“I just don’t understand where she got that detail,” Benton says. “Well, maybe from him. Maybe he’s changed his story yet again. Johnny said he left The Biscuit at two, not one, but maybe he’s changed that rather critical detail because he thinks it’s what someone wants to hear. However, it would be unusual, very unusual.”
“You were just with him this morning.”
“I’m not the one who would influence him to change a detail.”
Benton is saying that the detail is new and he doesn’t believe that Johnny has changed his story about what time he left the cafe. It would seem Mrs. Donahue simply made a mistake, but when I try to imagine that, something feels wrong.
“How would he have gotten to Salem at all?” I ask.
“He could have taken a taxi or a train, but there’s no evidence he did either. No sightings of him, no receipts found, nothing to prove he was ever in Salem or had any connection with the Bishop family. Nothing except his confession,” Benton says as his eyes cut to the rearview mirror. “And what’s important about that is his story is exactly what’s been in the news, and he changes the details as news accounts and theories change. That part of his mother’s letter is accurate. He parrots details word for word. Including if somebody suggests a scenario or information—leads him, in other words. Suggestibility, vulnerable to manipulation, acting in a way that generates suspicion, hallmark signs in Asperger’s.” He glances in the mirror again. “And attention to detail, to minutiae that can seem bizarre to others. Like what time it is. He’s always maintained he left The Biscuit at two p.m. Three minutes past two, to be exact. You ask Johnny what time it is or what time he did something, and he’ll tell you practically to the second.”
“So why would he change that detail?”
“In my opinion, he wouldn’t.”
“Seems like he’d be better off saying he left earlier if he really wants people to believe he murdered Mark Bishop.”
“It’s not that he wants people to believe it. It’s that he believes it. Not because of what he remembers but because of what he doesn’t remember and because of what’s been suggested to him.”
“By whom? Sounds like he confessed before he was ever a suspect and interrogated. So he wasn’t enticed into a false confession by the police, for example.”
“He doesn’t remember. He’s convinced he suffered a dissociative episode after he left The Biscuit at two p.m., somehow got to Salem and killed a boy with a nail gun—”
“He didn’t,” I interrupt. “That much I can tell you with certainty. He didn’t kill Mark Bishop with a nail gun. Nobody did.”
Benton doesn’t say anything as he speeds up, the snowflakes small again and sounding like grit hitting the car.
“Mrs. Donahue’s also clearly misunderstood Jack’s medical opinion.” I talk with conviction as another part of me won’t stop worrying about how I should handle her. I consider doing what Benton said and not calling her. I’ll have my administrative assistant, Bryce, contact her instead, first thing in the morning, and say I’m sorry but I’m not able to discuss the Mark Bishop case or any case. It’s important Bryce not give the impression that I’m too busy, that I’m unmoved by Mrs. Donahue’s distress, and that makes me think of PFC Gabriel’s mother again, of the painful things she said to me this morning at Dover. “I assume you’ve reviewed the autopsy report,” I say to Benton.
“Yes.”
“Then you know there is nothing in Jack’s report that mentions a nail gun, only that injuries caused by nails penetrating the brain were the cause of death.” I decide I can’t possibly let Bryce make such a call on my behalf. I’ll do it myself and ask Mrs. Donahue not to contact me again. I’ll emphasize it’s for her own protection. Then I’m filled with doubt, going back and forth on what to do with her, no longer so sure of myself. I’ve always had confidence in my ability to handle devastated people, bereft and enraged people, but I don’t understand what happened this morning. Mrs. Gabriel called me a bigot. No one has ever called me a bigot before.
“A nail gun hasn’t been ruled out by the people who count,” Benton informs me. “Including Jack.”
“I find that almost impossible to believe.”
“He’s been saying it.”
“First I’ve heard of it.”
“He’s been saying it to whoever will listen. I don’t care what’s in his written report, the paperwork you’ve seen,” Benton repeats as he looks in the rearview mirror.
“Why would he say something contrary to lab reports?”
“I’m simply relaying to you what I know for a fact that he’s been saying about a nail gun being the weapon.”
“Saying a nail gun was used is absolutely contrary to scientific and medical fact.” In my sideview mirror I see headlights far behind us. “A nail gun leaves tool marks consistent with a single mechanized blow, similar to a firing-pin impression on a cartridge case. Instead, what we have in this instance are tool marks on nails that are consistent with a handheld hammer, and there were hammer marks on the boy’s scalp and skull and underlying pattern contusions. Nail guns often leave a primer residue similar to gunshot residue, but Mark Bishop’s wounds were negative for lead, for barium. A nail gun wasn’t used, and I’m frankly amazed if what you’re implying is that the police, the prosecutor, believe otherwise.”
“Not hard to understand a number of things people choose to believe in this case,” Benton says, and he’s sped up, driving the speed limit.
I look in my sideview mirror again, and the headlights are much closer. Bright bluish-white lights blaze in my sideview mirror. A large SUV with xenon headlights and fog lamps. Marino, I think. And behind him, I hope, is Lucy.
“Wanting to believe that Johnny’s confession is true, as I’ve said,” Benton continues. “Wanting to think that it had to be a blitz attack, that Mark Bishop couldn’t have seen it coming or he would have struggled like hell. No one wants to think a child was held down and knew what was about to happen to him as someone drove nails into his skull with a hammer, for Christ’s sake.”
“He had no defense injuries, no evidence of a struggle, no evidence of being held down. It’s in Jack’s report. I’m sure you’ve seen it, and I’m sure he explained all this to the prosecutor, to the police.”
“I wish you’d done the damn autopsy.” Benton cuts his eyes to his mirrors.
“What exactly has Jack been saying beyond what I’ve read in his paperwork? Besides the possibility of a nail gun.”
Benton doesn’t answer me.
“Maybe you don’t know,” I then say, but I believe he does.
“He said he couldn’t rule out a nail gun,” Benton replies. “He said it isn’t possible to tell definitively. He said this after he was asked because of what Johnny claimed in his confession. Jack was specifically and directly asked if a nail gun could have been used.”
“The answer’s definitively no.”
“He would debate that with you. He said it isn’t possible to tell definitively in this case. He said it’s possible it was a nail gun.”
“I’m telling you it’s not possible, and it is possible to tell definitively,” I reply. “And this is the first I’ve heard about a nail gun except for what’s been on the Internet, which I have dismissed, since I dismiss most things in the news unless I am certain of the sources.”
“He suggested if you pressed a nail gun against someone’s head, you’d get what’s similar to the muzzle mark made by a contact gunshot wound. And it’s possible that’s what we’re seeing on the scalp and underlying tissue. And that’s why there’s no evidence of a struggle or that the boy knew what was happening.”