“So Lucy told you it appears he’s been using my office,” I say. “For what purpose I don’t know. But maybe you do.”
“Nobody’s needed to tell me there’s a looting mentality at what is it Marino calls this place? CENTCOM? Or does that just refer to the inner sanctum or what’s supposed to be the inner sanctum, your office. No captain of the ship, and you know what happens. The Jolly Roger flag goes up, the inmates run the asylum, the drunks manage the bar, if you’ll excuse me for mixing metaphors.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“I don’t work at the CFC. Or for it. Just an invited guest on occasion,” he says.
“That’s not an answer, and you know it. Why wouldn’t you protect me?”
“You mean in the manner you think I should,” he says, because it’s silly to suggest he wouldn’t protect me.
“What has been going on around here? Maybe if you tell me, I can figure out what needs to be done,” I then say. “I know Lucy’s been catching you up. It would be nice if someone would catch me up. In detail, and with openness and full disclosure.”
“I’m sorry you’re angry. I’m sorry you’ve come home to a situation that is upsetting. Your homecoming should have been joyful.”
“Joyful. What the hell is joyful?”
“A word, a theoretical concept. Like full disclosure. I can tell you what I’ve witnessed firsthand, what happened when I met here several times. Case discussions. There have been two that involved me.” He stares off. “The first was the BC football player from last fall, not long after the CFC took over the Commonwealth’s forensic cases.”
Wally Jamison, age twenty, Boston College’s star quarterback. Found floating in the Boston Harbor on November 1 at dawn. Cause of death exsanguination due to blunt-force trauma and multiple cutting injuries. Tom Booker’s case, one of my other MEs.
“Jack didn’t do that one,” I remind him.
“Well, if you ask him, you might get a different impression,” Benton informs me. “Jack reviewed the Wally Jamison case as if it was his. Dr. Booker wasn’t present. This was last week.”
“Why last week? I don’t know anything about it.”
“New information, and we wanted to talk to Jack, and he seemed eager to cooperate, to offer a wealth of information.”
“‘We’?”
Benton lifts his coffee, then changes his mind and sets it back down on Fielding’s sloppy desk with all its collectibles that are all about him. “I think Jack’s attitude is he may not have done the autopsy, but that’s just a technicality. An NFL draft was right up the alley of your ironman freak of a deputy chief.”
“‘Ironman freak’?”
“But I suppose it was his bad luck to be out of town when Wally Jamison got beaten and hacked to death. Wally’s luck was a little worse.”
Believed to have been abducted and murdered on Halloween. Crime scene unknown. No suspect. No motive or credible theory. Just the speculation of a satanic cult initiation. Target a star athlete. Hold him hostage in some clandestine place and kill him savagely. Chatter on the Internet and on the news. Gossip that’s become gospel.
“I don’t give a shit what Jack’s feeling is or what’s right up his goddamn alley,” says a hard part of me that’s old and scarred over, a part of me that is completely fed up with Jack Fielding.
I realize I’m enraged by him. I’m suddenly aware that at the core of my unhealthy relationship with him is molten fury.
“And Mark Bishop, also last week. Wednesday was the football player. Thursday was the boy,” Benton says.
“A boy whose murder might be related to some initiation. A gang, a cult,” I interject. “A similar speculation about Wally Jamison.”
“Speculation being the operative word. Whose speculation?”
“Not mine.” I think angrily of Fielding. “I don’t speculate unless it’s behind closed doors with someone I trust. I know better than to put something out there, and then the police run with it, then the media runs with it. Next thing I know, a jury believes it, too.”
“Patterns and parallels.”
“You’re connecting Mark Bishop and Wally Jamison.” It seems incredible. “I fail to see what they might have in common besides speculation.”
“I was here last week for both case consults.” Benton’s eyes are steady on me. “Where was Jack last Halloween? Do you know for a fact?”
“I know where I was, that’s about the only fact I know. While I’ve been at Dover, that’s all I’ve known and all I was supposed to know. I didn’t hire him so I could goddamn babysit him. I don’t know where the hell he was on Halloween. I guess you’re going to tell me he wasn’t out somewhere taking his kids trick-or-treating.”
“He was in Salem. But not with his kids.”
“I wouldn’t know that and don’t know why you do or why it’s important.”
“It wasn’t important until very recently,” Benton says.
I stare at his boots again, then at his dark pants with their flannel lining and cargo and rear slash pockets for gun magazines and flashlights, the type of pants he wears when he’s working in the field, when he goes to crime scenes or is out on the firing or explosive-ordnance-disposal ranges with cops, with the FBI.
“Where were you before you picked me up at Hanscom?” I ask him. “What were you doing?”
“We have a lot to deal with, Kay. I’m afraid more than I thought.”
“Were you dressed in field clothes when you picked me up at the airport?” It occurs to me that he might not have been. He’s changed his clothes. Maybe he hasn’t done anything yet but is about to.
“I keep a bag in my car. As you know,” Benton says. “Since I never know when I might get called.”
“To go where? You’ve been called to go somewhere?”
He looks at me, then out the window at the chalky skyline of Boston in the snowy dark.
“Lucy says you’ve been on the phone.” I continue to prod him for information I can tell I’m not going to get right now.
“I’m afraid nonstop. I’m afraid there’s more than I thought,” and then he doesn’t continue. That’s all he’s going to say about it. He’s headed out somewhere, has someplace to go. It’s not a good place. He’s been talking to people and not about anything good and he’s not going to inform me right now. Full disclosure and joy. When there is such a thing, it is only a taste, a hint of what we don’t have the rest of the time.
“You met on Wednesday and then on Thursday. Discussing the Wally Jamison and Mark Bishop cases here at the CFC.” I go back to that. “And I assume Jack was in on the Mark Bishop discussion as well. He was involved in both discussions. And you didn’t mention this a little while ago when we were talking in the car.”
“Not such a little while ago. More than five hours ago. And a lot has happened. There have been developments since we were in the car, as you know. Not the least of which is what we now realize is another murder. Number three.”
“You’re linking the man from Norton’s Woods to Mark Bishop and Wally Jamison.”
“Very possibly. In fact, I’d say yes.”
“What about the meetings last week? With Jack? He was there,” I push.
“Yes. Last Wednesday and Thursday. In your office.”
“What do you mean my office? This building? This floor?”
“Your personal office.” Benton indicates my office next door.
“In my office. Jack conducted meetings in my office. I see.”
“He conducted both meetings in your office. At your conference-room table in there.”
“He has his own conference table.” I look at the black lacquered oval table with six ergonomic chairs that I got at a government auction.