Point of Origin

His skin was pitted down his neck and into the open shirt he wore, and I could only imagine his shame as an adolescent, and the mockery and derisive laughter of his peers. I had known young men like him as I was growing up, those disfigured by birth or disease and unable to enjoy the entitlement of youthfulness or being the object of love.

So he had robbed others of what he did not have. He had destroyed as he had been destroyed, the point of origin his own miserable lot in life, his own wretched self. I did not feel sorry for him. Nor did I think that he and Carrie were still here in this city, or even anywhere around. She had gotten what she'd wanted, at least for now. The trap I had set had caught only me. She had wanted me to find Benton, and I had.

The final word, I felt sure, would be what she eventually did to me, and at the moment, I was too beaten up to care. I felt dead. I found silence in sitting on an old, worn marble bench in the riotous tangle of Joyce's overgrown backyard. Hostas, begonias, and fig bushes fought with pampas grass for the sun, and I found Lucy at the edge of intermittent shadows cast by live oak trees, where red and yellow hibiscus were loud and wild.

'Lucy, let's go home.'

I sat next to my niece on cold, hard stone I associated with cemeteries.

'I hope he was dead before they did that to him,' she said one more time.

I did not want to think about it.

'I just hope he didn't suffer.'

'She wants us to worry about things like that,' I said as anger peeked through my haze of disbelief. 'She's taken enough from us, don't you think? Let's not give her any more, Lucy.'

She had no answer for me.

'ATF and the police will handle it from here,' I went on, holding her hand. 'Let's go home, and we'll move on from there.'

'How?'

'I'm not sure I know.' I was as truthful as I could be.

We got up together and went around to the front of the house, where McGovern was talking to an agent out by her car. She looked at both of us, and compassion softened her eyes.

'If you'll take us back to the helicopter,' Lucy said with a steadiness she did not feel, 'I'll take it on in to Richmond and Border Patrol can pick it up. If that's all right, I mean.'

'I'm not sure you should be flying right now.' McGovern suddenly was Lucy's supervisor again.

'Trust me, I'm fine,' Lucy replied, and her voice got harder. 'Besides, who else is going to fly it? And you can't leave it here on a soccer field.'

McGovern hesitated, her eyes on Lucy. She unlocked the Explorer.

'Okay,' she said. 'Climb in.'

'I'll file a flight plan,' Lucy said as she sat in front. 'So you can check on where we are, if that will make you feel better.'

'It will,' McGovern said, starting the engine.

McGovern got on the radio and called one of the agents inside the house.

'Put Marino on,' she said.

After a brief wait, Marino's voice came over the air.

'Go ahead,' he said.

'Party's taking off. You going along?'

'I'll stick to the ground,' his answer came back. 'Gonna help out here first.'

'Got it. We appreciate it.'

'Tell them to fly safe,' Marino said.

A campus police officer on bicycle patrol was standing sentry at the helicopter when we got there, and tennis was going strong on the courts next door, balls clopping, while several young men practiced soccer near a goal. The sky was bright blue, trees barely stirring, as if nothing bad had happened here. Lucy went through a thorough preflight check while McGovern and I waited in the car.

'What are you going to do?' I asked her.

'Bombard the news with pictures of them and any other info that might cause someone out there to recognize them,' she answered. 'They've got to eat. They've got to sleep. And he's got to have Avgas. He can't fly forever without it.'

'It doesn't make sense that it hasn't been spotted before, refueling, landing, flying, what all.'

'Looks like he had plenty of his own Avgas right there in his garage. Not to mention there are so many small airfields where he could land and gas up,' she said. 'All over. And he doesn't have to contact the tower in uncontrolled airspace, and Schweizers aren't exactly rare. Not to mention' - she looked at me - 'it has been spotted. We saw it ourselves, and so did the farrier and the director of Kirby. We just didn't know what we were looking at.'

'I suppose.'

My mood was getting heavier by the moment. I did not want to go home. I did not want to go anywhere. It was as if the weather had turned gray, and I was cold and alone and could escape none of it. My mind churned with questions and answers, and deductions and screams. Whenever it went still, I saw him. I saw him in smoldering debris. I saw his face beneath heavy plastic.

'… Kay?'

I realized McGovern was talking to me.

'I want to know how you're doing. Really.' Her eyes were fastened to me.

I took a deep, shaky breath, and my voice sounded cracked when I said, 'I'm going to make it, Teun. Beyond that, I don't know how I'm doing. I'm not, even sure what I'm doing. But I know what I've done. I've ruined everything. Carrie played me like a hand of cards, and Benton's dead. She and Newton Joyce are still out there, ready to do something bad again. Or maybe they already have. Nothing I've done has made a goddamn difference, Teun.'

Tears filled my eyes as I watched a blurry Lucy checking to make sure the fuel cap was tight. Then she began untying the main rotor blades. McGovern handed me a Kleenex. She gently squeezed my arm.

'You were brilliant, Kay. For one thing, had you not found out what you did, we wouldn't have had a thing to list on the warrant. We couldn't have even gotten one, and then where would we be? Yes, we haven't caught them yet, but at least we know who. And we will find them.'

'We found what they wanted us to,' I told her.

Lucy had finished her inspection and looked my way.

'I guess I'd better go,' I said to McGovern. 'Thank you.'

I took her hand and squeezed it.

'Take care of Lucy,' I said.

'I think she does a pretty good job of taking care of herself.'

I got out and turned around once to wave goodbye. I opened the copilot's door and climbed up in the seat, then fastened my harness. Lucy slipped her checklist out of a pocket on the door, and went down it, zeroing in on switches and circuit breakers, and making sure the collective was down, the throttle off. My heart would not beat normally, and my breathing was shallow.

We took off and nosed around into the wind. McGovern watched us climb, a hand shielding her eyes. Lucy handed me a sectional chart and said I was to help navigate. She lifted into a hover and contacted Air Traffic Control.

'Wilmington tower, this is helicopter two-one-niner Sierra Bravo.'

'Go ahead, helicopter two-one-niner, Wilmington tower.'

'Requesting clearance from university athletic field, direct to your location for ISO Aero. Over.'

'Contact tower when entering pattern. Cleared from present position, on course, stay with me and report down and secure at ISO.'

'Two Sierra Bravo, wilco.'

Then Lucy transmitted to me, 'We'll be following a three-three-zero heading. So your job after we gas up will be keeping the gyro consistent with the compass and helping out with the map.'

She climbed to five hundred feet and the tower contacted us again.

'Helicopter two Sierra Bravo,' the voice came over the air. 'Traffic is unidentified and at your six o'clock, three hundred feet, closing.'

'Two Sierra Bravo is looking, no joy.'

'Unidentified aircraft two miles southeast of airport, identify yourself,' the tower transmitted to all who could hear.