Shimmer (22 page)

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.

Old and suffering, as Claudia had described him.

Telling Grace, in other words, that it was almost impossible to go on hating him now, after what he'd had to endure.

She picked up Sam's pillow, cuddled it close, breathing him in.

Pushed away the pictures of the old man.

Hung on, instead, to the fact that by the time she woke, Sam would be home.

78

Cal had been waiting again, had been for a while now.

Long enough to see the black-and-whites coming and going.

And to be as sure as he could be that Sam Becket was not home, was out working late, he guessed, hoping to catch a double killer.

Triple now.

The last time he'd come here, it had been as Jerome. Weak son of Roxanne Cooper. Her whipping boy. Less than a man.

And Samuel Becket had kicked his ass.

He should not have done that.

No way.

Now Cal, son of Jewel, was holding a burger patty in one gloved hand, stuffed full with three ground up Rest-Ezee tablets, more than enough, he'd calculated, to shut that mean, growling little dog the fuck up.

Nothing but a low gate keeping him from the back of the house – and then there was the fenced-in deck with one of those doggy doors leading right inside.

Cop daddy ought to know better.

The little runt had been yapping every time the black-and-whites had come around, so aside from maybe getting pissed off, by now no one was going to be taking serious notice of him.

Something had put the wind up the local cops, that was for sure. The last patrol car had come around a few minutes ago. Another, ten minutes before that. Fifteen the time before. He'd made his decision to wait until right after the next circuit, then make his move.

She was alone, except for the kid. Cal was as sure of that as he could be.

Only one shadow passing across the windows since he'd been here.

Female.

Stepsister Grace.

He remembered the judgement in her eyes both times when he'd called.

Bitch.

She should only know what had happened to the last woman who'd looked at him that way – that would soon change her mind.

Just a little respect and ten thousand bucks.

He'd probably have taken five, if they'd offered it.

But Becket had kicked him.

Grace woke up again when Woody started barking, which had been happening like damned clockwork ever since David and Saul had left, at least every fifteen minutes, and she was beginning to wonder if she could ask the cops, ever so nicely, if they'd maybe cut down their checks to twice an hour.

But with the crime rate on the islands being among the lowest in all Florida, she guessed they were glad to help. And Sam, being one of them, having asked for the patrols, they weren't likely to pay her any heed.

Anyway, she guessed she'd rather have an interrupted night than take any chances with a man like Jerome somewhere out there . . .

She sighed, got out of bed, went to check again that Joshua hadn't woken.

Little boy, sleeping peacefully, undisturbed and enviable.

Grace wandered over to the window, saw the brake lights of the black and white just moving away, nice and slow, and felt consoled.

Which was the general idea.

‘Go to sleep,' she called softly down the staircase to Woody.

He stopped barking.

Grace went back to bed.

She slept again.

Cal knew how to be quiet.

Years of practice, tiptoeing past any room his mom was inhabiting.

He hadn't always managed it, what with Jewel having the ability to hear a fucking feather drop fifty feet away.

Witch-bitch.

But he'd learned how to be quiet.

79

The ringing was loud enough to wake the dead.

One phone on the bedside table, the cordless on the pillow beside her.

‘Yes?' Grace said into the latter, still befuddled by sleep.

‘Sweetheart, I'm sorry,' Sam's voice told her. ‘I didn't mean to wake you.'

‘I don't mind,' she said. ‘Are you at the airport?'

‘Still in the air,' he said. ‘They switched planes and this one has phones, so I took advantage.'

‘How much longer?'

‘About an hour.'

‘You must be so exhausted.' Grace felt awake now, happy to be hearing him. ‘I can't wait for you to get here. If it weren't for Joshua, I'd jump in the car and come pick you up.'

‘How is our beautiful boy?' Sam asked.

‘Gorgeous last time I looked. All innocence, arms flung out, you know.' She stretched lazily. ‘Shall I go check on him again now, tell him his daddy's on the phone?'

‘Sure,' Sam said.

‘Walk with me.' She got out of bed. ‘Isn't this horribly expensive?'

‘About five zillion bucks a second,' he said, ‘but who's counting?'

She was out of their room.

Walking into the nursery.

She knew even before she was at the crib.

‘Oh, my God.' The phone fell from her hand on to the floor.

‘Grace?' Sam's voice sounded tinny, distant.

‘Oh, dear
God
.'

‘Grace, for God's sake, what's happening?'

The world felt more distant to her than Sam's voice on the floor, travelling thirty-something thousand feet up in the sky. Grace's world was spinning around her, she was down on her knees, scrabbling for the phone, and then she was up again, running like a wild, mad thing down the staircase, into the kitchen, into the den, back out into the hall, back up the stairs again in case she was wrong, crazy, in case she was the greatest fool in the world, in case she'd made a mistake.

‘He's gone.'

Unreal words, ripping agonizingly out of someplace in her heart.

‘Sam, he's been
taken
!'

80

The kid was in a wicker basket that Cal had bought earlier from a tourist shop in Surfside, the basket strapped to Daisy's back seat with a blue dog leash and a white plastic belt.

