Point of Origin

She was at a loss for a moment, staring out the window at an old magnolia tree heavy with blossoms that were limp and brown.

'They're still working on him,' she finally spoke. 'But based on indications so far, it appears his throat may have been cut. There were cuts to the bones of his face. Here and here.'

She pointed to her left jaw and space between his eyes.

'There was no soot or burns in his trachea, and no CO. So he was already dead when the fire was set,' she said to me. 'I'm sorry, Kay. I… Well, I don't know what to say.'

'How can it be that no one saw him enter the building?' I asked as if I had not comprehended the horror of what she had just said. 'Someone forces him inside at gunpoint, maybe, and no one saw a thing?'

'The store closed at five P.M.,' she answered. 'There's no sign of forcible entry and for some reason the burglar alarm hadn't been set, so it didn't go off. We've had trouble with these places being torched for insurance money. Same Pakistani family always involved one way or another.'

She sipped her coffee.

'Same MO,' she went on. 'Small inventory, the fire starts shortly after business hours, and no one in the neighborhood saw a thing.'

'This has nothing to do with insurance money!' I said with sudden rage.

'Of course, it doesn't,' she answered quietly. 'Or at least not directly. But if you want to hear my theory, I'll tell you.'

'Tell me.'

'Maybe Carrie was the torch…'

'Of course!'

'I'm saying she might have conspired with the owner to torch the place for him. He may have even paid her to do it, not having any idea what her real agenda was. Granted, this would have taken some planning.'

'She's had nothing to do for years but plan.'

My chest tightened again and tears formed a lump in my throat and filled my eyes.

'I'm going home,' I told her. 'I've got to do something. I can't stay here.'

'I think you are better off…' she started to protest.

'I've got to figure out what she will do next,' I said, as if this were possible. 'I've got to figure out how she's doing what she's doing. There's some master plan, some routine, something more to all this. Did they find any metal shavings?'

'There wasn't much left. He was in the plenum, the point of origin. There was some kind of big fuel load up there, but we don't know what, except there were a lot of Styrofoam peanuts floating around. And those things will really burn. No accelerants detected, so far.'

'Teun, the metal shavings from the Shephard case. Let us take them to Richmond so we can compare them with what we've got. Your investigators can receipt them to Marino.'

She looked at me with eyes that were skeptical, tired, and sad.

'You need to deal with this, Kay,' she said. 'Let us do the rest of it.'

'I am dealing with it, Teun.'

I got up from my chair and looked down at her.

'The only way I can,' I said. 'Please.'

'You really should not be on this case anymore. And I'm placing Lucy on administrative leave for at least a week.'

'You won't pull me off this case,' I told her. 'Not in this life.'

'You're not in a position to be objective.'

'And what would you do if you were me?' I demanded. 'Would you go home and do nothing?'

'But I'm not you.'

'Answer me,' I said.

'No one could stop me from working the case. I would be obsessed. I would do just what you're doing,' she said, getting up, too. 'I'll do what I can to help.'

'Thank you,' I said. 'Thank God for you, Teun.'

She studied me for a while, leaning against the counter, her hands in the pockets of her slacks.

'Kay, don't blame yourself for this,' she said.

'I blame Carrie,' I replied with a sudden flow of bitter tears. 'That's exactly who I blame.'

18

SEVERAL HOURS LATER, Marino was driving Lucy and me back to Richmond. It was the worst car trip I could remember, with the three of us staring out and saying nothing, an oppressive depression heavy on the air. It did not seem true, and whenever truth struck again, it was with the blow of a heavy fist into my chest. Images of Benton were vivid. I did not know if it were grace or a bigger tragedy that we had not spent our last night together in the same bed.

In a way, I wasn't sure I could bear the fresh memories of his touch, his breath, the way he felt in my arms. Then I wanted to hold him and make love again. My mind tumbled down different hills into dark spaces where thoughts got caught on the realities of dealing with his possessions at my house, including his clothing.

His remains would have to be shipped to Richmond, and despite all I knew about death, the two of us had never devoted much attention to our own or the funeral service we might want and where we should be buried. We had not wanted to think about our own, and so we hadn't.

I-95 South was a blur of highway running forever through stopped time. When tears filled my eyes, I turned to my window and hid my face. Lucy was silent in the back seat, her anger, grief, and fear as palpable as a concrete wall.

'I'm going to quit,' she finally said when we passed through Fredericksburg. 'This is it for me. I'll find something somewhere. Maybe in computers.'

'Bullshit,' Marino answered, his eyes on her in the rearview mirror. 'That's just what the bitch wants you to do. Quit law enforcement. Be a loser and a big fuck-up.'

'I am a loser and a fuck-up.'

'Bull fucking shit,' he said.

'She killed him because of me,' she went on in the same heartless monotone.

'She killed him because she wanted to. And we can sit here and have a pity party, or we can figure out what we're gonna do before she whacks the next one of us.'

But my niece was not to be consoled. Indirectly, she had exposed all of us to Carrie a long time ago.

'Carrie wants you to blame yourself for this,' I said to her.

Lucy did not respond, and I turned around to look at her. She was dressed in dirty BDUs and boots, her hair a mess. She still smelled of fire, because she had not bathed. She had not eaten or slept, as best I knew. Her eyes were flat and hard. They glinted coldly of the decision she had made, and I had seen the look before, when hopelessness and hostility made her self-destructive. A part of her wanted to die, or maybe a part of her already had.

We reached my house at half past five, and the slanted rays of the sun were hot and bright, the sky hazy blue but cloudless. I carried in newspapers from the front steps and was sickened again by this morning's front-page headline about Benton's death. Although identification was tentative, it was believed he had died in a fire under very suspicious circumstances while assisting the FBI in the nationwide hunt for the escaped killer Carrie Grethen. Investigators would not say why Benton had been inside the small grocery store that had burned, or if he might have been lured there.

'What do you want to do with this?' Marino asked.

He had opened the car trunk, where three large brown paper bags contained the personal effects collected from Benton's hotel room. I could not decide.

'Want me to just put them in your office?' he asked. 'Or I can go through them if you want, Doc.'

'No, no, just leave them,' I said.

Stiff paper crackled as he carried the bags into the house and down the hall. His footsteps were burdened and slow, and when he returned to the front of the house, I was still standing by the open door.

'I'll talk to you later,' he said. 'And don't go leaving this door open, you hear me? The alarm stays on and you and Lucy shouldn't go out anywhere.'

'I don't think you have a worry.'

Lucy had dropped her luggage in her bedroom near the kitchen and was staring out the window at Marino driving away. I came behind her and gently put my hands on her shoulders.

'Don't quit,' I said, and I leaned my forehead against the back of her neck.

She did not turn around, and I felt grief shudder through her.

'We're in this together, Lucy,' I went on quietly. 'We're all that's left, really. Just you and me. Benton would want us united in this. He wouldn't want you giving up. Then what will I do, huh? If you give up, you'll be giving up on me, too.'