Dust

30

I escort Benton back to the anteroom as if he needs to be shown the way or maybe people assume I want a moment alone with my husband. He removes his protective clothing, pulling apart the papery tie of his white gown, heaping it into a bright red biohazard trash can.

I tell him the truth, a cruel one with even crueler implications.

“If she was killed by the Capital Murderer, then he’s using an electrical weapon, a type of stun gun, on his victims. At least he did on this latest one,” I explain. “And not just any model. The type used on her fires cartridges with wires and weighted probes that anchor into flesh like fishhooks. In other words, he has the sort of weapon I associate with law enforcement.”

“Unless he bought it on the street.” Benton sits down on a bench and pulls off his shoe covers. “Which wouldn’t be hard. And, for that matter, there’s not much you can’t get online.”

“Certainly that’s possible. But he knew what to get and what it does.”

Benton takes off his gloves and surgical mask, reaching for the trash. “Sadism and control,” he says as he folds his safety glasses and gives them to me. “Just the anticipation of being shocked would be terrifying.”

“It would be.” I return his glasses to a shelf lined with different sizes of glasses and a spray bottle of disinfectant.

“That’s why they don’t fight him.” He stares off as if seeing a vision, a horrible one.

“Paralysis lasted only as long as he squeezed the trigger unless you’re as unlucky as I suspect she was. Or maybe what happened to her was unintentionally merciful. Maybe he used an electroshock weapon and her premature death spared her from a tortured one. Maybe that’s why there’s no bag, no frilly tape or bow.”

“He didn’t get to the best part and his ritual was aborted.” Benton rests his arms on his knees and stares at his bare hands, tapered and graceful like a musician’s and pale because of where we live. He fingers his simple platinum wedding band, turning it slowly.

“We’ll see what the autopsy says but if he shot her with a stun gun while she was in the dark parking lot it might be why she suddenly got quiet when she was talking to Carin Hegel,” I add and I tell him about the recorded telephone conversation Lucy played for me.

I describe the sound of a car engine behind the Psi Bar and Gail Shipton saying “I’m sorry? Can I help you?” And then nothing. I sit down next to Benton shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee, my papery cocooned feet next to his borrowed black sneakers.

“It would explain Gail not talking anymore,” I suggest. “She would have dropped her phone and been unable to say a word. But she didn’t collapse to the ground or she’d have scrapes, contusions, possibly serious injuries if she struck her head. Something prevented her from falling when her muscles locked up.”

“He may have caught her and maneuvered her into his car.” Benton plays it out, staring down at his hands solemnly as if he’s just discovered he’s been missing something important all along. “She was going to be disoriented and she wasn’t likely to struggle if it meant being shocked again. Obviously she didn’t scream or that would have been on the recording Lucy’s not supposed to have and hasn’t turned over to the police.”

“Not everybody screams and some people black out. If she had underlying cardiac disease or damage, she may have gone into arrest.” I’m not going to get into what Lucy has or hasn’t done.

At the moment I’m not interested in her usual violations of protocols and splintering of rules. I’m more worried about Benton’s FBI boss doing that and then some.

“If she died of a heart attack, that would be a major cheat for whoever this is,” Benton says as we get up and I know what he’s feeling.

I can see it in the tightness in his face and the haunted shadows in his eyes that are the ghosts of every savaged person whose case he’s worked. He has to bring them back from the dead to be their champion. He has to know what they were like before some predator ripped their souls from them. He can’t let the victims go. They are a crowd inside him, a disembodied population that by now is vast.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself. Please try not to be.” I look at him and touch his hand. “You can’t know something if it hasn’t presented itself. You can’t conjure it up from thin air.”

“There must be some trace of what he’s been doing to them and I missed it.”

“If anybody missed it, the medical examiners did. Maybe he didn’t use a stun gun on the others.”

“Their lack of injuries make me think he subdued them in a similar way.” He collects his blazer and coat from a hook on the wall.

“If they were shocked through clothing, especially layers of it, there’s a good chance the darts wouldn’t have left a mark or at least not one that would have been noticed.”

“Witnessing a victim’s panicky death as she’s suffocating is part of the thrill,” he says. “It would suck for him if she had a heart attack. That would be his coitus interruptus and would frustrate and infuriate him. He was interrupted and his compulsion wasn’t satisfied. Dressed up with no place to go and she cheated him. He’d studied her and yet she did the unexpected. She had the gall to die before he could finish killing her. He’ll do something again. He’ll do it soon. I didn’t calculate this.”

“Why would you?”

