Last Run

by Hilary Norman

  Lucia had told Grace to keep it.

  Something about it being useful.

  ‘You might find a use for it.’

  Grace had thought it an odd remark at the time – but then there had been so much else to think about, she’d forgotten all about it.

  Chances were, of course, that Lucia might just have meant that they – perhaps the police – might have used the photograph for identification purposes, in helping establish her relationship with Kez.

  But what Grace really thought right now – so strongly that she felt galvanized by the idea – was that Lucia might have meant something very different.

  Something desperately important.

  ‘The photograph,’ she said to Cathy.

  ‘What photograph?’

  ‘In my bag.’ Grace stared around the room. ‘Where’s my bag?’

  ‘We unpacked it,’ Cathy reminded her, ‘back in the bedroom, the postpartum room, remember?’

  Before moving to the delivery suite they had been shown the room in which Grace would rest after the birth, a pretty room with a second bed, space for a bassinet and a lockable closet for personal possessions.

  ‘I mean my handbag,’ Grace told her.

  ‘I think it was locked away,’ Cathy said.

  Barbara Walden walked back into the suite wearing green scrubs, looking fresh as a daisy, not a hint of jet-lag.

  ‘How’re you doing?’

  ‘I need you to get it,’ Grace told Cathy, ignoring the doctor.

  The next flood of pain was already beginning, starting in her back, spreading swiftly down into her legs and all points in between, and Grace was struggling to hold on to her thought processes, because this was more important than the pain.

  ‘I need it.’ She cried out with pain. ‘For Sam – I need it now.’

  ‘I don’t want to leave you,’ Cathy said.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Barbara Walden told Cathy, coming to Grace’s side. ‘You go.’

  The contraction was past and Grace resting, when Cathy came back in with the bag.

  ‘Thank you.’ Grace’s hands were trembling. ‘Thank you, sweetheart.’

  ‘Let me.’ Cathy fished around inside, found the photograph right away and pulled it out. ‘Here.’

  ‘Open the frame.’ Grace’s voice shook. ‘Look behind the picture.’

  ‘All right.’ Cathy turned the frame over, saw that the back had a velvety cover, the type that slid in and out of grooves at both sides.

  ‘Hurry.’ Impatient in case the next contraction overtook her, Grace snatched it out of Cathy’s hands, slid the back out, let it fall to the floor.

  Brown corrugated card backed the photograph.

  Grace began to cry.

  ‘Here.’ Cathy took the frame back, lifted the brown card.

  There. What they needed.

  Written in clear blue ink letters on a lined index card.

  Yellow oleander for Detective Becket

  Wolfsbane for Officer Suarez

  ‘I’ll get it to CCU and call the cops,’ Cathy said, adrenalin coursing.

  ‘Thank you.’ Grace was weeping harder. ‘Thank you.’

  Dr Walden gave her a moment and then came over, put her arms around her, rubbed her back gently.

  ‘That’ll do it,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Think so?’ Grace whispered, still weeping.

  ‘It’s bound to help,’ the doctor told her. ‘Which means that you can start helping yourself and your little one.’

  ‘I can’t seem to care too much about myself right now,’ Grace said.

  ‘You should,’ Barbara Walden said. ‘Your baby and your husband are both going to need you soon enough.’

  Grace nodded.

  ‘For them then,’ she said.

  She lay back for a moment, closed her eyes, let herself think about her child, their son, labouring so hard to be born, and felt a wave of shame because he had been struggling on this first, dark journey without even so much as the aid of his mother’s properly focused thoughts.

  Not any more.

  She’d be with him now, for as long as it took. With him for ever.

  It’s all right, she told her child. I’m all yours.

  Her mind moved away again, back down to the CCU, to Sam, but with an effort almost as great as the physical labors of birth itself, she dragged it back again.

  It’s all right, she told her son again. You can come now.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  The discovery had helped Sam, though not, of course, poor Teté.

