I haven’t seen Benton since yesterday, when he was with me at my office. I took care of Douglas Burke because I didn’t think anyone else should, and Benton didn’t look on directly, but he was in the autopsy room the entire time. Mainly he wanted to know if she struggled, if she made any attempt at all to defend herself. Burke was armed with a nine-millimeter pistol, and Benton didn’t understand what could have happened, why she didn’t fight.
All she did was shoot the damn door and shoot it badly, he said repeatedly.
Based on the dents and holes in the door and door frame, she was aiming for the lock.
Why the hell didn’t she shoot him? Benton must have asked that a dozen times, and I’ve continued to explain what seems obvious to everyone else.
Burke was so hung up on Channing Lott, she was so convicted in her own beliefs, that she didn’t know who stood before her. She didn’t realize who the killer was until he led her into that windowless room, what Al Galbraith had turned into a death chamber, an empty storage area with walk-in deadbolted freezers and a port in a brick wall fixed with a nozzle. The dry-ice blaster was on the other side of that wall, and that’s where Galbraith would turn it on, a heavy-duty aggressive machine with a hopper that could hold enough dry-ice pellets to blast frozen CO2 for hours.
Galbraith had adjusted the settings as low as they would go, the purpose of this particular piece of equipment not for removing mold or sludge or grease or old paint or varnish or corrosion. He didn’t use this monster machine to blast clean the inside of wine barrels but to kill human beings, running at a low pressure of eighty pounds per square inch, consuming sixty pounds of dry ice pellets per hour, the carbon dioxide level slowly rising as the temperature in the room dropped, and the noise of compressed air would have been terrible.
Douglas Burke didn’t struggle with him, didn’t have a chance. I suspect he tricked her into stepping inside that room and then shut the door and locked it. The best she could do was try to shoot her way out, emptying her entire clip, but she couldn’t get the door open, and she likely had very little time to try.
It’s really not possible for me to know how long she was alive, but by the time we got to her she was beginning to freeze-dry, was partially frozen inside that frigid airless chamber where one chair had been set in the middle of the reddish fiber–covered concrete floor. Where he sat Peggy Stanton so he could verbally abuse her, is Benton’s guess. Where he sat Mildred Lott, whom he didn’t know socially and who treated him like a Lilliputian, Galbraith told the FBI.
• • •
It is almost ten p.m. when Benton pulls in, and Sock gets up and lazily trots to the side door and Quincy bounds after him, and I’m glad they’re friends. The moon is distant and small over rooftops behind our Cambridge home, and the French stained-glass window is lit up over the staircase landings, its wildlife scenes bright like jewels from the backyard where Benton and I decide to sit. The low stone wall around the magnolia tree is cold, and I realize it is winter.
“Not even Halloween yet and it’s cold enough to snow,” I say to Benton in the dark, and he has his arm around me, pulling me close.
“Try not to be so pessimistic,” I say to him after hearing about his day, about how badly he thinks the case will go. “I’ve been telling myself the same thing all night. Don’t lecture Marino. Don’t lecture Lucy. Don’t be so damn hard on myself and assume nothing makes a difference.”
“I wish he’d just go ahead and commit suicide in jail.” Benton sips straight Scotch. “There. I said it. Save the government a trial. But pieces of shit like that don’t kill themselves. Same damn dog and pony show all over again. I can’t believe Donoghue’s firm is going to represent him, probably will be Judge Conry again, and you’ll get dragged through it again.”
“I won’t be called by her this time.” It won’t be Jill Donoghue subpoenaing me. “This is the prosecution’s case. It’s theirs to win.”
“Dan Steward is a moron.”
I remind him the evidence is compelling. Galbraith killed all of them, leaving partial prints on boxes of trash bags, on a malt liquor bottle and a pouch of cat treats, and the wooden fibers he tracked from what the police now call the blasting house were also on Peggy Stanton’s body and inside her car, where a fingerprint on the rearview mirror is his, and prints were found on checks he forged to pay her bills.
The same wine-stained American oak fibers were inside an old lobster boat Galbraith kept in a marina, I remind Benton, trying to encourage him. Police found Peggy Stanton’s clothing and Mildred Lott’s nightgown in a drawer at his waterfront house on Cohasset Harbor, where he stored his once formidable mother’s personal belongings. Even a moron can’t lose a case like this, I say to Benton.
“I’m confident we’re going to have DNA,” I assure him. “Paint samples from the lobster boat match the trace of paint on the bamboo pole, the same residue on the barnacle I removed from the leatherback. And that places his boat in the area where Peggy Stanton’s body was recovered, where he ran into the turtle, plus he had her cell phone and checks. He had Emma Shubert’s cell phone, and a range extender in his warehouse so he could log on to Logan’s wireless. And then there’s the rather glaring detail of Mildred Lott’s body.”
I mention that it might be difficult for even Jill Donoghue to explain why Mildred Lott’s body was found frozen rock-solid inside one of Al Galbraith’s freezers.
“Donoghue will say Channing Lott had something to do with it or is to blame, and what’s maddening about it is he can’t be tried again.” Benton’s voice is glum, his chin resting on top of my head.
“Well, that would be a good argument.” I feel his heartbeat through my jacket, and I reach up to kiss him. “And I’m glad you’re not the lawyer in this case. Let’s go eat.”
• • •
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credits
As always, I’m grateful to those who so generously share their expertise during a Scarpetta journey. All of you help make the magic.
Thank you, Dr. Marcella Fierro, for all things forensic-pathological, and as always I’m grateful for Dr. Nicholas Petraco, the guru of trace evidence.
I’m indebted to Stephen Braga for guiding me through legal dilemmas and courtroom scenes, and to Cambridge Police Detective Danny Marshall for letting me tag along with him.
Hugs to Dan and Donna Aykroyd for daring Staci and me to join them on a dinosaur dig in northwest Canada’s bone beds, where I found a seventy-million-year-old tooth and the idea for this novel.
What a blast that the U.S. Coast Guard (San Diego) and the Boston Fire Department’s marine unit shared their go-fast boats with me.
I’ll always owe you, Connie Merigo, the New England Aquarium’s rescue director, for teaching me all about sea turtles, and allowing me to get close enough to touch and smell a rare leatherback.
And words of thanks aren’t enough for my partner, Dr. Staci Gruber, my muse for technology, for everything.
Patricia Cornwell, The Bone Bed
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