Kay Scarpet - The Last Precinct Part 37

"We don't have a runway." She says this several times.

Finally, she puts her husband on the phone. His name is Marcus. He tells me they have a soybean field between their house and Route 5 and there's a silo painted dark green, too. There isn't another silo in that area, not one painted dark green, he adds. It is fine with him if we land in his field.

The rest of my day is long. I work at the office and catch my staff before they head home. I explain to them what is happening in my life and a.s.sure each person that his job is not in jeopardy. I also make it clear that I have done nothing wrong and am confident my name will be cleared. I don't tell them I have resigned. They have suffered enough tremors and don't need an earthquake. I don't pack items in my office or head out with anything other than my briefcase, as if all is well and I'll see everybody in the morning, as usual.

Now it is nine P.M. I sit in Anna's kitchen, picking at a thick slice of cheddar cheese and sipping a gla.s.s of red wine, going easy, unwilling to cloud my thinking and simply finding it almost impossible to swallow solid food. I have lost weight. I don't know how much. I have no appet.i.te and have developed a wretched routine of going outside periodically to smoke. Every half hour or so, I try to contact Marino with no success. And I keep thinking about the Tlip file. It has hardly been out of my mind since I looked at it on Christmas Day. The telephone rings at close to midnight and I a.s.sume it is Marino finally returning my page. "Scarpetta," I answer.

"It's Jaime," Berger's distinctive, confident voice sounds over the line.

I pause in surprise. But then I remember: Berger seems to have no hesitation in talking to people she intends to send to jail, doesn't matter the hour.

"I've been on the phone with Marino," she starts off. "So I realize you know my situation. Or I guess I should say, our situation. And actually you ought to feel all right about it, Kay. I'm not going to coach you, but let me say this. Just talk to the jury the same way you do to me. And try not to worry."

"I think I'm beyond worrying," I reply.

"Mainly I'm calling to pa.s.s on some information. We got DNA on the stamps. The stamps from the letters in the Tlip file," she informs me as if she is in my mind again. So now the Richmond labs are dealing directly with her, it occurs to me. "It appears Diane Bray was all over the map, Kay. At least she licked those stamps, and I will a.s.sume she wrote the letters and was smart enough not to leave her prints on them. The prints that were left on several of the letters are Benton's, probably from when he opened them before he realized what they were. I a.s.sume he knew they were his prints. Don't know why he didn't make a note of it. I'm just wondering if Benton ever mentioned Bray to you. Any reason to think they knew each other?"

"I don't remember him mentioning her," I reply. My thoughts are locked. I can't believe what Berger has just said.

"Well, he certainly could have known her," Berger goes on. "She was in D.C. He was a few miles down the road in Quantico. I don't know. But it baffles me that she would send this stuff to him, and I'm wondering if she wanted it posted in New York so he would go down the path of believing the crank mail was from Carrie Grethen.

"And we know he did go down that path," I remind her.

"Then we also have to wonder if Bray possiblyjust possiblyhad anything to do with his murder," Berger adds the final touch.

It flashes in my mind that she is testing me again. What is she hoping? That I will blurt out something incriminating. Good. Bray got what was coming to her or She got what she deserved. At the same time, I don't know. Maybe it is my paranoia speaking and not reality. Maybe Berger is simply saying what is on her mind, nothing more.

"I don't guess she ever mentioned Benton to you," Berger is saying.

"Not that I recall," I reply. "I don't remember Bray ever saying a word about Benton."

"What I just can't get," Berger goes on, "is this Chandonne thing. If we consider that Jean-Baptiste Chandonne knew Braysaying they were in business togetherthen why would he kill her? And in the manner he killed her? That strikes me as a non-fit. It doesn't profile right. What do you think?"

"Maybe you should Mirandize me before you ask me what I think about Bray's murderer," is what I say. "Or maybe you should save your questions for the hearing."

"You haven't been arrested," she replies, and I can't believe it. She has a smile in her tone. I have amused her. "You don't need to be Mirandized." She gets serious. "I'm not toying with you, Kay. I'm asking for your help. You should be G.o.dd.a.m.n glad it will be me in that room interviewing witnesses and not Righter."

"I'm just sorry anyone will be in that room. No one should be. Not on my account," I tell her.

