Mind Games

by Hilary Norman

  ‘We’re both glad to see you,’ Grace said. ‘How’s your father doing?’

  Sam was raking Harry’s curly white coat with his fingers exactly the way he liked. ‘The doctors seem hopeful enough that they can beat this fever, but until he comes to properly, talks and walks, no one’s taking bets.’

  ‘I went to see him.’ She wasn’t certain she ought to have said that.

  ‘I know.’ Sam got up. ‘I’m sorry about what Ma said to you.’

  ‘I understood.’

  ‘More than I did.’

  ‘She thinks Cathy’s guilty, and I’m still standing by her. I can’t blame her for being bitter about that.’

  ‘I saw the flowers you sent,’ Sam said. ‘They were lovely.’

  Grace looked up at him. ‘Can you stay for dinner?’

  ‘Sure you want me?’

  ‘Never surer.’

  They hung out in the kitchen while Grace fed Harry, then cheat-baked high-speed potatoes in her microwave oven, tossed a salad, grilled a couple of steaks and crisped a loaf of bread. They ate hungrily – Sam, she noticed, always seemed to be hungry – batting small talk around, grateful for some respite before they got around to what they both had on their minds.

  Grace started first, knowing it was high time for her to share with Sam what his father had told her two days before he’d been attacked in his office. Sam listened attentively, not speaking at all until she was through telling him about the evils of John Broderick.

  ‘That’s what you wanted to talk to me about Saturday morning, wasn’t it?’

  ‘It was,’ she said. ‘But you weren’t in the mood to listen.’

  ‘No, I wasn’t.’ Sam paused. ‘It was the anniversary of my son’s death on Sunday. No excuses, but I always get a little crazy when it gets close.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ Grace said, softly. ‘I’m sorry, Sam.’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s over now.’

  ‘Now you have your dad to worry about.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘But I should have listened to you.’

  ‘Do you see now why I wanted to know if you’d checked out Broderick’s death? Why it troubles me that his body was never found?’

  ‘We can’t be sure it was never found,’ Sam pointed out. ‘He could have washed up a John Doe somewhere, maybe even out of state.’

  ‘But don’t computers link up about missing persons these days?’

  ‘Mistakes happen. People get buried in the wrong places.’ Sam looked at her sharply. ‘Suicide scams happen, too, Grace – you’re right about that, of course. But there’s usually a solid reason – mostly financial. I’ve checked Broderick’s death out pretty thoroughly. He left a note, so there was no question of Marie or anyone else claiming life insurance, and he left almost everything he had to his mother in Fort Lauderdale —’

  ‘Is she still alive?’

  ‘Died three years ago,’ Sam said.

  ‘Doesn’t it strike you as odd that he left everything to his mother, but left some surgical instruments to his five-year-old daughter?’

  ‘Not exactly the most charming of keepsakes,’ Sam agreed.

  Grace’s mind was still moving. ‘Suicide scams aren’t always about money, are they? Broderick was being investigated – he was going to get in a lot of trouble, lose his job, maybe even go to jail.’

  ‘So you’re thinking flight,’ Sam said.

  ‘Why not? If he couldn’t face it.’

  ‘Sounds like a perfect motive for suicide to me.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Grace said. ‘Maybe not.’

  Sam waited until she was ready to pour the coffee before hitting his own big one. He wanted to stay in the kitchen rather than go out on the deck, he said, because he had something he thought Grace ought to see.

  ‘We found Cathy’s journal on her computer.’

  Grace felt her stomach jolt.

  ‘She had one of those notebook models. She took it with her to her aunt’s place.’ Sam paused. ‘The journal was password-protected, but our guys opened it up.’

  Grace had just picked up her coffee cup. Now she had to put it down.

  ‘The password was H-A-T-E,’ Sam said.

  ‘Shit,’ Grace said.

  ‘Yeah,’ he agreed.

  ‘So?’ She looked across the table at him. ‘Do I take it the journal was another gift for the State Attorney?’ Her tone was bitter.

  ‘Right first time.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ she said.

  ‘Sure you want to know?’

