Chaos

CHAPTER 32

LIKE I SAID? BE ready because it stinks like holy hell in there…” Barclay announces in a stage whisper.

He’s annoyingly present and officious as he holds open the tent flap for my important FBI husband, practically saluting him, showing him into our glaringly bright, baking-hot, airless, foul-smelling theater, where I’m about to pass out.

“Whatever you need, you know where I’ll be.”

“I’ve got it from here.” Benton has had his fill.

“I almost went with the FBI, you know. I got no problem working with you guys,” as if everybody else does. “Well you got my number if there are any other questions?”

“That’s it for now.” Benton’s politeness hardens like epoxy as he tells the overbearing obtuse investigator he can leave-that nobody minds.

As I listen I’m finding it difficult to kneel in the grass, to concentrate. I’m packing up my scene case, feeling a little drunk, and I wonder what questions Benton was asking Barclay. What were they discussing as the presumptuous investigator escorted him here? I slam down the lid of what’s nothing more than a big black toolbox.

“Bet you don’t know many agents who started out as police investigators? Because I would think that would be a big draw…”

“You need to go,” Benton snaps at Barclay.

And heavy plastic clasps snap. And my heart lurches. I feel strangely shaky and emotional.

Keep breathing. Keep moving.

SINCE I SAW BENTON last he’s taken off his suit jacket and his tie. The sleeves of his white shirt are folded up to his elbows, and the pistol holstered on his hip is exposed.

He didn’t drop by to say there’s a lovely bottle of French Chablis waiting at home. He’s here on official Bureau business, and I think of Lucy as my pulse hammers. I ask if she’s okay and feel a stab of nausea.

“She’s fine.” Benton watches me from just inside the tent, near the equipment cases.

I’m getting increasingly agitated. Hostility smolders and sparks like an aggravated dragon while I act like everything is normal.

“We need to talk, Kay.”

But I’m wondering how the hell he knows Lucy is fine unless he’s been in communication with her recently. And if so, why? Don’t gild the lily. Don’t sugarcoat. Just tell me what I don’t want to hear, tell the damn truth for once.

“Is she still working in the truck?” I hear myself ask even as I know the answer.

“No.” Benton stares at me, and Lucy wouldn’t still be here.

That was hours ago when we talked inside the air-conditioning, and the stench is putrid and pervasive now. I’m insulated in it like a foul rotting gauze that I taste in the back of my throat as the dragon salivates, swallowing hard.

For God’s sake, don’t throw up.

I’d never live it down, and I watch Investigator Barclay vanish through the tent flap, what’s become the wormhole to a parallel universe. He won’t go far. No doubt he’ll hover within earshot as he’s done most of the time Marino and I have been working in isolation, conversing in private, speculating secretly, gossiping just between the two of us, not realizing some asshole wannabe was out there listening.

No telling what Barclay relayed to my husband, in other words to the FBI. After what Marino and I have been through with this scene, and the biggest damn threat is one of our own. The thought penetrates furiously as my heart pounds harder, and my eyes are watering. I take deep slow breaths, blinking several times, well aware that a common symptom of heat exhaustion is irritability. But knowing that doesn’t do any good once you’re caught in a vortex of uncontrolled fury.

“Hey Benton? Did Dorothy get in okay?” Of course Marino would ask sweetly, warmly about a woman who devours men like tartare.

Innamorato pazzo! as my father used to say.

Marino is crazy in love. Now that I’m looking for it, I can see it plain as day, and I pay attention while Benton tells him in a leaden voice that Dorothy is fine.

Other than one of her absurdly ostentatious oversize designer bags being lost, that is. I don’t say it out loud.

She’s landed safely with almost all her luggage, Benton informs us about my vain self-important inconvenient sister who’s always treated her own flesh and blood like shit.

“But she’s finally in the car at least?” Marino has to make sure about his intended paramour. “Because I’ve not gotten a text from her in the last couple hours. She stopped answering.”

Sotto l’incantesimo! my father would declare. Marino is under the spell. He and Dorothy have been in contact even as I’ve been by his damn side working this motherfucking scene, and he never let on. Then I’m horrified that I just said something so hideous as that out loud. Maybe I didn’t. Maybe I thought it but didn’t say it.

