Sam looked up at him, unblinking.
‘Oh, we do,’ he said.
ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTEEN
Martinez and Saul sat in the pick-up outside Saul’s apartment building.
‘What do we do now?’ Saul asked.
He could feel the cracks beginning to show.
The agony of what had already happened.
What still might. What might be happening even as they sat here.
Useless.
The loss of Teté came back again.
He’d loved her, and he loved Grace, but his big brother was the lion of his life.
‘What do we do?’ he asked again.
‘I do the only thing I can,’ Martinez said, feeling the young man’s pain. ‘Go join the squad, make damned sure we find them fast.’
‘What if they won’t let you?’ Saul said.
‘They’ll let me,’ Martinez said.
Saul looked at him and believed him.
‘You doing OK?’ he asked.
‘I’ll only be doing OK,’ Martinez said, ‘when we get Sam and Grace back home where they belong.’
ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN
‘Simone’s mother’s in a nursing home,’ Cathy said suddenly.
She was still with Beth Riley in the Violent Crimes office.
Everyone else out on the streets looking, without a clue where to look, and Riley was itching to be out there too, but Alvarez had ordered her to stick with Cathy in case there was one still-buried piece of information left to drain from the young woman.
And now, abruptly, here it was.
Might be, Riley told herself.
‘Grace drove her there only last . . .’ Cathy shut her eyes, fought to remember, dug it up. ‘Last Monday,’ she said. ‘Simone was having one of her migraines.’
‘She gets bad migraines?’ Riley made a note.
Cathy nodded. ‘Or she says she does.’ She put one hand over her eyes for a moment, trying to drag up details. ‘Grace came to the café Monday afternoon – she’d brought flowers to thank them for this dinner they’d helped me make for them a few days before, and I told Grace that Simone’s car was in the workshop—’
‘What car does she drive?’
‘I don’t remember, I hardly ever saw it.’ Cathy shook her head, mad at herself. ‘It was red, I know that, and small.’ She shut her eyes again. ‘Two doors. I can’t tell you the make, I’m sorry.’
‘You know which workshop she used?’ Riley asked.
‘No.’ Cathy clenched her right hand, pounded it suddenly on her thigh. ‘God, I’m worse than useless.’
‘You’re doing great,’ Riley told her. ‘Go on about that afternoon.’
Cathy took a breath, got back on track. ‘Grace told me later that the home seemed nice, that a woman at reception said Simone was a wonderful daughter.’ Her mouth compressed bitterly. ‘Wonderful.’
‘Did Grace tell you the name of the home?’
‘No, but Simone told me it was off Indian Creek Drive, just a few blocks south from the café.’
‘But she never told you the name?’
‘Not that I remember.’ Cathy paused. ‘Grace might have told Mildred, though, because she was minding Joshua that day, so she’d have been home when Grace got back.’
Riley was already keying in David Becket’s number.
She had the name less than three minutes later.
‘It was the James L. Burridge Care Home,’ Mildred said. ‘I asked Grace for the name because it sounded like a nice place, and you never know when you might hear of someone in need.’
‘Burridge,’ Riley said. ‘You’re sure, Ms Bleeker?’
‘I’m sure,’ Mildred said. ‘I hope it helps.’
Alvarez came in as Riley was printing out the details.
‘Cathy’s given us something,’ she told him, grabbing the printout from the machine. ‘Regan’s mother’s nursing home.’
‘Let’s go,’ he said.
Cathy was on her feet. ‘Can I come along?’
‘Afraid not,’ Alvarez said.
‘We’ll get you taken to Dr Becket’s,’ Riley said.
‘That’s just going to be a waste of your time,’ Cathy said, ‘and anyway, I don’t want to sit at David’s pretending not to be going crazy.’
‘I’m sure he could use your company,’ Riley said.
They were out of the office, already on the stairs, Alvarez ahead and moving fast.