  Grace thought, suddenly, about his position, rather than her own. ‘Is it all right for you to be sharing this with me?’

  ‘Probably not,’ Sam said. ‘But I won’t tell if you won’t.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said.

  He had taken off his sport coat before sitting down to eat. Now he retrieved some folded sheets of copy paper from an inside pocket and smoothed them out on Grace’s kitchen table. There were three relevant entries.

  The first, logged on the last day of March, two days before Marie and Arnold Robbins’ killings, read:

  I see their faces, see them smile, know their betrayal, and I hate them more than I can say.

  I don’t think I can wait much longer.

  The second, dated April 9, the day after Beatrice Flager’s stabbing, said:

  She shouldn’t have done it to me. She ought to have minded her own business.

  She was always a bitch, anyway.

  ‘There’s one more,’ Sam said. ‘It was the last entry in the journal.’ Grace’s head was spinning. She hardly trusted herself to speak. Sam laid the last piece of paper on top of the others.

  I feel like I’m about to explode. No one believes me.

  No one ever believes me.

  I know I’m on my own now.

  Maybe I always have been.

  ‘That was dated April 18.’ Sam confirmed Grace’s worst fear.

  ‘And nothing after that?’ Her voice was very quiet and a little shaky.

  ‘Nada.’

  ‘I guess there couldn’t have been.’

  ‘I guess not.’

  Grace took a few moments. She felt desolate. A new thought struck her. ‘No entry that might relate to your father?’

  Sam shook his head.

  ‘Isn’t that a little strange?’

  ‘Could be.’ He paused. ‘But then, the whole thing’s a little off.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘It’s not exactly subtle, is it?’

  ‘She’s fourteen years old, Sam. How subtle do you want her to be?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He was looking troubled. ‘But when it comes to charging Cathy with Beatrice Flager’s killing – and that’s going to happen any moment now – and when it comes before the grand jury, the police and the prosecution are going to try and persuade them that she was smart enough – cunning enough – to get up in the middle of the night without rousing her aunt, get herself over to Coconut Grove, stab Flager through the neck without waking her first – and maybe even to have done more or less the same thing at my dad’s office . . .’ His voice trailed away. He was shaking his head.

  ‘What’s your point, Sam?’

  ‘My point . . .’ He rubbed the side of his head. ‘My point is that if she did have what it took to do all that, then she sure as hell knew better than to write what amounts to a confession in her journal for all the world to read.’

  ‘The entries were password-protected,’ Grace said.

  ‘She’d know better than to think that meant anything if any kind of an expert got a hold of her computer. Kids these days all know better than that.’

  ‘Have you questioned Cathy about the journal?’ Grace remembered that Cathy had volunteered the information to her about keeping a computer journal, had even told her that it was a notebook model she’d taken to her aunt’s house.

  ‘She admits to keeping a journal, but she denies writing those entries. She also denies having created that password.’ Sam shrugged. ‘Majority opi
nion in the department is that her denial means zip.’ (‘Jack shit’ was actually the way Al Martinez had put it, and both Sergeant Kovac and Chief Hernandez agreed with him.)

  ‘Am I right in thinking you have another opinion?’ Grace asked with a swift rush of hope. ‘I mean, what are the options here? Is there a chance that Cathy didn’t write those entries herself?’

  ‘If she didn’t write them – if – then I guess someone else did.’

  ‘But how could they get into her computer memory?’ Grace thought for a moment. ‘Aren’t all entries automatically timed and dated by the computer?’

  ‘Yes, they are,’ Sam said, ‘and we removed Cathy’s notebook computer from her bedroom at her aunt’s house.’ He read her unspoken question. ‘Which means whoever made the last entry almost certainly had to be in the house at that time.’

  ‘Could it have been sent by modem?’ Grace suggested.

  ‘I’m no expert,’ Sam said, ‘but our guys said no to that when I raised it.’

  Grace didn’t know exactly what she was feeling. She didn’t know whether to be optimistic or not about his doubts. ‘More coffee?’ she asked.

  ‘Sure. Please.’

