“These were L-head nails, typically used in flooring.”
“According to the police, no nails like that were found at the residence,” he repeats.
“Iron, not stainless steel.” I continue with details from photographs, from lab reports, and all the while I hear myself, I’m aware that I’m going over the case with Benton as if it’s mine. As if it’s his. As if we are working it the way we used to work cases in our early days together. “With traces of rust despite their protective zinc coating, which suggests they weren’t just purchased,” I go on. “That maybe they’d been lying around somewhere and exposed to moisture, possibly saltwater.”
“Nothing like that at the scene. No L-head flooring nails, no iron nails at all,” Benton says. “The father’s been spreading the rumor about a nail gun, at least publicly.”
“Publicly. Meaning he told the media,” I assume.
“Yes.”
“But when? He told the media when? That’s the important question. Where did the rumor come from and when? Do we know for a fact it started with the father, because if it did, that’s significant. It could mean he’s offering an alibi, suggesting a weapon he doesn’t have, that’s he trying to lead the police in the wrong direction.”
“We’re thinking the same thing,” Benton says. “Mr. Bishop might have suggested it to the media, but the question is, did someone suggest it to him first?”
I detect more subtleties. It occurs to me that Benton knows how the rumor about a nail gun started. He knows who started it, and it’s not difficult to guess what he’s implying. Jack Fielding is trying to influence what people think about this case. Maybe Fielding is the one behind the rumor that is now all over the news.
“We should do a retrospective. I’m trying to remember the name of the Salem detective.” There’s so much to do, so much I’ve missed. I hardly know where to start.
“Saint Hilaire. First name James.”
“Don’t know him.” I’m a stranger to my own life.
“He’s convinced of Johnny Donahue’s guilt, and I’m really concerned it’s just a matter of time before he’s charged with first-degree murder. We have to move fast. When Saint Hilaire reads what Mrs. Donahue just wrote to you, it will be worse. He’ll be more convinced. We have to do something quickly,” Benton says. “I’m not supposed to give a damn, but I do because Johnny didn’t do it and no jury is going to like him. He’s inappropriate. He misreads people, and they misread him. They think he’s callous and arrogant. He laughs and giggles when something isn’t funny. He’s rude and blunt and has no idea. The whole thing is absurd. A travesty. Probably one of the most classic examples of false confessions I’ve ever seen.”
“Then why is he still on a locked unit at McLean?”
“He needs psychiatric treatment, but no, he shouldn’t be locked up on a unit with psychotic patients. That’s my opinion, but no one’s listening. Maybe you can talk to Renaud and Saint Hilaire and they’ll listen to you. We’ll go to Salem and review the case with them. While we’re there, we’ll look around.”
“And Johnny’s breakdown?” I ask. “If his mother is to be believed, he was fine his first three years at Harvard and suddenly has to be hospitalized? He’s how old?”
“Eighteen. He returned to Harvard last fall to begin his senior year and was noticeably altered,” Benton said. “Aggressive verbally and sexually, and increasingly agitated and paranoid. Disordered thinking and distorted perceptions. Symptoms similar to schizophrenia.”
“Drugs?”
“No evidence whatsoever. Submitted to testing when he confessed to the murder and was negative; even his hair was negative for drugs, for alcohol. His grad-school friend Dawn Kincaid is at MIT, and she and Johnny were working together on a project. She became so concerned about him she finally called his family. This was in December. Then a week ago, Johnny was admitted to McLean with a stab wound to his hand and told his psychiatrist that he’d murdered Mark Bishop, claiming he took the train to Salem and had a nail gun in a backpack, said he needed a human sacrifice to rid him of an evil entity that had taken over his life.”
“Why nails? Why not some other weapon?”
“Something to do with the magical powers of iron. And most of this has been in the news.”
I recall seeing something on the Internet about devil’s bone, and I mention that.
“Exactly. What iron was called in ancient Egypt,” Benton replies. “They sell devil’s bone in some of the shops in Salem.”
“Lashed together in an X that you carry in a red satin pouch. I’ve seen them in some of the witcheries. But not the same type of nails. The ones in the witcheries are more like spikes, are supposed to look antique. And I doubt they’re treated with zinc, that they’re galvanized.”
“Supposedly, iron protects against malevolent spirits, and thus the explanation for Johnny using iron nails. That’s his explanation. And his story’s completely unoriginal; as you just pointed out, it was one of the theories all over the news the days before he confessed to the murder.” Benton pauses, then adds, “Your own office has suggested black magic as a motive, presumably because of the Salem connection.”
“It’s not our job to offer theories. Our job is to be impartial and objective, so I don’t know what you mean when you say we suggested such a thing.”
“I’m just telling you it’s been discussed.”
“With whom?” But I know.
“Jack’s always been a loose cannon. But he seems to have lost what little impulse control he had,” Benton says.
“I think we’ve established that Jack is a problem I can no longer attempt to solve. What project?” I go back to what Benton mentioned about Johnny Donahue’s female MIT friend. “And what’s Johnny’s major?”
“Computer science. Since early last summer, he was interning at Otwahl Technologies in Cambridge. As his mother pointed out, he’s unusually gifted in some areas….”
“Doing what? What was he doing there?” I envision the solid facade of precast rising up like the Hoover Dam not far from where we just drove past, the part of Cambridge where the SUV with xenon lights was following us before it vanished.
“Software engineering for UGVs and related technologies,” Benton says, as if it is no great matter because he doesn’t know what I do about UGVs.
Unmanned ground vehicles. Military robots like the prototype MORT in the dead man’s apartment.
“What’s going on here, Benton?” I say with feeling. “What in God’s name is going on?”
7
The storm has settled in, the wind much calmer now, and the snow is already several inches deep. Traffic is steady on Memorial Drive, the weather of little consequence to people used to New England winters.
The rooftops of MIT fraternity houses and playing fields are solid white on the left side of the road, and on the other side the snow drifts like smoke over the bike path and the boathouse and vanishes into the icy blackness of the Charles. Farther east, where the river empties into the harbor, the Boston skyline is ghostly rectangular shapes and smudges of light in the milky night, and there is no air traffic over Logan, not a single plane in sight.
“We should meet with Renaud as soon as possible—the sooner, the better.” Benton thinks Essex County District Attorney Paul Renaud should know that there may be something more to Johnny Donahue’s confession, that somehow the Harvard senior and a dead man in my cooler could be connected. “But if this involves DARPA?” Benton adds.
“Otwahl gets DARPA funding. But it isn’t DARPA, isn’t DoD. It’s civilian, an international private industry,” I reply. “But certainly it’s closely tied to government through substantial grants, tens of millions, maybe a lot more than that, since their rather clumsy invention of MORT.”