Caged (31 page)

‘Gracie, sweetheart.’ Sam was beside her, a towel in his hand, helping her.

‘Jerome,’ she said. ‘He’s on the ship. He was talking to me out on deck.’

She was still shaking, perspiring, and Sam eased her up off the floor, gave her water, helped her out of the bathroom to the bed, sat her down, then crouched, staring into her face. ‘What happened? Did he hurt you?’

‘He didn’t touch me,’ Grace said, a sense of unreality overcoming her. ‘He just talked to me, said something about his boat, the
Baby
 . . .’ Her eyes were huge with fear. ‘And then he asked about Joshua.’

‘What did he say?’ Sam was taut, old rage returning, new fury erupting.

‘He just said: “How is your little one, by the by?” And then I ran.’

‘But you saw him, before you ran?’

‘Just a shape in the dark – I couldn’t be sure,’ Grace said. ‘But it was definitely his voice.’

Sam’s mind was racing, trying to keep control. ‘Might it have been a recording of his voice?’

‘I guess it’s possible.’ She took a deep breath, steadying herself. ‘Though even if it was, it still means Jerome’s alive and playing tricks, doesn’t it?’

‘I can’t think of a better explanation,’ Sam said grimly.

He straightened up, heading for the phone.

‘How would he have known I was going to go for a walk?’ Grace said.

‘I don’t know,’ Sam said.

‘He must have been waiting, watching,’ she said, feeling sick again. ‘He’s probably been watching us the whole trip.’

Sam picked up the phone, pushed the key for Guest Relations, waited.

‘I need to see the captain,’ he said.

NINETY-FIVE

T
he captain was unavailable and not, in any case, Sam was informed, the right person to talk to.

The ship’s security chief, a man of around fifty named Arlo Larsen, was lanky and bespectacled, putting Grace in mind of James Stewart, perhaps too affable and laid-back, she and Sam both felt at the outset, to be as effective as they needed him to be. Especially as Mr Larsen was probably more accustomed to dealing with complaints of theft or gambling-related frauds than with inconclusive sightings of presumed-dead psychopaths.

‘If this man was on board at two a.m.,’ Larsen told them in his office in the Passenger Relations department on Deck Five, ‘then he’ll still be on the
Stardust
now, which means there’s every chance we’ll be able to find him before he disembarks.’

A photograph of Jerome Cooper lay on his desk, faxed to the ship by one of the night shift back at South Beach after an urgent satellite call from Sam to Mike Alvarez at home, and the sergeant himself had spoken to Larsen to confirm the Beckets’ credentials and the seriousness of the old case.

‘You have to remember we’re talking about a full-blown psycho killer and child kidnapper,’ Sam reminded him now.

‘I understand that, Detective Becket,’ Larsen said. ‘And I also understand that even if the voice you heard – ’ he looked at Grace – ‘does turn out to have been a recording of some kind, it makes it no less sinister.’

‘You have to search the ship,’ Sam said. ‘Whether it’s for Cooper or a recording machine.’

‘The ship will be thoroughly checked after debarkation,’ Larsen said.

‘And meantime, what?’ Frustration fed Sam’s anger. ‘You let him stroll off?’

‘Of course not,’ Larsen said, ‘but you know better than most, Detective, that we can’t conduct any personal or property searches without a warrant.’

‘If it was a tape,’ Grace said, ‘it’s probably been thrown overboard.’

‘I agree.’ Behind the spectacles, Larsen’s narrow blue eyes were couched in wrinkles. ‘But so far as the man goes, or perhaps his accomplice, in my experience people who want to go on living tend not to jump off moving cruise ships out at sea. If this was your man, he sounds more like a survivor than a suicide.’

‘Jerome Cooper blew up a cruiser while he was still on board,’ Sam said.

‘Then we’d have to say that if he jumped tonight, he’s gone,’ Larsen said. ‘But since I seriously doubt that, we’ll proceed as if there’s a good chance he’s still with us, presumably under an alias.’

‘So if you can’t search,’ Sam asked, ‘what do you plan to do?’

‘Everything possible,’ Larsen said, ‘without causing alarm to our other passengers, especially since there’s no proof of any threat to them—’

‘If this is Cooper,’ Sam said, ‘you can’t assume that.’

