Last Run

by Hilary Norman

  ‘But things could still go wrong.’ The pleading child had disappeared again, melted back into the core of Sam, the man, filled with fear and a growing, seething rage.

  ‘They could,’ David said. ‘And he could have died right there on the beach.’ He reached for Sam’s big hand, squeezed it, felt his skin hot against his own cold fingers. ‘But our boy’s strong, right?’

  Sam looked at his father, recalled again his time in ICU, tethered by tubes and wires, remembered him surviving.

  ‘Like you.’ He squeezed his hand back.

  And then, abruptly, his mind started working again, and he let the hand go. ‘Them,’ he said. ‘You said a man found “him” on the beach, but surely you meant them. Saul and Terri.’

  ‘No,’ David said. ‘Just Saul. They said he was alone.’

  For the first time, Sam looked around the unit, his gaze passing over the other patients and the vigilant nursing team, searching for another kind of uniform, guessed that the police had been and gone, figuring there was no point coming back till there was a chance of Saul waking.

  The Naples PD officer walked in as if Sam had conjured him up, began to walk across the room, but Sam beckoned him quickly into a corner near the door where no one would overhear, showed his badge and saw the other man’s expression change from irritated to compassionate.

  His own cop’s mind had begun to tick horribly.

  ‘Do you know,’ he asked, ‘if there’s a chance it was a bat?’

  ‘You mean, like a baseball bat?’ The guy saw Sam nod. ‘I wasn’t at the scene, but word is it could have been something like that, or a club, maybe.’

  Something in Sam recoiled.

  It made no sense, none at all. Different coast, no possible connection.

  Except through him, through his involvement in the investigation.

  ‘Son?’

  David was at his side, looking at him with new anxiety.

  ‘It’s OK, Dad.’

  He put an arm around his father’s shoulders, went with him back to the bed.

  This had to be random, surely, his mind went on ticking; a brutal, random assault.

  Except there was no getting away from the fact that it had all the ingredients of another attack by the same individual who might have already killed three people on the Atlantic coast.

  All the ingredients but one, thank the Lord. The most fundamental difference of all: Saul was still clinging to life.

  Grace was coming down the corridor, heading for the unit as he came out.

  ‘How’s he doing?’ Her eyes searched his face. ‘Terri told us what happened.’

  Sam looked at the awful strain in her face, and put his arms around her.

  ‘He’s strong,’ he said. ‘He’ll make it.’

  ‘I know he will,’ Grace said. ‘I know.’

  ‘I want to see him.’ Cathy was just a foot away, still white-faced.

  ‘Sure, sweetheart,’ Sam told her. ‘Dad’s still in there.’ He pulled gently away from Grace, laid a hand on Cathy’s arm. ‘You have to be prepared for all the tubes and wires and machines, OK?’

  Cathy nodded.

  ‘He’s unconscious because they’re keeping him that way, because it’s the best thing for him.’ He looked at Grace. ‘You holding up?’ Sam asked Grace.

  ‘Don’t worry about me,’ she said, tension building in her by the second.

  Sam turned away, walked across to where Terri still sat on the bench by the wall.

  ‘Where were you,’ he asked, ‘when it happened?’

  Behind him, Grace remained motionless, let Cathy go into the ICU alone.

  Bad mom.

  Bad wife, worse sister-in-law.

  Terri had stood up slowly, was facing Sam.

  ‘We had a fight,’ she told him.

  ‘Another one,’ Sam said, and shook his head.

  He began to turn away from her; then swivelled slowly back around.

  ‘You must have noticed the similarities, too,’ he said.

  ‘Of course,’ she said.

  Grace was watching Terri again. The young woman was wrecked, there seemed no doubt about that, and it was impossible to conceive that this horrific crime could have anything whatever to do with her.

  Yet all the outward distress in the world might mean nothing.

  Might.

  Grace knew she had no choices left.

  She took a deep breath. ‘Sam,’ she said. ‘I need to speak to you.’

  He was pulling his cell phone out of his pocket, starting to walk away from the ICU, where he might get away with making calls without going outside.

