Mind Games

by Hilary Norman

  ‘Is that a problem?’ she asked, lightly.

  ‘I thought you’d told her she wasn’t allowed to use the computer.’

  Grace bristled a little. ‘I said I’d rather she didn’t.’ She paused. ‘This isn’t a house of detention, Dora. I want Cathy to feel at home. Kids are so accustomed to computers these days – I think they feel cut off without them.’

  ‘Just the same.’ Dora wasn’t giving way. ‘What she did was sneaky.’

  ‘What did she do?’ Grace wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

  ‘That’s just it – I can’t tell you.’

  Grace was confused. ‘You’ve lost me, Dora.’

  She saw a patient expression come across Dora’s face. The older woman often ended up being that way with Grace when it came to discussing computer-related matters.

  ‘I can’t tell you what she did because she gave it a password.’ Dora took Grace’s silence to mean that she hadn’t understood. ‘You know about passwords,’ she said, encouragingly. ‘We’ve used them on confidential files.’

  Grace did know all about passwords. She had persuaded Dora, some time back, to let her have a small notebook containing the passwords for any files she might need to access in her absence. They’d argued about it for a while. There was no point having passwords in the first place, Dora had pointed out, if they were going to leave them lying around for anyone to pick up. Grace had said that she hadn’t planned on leaving them lying around. Dora told Grace she should put them in her safe. Grace said that she didn’t have a safe. Thinking back, Grace remembered that she’d had to get as far as reminding Dora that while confidentiality was a matter of real importance, nothing in her files had any bearing on national security. Finally, Dora had handed over the notebook.

  Grace knew about passwords.

  She remembered Sam telling her about Cathy’s password-protected journal entries. The ones they had persuaded themselves might have been doctored by John Broderick.

  ‘Did she give the file a name?’ she asked Dora, quietly.

  ‘Every file has to have a name.’

  Grace wasn’t in the mood for tutoring.

  ‘What name does this file have?’ she asked, a tad too crisply.

  She knew what Dora was going to answer before she opened her mouth.

  ‘My Journal,’ Dora said..

  Sam called less than an hour later, asking if Grace and Cathy might feel like going to the show that evening. He always referred to it that way; it might be opera, he said, but any opera company that would have him singing a major part definitely put on shows, not performances.

  Grace told him she was snowed under, which was fine because she’d already happily sat through two shows since the first night, and so she knew Sam wasn’t going to be upset.

  ‘I don’t suppose Cathy would want to come,’ he said.

  ‘I think Cathy’s all opera’d out,’ Grace said apologetically.

  ‘Any chance of getting together after the show?’

  ‘I don’t know. I have a headache building, and by the time I’ve finished doing my paperwork . . .’ Grace let the sentence trail off.

  ‘You okay?’ Sam sounded concerned.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she told him. ‘Call me when you’ve taken your last curtain call. Maybe I’ll feel better.’

  ‘Don’t worry if you don’t. I’ll call anyway.’

  Grace wasn’t certain why she hadn’t said anything to him about the computer thing. Probably for the same reason she hadn’t yet told him about Harry being out on the parapet.

  She didn’t want to have to think about it.

  She wanted to bury her head in the sand until she knew it was all innocent and meaningless.

  The journal entry was probably entirely meaningless. Cathy had, after all, kept a legitimate journal for a long time, under that simple, no frills heading. It had only been those incriminating entries that she’d denied creating.

  And that password.

  Grace remembered that one without checking in any notebook.

  She waited until after Dora had gone for the day and Cathy had gone out for a run. She went into the study and closed the door, leaving Harry standing guard outside. She sat down at the desk, reached for the switch, and turned on the computer.

  She waited while it went through its opening convolutions. Dora had trained it to move through its incomprehensible (to Grace) pre-op checks without operator assistance, so that when she was the one using it she could just switch on, wait a few seconds, and get right to work.

  It was ready for her now.

  Grace pressed the F-key that Dora had taught her was the fastest route for commencing a file retrieval. Dora had not said which directory the entry had been filed under and Grace had not asked for the information. SUNDRIES seemed the most likely port. She pulled the directory down onto the screen.

