Mind Games

by Hilary Norman

  Chapter Thirty-five

  It had been a rape case that had taken him away from her the previous night, Sam told Grace when he called her just before ten o’clock.

  ‘How’s the victim?’ she asked.

  ‘Battered. Shocked.’ Sam paused. ‘As you’d expect.’

  ‘Do you know who did it?’

  ‘Maybe. It’s too soon to say much.’ He paused again. ‘I’m going to be pretty tied up all day and probably most of tonight. I’m sorry, Grace.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I’d like to have seen you is what for.’

  ‘Me too,’ Grace said. ‘But you don’t have to give me a thought, Sam. Just do what you have to do.’

  ‘I’ll be doing that,’ Sam told her, ‘but don’t expect me not to think about you at least once.’

  Just after two-thirty p.m., Dr Parés telephoned.

  ‘Did you get to see Cathy yesterday?’ Grace was swift to ask.

  ‘Yes, I did, but that’s not why I’m calling,’ he said.

  Something in his tone set Grace’s antennae on alert. ‘Has something happened to her?’

  ‘In a sense, yes, I’m afraid it has.’ The doctor went on swiftly but gently. ‘There was an incident this morning – another young woman was discovered in her cell with lacerations to her back and shoulders. According to her, she was attacked some time before lockdown last night.’ Parés paused. ‘She says she didn’t see who it was, but when Cathy’s cell was searched, a weapon was found.’

  Grace’s stomach was in knots. ‘What kind of a weapon?’

  ‘A potato peeler. Apparently, Cathy was on kitchen duty yesterday.’

  ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘I understand, Dr Lucca,’ Parés said, sympathetically. ‘But I gather there were traces of blood still on the implement.’

  Grace’s mind reeled. ‘I have to see her.’

  ‘That won’t be possible,’ Parés told her. ‘She’s in solitary confinement. The only people they’ll allow in are her lawyer and myself.’

  ‘But surely, as her psychologist—’

  ‘By all means, you can always ask, doctor,’ Parés said. ‘I think you should ask, but I would imagine it will be some days before you’re admitted.’ He paused again. ‘I’m very sorry to give you bad news.’

  Grace put down the telephone and called Jerry Wagner whose assistant, Veronica Blaustein, informed Grace that her boss had been out on business when the call had come in from the house of detention, but that he would be calling there before the end of the day.

  ‘Would you please ask him to call me when he gets back?’ Grace asked.

  ‘I’ll certainly ask him,’ Ms Blaustein said, ‘but he may not come back to the office until Monday.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll be talking to him,’ Grace pushed.

  ‘That depends on his schedule, Dr Lucca.’

  Grace thought about calling Sam, but then she remembered the rape victim, and she knew without being told that the Female House of Detention was out of the Miami Beach Police Department’s jurisdiction, which meant that there would be nothing Sam could do for Cathy. On the contrary, his involvement in this latest development would probably just end up adding more weight to the case he’d already handed over to the State Attorney’s office.

  ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she said to Dora later, over a cup of tea.

  ‘There’s nothing you can do.’ Dora was to-the-point, as usual. ‘There are some people even you just can’t help, Dr Lucca.’ She never balked at giving Grace a dose of her opinion, but she drew the line at calling her by her first name – something, she’d once explained, to do with the pleasure she took in working for a woman doctor. ‘Anyway,’ she went on, ‘you have a patient coming in ten minutes – now her you may be able to do something for. So just drink your tea and try to relax a little.’

  Grace managed, as she always did, to focus on her patient, but she did not relax. Nor did Jerry Wagner get back to her. Sam did, nearing the end of his own twenty-four-hour working day. He was too bushed to have much in the way of comfort to offer her regarding Cathy, but he promised to keep his ear to the ground and let her know the minute he heard anything.

  ‘That’s if I do hear anything,’ he added. ‘It’s out of—’

  ‘Your jurisdiction,’ Grace finished for him. ‘I know, Sam. I’m just letting off steam. I feel so cut off from her – I mean, if ever there was a time when a patient needed me, it has to be Cathy right now, and all I’m supposed to do is wait till Monday morning and make an application to visit her.’

  ‘It’s rough,’ Sam said. ‘I’m sorry, Grace.’

