The Last Precinct

Chapter 31

IN THE KITCHEN, I SET THE OVEN AND COOK PASTA. I mix grated cheeses with ricotta and begin layering it and meat sauce between noodles in a deep dish. Anna stuffs dates with cream cheese and fills a bowl with salted nuts while Marino, Lucy and McGovern pour beer and wine or mix whatever holiday potion they want, which in Marino's case is a spicy Bloody Mary made with his moonshine.

He is in a weird mood and well on his way to getting drunk. The Tlip file is a black hole, still in the bag of presents, ironically under the Christmas tree. Marino knows what's in that file, but I don't ask him. Nobody does. Lucy begins getting out ingredients for chocolate-chip cookies and two pies_ one peanut butter, the other key lime_as if we are feeding the entire city. McGovern uncorks a Chambertin Grand Cru red burgundy while Anna sets the table, and the file pulls silently and with great force. It is as if all of us have made an unspoken agreement to at least drink a toast and get dinner going before we start talking about murder.

"Anybody else want a Bloody?" Marino talks loudly and hangs out in the kitchen doing nothing helpful. "Hey, Doc, how 'bout I mix up a pitcher?" He yanks open the refrigerator and grabs a handful of Spicy Hot V8 juices and starts popping open the small cans. I wonder how much Marino had to drink before he got here and the safety comes off my anger. In the first place, I am insulted that he put the file under the tree, as if this is his idea of a tasteless, morbid joke. What is he implying? This is my Christmas present? Or is he so callous it didn't even occur to him that when he rather unceremoniously stuck the bag under the tree the file was still in it? He bumps past me and starts pressing lemon halves into the electric juicer and tosses the rinds in the sink.

"Well, I guess nobody's gonna help me so I'll just help myself," he mutters. "Hey!" he calls out as if we aren't in the same room with him. "Anybody think to buy horseradish?"

Anna glances at me. A collective bad mood begins to settle in. The kitchen seems to get darker and chillier, and my anger itches. I am going to fire at Marino any minute, and I am trying so hard to hold back. It is Christmas, I keep telling myself. It is Christmas. Marino grabs a long wooden spoon and makes a big production of stirring his pitcher of Bloody Marys as he slops in an appalling amount of moonshine.

"Gag." Lucy shakes her head. "At least use Grey Goose."

"Ain't a way in hell I'm drinking French vodka." The spoon clacks as he stirs and then taps it on the lip of the pitcher. "French wine, French vodka. Hey. What happened to things Italian?" He exaggerates a New York_Italian accent. "What happened to the neigh-ba-hood?"

"Nothing Italian about that shit you're mixing," Lucy tells him as she gets a beer out of the refrigerator. "You drink all that, Aunt Kay will take you to work with her in the morning. Only you'll be lying down in a bag."

Marino chugs a glass of his dangerous concoction. "That reminds me," he says to no one in particular. "I die, she ain't cutting on me." As if I am not standing right there. "That's the deal." He pours another glass, and by now, all of us have stopped what we are doing. We stare at him. 'That's been bothering me for ten fucking years now." Another swallow. "Damn, this stuff will warm your toes. I don't want her slamming me around on one of those damn steel tables and cutting me up like I'm a fish from the fucking market. Huh. I got a deal with the girls up front." A reference to my clerks in the front office. "No passing my pictures around. Don't think I don't see what goes on up there. They compare dick sizes." He chugs half a glass and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. "I've heard 'em do it. Especially Clit-ta." He makes a lewd play on Cleta's name.

He starts for the pitcher again and I put out my hand to stop him as my anger rushes forth in an army of harsh words. "That's enough. What the hell's gotten into you? How dare you come here drunk and then get drunker. Go sleep it off, Marino. I'm sure Anna can find a spare bed. You're not driving anywhere and none of us care to be subjected to you right now."

He gives me a defiant, mocking stare as he lifts his glass again. "Least I'm being honest," he retorts. "Rest of you can pretend all you want that it's a good damn day because it's fucking Christmas. Well, so fucking what? Lucy's quit her job so she don't get fired because she's a smart-ass queer."

"Don't, Marino," Lucy warns him.

