Eclipse (24 page)

Not off enough for him to take a gamble.

Close enough to kill him.

Clearly, Kate Petit had enough sight for that.

Enough vision, therefore, hypothetically, to make her Black Hole.

Sam's chair sagged, felt lumpy, suggesting financial straits.

No financial gain anyone knew of from the killings.

Both women were still standing.

‘Toni?' He looked up at her. ‘You said you need to talk.'

Maker of theatrical costumes.

Sister, it now seemed possible, of a serial killer.

Of a monster.

Toni sat on the couch to Sam's right. She was pale, and if he'd thought she'd looked tired earlier, now he perceived the kind of weariness that ate right through to the bone.

Or maybe the soul.

She looked up at her sister. ‘It's time, Kate,' she said. ‘I want to tell him.'

Sam looked at Kate Petit, her eyes completely shielded by the glasses.

Dark glasses a recurring theme in the case, though not in all the killings.

Eye coverings of different kinds. Not covering
eyes
at all . . .

He suppressed a shudder.

‘Your funeral,' Kate said to her sister.

She stooped to pick up a shabby, claret-colored cushion from the couch, then lowered herself onto the footstool, all the time keeping the handgun directed at Sam.

The cushion as a silencer perhaps, Sam registered.

Black Hole had used cushions for that purpose.

He looked at the muzzle of the weapon, and images of his loved ones passed swiftly through his mind, as they always had when he'd faced mortal danger.

One day his luck would run out.

Kate positioned the cushion on her thighs, rested her forearms on it.

Not just yet, Sam thought.

‘May as well get comfy,' she said.

A little less harsh, perhaps; a note of something else, something almost seductive.

And deeply, intensely dangerous.

‘What shall we talk about first, big sister?' Kate asked. ‘How about life back in good ole Louisiana?'

Toni Petit seemed to sag a little, her narrow shoulders drooping.

And then she straightened, took a breath and began to talk.

The years dropping away.

On her way to Delgado's home, Grace had tried Sam again, and now, as she parked her car on Country Club Drive just before eleven o'clock, she called Martinez instead.

‘Hey,' he said. ‘What's up, Grace? You're mobile?'

Grace explained about Delgado's call, asked if Martinez had talked to Sam.

‘No, but he left me a message. First chance, I'll tell him where you are.'

‘And that Joshua's at Claudia's, so he doesn't need to worry about us.'

‘You think this could be a breakthrough with the girl?' Martinez asked.

Grace knew he was talking about the case, not Felicia's health.

‘Too soon to tell,' she said.

‘And if it is, you won't be saying,' Martinez said. ‘Just don't forget to tell us if you think she's ready to be interviewed, Gracie.'

‘I won't forget.' She paused, her chest feeling tight. ‘Al, is Sam OK?'

‘He sounded fine. I'm on my way to meet him now. So you go do what you gotta do, Doc, and I'll go check on our guy.'

‘Thanks, Al,' Grace said. ‘And you both be careful, please.'

‘Always,' Martinez said.

‘And make sure he calls me when he can.'

‘You got it,' he said.

Grace put the phone in her bag, took a moment.

Whatever he'd said, Martinez was troubled about something.

Didn't mean it had to be Sam.

But if Martinez was worried, then she was too.

She sighed, got out of the car, locked it.

Forced herself to direct her concentration on Felicia Delgado.

And whatever it was that she wanted to tell her.

‘Will you be OK if I go get a little fresh air?' David asked Mildred.

Alvarez and Riley had departed just minutes before, on their way to find George Wiley.

‘I wish you wouldn't,' Mildred said.

‘I want to check on Adams, too,' David said. ‘See what's holding him up.'

Mildred shook her head.

‘Please try and keep your head still,' David reminded her. ‘And rest a little.'

‘I'll rest better if you stay with me.'

‘I just need some air,' he persisted. ‘A few minutes.'

‘Please be careful,' she said.

‘I know we have pollution,' David said lightly, ‘but I don't think five minutes of Florida air's going to kill me.'

Mildred's uncovered eye looked at him hard.

