder that these tiny offerings were something he continued with for his own sake, not his little boy’s. But still, it did no one any harm, and it gave him a bean or two of comfort now and again.
He put down a gleaming, brownish dappled Cowrie, followed it with a small moon shell, and then reached his right hand in his pocket for the final time. ‘And here’s the one I like the most. The book says it’s common, but I never found one this pretty before.’ He laid down a small, smooth, soft rose-coloured shell. ‘It even has a pretty name, Sampson. Janthina – isn’t that a neat name?’
He didn’t know how long they remained on the grave after he’d gone, but there was never a trace of them from visit to visit. Maybe the oddness of the seashells offended whoever tended the cemetery, or maybe it was Althea herself who removed them, knowing they came from him. Whatever, Sam knew he was going to keep on bringing the tiny tributes to a beautiful child who had possessed an eye for the wonders of nature at such an early age.
The other thing Sam did, each time he came to the cemetery, was sing.
Sampson had liked his daddy’s voice.
He always sang the same thing. A few verses from the ‘Carousel’ soliloquy about a father dreaming of his unborn child. He sat down on the grass beside the headstone and sang very softly, and he never made it very far because it choked him up, but that didn’t matter because he knew Sampson couldn’t hear him anyway. And it was okay for a father to get choked up over his son’s grave.
If they’d buried him in Alaska, they couldn’t have stopped Sam from doing that.
Chapter Eighteen
On Sunday afternoon, Grace was home, going over and over the information David Becket had given her on Friday. Oh, she’d had plenty else to occupy her mind since Sam Becket had given her the brush-off on Saturday – a thirteen-year-old anorexic, a hyperactive third-grader and a juvenile pyromaniac-in-the-making, to name but three – but Cathy Robbins’ childhood was still holding sway over the rest.
When Peter Hayman called, just after two o’clock, it was hard to stop herself from calling it fate. She knew, of course, it was just a coincidence that the doctor had decided to call her at exactly the moment she was feeling about to explode if she couldn’t share her thought processes with someone else – but it didn’t feel that way at the time.
He wanted to ask her how things were progressing.
Grace wanted to tell him.
‘Want to drive down?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know where you are.’
‘About a mile from where we met,’ Hayman said. ‘On Key Largo.’
He lived at the ocean end of a small residential road that ran beside one of more than a dozen or so inlets in south Key Largo. Most of his neighbours lived in modern, expensive-looking, impeccably designed houses, many of them with handsome cruisers moored right in their backyards, but Hayman’s house was an old timber three-storey affair, loaded with enough atmosphere to make the grade as a movie set. Huge old ceiling fans and local art on the walls, rattan furniture inside and out on the screened porches that ran all the way around the house, a small, semi-wild palm and orchid garden out back, and what Hayman said was a regular afternoon visitation from a bunch of herons and pelicans looking for hand-outs on the ocean side.
‘How long have you lived here?’ Grace asked, once they were settled on one of the porches, sipping homemade lemonade.
‘A few years now.’ Hayman leaned back comfortably in his rattan chair, his brown hair flopping over his forehead, the straw hat he’d been wearing on Grace’s arrival laying on his right knee. ‘Do you like it?’
‘Very much.’
‘The neighbours wanted to see it pulled down because it was too out of keeping with their houses, but I persuaded the zoning people to let me put the place right and keep some flavour in the road. I guess they’re getting used to it – some of them even speak to me now and then.’
‘Glad to hear it,’ Grace said, looking around. ‘I think you’ve done a wonderful job.’
Hayman shrugged. ‘Once I’d decided to quit seeing patients on a daily basis and concentrate more on my studies and writing, there seemed no reason not to move to where I really wanted to be.’ He adjusted the spectacles on his nose and smiled. ‘I’m a bit of a sailor. I thought about heading all the way down to Key West, but then I figured that was less practical if I still wanted to see the occasional patient and mooch around bookstores and libraries on the mainland.’
‘You remind me of my sister’s husband,’ Grace said. ‘They live up in Fort Lauderdale half the time, and down on Islamorada the rest. Daniel’s an architect, but his great passion is fishing, so now he can spend as much time as he likes doing what he loves where he wants.’
‘Does your sister feel the same way?’ Hayman asked.
‘Claudia loves it. So do the kids – they have two boys.’ Grace looked around, aware that she was already starting to be lulled into relaxation by the lush peace wrapping itself around her. She often found the Keys almost darkly seductive, tended to feel a little too removed from reality for her personal taste, so that returning to the jangling commercialism of Miami felt almost as reviving as a welcome cool shower.
