Eclipse

by Hilary Norman

  ‘I missed you so much, Mommy.’

  ‘Not as much as I missed you,’ Grace told him.

  ‘How much?’

  ‘All the way to Jupiter and back again.’

  ‘Me too,’ Sam said.

  Claudia had prepared dinner, but was insistent on going home right away, adamant that they needed time alone and that she was ready for her own house.

  ‘I think this may have been the best evening ever,’ Grace said a few hours later, sitting in their den, Joshua finally asleep upstairs.

  ‘Ever,’ Sam agreed.

  Except there was one thing he still had to talk to her about, much as he hated to.

  No real choice.

  ‘Al and I are meeting Magda tomorrow,’ he said.

  ‘How come?’ she asked.

  He filled her in, then, finally, asked:

  ‘Any idea why Beatriz Delgado would have had your phone number?’

  ‘I’ve never even heard her name before.’ Grace shook her head. ‘That poor, poor woman,’ she said. ‘And her daughter.’

  In the room of dead things, another doll had been completed.

  She had been, before her makeover, a 2006 Teresa doll, a Hispanic friend of Barbie’s with a soft vinyl head.

  All the easier to operate on.

  Her original clothes had gone, and in their place she wore a 1965 Barbie olive-green dress.

  Her pretty dark eyes gone now, too, the grotesque tiny sockets stuffed with red-stained gauze, and two dainty little white lace doilies covering them.

  Black Hole’s task fulfilled once more.

  The miniature Beatriz Delgado already in her small white coffin.

  May 14

  Sam and Martinez met with Magda at nine-thirty on Saturday morning.

  Beatriz Delgado had not been her patient, and was, in any case, deceased, so Magda was free to talk about her. Though she would not, she stated, disclose any information about the daughter, since as they well knew, Florida recognized psychotherapist-patient privilege, and since she had not even the smallest cause for concern that Felicia Delgado might present a danger to anyone.

  She unbent just a little. ‘I will tell you that, as it happens, I’ve only had the briefest of conversations with Felicia. On May the eleventh.’

  The last day of Beatriz Delgado’s life.

  ‘So are you saying that even if you could talk about her, there’d be nothing worth telling us?’ Martinez asked.

  ‘I’ve said all I’m going to,’ she said.

  Sam showed her the phone number found in the Delgado house.

  Magda nodded. ‘Mrs Delgado initially called for an appointment with Grace. I told her that she was away, but that we have a mutual locum tenens arrangement. Mrs Delgado seemed anxious not to wait.’

  ‘The poor kid’s definitely in bad shape now,’ Sam said. ‘She hasn’t spoken to anyone since she was found wandering on the beach.’

  Magda shook her head, but said nothing.

  ‘Can you comment on the mother-daughter relationship?’ Martinez ventured. ‘From the mom’s point-of-view?’

  Magda said that she could not.

  Though she remembered very clearly the remark made by the fourteen-year-old, when she had seemed to align herself with her mother.

  ‘Both crazy,’ Felicia had said.

  A disturbing statement from a young teenager, deeply troubled even before her mother had been murdered.

  ‘Two things I think I can tell you,’ she said. ‘Mrs Delgado said that Felicia had refused to see a doctor the day before they came to me. She mentioned no name, but it would probably have been because of an eye infection.’

  Sam noted that, thanked her.

  ‘The second thing?’ Martinez asked.

  ‘Mrs Delgado phoned on the evening of the eleventh to make another appointment, but then, quite abruptly, she said she had to go, and hung up.’

  ‘What time was that?’ Martinez asked.

  ‘Just after six-thirty.’

  ‘Did you hear anything in the background at her end?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ Magda said. ‘My guess was that Felicia had come in.’

  ‘You didn’t try calling her back?’ Martinez asked.

  ‘It would have been inappropriate,’ Magda said. ‘With rare exceptions, we don’t chase patients or their guardians. If they want to speak to us, they call back.’

  Not this time.

  In the corridor outside his daughter’s hospital room, Carlos Delgado told Sam and Martinez that he knew nothing about any recent visits to a doctor by Beatriz or Felicia, though the report of his daughter’s refusal did not surprise him.