  She stood up, went to pour them both some more. She was taking her time, moving slowly, trying to get her head wholly around Sam’s position.

  ‘What is it you’re really saying, Sam?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Yes, you do.’ She brought the cups back to the table, bent down to give Harry a quick ruffle, then straightened up and sat back down. ‘I think you’re saying that you still don’t believe that Cathy killed anyone.’

  Sam’s eyes were still deeply troubled. He took in a long breath, let it out slowly. ‘You have to appreciate this is me talking, Grace. Not the department. Certainly not the State Attorney.’

  ‘I do appreciate that.’

  ‘So this is strictly off-the-record.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said.

  ‘Then yes, I am saying that I still have doubts.’ He saw the spark in her eyes. ‘But that’s no reason to get your hopes up. You were right when you called the journal entries another gift to the State Attorney. That’s exactly what they are.’

  Grace nodded, then poured a little half-and-half in her coffee. It was an effort to maintain her composure, but she was managing it. ‘Any other developments?’

  ‘Off the record?’

  ‘For now, definitely.’

  ‘What does that mean, Grace?’

  She met his eyes calmly. ‘That I won’t mention a word of what you tell me without discussing it with you first.’

  ‘Okay.’ Sam stirred sugar into his black coffee. ‘I might not have thought this worth talking about if you hadn’t told me what my dad got out of Lafayette.’

  Grace’s spine was starting to prickle.

  ‘According to the toxicology reports,’ Sam began, ‘all the victims except my father had tranquillizers or sedative drugs in their systems, which is why, we’re guessing, there was no sign of struggle in any of the attacks.’ He paused. ‘The State Attorney doesn’t seem to think that’s a big deal because the drugs were definitely prescribed for them, and a big percentage of adult Floridians take that kind of medication daily, so the presence of drugs is coincidental and has no bearing on the case against Cathy Robbins.’

  ‘And you?’ Grace asked. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Going on the hard evidence, I think they could be right.’

  ‘But now that you know about John Broderick’s history of drug abuse’ – Grace was unable to contain herself any longer – ‘you’re starting to wonder.’

  ‘Don’t get excited, Grace.’ Sam’s smile was brief and tense. ‘I’m not sure I trust myself around this case. Al Martinez said something to me a week or so back that implied I might be letting Cathy’s vulnerable façade influence me. He may have been right.’

  ‘I know how you feel,’ Grace said quietly. ‘I’ve had the same concerns about my own attitude.’

  ‘And bringing Broderick into the question is still plain crazy, you know that too, don’t you?’ Sam shook his head. ‘I’ve found nothing to suggest he might not have drowned nine years ago.’

  ‘But you have been checking into it.’ The knowledge warmed Grace. ‘Even before you knew about the drugs and Lafayette’s inquiry into him, you were concerned enough to wonder about his death.’

  ‘I don’t like loose ends,’ Sam said, simply. ‘I didn’t like the fact there was no body.’ He paused. ‘Now I like it even less.’

  The two of them went out on to Grace’s deck, while she ran almost impossibly wild theories past Sam. First, going back more than a year, she brought up the cannabis and goldfish accusations, which even now, in the face of infinitely vaster charges, still exercised Cathy’s mind. If Broderick was by any chance still alive, given his track record, Grace suggested, it might not have been beyond the bounds of possibility for him to have found a way to get dope into his daughter, then mutilate the fish and watch Arnold’s and Marie’s horrified reaction.

  ‘Physician turns housebreaker,’ Sam said sceptically.

  ‘He was already an abuser,’ Grace reminded him. ‘And cunning. I don’t see him breaking in – I picture him finding a way to get hold of the house keys and walking through the door at night.’ She was becoming galvanized. ‘And once he had the keys, he could have just walked in again on April 2.’

  ‘And doped and killed Marie and Arnold?’

  ‘I can believe in him as a killer more easily than I can Cathy.’ Grace stood up, began to pace the deck. Harry, who’d been lying down peaceably, raised his head and followed her with his eyes. ‘He could have broken the window from the inside,’ she went on. ‘And made an entry in her journal.’

