Eclipse (21 page)

‘Moment ago, it was ninety per cent,' Martinez said. ‘You want me to come and join you, man?'

‘I don't think so,' Sam said. ‘But I'll stay in touch.'

‘You do that,' his partner said.

Martinez hung up, not entirely happy because like all the detectives, they never went on calls alone. Though this, of course, wasn't official, this was just Sam Becket going on what sounded like a wild goose chase.

Except that Sam had used the words ‘gut feeling'.

Which made Martinez a little uncomfortable.

Toni Petit was still driving carefully and steadily.

Which spoke against migraine, Sam thought, because people who suffered those tended to drive either erratically or too slowly, and those who got aura with their headaches often pulled over because their vision was impaired.

This woman was driving normally.

Even less of a crime than taking too many photos of a person.

Sam's mind flicked back to Chauvin, who had, albeit briefly, spooked his daughter and angered his wife, and his own hands tightened on the wheel.

His eyes moved to the rearview mirror, then narrowed and focused ahead again, concentrating on maintaining the tail on the Honda.

He wondered if Toni was going home or someplace else.

Either way, he was staying with her.

Mildred had been sleeping.

Her left eye was covered with a plastic shield, and she had a cannula in a vein in her left arm attached to a drip feed, and she'd asked David why she needed that, and he'd assured her that it would only be there until she felt well enough to eat and drink normally.

‘If I hadn't had anesthesia, I wouldn't need it,' she'd said, shaking her head. ‘Such a wimp.'

‘But a happy one, who didn't need to know anything about her surgery,' David said. ‘Remember to keep your head still.'

‘Yes, Doctor.' Mildred had smiled at him, and drifted off to sleep.

Awake again now.

‘I don't know why you don't go home.'

‘Because I want to be with you,' David said.

The room was dimly lit, and she didn't know how her operated eye was doing because it was covered, but her right eye was just as before, and anyway, even without looking at her husband, she knew that he was doing his ‘sentinel' thing. Keeping watch on her lest she experience the slightest problem.

Her problems behind her now, thank the Lord, at least for a while.

The remnants of the anesthesia still working on her very nicely.

There would, of course, be tomorrow to contend with. Dr Adams coming to check on his handiwork, maybe one of the other younger doctors doing the same. And then there'd be follow-ups . . .

Stop that.

She reminded herself how Ethan Adams had made her feel just before the procedure; almost confident, so far as she could recall.

And she did feel fairly confident of his skill now, so, provided it had worked and her vision was as improved as everyone said it would be, she might even agree to having the right eye done in due course.

Not that she would be hurried into that.

And she didn't need to think about it now. Not with this pleasant, sleepy buzz still coursing through her.

‘You should go home,' she told David. ‘Or at least go get some dinner.'

Right on cue, David's stomach rumbled, and he laughed.

‘Guess you might be right about that,' he said.

For a while now, Sam had felt pretty sure that he'd picked up a tail of his own.

It was always hard to be certain on a busy Interstate, but it seemed to him that the driver of the car in question had been working hard to keep close but not too close, ducking in and out.

An amateur, for sure.

White car. Hell of a popular color.

Sam ignored it, stayed focused on Toni's car.

Three vehicles now between the Saab and Honda, but he saw her right indicator start flashing.

Exit up ahead.

Maybe heading to Miami Beach.

More choices up soon.

Sam took the right turn-off, checked and saw that the white car was still with him, just one pickup truck between them.

Starting to tick him off . . .

Not going to Miami Beach, Toni turned right instead onto West Hallandale Beach Boulevard, then left onto NW 2nd Avenue, and Sam followed, his own suspect tail coming with them . . .

And then, finally, on Foster Avenue, in a quiet, dark piece of Hallandale that neither Sam nor any other cop would have especially chosen to visit on their own, the Honda finally came to a halt.

Sam, holding back by a few hundred yards, slowed to a crawl.

He watched Toni Petit get out of her car, lock up, then walk toward a beat-up looking little house set well back from the road, and go inside.