“It’s really important.” He works his arms into the sleeves of his blazer. “It might explain a lot of things. He goes through only part of the ritual because the fantasy isn’t there. It was ruined by her when she behaved in a way he didn’t expect and then had the audacity to die on him.”

“I’m going to do my best to find that out.”

“Maybe that’s why he dug into the Vicks while he was out there with her body. He was having a harder time than usual, was thrown off his game by what he didn’t anticipate. He was angry and distracted, trying to regain his focus. She didn’t let him finish. She robbed him. That’s the way he looks at it. The flower of evil never bloomed and he’s an enraged bull.”

“We have to see what her body says.”

“He’s losing his way and his control,” he says as if Armageddon is about to start. “It always happens. I didn’t think it would happen this fast with him when in fact it was already in the works, which is why he came back here. Christ. He’s here because he’s straying out of bounds and he has no insight, guided by a force he doesn’t understand, the malignant one that owns him, and this is home. This is where it started and will end. Something will.”

What Benton is seeing he can’t stop. He’s tense all over as if he’s the one being shocked.

“Decompensating, getting more caught up in his deviant violent fantasies, ones he doesn’t even know are sick and unjustified. He doesn’t see himself as cruel. It’s everybody else’s fault.” He stares off without blinking. “He thinks he’s as normal as you and me. He thinks what he does makes sense,” he says as Anne walks in to suit up. “I’m going to get my car. I’ll tell Granby if he wants to meet with you at three it has to be here at the CFC.”

“Yes, with me,” I repeat because Benton has been uninvited. “What time is Bryce interviewing the candidate for Marino’s job?” I ask Anne.

“Three of course.” She eyes Benton curiously. “I could tell him to push it back to five.”

“If there’s even the slightest chance I can stop by,” I reply. “Is this a necessary case discussion or politics?” I ask Benton as he opens the door. “And maybe I’m not inclined to meet since he doesn’t want you to attend,” I add and I go cold inside.

The hell with Ed Granby.

“I’m not interested in his damn politics and agendas,” I add, feeling more offended by the minute. “FBI jurisdiction and all that goes with it has nothing to do with the CFC.”

I can’t stand the idea of Granby wasting my time and I won’t be able to look at him without thinking of vaginal fluids and menstrual blood that couldn’t possibly have been left by Martin Lagos. I’ve never been fond of Benton’s boss and now I want nothing to do with him until I discover the truth of what happened in CODIS. If Granby instructed someone to alter a DNA profile, I want to know why and I want him to get the trouble he deserves.

“Well, that’s the problem as I understand it.” Benton stands in the doorway, looking at me. “Marino basically indicated I worked the MIT scene when we hadn’t officially been invited in by Cambridge. And next the Cambridge superintendent called with his tail feathers ruffled. So Granby’s trying to sort it out. That’s what he says. And I can’t be there since I’m the problem.”

“And it’s not his real reason,” I reply.

“I can see Marino’s social skills haven’t gotten any better,” Anne remarks. “Why does he have to be such a jerk?”

“It’s always sensitive,” Benton adds because it takes nothing to get local police pissed off at the almighty Bureau. “Granby wants to know what you know,” he says to me and that’s really what the meeting is about.

“Know what I know?” I’d be amused if it were anybody else. “In general? That could take a while.”

“Like the rest of his life if he wants to know what you know,” Anne says.

“He says it’s to clear things up about why I was with you at Briggs Field when no one has officially asked for our help.” Benton tells me more of Granby’s mendacious blather.

“Did you happen to pass on your theory about our case from this morning, the one that’s caused ruffled feathers?”

“I do my job and report to my supervisor,” Benton says with a straight face that doesn’t hide what he really feels.

Granby has been alerted that Gail Shipton’s murder may be connected to the ones in D.C. and if he tampered with evidence he’s got to be paranoid and know he has a problem. Of course he’d like to meet with me and hear all the details and of course he doesn’t want Benton present.

“I have a feeling I’m going to be busy at three,” I decide. “I just realized I will be. You know what? It just isn’t possible to meet today or tomorrow either. I’ll get Bryce to look at my calendar when I have a chance.”

Benton meets my eyes and smiles and then he leaves.

“Well, you’re back with a vengeance.” Anne plucks protective clothing off shelves.

“Not because of anything I did,” I reply. “This party wasn’t thrown in my honor. I just happened to wander in.”

“Did I hear something about a stun gun?”

“You didn’t hear anything at all.”

“Harold says you need me,” Anne says. “What exactly would you like me to do?”