‘He has Mildred and Saul and Joshua,’ Cathy said. ‘And you never know, I might remember something else.’
‘OK,’ Alvarez said, ‘you can come, but I need your word you’ll keep your mouth shut at the nursing home, or we’ll lock you in the car.’
‘That’d be against the law,’ Cathy said.
‘So sue us,’ Riley said.
ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTEEN
Grace was shivering, mad at herself for showing weakness, but finding it beyond her control.
‘Please.’ Sam tried again. ‘Grace is really cold. Couldn’t you please just find something to cover her with?’
‘If you’re concerned about her catching a chill,’ Simone said, ‘I wouldn’t be.’
‘Oh, what the hell,’ Dooley said.
A wisp of humanity left in him, Sam wondered, maybe even of shame.
And maybe, with that, a scrap of hope for them.
Dooley stepped away back into the dark beyond the scope of the light bulb, came back holding something.
He took a key from a pocket in his tracksuit pants.
‘Are you sure?’ Simone asked.
‘Won’t make any difference to us now,’ Dooley said.
Sam saw her shrug, and maybe Regan did defer to him, even if Dooley had said this was her ‘fantasy’, and Sam logged that mentally, getting down every tiny detail that might possibly help them get out of this mess alive.
The cage gate opened and Dooley stepped inside.
The thing in his left hand was a filthy white towel.
He turned to Simone, nodded to her, and she followed him through.
‘You give it to her,’ Dooley said, and passed her the towel.
And was there a little propriety in that, Sam wondered, and might their ‘friendship’, monstrous sham as it was, nonetheless be making this a little less easy for Dooley? Maybe, despite himself, the man felt some respect for Grace, or maybe some of his fondness for Cathy had been real. And Sam was trying not to think about Cathy and what this was going to do to her, though it was he who’d brought these people into their lives, not her . . .
Simone threw the towel on to Grace’s knees, stepped quickly back.
More nervy now, Sam thought, than she had been outside the cage, and the soft green of her eyes looked opaque now.
‘Thank you.’ Grace covered her breasts with the towel, tucked it beneath her armpits like a bath towel, told herself not to think what it might have wiped up before, maybe blood or . . .
Stop.
‘Thank you,’ Sam said too.
‘What happened to your father?’ Grace asked Simone. ‘If you don’t mind talking about him.’
‘He died.’
Sam wanted to know how, wondered if the pair had maybe murdered the bastard, knew better than to ask, though clearly they had not done the obvious, had not made Regan’s parents their first ‘couple’.
‘Is that when your mother came down to Miami?’ Grace asked.
‘Oh yes,’ Simone said. ‘When she needed looking after.’
‘And you’ve done that for her,’ Grace said, keeping her tone neutral.
‘More than the bitch deserved,’ Dooley said.
‘What happened to her?’ Grace asked.
‘She has vascular dementia,’ Simone said.
Grace waited a moment.
‘I’d like,’ she said, carefully, ‘to hear about your dreams.’
Still holding on to the small truce, Sam realized, then saw Regan glance at Dooley, clearly deferring to him now.
‘S
imone’s dreams,’ Dooley said, ‘were all about punishing her parents.’
‘And did you,’ Sam asked Simone, ‘punish them?’
Better for the question to come from him, safer for Grace, he hoped.
Simone said nothing, leaned back against the outer bars of the cage.
‘She never had the chance,’ Dooley answered for her. ‘The old man was dead and then Celine got sick, so Simone had to adapt.’
‘There were so many perfect couples,’ Simone said. ‘I hated them all.’
‘The trouble was,’ Dooley took over again, ‘she hated herself too for feeling that way, felt she had to be bad to want to harm them, which was why she’d been self-harming instead.’
Classic stuff, Sam thought, maybe just a little too textbook, and he risked a glance at Grace and felt that she was buying it, and if it was good enough for her . . .
Besides, it was all they had.
‘And you helped her move on?’ Grace asked Dooley.