Letting herself in, so far as he could see.

Still edging forward, he looked in his rearview mirror.

‘Goddamn it,' he said.

He slammed on his brakes, got out of the Saab, sprinted back toward the other car.

A white Ford Focus rental.

Anger filling him.

‘Get the fuck out of the car,' he told the driver.

Thomas Chauvin opened the door slowly, warily, and got out.

The five inches height between them suddenly seemed a whole lot more.

‘I know,' he said. ‘And I'm sorry.'

‘What the hell do you think you're doing?' Sam demanded.

‘Being an asshole, I guess.' Chauvin was meek.

‘You got that right,' Sam said. ‘What are you, eight years old?'

‘I got a little carried away,' the Frenchman said. ‘I guess I was in the zone, you know?'

‘No, I don't know,' Sam said. ‘Nor do I know what you thought you were doing in my house and my daughter's apartment earlier today, and we'll be getting back to that some time real soon. But right this minute I just want you to get back in this car, turn your butt around and get the hell back to Surfside, or I will get your ass kicked right out of this country.'

‘Am I allowed to ask what—?'

‘No,' Sam said.

‘Just get in the car, right?' Chauvin said.

‘
Now
,' Sam said.

David had given in, and had gone to get some dinner.

Hungry now. Food suddenly a metaphor for the goodness of the life he looked forward to sharing with his wife. A woman tough enough to cope all by herself for years on the streets, yet too fragile, too human, to want to face up to something she'd felt ‘squeamish' about.

An understated word for something that had, of course, been a fear of phobic proportions. And yet, with a little help and encouragement, she had faced that too.

Great lady.

So now he could eat. Now he was suddenly starving.

Chops came to mind. With mashed potatoes and, maybe, a glass of wine.

Mildred was OK.

That merited a celebration.

More of that when they got her home.

Mildred was sleeping.

Dreaming.

In her dream, she was sitting on the smooth sand at South Beach, all alone, watching two men walking slowly away from her. One quite old, one young, but both walking evenly, their pace matched. Donny, her late fiancé, and David.

They were leaving her, but she did not feel sad because she was too compelled by what was happening up in the sky to keep her eyes trained on the men.

The light was dying, the sun itself slowly disappearing.

No clouds anywhere, a perfectly clear sky, yet darkness was spreading.

‘It's just an eclipse,' Mildred said to herself.

‘Don't watch,' Edith Bleeker, her mother, told her, ‘or you'll go blind.'

But Mildred knew there was nothing to fear, and anyway, her mother had told her not to marry Donny, and she had thought him long dead, but there he'd just been, walking on the beach with David, so if she wanted to watch the eclipse, she was going to do just that.

And oh, Lord, what a sight it was as totality began, and the corona she'd only ever read about, only ever seen on television, blazed into the blackness, and oh, my, it was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen, and there was nothing at all to be afraid of, and she was just going to look and look until . . .

‘Mrs Becket?'

The voice woke her.

The brightness of the light from the corridor outside her room made her right eye blink.

Dr Wiley was looking in on her. ‘How's my favorite patient doing?' he asked.

Which irritated Mildred, because he had broken her wonderful dream, and because she was sure that she was no one's favorite patient.

‘I was sleeping,' she said.

‘That's good,' Dr Wiley said. ‘How are you feeling?'

‘I don't know,' Mildred said pointedly. ‘I was asleep.'

‘No nausea?'

‘No.'

‘What about the eye?'

The eye was exactly what she had just been enjoying
not
thinking about, though she guessed the dream about the eclipse and, in particular, her mother's warning, indicated that her fears were still alive, and if she had been allowed to continue dreaming, maybe the worst would have happened, maybe she would have been blinded, so Dr Wiley might have done her a favor, after all.

‘It feels all right,' she answered him.

‘No pain?'

‘A little discomfort earlier. Not really pain, and it's fine now.'