  ‘Why?’ Sam asked.

  Grace stopped pacing and looked down at him. ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why would he kill them?’

  ‘Who knows? Revenge – at least on Marie – for blowing the whistle after he walked out on her. On Arnold, too, perhaps, for taking his place.’ Grace paused. ‘We know he was a very jealous man. Frances said he was jealous of Cathy, even before she was born.’

  ‘Jealousy’s one thing,’ Sam said. ‘This kind of warped cruelty’s something else.’ He looked at Grace, seeking an answer. ‘Why would a man want to punish his own daughter so brutally?’

  ‘I don’t know, Sam,’ Grace told him, ‘except that maybe before she came along he thought his life was okay, and afterwards it all went downhill.’

  ‘And why wait nine years to take this so-called revenge?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Best eaten cold, they say, don’t they?’ Grace said. ‘Or maybe the planning was the part he liked best.’

  ‘A guy would have to be seriously sick, Grace,’ Sam said. ‘Not to mention alive.’

  She wasn’t ready to let up. ‘If it is Broderick, I imagine they don’t come much sicker.’ She sat down beside Sam again. ‘And I’ve never been a gambling woman, but I’d bet my boots he’s very much alive, too.’

  They both fell silent.

  ‘What about Beatrice Flager?’ Sam asked after a while.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Grace paused. ‘He may have thought she and her records posed a potential threat if Cathy, or even Arnold, had talked about him and the past to her.’

  ‘So what? Your theory is that Broderick’s been watching their every move for all these years?’ Sam said. ‘I mean, Cathy only went to Flager one time.’

  ‘But the very fact that she refused to go back again slides right into the notion that Broderick’s prime aim was – is – to frame her. If she didn’t get along with her therapist, resented her even, then that makes her a more plausible suspect in Ms Flager’s killing.’

  ‘If Broderick’s been keeping tabs on them for nine years, how come no one ever recognized him?’

  ‘I guess he’d have been careful around the Robbinses,’ Grace said. ‘And don’t forget, he lived and worked in Tallahassee before the suicide, so
chances are no one would remember him. And maybe he’s changed his appearance.’

  ‘You’ve been watching too many movies, Grace.’

  ‘Maybe I have,’ she admitted. ‘It does get more complicated with Frances,’ she went on, thoughtfully. ‘We know she hated Broderick, probably counselled her sister against him – and we also know that Cathy got upset because her aunt doubted her. Though it’s unlikely Broderick could have known that, of course.’

  ‘You mean, you don’t have a theory about his bugging the house?’

  Grace smiled, then quickly grew sombre again. ‘It seems to me that if what we’re looking at is an elaborate revenge on Cathy, Frances’ killing was the obvious final act to have pinned on her.’

  ‘And where does my father fit into this scenario?’ Sam said.

  ‘He tried to help Cathy,’ Grace said, softly. ‘That might have been enough motive.’ She saw something change in Sam’s expression. ‘What?’

  ‘Did you tell Cathy what my father told you about Broderick?’ he asked.

  ‘No, of course not.’ Grace hesitated. ‘But I did tell Frances.’

  ‘Was Cathy around? Might she have heard what you said?’

  ‘I know she heard some of it. I don’t know how much.’ Strike another one for the State Attorney, Grace realized with a pang, watching Sam’s face for anger or, at least, renewed scepticism for her unsubstantiated theorizing. He didn’t look sceptical, though. He looked faraway and even grimmer than before.

  ‘What are you thinking, Sam?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘Okay.’ He took a moment. ‘I was thinking about what you just said about my father getting hurt because he wanted to help Cathy.’

  ‘That makes some sense, doesn’t it?’

  ‘As much sense as any of this, given that we’re still talking about a dead man.’ He paused again. ‘But my father isn’t the only person who’s been trying to help Cathy.’

  Grace saw where he was heading. ‘You’re talking about me.’

  ‘It springs to mind.’

  ‘Broderick won’t hurt me,’ she said confidently.

  ‘Because Cathy’s been charged?’