  They felt such guilt about the loneliness of her death, though even if Sam’s own collapse had not temporarily wiped David’s concern for Terri from his mind, it would have made no difference, because her heart had given out before she could even call for help. The post-mortem might reveal some cardiac weakness, something congenital, perhaps, not picked up in a standard physical exam, but for whatever reason, Terri had stood no chance.

  If Cathy had not been at Sam’s side so swiftly that, too, might have ended in tragedy, but as it transpired, though he had not been present at or even aware of the birth – on Wednesday, September 14 – of his son, he had, forty-eight hours later, been well enough to meet him.

  Joshua Jude Becket.

  Four pounds five ounces, breathing on his own, even suckling. The most beautiful, perfect child in the world, bringing joy with him, and healing, too, at least for his father.

  His Uncle Saul’s wounds, as much spiritual, perhaps even more than physical, would take much longer to heal. Months of pain and rehab and uncertainty, without the solace of his love to come home to at the end of it.

  Lucia was still alive, they heard, but fading by inches.

  Multi-system organ dysfunction, they were told, leading to probable multiple organ failure and, ultimately, death.

  The doctors were still doing what they were sworn to do.

  The police were hoping to do the same, but they and the state attorney were on a frustrating kind of standby, since there was no guarantee that she would live, let alone be fit enough to face charges, which had resulted – to date – in none being formally filed.

  ‘No prospect of speedy trial,’ Sam had explained to Grace and Cathy, ‘which a lot of defense attorneys file these days.’

  ‘And Lucia’s in no condition to run,’ Grace had said.

  ‘No flight risk at all,’ Sam had agreed, ‘which means Martinez and Rowan and the others – ’ he was resigned, for now, to excluding himself, since he was still suspended from duties – ‘can take their time working up the investigation.’

  Time and effort was needed to link the murders of Gregory Hoffman, Teresa Suarez, the probable killing of Phil Busseto, and the attempted murder of Samuel Becket – adding to the mix those other homicides after which Lucia had aided and abetted Kez; and monitoring her medical progress with regard to when – if ever – the time might come to file charges and make a formal arrest.

  One multiple killer beyond justice.

  The other too sick even to warrant a guard at her door.

  Sam Becket more likely than Lucia, at this time, to face charges.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  October 6

  Kez was laid to rest eight days after Terri’s cremation, the funeral in Naples, in keeping with a letter of wishes left by Lucia.

  ‘It was the place she considered her sanctuary’ – her aunt had written – ‘the nearest she had to a real home.’

  Martinez had told Sam about the letter, and Sam, in turn, had told Cathy.

  Cathy did not believe Lucia’s decision the right one. Kez might have called the Naples apartment her ‘sanctuary’, but her home had been in the old clapboard house on Matilda Street in Coconut Grove, the spartan space with the Flo-Jo posters and the track photograph of herself, running free. That other place had, Cathy suspected, been largely her aunt’s creation, somewhere for her niece to escape to when she’d been bad.

  She kept those thoughts to herself.


  ‘Any time you need to talk,’ Grace had told her, ‘I’m here for you.’

  She had said that several times.

  ‘Same as always,’ she had said.

  Not the same, though, Cathy had realized. Never the same again.

  She did not go to the funeral, even though Grace and Sam had both said they would understand if she did, had even encouraged her to go.

  ‘I can’t,’ she had told Grace. ‘It wouldn’t feel right.’

  ‘You loved Kez,’ Grace had said. ‘That would make it right.’

  ‘Saul couldn’t go to Teté’s,’ Cathy had said.

  ‘Exactly. Because he couldn’t,’ Sam had said. ‘Different.’

  Cathy had stayed away from Terri’s funeral, too, had told the others that she thought she might go to Miami General to be with Saul during the service and interment, but when the time came she had felt too guilty, had written him a note and gone running instead, which had made her feel even more ashamed.

  No one had criticized her, but she had seen disappointment in their faces.

  ‘I guess I’m a coward,’ she had said.

  ‘Some things,’ Grace had said, ‘can be very hard to face.’