‘Of course not,’ Larsen said. ‘But the fact seems to be that if it was Cooper who spoke to you, Mrs Becket, he made no overt threat.’

‘It certainly felt threatening to me,’ she said.

‘I’m sure it did,’ Larsen said gravely. ‘For now, I’d like the three of us to take a walk around Deck Seven with a couple of flashlights, see if this man left any trace behind.’

‘Good.’ Sam stood up. ‘I’ve noticed you have CCTV.’

Larsen nodded. ‘Cameras on all decks, and my people are already checking the time in question.’ He paused. ‘The most time-consuming task will be checking Cooper’s photograph against our passenger and crew photos. With the best will in the world, I’d say there’s zero chance of completing that before we disembark.’ He opened the door for them. ‘But we’ll do our very best.’

They found nothing out on deck, and though Larsen’s team were able to track Grace at two points on her walk, there was not a single figure on the CCTV footage even remotely fitting Cooper’s description.

‘My best advice to you,’ the security chief told them at four a.m., ‘is to get yourselves some rest, since we’ll be docking in about an hour and a half.’

‘Nice idea,’ Sam said, ‘but with debarkation starting at around eight—’

‘Eight thru ten,’ Larsen confirmed.

The
Stardust
had a disembarkation schedule similar to that of most large cruise ships, organizing passengers into manageable groups to stagger the customs and immigration process, departure itself via two main gangways.

‘We’re scheduled for eight thirty,’ Sam said, ‘but I’d appreciate our being allowed to stay on board until the last group.’

‘You have in mind, I daresay,’ Larsen said, ‘being in a position to view passengers as they leave.’ He took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes, put them back on. ‘If none of the officials raise any objection, I think we’ll find a way to arrange that.’

‘We’d be very grateful,’ Grace said.

The security chief threw her a sympathetic glance. ‘Not the finale to your cruise you had in mind, Mrs Becket.’

‘Not exactly,’ she agreed.

Neither the Fort Lauderdale police, nor the customs and immigration officers who came on board the
Stardust
, objected to their scrutinizing passengers as they left the ship, and Arlo Larsen told Sam and Grace that the job of checking passenger photographs against Cooper’s shot would continue till completion.

‘If that man is or has been on the
Stardust
,’ Larsen assured Sam, ‘then unless he’s altered his appearance considerably . . .’

‘Which is possible,’ Sam said.

‘But if he has not,’ Larsen went on, ‘we should at least find out if he was on board.’

Watching from two separate vantage points was arduous and dispiriting, their eyes burning as they struggled to concentrate on one face after another, and Sam and Grace both knew before they’d gotten halfway through that it was hopeless.

Not going to happen.

And definitely not, as Arlo Larsen had said, the way they’d have chosen to end a beautiful trip.

More than anything, it was frustrating as hell.

No sign of Cooper anyplace they looked.

Cal the Hater was gone again.

NINETY-SIX

M
artinez was more than glad to be home.

But he was not a happy man.

He had known, ever since he’d been back to being coherent, that something was up with Jess, that the sparkle in those pretty eyes when she looked at him had gone. She’d still been kind and attentive, hell, she’d been sweet as ever – yet something about her had been
off.

And she’d been hiding something from him too, though he hadn’t been able to figure out what it might be, and it had been bugging him.

Driving him nuts, to be honest.

If not for that, he didn’t think he’d have stooped so low as to do what he had yesterday.

He’d waited until she was taking a shower, and then he’d taken a look in the canvas shoulder bag she carried with her everywhere.

He wasn’t sure why he’d done that, didn’t think he’d been expecting to find anything significant, had felt lousy even as he’d opened it, a real fink, as a matter of fact, but something had kept pushing him, goading him on.

He’d found more than he’d bargained for, that was for sure.

A small bound notebook, not much bigger than a wallet, stuffed inside a zipped compartment in the bag; the book filled with tidy notations, with reports and statistics and conclusions.

About rats.

About goddamned, frigging
rats
.

So he’d had it out with her.

‘Are you crazy or something?’ he’d asked her straight out of the shower, one of the new white towels he’d bought for her still wrapped around her wet body. ‘Are you a secret scientist or just a whack job?’