"McGovern quit her job, and I dunno what her deal is." Pokes a thumb at her, insinuating she may be of Lucy's same persuasion. "Anna's gotta move outta her own fucking house because you're here and being investigated for murder, and now you're quitting your job. No small fucking goddamn wonder, and we'll just see if the governor keeps you around. A private consultant. Yeah." He slurs his words and sways in the middle of the kitchen, his face blotchy red. "That'll be the day. So guess who's left? Me, myself and I." He slams the glass down on the counter and walks out of the kitchen, bumping into a wall, knocking a painting crooked, stumbling into the living room.

"My God." McGovern quietly lets out a big breath.

"Redneck bastard," Lucy says.

"The file." Anna stares after him. "That is what is wrong with him."

MARINO is IN A DRUNKEN COMA ON THE LIVING room couch. Nothing stirs him. He does not move, but his snoring alerts us that he is both alive and not aware of what is going on inside Anna's house. The lasagna is cooked and staying warm in the oven, and a key lime pie chills inside the refrigerator. Anna has set out on the eight-hour drive to Hilton Head, despite my protests. I did all I could to encourage her to stay, but she felt she should go on. It is midafternoon. Lucy, McGovern and I have been sitting at the dining room table for hours, place settings moved out of the way, gifts still unopened under the tree, the Tlip file spread out before us.

Benton was meticulous. He sealed each item in clear plastic, and purple stains on some of the letters and envelopes indicate ninhydrin was used to process latent fingerprints. The postmarks are Manhattan, all with the same first three digits of a zip code, 100. It is not possible to know which branch posted the letters. All a three-digit prefix indicates is which city and that the mail wasn't processed through a home or business postage meter machine or at some rural station. In those instances, the postmark would be five digits.

There is a table of contents in the front of the Tlip file and it lists a total of sixty-three items dating from the spring of 1996 (about six months before Benton wrote the letter he wanted delivered to me after his death) to the fall of 1998 (mere days before Carrie Grethen escaped from Kirby). The first item is labeled Exhibit 1, as if it is physical evidence for a jury to see. It is a letter posted in New York on May 15, 1996, unsigned and computer-printed in an ornate, hard-to-read WordPerfect font that Lucy identifies as "Ransom."

Dear Benton,

I'm the president of the Ugly Fan Club and you've been picked to he an honorary member! Guess what? Members get to be ugly for free! Aren 't you excited? More later…

This was followed by five more letters, all within weeks of each other, all making the same references to an Ugly Fan Club and Benton's becoming the newest member. The paper was plain, same Ransom font, no signature, same New York zip code, clearly the same author for all. And a very clever one until this person mailed the sixth letter and made a mistake, a rather obvious one to the investigative eye, which is why I am baffled that Benton didn't seem to catch it. On the back of the plain white envelope are writing impressions that are noticeable when I tilt the envelope and catch light at different angles.

I get a pair of latex gloves out of my satchel and put them on as I wander into the kitchen to find a flashlight. Anna keeps one on the counter by the toaster. Back in the dining room, I slip the envelope out of its plastic cover, hold it up by the corners and shine the flashlight on the paper obliquely. I catch the shadow of the indented word Postmaster and it becomes instantly clear to me what the author of this letter did.

"Franklin D.," I make out more words. "Is there a Franklin D. Roosevelt post office in New York? Because this definitely says N-Y, N-Y."

"Yes. The one in my neighborhood," McGovern says, her eyes getting wide. She comes over to my side of the table to get a closer look.

"I've had cases where people try to create alibis," I say, shining the light from different angles. "An obvious, shopworn one is you were in a different, very distant location at the time of the murder and therefore couldn't have done it. An easy way to do that is have mail posted from some remote location at or around the time the murder happens, thereby making it seem the killer couldn't be you because you can't be in two places at once."

"Third Avenue," McGovern says. "That's where the FDR post office is."

"We've got part of a street address; some of it's obliterated by the flap. Nine-something. Three A-V. Yes, Third Avenue. What you do is address the letter, put on the appropriate postage, then enclose it in another envelope addressed to the postmaster of whatever post office you want your letter mailed from. The postmaster is obliged to mail your letter for you, postmarked in that city. So what this person did was tuck this letter inside another envelope, and when he addressed that outer envelope, the impressions of what he wrote were left on the envelope underneath."

Lucy has come behind me, too, and is leaning close to see. "Susan Pless's neighborhood," she says.