  Saul was the one who had almost swayed Cathy about Kez’s funeral.

  She was a sick person, he had typed left-handed into the computer they’d recently given him, and which he had used to write his own eulogy for Terri. We all know that. It doesn’t change how you felt about her.

  ‘What Kez did to you changed that,’ Cathy said.

  ‘If I could,’ Saul typed, ‘I would go with you.’

  ‘I wouldn’t let you,’ Cathy told him.

  David said much the same thing, and had offered to accompany her.

  ‘You need to say goodbye,’ he said. ‘It’s important.’

  ‘Maybe I will,’ Cathy told him. ‘But later, some time when it’s more private.’

  ‘See that you do,’ David said.

  It had been a long time since Cathy had felt so alone.

  A time of great closeness in the Becket family. Her family.

  A time of bonding between Joshua and his parents and grandfather and uncle – and Cathy felt nothing but love for this new scrap of an infant, strong enough to bawl his lungs out and disturb them all, morning, noon and night. His Aunt Claudia had come from Seattle to help out, and there had been a few raw, painful encounters between her and Grace because her sister had felt so wounded by her exclusion during their worst of times.

  But all of it, the hurt and the disruption and the worries over Saul, and the ongoing uncertainties about Sam’s career, all of it spelled family and was, therefore, warming and ultimately reassuring to Cathy. And yet, included as she undeniably was in all of it, and as loving and supportive as everyone had been to her, Cathy still felt isolated by her guilt for having brought Kez to them.

  ‘I have similar feelings, sometimes,’ Grace had told her during one of their talks, ‘because I worked with Lucia all that time and never recognized her pain.’

  Cathy believed her, yet the knowledge brought her no comfort.

  ‘You mustn’t blame yourself,’ Sam had told her more than once.

  ‘I don’t,’ Cathy had said. ‘Not really.’

  She could see that Sam had not believed her, that he was worried for her. She loved him so much, loved them all without reservation.

  Yet she chose not to tell them the truth about how she really felt.

  Who she really blamed.

  If she had told them they might have become more concerned, might have thought about watching her more closely, more carefully, in case she did something foolish.

  Like going to see Lucia.

  Chapter Forty

  October 12

  They let her visit.

  They would not have done so had formal charges been filed and a guard placed at the door of Lucia’s hospital room. Cathy was not, after all, family – though the lack of any close relatives (Gina had not appeared at her daughter’s funeral) had helped in the acceptance that Lucia was no flight risk.

  No family or close friends, therefore, to plan a breakout. And Lucia was dying. So they saw no reason not to let Cathy see her.

  The nurse she spoke to before her visit had told her it was possible Lucia might understand her if she wanted to talk to her, though she could expect no response.

  Kez’s aunt’s eyes were closed and she was on a ventilator, tubes all over, monitors quietly following her progress.

  Cathy waited until they were alone, and then she placed the gift she had brought with her on her bedside table and drew the visitor’s chair close up to the bed.

  ‘I have things to say,’ she told Lucia.

  She waited for a moment, watched the pinched, greyish face, watched the chest rise and fall, watched the tissue paper eyelids.

  ‘I blame you,’ Cathy said.

  She waited another moment, as if the eyes might open, then went on.

  ‘I blame you, Lucia, because you knew what Kez was and you said nothing. Did nothing to stop me falling in love with her. You put us all in danger. Saul and Sam and Grace, and all the others, too. The ones she murdered, the ones you killed, or tried to kill, in her name.’

  No point to this.

  It was like talking to a corpse. But people did that all the time in funeral homes and at gravesides.

  And Cathy had a little more that she needed to say.

  ‘Most of all, though, I blame you for Kez.’

  The pain was flowing again, heat in her veins, raising the pitch of her voice.

  ‘You should have helped her, Lucia. Not the sick way you chose.’

  Too loud.

  Cathy took a breath and went on.