  ‘Another thing they shared,’ Delgado said. ‘Avoiding doctors. In fact, I’m surprised Beatriz managed to get her to the psychologist.’

  ‘Your wife obviously wanted to help her very badly,’ Sam said.

  Delgado leaned heavily against the wall. ‘Beatriz loved Felicia very much. I never doubted that.’

  ‘One more thing,’ Martinez said.

  ‘Anything,’ Delgado said.

  ‘Do you know if your wife ever had beauty treatments at home?’

  ‘Or maybe massage or physiotherapy,’ Sam added.

  ‘Not that I know of. But I wouldn’t know, unless I paid for it.’

  They asked him to check credit card and bank details with that in mind.

  ‘It could be important,’ Sam said.

  ‘Is that what you think happened?’ Delgado’s forehead creased deeply. ‘You think maybe someone like that came in and—’

  ‘It’s just one line of inquiry,’ Sam said.

  ‘But important,’ Martinez emphasized. ‘Even just so we can rule it out.’

  ‘She used to go out to the hairdresser,’ he said. ‘I don’t know where.’

  ‘What about her nails?’ Sam asked.

  ‘I don’t know anything like that.’

  ‘One last thing,’ Sam said. ‘As the person who knows Felicia better than anyone, have you been able to get any sense as to whether this shutting down is from shock, or because she might possibly be too frightened to talk?’

  ‘You mean if she saw the killer?’ Delgado shook his head. ‘I don’t know what’s going on inside my child’s head right now, Detective. I’m not sure I’ve ever known. Shock, for sure, but I don’t know what else. I wish to God I did.’

  Delgado’s alibi for the evening before the killing was holding up, so far as it went.

  His neighbor had confirmed having heard his TV most of the evening of the eleventh, remembered because it had been a noisy sport event.

  ‘Could have gone out and left the TV turned on,’ Martinez had pointed out.

  The surveillance cameras in the building’s underground garage had recorded Delgado’s BMW entering at five-ten p.m. on May 11, and not leaving until just after eight-forty next morning to go to his office, where the school had reached him an hour or so later.

  ‘Could have gone out anytime before that without his car,’ Martinez said, back in the office on Saturday afternoon.

  ‘I know,’ Sam said.

  ‘But you’re not getting a bad feeling about him,’ Martinez said.

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Me neither.’ Martinez paused. ‘Which is more than I can say about the daughter. I hate to say it, but she creeps me out, lying there with those glasses.’

  ‘She has a phobia.’ Sam shook his head.

  ‘I know it,’ Martinez said. ‘But still, if the mom were the only victim . . .’

  May 15

  On Sunday, the whole family were at Cathy and Saul’s for brunch.

  Rain forcing them to stay inside, a little cramped, but no one complaining.

  Food in this apartment by Cathy or, sometimes, by Mel Ambonetti, Saul’s girlfriend, an anthropology student. Furniture by Saul, who’d given up studying medicine some years back to learn woodcraft, and was now a modestly successful cabinet maker with a small workshop off North Bay Road.

  Mildred
was refusing to talk about her eyes, which left too much time for Grace to tell the family about her trip, and Cathy said she should do more lecturing, and Grace agreed that she wouldn’t mind participating in the occasional future seminar.

  ‘No more trips to Europe, though,’ she said.

  ‘Sam could go with you next time,’ Saul said.

  ‘I might cramp her style,’ Sam said. ‘Put off the gorgeous young men.’

  Grace made a dismissive sound.

  ‘What was his name again, Gracie?’ Sam persisted, teasing.

  ‘You mean there was a guy?’ Cathy asked.

  ‘No need to sound so surprised,’ Mildred said.

  ‘With a beautiful woman like Grace,’ David said, ‘it’s almost inevitable.’

  ‘Oh, stop,’ Grace said.

  ‘She’s blushing,’ Saul said.

  ‘Tell us,’ Mel said.

  ‘There’s nothing to tell,’ Grace said. ‘Sam’s just teasing me.’

  ‘His name was Thomas Chauvin,’ Sam said. ‘A Frenchman.’ He grinned.