  She heard the exhaustion in his voice, and felt guilty. ‘No, I’m sorry. You’ve got more than enough to deal with, and what you need now is some wind-down time and sleep.’

  ‘I gotta admit, sleep sounds pretty tempting.’

  ‘Any time off for good behaviour tomorrow or Sunday?’

  ‘Depends how soon we get this bad guy nailed down.’

  ‘I hope it’s real soon,’ Grace said, ‘for everyone’s sake.’

  Sam called twice next morning before eleven, but each time Grace was engaged with a patient and both times, when she tried getting back to him, he was unavailable.

  At five minutes past eleven, Peter Hayman called.

  ‘In case you hadn’t noticed, it is now officially the weekend,’ he said, ‘which is when some folk get it into their heads to quit work and relax. Now I just happen to be planning to put in a few hours’ sailing with some friends this afternoon and tomorrow. How about you come down and join us?’

  ‘I can’t, Peter,’ Grace said.

  ‘Wall-to-wall patients?’

  ‘A few,’ she told him. ‘And some other commitments.’

  ‘Pity.’ He seemed easy about it. ‘It might have been fun, and just the break you needed.’ He paused. ‘You don’t mind my calling to ask, do you, Grace? It’s just a gorgeous morning down this way, and when my friends called, I thought of you.’

  ‘I’m glad you called,’ she said.

  She called the house of detention, tried and failed to speak to Cathy or to get any useful information, and was told yet again that if she wanted to arrange a visit, she would need to call again on Monday.

  Two hours later, while she was making a sandwich, Sam got third time lucky, though it was a short and gruesome conversation because there had been another rape down on South Beach, which meant that he and all his colleagues were going to be on heavy duty all weekend.

  ‘I’m sorry, Grace,’ he said. ‘And not just because of the case. Being paged the other night was a real bitch.’

  ‘For me too,’ she told him.

  ‘I’m not sure when I’ll even be able to call,’ he went on. ‘Cases like this, everyone tends to get pretty steamed up.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ Grace said.

  ‘I guess you probably can.’

  Across the telephone line, Grace heard voices in the background.

  ‘Don’t worry about me, Sam,’ she said, gently.

  The voices got raised.

  ‘Gotta go,’ he said.

  Grace put down the phone. Her mind went, unbidden, to the night before last, up on Sam’s roof. Her body was still sore, grazed in parts from its rough and tumble brushes with concrete, but the tenderness just brought back the other memories. Hot, spicy and damn near overpowering.

  And she wasn’t remembering the pizza.

  She ate her sandwich, cleared away that and breakfast, took Harry for a stroll around the island, came back and scanned her notes for her two-thirty patient. When the phone rang again, she found herself hoping it might be Sam, but it was the mother of her four p.m. patient, explaining that her daughter had suddenly become extremely upset about coming to see Grace, and so, if she didn’t mind too much, she felt it better to postpone. Grace told her that she didn’t mind, that it was important her daughter felt at least reasonably comfortable about coming, and perhaps they could try reschedul
ing in a few days’ time.

  She put down the phone and checked her calendar. The cancellation meant that her next patient was her last for the day – and she knew without looking that Sunday was appointment-free, since she’d been planning to bring her records and paperwork up to date.

  That had been before the night on Sam’s roof and the news about Cathy.

  Suddenly, Grace felt terribly restless. Aimless.

  If she sat at home all weekend, Grace began to think she might be in danger of regressing to adolescence, hoping each time the phone rang it would be Sam telling her that they’d caught the rapist and that he was free to see her. She thought she’d learned a little more than that about the complexities of violent crime and police work during the past several weeks; unless the rapist turned himself in or was turned in by a relative, she knew a speedy resolution was probably unlikely.

  If she sat around the house for another day and a half, thinking about Cathy Robbins and potato peelers and attacks on other inmates, she’d be in need of therapy herself by Monday.

  With five minutes to go before her two-thirty was due, she made up her mind and made the call to Peter Hayman.

  ‘Is the invitation still open?’

  ‘Sure is,’ he said.

  ‘I could leave town a little after four,’ she told him. ‘I guess it’s a bit late in the day to plan much sailing, but at least I could check into a hotel and be ready for an early start, if that’s what you and your friends have in mind.’