  ‘If you had got her treatment after the first time, when she was still a child, she could have been helped and it would all have been behind her by now. They’d probably have sent her to a psych unit, and they could have taken care of her. Kez could have had a chance to move on and be a great athlete.’

  Her palms were damp and she was trembling, feeling sick.

  ‘And all those people would not be dead.’

  The door opened and Cathy froze, waited to be thrown out.

  A nurse, kind-faced, Filipina, offered her something to drink.

  ‘No, thank you,’ Cathy told her. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘It’s good,’ the woman said, ‘that someone’s here for her.’

  ‘Yes,’ Cathy said. ‘Thank you.’

  She waited until the door had been closed for a minute.

  ‘Grace feels bad for you,’ she went on. ‘She hated you at first for what you did to Sam, what you’d done to Greg, but she’s a shrink and she’s kind and she tends to blame herself for things that aren’t her fault. She thinks she should have known that you were tortured – her word, not mine. She thinks she should have been able to help you.’ Cathy shook her head. ‘Not me. Just so you know, Lucia. I don’t feel any compassion for you. I blame you for destroying Kez.’

  The tissue eyelids flickered then and the tracings on one of the monitors jerked a little, then went on as before. Probably just a reflex, she supposed.

  The nurse, though, had said that Lucia might just hear her.

  ‘That’s it, really,’ Cathy said. ‘That’s what I came to say. That I blame you for everything. Just so you know.’

  She stood up.

  ‘I brought you a little something. There’s a card, too. It says: “I thought you might find a use for these.” ’

  She watched the dying woman, studied her one last time.

  ‘But I guess you’re too far gone for that,’ she said.

  Somewhere nearby a man was weeping, a thin, bereft sound.

  ‘I’ll leave them for you, all the same,’ Cathy said. ‘Then maybe, if you ever do open your eyes, you’ll see how pretty they are. If you do, I guess it’ll really hurt you not to be able to touch them.’

  She went to the door.

  ‘I hope so, anyway,’ she s
aid.

  Chapter Forty-one

  October 13

  Martinez called Sam next day. Told him what Cathy had done. About the visit.

  ‘Did you know she was going?’

  Sam said he had not known.

  ‘Was there a problem?’ he asked, already tense.

  He had been sitting in the kitchen with Woody, drinking freshly squeezed orange juice. He had not felt like coffee since getting out of the hospital – had told Martinez to tell the guys not to trouble returning his espresso machine when they were done testing – and the only tea he was tending to drink these days came in little bags out of sealed packets from the supermarket.

  Upstairs, Joshua – safe with his mom – had been crying for his feed and had now stopped, and just before the phone rang Sam had been about to go join them, the thought already in his mind of their infant son at Grace’s breast.

  Sweetest picture in the world, bar none.

  ‘No problem with the visit, as such,’ Martinez answered. ‘It was the gift she left.’

  ‘Tell me.’ Sam’s heart beat faster.

  ‘It’s OK.’ His good friend was swift with reassurance these days. ‘It might not have been, might have spelled big trouble for Cathy, if the guy who got what it really was hadn’t come to me.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Sam said. ‘So what was it?’

  ‘Bunch of flowers,’ Martinez said. ‘Pretty things, he said. Pretty colour, the nurse said, when she showed them to the officer – nice young guy called Domingo – checking in on Lucia.’

  ‘Tell me,’ Sam said again, tersely.

  ‘Jimsonweed,’ Martinez said.

  They both knew about jimsonweed – aka Devil’s Trumpet and Mad Apple and a whole bunch of other names – from way back, had arrested a teenager only a few months back who’d run amok on a beach after smoking the weed.

  ‘Common as shit,’ Martinez went on, ‘so Cathy could have picked them at the roadside just about any place.’

  Sam’s mind went straight there, to an image of their grieving, messed-up daughter gathering toxic weeds by the side of some highway – and they were highly toxic, he knew that. He supposed that if she’d meant serious business, Cathy could have gone to greater trouble, gone in search of something even more obviously deadly, but she had known, of course, that Lucia was beyond the effort.