Not the gentlest way to talk to his fiancée.

But after what he’d just been through . . .

‘I could have died,’ he reminded her.

‘You think I don’t know that?’ Jess said.

Her face was very pale again, the way it had looked when he’d been in the hospital, while she’d seemed so scared for him.

‘But they were asking if I’d been in contact with rats anyplace,’ Martinez said, ‘and Sam came here to check it out, and his dad told me you were horrified and saying what if you had rats at your place and you didn’t know it, then that would mean you’d done that to me.’ He was shaking suddenly, trembling with exhaustion, and Dr Friedman had said he’d need time to get over this, that he had to take things easy and avoid stress, but he couldn’t help himself. ‘And all that time you were keeping fucking rats and you didn’t
tell
them?’

‘I’m sorry,’ Jess said.

‘You’re
sorry
.’ He had taken a moment, trying to calm himself down. ‘Why the hell did you want to keep them in the first place?’

‘I like them,’ she told him, a touch of defiance in the statement. ‘I like them, and they never judged me, and I guess I liked being in charge of them, learning about them, having control over them – over
something
, I guess – and I looked after them well. I was calm and efficient around them and I made sure they all had good lives until it was their time. Except one of them escaped and I guess, maybe, he was sick.’

‘You guess
he
was sick,’ Martinez said. ‘Oh, poor Ratty.’

‘Romeo,’ she said. ‘His name was Romeo the Fifth, because he was the fifth buck – the fifth male – I’d kept.’

‘Jesus,’ Martinez said, and sank down on his bed. ‘Jesus F. Christ, I’ve been engaged to a total fruitcake.’

‘Thank you,’ Jess said.

‘Can you blame me?’

‘I guess not.’ She half smiled. ‘But it reminds me why I prefer rats to men.’

Martinez looked up at her and saw in her eyes that it was true.

He stood up with an effort. ‘Get out.’

‘You don’t mean that, Al.’

‘Get the hell out of my house.’

Jess nodded slowly. ‘OK.’

‘Now,’ Martinez said, quietly. ‘I want you gone.’

‘Can I get my things first, please?’ Jess asked.

‘Get them,’ he said, trying to control the trembling inside him. ‘And go.’

She had come to him just before she left, had handed him back the ring.

Martinez had looked down at the little sapphires and tiny diamonds in his hand, and it was all sparkling because she’d polished it every day.

‘You don’t have to,’ he said.

‘Sure I do,’ she said.

Looking at the ring made him sad, made their ending real.

‘I think you should know,’ Jess said, ‘about your good friend, Sam.’

‘What about him?’

‘Only that he came on to me,’ she said. ‘A couple of times.’

‘Liar,’ Martinez said. ‘You lousy little liar.’

He ground the ring hard into the palm of his hand and then threw it with as much strength as he could muster at the wall, where it struck an old painting of a young Cuban boy which had been one of his mother’s favourite possessions.

‘Cathy didn’t believe me either,’ Jess said.

‘You told her that?’ He was incredulous. ‘You total bitch.’

‘Am I?’ Jess’s voice was suddenly smaller. ‘I’ve always tried not to be. I’ve tried to be good to people.’

Martinez thought abruptly back to all the
good
things she was always doing for other people, the kindnesses and favours and overtime to help colleagues out. Never wanting praise for it, but still making sure everyone knew about it. And then he thought about the way she was so often there when things went wrong for other people, like the woman at the office with a busted ankle who Jess did everything for . . .

It made him wonder.

And then that made him feel even more tired.

‘You’d better go, Jessie,’ he’d told her.

His anger was all gone again now, only the sadness remaining.

‘Will you miss me at all?’ she asked him.

‘I’ll miss the woman I thought you were,’ he said.

‘But not really me,’ she said.

‘I don’t know,’ he said, and shook his head.

‘I’m going to miss you, Al,’ she said.

Martinez shrugged. ‘You can always get yourself some more rats.’

‘No.’ Jess shook her head. ‘That’s all finished now.’

‘Because they made me sick?’ A small spike of hope rose up in him.

‘Sure,’ she said. ‘And anyway, it’s all spoiled now. It wouldn’t be the same.’