  ‘Seems he and Gracie just kept bumping into each other everywhere they went in Zurich.’

  ‘It’s a small city,’ Grace said.

  ‘And then Gracie saved his life,’ Sam said.

  ‘That’s just nonsense,’ she said.

  ‘Now even I need to know more,’ Mildred said. ‘And I’m nowhere near as nosy as the rest of this family.’

  ‘It was nothing,’ Grace said. ‘He was crossing the street, took a tumble on a tramline and I went to help him.’

  ‘She omits to mention there was a tram bearing down on them,’ Sam said.

  ‘Grace, that sounds dangerous,’ David said.

  ‘It wasn’t,’ she dismissed. ‘The driver stopped in time.’

  ‘But you didn’t know he would,’ Claudia said.

  ‘It sounds very brave, Aunt Grace,’ Robbie, Claudia’s younger son, said.

  ‘It sounds very Grace, period,’ Mike, his older brother, said.

  ‘It sounds stupid to me,’ Cathy said.

  Sam glanced at her, saw consternation in her eyes, their cornflower blue so uncannily similar to Grace’s that strangers always assumed they were biological mother and daughter.

  ‘Sweetheart, it really was no big deal,’ Grace told her.

  ‘After all we’ve been through,’ Cathy said, ‘I’d just think you’d know better.’

  ‘I have to agree,’ Claudia said.

  ‘It’s hard to leave another human being in trouble,’ Mel said, ‘if there’s something you can do about it.’

  ‘But what if the tram hadn’t stopped?’ Saul said.

  ‘It did,’ Grace said. ‘Zurich is a very safe place.’

  ‘Maybe we should change the subject?’ David suggested.

  ‘Can’t I just mention the flowers?’ Sam said.

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ Grace said.

  At fifteen minutes after three, in North Miami Beach, a young woman, responding to a buzz that she had been anticipating, opened her front door and let two callers into her apartment.

  ‘I’m not sure if I’m looking forward to this or not,’ she said.

  ‘A lot of clients get a little nervous,’ one of the callers said, ‘but there’s really no need.’

  They went into the living room to get organized.

  ‘If you are a little tense,’ the other visitor said, ‘we have just the thing.’

  All organic, apparently.

  A kind of tea made from an herb that grew exclusively in Guatemala.

  ‘We’re not talking dope, are we?’ the young woman checked.

  ‘I’ll show you the packet, if you like,’ the first visitor said. ‘Do you have any honey? It tastes great with honey.’

  ‘I’m feeling really weird,’ she said a little later.

  ‘The tea does sometimes have a slightly stronger effect on sensitive people,’ one of the visitors said. ‘But you don’t need to worry, it’ll wear off soon.’

  ‘Are you sure . . .?’

  ‘Just relax and enjoy.’

  The young woman’s pretty blue eyes were closing.

  She was already semiconscious when the two visitors assisted her into her bedroom.

  Which had been made ready.

  The last thing she was aware of was the comfort of her own bed.

  The pillows beneath her head felt strange, but . . .

  ‘It’s time,’ one of the visitors said.

  ‘I don’t want to,’ the other one said. ‘It doesn’t feel right.’

  ‘It’s exactly right,’ the other said. ‘It’s perfect. Do it now.’

  The young woman on the bed, asleep now, gave a soft moan.

  ‘Do it.’

  The detectives had returned to the office for a one-on-one brainstorming session.

  Felicia still hovering at the top of Martinez’s agenda.

  ‘So I know the chances of even a screwed up fourteen-year-old girl being Black Hole are zero. But what are the chances of Beatriz’s killing being a copycat?’

  Sam drummed his fingers on his desk. ‘OK. So let’s go over what’s out there in the public domain. Dates of killings, victims’ names and “Black Hole”, which for now, at least, could easily refer to their all having been shot in the head.’

  ‘And that the crimes were “gruesome” and “grisly”,’ Martinez added.

  The families knew more, of course, had been asked not to speak about the condition of the bodies, but stuff like that still sometimes got out, because bereaved, shattered individuals often had to talk about what they had seen.