  It was there. MY JOURNAL.

  Grace asked the computer to open the file. As she had known it would, it refused to do so. Instead, it asked for the password.

  Grace took a deep breath. She felt shaky.

  She typed it in.

  H-A-T-E.

  And hit the return.

  And wished she hadn’t.

  Grace closed down the computer, found Harry still waiting outside the door, went and poured herself an early glass of wine.

  She needed it.

  She took it out on deck, kicked off her loafers, sat on the edge, Harry up close, dunked her feet into the water and took a drink.

  She was disturbed. No two ways about it.

  Putting aside all other considerations – for a while, at least – she was greatly disturbed by what Cathy had written about Dr Parés. Grace had become aware that the doctor had been exerting considerable influence over Cathy during her last weeks in prison, but it had seemed, on the whole, to have been such a beneficial influence that she’d seen no good reason to intervene.

  Not that anyone would have listened to her if she had tried to.

  Grace drank a little more wine, and thought about getting in touch with Parés, but then she began to wonder what she would say if she did reach him. She did not, for one thing, want to risk antagonizing a man who might, at this still crucial time, be in a position to influence the State Attorney or a judge, or – if things did become worse again – a jury. And Parés had written one of the reports that had contributed to getting Cathy out of prison and into Grace’s care.

  Conscious that Cathy was likely to get home any time, Grace began trying to analyse what she’d written in her journal. Was it really so disturbing?

  Know your enemies.

  Parés’ advice, apparently. And under the circumstances, maybe not such bad advice at that. A teenager accused of monstrous crimes, locked up in a potentially dangerous environment with adult offenders of all kinds, would almost certainly have been well advised to recognize who was an enemy and who was a friend.

  Certainly not a good enough reason to get on the phone to Eric Parés and give him a hard time.

  Grace moved on to what she knew had troubled her – shocked her – the most.

  The fact that Cathy still didn’t know whether to trust her or not.

  That she might still, beneath her increasingly easy exterior, be uncertain about Sam, was not all that surprising. He might be on suspension, but that had come about because of Sam’s fears for Grace, not because of his doubts over Cathy’s guilt. He was, no matter what, the man who’d brought her in. Sad, but true.

  Cathy’s uncertainty about her was deeply upsetting.

  And above it all, of course, was the fact that with Grace, and with Sam, Cathy had apparently been acting out a role. Pretending to trust them.

  She was, after all, capable of deceit.

  Absently, Grace ruffled the fur on Harry’s head and he pressed closer.

  ‘That leaves the big question, doesn’t it?’ Grace told him softly.

  Had the events of the past few months made Cathy that way? Or had she been like that before Mar
ie’s and Arnold’s deaths?

  Big question.

  Cathy came home about ten minutes later, flushed and with eyes sparkling, greeted Grace and Harry with breathless enthusiasm, drank three glasses of bottled water and went upstairs to shower and change.

  Grace cooked comfort food that evening. Pasta with her own home-made clam sauce. If Sam had been there, she would have opened a bottle of wine, and Lord knew she was tempted to use another glass or two for anaesthetic purposes, but instead she toughed it out and drank Coke with Cathy.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Cathy asked her once, just after they’d started eating.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Grace told her. ‘A little tired, maybe.’

  ‘Did you work hard?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘How was Dora?’

  ‘Same as usual.’

  ‘Glad I wasn’t around?’ Cathy pulled a face. She’d told Grace before that Dora didn’t trust her. She had, of course, been right.

  Know your enemies.

  Sam called just after ten-thirty. He sounded exhilarated.

  ‘Only another two shows,’ he said.

  ‘You’ll miss it.’

  ‘You bet I will.’ He paused. ‘You’re beat.’

  ‘Afraid so,’ Grace said.

  ‘Cathy okay?’

  ‘Fine. She went for a long run, seemed to enjoy it. We ate pasta and watched a movie and now we’ve both gone to our beds.’

  ‘Which movie?’