Not only that, but the letter, which is by far the most vile, is dated December 5, 1997_the same day Susan Pless was murdered:

Hey Benton,

How are you, soon-to-be-ugly boy. Just wondering_ Got any idea what it's like to look in the mirror and want to commit suicide? No? Will soon. Wiiiilllll soooonnnn. Gonna carve you up like a Christmas turkey and same goes for the Chief Cunt you screw when you got time off from trying to figure out people like me amp; you. Can't tell you how much l'm-a-gonna (to quote Southerners) like using my big blade to open her seams. Quid pro quo, right? When you gonna learn to mind your own business?

I imagine Benton receiving these sick, crude missives. I imagine him in his room at my house, sitting at the desk with laptop opened and plugged into a modem line, his briefcase nearby, coffee within reach. His notes indicate he determined the font was Ransom and then contemplated the significance. To obtain release by paying a price. To buy back. To deliver from sin, I read his scribbles. I might have been down the hallway in my study or in the kitchen at the very moment he was reading this letter and looking up "ransom" in the dictionary, and he never said a word. Lucy volunteers that Benton

wouldn't have wanted to burden me, and nothing helpful

would have come from my knowing. I couldn't have done anything about it, she adds.

"Cactus, lilies, tulips." McGovern goes through pages of the file. "So someone was anonymously sending him flower arrangements at Quantico."

I start picking through dozens of message slips that simply have "hang-up" written on them and the date and time. The calls were made to his direct line at the Behavioral Science Unit, all tracing back to out of area on Caller ID, meaning they were probably made on a cell phone. Benton's only observation was pauses on the line before hanging up. McGovern informs us that flower orders were placed with a Lexington Avenue florist that Benton apparently checked out, and Lucy calls directory assistance to see if that same florist is still in business. It is.

"He makes a note here about payment." It is so hard for me to look at Benton's small, snarled penmanship. "Mail. The orders were placed by mail. Cash, he has the word 'cash.' So it sounds like the person sent cash and a written order." I flip back to the table of contents. Sure enough, exhibits fifty-one through fifty-five are the actual orders received by the florist. I turn to those pages. "Computer-generated and unsigned. One small arrangement of tulips for twenty-five dollars with instructions to send it to Benton's Quantico address. One small cactus for twenty-five dollars, and so on, envelopes postmarked New York."

"Probably the same thing," Lucy says. "They were mailed through the New York postmaster. Question is, where were they mailed from originally?"

We can't know that without the outer envelopes, which certainly would have been tossed into the trash the instant post office employees opened them. Even if we had those envelopes, it is highly unlikely the sender wrote out his return address. The most we could have hoped for was a postmark.

"Guess the florist just assumed he was dealing with some nutcase who doesn't believe in charge cards," McGovern comments. "Or someone having an affair."

"Or an inmate." I am, of course, thinking of Carrie Grethen. I can imagine her sending out communications from Kirby. By slipping the letters in an outer envelope addressed to a postmaster, at the very least she prevented the hospital staff from seeing who she was sending the letters to, whether it was to a florist or to Benton directly. Using a New York post office makes sense, too. She would have had access to various office branches through the telephone directory, and in my gut I don't think Carrie was concerned about anyone's supposing the mail originated in the same city where she was incarcerated. She simply didn't want to alert Kirby staff, and she was also the most manipulative person on this planet. Everything she did had its reason. She was just as busy profiling Benton as he was her.

"If it's Carrie," McGovern somberly remarks, "then you do have to wonder if she in any form or fashion was at least privy to Chandonne and his killings."

"She would get off on it," I reply with anger as I push back from the table. "And she would know damn well that by writing a letter to Benton dated the same day as Susan's murder, it would send him through the ceiling. He'd make that connection, all right."

"And picking a post office located in Susan's neighborhood," Lucy adds.

We speculate, postulate and go on until late afternoon, when we decide it is time for Christmas dinner. After rousing Marino, we tell him what we have discovered and continue to talk as we eat greens, sweet onions and tomatoes drenched in sweet red vinegar and cold-pressed olive oil. Marino shovels in food as if he hasn't eaten in days, stuffing lasagna into his mouth while we debate and speculate and beg the question: If Carrie Grethen was the person harassing Benton and she had some link to the Chandonne family, was Benton's murder more than a simple act of psychopathy? Was his slaying an organized crime hit disguised to seem personal, senseless, deranged, with Carrie the lieutenant who was more than eager to carry it out?

"In other words," Marino says to me with his mouth full, "was his death like what you're accused of."

