The Hand That Feeds You

14

Unlike accused humans, Cloud and George didn’t have the right to a speedy trial, nor was there such a thing as bail for dogs. They languished behind bars while the courts took their time. To say they languished is not accurate. Every day, they deteriorated physically and spiritually in the filthy confines of the noisy and understaffed shelter.

Then McKenzie called with news that gave me hope — he had secured a hearing date, in two weeks. We met as usual at Champs. For the first time he was there before me. His face was animated; I could see he was pleased with what he had accomplished. He presented the news to me as the gift that it was: I knew that dangerous-dog cases could sit on the docket for a year or more.

It surprised me that the first thing he said was that I looked better. Better than what? I must have looked confused because he went on, “I mean, you look rested, calm.”

“Really?” I said, incredulous. Apparently staying up all night tracking down your dead lover’s ex-wife was rejuvenating. “Thank you. You do, too.”

“I don’t need any quid pro quo. I’m just glad to see you looking well.” McKenzie flagged a waitress. When she brought over menus, he didn’t look at his.

I told him I’d brought the affidavit from my vet and handed him the folder, thick with years of Cloud’s medical records. As a puppy, Cloud had eaten a pair of Fogal herringbone tights. The surgery to get them out of her stomach cost $4,000, but the vet gave me the tights back. Since the tights had cost $65, I figured I was only out $3,935.

“You spent sixty-five dollars on tights,” he said, leafing through the folder.

He read on. Cloud was once stung in the nose by yellow jackets, and her muzzle swelled up so much she couldn’t open her eyes. One time she was snake-bit swimming in a lake in Florida.

George’s folder, by contrast, contained only three months of records. The treatments he had required were standard vaccinations and checkups.

“Why are there no charges for George?”

I told him my vet had refused to charge me for any of George’s or Chester’s appointments — she had a soft spot for rescues.

The waitress brought McKenzie a vivid green drink made of seven vegetables. I ordered coffee, black.

“I also brought pictures.” I fanned them out on the table: all three of the dogs meeting a baby in the park, and playing ball with a team of first-graders.

I handed him testimonials from neighbors who had known Cloud since she was a puppy.

“You’re very thorough,” he said appreciatively, slipping them into his backpack.

“Is there anything more I can do?”

“Any of these neighbors know George well enough to testify in his defense in court?”

“My neighbors watched Cloud grow up, but they were afraid of George. I was disappointed that they were prejudiced because he’s a pit bull. He never did anything wrong, and still they avoided him.” That’s when I remembered Billie, reaching through the kennel bars to stroke George when he and Cloud were first brought in.

“One of the volunteers at the shelter knows him and might do it. She’s the one I told you about, the one who arranged George’s temperament test.”

“That would help us.”

I was struck by his use of the word us. It told me something about him. I was so grateful not to be alone with this. And that made me feel calm, rested. I wasn’t used to feeling this with a man. I liked it. But I didn’t trust it. Normally I was drawn to men who, like Bennett, seemed kind and attentive at first, but turned out to be anything but. My reaction to that discovery was counterintuitive: I was drawn further in. The more controlling and withholding a man was, the closer I felt to him. Not because he enlisted my understanding but precisely because he did not. I worked harder to deserve his trust. The harder I worked, the less he trusted me. I became increasingly anxious and I mistook this anxiety for passion. The more anxious I became, the more fixated on me he became, and I mistook his fixation — Where were you? Why were you late? — for love.

“How can I reach that volunteer?”

I gave him the number Billie had given me when I’d first met her in the shelter.

“I have something for you.” He reached into his backpack. “This is a copy of the Boston police report on Susan Rorke’s death.” I took the heavy file, but before I could slip it into my tote bag, he said, “You’re used to crime-scene photos, right?”

“Not a problem,” I lied. The victims in the hundreds of crime-scene photos I’d studied had not been engaged to my fiancé.

“Do you want something more than coffee?”

I made my excuses. I was so eager to read the report that I couldn’t get away soon enough. (There is a fine line between apprehension and excitement.)