‘This is a very pleasant surprise for me, Dr Lucca,’ Hayman said.
‘You don’t mind my intruding then?’
‘Far from it.’ He paused. ‘Though glad as I am to see you again, we both know you haven’t driven down here to talk fishing or sailing.’
She took another sip of lemonade, then set her glass down on the wicker table. ‘I’ve learned some things about Cathy Robbins’ past – disturbing things – and they seem to have sparked off some wild ideas.’ She looked directly at him. ‘Some of which relate to the theory you and I were discussing last week.’
‘So you thought another conversation might clarify things?’
‘Or spark something new.’ Grace hesitated. ‘Even though none of this information has stemmed from my talks with Cathy, I don’t need to tell you how confidential this has to be.’
‘No, Dr Lucca,’ the psychiatrist said, ‘you don’t.’
She shared with him what David Becket had told her about the late John Broderick. That Cathy had spent the first few years of her life with a father who had, according to the ethics committee at Lafayette Hospital, abused his wife and child with sedatives and other prescrip
tion drugs.
‘He gave them both sedatives to keep them in order,’ she told Hayman. ‘He told Marie he was giving her monthly B12 injections when he was really injecting her with progestogen, and he gave Cathy longterm phenobarbitone for a non-existent condition.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t have the details,’ Grace said, ‘just the bare facts. Marie wanted more children, but the progestogen took care of that. It also screwed up her menstrual cycle, increased her weight and gave her headaches and nausea.’
‘And depending on how much he was giving her, the phenobarbitone would have made Cathy sluggish or worse,’ Hayman said.
‘Exactly.’
‘But we don’t know why he did these things?’
‘Not yet.’ Grace paused. ‘We do know that Broderick never allowed his wife to consult another physician. It was only after he walked out on them and Marie went for a check-up that a blood test showed up the progestogen.’
‘And after that, they checked on Cathy?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And you’ve been wondering about MSBP.’ Hayman paused. ‘Not only in relation to the drugs, but to the killings, too.’
‘I know it’s impossible.’
‘With Broderick dead, yes, it is.’
‘What if he isn’t?’ Grace asked.
They talked for a long time, about Münchhausen’s and other factitious disorders, spilling over into various obsessional and control-related conditions that might or might not present clues in the Broderick-Robbins-Flager case. As afternoon drifted into evening, and her host threw some crayfish and snow crab legs into a wok on his barbecue for a casual stir-fry dinner, Grace found herself impressed by the depth of his interest. She watched the tall, slightly rumpled man focusing on his cooking, tossing in vegetables and spices, tasting as he went, and it occurred to her briefly that if it weren’t for the undeniable fact that she was only just starting to acknowledge her attraction to Sam Becket, Grace might quite easily have found herself drawn to Peter Hayman.
‘You know,’ he said, suddenly, ‘the more I think about what you’re suggesting Broderick might have done, the more inconceivable I find it.’
‘Because you believe he’s dead?’
‘Even leaving that tiny detail aside.’ Hayman went on tossing ingredients in the big, fire-blackened wok. ‘No, I’m talking about the bizarreness of that kind of crime.’
‘Is it so much more bizarre than what that mother on the west coast did to her son?’ Grace asked.
‘I’d say so, yes.’ He picked up the first of two clay plates warming by the side of the barbecue and spooned stir-fry on to it. ‘The time factor and long-term planning turns it into something much more cunning, for one thing. For all I’ve seen and heard over the years, and even considering what we know Broderick did to Marie and Cathy, I still find it difficult to imagine any father being so cold-hearted.’
‘Or so evil,’ Grace added.
Hayman looked up from spooning fish and vegetables on to the second plate. ‘Do you regard sufferers of MSBP as evil?’ His tone was even and friendly, yet there was an implicit rebuke in the question.
‘I have, once or twice.’ She wanted to be frank. ‘I know I should be able to exercise greater tolerance than that, but I find it difficult – given that the victims, the real sufferers, are helpless children.’
Hayman carried the plates over to the wicker table, set them down and bade her have a seat. ‘I’d say it’s that old question rearing one of its ugliest heads – mad or bad? Sick or evil?’
Grace sat down. The appetizing aroma rose off her plate, blending with the barbecue smoke and the orchids from the backyard.
‘If by the remotest chance,’ she said, ‘John Broderick did engineer these murders and the awful, unthinkable potential outcome for his own daughter, then I do have to say there’s no doubt in my mind which category he comes under.’
They quit talking about death and evil and fell on their food. Hayman drank wine, but Grace stuck to water because of her drive back home – but then, just before leaving, she called Claudia and knew right away from her voice that something was wrong.