  Grace frowned. ‘I can’t remember.’ She honestly couldn’t. ‘Tom Cruise was in it, but I think I fell asleep about five minutes in.’

  ‘You really are beat.’ Sam sounded sympathetic.

  ‘And you’re ready to party, aren’t you?’ She felt horribly guilty. ‘Oh, Sam, I’m sorry.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For being such a drag.’

  ‘Not exactly the word I’d use to describe you, Grace.’

  She could not tell him what she really felt guilty about. She would tell him – she knew she would – but tonight she just wasn’t ready.

  ‘Sure I can’t come over?’ he asked. ‘Stroke your hair while you sleep?’

  Grace was more than sorely tempted.

  ‘My headache’s still nagging at me,’ she said. ‘I think I’m ready to sleep now.’

  ‘Okay,’ Sam said. ‘Sweet dreams.’

  ‘You, too, when you come down.’

  ‘Oh, I’m already down, baby. Opera used to be the only thing that could get me high as a kite.’ Sam paused. ‘Now it’s you, Gracie.’

  Grace remembered quite liking it when she’d heard Teddy’s friend Ramon calling her that. She liked it even better coming from Sam.

  She told him goodnight, watched Harry burrow down as usual near her feet, then turned out the light and lay still in the dark. Thinking, of course. Mulling it all over. The thing with Harry on the balcony, and the journal.

  She was only just beginning to allow herself to acknowledge the worst aspect of all concerning the latter.

  The fact that Cathy was still using the same password.

  The ugly word they’d hoped had been part of Broderick’s creation.

  Grace thought she would never go to sleep.

  And then she was gone.

  She dreamed she was back in Hayman’s guest room and that he was in the room again, standing in the dark looking at her.

  Grace woke up.

  It wasn’t a dream.

  Except that it wasn’t Hayman.

  It was Cathy staring down at her.

  Grace sat up. ‘Cathy, what’s wrong?’

  She didn’t answer. Grace fumbled for the light switch, turned it on. Cathy blinked, but didn’t say anything. At the end of the bed, Harry was still lying down, but he was alert, ears cocked, eyes darting between Grace and Cathy.

  ‘Cathy, why are you in here? What’s the matter?’

  Slowly, very slowly, Cathy shook her head, and then, still not saying a word, she turned around and walked towards the open door. Grace watched her turn right, heading for her room; her heart pounded as she got carefully out of bed and followed.

  Cathy had got back into her bed and was lying down, eyes closed, lids fluttering slightly. Rapid eye movement. Breathing even.

  She was asleep.

  Which seemed to indicate that she’d been sleepwalking.

  Grace knew better than to wake her now. As quietly as possible, she crept back through the door and closed it. And went back to her own bed.

  ‘Cathy’s a somnambulist, Harry,’ she told her wise old dog.

  He grunted.

  Grace lay back against her pillows.

  She was remembering Frances Dean telling her, a few days after her sister’s and brother-in-law’s death, that she’d woken one night to find Cathy staring down at her. Two weeks later, Frances had been dead too.

  Grace didn’t know if that meant a damned thing.

  Except that she had read about cases where murderers had claimed that they’d been sleepwalking.

  ‘For crying out loud, Lucca,’ she muttered harshly.

  Talk about the power of imagination.

  Except that if it was all just her imagination working overtime, why the hell did she feel what she was feeling?

  Afraid.

  Chapter Seventy-three

  SATURDAY, AUGUST 8, 1998

  Grace called Sam just after six a.m. and arranged to meet him for breakfast at eight-thirty. It was Teddy’s morning to clean the house, so she had no qualms about telling Cathy that she had to leave her and go out on an appointment.

  Not too many qualms, anyway.

  Sam had suggested meeting in the Garden Café at the Sheraton, Bal Harbour, just across the Concourse on Collins. Grace’s first, instinctive reaction had been to feel that it was too pleasurable a location for the meeting she had in mind – but then she remembered that she’d let him down the night before, particularly by not sharing the truth with him, so she kept quiet and figured it would be a miserable enough breakfast, so maybe a waterfall and tropical garden wouldn’t hurt.

