Free Eclipse by Hilary Norman Page A

quietly to Sam a while back.
    Referring to Felicia Delgado’s large, inky-dark sunglasses.
    According to hospital personnel, she had become distressed and combative each time someone had tried to remove them.
    Lending credibility to Carlos Delgado’s description of his daughter’s phobia, which he said she had shared with her late mother.
    The sight of the glasses had really chilled Sam. Not because of what Felicia’s father had told them, but because of the Polaroid shot that Joe Duval had shown him at the Fort Lauderdale scene.
    Of Amelia Newton wearing those oversized dark glasses.
    He remembered again the acetone smell.
    Felicia Delgado’s fingernails had no polish on them, but Sam asked one of the nurses if she’d noticed if the teenager had polished toenails.
    â€˜I didn’t notice,’ the nurse said, almost disapprovingly.
    Sam asked her to take a look at her feet, told her it might be important.
    Waiting, his thoughts slid back over the horrors of the day.
    The doily coverlets over the victim’s destroyed eye sockets. No more grotesque than the covers used in the other cases, except they seemed somehow
jokier
than the other items Black Hole had used.
    And there was something else that was really getting to Sam.
    It looked as if Felicia Delgado had washed blood off herself, though traces had remained beneath her fingernails and on her arms as well as her clothes.
    Which had to make her a person of interest in the case.
    Sam’s best guess was that she had found her mother, had touched her, perhaps tried to hold her, and had then fled in a state of near catatonic shock.
    But the way Felicia was now, hours later, just lying there in that hospital bed, reminded Sam too damned much of how Cathy had been when she’d been found following her own parents’ murder.
    Long time ago.
    But some memories were never eradicated.
    Like the day when he had been the one with no choice but to arrest her.
    She had been fourteen, too, at the time. And totally innocent.
    So many scars in Cathy’s psyche.
    And here was another fourteen-year-old in similarly terrifying circumstances.
    They were going to have to interview this child as soon as she was fit, and they would, God help them, do their job.
    But already Sam hated it.
    The nurse was back.
    â€˜No polish,’ she said.
    Which meant nothing, since many nail polish removers contained acetone, yet with so little to go on at this early stage . . .
    â€˜Any chance it was removed here?’ Sam asked.
    The nurse shook her head. ‘If she were undergoing anesthesia, some varnish might be removed from her fingernails,’ she said, ‘but not her toes.’
    Sam thanked her, his mind flipping to the drug found in previous victims. They were a long way off toxicology confirmation that Beatriz Delgado had ingested a large dose of Diazepam prior to her death, but Sam had called his father a while ago to ask about the drug’s role in the treatment of phobias, and David Becket had confirmed its use in some cases.
    Though, in fact, Xanax and Prozac had both been found in Mrs Delgado’s bathroom cabinet, but no Diazepam.
    â€˜You think they did blood tests on the kid here?’ Martinez asked quietly.
    Sam looked at him. ‘No reason they’d be looking for that drug if they did.’
    â€˜I guess not,’ Martinez said. ‘But I’d sure like to know if she had any of that shit in her before she went walkabout on the beach.’
    â€˜And if she did?’ Sam said.
    â€˜Would it confirm her as strictly victim?’ Martinez shrugged. ‘Since we have no cause to get her tested, we’re not going to find out.’
    Sam said nothing.
    His thoughts slipped back again, to Cathy.
    â€˜Hey,’ his partner said. ‘Not the same.’
    That was the way it went with them sometimes, almost reading each other’s minds. Like a kind of marriage.
    â€˜I know it,’ Sam said.
May 13
    He was