"Well, there are two key pieces that we've got to figure out." She is impervious and has more to tell me. "The seminal fluid in Susan Pless's case isn't Chandonne's. And now we have this newest information about Diane Bray. It's just instinct. But I don't think Chandonne knew Diane Bray. Not personally. Not at all. I think all of his victims are people he had experienced only from a distance. He watched and stalked and fantasized. And that, by the way, was Benton's opinion, too, when he profiled Susan's case."

"Was it his opinion that the person who murdered her also left the seminal fluid?" I ask.

"He never thought more than one person was involved," Berger concedes. "Until your cases in Richmond, we were still looking for that well-dressed, good-looking guy who ate with her in Lumi. We sure weren't looking for some self-proclaimed werewolf with a genetic disorder, not back then we weren't.

I don't. I fade in and out, now and then picking up the alarm clock to check the time. Hours advance imperceptibly and weightily, like glaciers. I dream I am in my house and have a puppy, an adorable female yellow Labrador retriever with long, heavy ears and huge feet and the sweetest face imaginable. She reminds me of Gund stuffed animals in FAO Schwarz, that wonderful toy store in New York where I used to pick up surprises for Lucy when she was a child. In my dream, this wounded fiction I spin in my semi-conscious state, I am playing with the puppy, tickling her, and she is licking me, her tail wagging furiously. Then somehow I am walking into my house again, and it is dark and chilled and I sense n.o.body home, no life, absolute silence. I call out to the puppy I can't remember her nameand frantically search every room for her. I wake up in Anna's guest room, crying, sobbing, just bawling.["_Toc37098935"]

CHAPTER 33.

MORNING COMES AND HAZE DRIFTS LIKE SMOKE AS we fly low over trees. Lucy and I are alone in her new machine because Jack woke up with aches and chills. He stayed home, and I have a suspicion that his illness is self-induced. I think he is hung over, and I fear that the unbearable stress I have brought upon the office has encouraged bad habits in him. He was perfectly satisfied with his life. Now everything has changed.

The Bell 407 is black with bright stripes. It smells like a new car and moves with the smooth strength of heavy silk as we fly east, eight hundred feet above the ground. I am preoccupied with the sectional map in my lap, trying to match depictions of power lines, roads and railroad tracks with those we pa.s.s over. It isn't that we don't know exactly where we are, because Lucy's helicopter has enough navigational equipment to pilot the Concorde. But whenever I feel the way I do right now, I tend to obsess over a task, any task.

"Two antennas about one o'clock." I show her on the map. "Five hundred and thirty feet above sea level. Shouldn't be a factor, but don't see them yet."

"I'm looking," she says.

The antennas will be well below horizon, meaning they aren't a danger even if we get close. But I have a special pho-bia of obstructions, and there are more of them going up all the time in this world of constant communication. Richmond air traffic control comes over the air, telling us radar service is terminated and we can squawk VFR. I change the frequency to twelve hundred on the transponder as I barely make out the antennas several miles ahead. They don't have high-intensity strobes and are nothing more than ghostly, straight pencil lines in thick, gray haze. I point them out.

"Got 'em," Lucy replies. "Hate those things." She pressures the cyclic right, curving well to the north of them, wanting nothing personal with antenna guy wires, for the heavy steel cables are the snipers. They will get you first.

"The governor going to be p.i.s.sed at you if he finds out you're doing this?" Lucy's question sounds inside my headset.

"He told me to take a vacation from the office," I reply. "I'm out of the office."

"So you'll come to New York with me," she says. "You can stay in my apartment. I'm really glad you're leaving the job, giving up being chief, striking out on your own. Maybe you'll end up in New York working with Teun and me?"

I don't want to hurt her feelings. I don't tell her I am not glad. I want to be here. I want to be in my home and working my job as usual, and that will never be possible. I feel like a fugitive, I tell my niece, whose attention is outside the c.o.c.kpit, eyes never straying from what she is doing. Talking to someone who is piloting a helicopter is like being on the phone. The person really doesn't see you. There is no gesturing or touching. The sun is getting brighter, the haze thinning the farther east we fly. Below us, creeks glisten like entrails of the earth, and the James River s.h.i.+nes white like snow. We get lower and slower, pa.s.sing over the Susan Constant, G.o.dspeed and Discovery, the full-size replicas of the s.h.i.+ps that carried one hundred and four men and boys to Virginia in 1607. In the distance, I make out the obelisk peeking up through the trees of Jamestown Island, where archaeologists are raising the first English settlement in America from the dead. A ferry slowly carries cars across the water toward Surry.