‘Matt made me see that making my dreams happen for real was the only way I was ever going to break free,’ Simone said.
‘And was he right?’ Grace asked. ‘Has it helped you?’
‘Matt helped me see it was what I was meant to do.’ Simone denied her a direct answer. ‘He told me I wasn’t a bad person at all, because he hated those kinds of people too, hated their self-righteousness, their vanity.’
Sociopaths, in other words, Sam thought. A pair of goddamned sociopaths stumbling across one another, feeding off each other. Regan in part a victim, first of her parents, then of Dooley’s delight in finding someone he could control, someone so needy, and Sam had come upon those types before, had read volumes about them.
And the game that these two had been playing must have been challenging, and maybe Dooley thrived on that, too, maybe that was why they’d conducted their terror campaign in such a bizarre way – and game-playing had formed a basic part of the MO of so many serial killers.
‘I get the display choices now,’ Sam said.
‘Bully for you,’ Dooley said.
‘Very smart,’ Sam said. ‘The restaurant stuff laid down with the false art trail.’
‘We liked it,’ Simone said.
‘But why the display?’ Grace asked.
‘Because there’s no point making any kind of protest,’ Dooley said, ‘unless people are going to know about it. No point killing people and just digging a hole.’ He smiled at Grace. ‘No point unless someone gets it, right?’
‘And the glue?’ Sam asked, and he thought he knew the answer, but the longer they were prepared to go on talking, the better.
‘Together forever,’ Simone answered.
‘Like the song,’ Dooley said.
‘Those touchy-feely, happy, smug couples. We talked about it, and we figured it ought to be just the way they’d like to end their days.’
Grace felt sick again.
She wondered just how they would be joined together if no one came in time.
Skin, presumably. Brown to white.
And maybe Simone wasn’t altogether wrong in what she had just said, because she would rather be holding Sam’s hand forever than live without him.
Except what about Joshua?
She swallowed down the agony, mustered a smile for Sam, then realized it might be held against them.
Careful.
ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTEEN
Celine Regan was in no condition to be interviewed.
Norman Gardner, the manager of the home, had told Alvarez as much right away, but had, after some persuasion, allowed Beth Riley to see for herself.
She came downstairs after less than ten minutes.
‘Hopeless,’ she said.
Gardner had also handed over the two contact phone numbers that Simone Regan had entrusted to them. One the number of the Opera Café. The other her cell phone.
No reply on that, nor voicemail, and pinpointing current locations of cells was, in reality, nowhere near as miraculously rapid as it appeared to be in movies. All kinds of hoops to be jumped through first, court orders to allow cell trackers being even slower to obtain than search warrants.
Besides which, no one was betting on Simone using that phone right now.
Cathy, silent until now, asked the next question before Alvarez or Riley.
‘Where did Mrs Regan live before she came here?’
‘I don’t have that information to hand,’ Norman Gardner told her, then turned to Alvarez. ‘And even if I did, it would be a huge breach of confidentiality for me to give it to you.’
‘What about her doctor?’ Riley asked. ‘He might have it.’
‘Not necessarily,’ Gardner said, ‘since the lady’s been here a long time.’ He paused. ‘And he’ll very likely have the same issues.’
‘We’ll try him anyway,’ Alvarez said.
‘Quickly,’ Cathy said. ‘Please.’
‘I’ll get you the number,’ Gardner said.
ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTEEN
Coming to the end of question time, Sam suspected.
Simone was still leaning against the bars, but Dooley had started moving around just inside the cage. No perceptible impatience in him yet, but Sam knew there had to be a limit on how much conversation these two would permit.
He doubted if the Eastermans or the others had been granted these ‘privileges’ before dying, and he only hoped it had been quick for them, had a better understanding than before of the terror they must have endured.
‘What about the couples you chose?’ he asked.
‘Customers,’ Simone answered simply.