  ‘So far as we know, no one’s leaked eyes to date,’ Sam said. ‘So I don’t see one single possibility that this vulnerable girl planned on killing her mom and making it look like the work of the latest Florida serial killer.’

  ‘OK,’ Martinez said.

  ‘So are we done with this, finally? Felicia Delgado is ruled out as anything other than a witness?’

  ‘Sure, though if we haven’t totally ruled out Carlos yet . . .’

  Sam saw where Martinez was going.

  ‘You’re thinking Felicia might have seen her father kill Beatriz,’ he said.

  ‘That’s one possibility,’ Martinez said. ‘But suppose Carlos is Black Hole, and suppose Beatriz found out.’ He paused. ‘Though if mom and daughter had both found out, then the kid would be dead too.’

  ‘Unless she ran,’ Sam said.

  ‘Dad’s with her now practically twenty-four-seven,’ Martinez said.

  ‘Officer outside her door.’ Sam paused. ‘But Delgado could be talking quietly to Felicia, threatening her.’

  ‘And we can’t listen in,’ Martinez said.

  No probable cause, and they both knew it.

  They went on playing with theories.

  ‘Suppose Beatriz found out Delgado was a killer, and Felicia overheard and didn’t believe mom, wanted to protect daddy?’ Martinez said.

  ‘That might play out if Beatriz had been stabbed or pushed down a staircase,’ Sam said. ‘Not the way it happened. No way.’

  ‘Agreed,’ Martinez said.

  ‘So do you feel Felicia needs protection from her father?’

  ‘Probably not.’

  ‘Because I’m really starting to believe he cares.’

  With nothing new to go on, they returned to the acetone smell.

  Sam’s researches had taught him all kinds of things – mostly of no use to them. That the compound occurred naturally in the human body, that acetone on the breath alerted doctors to serious diabetic situations; that it was used in a variety of cleaning products and in paints and varnishes, among other things.

  It was sometimes used to cleanse skin prior to certain medical procedures, but to date, no common ailments or physical conditions had linked the victims. And it could also be used in beauty treatments as part of the ‘defatting’ process prior to chemical exfoliation.

  No signs of chemical peels on any of the victims.

 
‘Let’s don’t forget TATP,’ Martinez said wryly.

  Referring to triacetone triperoxide, aka acetone peroxide. A high explosive popular with terrorists.

  Not looking for a bomb maker.

  About the only good news they had.

  ‘So what the fuck do we have?’ Martinez said. ‘For the investigation, never mind the press conference?’

  ‘Not a whole goddamned lot,’ Sam said.

  Depressing as hell.

  May 16

  Monday morning brought more bad news.

  An interview in the Miami Star.

  Sandy Reiner talking in depth with Michele Newton, sister of Black Hole’s Fort Lauderdale victim.

  The young woman had seemed to understand the vital importance of keeping key details about Amelia’s body out of the public domain. But at some low point, still stoked up with grief and rage, she had clearly changed her mind.

  Sandy Reiner would have said that the public had a right to know, maybe even that her silent cooperation was only serving to ease pressure on the cops. Reiner was a slick writer, a master of persuasion, his scoops regularly lifting his paper’s readership and picked up by TV news.

  So before long, just about everyone in Miami was going to know about the full horrors of Black Hole’s MO.

  And Sam and Martinez knew, just by looking at the intent, hungry crowd gathered in the sunshine on Rocky Pomerantz Plaza for the press conference, that nothing Chief Hernandez or Captain Kennedy or Special Agent Joe Duval were telling them this morning would do anything to stem the flow.

  They headed back inside when it was over, gloom pervading, certain that headlines by lunchtime would be set to terrify as many South Florida females as possible.

  Intensifying the pressure on all concerned.

  As was only right and proper.

  Mildred having agreed to take the next step, she and David had returned to Miami General to see Dr Ethan Adams.

  Almost resigned by now.

  The doctor attempted again to discuss methods of cataract removal, but she asked him to stop. He said that he preferred his patients to understand what was going to happen to them, and she said that she appreciated that.

  ‘And if we were talking about any other part of my body, I’d probably agree, but I’ve made my decision, so if it’s all the same to you –’