  ‘Just give me a minute,’ he said.

  ‘Now,’ Grace told him, and her voice shook just a little. ‘Please.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  Grace had never seen Sam look at her like that before.

  As if he hated her.

  It passed swiftly, disbelief taking its place.

  ‘I don’t believe you could have kept this to yourself.’ He shook his head. ‘Though I have to say I don’t believe in what you’ve been thinking.’

  ‘Thank God,’ Grace said.

  They were in a small room, someone’s nondescript office. They had slipped in there because she had said, softly, that no one else must hear what she had to say.

  ‘It’s craziness,’ Sam went on now. ‘Based on virtually nothing. The fact that Terri came to see you just after Gregory left that last time.’

  ‘And the photograph of Maria Rivera,’ Grace reminded him painfully, desperately wanting him to swat that away too. ‘And her obsession, most of all, with the killings.’

  ‘The obsession of an ambitious rookie taking all the wrong paths,’ Sam came back. ‘We’ve talked about all this before, Grace.’

  ‘And you said – ’ she wanted to give way, to drop this, but she had to get it all said so that they could, God willing, leave the awful suspicion behind – ‘that Terri oughtn’t to have known anything about Pompano Beach.’

  ‘More obsession, Grace.’ Sam was impatient to get out of the room. ‘She’s had a pretty screwed up life, she’s maybe a little needy because of—’

  ‘What about the photograph?’ Grace asked doggedly.

  Sam was silent.

  ‘Oh God,’ Grace said. ‘That’s getting to you too, isn’t it?’

  ‘What’s getting to me is why Saul didn’t tell me about it.’

  That look returned; a dagger straight into Grace’s heart.

  ‘You know why,’ she said weakly.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘and I can understand that.’ His mouth was set hard. ‘What I can’t, will never, understand is why my own wife kept it from me.’

  He stopped then, did not say out loud what Grace knew he had to be thinking.

  The same as she was. That if – if, heaven forbid – Terri was to blame, then this terrible thing need never have happened.

  That if Grace was right, it was her fault that Sam’s brother was lying there now in the ICU with head injuries and a crushed larynx.

  Her fault.

  ‘Sure, we spoke with Officer Suarez,’ the detective told Sam, ‘right after she showed up at the Cove Inn.’

  He had only just exited the elevator at the fifth floor, had paused at the nurses’ station for an update, when Sam had jumped right on him.

  Detective Joseph Patterson of the Naples PD, a young man with keen blue eyes, a cleft chin and brown hair in early retreat from his forehead, investigating the aggravated battery of Saul Becket; all available fellow officers – he had swiftly assured Sam – out on the streets doing everything in their power to get the assailant locked up as quickly as possible.

  No evidence, meantime, was the word from the crime scene, and nothing on Saul’s body, no fragments under his fingers, though his clothing had been taken away for analysis.

  They’d moved out of the corridor into a waiting area, currently empty.

  ‘We knew about the inn,’ the detective told Sam, ‘because your b
rother had a note of the reservation in his wallet. Mr and Mrs Saul Becket.’

  So old-fashioned and just plain Saul it made Sam want to cry.

  The people at the Cove Inn had reported that Saul had been in and out all afternoon and evening looking for Terri, plainly upset, and everyone Patterson had talked to there had been deeply shocked to hear what had happened, particularly as they had found him such a very nice young man.

  ‘Anything we should know?’ Patterson asked him.

  Sam shook his head. ‘Nothing I can tell you.’

  ‘Regarding the relationship with Officer Suarez maybe?’

  ‘She’s told me they’d had an argument – ’ Sam picked his words carefully – ‘and that she’d walked out, that she didn’t come back till . . .’ He paused. ‘You know when.’

  ‘That’s what they figured at the inn,’ Patterson said. ‘Lovers’ tiff.’

  ‘The relationship has been a little up and down.’ Sam kept his tone even.

  When Saul woke up – when – if he learned that Sam had laid so much as the smallest finger of suspicion on Terri, he’d probably never forgive him. Without real, realistic justification there was simply no way on earth Sam was going to risk that. Not with nothing more than his pregnant wife’s almost certainly irrational doubts and a photograph.

