Eclipse (5 page)

She picked up instantly, which told him she'd been hoping he'd call.

Which he loved.

Something to be said about separation, perhaps – so long as it was brief.

‘It's early,' she said. ‘You should be asleep.'

‘I should be speaking to my wife,' Sam said. ‘How'd it go?'

‘Quite well, I think,' she said.

‘Good questions?'

‘Better than that,' she said. ‘A real back-and-forth debate.'

‘Better than “quite well” then,' Sam said. ‘Congratulations, Gracie.'

‘How's our son?'

‘Still sleeping, angelic till he wakes. How was dinner with those nice people?'

‘Good fish restaurant,' she told him. ‘And they are nice. I miss you.'

‘Me too, sweetheart. Roll on Friday.'

‘Is Claudia OK?'

‘She was last night,' Sam said. ‘I've had to ask her to chaperone me this evening.'

‘How come?'

‘Billie Smith wants to run through some scenes before the next rehearsal.'

‘Billie Smith as in young and gorgeous?' Grace said.

‘Billie Smith as in the kid of my old school pal,' Sam said. ‘But yes, definitely as in young and gorgeous.'

‘I'm glad Claudia's chaperoning.'

‘You are kidding, I hope,' Sam said. ‘Old enough to be her father, remember?'

‘Still pretty handsome for an old guy,' Grace said. ‘And your eyes still work.'

Sam heard a hum of approaching voices over the phone.

‘I have to go,' Grace said.

‘I love you,' Sam told her.

But she had already gone.

Eight a.m., and Mildred and David were seated in another waiting room.

She'd requested a first appointment, figuring that at least she'd be done with it early, and she'd considered turning down David's tranquilizer, then caved in.

Dr Ethan Adams, according to her husband and Ralph Sutter, was a distinguished, well-respected ophthalmic surgeon with his own clinic, though this morning they were seeing him in an office he occupied twice weekly at Miami General Hospital.

Right now, waiting, Mildred felt far worse than she had yesterday.

No real possibility of escaping, because the diagnosis had already been made, so now it was just a question of precisely how this new doctor – this
surgeon
– decided to deal with it.

‘OK?' David asked her.

‘Wonderful,' she said.

She felt nauseous, cold.

David took her left hand, but she pulled it away, laid it in her lap.

‘Sorry,' she said.

‘It's fine,' he said. ‘It will be fine.'

‘I just want it to be over,' Mildred said.

Ethan Adams was around fifty, she surmised, with beautiful silver hair, silver-rimmed spectacles to match, immaculate skin and well-kept, elegant hands. He looked like the kind of super-rich man with staff at home to help him with personal care and dressing – and of course, that was nonsense, she was being judgmental and unfair, but the fact was, Mildred did not care for him.

There was something about Dr Ethan Adams that disturbed her.

She did not feel that he was a
nice
man.

Which probably did not matter nearly as much as his talent for operating on cataracts. Yet for someone as scared as she was, it seemed to matter a good deal.

She told herself it was just imagination, fear taking over.

‘Shall we make a start?' Ethan Adams asked her.

No.

Mildred stood up.

‘Of course,' she said.

Grace, two of her fellow delegates and Elspeth Mettler had come to a restaurant two streets down the hill from the conference center, a small, pleasant place with embroidered white tablecloths and gleaming cutlery. The menu was small but with enough variety for most tastes, and the aromas emerging from the kitchen were mouth-watering.

‘I was expecting a sandwich,' Grace said.

‘Don't worry,' Dr Mettler told her. ‘The portions here are quite small.'

‘Certainly by American standards,' said Natalie Gérard, a slim, suntanned teacher from Provence.

‘Doctor Lucca hardly looks like a huge eater.' Dr Stefan Mainz, a children's advocate from Frankfurt, smiled warmly at Grace.

‘Maybe not huge,' she said. ‘But I do enjoy fine food.'

‘Marvelous food in Tuscany,' Dr Mainz said. ‘Or is your surname a red herring, Doctor?'

‘Not red or any other color herring,' she said. ‘But please call me Grace.'

