“He’s such a petty bureaucrat.” I try to be reassuring as we walk in the sun and the wind. “He resents the way you dress. He resents your car and your house and is none too fond of me no matter what he pretends about any of it. He resents that you basically started profiling, are a trendsetter and authority in the field, and he has no legacy. Granby will never be known for anything except that people like us talk badly about him.”
“Eventually he’ll force me out, and Marino didn’t help matters by alerting my office that I’m assisting in an investigation they know nothing about.” Benton stares down at his big orange feet as they slap against mud. “I’ve not talked to Granby, obviously. I’ve been a little busy.”
“What did Marino say?” I feel a rush of annoyance.
“Suggesting we find a time to have a meeting about the case. He wasn’t thinking.”
“Dammit. That’s unfortunate. It was stupid. He was flaunting himself and whenever he does that he has terrible judgment. And he has to pick on you, Benton. Especially right now because he’s not feeling much confidence.”
“It doesn’t matter why. But I wish he hadn’t done it.”
“Besides, they’ve asked you to retire before. They always change their minds because the people with good sense realize your value.”
“This case may be what finally does me in.” He tucks his phone into his pants pocket. “Especially if there’s a perception that I’ve helped someone become a better murderer.”
“That’s preposterous, and it may not be true he’s read anything you’ve written.”
“It could have given him ideas. But it didn’t make him kill anyone. It doesn’t work like that. Granby’s changed who and what I am to everyone and I can’t stop it.”
“What you’re describing is disturbing.” I’m more direct. “I’ll just say it. I’m worried about you and your state of mind.”
He gently grips my elbow as we maneuver around thick mud. He touches the small of my back the way he does when he’s letting me know he’s here. Then he watches where he’s stepping, not close anymore, and I feel the distance between us, a cool emptiness. I feel unsettled and anxious. Nothing feels safe, and I find myself looking around, wondering if we’re being watched or followed.
“Tell me how you’re doing, Kay.” He glances at me and he continues his sweep, looking around and straight ahead, his profile keen.
“I’m fine. How about you? Besides not eating or sleeping enough. Who’s chasing who?” I go ahead and say it.
“You’re probably not fine. In fact, I know you’re not. When what we believe we’ve mastered is no longer predictable we’re not fine. The world suddenly is a very scary place. It loses its charm.”
“Charm,” I repeat ironically, stonily. “The world lost its charm when I first met death. We were unhappily introduced when I was twelve and have been together ever since.”
“And now you’ve met something you can’t dissect. No matter how many times you take it apart you won’t figure it out.”
He’s not talking about Washington or Cambridge. He’s talking about Connecticut. I don’t answer right away as we walk. I pause to put my coat back on as the wind picks up sharply. I dig my hands into my pockets and they’re stuffed with dirty gloves. I look for a trash can but there isn’t one.
“Let’s be honest, the world’s always been a scary place with very little charm.” I try to brush it off as I’ve brushed off the flu, as I brushed off the death of my father when I was young, as I’ve brushed off so much since Benton has known me.
“You’ve been drawing from a well that you never knew was bottomless and you just found out the unlimited depth of inhumanity,” he says. “A type of senseless slaughter you can’t solve because it’s already over by the time you get there, decimating a shopping mall, a church, a school. And I can’t profile who will do it next, what demented empty person will strike out of nowhere. Granby’s right about that much at least.”
“Don’t give him any credit.”
“All I can do is predict the aftermath because such a person does it only once. Then he’s dead and we’re looking for the next one.”
“How many next ones?” The anger raises its head again. I feel the hot breath on my neck and don’t want anything to do with it.
“The more it happens, the more it will,” Benton says. “The lowest common denominator used to be what’s primal no matter how perverted. Murder, rape, torture, cannibalism, even the public executions the Romans orchestrated to entertain Colosseum crowds. But nothing in history is like this. Committing mass murder as if it’s a video game. Killing children, babies, unloading high-capacity magazines into crowds of strangers, creating a gruesome spectacle for fame. No, you’re not fine, Kay. Neither of us is.”
“A lot of the first responders will quit.” I look down where I walk. “It was too much for even the experienced ones, the EMTs and police I met. Those who got there first were like zombies, doing everything they were supposed to do but nobody was home. It was as if a light had gone out inside of them forever.”
“You won’t quit.”
“I wasn’t first, Benton.” I step around bent rebar and a railroad spike half buried in the rocks.
“You saw the same thing they did.”
I slip my arm around him and feel the slimness of his waist as I lean my head against his shoulder and breathe in the subtle smell of him, his skin, his cologne, the wool of his jacket warming in the sun.
“You’re projecting about me,” he says into my hair. “I’m not straying out of bounds but you’re worried you are. You’re projecting your fears about yourself onto me. That’s what happens when something really gets to you. No matter what we see, we’re never ready for the next thing that’s inconceivably awful.”
“Well, that sounds grim. With all you and I have dedicated ourselves to? And the world is more screwed up than it’s ever been. Sometimes I wonder why we bother.”
“No you don’t.”
“You’re right,” I reply. “I don’t wonder. I don’t know any better and maybe that’s worse.”
“Do you have that little flashlight you usually carry?” he asks.
We’ve reached an institute for brain research where the train tracks bore through the building, literally through the middle of it, a tunnel maybe half a block long. It’s semi-dark inside and at least ten degrees cooler and I get out the flashlight and turn it on. I illuminate our way as pebbles we dislodge click against one another and chink against iron rails, reminding me of the sounds behind the wall at the back of our yard. Leaves and sticks disturbed, a rock or piece of brick dislodged, and then the young male running.
Reemerging into the bright, rain-scrubbed morning, I return the flashlight to my bag and we step over puddles in gravel, reaching a stretch of mud that has washed over the tracks in a thin gray slick. Both of us see the impression at the same time, what looks like a bare footprint.
20
My first thought is Gail Shipton. Her feet were bare but that’s ridiculous. She didn’t wrap herself in a white cloth and walk along these tracks in the pouring rain to die in the middle of Briggs Field as if she willed it. More important, the footprint is pointed the wrong way, headed out of the campus and not in.
We stop beyond the tunnel where rusty iron rails are missing crossties, a toothless stretch of railroad tracks spanning six or seven feet. Then the crossties resume and on the first one is the footprint left in a dirty patina coating the old creosote-treated wood. I crouch to take a closer look at the distinct shape of an insole and five toes with odd scoring at the ball of the foot and the back of the heel. The footprint is anatomically perfect. Too symmetrical and too perfect. It looks fake for a reason.