“The killer is someone they knew and underestimated or ignored.” The legs of my pants are soaked and my hands are cold. “People like this don’t unlock a door or turn their back on someone they have even the slightest hesitation about.”
“Rage,” Benton says. “Lombardi hit this person where it hurts. He insulted and humiliated him and I have a feeling Lombardi had done it before. We’re going to find there’s a history. He knew him and I maintain no one at Double S asked him to murder Gail and wouldn’t have because of the scam she was involved in, and that’s not why he killed her anyway.”
“He may believe that’s why. He may believe that’s why he’s killed all of them.”
“He believes what drives him is rational but it’s all about what arouses him,” Benton says. “And maybe he’s gotten crazy because what he just did was dangerously foolish and it surprises me that someone as ruthless as Lombardi missed every cue until his blood was gushing all over his desk.”
“Arrogance. A bully above the law who thought he was untouchable. Or maybe there’s another reason he took this person for granted.”
“Granby’s looking for a Russian gangster to arrest and I’m sure he’ll find one somewhere,” Benton says bleakly.
I envision Ed Granby trim and dapper, with glittery small eyes and a long nose as pointed as a pencil, his hair combed straight back and gray only at the temples. His hair is so perfect I’m sure he dyes it like that and I feel my indignation swell and rise and I walk close to Benton, feeling him against me, and I feel calmer as the house looms nearer but still about a quarter of a mile off, a light on at ground level, the rest of it dark.
I check messages, my phone display glaringly bright in a darkness moiling with fog. Lamps in the distance illuminate little as they barely push through as if we’re out on a ship approaching a socked-in shore. I have another reminder from Ernie Koppel that he’s home if I want to talk and I try his number as we walk.
“I’m outside and it’s windy,” I apologize when he answers.
“I imagine you’re still in Concord and we’re eating dinner glued to the TV. It’s on every news channel.”
“What have you got for me?”
“An early Christmas present, a lot of things.”
“That makes me happy.”
“A tool-mark match, yes, and you’re not surprised because you suspected it. And you’re right about the Maryland case,” he says. “The same mineral fingerprint as this one here at MIT and also from the residue you just collected at the Concord scene.”
“From the stubs Lucy dropped off.”
“Yes,” he says. “The same mineral fingerprint on the dead person’s fleece. Halite is basically rock salt and under SEM it’s obvious it was artificially grown by saturating salt water and allowing it to evaporate, which makes me suspect the residue that’s turning up is from something manufactured for a specific commercial use.”
“Do you have any idea what?”
“Calcite and aragonite are common in construction, found in cement and sand, for example. And I know that halite’s used in glassmaking and ceramics and also to melt ice on the roads. But the three of these minerals together with the same elemental fingerprint as in the Maryland case and now this one and basically every sample I tested? It could be some sort of art supply for pottery or sculpture, maybe some type of mineral pigments in tempera paint or special effects. Under black light it sure as hell would be iridescent.”
“Anything about the fibers?”
“From Gail Shipton, Lycra from the blue fibers you collected and also what she was wrapped in. The white cloth is also Lycra. And that’s also consistent with the fibers found in the Washington, D.C., cases, maybe the same fabrics in all of the cases but different runs of it. One thing that surprised me is the vapor rub. I can’t pinpoint the brand but the spectral fragmentation pattern made for a relatively easy identification that’s the surprise in the Cracker Jacks. Apparently someone was looking to do more than clear his sinuses. MDPV,” he says.
“You’re kidding.”
“I’m definitely not kidding. DNA handed off a sample to me late afternoon and I gave it a whirl with FTIR and that’s what I got but I’m not a toxicologist. If you’re not opposed to using up some of the sample, I suggest liquid chromatography — tandem mass spec just to confirm. And by the way the tox lab tells me it’s the same methcathinone analog as that suicide from last week, the lady who jumped off her building. A really dangerous designer drug someone’s selling on our streets, the same one that’s been wreaking havoc this past year I’m afraid.”
“Thank you, Ernie.”
“I know it’s not for me to offer but I’m going to anyway. I think it’s the same guy. He’s doing something weird to them, maybe wrapping them in stretchy fabric and then using some sort of artistic medium, maybe painting portraits of them after they’re dead, who the hell knows. You be careful, Kay.”
“Racehorses and bath salts,” I say to Benton when I get off the phone. “I guess if you want to focus keenly and experience superhuman energy and euphoria and wreak havoc on your neurotransmitters, mix a little monkey dust in your vapor rub and keep swiping it up your nose.”
“That helps explain what he just did. It might explain a lot of things. Increasing paranoia, agitation, aggression, and violence.”
“His system’s going to be roaring, hot and sweating, his blood pressure through the roof.” I think of the bareheaded young man with no coat on in the rainy cold. “He may be getting psychotic.”
I imagine him watching me in the dark behind my house and I wonder who and what he thought I was, and who is Benton? Who are any of us or his victims to him?
“The horror of this drug is that you can’t escape from it and you never know what dose you’re getting in a package,” I explain. “So the reaction can go from mild to insanity and brain damage. Eventually it will kill him.”
“Not soon enough,” Benton says.
Through fragrant evergreens that smell like cedar we near the lighted windows on the first floor, careful about cameras, making sure no one is around as I continue looking back like a fugitive.
I see no headlights or flashlights, just the darkness of the wet foggy night and our foggy breath, and I hear the wet sounds of Benton’s borrowed shoes. I estimate that from the entrance of the property to where the driveway curves past the outbuildings and the office and around to Lombardi’s house the distance is almost two miles. We trudge through a vegetable garden that’s dormant and dead and then spreading out before us are a tennis court with no net, a barbecue pit, and a lap pool that’s covered for the winter.
There’s another tarmac, this one round and made of pavers that I suspect are heated, and beyond it are four bay doors that are heavy metal like hurricane shutters. Inside are cars, Benton says, rare Ferraris, Maseratis, Lamborghinis, McLarens, a Bugatti, all with Miami plates, the baubles of the super-rich and super-thieves, and like yachts, business jets, and penthouses, they’re a way to launder illegal money. The cars probably were destined for the Port of Boston and headed to places like Southeast Asia and the Middle East, Benton suspects.
A solid-wood door opens onto the long, glass-enclosed stone walkway that up close I can see has a golf cart inside and is stacked with split firewood. This leads from the outbuilding that’s a spa to the house that includes the private kitchen and living area, the master suite on the top floor and the garage on the lower level. Benton opens another door that he left unlocked when he was here earlier with Marino and we enter Lombardi’s private kitchen, an open space with a deep fireplace near a breakfast table and zinc counters and big windows overlooking the grounds.