Catherine Coulter - Split Second

Lucy fell utterly silent, and her head fell to the side. Savich thought she’d come out of it and fallen asleep, but Dr. Hicks stayed his hand when he would have patted her shoulder. He shook his head to continue.

Savich said again, “Is your daddy saying anything to your grandmother you can understand?”

“My daddy’s voice is shaking. He’s yelling, and Grandmother’s crying.”

“What does your grandmother say?”

“‘I didn’t mean to, Joshua’—Grandmother always calls Daddy Joshua even though Uncle Alan and Aunt Jennifer call him Josh.”

“Do you hear your grandmother say what she didn’t mean to do?”

“She just kept crying and saying over and over, ‘He ruined everything, Joshua. My ring! He threw it out, said no one would ever find it. I couldn’t bear it, I couldn’t.’”

“What happened next?”

“They went to Grandmother’s room, so I didn’t have a chance to sneak out. Then they came back and they were both carrying lots of clothes and shoes and stuff. They went back and forth, and when they were in the attic I ran down to the kitchen.”

“Did they ever know you were there, Lucy?”

“No. I went up later and saw my dad, and he was standing by his bedroom door, and he was crying. He saw me and called to me, and I ran to him, and he hugged me.”

“You never said anything to your dad? To your grandmother?”

“No. I knew they’d be mad. I didn’t want to get swatted.”

“Lucy, tell me about your grandmother.”

She looked confused. Savich realized she was only a kid and the question was far too complicated. “Do you love your grandmother?”

She nodded, another quick, jerky movement. “She makes me peanut-butter cookies; they’re my favorite. She lets me sit beside her while she’s reading. She’s always reading. But she always sits in the living room. I hate the living room; it’s like a dead room, and you can’t breathe.”

“Do you love your grandfather, Lucy?”

Her face lit up. “Grandfather likes me to sit on his leg, and he bounces up and down and says he’s my horse. He always smells like beef jerky. I really liked jerky until—”

“Until?”

“Until he went away to the store and never came back. He worked real hard, and so did Daddy. He made lots of money, my daddy said that. One day before he went away, he came home from work and he was mad. I remember he shouted at Grandma and he said bad words. Daddy took me away. He bought me an ice cream and told me to forget it and never say those words.”

“Do you know where he worked, Lucy?”

She looked thoughtful, but she shook her head.

Savich moved away to stand beside Coop while they listened to Dr. Hicks bring Lucy back. “You did very well, Lucy. Now I’m going to snap my fingers, right in front of your nose, and you’re going to wake up. You’re going to feel relaxed and settled, and you’re going to remember everything we spoke about, all right?”

“Yes, Dr. Hicks.”

Dr. Hicks snapped his fingers. From one instant to the next, Lucy was back, and she looked calm. She said, “I’ve got answers now.”

“Yes,” Savich said, “most of them. No doubt about what happened anymore.”

Coop watched her face change. She looked ineffably sad. Slowly, tears began to stream down her face. “Can you imagine,” she whispered, choking, “my dad saw his mother kill his father, and then he protected her, helped her shove Grandfather into a stupid trunk with a white towel over him? It’s too horrible, what he lived through, and he never told a single person, kept it all deep inside him, until he couldn’t any longer. I wonder if that’s why he never married again, because he could never tell anyone what happened. It was so vivid in his mind, still. In the last moments of his life he was reliving that horrible event.”

Lucy put her face in her hands and cried, not for herself but for her father.

Coop laid his hand on her shoulder until she quieted. He said matter-of-factly, “Maybe that’s why you stayed with your grandmother; your father was taking care of both of you.”

Lucy raised her face to his. “Do you know, now that I remember back, my dad never left me alone with my grandmother. I remember now that when she read with me sitting next to her, Dad was always nearby.”

Savich said, “At last you know. Now you have to let it go.”

Dr. Hicks patted her arm. “You will be all right, Lucy Carlyle. You’re a survivor, and you see things and people clearly. Yes, you will be fine.”

Lucy gave him a twisted smile. “Me, see people clearly? I don’t think so, sir. I really don’t think so.”

Dr. Hicks lightly squeezed her hand. “You will come to see I am right. Now, why don’t you let Agent Savich and Agent McKnight buy you a pizza in the boardroom, let your mind settle a bit?”

“It’s been a long time since I was in the academy.” But as she spoke, the words died in her throat. “How can things be all right?”

“I forbid you to worry about it right now, Lucy. It’s too much to take in. That’s what these two gentlemen are for. Let them stew and fret. Not you, all right?”

Lucy nodded finally, but Coop knew she couldn’t help but stew about it.

Lucy turned to Savich. “Dillon, do you think they’ve completed the autopsy?”

“Let’s see.” When Savich slipped his cell back into his pocket a few seconds later, he said, “Dr. Judd will call you himself when they’re finished, Lucy.”

“She—she really stabbed him. It’s still so difficult to imagine. And they were fighting over a ring? How could a ring be so important?”

“We may never know that, Lucy,” Savich said. “You know that.”

She nodded.

Coop raised her to her feet. “Let’s go have that pizza.”

Wall Street, New York City

Enrico’s Bar

Monday night

“‘It’s a long, long way to Tipperary, but my heart’s right there.’”

“I really like that song.” Genevieve Connelly toasted Thomas, the young man she’d just met. He grinned at her; then, hearing some applause, he turned on his bar stool and bowed from the waist.

Genny took another sip of her mojito. “I don’t even know where Tipperary is.” She sounded too sharp, simply too sober, and took another drink. She wanted to get drunk, had to get drunk, even though it was Monday night, and a work night. She saw herself hugging the toilet bowl, but it didn’t matter. She was too angry, too depressed, to worry about it. She took another drink and smiled at Thomas when he told the bartender, Big Ed, to serve her up another mojito. Before long, she knew Thomas was from Montreal, worked sixty hours a week as a waiter at the Fifth Wheel in the East 80s, and wrote poetry at night, a twenty-first-century e. e. cummings in the making, he told her, and he seemed perfectly serious.

She found herself telling him she’d very nearly been engaged, but that wasn’t going to happen now, because Lenny was a jerk with an addiction she hadn’t even known about. Yeah, a jerk who was in Atlantic City gambling right now.

Genny wanted to work up a mad, but the mojitos were making her mellow instead. “I trucked over to Morrie’s after work to meet Lenny for dinner, only he never showed. I finally called his mother, and do you know what she said?” And Genny, an accomplished mimic, recited in a soft, sad voice, with a hint of a whine, ‘Since he stole four hundred dollars out of my purse, dear, I’ll bet he’s in Atlantic City again. I guess he hasn’t told you about his little problem?’

“His little problem? I mean, which one? He was a thief and a gambler, right? Well, I couldn’t take it in, and so I hung up. I don’t think she ever liked me much, and now it doesn’t matter, does it? She calls it a little problem?”