“I feel sure about this. It’s going to be fine,” I say to him in an upbeat way that blankets my slow-burning indignation and fury.
38
We load my gear and the red bag of soiled protective clothing into the trunk of Benton’s powerful turbo sports car as if we’re leaving.
He shuts the lid and locks it with a chirp. On foot we divert away from the parking lot, pushing through a barrier of pines with low-hanging branches, veering away from the driveway toward more trees, a meadow and acres of yard in a precise direction that he determined earlier. I notice him check tall lamps glowing dull yellow, their security cameras pointed like periscopes to pick up any movement along the blacktop we avoid as we make our way carefully through the foggy dark toward the house where Lombardi lived alone.
His grounds are deliberately planned, with the office building about a mile into the winding paved drive. Then a glass-enclosed walkway connects that building to a larger one, what Benton tells me is a spa, gym, and indoor pool, that in turn is connected by another enclosed walkway to a generous guest quarters. From there an additional walkway leads to the house painted dark green with dark brown shutters and a dark green metal roof, tucked in pines and not easily spotted from the air. Benton describes the dead billionaire’s lair as architecturally camouflaged.
Doors leading into Lombardi’s personal spaces are secured with anti-drill dead bolt lever locks, each with a key that can’t be duplicated, and every area of the compound, with the exception of barns, maintenance sheds, and the sunporch, is connected by these glass and stone walkways that remind me of covered bridges, unusually long ones. As we skirt the soggy perimeter in the inky dark and Benton explains the layout and security to me, I can’t help but think of an octopus reaching out its tentacles across the property, beyond a dark horizon obscured by black clouds and into other cities, states, countries, and continents.
“You’ll judge it for yourself,” Benton says. “You’d never imagine this is going on around here but it shouldn’t be the priority. It can wait, goddamn it. He’s going to kill someone else. And nobody’s looking for him.”
“We are. But he’ll never be caught if we don’t catch Granby first. I believe he knows damn well who this guy is.”
“You have to wonder why he’d help protect him if he has no idea,” Benton replies. “It’s not just about clearing cases in D.C. that are bad for politics and tourism. Granby wants them blamed on someone else for a reason, possibly because Lombardi wanted it. Hang three murders around the neck of a missing man who’s probably dead and no harm done unless the Capital Murderer kills again somewhere else where the DNA can’t be tampered with. And he did and here we are and Granby must be secretly panicking.”
He doesn’t say it as if he’s happy about it. Benton isn’t heavy-handed or vindictive and maybe I can be both. He steers me around low-hanging branches I can barely see and when my shoulder grazes them cold rainwater showers me. I put my coat on and button it up.
“If we walked on the driveway, who’s going to see us and what would happen?” I comb my fingers through my damp hair.
“The cameras would pick us up and we’d show up on monitors. They’d be here in two seconds and Granby would have us escorted off the property immediately.”
“You really think so?”
“It wouldn’t be pretty,” he says.
“That’s assuming they aren’t too busy to notice.”
“They probably are at the moment. When more backup arrives we’ll be out of luck and out of time. I’m surprised they aren’t here already.”
“What happens when we get to the house?” I ask.
“The door near the garage has an alarm but the system’s off. The chef disarmed it earlier and didn’t reset it. There’s no camera at that entrance probably because Lombardi wanted to come and go with various acquaintances, colleagues, mobsters, or his women and not be seen or recorded.”
“Colleagues such as friends in high places,” I suggest.
“I think that’s the picture we’re getting.”
“And his women like Gail Shipton.”
“To control her. To overpower. To bend her to his will.”
“It wasn’t just about sex.”
“Power,” Benton says. “He made her do it because she didn’t want it. And to put her in her place. Carin Hegel thought she was a match for these people at first because she had no idea. She thought it was just a lawsuit. And Lombardi was putting her in her place, too.”
“She doesn’t think it’s just a lawsuit now as she hides out at Lucy’s house. And I wonder how many other former clients Lombardi did this to. Took everything they had in a way that couldn’t be proven, then settled with insurance money that he got a cut of — the biggest cut, I’m sure. Or maybe he simply got them to bend to his will because they felt they had no choice or might be killed.”
“What he did with Gail would have been a small transaction for him,” Benton says.
“A hundred million is small?”
“Whatever the settlement would have been, a payout from insurance companies, pocket change to him but an amusement because a big trial lawyer like Hegel dared to sue him. Gail was weak and got desperate and then he owned her and any technology she might help him with.” Every other minute he’s looking at his phone, getting information from Lucy. “If she wasn’t dead, she’d be charged with fraud. She’d be out of MIT and life would be over for her.”
“Does Granby know about that part of it? That she was in collusion?”
“I don’t know what he knows on his own but you heard what I told him.” Benton’s voice is as hard as iron. “I laid out what was important and I’m not telling him another damn thing. I’m home for the holidays, remember? And we’re not here unless they’ve noticed my car.”
“Some investigators they are if they haven’t.”
“They’re not noticing anything except what’s in the documents they’re rooting through,” Benton replies. “They’ve probably gotten the safe open by now and no telling what’s in it — I’m guessing millions in cash, gold, foreign currency, and account numbers for offshore banks — and he’s on the phone with headquarters every other minute, plotting, planning, cracking another big case. He’s predictable and he’s got it all figured out and the person we should worry about isn’t on their radar. No one’s looking for a reason. Granby’s diverted them.”
“He cheated the DNA. He solved a case that isn’t solved and now what’s he going to do about it?” We walk through bunchgrass that would be bright with wildflowers in warmer months. “He’ll clear the D.C. cases, blame the murders on Martin Lagos, and make what’s happened here a separate investigation into organized crime and professional hits,” I suppose.
“Which is totally illogical and someone will point that out eventually. Not everybody in the FBI is incompetent and corrupt,” Benton says. But what he’s really saying is he doesn’t want to believe anybody is.
“We don’t have the luxury for what will happen eventually.”
“A contract killer brings his own weapon to a job,” Benton says. “He doesn’t leave clothing at the scene, take a blood-soaked hooded sweatshirt from one of his victims so he can disguise himself as he runs like hell through a crowd of schoolchildren on his way back to wherever he left his car. He doesn’t grab an envelope full of cash and then accidentally drop it in a public park, an envelope with blood and a return address on it.”
Benton watches where he steps, his borrowed sneakers drenched. The wind is more frigid than I thought and everything we brush against is waterlogged.
“This is someone out of control who didn’t kill the people of Double S for money,” he says. “Maybe he wanted a reward and the ego gratification of being thanked for getting rid of Gail Shipton but the others were personal. They had it coming. Maybe not in Swanson’s case. He may have been in the way and that’s it.”