The table falls silent. None of us quite get his meaning, but then I do. "You're saying, if there was a real motive for his murder but it was disguised to look like a serial killing?"

He shrugs. "Just like you being accused of murdering Bray and disguising it to look like Wolfman did it."

"Maybe why Interpol got so hot and bothered," Lucy considers.

Marino helps himself to excellent French wine he gulps down like Gatorade. "Yeah, Interpol. Maybe Benton got all tangled up with the cartel somehow and…"

"Because of Chandonne," I interrupt as my focus sharpens and I think I am on the trail that might just lead to the truth.

Jaime Berger has been our uninvited Christmas guest. She has shaded my thoughts all afternoon. I can't stop thinking about one of the first things she asked when we met in my conference room. She wanted to know if anyone had profiled Chandonne's Richmond murders. She was so quick to bring that up and so clearly believes profiling is important. Certainly, she would have had someone profile Susan Pless's murder and I am increasingly suspicious that Benton very well may have known about that case.

I get up from the table. "Please be home," I say out loud to Berger, and I experience a growing sense of desperation as I dig in my satchel for her business card. On it is her home number and I call from Anna's kitchen where no one can hear what I say. A part of me is embarrassed. I am also frightened and mad. If I am wrong, I will sound foolish. If I am right, then she should have been more open with me, damn it, damn her.

"Hello?" A woman answers.

"Ms. Berger?" I say.

"Hold on." The person calls out, "Mom! For you!"

The minute Berger gets on the line I say, "What else don't I know about you? Because it's becoming patently clear that I don't know much."

"Oh, Jill." She must mean the person who answered the phone. "Actually, they're from Greg's first marriage. Two teenagers. And today I'd sell them to the first bidder. Hell, I'd pay someone to take them."

"No, you wouldn't!" Jill says in the background and laughs.

"Let me get to a quieter spot." Berger talks as she moves into some other area of wherever it is she lives with a husband and two children she has never mentioned to me, even after all the hours we spent together. My resentment simmers. "What's up, Kay?"

"Did you know Benton?" I ask her straight up.

Nothing.

"Are you there?" I speak again.

"I'm here," she says and her tone has gotten quiet and serious. "I'm thinking how best to answer you…"

"Why not start with the truth. For once."

"I've always told you the truth," she replies.

"That's ridiculous. I've heard even the best of you lie when you're trying to manipulate someone. Suggesting lie detectors, or the big needle truth serum to get people to 'fess up, and there's also such a thing as lying by omission. The whole truth. I demand it. For God's sake, did Benton have something to do with the Susan Pless case?"

"Yes," Berger replies. "Absolutely yes, Kay."

"Talk to me, Ms. Berger. I've just spent the entire afternoon going through letters and other weird things he received before he was murdered. They were processed in the post office located in Susan's neighborhood."

A pause. "I'd met Benton numerous times and my office has certainly availed itself of the services the behavioral science unit has to offer. Back then, at least. We actually have a forensic psychiatrist we use now, someone here in New York. I'd worked with Benton on other cases over the years, that's my point. And the minute I learned about Susan's murder and went to the scene, I called him and got him up here. We went through her apartment, just as you and I went through the Richmond crime scenes."

"Did he ever indicate to you that he was getting strange

mail and phone calls and other things? And that just possibly there was a connection between whoever was doing it and whoever murdered Susan Pless?"

"I see," is all she says.

"See? What the hell do you see?"

"I see you know," she answers me. "Question is, how?"

I tell her about the Tlip file. I inform her that it appears Benton had the documents checked for fingerprints and I am wondering who did that and where and what the results might have been. She has no idea but says we should run any latent prints through the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, known as AFIS. "There are postage stamps on the envelopes," I inform her. "He didn't remove them and he would have had to if he wanted them checked for DNA."

It has only been in recent years that DNA analysis has become sophisticated enough, because of PCR, to make it worthwhile to analyze saliva, and just maybe whoever affixed postage stamps to the envelopes did so by licking them. I am not sure that even Carrie would have known back then that licking a stamp might give up her identity to us. I would have known. Had Benton showed these letters to me, I would have recommended he have the stamps examined. Maybe we would have gotten results. Maybe he wouldn't be dead.

"Back then a lot of people, even those in law enforcement, just didn't think about things like that." Berger is still talking about the postage stamps. "Seems like all cops do these days is follow people for their coffee cups or sweaty towels, Kleenex, cigarette butts. Amazing."