‘So what, just happy people who came in to the café?’ It was hard for Grace not to load that question with the loathing she felt, almost impossible to grasp such random cruelty.
‘That’s about it,’ Dooley said. ‘I let Simone do the choosing.’
Jess Kowalski came into Sam’s mind, what Martinez had said about her liking the fact that she had control over her rats.
This was another control thing, all the way down the chain. Dooley in charge of Simone, giving her his blessing, letting her choose their prey, then the pair of them exerting ultimate power over the victims.
Us now.
‘It had to be customers who came when Cathy wasn’t working,’ Sam said, knowing that had to be true since otherwise she’d have seen their photographs in the media and been one of the first to put it together.
Putting herself in even greater danger than she had already, unwittingly, been in.
‘Except in our case,’ Grace said.
Dooley nodded. ‘Different in your case.’
‘Not so different,’ Simone said. ‘We heard more from Cathy about Grace and Sam, the greatest couple in the world, than we ever heard about any of the others.’
‘And I was working the case,’ Sam said.
‘Sure,’ Dooley said. ‘Which made you the most likely person to track us down, given enough time.’ He shrugged. ‘Not that you were doing so great.’
‘But Matt said it made you the obvious final choice for Miami,’ Simone said.
‘Are you planning to move on?’ Sam asked.
‘Don’t suppose we’ll have much choice,’ Dooley said. ‘After you guys.’
ONE HUNDRED AND NINETEEN
Celine Regan’s personal physician, Dr Richard Massey, was in bed with the flu, according to his housekeeper, Maria Rodriguez, who was refusing to wake him because she said he needed his rest.
Alvarez wasted no more time, called Tom Kennedy, who got right on the phone to Rodriguez.
‘Either you get Dr Massey on the line right now, ma’am,’ the Captain told her, ‘or we’ll hit the doc and you with a subpoena, and what that means, in case you don’t understand me, is if you don’t do as you’re told you could go to jail.’ He paused. ‘Prisión. La cárcel.’
‘For me?’ Maria Rodriguez was aghast.
‘Get the doctor now, ma’am.’
Less than three minutes later, the physi
cian was on the phone, apologetic and plainly pissed with his housekeeper for making the police wait.
‘I know I have that address on file,’ Massey told Kennedy, ‘though Mrs Regan’s been at the Burridge for a while, so her house could have been sold or rented.’ He hesitated. ‘I remember she did go walkabout though a few months back, and I don’t know where she went to hole up.’
‘Would she still have remembered back then where she’d lived before?’ Kennedy asked.
‘She might have,’ Massey said.
‘Did she come back of her own accord?’
‘Her daughter brought her back. I’m afraid Mrs Regan was never the same again after that. I had to come in to see her several times during that period to calm her down, and she was extremely confused.’
‘In what sense?’ Kennedy asked.
‘She seemed obsessed about being locked in a cage,’ Massey said. ‘She said her daughter kept her locked up when she was bad, which we knew was the dementia talking, because Simone was highly thought of at the Burridge.’
‘We need that address,’ Tom Kennedy said.
‘It’s in my office,’ the doctor said. ‘I’d need to—’
‘We need that now, please,’ Kennedy told him. ‘The lives of two fine people are depending on you, Dr Massey.’
Not the Captain for nothing.
ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY
Grace was shivering again.
She hated herself for it, but it was a reaction she could do nothing about, and she needed to pee, too, but for now she thought she’d die before she’d do that in front of them.
And maybe she would.
At least Joshua would still have their wonderful family, and he was young enough to grow up scarcely aware of missing them.
But not Cathy.
Like Sam, Grace could not bear to think about what this would do to her.
There had been no peace in that young woman’s life, no real peace for any length of time since childhood, and thinking about her, Grace knew that she would, given the chance, claw these people’s eyes out with her bare hands if it helped.
‘My wife’s still cold,’ Sam said.
‘I’m sorry about that,’ Dooley said.
His right hand moved to his back pocket.
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