A Prussian blue smudge across the horizon is the first hint of dawn, and I ask Machado to upload his photographs to me ASAP as what I detect becomes audible. We sharply turn toward the river. We look up at the same time. The rapid stuttering roar becomes louder, a helicopter flying low over the Charles to the southeast, coming closer fast.
“I hope that’s not another damn TV station,” Marino says.
“I don’t think so.” I look up at the dark sky. “It’s too big for that.”
“Military or the Coast Guard,” Machado speculates.
“It’s not.” I recognize the high-pitched whiny roar of the turboshaft engines and the staccato thump-thump of its composite blades turning almost at the speed of sound.
“Let’s cover her up until it’s gone,” Harold exclaims. “We can’t hold up the sheet with all the wind.”
“You’re fine.” I indicate for them to stay put, to keep the barrier in place, shielding the body from the TV crew and spectators. I raise my voice to a yell. “Hold your position for now. It will be all right.”
The helicopter appears in a deafening storm of strobing lights over apartment buildings, cutting across the field. It flies directly overhead at about a thousand feet, high enough to spare us its turbulent rotorwash. Lucy knows how to navigate a crime scene and she hovers high, the fifty-million-candlepower Nightsun flooding the red clay and whiting out the body, then she moves on.
We shield our eyes at the same time and turn the same way at the same time, following the ominous-looking EC145 as it circles the field. It swoops around again much lower and slower, making what Lucy calls high-and-low recons as she checks for obstructions such as antennas or power lines or light standards, any danger she might perceive. I can make out the shape of her helmet in the right pilot’s seat, an amber visor lowered over her face. I can’t tell who is next to her with a headset on but I know. What I’m not sure of is why. But I couldn’t be more relieved.
“Stay right here!” I call out to Rusty and Harold over the deafening noise. “Don’t move yet!”
I walk swiftly through mud and the soaking grass to the empty parking lot as the snub-nosed wide-bodied helicopter lowers into a hover. It hangs in the air, trees thrashing at the edge of the tarmac in the blinding glare. Then it gently sets down. Lucy doesn’t cut the engines to flight idle. She’s not going to stay long.
The left front door opens and Benton plants one foot on the skid, then the other, climbing down.
His coat flaps in the violent wind as he opens the back and reaches inside for his luggage as my helmeted niece turns toward me from the right seat and nods. I raise my hand, not sure what the reason might be for what she’s just done but I’m extremely glad. It’s almost like a miracle, like something I would have prayed for, had I thought about praying.
Benton trots across the tarmac and I take one of his bags as he slips his arm around my waist, pulling me close, nuzzling the top of my head with his jaw. The helicopter lifts in a steep vertical ascent, nosing back to the river, and we watch it pick up speed over buildings and trees, banking around toward Boston. Its whir and winking lights recede as quickly as they appeared.
“Thank God you’re here but I don’t understand,” I say to him when the noise is gone.
“It was supposed to be my birthday surprise.”
“Somehow I don’t believe that’s the only reason.”
“It’s not and I didn’t plan on being here this early.”
“Saturday, I thought.”
“I mean this early today.” He kisses me and pins his attention to the scene illuminated in the middle of the mud where Rusty and Harold continue to hold up a plasticized sheet like morbid bunting. “A present to myself, a surprise for you, and I needed to get the hell out of D.C.”
“Lucy got my text.” It begins to make sense, I think.
“Yes.” Benton scans the wet grass and soupy red mud. He stares for a long moment at the body draped in white. “But she’d known since around midnight that Gail Shipton was missing. Her search engines found it posted on Channel Five’s website.”
He explains that Lucy flew to D.C. yesterday, setting down in Dulles in the late afternoon, and the plan was to have dinner with Benton and then the two of them would fly home today. As a surprise she would deliver him to the house, where she assumed I’d still be getting over the flu. Then when she got the alert that Gail was missing, Lucy decided they needed to leave immediately.
“The first thing she said was that something had happened to her and she was probably dead,” Benton explains. “Is the white cloth she’s wrapped in yours?”
“That’s the way she was found.”
He stares silently at the scene in the distance and I know he’s compiling data, taking in the details. Already he is.
“The first victim was from Cambridge. Klara Hembree.” I let him know what I’m worried about. “The cloth is unusual and the way it’s wrapped around the body looks exactly the same as what I saw in Klara’s case and the other most recent two. Wrapped around under the arms like a big bath sheet.”
I go on to explain that my preliminary examination of the body revealed no indication that she struggled or made any attempt to defend herself. Then I describe the way she’s posed and the fluorescing residue all over her and the cloth, which I suspect is a woven synthetic blend. I tell him the low-stretch fabric is similar to Lycra and the fibers recovered in his cases are Lycra, and then I let him know about the urine-stained panties that are too big.
Benton listens carefully, compiling the information, sorting through it, and what I’m saying registers strongly but he’s going to be cautious about jumping to conclusions.
“Do you know what kind of panties?” he asks.
“The label?”
“Yes.”
“Expensive ones,” I reply.
A high-quality cotton, pale peach, a Swiss designer, I explain and he says nothing at first. But I see it in his face. What I’m saying means something to him.
“The third victim in D.C.,” he then says. “Julianne Goulet liked expensive Swiss lingerie, a brand called Hanro.”
“That’s what this is. And I recall from her reports that she was about five-foot-seven, weighed around one-forty, and that could be a size medium.”
“They could be hers. He has a connection here and I believe he stalked Klara while she still lived here and followed her to D.C. when she moved.” Benton says what is racing through his mind. “She was a target and the most recent two were an opportunity, and now this? If so, it’s at least three murders in one month. He’s comfortable here — specifically, in this area of Cambridge — but he’s out of control and that’s why he’s escalating. I need to look around, and I’m not going to suggest anything until I’m sure.”
He won’t pass on this information to Marino, Machado, or any of the police working this case. Benton isn’t going to tell them they’re looking for a serial killer until there can be no doubt.
“And there’s going to be a major problem if it’s the same killer. The Bureau will deny it,” he adds stunningly. “I’m going to need to spend some time out here.”
He’s not going to explain right now. He wants to get going.
“I don’t guess you have a pair of boots in your bag.” I look down at his shoes, a burnished brown leather slip-on with a double monk strap. “Of course you don’t. What am I asking?”
He wouldn’t have rubber boots in his bag. In fact, he doesn’t own a pair. Even when Benton is working in the yard he looks perfectly put together. He can’t help it. One of these long, lean, chiseled men, he looks rich and well bred even at a crime scene in the middle of mud.