“Why would he lie about this case?” I ask again. “Why would he want to influence anybody about it?”
“I can’t imagine how you could make a kid stay still for that,” Benton says, and he’s thinking about Mark Bishop’s death. “The family was inside the house and claim they didn’t hear screams, didn’t hear anything. They claim that Mark was playing one minute and the next he was facedown in the yard. I’m trying to envision what happened and can’t.”
“All right. We’ll talk about that, since you’re not going to answer my question.”
“I’ve tried to picture it, to reconstruct it, and draw a blank. The family was home. It’s not a big yard. How is it possible no one saw someone or heard anything?”
His face is somber as we drive past Lanes & Games, where Marino bowls in a league. What is the name of his team? Spare None. His new buddies, law enforcement and military people.
“I thought I’ve seen it all, but I just can’t picture how it happened,” Benton again says, because he can’t or won’t tell me what is really on his mind about Fielding.
“A person who knew exactly what he was doing.” I can envision it. I can imagine in painful detail what the killer did. “Someone who was able to put the boy at ease, perhaps lure him into doing what he was told. Maybe Mark thought it was part of a game, a fantasy.”
“A stranger showed up in his yard and got him to play a game that involved having nails hammered into his head—or pretending to, which is more likely,” Benton considers. “Maybe. But a stranger? I don’t know about that. I’ve missed talking to you.”
“It wasn’t a stranger, or at least didn’t seem like one to Mark. I suspect it was someone he had no reason to distrust—no matter what he was asked to do.” I base this on what I know about his injuries or lack of them. “The body showed no signs that he was terrified and panicky, someone trying to fight or escape. I think it’s likely he was familiar with the killer or felt inclined to cooperate for some reason. I’ve missed talking to you, but I’m here now and you’re not talking to me.”
“I am talking to you.”
“One of these days I’m going to slip Sodium Pentothal into your drink. And find out everything you’ve never told me.”
“If only it worked, I would reciprocate. But then we’d both be in serious trouble. You don’t want to know everything. Or you shouldn’t. And I probably shouldn’t, either.”
“Four p.m. on January thirtieth.” I’m thinking about how dark it would have been when Mark was murdered. “What time did the sun set that day? What was the weather?”
“Completely dark at four-thirty, cold, overcast,” says Benton, who would have found out those details first thing if he was the one investigating the case.
“I’m trying to remember if there was snow on the ground.”
“Not in Salem. A lot of rain because of the harbor. The water warms up the air.”
“So no footprints were recovered in the Bishops’ yard.”
“No. And at four it was getting dark and the backyard was in shadows because of shrubbery and trees,” Benton says, as if he’s the detective on the case. “According to the family, Mrs. Bishop, the mother, went out at four-twenty to make Mark come into the house, and she found him facedown in the leaves.”
“Why are we assuming he had just been killed when she found him? Certainly his physical findings would never allow us to pinpoint his time of death to exactly four p.m.”
“The fact that the parents recall looking out the window at approximately a quarter of four and seeing Mark playing,” Benton says.
“‘Playing’? What does that mean exactly? What kind of playing?”
“Don’t know exactly.” Benton and his evasiveness again. “I’d like to talk to the family.” I suspect he’s already talked to them. “There are a lot of missing details. But he was playing by himself in the yard, and when his mother looked out the window at around four-fifteen, she didn’t see him. So she went out to make him come into the house and found him, tried to rouse him, and picked him up and rushed him inside. She called nine-one-one at exactly four-twenty-three p.m., was hysterical, said that her son wasn’t moving or breathing, that she worried he had choked on something.”
“Why would she think he might have choked?”
“Apparently, before he went out to play, he’d put some leftover Christmas candy into his pocket. Hard candies, and the last thing she said to him as he was going out the door was not to suck on candy while he was running or jumping.”
I can’t help but think that this is the sort of detail Benton would have gotten from the Bishops in person. I feel he has talked to them.
“And we don’t know what kind of playing he was doing? He’s by himself, running and jumping?” I ask.
“I just got involved in this case after Johnny confessed to it.” Benton is evasive again. For some reason, he doesn’t want to talk about what Mark was doing in his backyard. “Mrs. Bishop later told police she didn’t see anybody in the area, that there was no sign of anybody having been on their property, and she didn’t know until Mark got to the emergency room that he’d been murdered. The nails had been hammered in all the way, and his hair hid them and there was no blood. And his shoes were missing. He was wearing a pair of Adidas while playing in the yard, and they were gone and haven’t shown up.”
“A boy playing in his yard in the near dark. Again, hard to imagine he would cooperate with a stranger. Unless it was someone who represented something he instinctively trusted.” I continue making that point.
“A fireman. A cop. The guy who drives the ice-cream truck. That sort of thing,” Benton considers easily, as if this is safe to talk about. “Or worse. A member of his own family.”
“A member of his family would kill him in such a sadistic, hideous fashion and then take his shoes? Taking the shoes sounds like a souvenir.”
“Or supposed to look like one,” Benton says.
“I’m no forensic psychologist,” I then say. “I’m playing your role, and I shouldn’t. I’d like to see where it happened. Jack never went to the scene, and he should have made a retrospective visit.” My mood settles lower as I say that. He didn’t go to Mark Bishop’s scene, and he didn’t go to Norton’s Woods.
“Or another kid. Kids playing a game that turned deadly,” Benton says.
“If it was another kid,” I reply, “he was remarkably well informed anatomically.”
I envision the autopsy photographs, the boy’s head with his scalp reflected back. I envision the CT scans, three-dimensional images of four two-inch iron nails penetrating the brain.
“Whoever did it couldn’t have picked more lethal locations to drive the nails,” I explain. “Three went through the temporal bone above the left ear and penetrated the pons. One was nailed into the back of the skull, directed upward, so it damaged the cervicomedullary junction, or upper cervical spinal cord.”
“How fast would that have killed him?”
“Almost instantaneously. The nail to the back of the head alone could have killed him in minutes, as little time as it takes to die after you can no longer breathe. Injury at the C-one and C-two levels of the spinal cord interferes with breathing. The police, the prosecutor, a jury, for that matter, would have a hard time believing another child could have done that. It seems that causing death, almost immediate death, was the intention, and it was premeditated, unless the hammer and nails were at the scene, in the yard or house, and by all accounts they weren’t. Correct?”
“A hammer, yes. But what house doesn’t have a hammer? And the tool marks don’t match. But you know that from lab reports. No nails like the ones that killed him. Those weren’t found at the family’s home, and no nail gun,” Benton says.