Did I imagine a flicker of disappointment on his face as I gathered my things? If that is what I saw, then was he disappointed in my interest in Susan Rorke over the dogs, or disappointed that I did not linger with him?

• • •

I couldn’t bear to read the police report in the apartment where Bennett had been killed. I walked a block to the East Williamsburg branch of the public library, a small, one-story, vine-covered brick building.

I walked past the empty children’s book area, past the crowd at the video rentals, past the line of homeless waiting for a free computer, and sat down at the deserted long table meant for readers. Normally it saddens me that so few people read, but today I was fine with it.

I spread out the crime-scene photos. I hadn’t realized that Susan Rorke landed on a vendor’s cart. The body was upside down, the legs caught on the cart, her upper body hanging. Her shirt had ridden up and exposed her breasts. Skewed gymnast. Hanging deer. I tried to make anatomical sense of what I was seeing. The juxtaposition of the halal cart and the broken body was obscene, and my thoughts took an obscene turn — Did they retire that cart? Ashamed of myself, I thought back to the Facebook photos in which she displayed her engagement ring, which was not in any of the crime-scene photos. Had the killer taken it? As a souvenir or to hide evidence? If Bennett — it was to hide evidence. If Samantha — it was to retrieve what she believed was his grandmother’s ring, and to keep what she believed was rightfully hers.

The autopsy report said she died of blunt force trauma. As I knew from my studies, blunt force trauma is the ME’s go-to attribution for accidents, suicides, and homicides. Deaths from blunt force trauma occur for a range of reasons, whereas death from gunshot wounds or stabbings, for example, are confined to fewer possibilities. I read quickly, looking for the answer to a key question: Was the blunt force trauma inflicted by the collision with the cart, or did she sustain the deadly injury prior to contact? The autopsy report was clear on this — the cause of death was listed as a blow to the back of the head with an instrument the size of a silver dollar, consistent with a hammer. Yet no hammer was found at the scene or during an extensive search of the building and surrounding area.

It was one thing to push a person out a window in a rage, another thing to have brought a hammer. Death would have been instant.

I skipped past the environmental conditions at the crime scene — I had no need to know the “exterior ambient temperature.”

I skipped past the reporting officers’ accounts, past the location description and “injury extent,” past occupation, and started to read when I got to the evidence inventory.

The tox screen showed no blood alcohol or drugs. She wasn’t impaired in any way until she was attacked by the unidentified figure photographed by a security camera in a bank across the street from the shelter. The shelter’s own camera was broken.

Witnesses included the shelter’s security guard, who claimed he heard a woman cry out, “No, no, no, no!” when he stepped outside for a smoke, followed by the sound of Susan Rorke’s landing less than a hundred feet away. Other witnesses — three shelter residents in the infirmary — say they saw a figure wearing a hoodie running down the hallway. Two kitchen volunteers preparing the day’s lunch saw the same hooded figure leave the building shortly after the time of death.

I turned to the photograph of Bennett’s car going through a tollbooth on I-93 north at 1:57—forty minutes after Susan Rorke’s death — on his way to meet me in Old Orchard Beach.

Then the most incriminating evidence: the DNA in the semen found in Susan Rorke matched the DNA of the body of “Bennett” in the Manhattan coroner’s office.

I took a deep breath. I was upset just then by the discovery that Bennett met me in Maine after inseminating another woman, rather than by the possibility that he came to me after killing her. If I was this jealous, why not Samantha? The police report had included a 911 call Susan had made the week before she was killed. Her tires had been slashed, she said. This was Samantha’s MO, if she was the “Sam” Bennett had told me about. The hoodie and baggy clothes concealed the suspect’s gender. Bennett may have slept with Susan Rorke the night before and been in Boston the day she was killed, but it wasn’t a slam dunk that he was the killer. Knowing that 68 percent of all murders of women are committed by their husband or boyfriend, the Boston police would have looked at Bennett first. Wouldn’t I, too, if I could be impartial? But I wasn’t. In my experience, Bennett’s anger was not annihilating, it was controlling. But what about someone else’s experience of him, someone perhaps more knowledgeable than I had been? Such as his ex-wife. If he was capable of murder, she might know.