‘Perhaps we should order,' Ms Gérard urged. ‘We don't have long.'

A small bowl of fragrant fish broth, an excellent mushroom risotto and a glass of Valais white wine later, Grace felt more like snoozing than returning to the conference, but she hoped the uphill walk back would revive her.

‘I need to pick up something from the pharmacy over the road,' Dr Mettler said. ‘I'll see you all back there.'

She hurried across the street and into the
Apotheke
, just as a young man emerged from the shop, paused to slip a small paper bag into the pocket of his leather jacket, and took out his cell phone.

For a moment, Grace, still standing outside the restaurant, was unsure.

His glasses were dark today, and though he appeared to be glancing in her direction, he showed no sign of recognition.

Yet she was almost sure that it was the man who'd spoken to her on her first afternoon in Zurich.

Suddenly, belatedly, he raised his left hand absently in a kind of salute.

‘Coming?' Dr Mainz prompted her.

Grace returned the wave, and quickly turned back to her colleagues. ‘Yes, of course. I'm sorry.'

‘A friend?' Natalie Gérard was curious.

‘Just someone I encountered the other day,' Grace said. ‘A coincidence.'

‘Ah,' Stefan Mainz said. ‘But do we believe in those?'

‘My husband doesn't, on the whole,' Grace answered as they walked up the hill. ‘But I think I do, for the most part.'

‘Your husband's a detective, I heard,' Ms Gérard said.

‘A police detective, yes,' Grace said.

‘Some parallels in his work and yours, don't you think, Doctor Lucca?' the advocate said. ‘Detection and deduction.'

Grace smiled. ‘Sometimes.'

A scrap of recall came to her abruptly from that first afternoon. The young man in Sprüngli had asked her, at the outset, if she was OK, but then, when she'd got up to leave, after she'd thanked him for his concern, he had said: ‘It was not so much concern.'

Which she hadn't really understood, but which had probably meant nothing whatsoever, like her mistaken impression that he'd been flirting with her.

And she supposed that Zurich was a small enough city for coincidences.

Slow, slow morning at the office.

Sam could not remember the last time his desk had been this clean.

Martinez's looked about the same, except he was relaxed about it, whereas Sam felt restless and bored.

It was hard to know what to feel at times like these, since none of them wished for brutality anyplace, let alone in their jurisdiction, and the other detectives in Violent Crimes sure as
hell
did not want to see first-hand the handiwork of a monster like Black Hole . . .

A vacation might be nice, Sam pondered. Maybe he'd ask Claudia if she'd mind caring for Joshua on her own for a few days, and he could fly to Zurich, meet Gracie . . .

Except Grace was not on vacation, and she was flying back Friday and the fare was not flexible, and he had this damned rehearsal with Billie Smith tonight, and the next official S-BOP rehearsal in a few days.

And anyway, this restlessness was mostly on account of Grace not being home, so, Lord willing, only another two days to go.

Dr Magda Shrike was about to see a new patient.

Actually, the patient's mother had phoned to make an appointment with Grace and, in her absence, had agreed that her daughter should see Magda.

Felicia Delgado, age fourteen.

Her mother, Beatriz Delgado, had said that she just couldn't cope anymore, and she knew she ought to have sought help long ago, but she'd been too afraid, because this was, of course, ‘all her fault'.

They'd arrived together, two brunettes, both wearing ultra-large and impenetrably dark designer sunglasses.

Beatriz Delgado had requested a few minutes with Magda before her daughter's appointment. Magda had asked the teenager if that was OK with her, and Felicia had shrugged and sat down to wait.

In Magda's office, the reason for the dark glasses was swiftly revealed.

‘My daughter has a phobia,' Mrs Delgado said. ‘And the reason I say I'm to blame for her problems is because I have the same thing, so I've passed it on to her.' Her clasped hands were white-knuckled. ‘It's called ommatophobia. A fear of eyes.'

‘Do you know the origin of your problem, Mrs Delgado?' Magda asked.

The other woman shook her head. ‘I don't think I can remember a time when I was normal.'