“Assist. He can help Luke while you help me. We’ve got to do an angiography and scan her again to see if my suspicion is right and she has an underlying cardiac problem that made her susceptible to sudden death. I’d like whatever is said about this case to stay between us for now. I’d like whatever you just heard to stay in this room, please.”

“Loose lips.” She zips hers and throws away the imaginary key. “Not from me. What are you thinking?”

“We may be dealing with a killer who has some connection to law enforcement or has access and an interest,” I answer.

“A killer cop?”

“I don’t know and not necessarily. But not just anyone can acquire the type of stun gun used on her. Either he got one illegally or has law enforcement ties or someone close to him does.”

“That’s what caused her pneumothorax? I almost said I’m shocked. I don’t think we’ve ever had a stun-gun injury before.”

“That’s because most people don’t die from them.”

“I dated this guy for a while, a rookie cop. Part of their training is they have to be shot with one.” She puts a gown on over her purple scrubs. “He told me it doesn’t hurt as much as it scares the shit out of you.”

“You know what it feels like when you whack your funny bone? Imagine that times a thousand all through your body for five seconds or longer. It’s about as painless as having a grand mal seizure.”

“So my guess is if you do that to someone once, they’re not going to resist you and risk a second dose.”

“Unless they’re high on coke or PCP. Were you aware that Lucy was picking up Benton in Washington and bringing him home a few days early as a surprise?” I can ask Anne anything and she won’t repeat it or make judgments.

“Bryce told me. I think a lot of people knew and were really pleased,” she says. “We felt bad about what you’d been through in Connecticut and then you got the flu. It’s almost Christmas and Benton was gone and tomorrow’s his birthday. It may surprise you but people here think all you do is work and we want you to have a little ease now and then and be happy.”

I realize how much I need to talk. I can’t stop thinking about Granby’s outrageous suggestion that the Capital Murderer is influenced by what Benton has published and therefore these sadistic deaths are partly Benton’s fault. So he should retire and the Bureau shouldn’t be involved in profiling anymore; it’s outdated and dangerous. Granby is trying to poison him and he knows how to do it, and I’m trying to be my objective, calm self but I’m seething inside.

“People here knew Lucy was flying Benton home today,” I say to Anne. “His FBI colleagues knew, his damn boss knew, and his hotel in northern Virginia and whoever saw the flight plan Lucy filed also knew.”

I try to work through it, any possibility of how the killer might have been aware that Benton was flying home today, but I’m as unconvinced as I was when he first suggested it. He’s upset and bruised. He’s blaming himself. I have to understand but I can’t listen to it. And it doesn’t matter anyway. Whatever the killer knew doesn’t make any of this Benton’s fault. How dare Granby suggest anything to the contrary? How dare he invalidate Benton’s accomplishments and real sacrifices?

“Why?” Anne asks.

“Lucy knew Gail Shipton.”

“I’ve gathered that.”

“Benton is concerned that whoever killed her may have had some idea he would be here when her body was found, that maybe he timed it with Benton in mind.”

“That’s creepy.” I can tell she doesn’t buy it, not even slightly.

“I’m wondering if Lucy may have said something to Gail.”

“And then Gail told the person who intended to murder her? Said hey, Benton’s coming home, why don’t you do it now? And is this Benton’s theory?”

“Obviously it sounds silly when you put it like that.” I press the wall button with my elbow and the steel doors swing open wide. “It may be one of those questions that’s never answered but I can’t stand what it’s doing to him.”

“You know what I have no doubt about?” Anne follows me inside. “He looks stressed. He looks tired and strung-out and a little bit down. Sometimes when I get that way I think everything’s my fault. I worry something’s hiding in my closet and under my bed. I get weird, to be honest.”

“Yes, well, Granby’s certainly doing his best to make Benton feel that way.”

“You need to sort it out for him, Dr. Scarpetta. Or he’ll torture himself.”

“I’m trying to figure out how to do that.”

“Ask Lucy,” she says. “Just ask her who she may have told and then you’ll know for sure.”

“I don’t want her to feel I’m blaming her.”

“You’re not blaming her or anyone and you need to stop being responsible for everybody’s feelings.”

“That will never happen,” I reply.

I excise the puncture wound and wait for Lucy to respond to a question that’s uncomfortable for her. It’s a question I didn’t ask earlier because there was so much to ask and now priorities have shifted and I also know how she’ll react.

Lucy hesitates before deciding, “In passing, I think I did. I wouldn’t have supposed it mattered.”

My brilliant, clever niece is obvious when she perceives that I think she screwed up. It’s as if she suddenly has on wooden shoes. I pick up forceps from the surgical cart.