  Not just any photograph, though.

  ‘Where was Terri Suarez, out of interest?’ he asked, almost casually. ‘When my brother was looking for her?’

  ‘Hasn’t she told you?’ Patterson asked.

  ‘I didn’t ask her,’ Sam said. ‘She’s too shaken up.’

  ‘As you all are,’ Patterson said.

  His judgment, Sam felt, was being torn to bits. His first impulse was to shove the Naples detective out of the hospital and on to the street to get the job done; but bitterly angry as he was at Grace, he still knew better than to completely dismiss her instincts. The photograph of Maria Rivera was disturbing him, as it had clearly disturbed Saul, and Joseph Patterson had already quizzed Terri so Sam needed to keep him here at least until he had his answers.

  Not that Patterson was under any obligation to tell him a damned thing about his case – even if Sam was a fellow cop, and even if there were, as Sam had already briefly told him, some similarities with the Miami Beach and other east coast killings.

  Most of all right here and now, Sam was a relative, which meant that Patterson and his colleagues were going to be particularly reluctant to tell him too much, let alone permit him any involvement in their investigation.

  The sympathy was there though, and professional courtesy.

  ‘She said she was walking around the city.’ Patterson finally answered Sam’s question about Terri’s whereabouts. ‘Had a drink in a bar, no proof of that, but then she says she took a bus ride and got off at a pizza place just a little way from here – she showed us the receipt for that.’

  ‘You’re making her sound like a suspect,’ Sam remarked.

  ‘Not at all,’ the other man said quickly. ‘She’s one of us. But fact is they came into town as boyfriend and girlfriend, had a bust-up big enough to keep them apart all afternoon and evening, and next thing your brother’s in the hospital. So we had to ask a few routine questions, you know?’

  ‘Sure,’ Sam said, grateful someone else had.

  His thoughts turned back to Saul, to the ugliness of his injuries, the ferocity of the assault, the strength needed for such an attack. Terri had told them that she went to a gym, liked staying in shape, and she was certainly that; a curvy, beautiful young woman, tough enough for her job, but nothing more than that.

  ‘She was on the beach, too, you know,’ Patterson told him.

  Sam didn’t say anything.

  ‘I noticed the sand on her moccasins when she came into the inn. She said she took the bus back after her pizza, went walking on the beach for a while, then sat down to do some thinking.’ The detective shrugged. ‘The kind of thing people – young lovers – do after a fight, I guess. Mooch on the beach, looking at the moon.’

  ‘So where was she,’ Sam asked, ‘when it happened?’

  ‘About a mile north of where your brother was attacked.’

  ‘Anyone to corroborate that?’

  ‘Any reason we’d need to, Detective Becket?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Sam said. ‘Force of habit. Routine, like you said.’

  ‘She said there were other people walking. We’ll be asking around.’

  Sam was silent again, the question he’d wanted to ask for the last several moments still hanging heavily in his mind – but then Patterson answered it anyway.

  ‘Just sand and grit on her moccasins,’ he said. ‘No blood.’

  Sam felt a sick kind of relief wash over him.

  ‘Not that it would prove much,’ Patterson added, ‘if Terri Suarez was a suspect. Not with the doc saying it was probably a bare foot that did the stomping.’

  The relief, paltry as it had been, went away.

  He had to ask, had to.

  ‘I don’t suppose you asked Terri – Officer Suarez – to show you her feet?’

  ‘No.’ Now Patterson was looking curiously at Sam. ‘Sure there’s nothing you want to tell me?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Sam said.

  ‘Something about Ms Suarez I should know?’

  ‘Not a thing.’ Sam shook his head. ‘I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.’ His jaw felt stiff, his eyes were burning. ‘But then I’m still having trouble believing what’s happened to my brother.’

  ‘What kind of a guy is he?’ The question was kind. ‘Is he a fighter?’

  ‘He’s a med student,’ Sam said. ‘Our dad’s a doctor.’ He took a breath, needing to control himself. ‘My brother’s a sweetheart of a guy. I’m praying he’s a fighter, too.’