‘It's not uncommon,' Magda said, ‘for sufferers of phobias to have no conscious understanding of what might have sparked their fear or aversion, though in some cases they've buried the source deep because of its painfulness.'

The need for this consultation, Mrs Delgado explained, had been triggered by an eye infection that Felicia had developed some days ago. Yesterday, after her daughter had refused to keep an appointment with a doctor, her mother had bought antibiotic eye drops and attempted to administer them – which had been hard for her, Beatriz said, had made her feel sick to her stomach – but her daughter had become completely hysterical.

Magda waited.

‘My husband – a decent man – left me when Felicia was seven, because he couldn't bear to go on living with a crazy person. I have no other family, I don't talk to our neighbors, and over time I've pushed away all my friends.' Her voice was choked. ‘I'm only telling you these things, Doctor Shrike, because of how badly they've affected Felicia, and I've already caused her so much damage.'

‘You've brought her here now,' Magda said.

‘But what if I'm too late?' Beatriz Delgado said.

It was a long, long day for Mildred. Dr Ethan Adams nothing if not thorough.

Questions came first for him.

‘Couldn't we please get the exam out of the way first?' Mildred asked.

‘I'm afraid not,' he said.

Dr Sutter had asked her similar questions about her vision and general health, but this man was not prepared to take her word as gospel. Her assurance that she did not have either diabetes or high blood pressure made little impression on him. He took her blood pressure and pronounced it a little high, which surprised neither Mildred nor David in the circumstances, and ordered basic blood tests – which Mildred supposed she didn't mind, having no fear of needles.

Eyes, so far as she knew, were her only real Achilles' heel.

Dr Adams explained about the different types of cataracts and their causes, and Mildred tried to tune out, nodding occasionally and trying to visualize happy situations. But then Adams began describing the various methods that might be used to treat and remove each kind of cataract, and Mildred could bear no more and cut him short, feeling angry with him because he had been made aware of her anxieties.

‘I'm afraid I'm much too nervous to listen to that right now,' she said.

Dr Adams smiled, but Mildred saw that he was unimpressed. Which was just too bad, so far as she was concerned, and she was perspiring now – she seldom perspired – and her heart was beating too fast, and he hadn't even
begun
his examination.

‘Maybe later,' she said, ‘after you've discovered which type of cataract I have, you can tell me what you're going to do.'

His smile did not reach his eyes. ‘I'm pretty sure already what we're going to find,' he said.

‘Good for you,' Mildred said.

She could feel David's eyes on her, ignored him.

Barely hanging on as it was.

He repeated every test that Dr Sutter had done, and by the time they reached the eye drop stage, she disliked him even more intensely, though she knew she was being irrational, because patently these tests were vital, and for Pete's sake, her
eyesight
was the prize at the end of all this.

So she gritted her teeth and went on, through extra exams and tests to rule out far more serious problems like macular degeneration, and nothing bad befell Mildred. Except for blurry vision, plain old-fashioned fear, and a growing revulsion at having Ethan Adams sitting so
close
to her.

Over soon, she kept telling herself.

Which, of course, it finally was.

Except that she knew that it was only the beginning.

Magda seldom expected much from a first encounter with a troubled teen. In this case, little more than gauging how resistant Felicia Delgado was to talking to her or any psychologist, though conversely – less probably – she might discover a young person craving professional help.

Felicia came to the point fast.

‘Don't ask me to take off my glasses, because I won't.'

‘All right,' Magda said.

‘I'm sure my mother told you that already.'

The big sunglasses covered the teenager's oval face from her eyebrows down to her cheeks and horizontally to her ears. Her hair, long, shiny and brown with reddish lights, was cut with long bangs. She took care with her general appearance and her exposed skin was clear, but her fingernails were chewed, her sitting position slightly hunched.

‘She told me that you have a problem regarding your eyes,' Magda said.

Felicia shifted in her chair.

‘What color are they?' Magda asked.

‘Brown,' Felicia said. ‘I don't want to talk about them.'

‘Is there anything you would like to talk about?'