‘Papa called,’ her sister said.
‘What’s happened?’ Grace had reached Frank midweek, had learned that Ellen had come through surgery well and was doing okay. She had wavered a little during that call, had told him that she and Claudia would certainly fly back to Chicago if Ellen wanted them to – not if he wanted them to, that much had not altered a damn in her heart or head – but Frank had gotten cold and nasty, had pointed out (not inaccurately) that if they’d really wanted to come, they’d be there. Now, in the half-second no-man’s-land of waiting for her sister to answer her question, Grace wondered how she would feel if Claudia told her that Ellen had died.
‘Nothing’s happened’ – the answer came – ‘except Papa says Mama’s weak as a kitten, and I came off the phone feeling guilty as hell, which was exactly the way he wanted me to feel.’
‘But knowing that doesn’t make it less so,’ Grace said.
She thanked Peter Hayman for his hospitality and kindness, made a call to Teddy Lopez to ask him to pick up poor neglected Harry, then headed south-west on Route 1 instead of north-east and was at the Brownley house before ten p.m. Daniel was up in Fort Lauderdale for the night, and the boys were tucked up in bed, and Claudia clung to Grace when she arrived in a way she hadn’t done since they were scared, confused children in Chicago. Frank, Claudia now confessed, had said a whole lot more to her than she’d indicated on the phone. He had turned Ellen’s cancer into a new kind of club to wield over his eldest daughter; her and her sister’s leaving home, running out on their mama, had caused her years of unhappiness, he had said, and that was why Ellen was sick, because everyone said that now, didn’t they? – that stress caused cancer – so Frank hoped that Claudia and Grace were real pleased with themselves.
The sisters sat up till late. They didn’t say too much, just let some Phil Collins music play softly in the background, drifting over them, blending soothingly with the night voices of Florida Bay. Grace talked a little about her afternoon and evening with Peter Hayman, and Claudia had a few questions to ask about Grace’s feelings for Sam Becket – there wasn’t much of consequence in her sister’s life that escaped Claudia’s attention. But ever-present now, hovering above and around them, was the cloud of confusion and guilt that Frank Lucca had managed to plant over Claudia’s head. Grace had hated their father for most of her life. She had never despised him more than she did tonight.
Chapter Nineteen
Sam was in a bar about a mile from the cemetery.
He’d flown up before lunch, figuring on heading straight to the airport and catching a commuter flight back to Miami as soon as he’d finished at the graveside, but in the event he’d stayed there longer than he’d intended to, and by the time he’d gotten up off the ground he had been aching and one of his two old gunshot wounds – the one that had just missed shattering his left kneecap – had been growling at him, so he’d thought he might just find a bar first and have a drink.
It was a nice place, the right kind of bar for his mood. Dark and anonymous, with a ball game to watch and a consolingly extensive range of liquor lined up on the wall, and a good old bartender who knew when to leave a man to himself. Sam didn’t especially like getting drunk and found the after-effects appalling, and he hadn’t let it happen to him for a very long time, but today, once he’d downed the first whisky, it just seemed the right thing to do. So for what little was left of Sunday afternoon and the early part of the evening, he’d stayed in the gentle, undemanding bosom of that bar, drinking beer with whisky chasers, and when Joe the bartender knew he’d had enough, he’d extracted exactly the right number of bills from Sam’s wallet, noted that the untroublesome drunk was a Miami Beach cop, and asked a friend of his named Hubie to drive Sam to the Turtle Motel and check him in.
Even now, in the motel room, drunk as he was, Sam remembered
exactly why he’d gotten that way, but the whisky had served as a kind of anaesthetic, dulling, if not entirely annihilating the agony, and now the old images of a little boy lying fatally injured on the road were all jumbled up with other dark, bleak things . . . A man and woman lying in their bed, throats cut . . . a young girl with innocent blue eyes and golden hair who might just be a monster . . . another victim, dead on a couch with a hole in her temple . . .
And then there was Dr Grace Lucca, with her own golden hair, lovely, intelligent eyes and grave manner, gentling his messed-up mind, her image more warming than any shot of whisky.
Sam knew he’d been brusque with her last time they’d spoken, and he knew why he’d acted that way – it was the same way he always got with everyone around the time of the anniversary – but Grace hadn’t known that, and he’d heard her back off, cut the conversation short, and he regretted it now, lying here all alone on the motel bed with the world spinning meanly around his head. But there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. Not here. Not tonight.
He was too damned drunk to do a damned thing about anything.
Chapter Twenty
MONDAY, APRIL 20, 1998
Mind Games Page 12