"Is there a point to this?" Benton's voice snaps like a pistol slide racking back. "I'm not interested in his pornographic drivel. What does he want?"
Marino looks hard at him, pauses, then turns over the letter. Sweat beads on his balding head and rolls down his temples. He reads what is on the back of the plain white sheet of paper:
I must see you! You cannot escape unless you do not care if more innocent people die. Not that anyone is innocent. I will tell you all that is necessary. But I must look at you in the flesh as I speak the truth. And then you will kill me.
Marino stops reading. "More shit you don't need to hear…"
"And she knows nothing about this?"
"Well," Marino equivocates, "not really. Like I said, I didn't show it to her. All I told her is I got a letter and Wolfman wants to see her and will exchange information for her visit. And he wants her to be the one who gives him the needle."
"Typically, penitentiaries use free-world doctors, regular physicians from the outside to administer the lethal cocktail," Benton oddly commerits, as if what Marino just said has no impact on him. "Did you use ninhydrin on the letters?" Now he changes the subject. "Obviously I can't tell, since these are photocopies."
The chemical ninhydrin would have reacted to the amino acid in fingerprints, turning portions of the original letters a deep violet.
"Didn't want to damage them," Marino replies.
"What about an alternate light source? Something nondestructive, such as a crime scope?"
When Marino doesn't respond, Benton pierces him with the obvious point.
"You did nothing to prove these letters are from Jean-Baptiste Chan-donne? You just assume? Jesus." Benton rubs his face with his hands. "Jesus Christ. You come here-here-take a risk like that and don't even know for a fact that these letters came from him? And let me guess. You didn't have the backs of the stamps and envelope flaps swabbed for DNA, either. What about postmarks? What about return addresses?"
"There's no return address-not for him, I mean-and no postmark that might tell us where he sent it from," Marino admits, and he is sweating profusely now.
Benton leans forward. "What? He hand-delivered the letters? The return address isn't his? What the hell are you talking about? How could he mail something to you and there's no postmark?"
Marino unfolds another piece of paper and hands it to him. The photocopy is of an eight-and-a-half-by-eleven-inch white envelope, preprinted, U.S. postage paid for the nonprofit organization the National Academy of Justice.
"Well, I guess we've both seen this before," Benton says, looking at the photocopy, "since we've been members of the NAJ for most of our lives. Or at least I used to be. Sorry to say, but I'm not on their mailing list anymore." He pauses, noting that First-class mail has been x-ed through just below the preprinted postage-paid stamp.
"For once, I'm blanking out on any possible explanation," he says.
"This is what came in the mail to me," Marino explains. "The NAJ envelope, and when I opened it, the two letters were inside. One to me, one to the Doc. Sealed, marked Legal Mail, I guess in case someone at the prison was curious about the NAJ envelope and decided to tear into it. Only other thing written on the envelopes was our names."
Both men are silent for a moment. Marino smokes and drinks beer.
"Well, I do have a possibility, the only thing I can think of," Marino then says. "I checked with the NAJ, and from the warden on down, there are fifty-six officers who are members. It wouldn't be unusual to see one of these envelopes lying around somewhere."
Benton is shaking his head. "But your address is printed, machine-printed. How could Chandonne manage to do that?"
"How the hell do you stand this joint? Don't you even got air-conditioning? And we did swab the envelopes the letters came in, but it's that self-stick adhesive. So he didn't have to lick nothing."
This is evasion and Marino knows it. Sloughed-off skin cells can adhere to self-sticking adhesives. He doesn't want to answer Benton's question.
"How did Chandonne pull off sending you letters inside an envelope like this?" Benton shakes the photocopy at Marino. "And don't you find it just a little odd that first-class mail is x-ed out? Why might that be?"
"I guess we'll just have to get Wolfman to explain," Marino rudely replies. "I got no fucking idea."
"Yet you seem to know for a fact that the letters are from Jean-Baptiste." Benton measures each word. "Pete. You're better than this."
Marino wipes his forehead on his sleeve. "Look, so the fact is, we don't got scientific evidence to prove nothing. But it's not because we didn't take a shot at it. We did use the Luma-Lite, and we did try for DNA, and everything's whistle-clean as of this moment."
"Mitochondrial DNA? You trying for that?"
"Why bother? It would take months, and by then he'll be dead. And there's no way in hell we're going to get a goddamn thing anyway. For crying out loud, don't you think the asshole gets off on somehow using a National Academy of Justice envelope? How's that for a fuck-you? Don't you think he gets off on making us do all these tests when he knows we'll come up with zip? All he had to do was cover his hands with toilet paper or whatever when he touched anything."
"Maybe," Benton says.
Marino is about to erupt. He is exasperated beyond his limit.
"Easy, Pete," Benton says. "You would think less of me if I didn't ask."
Marino stares off without blinking.
"My opinion?" Benton goes on. "He wrote the letters and was deliberate about not leaving evidence. I don't know how he managed to use a National Academy of Justice envelope, and yes, that is a huge fuck-you. Frankly, I'm surprised you haven't heard from him before now. The letters sound authentic. They do not have the off-key ring of a crank. We know Jean-Baptiste has a breast fetish." He says this clinically. "We know it is very likely he has information that could destroy his criminal family and the cartel. It fits with his insatiable need to dominate and control that he presents the conditions he has."
"And what about him saying the Doc wants to see him?"
"You tell me."
"She never wrote him. I asked her point-blank. Why the hell would she write that piece of shit? I told her about the National Academy of Justice envelopes, that the letter to her and me came in one. I showed her a photocopy…"
"Of what?" Benton interrupts.
"A photocopy of the National Academy of Justice envelope." Marino is getting exasperated. "The one her and my letters from Wolfman came in. I told her if she gets one of these goddamn National Academy of Justice letters herself, not to open it, not to even touch it. Do you really believe he wants her to be his executioner?"
"If he intends to die…"
"Intends?" Marino interrupts him. "I don't believe ol' Wolfмe Boy's got much to say about that."
"A lot can happen between now and then, Pete. Remember who his connections are. I wouldn't be too sure of anything. And by the way, when Lucy got her letter, was it also sent in a postage-paid National Academy of Justice envelope?"