1 have an incredible thought. What she is saying has brought to mind a case in England where a man was falsely accused of a burglary because of a cold hit on the Birmingham-based National DNA Database. The man's solicitor demanded a retest of the DNA recovered from the crime, this time using ten loci, or locations, instead of the standard six that had been used. Loci, or alleles, are simply specific locations on your genetic map. Some alleles are more common than others, so the less common they are and the more locations used, the better

your chances for a match_which isn't literally a match, but

rather a statistical probability that makes it almost impossible to believe the suspect didn't commit the crime. In the British case, the alleged burglar was excluded upon retesting with ad- ditional loci. There was a one-in-thirty-seven-million chance of a mismatch, and sure enough, it happened.

"When you tested the DNA from Susan's case, did you use STR?" I ask Berger.

STR is the newest technology in DNA profiling. All it means is we amplify the DNA with PCR and look at very discriminating repeated base pairs called Short Tandem Repeats. Typically, the requirement for DNA databases these days is that at least thirteen probes or loci be used, thus making it highly improbable that there will be any mismatches.

"I know our labs are very advanced," Berger is saying. "They've been doing PCR for years."

"It's all PCR unless the lab is still doing the old RFLP, which is very reliable but just takes forever," I reply. "In 1997, it was a matter of how many probes you used_or loci. Often in first screening of a sample, the lab may not do ten, thirteen or fifteen loci. That gets to be expensive. If only four loci were done in Susan's case, for example, you could come up with an unusual exception. I'm assuming the ME's office still has the extraction left in their freezer."

"What sort of bizarre exception?"

"If we're dealing with siblings. Brothers. And one left the seminal fluid and the other left the hair and saliva."

"But you tested Thomas's DNA, right? And it was similar to Jean-Baptiste's but not the same?" I can't believe it. Berger is getting agitated.

"We also did that just days ago with thirteen loci, not four or six," I reply. "I'm assuming the profiles had a lot of the same alleles, but also some different ones. The more probes you do, the more you come up with differences. Especially in closed populations. And when you think of the Chandonne family, theirs is probably a very closed population, people who have lived on Ile Saint-Louis for hundreds of years, probably married their own kind. In some cases, inbreeding_marrying cousins, which might also account for Jean-Baptiste Chandonne's congenital deformity. The more people inbreed, the more they up their chances for genetic glitches."

"We need to retest the seminal fluid from Susan's case," Berger decides.

"Your labs would do that anyway, since he's up on murder charges," I reply. "But you might want to encourage them to make it a priority."

"God, let's hope it doesn't turn out to be someone else," she says in frustration. "Jesus, that would be awful if the DNA doesn't match when they do the retest. Talk about really screwing up my case."

She is right. It certainly would. Even Berger might have a hard time making a jury believe that Chandonne killed Susan if his DNA doesn't match the DNA of the seminal fluid recovered from her body.

"I'll get Marino to submit the stamps and any latent prints to the Richmond labs," she then says. "And Kay, I need to ask you not to look at anything in that file unless it's witnessed; don't look any further. That's why it's best you don't submit any evidence yourself."

"I understand." Another reminder that I am under suspicion for murder.

"For your own protection," she adds.

"Ms. Berger, if you knew about the letters, about what was happening to Benton, then what did you think when he was murdered?"

"Aside from the obvious shock and grief? That he was killed by whoever was harassing him. Yes, first thing that came to mind. However, when it became clear who his killers were and then they were gunned down, there didn't seem to be anything to pursue further."

"And if Carrie Grethen wrote those harassing letters, she wrote the worst one, it seems, on the very day Susan was killed."

Silence.

"I think we must consider there could be a connection." I am firm on this point. "Susan may have been Chandonne's first victim in this country, and as Benton started poking around he might have started getting too close to other things that point to the cartel. Carrie was alive and in New York when Chandonne came there and killed Susan."

"And maybe Benton was a hit?" Berger sounds doubtful.

"More than maybe," I reply. "I knew Benton and the way he thought. For starters, why was he carrying the Tlip file in his briefcase_why did he take it with him to Philadelphia if he didn't have some reason to think that the weird stuff in it was connected to what Carrie and her accomplice were doing? Balling people and cutting their faces off. Making them ugly. And the notes Benton was getting made it clear he was going to be made ugly, and he sure as hell was…"

"I need a copy of that file," Berger dismisses me. It is obvious by her tone that she suddenly wants to get off the phone. "I've got a fax machine here in the house." She gives me the number.