Marino’s not behaving as if I did. I look closely and suddenly there are two of him all in white like Pillsbury Doughboys. Neither seems offended. But I can’t tell and I close my eyes. Then I open them and Marino is by himself again and acting normal for him. I hope I didn’t say motherfucking. Not that I’m a prude. But I rarely talk like that. I’m not thinking straight. I’m about to erupt like a volcano. My electrolytes are in the toilet, and it’s bewildering.

“As long as she’s okay,” Marino is saying to Benton. “But the airport’s a nightmare because of the elevated terror alert and who knows why else.” He tries to be nonchalant about it and fails.

“She’s with Janet and Desi.” Benton’s eyes don’t leave me.

“Then she’s in the car on the way to their house?” Marino probes but Benton isn’t paying attention.

“We need to talk, Kay. I need you to come with me,” and I detect sadness beneath my husband’s iron will.

I push back my hood, my hair plastered to my scalp. I pick up my scene case, and it seems incredibly heavy as I make my way to him.

“What’s the matter, Benton?” Marino yells. “You getting bored hanging out with pencil necks? Couldn’t stand missing out on all the excitement? Wanted to drop by and see what real investigators do?”

He’s behind me, loud enough to break the sound barrier and not picking up on cues. Marino’s too busy making cracks about the FIBs, as he calls the FBI when he’s not calling them something worse. Then he falls silent mid-snark because Benton’s grim expression is as rigid as a mask. He’s oblivious to everything except me.

“Shit.” Marino realizes something is seriously off. “Hey? What’s going on?”

“You don’t look good, Kay.” Benton couldn’t be more gentle or somber. “I need you to sit down.”

He starts to touch me but I move away. I have blood on the cuffs of my sleeves. I need to decontaminate. I have to get out of this synthetic clothing before I suffocate. I feel claustrophobic wrapped up from stem to stern like a house under construction, and I’m breathing faster and shallower.

I will myself not to show that I’m on the brink of collapse. I’m keenly aware of the danger signs. One of them is not sweating enough. I’m not anymore.

“How about sitting down and drinking something?” Benton says because he’s thoughtful.

He always has been, from the first time we found ourselves in the same room together, and I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Benton was considerate and kind when he didn’t have to be, when most people weren’t. He didn’t follow the lead of his male compatriots and think of me as tits and ass in a lab coat. He never called me ma’am or Mrs. He’d say my name the way he still does. As if he meant it.

“Do we have Gatorade? Anything like that out here…?” He’s asking because he would do anything for me.

“Not that I’m seeing so far but I’ll keep digging.” Marino is crouching by his Harley-Davidson cooler bag, and I blearily watch his thick fingers find the small metal tongue.

I hear the sound of a zipper as I sit down on top of my scene case. I begin taking off my coveralls, and everything’s a struggle.

“We need to talk about Briggs,” Benton says.

“Is this about him canceling?” It sounds pathetically lame when I ask, like wishful thinking on my part.

I know that’s not why my husband, why Special Agent Benton Wesley has come for me. He didn’t show up to pass along information about my event with Briggs but to haul me away because the U.S. government wants what only I can give. Or give up, and that’s the more likely story. Whatever the FBI demands won’t be in my best interest. It never is one hundred percent of the time.

“I’m sorry,” Benton says as I reach down to pull off my dirty grass-stained shoe covers. “I didn’t want you hearing this from somebody else.”

“Ruthie tried to get hold of me and sounded upset.” Blood pounds in my head. “That’s what I thought she was calling about.” But it wasn’t, and I should have put more effort into finding out what she really wanted.

“He’s gone,” Benton says. “I’m sorry, Kay.”

“FUCK!” MARINO VIOLENTLY TWISTS the cap off a bottle of water, handing it to me as his face turns a deeper shade of red. “What the hell are you talking about?” He glares at Benton. “He’s gone? General Briggs is dead?”

“I’m really sorry,” Benton says to me, and how ironic that he would resort to a euphemism.

Gone. As in passed away. No longer with us. Not here anymore.

That can’t be right. That’s not what he means. But it is, and dread nudges harder. It throws an elbow into my solar plexus, knocking denial right out of me.

