Shimmer

by Hilary Norman

  She sought the right response, something that might help her sister, but only one thing sprang to the forefront of her mind, so she asked that instead.

  ‘Have you called Daniel yet?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Claudia said. ‘But soon.’

  ‘Don’t wait much longer, sis,’ Grace said.

  Not wanting her sister to suffer any more hurt.

  Plenty of people she did still care for, still loved.

  The Epistle of Cal the Hater

  I knew, finally, that I had to get out or lose my mind completely.

  Or maybe even die.

  Which might have been better.

  No escaping without money, though, and only one sure way to get it, only one talent. So I took what Jewel had taught me about dress-up and started putting it to my own advantage, with my personal homage to Ziggy, and figured I’d sell myself to the highest bidders wherever I could.

  I changed my name because that’s what performers do, and I did it in stages, started out just losing the first two letters of my own real name and calling myself ‘Rome’ – because that seemed to sit nicely with the whole orgy deal. And then I read a story about one of the Roman emperors, this crazy guy, Caligula, who screwed his sisters and had a bunch of people killed.

  Which is how I came to be called Cal, and how Roxy came to be called Jewel.

  Only by me, in my Epistle. She doesn’t know that’s how I think of her, and I know for sure that she’d hate it.

  I don’t like to think of what she’d do to me if she ever found out.

  It was when I was reading about Caligula, and I learned that his mom’s first name was Julia – which didn’t suit Roxanne one bit, was too classy, too straight – but then I got to thinking how they say diamonds are the hardest substance, so I cut Julia down to Jewel, which was just perfect for her.

  She doesn’t know about ‘Cal’ either.

  To my johns, I’m always Cal these days.

  Tabby wasn’t the first to like the name, as I recall.

  I tried being plain Jerome when I went after my stepsister for money.

  Which was not just for me, for the record. It was for Jewel too. I may be shit scared of my mom, but I don’t always hate her, and I know what looking after that sick old bastard must have done to her, so maybe, I figured, if I made enough money, I could give her a new life too.

  It isn’t my fault I was brought up to hate.

  Not just ‘those’ people, but Grace and Claudia too.

  I figured it was time one of them paid for my lousy life.

  Becket shouldn’t have done what he did to me outside their house.

  Not to Cal the Hater.

  67

  Mildred was in better spirits this evening.

  One of her acquaintances – an occasional provider of rather fine end-of-the-day sandwiches – had dropped by to say hello earlier, and had asked Mildred if she might like to come to her coffee shop at around six for a visit, since her colleagues would be gone, which meant she’d be closing up on her own, for once.

  ‘Tell the truth, I’d appreciate your company,’ the woman had said.

  Ordinarily, Mildred might have passed a dry, perhaps cynical remark, almost certainly would have done so in the privacy of her thoughts, but she liked this kind person well enough, and with the nervy mood she’d been in this past week, she thought she’d be a fool to refuse.

  She was on her way there now.

  68

  ‘I really think you guys should go home,’ Grace said a little after seven p.m., having bathed the baby and put him down right after another call from Chicago. ‘Sam’s on his way to O’Hare, and he’ll be in around midnight.’

  ‘We’ll stay till he’s home,’ David said.

  ‘You will not,’ Grace told him, because she knew he’d been feeling really unwell, and because Saul had let slip earlier that he had a chair commission to get finished by tomorrow; besides which, she was immeasurably relieved that Sam and Claudia were both fine, but also very drained. ‘You’ve seen the patrol cars, so I’m perfectly safe, and to be honest, I’m exhausted.’

  ‘Which is why I think we should order in dinner,’ Saul said.

  ‘All right,’ Grace gave in. ‘But then you’ll go home.’ She laid a hand on David’s craggy forehead. ‘You’re too warm.’

  ‘It’s June in Miami,’ he said. ‘I’m always warm.’

  ‘It’s cool in here,’ she said. ‘Saul, tell your father.’

  ‘You know better than that,’ Saul said.

  ‘What do you want to eat?’ David asked.

  ‘You choose.’ Grace dug out their collection of take-out menus from behind the toaster oven on the counter.

  ‘I’m not especially hungry,’ he said.

  ‘Aha,’ she said.

  ‘So Claudia’s going back home?’ David changed the subject.

  ‘As soon as Frank’s settled, apparently.’

  ‘Is he going to be OK being left that way?’ asked Saul.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Grace said.

  She waited again for some tug within herself, some guilt or conflict pulling at her, telling her to fly to Chicago and take care of her sick old father.

  There was still nothing there.

  69

  No problems with Sam’s late check-in at O’Hare, courtesy of the Sheriff.

  He moved swiftly through Terminal Three, ignoring the jolly flag-strewn concourse and most of the food court, grabbed himself a cup of black tea, swallowed down a couple of Tylenol, went through security, then headed straight to the gate, phoning home as he walked.

  ‘I can’t wait to see you,’ he told Grace. ‘Kiss the baby for me.’

  ‘How about his mom?’

  ‘Different kind of kiss,’ Sam said. ‘I love you, Gracie.’