"I see a green silo at nine o'clock," Lucy observes. "Think that's it?"

I follow her eyes to a small farm that backs up to a creek. On the other side of the narrow, muddy lick of water, rooftops and old campers peeking out of thick pines become The Fort James Motel and Camp Ground. Lucy circles the farm at five hundred feet, making sure there are no hazards such as power lines. She sizes up the area and seems satisfied as she lowers the collective and reins us back to sixty knots. We begin our approach to a clearing between woods and the small brick house where Benny White spent his twelve short years. Dead gra.s.s storms as Lucy gently sets us down, subtly feeling for the ground, making sure it is level. Mrs. White comes out of the house. She stares at us, a hand s.h.i.+elding her eyes from the sun, and then a tall man in a suit joins her. They stay on the porch while we go through the two-minute shutdown. As we climb out and walk toward the house, I realize that Benny's parents have dressed up for us. They look as if they have just come from church.

"Never thought something like that would land on my farm." Mr. White gazes off at the helicopter, a heavy expression on his face.

"Do come in," Mrs. White says. "Can 1 get you some coffee or something?"

We chat about our flight, make small talk, anxiety thick. The Whites know I am here because I must be entertaining ominous scenarios about what really happened to their son. They seem to a.s.sume Lucy is part of the investigation and address both of us whenever they speak. The house is very neat and pleasantly furnished with big comfortable chairs, braided rugs and bra.s.s lamps. The floor is wide heart of pine, and wooden walls are whitewashed and hung with watercolors of Civil War scenes. By the fireplace in the living room are shelves that are full of cannonb.a.l.l.s, minie b.a.l.l.s, a mess kit, old bottles and all sort of artifacts that probably are from the Civil War. When Mr. White notices my interest, he explains that he is a collector. He is a treasure hunter and scours the area with a metal detector when he is not busy at the office.

He is an accountant. His farm is not an active one, but has been in the family for more than a hundred years, he tells Lucy and me.

"I guess I'm just a history nut," he goes on. "I've even found a few b.u.t.tons from the American Revolution. Just never know what you're going to find around here."

We are in the kitchen and Mrs. White is getting a gla.s.s of water for Lucy.

"What about Benny?" I ask. "Was he interested in treasure hunting?"

"Oh, he sure was," his mother replies. "Of course, he was always hoping to find real treasure. Like gold." She has begun to accept his death and speaks of him in the past tense.

"You know, the old story about the Confederates hiding all this gold that's never been found. Well, Benny thought he was going to find it," Mr. White says, holding a gla.s.s of water as if he isn't sure what to do with it. He sets it down on the countertop without drinking a drop. "He loved being outside, that one did. I've often thought it was too bad we don't work the farm anymore because I think he would have really liked it."

"Especially animals," Mrs. White adds. "That child loved animals more than anyone I've ever met. Just so tenderhearted." She tears up. "If a bird flew into a window, he'd go running out of the house to try and find it, and then he'd come in just in hysterics if the poor thing broke its neck, which is usually what happens."

Benny's stepfather stares out the window, a pained expression on his face. His mother falls silent. She is fighting to hold herself together.

"Benny had something to eat before he died," I tell them. "I think Dr. Fielding might have asked you about that to see if he possibly was given something to eat at the church."

Mr. White shakes his head, still staring out. "No, ma'am. They don't serve food at the church except at the Wednesday-night suppers. If Benny had something to eat, I sure don't know where."

"He didn't eat here," Mrs. White adds with emphasis. "I fixed a pot roast for Sunday dinner, and well, he never had his dinner. Pot roast was one of his favorites."

"He had popcorn and hotdogs in his stomach," I say. "It appears he ate them not long before he died." I make sure they understand the oddity of this and that it demands an explanation.

Both parents have baffled expressions. Their eyes light up with both fascination and confusion. They say they have no earthly idea where Benny would have gotten hold of junk food, as they call it. Lucy asks about neighbors, if perhaps Benny might have dropped by someone's house before he went into the woods. Again, they can't imagine him doing something like that, not at dinner time, and the neighbors are mostly elderly and would never give Benny a meal or even a snack without calling his parents first to make certain it was all right. "They wouldn't spoil his dinner without asking us." Mrs. White is certain of this.

