Split Second - Catherine Coulter [58]
“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.”
CHAPTER 28
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