I GO INTO ANNA'S STUDY AND SPEND THE NEXT HALF hour photocopying everything in the Tlip file because I can't feed laminated documents into the fax machine. Marino finished the burgundy and is asleep on the couch again when I return to the living room, where Lucy and McGovern sit in front of the fire talking, continuing to paint scenarios that are only getting wilder the more they are influenced by alcohol. Christmas speeds away from us. We finally get around to opening gifts at half past ten, and Marino groggily plays Santa, handing out boxes and trying to be festive. But his mood has gotten only darker and any attempts at humor have a bite. At eleven o'clock, Anna's phone rings. It is Berger.

"Quid pro quo?" she launches in, referring to the letter dated December 5, 1997. "How many non-legal-minded people use that term? Just a crazy idea, but wonder if there's a way we could get hold of Rocky Caggiano's DNA. May as well turn over every stone and not be so quick to assume Carrie wrote these letters. Maybe she did. But maybe she didn't."

I can't concentrate as I return to Christmas gifts beneath the tree. I try to smile and act abundantly thankful, but I don't fool anyone. Lucy gives me a stainless-steel Breitling watch called a B52 while Marino's gift to me is a coupon for a year of firewood that he will personally deliver and stack. Lucy loves the Whirly-Girls necklace I had made for her and Marino loves the leather jacket from Lucy and me. Anna would be pleased with an art glass vase I found for her, but she is somewhere on 1-95, of course. Everybody goes through the motions quickly because questions hang heavy in the air. While we gather up rumpled ribbons and torn paper, I motion to Marino that I need a private word with him. We sit in the kitchen. He has been in some stage of drunkenness all day, and I can tell that he is probably getting drunk on a regular basis. There is a reason for it.

"You can't keep drinking like this," I say to him as I pour each of us a glass of water. "It doesn't help anything."

"Never has, never will." He rubs his face. "And that don't seem to make a damn difference when I'm feeling like shit. Right now, everything's shit." His bleary, bloodshot eyes meet mine. Marino looks like he is about to cry again.

"Any reason you might have something that could give us Rocky's DNA?" I come right out and ask.

He flinches as if I have hit him. "What'd Berger tell you when she called? That it? She call about Rocky?"

"She's just going down the list," I reply. "Anybody connected with us or Benton who might have a link to organized crime. And Rocky certainly comes to mind." I go on and tell him what Berger revealed about Benton and the Susan Pless case.

"But he was getting that whacko shit before Susan was murdered," he says. "So why would someone be jerking him around if he wasn't sticking his nose in anything yet? Why would Rocky, for example? And I assume that's what you're thinking, that maybe Rocky was sending him that weird shit?"

I have no answer. I don't know.

"Well, I guess you're gonna have to get DNA from Doris

and me 'cause I don't got anything of Rocky's. Not even hair. You could do that, right? If you got the DNA of the mother and the father then you could compare something like saliva?"

"We could get a pedigree and at least know your son can't be ruled out as a contributor of the DNA on the stamps."

"Okay." He blows out. "If that's what you want to do. Since Anna's split, think I can smoke in here?"

"I wouldn't dare," I reply. "What about Rocky's fingerprints?"

"Forget that. Besides, it didn't look to me like Benton had any luck with the prints. I mean, you can tell he tested the letters for them and that seems to be the end of it. And I know you don't want to hear this, Doc, but maybe you'd better be sure why you're getting into all this. Don't go on a witch hunt 'cause you want to pay back the fucker who might have sent that shit to Benton and maybe had to do with him being killed. It ain't worth it. Especially if you're thinking Carrie did it. She's dead. Let her rot."

"It is worth it," I say. "If I can know for sure who sent those letters to him, it's worth it to me."

"Huh. He said The Last Precinct was where he'd end up. Well, looks like he has," Marino muses. "We're The Last Precinct and we're working his case. Ain't that something?"

"Do you think he carried that file to Philadelphia because he wanted to make sure you or I got it?"

"Assuming something happened to him?"

I nod.

