“You’re talking like you know who it is.”
“I know the type,” Benton says and that’s all he’s going to say.
He’s not going to explain the rest of it. Not right now.
“You know something you’re sure as hell not saying,” Marino accuses angrily and uneasily.
“He’s the type to target his victims, to gather detailed information about them,” Benton explains. “He’s the type to access their residences, wander into their private spaces, surf the Internet for information, find whatever he can. That’s part of his arousal pattern.”
“We’ve checked out Gail Shipton,” Marino counters. “No police reports filed. No house break, nothing at all to suggest a possible B-and-E.”
“You should talk to people and find out if at any time, especially of late, she’s felt someone is watching her.”
“Good thing you told me. I wouldn’t have thought of it.” A flush creeps up Marino’s neck. “And there’s nothing to say he’s not some local fruitcake and maybe this dead lady is a stand-alone case. How come you haven’t bothered considering that?” Marino stares off at Simmons Hall with its thousands of cubed windows and silvery skin. “Maybe he knows certain details because he’s operating in his own neighborhood. Maybe we’ll get lucky and this is his damn truck. Maybe he left the tool accidentally. Maybe he meant to put it back inside his truck and forgot.”
“He watches,” Benton again says as if Marino had said nothing. “He knew this pickup truck would be here. You’ll likely find out from the owner that he’s left it here overnight on more than one occasion. Possibly he leaves it here overnight often because he likes to drink after work.”
“That’s just pure guessing,” Marino snaps as if he’s a defense attorney objecting, “based on nothing.”
“You’re probably going to find he’s had a DUI in the past and isn’t going to take the chance of getting another one.” Benton is relentless and unflappable. “You’ll likely discover he has some special status with MIT, maybe works here, and he can leave his truck and no one gives him a problem. He uses his own tools for whatever his job requires and anybody interested might know what he keeps locked up in his truck.”
“What’s the point?” Marino retorts as he glances at me repeatedly.
“What I can tell you is he has one that means something to him. His behavior is calculated and it all starts with what he sees and fantasizes about.” Benton predicts and projects, offering details that might sound ludicrous if they came from someone else.
But Benton is right most of the time no matter how much I might wish otherwise. It’s not because he’s lucky. It’s not because he’s clairvoyant. His conclusions are drawn from an unfathomable database built over decades of every conceivable atrocity he’s seen. He’s paid a high price to be good at what he does.
“Keep what I’ve said in mind as you work this scene and investigate this case. You’re hurting yourself if you don’t.” Benton nods at the pickup truck. “I’d check the storage box if I were you. Chances are you’re going to find something in it besides tools.”
Marino radios Machado that they need to process a vehicle in the lot over here, that someone pried open a storage locker.
“Have you looked inside it?” Machado’s voice is loud over the air as he and Marino face each other from opposite sides of Briggs Field.
“Not yet.”
“You’re thinking it’s related?”
“We need to work it like it is,” Marino says with a bored shrug in his voice for Benton’s benefit. “I’ll radio control, see what we can track down.”
Machado stops working on the fence post, which is dug up now and partially wrapped in heavy brown paper. He heads in our direction as Marino radios the dispatcher to run the truck’s tag for him.
“Once the owner’s located,” Marino lets us know, “I can figure out how long the truck’s been parked in this location and get an idea of when it was broken into.”
“I think we already have an idea.” Benton’s attention is fixed on the railroad tracks that run between the construction site and the back of Simmons Hall. “The body was discovered around three-thirty a.m.”
“We got the call at exactly three thirty-nine.” Marino can’t resist correcting him.
Grand Junction Corridor cuts through the MIT campus and runs in a straight line from east Cambridge, passing very close behind the CFC before crossing the Mystic River and into Boston. I’m reminded that whenever a circus comes to neighboring cities and towns, the train parks on the Grand Junction branch very close to where we’re standing.
Beyond that conspicuous and highly publicized use of the nearly defunct rail line, only an occasional freight train clatters through, usually on the weekend. I’ve had my share of getting stuck after work, waiting for a train carrying fresh fruits and vegetables to the Chelsea Produce Market. A few weeks ago I waited for a circus train that was a mile long, red with gold lettering, the Cirque d’Orleans out of South Florida, where I’m originally from.
“He wanted the body found quickly and likely watched it found, watched the scene being worked, possibly from right here in this construction site.” Benton continues to describe what he thinks the killer did. “Once it was daylight, he was long gone.”
Machado has reached us now and he looks curiously at the black pickup truck. Then he looks at Benton.
“You’re saying he was hanging around the whole time we’ve been here?” Machado asks dubiously.
“Not the entire time but long enough to watch Kay work the scene, to watch Lucy land.”
“And to watch you?”
“Possibly,” Benton says. “By the time he left it was still dark and he was on foot. Most likely he followed the train tracks out of the campus, which would have enabled him to avoid car traffic, campus security, students. No one was going to see him back here where the tracks are. They’re not lighted and there’s no pedestrian path alongside them. They’re a very effective and efficient way to get in and out. Unless a train is coming,” he adds. “He had to know about the tracks back here. He had to be familiar and comfortable with them.”
“You’re suspicious maybe he’s a student who knows the area inside out,” Machado supposes.
“I’m not suspicious of that.”
“Then how come you were photographing cars in the dorm parking lot?” Marino digs his big hands into a new pair of gloves, splaying his thick fingers, stretching and flexing them out.
“Because they’re here and somebody should for exclusionary purposes, mainly. They’re not going to be helpful for any reason other than that.”
“I get it. You drop out of the sky so you can tell us how to do our job.” Marino retrieves a dusting kit from his scene case.
“I dropped out of the sky because Lucy gave me a ride home,” Benton says without a trace of defensiveness and again that’s all he’s going to say.
Marino leans over the side of the black pickup truck, which I note is dirty and scuffed, a Toyota several years old that hasn’t seen a coat of wax in recent memory.
“Just so you know,” he says, “we wrote down every tag in every lot around here. Any place someone may have stopped to dump a dead body.”
“Great,” Benton says blandly.
Marino inspects the damaged area of the storage locker’s diamond-steel plate lid, an area of metal sharply bent near the lock’s keyhole. He opens the lid, propping it against the back windshield of the truck.
“Shit,” he mutters.