  His fellow passengers were already almost all on board, but he snatched another call to Martinez. ‘Have you found Mildred?’

  ‘She’s been out to dinner, would you believe?’ said Martinez. ‘Sent me one of her texts after I called her. I’ll go pick her up myself a little later.’

  It was not until Sam was on the plane and seated that he understood just how bone-weary he was. His head hurt from Roxanne Lucca’s crack with the heavy old gilt lamp – no prints when they’d dusted it, no big surprise – and those long, deep scratches on his chest were likely, he guessed, to be an ugly reminder for a while to come.

  ‘We’re in luck tonight,’ one of the flight attendants, a nice young guy named Azam, told Sam as they waited for a go from air traffic control. ‘They had a few technical problems earlier, which is why we had to switch to a 767.’

  If he hadn’t been so exhausted, Sam guessed he might have noticed sooner that his seat was a little more comfortable than the one he’d sat in on the flight out, but as the big jet began to roll around O’Hare in readiness for take-off, his tired mind was sickeningly preoccupied with pondering the wickedness that he believed this mother had passed on to her son. Roxanne was yet to be captured, but that would happen sooner or later; Sam had enough faith in law enforcement to be sure of that and the fact that she was already as good as indicted on charges of false imprisonment, battery, aggravated assault and probably more besides.

  As for Jerome Cooper, maybe he was partially to be pitied as one of Roxanne’s victims, though if he had taken his cruel inheritance to monstrous new lows . . .

  Circumstantial evidence only, to date.

  Posters on a bedroom wall and the middle name of a David Bowie character – not even the same character who seemed to have a physical appearance in common with the young man Mildred Bleeker had described.

  Wounds, on his own chest and on Frank Lucca’s body, that appeared similar to those injuries inflicted on two men in Florida – and both sets of wounds in Illinois caused by the mother, not the son.

  The stench of bleach.

  If it weren’t for Sam knowing that Jerome had been in the Miami area one day before the second homicide victim’s body had been found �
�� and going by Claudia’s account, she’d last seen Cooper on Bainbridge Island the Monday before Sanjiv Adani’s murder, which meant that the scumbag could have made it to Miami in time for that killing, too, whether he’d travelled by air or train or even by bus . . . If it weren’t for those timing feasibilities, all the fragile-as-hell evidence would presently be pointing to Roxanne rather than to Cooper.

  But Sam would have bet his last dime.

  He smiled at the businessman on his right, then looked to his left out of the window, told himself to take some mental time out.

  He thought about home instead, about Grace and Joshua.

  About raising a son in this scary world.

  The 767 rose into the sky.

  Sam was already sleeping.

  70

  Mildred was still feeling pretty good.

  Back home again on her bench.

  It was dark now, but all the fear in her seemed to have evaporated.

  Nice people could do that for you, which was good to remember. To realize that even after all these years outside society, there were places inside that you could still slip into, folk who did seem to want to spend just a little time with you.

  Her belly was full, the stars were coming out, the music back on Ocean Drive seemed to her just a little less raucous tonight, the ocean’s waves on the kindly side too, and soon she knew she would drift off.

  She remembered the call she’d had earlier from Samuel’s friend, reckoned that if it had been all that important, he’d come find her here soon enough.

  If he comes, he comes . . .

  71

  Cal was waiting.

  He wasn’t comfortable with this particular plan.

  Had never done anything like this in his life.

  This was bad. Worse than what he’d done to Tabby and the first guy, because when all was said and done, they’d been fools, asking for trouble and getting it.

  She’s asked for it too.

  He supposed that was true enough. Always being there and looking at him in that judgemental way of hers, like some kind of nemesis – which was a word he’d liked ever since he’d first read it in a magazine and looked it up and learned that Nemesis had been a goddess of ‘divine retribution’ – and he’d never thought he’d find a use for the word, but even though it was laughable to think of her that way, he did.

  Nemesis.

  Not for much longer.

  It was quiet this evening, not many people around, and Cal had prepared himself for this piece of risk-taking, knew he was going to have to be smooth as silk . . .

  Just one couple over to the right, about twenty yards from the bench where the stinky old bird was lying in her bundles. And a man over to the left, middle-aged and paunchy, strolling peaceably along the promenade like he had all the time in the world.

  Cal would have liked to kill him.

  But he would not.

  He’d thought long and hard about the right way to do this.

  Not the same way as the others, not strangling, because that was easy enough with them walking ahead of him, not expecting trouble, expecting sex or something post-coital instead. But she was lying down.

  He pictured her neck, all scrawny and old.

  Wished he didn’t have to go near her at all, let alone touch her.

  The couple over to the right had gone, but more people were coming and going all the time, none of them coming too close to the old woman’s bench because the homeless were a kind of an embarrassment to most people, and unless they wanted to poke fun or maybe slip them a buck, they kept a distance away, which was fine.

  The man was still there, had stopped walking to gaze at the ocean.

  He deserved to die.

  If he didn’t move away soon, Cal might choose to kill him after all.

  The man started walking again, heading out along the sandy path on to the beach.