Dead.

Briggs went swimming at six P.M., and forty-five minutes later was found facedown in the pool, and I try to comprehend it.

Dead.

The stagnant foul air seems smoky as if I’m looking through a veil. I take another sip of water warm enough to bathe in. I pour it into my hands. I splash it on my face. I dribble it over my bare arms. I dig my fingertips into my temples as my head aches miserably, looking up and down, blinking several times.

I get back on my feet as Marino machine-guns questions, demanding to know if the FBI is thinking that what happened to Briggs is connected to the dead lady here in the park. It’s unwise for Marino to ask that. He just made it easier for the rug to be pulled out from under him, and he does that a lot.

“Kay? You should sit.” Benton’s face is blurry. “Please take it easy. I want to make sure you can walk back. We probably should have you transported. What about a wheelchair?”

“Good God no. Just give me a few minutes.” I’m a little queasy.

“Sit and drink water please.”

“I’m fine.” But I’m wobbly on the way to worse if I’m not careful.

I don’t want to be sick, and I look away from him, from Marino. Don’t stare. Fixating is a recipe for disaster, and I look here. I look there. Up and down. Moving around. I don’t allow anything to hold my attention for more than a second or two, barely stopping my eyes from moving. Don’t fixate because that’s when it will happen.

That’s when you lose it, and I can’t count the people I’ve collected off the epoxy paint-sealed floor or presented with the ubiquitous plastic bucket. Mostly cops who gather around the stainless-steel autopsy table as if it’s no big deal, and I always see it coming.

That fifty-yard stare as my scalpel slices through the chest, making the Y incision, running down the torso, detouring around the navel, reflecting back tissue with quick deft flicks of the blade.

Exposing gastric contents, the intestines, and it’s not aromatherapy, to quote Marino. Only he pronounces, even writes it Romatheraphy with a capital R. As in the Eternal City. As in Romulus and Remus.

Two

Four

Six

Eight

Remember

Not

To

Fix-ate!

My little morgue ditty. Rhymes are an easy way to remember. Keep moving. Look here. Look there. Don’t stare. I recite my little ditty in my mind because I’m the one who needs it this time. And I keep my eyes moving. And my attention wanders…

Over the grass.

Across the tawny dirt path.

Back to the dead woman forlorn on her back.

In her white sports bra.

Her blue shorts.

And gray-striped socks.

Her head, each hand, each foot wrapped in brown paper like an uprooted tree in a burlap diaper.

Dead.

Packaged as evidence, disgraced and depersonalized, and that can’t be the bold, proud, spirited woman I met earlier today. Not once. But twice. Attractive, quick-witted, fit, overflowing with confidence and life. Reminding me of Lucy. How could she be reduced to this? To detritus hauled away and carved up?

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

But it did kill her, and what a strange thing to say, as if a part of her knew and was trying to laugh it off. I should have stopped it somehow. She was in my presence twice and I didn’t stop anything.

I look around the black cubical tent with its exposed gray aluminum frame. Then back at the body, and I remember her strong tan shoulders and bright smile as she taped recipes to the walls inside the Loeb Center. I remember her dropping her water bottle on the sidewalk in front of the Faculty Club.

You’re the peanut-butter-pie lady.

She was hot, her tan skin covered in a sheen of sweat. The sun was going down. There were smudges of peach and pink along the horizon, and I watched her ride across Quincy Street.

Dead.

I look up at the trees. Their heavy green branches are motionless in stifling air that would be a clamorous symphony if odors were musical instruments in an orchestra of stench. I’d be hearing minor keys, sharps and flats, a crescendoing chaos swelling with percussion. Heavy with bass strings. Building to a suffocating coda.

Then the house would go dark after the encore of death, and the bloated teeming crowd would be too turgid and foul for me to force my way through anymore. Looking for an exit. Not finding one. There isn’t one. Briggs would be the first to say it. I can’t show up at the morgue in Baltimore for him.

It would only give the bad guys something to dig up that doesn’t need to see the light of day, Kay.

I can hear him as if he’s standing in front of me with his deep dimples and big smile. There’s really only one rule in life, he preached. To do what’s right. But he didn’t always, and I wipe my eyes on the backs of my hands.