Eclipse

Table of Contents

Recent Titles by Hilary Norman

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgements

The Room was. . .

The Sam Becket Mysteries

MIND GAMES

LAST RUN *

SHIMMER *

CAGED *

HELL *

ECLIPSE *

BLIND FEAR

CHATEAU ELLA

COMPULSION

DEADLY GAMES

FASCINATION

GUILT

IN LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP

LAURA

NO ESCAPE

THE PACT

RALPH'S CHILDREN *

SHATTERED STARS

SPELLBOUND

SUSANNA

TOO CLOSE

TWISTED MINDS

IF I SHOULD DIE (written as Alexandra Henry)

* available from Severn House

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

First published in Great Britain 2012 by

SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

First published in the USA 2013 by

SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS of

110 East 59th Street, New York, N.Y. 10022

eBook edition first published in 2012 by Severn House Digital an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited.

Copyright © 2012 by Hilary Norman.

The right of Hilary Norman to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Norman, Hilary.

Eclipse.

1. Becket, Sam (Fictitious character)—Fiction.

2. Police—Florida—Miami—Fiction. 3. Serial murder investigation—Florida—Miami—Fiction. 4. Suspense fiction.

I. Title

823.9'2-dc23

ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-352-5 (epub)

ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8224-0 (cased)

ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-457-8 (trade paper)

Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

This ebook produced by

Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

For Gabriella
My beautiful little great-niece.
It will be many years before you're allowed
to read it – but this is for you.

My thanks to the following (in alphabetical order):

Howard Barmad; Diane Beate Hellmann; Daniela Jarzynka; Jeremy Joseph, MD, FRCS, FRC.Ophth.; Special Agent Paul Marcus and Julie Marcus (
still
putting up with me, and I can never thank you enough) and Scott Marcus, too; Annina Meyerhans; Wolfgang Neuhaus; James Nightingale; Katharina Peters; Sara Porter; Sebastian Ritscher; Helen Rose (who can answer
almost
any question); as always, gratitude to Dr Jonathan Tarlow; and special thanks to Euan Thorneycroft.

Finally, and most especially, to Jonathan.

The room was filled with dead things.

Some sham – things that had never been alive. Toys which might, perhaps,
almost
have lived in their owners' imaginations.

Some all too real.

A ginger cat in a coffin.

More than one tiny coffin in the room.

A white rat, too, nailed to a cork board.

Numerous butterflies.

And more.

There was an old beige teddy bear, lying on its back in a small crib.

A soft dog, part still fluffy, part threadbare, paws matted, testimony to small-child love, sucked on.

The toy dog had been laid out in the crib, front paws crossed on its chest.

Almost like a human corpse.

A doll lay nearby – a pretty blonde thing, carried back to Florida once upon a time all the way from FAO Schwartz in New York City by a doting dad and given to a daughter long since grown, with no time left for toys.

The doll was on her back too.

Her lower half covered with a tiny sheet. Her arms raised, twisted around in their sockets. Her hands covering her eyes, making it impossible to see if they were open or closed.

The eyes of every dead thing in the room were covered.

Some with hands or paws – in the coffin, the ginger cat's front limbs had been stretched, like the doll's arms, so that they, too, shielded its eyes.

The cat's paws were encased in white mittens.

The eye coverings were diverse. Everything from Band-Aids to miniature sleep masks to soft gauze and bandages.

Even the eyes of the butterflies were concealed.

In life, these were large and spherical, made up of thousands of hexagonally-shaped sensors, each directed at different angles, enabling the insects to see multidirectionally, albeit imperfectly.

The butterflies in this room no longer saw anything at all.

Their eyes blind now and invisible beneath tiny coverlets of white lace, like minuscule doilies at a child's tea party.

Unseen and unseeing.

There were photographs, too, on the walls.

Subject matter the same.

Dead creatures, terminated toys.

No eyes visible.

There was life, however, in the room.

A person, at work.

Stooped over a table, engrossed in a task.

Hard to see what the task was.

If you could have come close enough to peer over their shoulder, you would have seen.

Something horrible.

The stuff of nightmares.

The kind of thing it would be hard to forget.

The kind of thing to make you need to close your eyes.

And keep them closed.

On Sunday evening, Detective Sam Becket and Special Agent Joseph Duval were at Houston's in North Miami Beach, having dinner.

A first for them. The Miami Beach Police Department detective from the Violent Crimes Unit socializing with the man from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement – and not just a couple of beers in a bar after work. But Joe Duval had formerly been a Violent Crimes police detective in Chicago, and since he'd relocated to Florida the men had cooperated on a couple of major cases; Duval – fifty-something, sharp-nosed, sharp-jawed and slim – was an instinctive investigator and happy family man and, bottom line, he and Sam got along.