"Would you mind if I see his bedroom?" I then say. "Sometimes I get a better feel for a patient if I can see where he spent his private time."

The Whites look a little uncertain. "Well, I guess that would be all right," the stepfather decides.

They take us down a hallway to the back of the house, and along the way we pa.s.s a bedroom off to the left that looks like a girl's bedroom, with pale pink curtains and a pink bedspread. There are posters of horses on the walls, and Mrs. White explains that this is Lori's bedroom. She is Benny's younger sister and is at her grandmother's house in Williamsburg right now. She hasn't gone back to school yet and won't until after the funeral, which is tomorrow. Although they don't say it, I infer that they didn't think it was a good idea for the child to be here when the medical examiner dropped in out of the sky and started asking questions about her brother's violent death.

Benny's room is a menagerie of stuffed animals: dragons, bears, birds, squirrels, fuzzy and sweet, many of them comical. There are dozens. His parents and Lucy stay outside the doorway while I walk in and pause in the middle of the room, looking around, letting the surroundings speak to me. Taped to the walls are bright pictures done in Magic Marker, again of animals, and they show imagination and a great deal of talent. Benny was an artist. Mr. White tells me from the doorway that Benny loved to take his sketchpad outside and draw trees, birds, whatever he saw. He was always drawing pictures to give people for presents, too. Mr. White talks on while his wife cries silently, tears rolling down her face.

I am looking at a drawing on the wall to the right of the dresser. The colorful, imaginative picture depicts a man in a small boat. He wears a wide-brim hat and is fis.h.i.+ng, his rod bent as if he might just be having some luck. Benny has drawn a bright sun and a few clouds, and in the background, on the sh.o.r.e, is a square building with lots of windows and doors. "Is this the creek behind your farm?" I inquire.

"That's right," Mr. White says, hooking an arm around his wife. "It's all right, sugar," he keeps saying to her, swallowing hard, as if he might start crying, too.

"Benny liked to fish?" Lucy's voice sounds from the hallway. "I'm just wondering, because some people who are big animal lovers don't like to fish. Or else they let everything go."

"Interesting point," I say. "All right to look inside his closet?" I ask the Whites.

"Go right ahead," Mr. White says without hesitation. "No, Benny didn't like to catch anything. Truth is, he just liked to go out in the boat or find him a spot on the sh.o.r.e. Most of the time he'd sit there drawing."

"Then this must be you, Mr. White." I look back at the picture of the man in the boat.

"No, I think that would be his daddy," Mr. White answers somberly. "His daddy used to go out in the boat with him. Truth is, I don't go out in the boat." He pauses. "Well, I don't know how to swim, so I just have this uneasiness about being in the water."

"Benny was a little shy about his drawing," Mrs. White says in a shaky voice. "I think he liked to carry his fis.h.i.+ng pole around because, well you know, he thought it made him look like other boys. I don't think he even bothered bringing bait. Can't imagine him killing even a worm, much less a fish."

"Bread," Mr. White says. "He'd take bread, like he was going to roll it up in bread b.a.l.l.s. I used to tell him he wasn't going to catch anything very big if all he used for bait was bread."

I scan suits, slacks and s.h.i.+rts on hangers, and shoes lined on the floor. The clothing is conservative and looks as if it was picked out by his parents. Leaning against the back of the closet is a Daisy BB gun and Mr. White says Benny would shoot targets and tin cans. No, he never used the BB gun on birds or anything like that. Of course not. He couldn't even bring himself to catch a fish, both parents make that point again.

On the desk is a stack of schoolbooks and a box of Magic Markers. On top of these is a sketchpad and I ask his parents if they have looked through it. They say they have not. Is it okay if I do? And they nod. I stand at the desk. I don't sit or in any way make myself at home in their dead son's room. I am respectful of the sketchpad and turn pages carefully, going through meticulous drawings in pencil. The first one is a horse in a pasture and it is surprisingly good. This is followed by several sketches of a hawk sitting in a bare tree, water in the background. Benny drew an old broken-down fence. He drew several snow scenes. The pad is half filled, and all of the sketches are consistent with each other until I get to the last few. Then the mood and the subject decidedly change. There is a night scene of a cemetery, a full moon behind bare trees softly illuminating tilting headstones. Next I turn to a hand, a muscular hand clenched in a fist, and then I find the dog. She is fat and homely and is baring her teeth, her hackles up, and she cowers, as if threatened.

