It may be a project the two of them were working on and Benton may be suggesting that Lucy has been helping him by searching databases she isn’t legally allowed to access. Government databases, for example.
“The most recent photo is when he was fifteen, his birthday,” Benton says. “Just four days before his mother died. Age progression, facial recognition, came up with nothing. There’s no match to be made because he’s dead. That’s what I believe even if I can’t prove it yet.”
If Lucy has been helping him, it not only would be in direct violation of FBI regulations but it would be a violation far more serious. She’s not supposed to know what Benton is doing, much less assist, unless it’s been approved by his division, specifically by Granby, but then I’m not supposed to know about the Capital Murderer cases either.
Lucy conducting clandestine data searches for Benton reinforces just how much he doesn’t trust those around him. It would explain why she scrubbed Gail Shipton’s phone. If this forensic app he just mentioned was discovered, someone might question what it was being used for. Any hint that it was capable of searching classified law enforcement repositories could lead right to Lucy and also to Benton and to very big trouble. Both of them could face criminal prosecution. Benton would never encourage such a thing with her unless he was certain he had no choice.
“Do we have a clue about why Martin Lagos might have killed his mother?” I don’t recall being told a motive at the time and I don’t want to ask him for further details about what he and Lucy have done.
“We have a purported one. Supposedly she began sexually abusing him when he was six.” The sun is directly in Benton’s face as he turns toward the river, which we can’t see from here, then his eyes are back on Marino, who’s entering the tunnel now.
“Where did the information come from if she’s dead and he’s vanished?”
“A computer disk. At the time of his mother’s murder we got information off a disk the police discovered hidden in his bedroom. His computer’s hard drive was missing. Presumably removed by him,” Benton says. “A spy video camera may also have been missing, used to film his mother bathing, based on what Martin wrote in his diary.”
“Wasn’t Granby in Washington back then?” I have an instinct, an unpleasant one of how this is looping around.
Granby can’t resist reminding anyone who will listen that he was an assistant special agent in charge in D.C. and what an exciting time it was when everything wasn’t about 9/11 and the war in the Middle East. During a dinner not long after he moved here he asked what I remembered about him from when I was the chief of Virginia and I told him I was sorry if we’d met then and I didn’t recall it. I could tell I offended him. Then he seemed relieved.
“He was an inspector in place and on the White House’s National Security Staff,” Benton says. “The details about Martin Lagos’s abuse were never in your office records.” He changes the subject back to that. “There was never anything in the police report. The medical examiner didn’t need to know and it would have served no useful purpose for the media to get its hands on such an accusation. That was the decision.” Not Benton’s decision but someone else’s.
“Do you believe the abuse happened?”
“From what I’ve read in the diary, yes.”
Marino is midway in the shadowy tunnel now, Quincy straining toward us with his tongue hanging out. It looks like he’s grinning.
“I’d like to review the Gabriela Lagos case to refresh my memory,” I say to Benton. “Everything you have on it. I’d rather not go through Virginia. Nobody wants a former chief meddling. My input wouldn’t be welcome.” I have more than one reason.
If there’s a problem with Martin Lagos’s DNA, I’m certainly not tipping my hand by calling the office that handled the original analysis even though I was in charge of it at the time, in 1996. If something has happened, it’s happened since I was chief, possibly very recently, as recently as the third victim’s murder, which wasn’t even a month ago.
“I can get you a lot more than your former office can as long as I don’t clear it with Granby,” Benton says. “He won’t say no. It just won’t happen and then other things will.”
“As soon as I can get anything that might relate to what’s going on,” I reply. “You think my case here is connected to the ones in D.C., so let me look at the evidence. I have that right and jurisdiction. Let’s compare the DNA, let’s compare the fibers to what I’ve recovered from this morning. Give me everything you’ve got as quickly as you can.”
“Leave it!” Marino orders his dog.
“The DNA is harder,” Benton says.
“Heel!” Marino’s voice echoes inside the tunnel, where Quincy is pulling him around. “Shit!”
“I can e-mail the microscopic images of the fibers,” Benton says. “But the DNA profiles have to come from CODIS and I can’t access that directly. I’d have to put in a formal request.”
“Who did the original analysis in Julianne Goulet’s case?”
“The Maryland medical examiner’s office. Baltimore.”
“I know the chief very well.”
“You can trust him without reservation?”
“Absolutely.”
Quincy sloshes into a puddle and drinks from it and Marino yells, “No! Leave it! Dammit!”
“About the time it’s believed Gabriela Lagos died an anonymous caller reported witnessing a young male jumping from the Fourteenth Street Bridge into the Potomac at night,” Benton tells me. “The body was never found.”
“Never?” I question. “That strikes me as strange.”
“No drinking puddles!” Marino is the one barking.
“Were you the profiler on her case?” I don’t remember Benton ever telling me at the time that he was involved in Gabriela Lagos’s homicide.
“I was consulted, yes. Not about her but about Martin and what was in his diary” is all Benton says, and Marino has reached us.
Benton holds out his hand to encourage Quincy to come. “That’s a good boy.” He ruffles the German shepherd’s neck. “I can see you’re very well trained,” he says with quiet sarcasm.
“He’s sure as hell not being good,” Marino is grumpy and out of breath. “Don’t be a bad boy.” He pats his dog, thumping him on the sides. “You know what to do. Now, sit.”
Quincy doesn’t.
22
Not far up ahead but out of sight from where we wait is a Bank of America kiosk.
“At Mass Ave and Albany. It would have been an ideal place for the killer to leave his car,” Benton describes the very intersection where I get stopped on occasion when the circus train lumbers through.
The last time wasn’t that long ago, the first of December, when the long candy-apple-red train with gold lettering on the sides took forever to clatter past, headed into the MIT campus to park at the Grand Junction branch. I sat and imagined the exotic animals inside those cars, remembering when this same Florida-based circus performed in Miami several times a year during my childhood. The Cirque d’Orleans casts a shadow over my mood every time it sets up in an arena around here, reminding me of my past, of my father who used to take me to see the elephants walking trunk to tail along Biscayne Boulevard.
“He could have left his car there in the public lot.” Benton continues talking about where the killer may have parked as I hold Quincy by his leash and pet him. “And nobody would have paid attention. Cars are in and out of that lot at all hours because of the ATM. He left his vehicle and returned on foot probably right along these tracks. It would have been raining when he did. The footprints he left when he returned to the scene would be gone for the most part, just the partials we’ve noticed. The intact ones are from when he left the final time, possibly right before dawn when the rain had stopped.”