"Maybe," he says. "He was worried he wasn't going to be around much longer and he wanted us to find that file if something did happen to him. And it's strange, too. It's not like he says much in it, almost like he knew other people might see it and he didn't want anything in it that maybe the wrong person would see. Don't you find it interesting there ain't any names in it? Like if he had suspects in mind, he never mentioned anybody?"

"The file's cryptic," I agree.

"So who was he afraid might see it? Cops? 'Cause if something happened to him, he would know cops are going through his shit. And they did. Philly cops went through everything in his hotel room and then turned it over to me. He would also figure you're going to see his stuff at some point. Maybe Lucy, too."

"I think the point is he couldn't be sure of who might see the file. So he was cautious, period. And Benton was certainly known for being cautious."

"Not to mention," Marino goes on, "he was up there helping out ATE So he mightliave thought ATF would see the file, right? Lucy's ATF. McGovern's ATF and was in charge of the response team working the fires Carrie and her asshole sidekick were setting to disguise the fact they had this nasty little hobby of cutting people's faces off, right?" Marino's eyes narrow. "Talley's ATF," he says. "Maybe we ought to get his DNA, the son of a bitch. Too bad." He gets that look again. I don't think Marino will ever forgive me for sleeping with Jay Talley. "You probably had his fucking DNA, no pun intended. In Paris. I don't guess you got a stain you maybe forgot to wash out?"

"Shut up, Marino," I say softly.

"I'm getting withdrawal." He gets up and goes to the liquor cabinet. Now it's time for bourbon. He pours Booker's into a glass and comes back to the table. "Wouldn't that just be something if it turns out Talley's involved in everything from soup to nuts. Maybe that's why he wanted you at Interpol. He wanted to pick your brain to see if you knew maybe what Benton knew? 'Cause guess what? Maybe when Benton was poking around after Susan's murder, he started figuring out shit that started pulling him too close to a truth Talley can't afford for nobody to know."

"What are you two talking about?" Lucy is in the kitchen. I didn't hear her walk in.

"Sounds like a job for you." Marino gives her his puffy eyes as he swills bourbon in his glass. "Why don't you and Teun investigate Talley and find out how dirty he is. 'Cause I believe with all my little heart they don't come no dirtier. And by the way." This to me. "In case you didn't hear, he's one of the guys who drove Chandonne up to New York. Now ain't that interesting? He sits in on Berger's interview. He spends six hours in the car with him. Hey, they're probably drinking buddies by now_or maybe they already was."

Lucy stares out the kitchen window, her hands in the pockets of her jeans, obviously put off by Marino and embarrassed by him. He is sweating and profane, and unsteady on his feet, and filled with hate and spite one minute, sullen the next.

"You know what I can't stand?" Marino keeps at it. "1 can't stand bad cops who get away with it because everybody's too damn chicken to go after them. And nobody wants to touch Talley or even try because he speaks all these languages and went to Harvard and is a big shot golden boy…"

"You really don't know what you're talking about," Lucy says to Marino, and by now, McGovern has wandered into the kitchen. "You're wrong. Jay's not off limits and you're not the only person on this planet who has doubts about him."

"Serious doubts," McGovern echoes.

Marino shuts up and leans against the counter.

"I can tell you what we know so far," Lucy says to me. She is reluctant and soft-spoken because nobody, really, is quite sure how I feel about Jay. "I kind of hate to, because there's nothing definitive. But it's not looking good so far." She looks at me as if in search of a cue.

"Good," I tell her. "Let's hear it."

"Yeah. I'm all ears," Marino responds.

"I've run him through quite a number of databases. No criminal or civil court records, no liens or judgments, et cetera. Not that we expected him to be a registered sex offender or deadbeat parent or missing or wanted or whatever, and there's no evidence that the FBI, CIA or even ATF has a file on him in their systems of records. But doing a simple search of real estate records raised a red flag. First of all, he has a condo in New York where he's let certain select friends stay_including high-ranking people in law enforcement," she says to Marino and me. "A three-million-plus place full of antiques, on Central Park. Jay has bragged that the condo is his. Well, it's not. Comes back to a corporate name."

"It's not uncommon for wealthy people to have property in separate corporate names, for privacy reasons and also to protect various assets from litigation," I point out.

"I know. But this corporation isn't Jay's," Lucy replies. "Not unless he owns an air freight company."

"Kind of eerie, right?" McGovern adds. "Considering how much shipping the Chandonne family is involved in. So maybe there's a connection. It's way too soon to say."

