She looked out the windshield. “I never saw the point,” she replied.
He snatched a glance at her at the same moment she looked at him.
She then said, “Last night was wonderful.”
“Yes, it was.”
“I haven’t, that is to say, I...”
“I... I really wanted to be with you that night. I had to be with you. But, I’m afraid I might have taken advantage. You were in a vulnerable position.”
“If anything I took advantage of you, Travis. And so what? We’re human beings. Sometimes... sometimes, you just can’t help yourself.”
She turned away and they drove for a bit in silence as they headed inland.
He finally said, “I was watching a video of Wilbur Kingman’s funeral.”
She turned to him. “A video?”
“It was at Earl’s place. I don’t know where it came from. You were in it, along with pretty much everyone else in town.”
“It was all very sad. Wilbur was a good man.”
“Who wrecked his boat on a shoal he should never have hit?”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Does anyone really know what happened out there?”
“Of course. Earl told us.”
“And now Earl’s dead.”
“Wilbur’s death was years ago. That can’t be connected to anything happening now.”
“I wish I was as sure of that as you are. Benjamin Bing was in the film. He was seated next to Earl. Bing was talking and Earl was listening, and he didn’t seem too happy about what was being said. They went off together. You know anything about that?”
“No, how could I?”
“I thought you might have seen or heard something. You walked out right after they did.” He paused to see if she might annotate his statement with what she might have been feeling that day, while in the vicinity of Benjamin Bing.
Like terror.
But she said nothing.
“Bing was in the military,” he said.
“Wait, he was?”
“You didn’t know that about him?”
“Um... maybe, I... I don’t remember. I just remember him as the police chief.”
“You remember nothing else about him?”
“Didn’t you ask me that before?” she said, a bite to her words.
“Sometimes you get new information when you keep asking the same question over and over, because people recall more.”
“I don’t want to talk about him. What you said before gave me the creeps.”
The rest of the drive went by in silence.
Chapter 71
The surgery had gone well, they were told, and Dak was awake and alert when they came into his room.
Alex sat next to him and gripped his hand while Devine stood behind her.
“Are you in much pain?” she asked.
“Probably, but the morphine, or whatever it is, is doing the job.” He looked at Devine. “I can’t believe this happened. I can’t believe Hal is dead. Do they know any more? Have they found whoever shot us?”
“No, but it was the same type casing that was discovered near where your sister’s body was found.”
“Harper told me the bullet that hit me then struck Hal and killed him.”
“That’s right.”
“Shit.” Dak shook his head and his eyes glimmered.
“Harper tell you anything else?” asked Devine. He was not in Alex’s line of sight so he added raised eyebrows to the question to let Dak know what he was referring to.
“Uh, yeah, he said he’d get back to me on what he decides.”
“What are you two talking about?” said Alex.
“Nothing important,” said Dak quickly. “How are you doing, Alex? Hanging in okay?”
“Not if stuff like this keeps happening,” she said with a glare. It was clear that she did not like being left out of whatever was going on between her brother and Devine.
“How well do you know Benjamin Bing?” asked Devine.
“Benjamin Bing?” said Dak curiously. “What’s he got to do with anything?”
“I think he has a great deal to do with everything that’s been happening.”
Alex turned to scowl at him. “I’m going to get some crappy hospital coffee, which will still be preferable to listening to this.”
She rose and left.
“What is going on?” exclaimed Dak.
Devine sat in the chair Alex had vacated and said, “Let me postulate a theory for you.”
“Okay,” said Dak nervously.
Devine proceeded to tell Dak his ideas about Benjamin Bing being the one who had attacked Alex all those years ago, and then how he believed the Palmers had seen him leaving the area, so they had to die, too.
“The Palmers were in tough financial straits back then, Annie told me. So I think they saw Bing, and after they found Alex they put it all together. They tried to blackmail him. The family is rolling in money. Only Bing doesn’t play that game. So their house goes up in flames.”
Devine didn’t mention that Françoise Guillaume had performed the autopsies on the Palmers, because he wasn’t sure whether she had any culpability. Bing could have poisoned them or otherwise incapacitated them, and Devine now knew that Maine did not do full autopsies on people who died in fires that looked purely accidental. Whether that was the procedure fifteen years ago, though, he didn’t know.
“Your sister told your mother that she came up here to take care of some unfinished business.” He explained about her use of the satellite footage. “She figured out that it was Bing.”
“But he’s retired and living in Florida.”
“No, I spoke with Fred Bing and asked him to check on that. His father told him that he hadn’t seen his brother in at least two weeks.”
“How would Bing know that Jenny had fingered him to be the one who attacked Alex?”
“That part I haven’t figured out yet. But if he did, it gives the man a motive to kill her. Look, I’ve Venn-diagrammed this thing from every angle I can think of. I don’t believe this had to do with what Jenny did for the government. This stems from what happened to Alex all those years ago. And Benjamin Bing was in the military. He was wearing a Purple Heart on his police uniform in a video I saw. He could probably get access to a still-in-testing .300 Norma round with a polymer casing easier than most.” He looked directly at Dak. “Do you remember Bing being around your sister, showing her more attention than he should?”
Dak looked troubled. “Look, Ben Bing thought way too much of himself, okay? He was built like a stud and thought he was the handsomest, coolest guy in town. And yeah, he wore his Purple Heart and some other medals on his cop uniform, although that’s against military regs and probably the police regs, not that he cared. He always bragged to the guys about the heroic shit he did in the Army, and how he nearly died in combat, but he was always short on specifics.”
“So it was the Army and not another service branch?”
“Yeah. But I can’t recall him acting inappropriate around Alex. They wouldn’t have had much direct contact, actually.”
“But you were away in the Army during that time.”
“That’s true.”
“Alex told me that he personally busted her boyfriend for a traffic infraction. Beat the kid up. I don’t think that was a coincidence.”
“What’s Alex’s take on all this?”
“She doesn’t want to believe it or talk about it. It’s why she walked out just now. I was actually hoping that my raising it with her would cause her memory to come back and we would finally have Alex being able to ID her attacker. But it didn’t happen.”
“You think he took a shot at you because you’re trying to find out the truth?”
“Makes the most sense so far.”
“But why would he shoot me? Because what you’re saying is he had to be the shooter from last night.”