  Sam was hungry, as always, and ordered just about everything. The fact that Grace asked for simple coffee and toast, probably combined with the look in her eyes, was more than enough to warn him that something was wrong.

  She told him. Three in a row.

  He took it all on board, ignoring his breakfast when it came.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘First things first. Are you having real doubts about Cathy’s innocence?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Grace said vehemently, then sagged a little. ‘I don’t think I am. I hope I’m not.’

  ‘So how are you explaining these things away?’

  ‘I’m not,’ she said. ‘Not just like that, anyway.’

  Sam thought for a moment. ‘Do you think everything that’s happened to Cathy may have created some new emotional problems?’

  ‘I think that’s a real possibility.’

  ‘Except we know she had a miserable time as a little kid, too, don’t we?’

  ‘Yes.’ Grace looked into Sam’s face defensively, afraid she might be about to see some gung-ho policeman materializing out of the gentle father-type she’d thought she’d been spending time with, falling in love with. But all she saw now was sadness and deep anxiety.

  ‘Would you be easier if she went into foster care or a home?’

  ‘Absolutely not.’ Grace was positive of that much, at least. ‘If I abandon Cathy now, I’m not sure she’ll ever recover.’

  ‘Okay,’ Sam said. ‘In that case, there’s only one other thing to do.’

  She was apprehensive again. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I start sleeping at your place, and the hell with circumspection.’

  If Sam had expected Grace to fight him on that, he was out of luck.

  Chapter Seventy-four

  SUNDAY, AUGUST 9, 1998

  Murphy’s Law ruled.

  Sam’s unofficial moving-in day coincided with that so-long-awaited call from
Captain Hernandez telling him that a sudden onslaught of the ’flu had laid low half of his already depleted department, which was why the chief had agreed to Sam’s reinstatement. Effective immediately, Sunday and house-moving notwithstanding.

  ‘Are you going to be okay?’ Sam asked Grace after he’d told her.

  ‘Of course I am. It’s wonderful news, Sam.’

  ‘I guess moving’s going to have to be a night-time thing.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that – you may still be working tonight.’

  ‘It’s desk duty, Grace, no heavy action.’

  ‘Well, that’s good, I’d say, with your back the way it is.’

  ‘My back’s not so bad.’

  ‘Is that why you’re seeing the physio twice a week and taking medication every night to get to sleep?’

  Sam smiled at his end of the phone line, hearing her dryness. ‘I can’t believe that they’re doing this exactly when I want to spend as much time with you as possible.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me,’ Grace said.

  ‘Can’t stop me worrying.’

  ‘You’ll still be sleeping here,’ she said, softly. ‘Even if it’s an hour a night, that’s going to make all the difference to me.’

  Grace meant what she said. Twenty-four hours did seem to have taken the edge off most of her personal anxieties over Cathy. If she looked hard enough and long enough, she was certain that she would find a rational explanation for everything that had gone on – even if that did end up meaning that Cathy had been traumatized into doing uncharacteristic things while sleepwalking. It was a weak kind of diagnosis that Grace would ordinarily have had some problems with, but for the time being, while she was still being guardian and woman over and above analytical psychologist, it had to be good enough.

  The department aside, Sam still found an hour and a half – aided by Martinez – to move all the stuff that mattered into Grace’s place on Sunday afternoon: jeans, T-shirts, shorts, shaving gear, medication, and his favourite opera recordings.

  ‘How come Sam’s moving in?’ Cathy had asked an hour or so earlier.

  Her tone had been flatter than of late, her eyes unquestionably wary. It was clear to Grace that the change of status was making her uncomfortable, even suspicious. Know your enemies. Evidently it was one thing being pals with Sam when he came over for supper or they all went out someplace fun together, but having him as part of their small, uneasy family was another matter altogether. Grace didn’t blame her. If the events of the past week had not occurred, it was the very last step she would have taken at this time. More disruption to Cathy’s shrinking, tilting, precarious world. Suddenly, Grace almost wanted to take the teenager in her arms and tell her that if she wasn’t happy about Sam coming to stay, she would tell him to go away again.