"No big surprise," Marino mutters, but his eyes light up. "Yeah, how well I remember him playing the big rich Harvard act, right, Doc? Remember, I wondered why we was suddenly on a Learjet, and next thing we're on the Concorde going to France. I knew Interpol didn't pay for all that shit."

"He never should have bragged about that condo," Lucy remarks. "Obviously he's got the same Achilles' heel other assholes do: ego." She looks at me. "He wanted to impress you, so he flies you out supersonic_says he got the tickets comped because they were for law enforcement. And sure, we know the airlines do that sort of thing on occasion. But we're tracking that, too, to see who made those reservations and what the story was."

"My big question," McGovern goes on, "is obviously whether or not that condo might be owned by the Chandonne family. And you can only imagine how many layers you'd have to go through to get to them."

"Hell, they probably own the whole fucking building," Marino says. "And half of Manhattan to go along with it."

"What about corporate officers?" I ask. "Any interesting names come up?"

"We've got names but they don't mean anything significant yet," Lucy replies. "These paper cases take a lot of time. We run them and then everything and everybody they connect with, on and on it goes,"

"And where do Mitch Barbosa and Rosso Matos fit in?" I ask. "Or do they? Because somebody took a key out of my house and put it in Barbosa's pocket. Do you think Jay did?"

Marino snorts and takes a swallow of bourbon. "Gets my vote," he retorts. "That and swiping your chipping hammer.

Can't think of anybody else who'd do it. I know every guy who went in there, in your house. Unless Righter did it, and he's too chicken and I really don't think he's dirty."

It isn't that Jay's shadow hasn't crossed our thoughts numerous times before. We know he was in my house. We know he is bitter toward me. We all have considerable questions about his character, but if he did plant the key or steal it from my house and pass it off to someone else, then this directly implicates him in Barbosa's torture-homicide and most likely in Matos's as well. "Where's Jay right now? Anybody know?" I search their faces.

"Well, he was in New York. That was Wednesday. Then we saw him yesterday afternoon in James City County. Got no idea right this very minute," Marino answers.

"There are a couple other things you might want to know." Lucy addresses this to me. "One in particular is real odd but I can't make heads or tails of it yet. On the credit search, I got hits on two Jay Talleys with different addresses and different social security numbers. One Jay Talley was issued his social security number in Phoenix between 1960 and 1961. Which couldn't be Jay unless he's in his forties, and he's what? Not much older than me? Early thirties at the most? A second Jay Talley I got a hit on was issued his social security number between 1936 and '37. No D-O-B, but he'd have to be one of the early timers who got a number shortly after the Social Security Act of 1935, so God knows how old this particular Jay Talley already was when he got his number. He'd have to be at least in his seventies and he sure moves around a lot and uses post office boxes instead of physical addresses. He's also bought a lot of cars, sometimes changing vehicles a couple times a year."

"Did Talley ever tell you where he was born?" Marino asks me.

"He said he spent most of his childhood in Paris and then his family moved to L.A.," I reply. "You were sitting in the cafeteria when he said that. At Interpol."

"No record of either Jay Talley ever living in L.A.," Lucy says.

"And speaking of Interpol," Marino says. "Wouldn't they check him out before letting him work there?"

"Obviously, they might have checked into him, but not extensively," Lucy replies. "He's an ATF agent. You assume he's clean."

"What about a middle name?" Marino asks. "We know his?"

"He doesn't have one. Nothing in his ATF personnel records." McGovern smiles wryly. "And neither does the Jay Talley who got his social security number back before the Great Flood. That alone is unusual. Most people have middle names. In his file at headquarters it does say he was born in Paris and lived there until he was six. But after that he supposedly moved to New York with his French father and American mother and there's no mention of Los Angeles. On his ATF application he claims to have gone to Harvard, but having looked into that we discovered there's no record of any Jay Talley having ever attended Harvard."

"Jesus," Marino exclaims. "Don't people check out nothing when they go through these applications? They just take your word for it that you went to Harvard or were a Rhodes scholar or pole-vaulted in the Olympics? And they hire you and give you a badge and a gun?"

"Well, I'm not going to give Internal Affairs a heads-up that they may want to check him out a little more closely," McGovern offers. "We've got to be careful someone doesn't tip him off, and it's hard to say who his friends are at headquarters."

Marino lifts his arms in the air and stretches. He cracks his neck. "I'm hungry again," he says.