  ‘Sounds great,’ Hayman said. ‘You sure you want to go to a hotel? I mean, if you don’t want to stay at your sister’s, you’d be welcome to use my guest room.’

  ‘My sister’s up in Fort Lauderdale,’ Grace told him. ‘And frankly I think I’m just in the mood for a hotel. Maybe Pelican Lodge – I’ve been wanting to try it for a while. But thank you for the invitation,’ she added.

  Her doorbell rang.

  ‘I heard that,’ Hayman said. ‘Is it a patient?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘How about I call the hotel for you, get you booked in?’

  The bell rang again.

  ‘That would very kind. I don’t like to impose—’

  ‘Grace, go let them in. I’ll call you in an hour, let you know about the reservation.’

  She hesitated for about another half-second en route to her front door, but then after that she was too busy focusing on her young patient to think of anything else; and then later, after Hayman phoned back to tell her that things were all set at the lodge, Grace was busy packing a bag and asking Teddy if he could come by and get Harry and leaving the number of the hotel on her machine for anyone who might need her urgently.

  Sometimes, she remembered herself telling Claudia more than once or twice, one just had to go with the flow, to do something when the urge struck, to just do it, grab the moment.

  So she grabbed it.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  SATURDAY, MAY 16 1998

  At three-ten, Sam was just leaving Metro-Dade headquarters where he’d been checking criminal records on their number one suspect in the rape cases – for which Sergeant Kovac had made Martinez lead investigator – when a thought unrelated to the current case slipped into his mind for the third time that day, making him reach for his personal cellular phone (Miami Beach PD didn’t run to that kind of expense) as he climbed into his car.

  Angie Carlino was an old pal, an outsize, sexy, kind-hearted Italian who’d worked in a series of clerical jobs down on Washington Street before falling in love with a Tampa-based cop and moving to the west coast where she now worked for the Pinellas County Sheriff’s office. Sam had gone to Angie’s wedding, sent her gifts when her babies were born, and she always sent him a caring note around the time of the anniversary of Sampson’s death. From time to time, when one or the other needed a little coast-to-coast help, they used each other to shortcut the system. Her home number was one of about twenty that Sam had logged on his cellular phone’s memory.

  ‘Angela, bellissima, come sta?’

  ‘Hey, handsome, what’s doing?’ Angie always recognized Sam’s voice, complained his Italian was lousy unless he was singing it.

  ‘Usual stuff, babe – how’s the family?’

  ‘Gorgeous and healthy, thank God.’ Angie paused. ‘So what’s up, Sam? What do you need?’

  ‘Anything you can find on a double shooting in St Pete a few years back.’

  ‘How many years is a few?’

  ‘Can’t tell you that exactly – any place between three and six.’

  ‘That’s a big help. Do we have a name?’

  ‘Uh-uh.’

  ‘Well, do we have anything to make this halfway possible?’

  ‘We have a mother and father in St Pete shot by their teenaged son. Both parents survived and sounds like Dad twisted some arms to get the case dropped – but there has to be something on record.’

  ‘Depends how many arms he twisted,’ Angie said wryly. ‘When do you need this, Sam? I mean, this is Saturday afternoon and I’m about to go out and buy me a new négligée.’

  ‘Special occasion?’

  ‘Do I need a special occasion to get my husband excited?’

  ‘I’ll bet Tony’s in a permanent state of excitement, Angie.’

  ‘Damn right, Sam. So can this wait till Monday, or is it urgent?’

  Sam’s face twisted a little. ‘Tell the truth, Angie, I don’t know what to tell you. No, it’s not legitimately urgent – it’s not even official business – but something’s bugging me, and I’m not sure what. I just have this feeling I should have checked it out a while back.’

  ‘Okay, kiddo, I’ll see what I can do –’ there was a smile in her voice – ‘soon as I’ve gotten over to Victoria’s Secret.’

  ‘I owe you one,’ Sam said.

  She called him back on his cellular two hours later.

  ‘Nothing,’ she told him.

  ‘Nothing at all?’

  ‘Niente. Nada. Nothing that even vaguely approximated the scenario.’ Angie paused. ‘I can run it by some of the local guys on Monday, see if it rings any bells off the record.’

  ‘That would be good,’ Sam said.

  ‘So do I get to go home now?’ Angie asked. ‘I waited here at the office in case you wanted me to check anything else.’