‘Please don't do anything foolish, old man,' she told him.

‘I don't plan to,' he told her.

And was out the door in an instant.

‘Oh, dear Lord,' Mildred said quietly.

They had lived on a farm in south Louisiana. A widowed father and his two daughters, soybean and corn their main crops, their lives comfortable and, to outsiders, contented and respectable.

Except that Jacques Grand – Jake to his friends, an attractive, hard-bodied, hard-working farmer – had been sexually abusing his older daughter, Antoinette, without compunction or constraint for years. Until one day in the fall of 1987 when she was ten, an hour after he had raped her once too often, Toni – as she was known – had summoned all her courage and had gone looking for him. Finding him in one of the barns, she told Jake that if he ever touched her again, she would tell her teachers exactly what he had been doing to her.

Toni had not seen Katherine, her eight-year-old sister, come into the barn behind her.

Had not realized that Kate had heard every word.

Kate, who adored their papa.

So that when Jake Grand had gone crazy, had called Toni a ‘lying bitch whore' and thrown a pitchfork at her, Toni had ducked, and the big lethal tool had flown over her head and speared Kate's left eye.

In the local hospital, Jake said that Kate had tripped and fallen onto the pitchfork, and Toni, who had used up her resources of courage, did not contradict him because, after all, the pitchfork had been meant for
her
, and if she hadn't ducked, this terrible thing would not have happened to her little sister.

Kate had lost the sight in that eye. And because her right eye was already severely myopic, the child was now seriously sight impaired. Glasses were vital, but Kate had always disliked them. Now that she was virtually blind without them, she hated them more than ever, deliberately and repeatedly losing or breaking them. An optician suggested a contact lens, but Kate said it hurt her, wept when made to insert it, then took it out and stamped on it.

‘I'm so sorry, baby, I'm so sorry,' Jake would tell her over and over, crucified with guilt because of what he'd done to her.

‘It's OK, Papa,' Kate always told him. ‘It was Toni's fault, not yours.'

For a while after that, Jake had left Toni alone, and so far as she knew, he never laid a finger on Kate. Yet her younger sister seemed sexually aware, and when the day came that Jake caught Kate masturbating, he yelled at her, said she was a whore, just like her sister.

The beatings started after that.

Always against Toni.

‘Without you,' Jake lashed at her, ‘your sister would have her sight! Without you, she would have remained
decent
.'

Kate knew all about it, saw Toni cowering, heard her cries of pain and fear, but since there was nothing she could do about it, and since she believed their father was right about it all being Toni's fault, she never protested, and anyway, Jake still did everything for her, was the perfect daddy.

And then one day in 1992, Toni couldn't take it anymore.

‘It was during Andrew,' she said now, almost twenty years later.

It took Sam a second to realize that she was talking about Hurricane Andrew, which had hit Louisiana after it had smashed through Florida, and he was so sucked into Toni's tale that he might
almost
have forgotten the gun pointed at him.

1992. Toni would have been fifteen. Kate thirteen.

‘Jake had two guns,' Toni said. ‘An old Remington pump-action shotgun, and his Colt pistol.'

‘This one,' Kate said.

It was the first time she'd spoken since Toni had begun, but there was excitement of a kind building in her now, Sam could almost feel it.

Whereas Toni, the storyteller, seemed calm.

In the eye of her own storm.

‘Papa had beaten me that morning for no reason at all.' She shook her head, her dark eyes distant. ‘The weather had made me feel strange – I'm often affected by storms, but not like that. It seemed to be feeding something inside me – strength, maybe.' She looked at Sam. ‘I went looking for the Remington. I'd always admired it, and our father loved it. I'd held it a few times, trying to absorb its power, I guess, but it always scared me too.'

She stopped.

The room was silent. No more sounds except the low hum of cars and, now and then, farther away, sirens.

‘That day, he'd used his belt and fists and he'd kicked me, too – and I was just so sick of it. And we'd all been hearing about the hurricane coming, and the wind was whipping up, and the storm was making me feel . . .' Toni tailed off, then blinked. ‘So anyway, I found the shotgun, and picked it up and went looking for him. And found him.'