Quiet now, the baby, a nice enough little thing, cute too, as brown babies went, at least in the dark, and he hadn't even screamed when the stranger had picked him up out of his crib – until Cal had put his hand over his little mouth, and then he'd tried to make plenty of noise, for sure, but no one had heard – not even the dog, who was sleeping the sleep of greed, which served the little shit right. And Cal didn't know or care how much Rest-Ezee might be too much for a little dog, but the kid had settled down in the basket, and he'd read someplace that babies liked motion, that moms and dads sometimes took their yelling brats out in their cars to quieten them down, so maybe he and this kid might be lucky.

The longest ride of his life had barely begun, he knew that. He'd stayed on Collins, because though it seemed endless on the tandem, and his legs were already hurting from pumping the pedals, and his back and shoulders were still sore from taking care of Tabby, it was still straighter and easier than taking back roads. And he'd taken a gamble on no one having seen him – and face it, no one had, because otherwise they'd have been on him already, wouldn't they, black-and-whites and maybe unmarked cars cutting him off and slamming him and Daisy to a halt. But there weren't any cop cars and not a whole lot of life of any kind out here tonight, so he was planning on staying on Collins until 63rd, and then he'd be on Alton, and at least then he'd feel like he was getting someplace.

His biggest problem right now, aside from the pain, was having too much time to think about what he was doing.

About what he'd done earlier that evening.

Because all this was – there was no denying it – premeditated. Which meant that Cal knew now, without any fragments of doubt to console him, that he had become an evil man.

He began to feel an urge to weep as he cycled through the warm night.

When he was done with this, he would have to punish himself again,
deeper
wounds this time, deeper than any he'd ever inflicted on himself or anyone else.

When he was done with this.

When he was
done
.

81

Screaming in his head.

Grace's and his own.

And all Sam could do was make lousy phone calls from the sky.

His hands were shaking, and his voice, too, and his body, inside and out.

Trying to stay in control, only just making it.

Bay Harbor PD first, because Joshua had been taken in their jurisdiction, and this had to be done right, and he knew they would do that, knew they would have done that for any child, let alone the baby son of one of their own. They would bring in FDLE and the Child Abduction Response Team and – if Jerome Cooper acted on previous
known
form and got in touch, demanding a ransom – then the FBI would come in, too. And if Sam heard so much as a flicker of hesitation in the voice of whoever he spoke to, he would make all those calls himself, haul every last special agent and investigator and detective out of their beds and into Miami Beach, but for now, at least, he was going to do it by the book.

And one of the things he wished to Christ he could do right now was to wipe every damnable learned statistic from his own policeman's mind, because the facts were that forty-four per cent of abducted children were killed within the first hour of being taken, seventy-four per cent within three hours, ninety-one within twenty-four hours, rising to ninety-nine per cent in seven days.

Screaming in his head.

The call to Bay Harbor had been made – and Sam had heard no hesitation, no fumbling, just clear and positive help – and so now he was calling Martinez, because jurisdiction and correctness aside, Alejandro Martinez was his trusted friend and a damned fine detective, and if there was just one extra step that could be taken, Martinez would go for it.

Another thirty minutes at least in the air.

The number was ringing.

Don't be scared, Joshua,
he told his sweet baby boy.
Daddy's coming.

Martinez picked up his cell phone.

His voice sounded bad, like he already knew.

‘I got bad news,' he said, right off. ‘Someone – I guess Cooper – got to Mildred.'

Another fracture in Sam's breaking heart.

‘Al, I got worse news,' he told his friend.

82

In a line of passengers just debarked from the seven thirty out of Chicago O'Hare, a tall, lean, blonde woman in a white trouser suit walked with the rest through Concourse D at Miami International, passing the desperadoes in the smoking room.

It was a long walk, even bypassing the baggage claim, and all the while she was still half expecting a uniform to step out ahead of her, as she'd anticipated earlier that evening at O'Hare. But either, she supposed, Becket and Claudia were still trussed up, or maybe she'd hit him harder than she'd thought; or maybe her crimes just didn't merit urgent messages to airports the way they seemed to on TV, or maybe the police in Melrose Park or Cook County were just plain sloppy.

It had been sloppy of her, too, to have paid for her ticket with her MasterCard, but even if she'd had enough cash to pay with, that might have attracted more immediate attention, and then after she'd used the card anyway, she'd figured she might as well use it again to take money out of an ATM. All of which meant that they would be tracing her to Miami by morning at the latest, but she'd just have to worry about that then.

After she'd found Jerome.

She might never have troubled to track him down again, let alone gone to this much trouble to save his miserable hide if Claudia had not come back to Melrose Park just to tell her and Frank about his botched blackmail attempts.

As well for his mother to know what Jerome had been up to.

High time she found him and put a stop to his nonsense before he got himself into real trouble, got himself put back in the slammer.

Everyone had their purpose, even her pathetic older stepdaughter.

Frank had always said she was the weaker of the two sisters.

Though at least Claudia had made a decent marriage, unlike the other one.