  ‘Did you get your négligée?’

  ‘You bet I did. My Tony’s going to be a happy guy tonight.’

  ‘Lucky Tony.’

  ‘So, nothing else?’ Angie nudged.

  Sam took a moment, trying to understand why he felt so disturbed. ‘Yeah, maybe, one little thing.’

  ‘Shoot.’

  ‘Check out any references to a psychiatrist name of Hayman – Dr Peter Hayman – now resident down in Key Largo, used to work over your way, possibly in St Pete.’

  ‘How urgent is this one?’

  Sam’s mind worked on. ‘Not urgent.’

  ‘I’ll take a quick run at him anyway,’ Angie said, ‘and if I don’t come up with anything fast, I’ll get back to it Monday. Okay?’

  ‘I double owe you,’ Sam said.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Grace arrived at Pelican Lodge a little after six to find there was no reservation in her name. The place was pretty as a picture – especially spectacular, in fact, after the strip-mall-dullness of the Key Largo main drag – and the couple at the front desk were charmingly distraught about her predicament, but they were also insistent that no one had made a booking for her.

  ‘Do you know who your friend spoke to, Dr Lucca?’ The woman, with short grey hair, efficient eyes and a name tag identifying her as Jane, looked to Grace like the kind of person not only unlikely to make a major error, but equally likely to own up if she had.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t,’ Grace said. ‘All I know is that Dr Hayman must have called you between two-thirty and three-forty-five.’

  ‘If he did,’ Jane said, ‘he didn’t talk to me.’

  ‘Nor me,’ her
dark-suited colleague named Carl added, dolefully.

  Grace considered getting angry, and decided against. She thought about calling Hayman, and decided against that too, since he was bound to get mad at the hotel, and then presumably reiterate his invitation for her to stay in his guest room, and she didn’t feel quite comfortable with that notion. So instead, she just stood at the reception desk and waited for Jane and Carl to sort things out. It was, she figured, one of those situations where if she stood there long enough, a solution was bound to be found. After all, didn’t they always say that all hotels had spare rooms for emergencies?

  ‘You must have a room somewhere,’ she said after another moment. ‘I’m really not very fussy. So long as it’s clean and—’

  ‘There’s nothing,’ Carl told her. ‘It’s just awful for you, Dr Lucca, and I wish we could just magic up a room, but there’s not so much as a broom closet.’

  ‘I cannot begin to imagine,’ Jane said, ‘who Dr Hayman talked to—’

  ‘Or thought he was talking to,’ Carl suggested, darkly. ‘Maybe he got a wrong number and someone hoaxed him. Maybe some kid with a lousy sense of humour.’

  ‘That doesn’t seem terribly likely,’ Grace said dryly.

  ‘The problem is, Dr Lucca,’ Jane said, ‘this weekend’s been fully booked for a long while. There’s a fishing tournament on – people tend to book from year to year.’

  Grace began shifting impatiently. ‘Can you call another hotel for me?’

  ‘Well, of course we can,’ Carl answered, ‘and we’ll do our very best, but frankly, unless they’ve had a last-minute cancellation or no-show, I’m afraid we’re going to find the same story all over.’

  He was right. They sat Grace in a palm-shaded rattan chair on a beautiful porch and brought her complimentary iced tea while they pulled out all the stops – and failed; and then they offered her a free weekend in their best suite for another time – if, Carl said, effusively, she could ever forgive them. But the bottom line was there were no rooms to be had on Key Largo, Tavernier or Islamorada.

  Grace had three choices. One, she could drive on down to Claudia’s and open up the house, but that meant playing games with the sophisticated alarm system which Daniel always switched on when they were up in Fort Lauderdale. Two, she could go back home. Or three, she could simply accept Hayman’s offer – and since it was him she was supposed to be sailing with first thing Sunday morning, nothing else made much sense. Yet still, even as she was digging her address book out of her canvas tote bag to find his number, Grace was less than perfectly happy about what she was doing. She found herself remembering the last time she’d seen Hayman, a couple of weeks back, that moment when she’d thought he’d held on to her hand for that second or two longer than necessary. Grace had wondered then if perhaps she’d misled him in some unintentional way, and she wondered now if choosing to stay with him might lead to awkwardness.