‘Only I'd been following her again,' Kate said. ‘I'd seen her take the gun.'

A slight tremor shook her hands, but she steadied herself, appeared very controlled, Sam thought, and the Colt that had once been their father's was still pointed at him, and he had to presume that her dark glasses were prescription, that the vision in her right eye was perfectly corrected . . .

‘Kate saw me take aim,' Toni said, ‘and she shouted out and ran at me, dragged the gun away from me. She was stronger than I'd realized, but still, if I'd fought her harder, I could have kept hold of it, but I remember being afraid that the gun might go off and shoot her, so I let her have it.'

Sam waited.

‘And then a tree, a Bald Cypress – our very own Louisiana state tree – decided it couldn't take the wind one second longer, and it fell, and I could see that it was going to hit Kate, so I hauled her out the way, and the gun went off and hit our father right between his eyes.'

‘It made a big, black hole,' Kate said, and shuddered.

A long shudder, seeming to pass all the way to her fingertips.

Yet still she held fast to the Colt.

‘That was the moment when my mind came back,' Toni said. ‘And when my little sister lost hers.'

Mildred's floor had been deserted except for a single nurse at the station near the elevators.

‘I'm looking for Doctor Wiley,' David had told her casually.

‘First-floor lounge.' She smiled. ‘I just directed your friends.'

Friends and plain-clothes cops.

He'd debated. Four stories down. Old legs and heart. Had chosen the elevator.

He'd tried to sit it out with Mildred, just wait, like the retiree he was supposed to be, and let the cops do their job, and if anyone respected the police, it was surely David Becket, whose pride in his detective son frequently filled his soul to bursting point. And Mike Alvarez and Beth Riley were more likely than anyone, except perhaps Sam, to see to it that that man – that
doctor
– got his.

Yet he had not been able to sit it out. He wanted – needed – to see with his own eyes the moment when George Wiley was placed under arrest and removed from the Adams Clinic.

He needed to
know
that Mildred was safe from him.

On the first floor, he saw them. The lieutenant and the sergeant and
him.

They were talking. Alvarez was just
talking
to the sonofabitch.

David strode toward them. ‘Why haven't you cuffed him?'

‘It's OK, Doctor Becket,' Alvarez told him, ‘but I'd rather you stayed—'

‘What's OK about it?' David erupted. ‘This man needs restraining, he needs locking up.'

‘We're dealing with it,' Riley told him quietly.

‘Did you find the instrument,' David demanded, ‘or did he get rid of it? Lord knows he had plenty of time.'

‘I'm just giving these officers my side of the story,' George Wiley said. ‘Two sides to every story, Doctor Becket, remember?'

‘Don't you dare patronize me, you—'

‘Hey,' Alvarez said gently. ‘Let's take it easy here.'

‘I was just telling the lieutenant about Mrs Becket's hysteria about her eyes,' Wiley said. ‘The fact that her considerable overreaction to eye exams was well-documented even before she checked in here.'

‘What the hell is going
on
here?' David turned on Alvarez. ‘Why is this man being allowed to talk about my wife this way?'

‘Diazepam before the simplest of eye tests,' Wiley went on. ‘If Doctor Ethan Adams were not so understanding—'

‘So help me,' David said to Alvarez, ‘if you don't shut this man up, I will.'

‘Hey,' Beth Riley said. ‘Take it easy.'

She reached out to touch David's forearm, but he pulled away.

‘I wouldn't have dreamed of mentioning such things,' Wiley went on, ‘but medicine is my life, and I just can't allow a neurotic patient—'

‘OK, that's enough.' Alvarez took a stand. ‘George Wiley, I am arresting you on suspicion of simple battery.'

‘
Simple
,' David said, still fit to explode.

‘You won't make it stick,' Wiley told the lieutenant, then turned back to David. ‘And you will regret it, Doctor Becket.'

In silence, Riley cuffed him.

‘Anything you say,' Alvarez began.

‘What a very nice scene,' a voice said from behind them.

Ethan Adams's eyes were angry.