“It’s me,” Benton said when Marino answered on the first ring. “Where are you?”
“In my shitcan apartment. You want to tell me what the hell just happened? Where did Carley Crispin get this shit? When Berger finds out, Jesus Christ. She’s on the helicopter and doesn’t know. Who the hell got to Carley? It’s not like she could just pull that info out of nowhere. Someone must have said something. Where the hell did she get the scene photograph? I’ve been trying to get hold of Bonnell. Big surprise, I’m getting voicemail. I’m sure she’s on her phone, probably the commissioner on down the line, everybody wanting to know if we got a serial murderer driving a cab in the city.”
Marino had been watching Scarpetta on The Crispin Report. That figured. Benton felt a twinge of resentment, then felt nothing. He wasn’t going to allow himself to sink into his dark pit.
“I don’t know what happened. Someone got to Carley, obviously. Maybe Harvey Fahley, maybe someone else. You sure Bonnell wouldn’t-” Benton started to say.
“Are you fucking kidding me? Like she’s going to leak details about her own case to CNN?”
“I don’t know her, and she was worried about the public not being warned.”
“Take it from me, she’s not going to be happy about this,” Marino said, as if he and Bonnell were new best friends.
“Are you near your computer?”
“Can be. Why? What does the Doc have to say?”
“I don’t know. She’s not home yet,” Benton said.
“You don’t know? How come you’re not with her?”
“I never go to CNN, never go over there with her. She doesn’t like it. You know how she is.”
“She walked over by herself?”
“It’s six blocks, Marino.”
“Doesn’t matter. She shouldn’t.”
“Well, she does. Every time, walks by herself, insists on it-has ever since she started appearing on shows more than a year ago. Won’t take a car service and won’t let me go with her, assuming I’m in the city the same time she is, and often I’m not.” Benton was rambling and sounded irritable. He was annoyed that he was explaining himself. Marino made him feel like a bad husband.
“One of us should be with her when she’s got live TV,” Marino said. “It’s advertised when she’s going to be on, advertised on their website, on commercials, days in advance. Someone could be outside the building waiting for her before or after. One of us should be with her, just like I do with Berger. When it’s live, it’s pretty damn obvious where people are and when.”
It was exactly what Benton was worried about. Dodie Hodge. She’d called Scarpetta on TV. Benton didn’t know where Dodie was. Maybe in the city. Maybe nearby. She didn’t live far from here. Just on the other side of the George Washington Bridge.
“I’ll tell you what. I’ll let you give Kay a lecture on security and see if she pays more attention to you than she does to me,” Benton was saying.
“Probably I should keep an eye on her without her knowing it.”
“A quick way to make her hate you.”
Marino didn’t respond, and he could have. He could say that Scarpetta didn’t have it in her to hate him or she would have hated him long before now. She would have begun hating him that spring night in Charleston a year and a half ago when Marino, drunk and enraged, had assaulted her inside her own home. But Benton was quiet. What he’d just said about hate seemed to linger, to hang like one of those planes not moving, and he was sorry he’d said it.
“Dodie Hodge,” Benton said. “The caller supposedly from Detroit. I can tell you the reason I know her name is she sent us an anonymous Christmas card. Sent one to Kay and me.”
“If that’s what you can tell me, then there’s other stuff you can’t tell me. Let me guess. From the land of fruit and nuts. Bellevue, Kirby, McLean ’s. One of your patients, explaining why she’d supposedly read some article you wrote about the shitty clearance rate. All true, though. Another twenty years, nothing will get solved. Everybody will live in forts with machine guns.”
“I didn’t publish a journal article on that particular topic.”
He didn’t add that Warner Agee did. Some derivative unoriginal editorial in Benton forgot which newspaper. He had Agee as a Google alert. Out of self-defense, ever since the bullshit had started cropping up in Wikipedia. Dr. Clark hadn’t been telling Benton anything he didn’t already know.
“She’s a patient of yours. True or false?” Marino’s voice. Christ, he was loud.
“I can’t tell you if she was or wasn’t,” Benton said.
“Past tense. She’s out, then, free as a cuckoo bird. Tell me what you want me to do,” Marino said.
“I think it would be a good idea to run her through RTCC.” Benton could only imagine what Dr. Clark would say.
“I got to go over there anyway, will probably be there most of tomorrow.”
“I’m talking about tonight. Now,” Benton said. “Maybe see if that beast of a computer system comes up with anything we should know. They letting you remote-access these days or do you have to go to One Police Plaza?”
“Can’t data-mine remote.”
“Sorry about that. Hate to put you out.”
“Got to work with the analysts, which is a good thing. I ain’t a Lucy. Still type with two fingers and don’t know a damn thing about disparate data sources, live feeds. What they call the hunt. Am putting on my boots as we speak, heading out on ‘the hunt,’ just for you, Benton.”
Benton was fed up with Marino trying to placate him, trying to win him over as if nothing had happened. Benton wasn’t friendly, barely civil, and he knew it and couldn’t seem to help it, and it had gotten worse in recent weeks. Maybe it would be better if Marino would just tell him to go fuck himself. Maybe then they could get past it.
“You don’t mind me asking, how’d you manage to connect a Christmas card with this Dodie lady who just called from Detroit? Supposedly Detroit,” Marino was saying. “The Doc know about the Christmas card?”
“No.”
“No to which question?”
“All of them,” Benton said.
“This Dodie lady ever met the Doc?”
“Not that I’m aware of. It’s not about Kay. It’s about me. Calling CNN was for my benefit.”
“Yeah, I know, Benton. Everything’s about you, but that’s not what I asked.” Aggression, like a finger poking Benton ’s chest. Good. Go ahead and get angry. Fight back.
“I recognized her voice,” Benton answered.
In an earlier century maybe the two of them would have taken it outside and had a slugfest. There was something to be said for primitive behavior. It was purging.
“On a Christmas card? I’m confused,” Marino went on.
“A singing card. You open it and a recording plays. A recording of Dodie Hodge singing a rather inappropriate Christmas tune.”
“You still got it?”
“Of course. It’s evidence.”
“Evidence of what?” Marino wanted to know.
“See what you find on the computer.”
“I’ll ask again. The Doc isn’t aware of Dodie Hodge or her card?”
“She’s unaware. Let me know what you find at RTCC.” Benton couldn’t go there himself and take care of it, didn’t have the authority, and he resented the hell out of it.
“Meaning I’m going to find something. That’s why you’re suggesting it,” Marino said. “You already know what I’m going to find. You realize how much time your confidentiality crap wastes?”
“I don’t know what you’ll find. We just need to make sure she isn’t dangerous, that she hasn’t been arrested somewhere for something,” Benton said.
Marino should find a record of Dodie’s arrest in Detroit. Maybe there were other things. Benton was being a cop again, only it was by proxy, and the powerlessness he felt was becoming intolerable.