All three of them dead now.
Did Fielding discuss the Patten case with Mrs. Gabriel, and who did she talk to first, Fielding or me? She called me at Dover at around quarter of eight. I always fill out a call sheet, and I remember writing down the time as I sat in my small office at Dover’s Port Mortuary, looking at the CT scans and their coordinates that would help me locate with GPS precision the frag and other objects that had penetrated the badly burned body of her son. Based on what she said to me as I now try to reconstruct that conversation, she likely talked to Fielding first. That might explain her repeated references to “other cases.”
Someone had planted an idea in her head about what we do for other cases. She was under the distinct impression that we routinely extract semen from casualties and in fact encourage it, and I recall being puzzled, because the procedure has to be approved and is fraught with legal complications. I couldn’t imagine what had given her such an idea, and I might have asked her about it, had she not been so busy castigating me and calling me names. What kind of monster would prevent a woman from having her dead boyfriend’s children or stop the mother of a dead son from being a grandmother? We do it for our other cases, why not her son? she wept. “I have no one left,” she cried. “This is bullshit bureaucracy, go on and admit it,” she yelled at me. “Bureaucratic bullshit to cover up yet another hate crime.”
“Anyone home?” Benton is in the doorway.
Mrs. Gabriel called me a military bigot. “You do unto others as long as they’re white,” she said. “That’s not the Golden Rule but the White Rule,” she said. “You took care of that other boy who got killed in Boston, and he wasn’t even a US soldier, but not my son, who died for his country. I suppose my son was the wrong color,” she went on, and I had no idea what she meant or what she was basing such an accusation on. I didn’t try to figure it out because it seemed like hysteria, nothing more, and I forgave her for it on the spot. Even though it obviously hurt me badly and I’ve not been able to put it out of my mind since.
“Hello?” Benton is walking in.
“Another hate crime, only it will be found out and people like you won’t get rewarded this time,” and she wouldn’t explain what she was thinking when she said something so terrible as that. But I didn’t ask her to elaborate, and I didn’t give her venomous comments much credence at the time, because being yelled at, cursed, threatened, and even attacked by people who are otherwise civilized and sane isn’t a new experience. I don’t have shatterproof glass installed in the lobbies and viewing rooms of offices where I’ve worked because I’m afraid of the dead throwing a fit or assaulting me.
“Kay?”
My eyes focus on Benton holding two coffees and trying not to spill them. Why would Julia Gabriel have called here before calling me at Dover? Or did Fielding call her, and in either event, why would he have talked to her? Then I remember Marino telling me about PFC Gabriel being the first casualty from Worcester and the media calling the CFC as if the body was here instead of at Dover, about a number of phone calls here because of the Massachusetts connection. Maybe that’s how Fielding found out, but why would he get on the phone with the slain soldier’s mother, even if she called here by mistake and needed to be reminded her son was at Dover? Of course she knew that. How could Mrs. Gabriel not know her son was flown into Dover? I can’t see any legitimate reason for Fielding to have talked to her or what he possibly could have said that was helpful, and how dare him.
He’s not military or even a consultant for the AFME. He’s a civilian and has no right to probe into details relating to war casualties or national security or to engage in conversations about such matters, which are plainly defined as classified. Military and medical intelligence are none of his business. RUSI is none of his business. The election in the UK isn’t, either. The only thing that should be Fielding’s damn business is what he has so resoundingly neglected, which is his enormous responsibility here at the CFC and what should be his damn loyalty to me.
“That’s nice of you,” I say to Benton in a detached way. “I could use a coffee.”
“Where were you just now? Besides in the middle of an imagined fight. You look like you might kill someone.”
He comes close to the desk, watching me the way he does when he’s trying to read what I’m thinking because he’s not about to trust what I say. Or maybe he knows what I have to say is only the beginning of things and that I’m clueless about the rest of it.
“You okay?” He sets the coffees on the desk and moves a chair close.
“No, I’m not okay.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I think I just discovered what it means when something reaches critical mass.”
“What’s the matter?” he asks.
“Everything.”
12
Please shut the door.” It occurs to me I’m starting to act like Lucy. “I don’t know where to begin, so many things are the matter.”
Benton closes the door, and I notice the simple platinum band on his left ring finger. Sometimes I’m still caught by surprise that we’re married, so much of our lives consumed by each other whether we’ve been together or apart, and we always agreed we didn’t have to do it, to be official and formal, because we’re not like other people, and then we did it anyway. The ceremony was a small, simple one, not a celebration as much as a swearing in, because we really meant it when we said until death do us part. After all we’d been through, for us to say it was more than words, more like an oath of office or an ordination or perhaps a summary of what we’d already lived. And I wonder if he ever regrets it. For example, right now does he wish he could go back to how it was? I wouldn’t blame him if he thinks about what he’s given up and what he misses, and there are so many complications because of me.
He sold his family brownstone, an elegant nineteenth-century mansion on the Boston Common, and he can’t have loved some places we’ve lived or stayed in because of my unusual profession and preoccupations, what is a chaotic and costly existence despite my best intentions. While his forensic psychology practice has remained stable, my career has been in flux these past three years, with the shutting down of a private practice in Charleston, South Carolina, then my office in Watertown closing because of the economy, and I was in New York and then Washington and Dover, and now this, the CFC.
“What the hell is going on in this place?” I ask him as if he knows and I don’t understand why he would. But I feel he does, or maybe I’m just wishing it because I’m beginning to experience desperation, that panicky sensation of falling and flailing for something to grab hold of.
“Black and extra-bold.” He sits back down and slides the mug of coffee closer. “And not hazelnut. Even though you have quite a stash of it, I hear.”
“Jack’s still not shown up, and no one has heard from him, I assume.”
“He’s definitely not here. I think you’re as safe in his office as he’s been in yours.” Benton says it as if he means more than one thing, and I notice how he’s dressed.
Earlier he had on his winter coat and in the x-ray room was covered in a disposable gown before heading upstairs to Lucy’s lab. I didn’t really notice what he was wearing underneath his layers. Black tactical boots, black tactical pants, a dark red flannel shirt, a rubber waterproof watch with a luminescent dial. As if he’s anticipating being out in the weather or some place that might be hard on his clothes.