The doctor closed the door quietly, came over to the bed and took her hand, startling her a little in the semidarkness, her eye shield limiting her vision.

‘What are you doing?' she asked.

‘Just taking your pulse,' George Wiley said.

‘I think my pulse is perfectly fine.'

‘Just routine,' the doctor told her.

Mildred sighed.

‘I expect you'll be glad to get home again,' Wiley said.

‘Oh, yes,' she said. ‘Though right now, I'd settle for some more sleep.'

‘I'm sorry,' Dr Wiley said. ‘Almost done.'

In the dim light she saw him take something from a pocket of his white coat. ‘What now?' she asked, a little tetchily.

‘Nothing for you to worry about,' he said.

Now he was starting to sound almost like Ethan Adams at his most irritating.

He was holding an ophthalmoscope, bending forward.

‘What are you doing?' Mildred asked, startled again.

‘Just going to take a quick look at the other eye,' he said.

‘Doctor Adams said I was here tonight so I could rest. He said he'd be here in the morning to look at my eye.'

‘Please just be still, Mrs Becket,' Dr Wiley told her.

Mildred felt suddenly too nervous to do otherwise, and she was almost getting accustomed to having her eyes examined, but that didn't mean she liked it, and certainly not when it wasn't necessary.

The bright light moved away, and she blinked.

‘And now, we'll just take a look at this,' Wiley said.

Maybe, Mildred thought, this was another dream, and if it was, she decided it was probably about time she woke up . . .

The doctor was putting both hands around the back of her head, and she realized that he was feeling for the elastic holding the eye shield.

‘I don't think you should be doing that, Doctor.' Now she felt agitated. ‘I was told not to touch that.'

‘Who's the doctor here?' George Wiley said.

Not a dream, she knew that now, yet still there was a strangely unpleasant quality to what was happening.

‘Please,' she said, ‘put it back.'

‘Don't be silly,' Wiley told her. ‘This is for your own good.'

She did not like his tone at all, and
what
was for her own good? She wished that David would come back, wished she hadn't pushed him to go out for dinner.

The shield was off and her eye felt naked, vulnerable.

‘Please, Doctor Wiley, put back the shield.'

‘Now, now,' the doctor said.

He leaned in closer again, placed one finger of his left hand on her eyebrow and his thumb on her cheek, and began to pull open her eye.

‘What are you
doing
?' Mildred asked, alarmed.

‘I told you, don't be silly, Mrs Becket,' Wiley said.

And then, with her other, better eye, she saw that he had some kind of instrument in his right hand.

‘Get that away from me!'

The doctor leaned in even closer, and suddenly Mildred knew she had to do something she'd never done before.

She screamed – and then she pushed him away, and as he stumbled, his left hand struck her operated eye and she cried out.

‘You stupid woman,' Wiley snapped.

The door opened.

‘What's going on?' David took in the scene, saw his wife cowering against the pillows, the young doctor standing over her. ‘What the hell are you doing?'

Wiley stepped away from the bed, slid his right hand into his pocket. ‘Your wife's a little upset.'

‘He had something in his hand, David.' Mildred was breathless. ‘Some kind of instrument. I could see he was going to poke it in my eye, so I screamed and pushed him away and his hand – his knuckles – hit me.'

‘Nonsense.' Wiley smiled at David. ‘Your wife was having a bad dream. I saw that she'd pulled the shield off her eye, and I was trying to make sure she hadn't hurt herself.'

‘That's a lie,' Mildred protested. ‘I was asleep until you woke me, and started taking my pulse and shining lights in my other eye.' She felt something trickle out of her operated eye, gasped, raised her hand . . .

‘Don't touch it,' David told her. ‘It looks OK, but best not to touch it.'

He was shaking with fury now, the only thing stopping him from punching Wiley the knowledge that getting himself arrested would not help Mildred.

‘I'd like to see that instrument,' he said.

Wiley laughed. ‘There was no instrument.'

David turned and pressed the red emergency button on the wall.

‘That's entirely unnecessary,' Wiley told him.