So when Duval had called a week ago and mentioned that his wife and son were going to be busy Sunday evening, Sam had suggested dinner, because Grace, his wife, would be out of town, and in her absence her sister, Claudia, would be staying at their house, helping to take care of Joshua, their three-year-old.

In fact, Sam had seen Grace off at Miami International just hours ago, and she would, within the hour, be boarding her flight to Zurich, Switzerland.

So tonight he was dining out, and tomorrow evening he'd be rehearsing Act Three of the South Beach Opera's production of
Carmen
.

Long time since Sam had sung with S-BOP, his old amateur company.

Almost like being single again.

Just the thought of that made him shudder.

It was seven p.m., and hectic. No such thing as a quiet table at Houston's, but on the other hand, in all the hubbub there was no big risk of neighbors listening in. Not that they had official work to discuss.

Except Sam could not help being interested in and disturbed by Duval's current big case. Another sicko loose in Florida, and just about
everyone
knew something about it. At least, as much as the investigators working the cases were letting the media know.

It was often the way in bad serial killings that the crimes themselves, or their perpetrators, collected unofficial names. This one had started in Orlando, where the first victim had been found, and it had stuck fast.

‘Black Hole' was the individual they were hunting.

Ugly name, and so far, off the record.

Three victims. The first in Orlando back in January, the second in Jupiter, Palm Beach County, almost a month later; the most recent in early March over in Naples, Collier County.

Everyone hoping, but not really believing, that it would be the last.

Details had been entered into ViCAP, the FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. Matching fingerprints found at two of the scenes had thrown up no corresponding prints in the IAFIS – the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System. Restricted details were on the FBI's Most Wanted website, and Joe Duval had entered the picture after the second murder.

No case yet in Miami-Dade County, and everyone in the MBPD wanted it to stay that way, and Sam Becket, for one, had heard more than enough about these killings to hope and pray that if Black Hole was coming this way, he might just bypass the Beach.

‘No fresh links?' Sam asked Duval now, quietly.

‘Nothing,' Duval said.

No more than Sam already knew. All three victims had been female and Caucasian, and the only other established common ground between them had been the manner of their deaths. The youngest twenty-two, the oldest forty-nine. One blonde, two brunettes. One married, one divorced, the youngest woman single. Two of them mothers. One not working out of choice; one in real estate; the last victim, Lindy Braun, owning and running her own bar.

‘And not so much as a sniff of a lead,' the FDLE man went on.

Which was when his Hickory Burger and Sam's ribs arrived, and after that their conversation rolled around family, the Heat and the Hurricanes, then to the fact that Duval, who'd been living close to MROC – Miami Regional Operations Center – in Doral, was hoping to move house, and they'd been looking around Pembroke Pines, had liked what they'd seen.

‘Grace and I were considering a move a while back,' Sam said, ‘but I think we're kind of glad we stayed put.'

‘Our son's a little tentative about relocating,' Duval said.

‘It can be tough on teens,' Sam said.

Duval's cell phone rang.

Sam picked up another rib, and knew, from the expression in the other man's intent gray eyes, that their dinner was at an end.

‘Fort Lauderdale,' Duval said grimly, his call over. ‘Another one.'

Not Sam's jurisdiction, but Duval had told him he should come along.

It wasn't an invitation to be relished, nor was it one he could refuse. Not just because it would be impolite, but because he was a homicide detective, and a part of that man wanted to see this.

Fort Lauderdale Police Department's homicide unit were already all over the scene. A nice little single family house, a corner unit in the quiet, tree-lined Shady Banks neighborhood.

A pleasant place to live.

Standing in the victim's bedroom, Sam Becket – the part who was just a man, rather than a cop – wished to hell that he'd passed on Duval's invitation.

Some sights a human being ought to avoid if possible.

‘Oh, man,' he said softly, seeing her, his mind recoiling along with his stomach.

He looked away – because he could, because this was not his case, so he could afford the luxury of averting his eyes from the horrors that had been visited on this poor woman.

Amelia Newton, age thirty-three. Living alone in her two bed, one bath, nicely-appointed, tidily-maintained, one-story house. No signs of a break-in or of a struggle anyplace, not even in the room where she lay.

Two photographs on her dressing table attested to the fact that she had been attractive. A slim, smiling woman with short blonde hair and blue eyes.

Sam looked over at Duval, knew he was doing what they all had to at such times. Shutting down their human side. Starting the process of doing the only thing they could for the victim: getting her justice.