I look up at the Whites. "Did Benny ever talk about the Kiffins' dog?" I ask them. "A dog named Mr. Peanut?"

The stepfather gets a peculiar expression, and his eyes brighten with tears. He sighs. "Lori's allergic," he says, as if that answers my question.

"He was always complaining about the way they treated that dog," Mrs. White helps out. "Benny wanted to know if we could take Mr. Peanut. He wanted the dog and said he thought the Kiffins would give it up, but we couldn't."

"Because of Lori," I infer.

"It was an old dog, too," Mrs. White adds.

"Was?" I ask.

"Well, it's real sad," she says. "Right after Christmas, Mr. Peanut didn't seem to be feeling well. Benny said the poor dog was shaking and licking itself a lot, like it was in pain, you know. Then maybe a week ago it must have gone off to die. You know how animals will do that. Benny went out looking for Mr. Peanut every day. It just broke my heart. That child sure did love that dog," Mrs. White adds. "I think that's the main reason he'd go over thereto play with Mr. Peanutand he just searched high and low for her."

"Was this when his behavior started changing?" I suggest. "After Mr. Peanut disappeared?"

"It was about that time," Mr. White replies, and neither parent seems able to bear stepping inside Benny's room. They cling to the doorway as if holding up the walls. "You don't think he did something like that because of a dog, do you?" He is almost pitiful when he asks.

MAYBE FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, LUCY AND I HEAD out to the woods together, leaving the parents at the house. They have not been to the deer stand where Benny was hanged. Mr. White told me he knew about the stand and has seen it many times when he has been out with his metal detector, but neither he nor his wife can bring themselves to go out there right now. I asked them if they thought other people knew the spot where Benny diedI am worried about the curious having tramped around out there, but the parents don't think anybody knows exactly where Benny's body was found. Not unless the detective told people around here, Mr. White adds.

The field where we landed is between the house and the creek, a barren acre that doesn't appear to have seen a plow in many years. To the east are miles of woods, the silo almost at the sh.o.r.e and jutting up rusty and dark like a tired, thick lighthouse that seems to look out across the water at The Fort James Motel and Camp Ground. As I imagine Benny visiting the Kiffins, I wonder how he got there. There is no bridge across the creek, which is about a hundred feet wide and has no outlet. Lucy and I follow the footpath through the woods, scanning everywhere we step. Tangled fis.h.i.+ng line is caught in trees close to the water, and I note a few old shotgun sh.e.l.ls and soft drink cans. We have walked no more than five minutes when we come upon the deer blind. It looks like a decapitated tree house that someone threw up in a hurry, with wooden rungs nailed up the trunk. A severed yellow nylon rope dangles from a crossbeam and stirs in a light cold breeze that blows off the water and whispers through trees.

We stop and are silent as we look around. I don't see any trashno bags or popcorn containers or any sign that Benny might have eaten out here. I get closer to the rope. Stanfield cut it about four feet from the ground and since Lucy is more athletic than I am, I suggest that maybe she could climb up into the stand and remove the rope properly. At least we can take a look at the knot on the other end. I take photographs first. We test the rungs nailed into the tree, and they seem st.u.r.dy enough. Lucy is bundled in a thick down-filled jacket that doesn't seem to slow her down as she climbs up, and she is careful as she reaches the platform, pus.h.i.+ng and tugging boards to make sure they can bear her weight. "Seems pretty st.u.r.dy," she lets me know.

I toss up a roll of evidence tape and she opens a Buck Tool. One thing about ATF agents, they all carry their own portable tool kits that include knife blades, screwdrivers, pliers, scissors. It goes back to needing them at fire scenes, if for no other reason, to pull nails out of the soles of your steel-reinforced boots. ATF agents get dirty. They step in all sorts of hazards. Lucy cuts the rope above the knot and tapes the ends back together. "Just a simple double half hitch," she says, dropping the rope and tape down to me. "Just a good ol' Boy Scout knot, and the end's melted. Whoever cut the end melted it so it wouldn't unravel."