  ‘By the looks of your family, at least he’ll have a whole bunch of supporters in his corner.’ He saw Sam’s battle for composure starting up again, put out a hand and gripped his arm briefly but supportively. ‘Meantime, we’re going to find this bastard.’

  ‘I’d like to help.’ Sam already knew how the other man would respond.

  ‘Best way you can do that,’ Patterson said, ‘is be here for Saul.’

  Sam nodded. ‘Right,’ he said.

  Lying through his teeth.

  Sam checked on Saul, confirmed there was no change, then left the others to take it in turns to sit with him, and went downstairs and out into the warm air.

  Dawn was well on its way, delicate and fragrant, heightened by the scent of the flowerbeds bordering the driveway at the front of the hospital. The urban section of Route 41, the Tamiami Trail, lay straight ahead, vehicles skimming to and fro, traffic still light at this time.

  Sam took out his cell phone and called Martinez, the only person outside the family he’d already told about Saul. Kovac and the captain could wait till later.

  ‘How is he?’ Martinez sounded as if he’d been waiting for the phone to ring.

  ‘Holding his own. Still in ICU, still critical.’

  ‘What can I do for you, man? Anything, name it.’

  ‘It’s a strange one, Al,’ Sam said, ‘and off the record, OK?’

  ‘Shoot,’ Martinez told him.

  ‘Anything out of place you can find out about Teresa Suarez.’

  ‘Saul’s lady?’ Martinez was confused. ‘The cop?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Saul said. ‘This is a little off, I know, but . . . ’

  ‘We’re not IAD, Sam.’ Martinez sounded upset. ‘And I wouldn’t find anything if I looked. She’s had all the checks, same as we all do when we’re starting out.’

  ‘I know,’ Sam said. ‘I thought maybe you could have a discreet word with one of your girlfriends in Property or Personnel.’

  ‘You want me to try to look at her file?’ Martinez was patently reluctant.

  ‘I don’t know if that would help, Al.’ Sam began pacing the broad driveway, fighting the sudden wall of fatigue that felt about r
eady to collapse on him. ‘I already know some family stuff – abusive father, both parents killed – life with her grandma – grandfather was NYPD, line of duty death.’

  ‘Jesus, man.’

  ‘I know,’ Sam agreed. ‘I don’t like it either, and the hell of it is I don’t even know what I’m looking for.’

  ‘It’s not so much what that bothers me as why?’ Martinez said. ‘You need to help me out here, tell me what’s goin’ on in your head.’ He paused. ‘You’re thinking Suarez had something to do with what happened to Saul?’ He sounded incredulous.

  ‘Not really,’ Sam said. ‘I hope not. With all my heart.’

  ‘But if that is what you’re thinking, that means you’re tying this up with the beach murders.’ Martinez paused again. ‘Are you kidding me?’

  ‘I’m not in a kidding mood,’ Sam said. ‘And I can’t say any more right now. What I want is to know she’s OK. Most of all, that she loves my brother as much as she says she does.’

  ‘And that she isn’t a secret whacko,’ Martinez added.

  Coming out of the elevator back on the fifth floor, he saw them right away. Standing outside the ICU. Body language unmistakable.

  Terror clamped around Sam’s heart. David had his arms around Cathy, her face buried in his chest. Grace had already seen him, started to move towards him but then stopped, uncertain if he wanted her close, and stricken by the doubt.

  Terri was leaning against a wall a few feet away, her face a mask of fear.

  Apparent fear.

  Sam felt leaden as he walked towards them, by-passed them all, asking nothing, needing to see for himself, to know . . .

  He went through the door.

  Saw a whole team around Saul’s bed, working on him.

  Please, God, no, please, God no.

  He heard Grace’s step behind him, felt her hand on his arm, looked around at her, saw the awful fear in her eyes.

  Stepped away from her.

  Chapter Nineteen

  It had been a seizure, a bad one, but they had him back, stable again.

  David told them it was possible it could happen again, but that he was in the best place and Saul was young and fit and tough.

  No more surgery, he said, until he was stronger.