“Vaguely I remember saying something,” she adds, not defensively but indifferently, and she doesn’t like what I’m asking and I knew she wouldn’t.

So she rationalizes out loud that it would make sense if she referenced Benton’s birthday surprise during the telephone conversation with Gail when she was behind the Psi Bar. Lucy had just flown into Dulles when she made that call. She was there to pick up Benton and bring him home the next day.

“I said where I was and why,” she adds from the other side of the steel table, talking to me while she stares at her dead former friend, someone she once trusted, someone who was lying to her and robbing her, someone she won’t miss.

“You’re sure it didn’t come up before.” I drop the sectioned wound into a bottle of formalin.

“It probably did,” Lucy admits and that doesn’t bother her but she resents the question.

The helicopter flight to pick up Benton was a subject that could have been introduced earlier. In fact, she’s fairly certain it did. Lucy does her best not to show what she feels. Anger, embarrassment, picked on, and hurt that I don’t trust her. If I did, I wouldn’t ask questions like this. That’s how it goes through her mind, the way she thinks and reacts as if I’m her mother belittling her and I’m certainly not. A circle of emotions as old as her history, one causing the next one and the next. A circle I know like the circles in my building, like the corridors that begin where they end in this place of life and death.

What she doesn’t feel is responsible. Whatever I’m implying isn’t something she caused and she’s not going to pretend to care that this woman who intended to screw her isn’t around anymore. Lucy doesn’t give a damn about what she might have said to her and I’d always rather that Lucy be honest, but when I witness her most basic programming it’s sobering. It’s close to unbearable. I call her a little sociopathic and Benton never fails to remind me you can’t be a little of that. Like a little pregnant or a little raped or a little dead.

She goes on to mention that Gail visited her this past Sunday, the day the birthday surprise was decided. Gail, Lucy, and Carin Hegel met that late morning at Lucy’s Concord home to discuss the upcoming trial and review depositions and other documents. It’s possible that during this visit she mentioned Benton’s birthday and her concern about me being home alone after returning from Connecticut.

“I just think it’s significant she was killed soon after that.” Lucy shrewdly makes what she believes is the most important point and one I’ve completely missed. “It was all over the news that you helped out the ME’s office in Connecticut.”

“Bryce and his big mouth,” Anne says.

He had to mention it to the Armed Forces chief medical examiner, my ultimate boss, and then the public information officer decided it would be good PR. The CFC is subsidized by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the Department of Defense and I get reminded from time to time that the buck doesn’t stop with me unless something goes wrong.

“It went viral on the Internet last Friday that you responded to the school and assisted with the autopsies.” Lucy doesn’t take her eyes off the wan dead face, lips drying, eyes duller.

Gail Shipton’s rigor is beginning to relax. Soon it will pass like a fist too tired to clench anymore.

“I don’t believe this is about me,” I reply.

“And I don’t believe we should assume it’s about Benton,” Lucy says. “Or if it is, maybe that’s just part of it. Maybe your role in Connecticut is the rest of it.”

“I see what she’s getting at.” Anne agrees with a theory that is new and not what I expected. “Benton’s worried the timing is about him when it may very well be about you.”

Creating a spectacle, Benton keeps saying. A violent drama that I don’t want to imagine for a moment could include me.

“Anybody keeping up with the news would have known when you were in Connecticut and when you came back,” Lucy points out. “The second-worst school shooting in U.S. history, second only to Virginia Tech. That would turn the head of some psycho who craves attention.”

A narcissist with borderline traits, Benton said. The killer has to watch the drama he creates.

“All of the publicity might have lit his powder keg,” Lucy adds.

“Gail Shipton wasn’t murdered because I helped out in Connecticut,” I state flatly. “That makes no sense at all.”

“Would you rather blame it on Benton?” She looks coolly at me.

“I’d rather blame it on the person who did it.”

“I didn’t say it’s why.” Lucy’s face is bright as if she’s found an answer. “I said the mass murder and your part in it —”

“My part in it?”

“Try not to be defensive, please,” Lucy says very calmly. “I’m saying it could have exacerbated what was already going to happen. That’s what I mean. I think Gail was targeted but maybe he decided to kill her now because what’s been all over the news excited him and fed into his sick shit.”

“I saw it on CNN that you were there and then it was mentioned that you’d returned to Cambridge.” Anne agrees and I don’t want to hear it. “The killer could be interested in you. It’s not your fault if it influenced him.”

“Are we about ready?” I say to her as I envision the young man behind my wall in the rainy dark. “We need to move quickly.”