That surprises me a little. I wouldn't expect someone to bother with a detail like that if he were cutting off rope so he could hang himself with it. "Atypical," I comment to Lucy when she climbs down. "Tell you what, I'm going to be bold and take a look."

"Just be careful, Aunt Kay. There are a few rusty nails sticking out. And watch out for splinters," she says.

I am wondering if Benny might have adopted this old stand as a tree fort. I grip weathered gray boards one after the other and work my way up, grateful that I wore khakis and ankle boots. Inside the deer blind is a bench seat where the hunter can sit as he waits for an unsuspecting buck to wander into his sights. I test the seat by pus.h.i.+ng against it, and it seems fine, so I sit. Benny was only an inch taller than I am, so I now have his view, a.s.suming he came up here. I have a strong feeling that he did. Someone has been up here. Otherwise the floor of the stand would be thick with dead leaves, and it isn't at all. "You notice how neat it is up here?" I call down to Lucy.

"It's probably still being used by hunters," she replies.

"What hunter is going to bother sweeping out leaves at five o'clock in the morning?" From this vantage point, I have a sweeping view of the water and can see the back of the motel and its dark and slimy swimming pool. Smoke curls out the chimney of the Kiffin house. I envision Benny sitting up here and spying on life as he sketched and perhaps escaped the sadness he must have felt since his father's death. I can imagine only too well as I remember my own young life. The deer blind would be a perfect spot for a lonely, creative boy, and just a stone's throw ahead at the water's edge is a tall oak tree wearing kudzu around its trunk like spats. I can picture a red-tailed hawk sitting high up on a branch. "I think he might have drawn that tree over there," I say to Lucy. "And he had a d.a.m.n good view of the campground."

"Wonder if he saw something," Lucy floats this up to me.

"No kidding," I reply grimly. "And someone might have been looking back," I add. "This time of year with no leaves on the trees, he might have been visible up here. Especially if someone had binoculars and had a reason to be looking over this way." Even as I say this, it occurs to me that someone might be looking at us right now. A chill touches my flesh as I climb back down. "You got your gun in that b.u.t.t pack, don't you?" I say to Lucy when my feet are on the ground. "I'd like to follow this path and see where it goes."

I pick up the rope, coil it and tuck it inside a plastic bag, which I then shove into a coat pocket. The evidence tape goes inside my satchel. Lucy and I start out on the path. We find more shotgun sh.e.l.ls and even an arrow from bow season. Deeper into the woods we walk, the path bending around the creek, no sound but trees groaning when the wind gusts and the snap of twigs beneath our feet. I want to see if the path might take us all the way around to the other side of the creek, and it does. It is a mere fifteen-minute hike to The Fort James Motel, and we end up in woods between the motel and Route 5. Benny certainly could have walked over here after church. There are half a dozen cars in the motel parking lot, some of them rentals, and a big Honda touring motorcycle is near the c.o.ke machine.

Lucy and I walk toward the Kiffin house. I point out the campsite where we found the bed linens and baby carriage, and experience a combination of anger and sadness about Mr. Peanut. I don't trust the story about the dog's supposedly going off to die. I worry that Bev Kiffin did something cruel, maybe even poisoned her, and I intend to ask her what happened along with a number of other questions. I don't care how Bev Kiffin reacts. After today, I am grounded, out of commission, suspended from my profession. I can't know for a fact I will ever practice forensic medicine again. I might be fired and branded for life. h.e.l.l, I might end up in prison. I feel eyes on us as we climb the Kiffins' front-porch steps.

"Creepy place," Lucy says under her breath.

A face peeks out from behind curtains and then ducks out of sight when Bev Kiffin's older son catches me looking back at him. I ring the bell and the boy answers the door, the same boy I saw when I was here. He is big and heavy-set and has a cruel face speckled with acne. I can't tell how old he is, but I place him at twelve, maybe fourteen.

"You're the lady who was out here the other day," he says to me with a hard look.

"That's right," I reply. "Can you tell your mother that Dr. Scarpetta is here and I need a word with her?"

He smiles as if he knows a mean secret that he thinks is funny. He stifles a laugh. "She ain't in here right now. She's busy." His eyes get harder and wander in the direction of the motel.

"What's your name?" Lucy asks him.

"Sonny."