  Cal took a look around.

  Pulled on his gloves.

  Took out the Leatherman knife.

  Released the blade.

  72

  In the house on Bay Harbor Island, Grace had just beckoned Saul out of the kitchen, where David was sitting, looking at but not touching a bowl of chicken soup she’d heated up for him a few minutes ago, because he’d had no appetite either for the sushi Saul had ordered in or even for the soft boiled egg she’d offered to make him.

  ‘I want you to take your dad home now,’ she told him. ‘I’m sure he has a fever, whatever he says.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ Saul said. ‘But you know Dad.’

  ‘If we both insist, he’ll just have to listen,’ Grace said. ‘Aside from worrying about him, I’d rather he didn’t pass it on to Joshua.’

  ‘I was thinking I could send him home in a cab,’ Saul said, ‘and I could stay.’

  ‘And will your commission finish itself?’ Grace asked.

  ‘If it’s me you’re talking about,’ David called from the kitchen, ‘I’m not quite finished yet.’

  ‘We just want you to go home.’ Grace stepped into the doorway. ‘Go to bed where you belong.’

  ‘I belong here,’ David said, ‘until Sam gets home.’

  ‘The last thing Sam wants is you getting sick,’ Grace argued. ‘The patrol cars have been coming by every ten minutes, and I have Woody, and I’ll keep my phone with me the whole time in case Jerome Cooper comes busting through the window.’ She saw anxiety flood into Saul’s face. ‘Which he will not.’

  73

  Mildred was dreaming about Donny.

  A beautiful dream, in which they were walking hand-in-hand on South Beach, and they were both young, and her hair was shiny and falling darkly about her shoulders, and Donny let go of her hand and put his arm around her, holding her tight . . .

  Not his arm.

  ‘Don’t make a sound.’

  Not his voice.

  ‘Not a sound, old woman, or I’ll make you suffer long and hard.’

  Mildred woke into terror.

  A hand was clamped over her mouth, weight on her body, male and hard and much too heavy for her to be able to do anything to help herself.

  She knew who it was.

  Her angel of death, come to get her.

  Help me, Donny, she called inside her head.

  ‘You shouldn’t have kept on staring at me,’ he told her. ‘You shouldn’t have kept on being there.’

  Mildred felt the blade slide through the light blanket and on through the layers of polyester and old wool and cotton, and if she could, she would have put up the biggest fight, because life was precious, but as slender as he’d looked, this angel was strong and she was just a weak old woman . . .

  And maybe he was going to send her straight back to Donny.

  But it hurt, Lord God, how it hurt.

  Wait for me, Donny.

  74

  They’d woken Sam for an in-flight snack a while ago, and he’d been surprised to find that he had an appetite.

  His chest still hurt, but his head felt easier, which was good news, because a concussion might have kept him off work for a day or more, and if ever there was a case that Sam Becket wanted to see through to the finish, it was this one.

  Before today, he couldn’t remember having felt the need to use an on-board telephone, but this 767 sported phones at every seat, and he did have the greatest urge to speak to Grace again.

  The satellite was down.

  Later, he thought, and went back to sleep.

  75

  David had caved in under their combined pressure and the undeniable fact that he felt lousy.

  ‘I feel like I’m letting you down,’ he said at the door.

  ‘You have the flu,’ Grace told him, then turned to Saul. ‘Make sure he goes straight to bed, please.’

  ‘Yes, doc,’ Saul said.

  ‘You make sure you lock up properly,’ David told her.

  Saul had already been right around the house with her, checking every window, making sure the doors to the deck
were locked.

  ‘And remember your phone,’ David said.

  ‘And your cell phone, too,’ Saul added.

  ‘Will you both please stop,’ Grace told them. ‘You’re enough to make anyone a nervous wreck.’

  ‘If you’re nervous,’ Saul said, ‘I could—’

  ‘Go,’ she said, and opened the door.

  76

  A bad scene, this one.

  Expedient and a whole lot less ugly than the others, but real bad.

  Especially in his mind.

  She’d looked no different when Cal had left her than when he’d arrived.

  Just an old tramp, sleeping on her bench.

  He’d rather have taken her into the dunes, done it there and left her hidden in the long wild grass, less exposed, but anything might have gone wrong along the way, and anyway, permitted or not, some people went walking in the dunes and might have stumbled on her, but the fact was, no one went around checking on sleeping vagrants to see if they were alive or dead.

  Except cops, of course, on occasion.

  Like Becket.

  Cal had washed his knife in the ocean right after he’d done it, and then he’d tucked it back into the waistband of his shorts and pulled his T-shirt down over it.

  More to do tonight.

  A whole lot more.

  77

  The temptation to pick Joshua up out of his crib and take him to bed with her had seldom been greater.

  Except chances were he’d wake later in the night, so it wouldn’t be fair to disturb him now because he needed his sleep – and so did she, she supposed, so Grace suppressed the urge and instead stooped to kiss the top of his beautiful head, and left the nursery.

  She went to lie down in her own, too empty, bed.

  An image of Frank Lucca came into her mind.