“What secrets do you think he kept from you?” Anna asks. “What mysteries did you see in his eyes?”
“Oh God. Mostly about work.” My breath trembles, my heart flying away in fear. “He kept many details to himself. Details about what he saw in certain cases, things he felt were so awful no one else should be subjected to them.”
“Even you? Is there anything you have not seen?”
“Their pain,” I speak quietly. “I don’t have to see their terror. I don’t have to hear their screams.”
“But you reconstruct it.”
“Not the same thing. No, not the same. Many of the killers Benton dealt with liked to photograph, audiotape and in some instances videotape what they did to their victims. Benton had to watch. He had to listen. I always knew. He’d come home looking gray. He wouldn’t talk much during dinner, wouldn’t eat much, and on those nights he drank more than usual.”
“But he wouldn’t tell you . . .”
“Never,” I interrupt with feeling. “Never. That was his Indian Burial Ground and no one was allowed to step there. I taught at a death investigation school in Saint Louis. This was early in my career, before I moved here, when I was still a deputy chief in Miami. I was doing a class on drowning and decided since I was already there, I’d go ahead and attend the entire weeklong school. One afternoon, a forensic psychiatrist taught a class on sexual homicide. He showed slides of living victims. A woman was bound to a chair and her assailant had tightly tied rope around one of her breasts and inserted needles in the nipple. I can still see her eyes. They were dark pools filled with hell, and her mouth was wide open as she screamed. And I saw videotapes,” I go on in a monotone. “A woman, abducted, bound, tortured and about to be shot in the head. She keeps whimpering for her mother. Begging, crying. I think she was in a basement, the footage dark, grainy. The sound of the gun going off. And silence.”
Anna says nothing. The fire snaps and pops.
“I was the only woman in a room of about sixty cops,” I add.
“Even worse, then, because the victims were women and you were the only woman,” Anna says.
Anger touches me as I remember the way some of the men stared at the slides, at the videotapes. “The sexual mutilation was arousing to some of them,” I say. “I could see it in their faces, sense it. Same thing with some of the profilers, Benton’s colleagues in the unit. They’d describe the way Bundy would rape a woman from the rear as he strangled her. Eyes bulging, tongue protruding. He would climax as she died. And these men Benton worked with enjoyed the telling a bit too much. Do you have any idea what that’s like?” I fix a stare on her that is as sharp as nails. “To see a dead body, to see photographs, videos, of someone brutalized, of someone suffering and terrified and realize that the people around you are secretly enjoying it? That they find it sexy?”
“Do you think Benton found it sexy?” Anna asks.
“No. He witnessed such things weekly, maybe even daily. Sexy, never. He had to hear their screams.” I have begun to ramble. “Had to hear them crying and begging. Those poor people didn’t know. Even if they had, they couldn’t have helped it.”
“Didn’t know? What didn’t these poor people know?”
“That sexual sadists are only more aroused by crying. By begging. By fear,” I reply.
“Do you think Benton cried or begged when his killers abducted him and took him to that dark building?” Anna is about to score.
“I’ve seen his autopsy report.” I slip into my clinical hiding place. “There’s really nothing in it to tell me definitively what happened before death. He was badly burned in the fire. So much tissue burned away, it wasn’t possible to see, for example, if he still had a blood pressure when they cut him.”
“He had a gunshot wound to his head, too, did he not?” Anna asks.
“Yes.”
“Which do you think came first?”
I stare mutely at her. I have not reconstructed what led up to his death. I have never been able to bring myself to do that.
“Envision it, Kay,” Anna tells me. “You know, do you not? You have worked too many deaths not to know what happened.”
My mind is dark, as dark as the inside of that grocery store in Philadelphia.
“He did something, didn’t he?” She pushes, leaning into me, on the very edge of the ottoman. “He won, didn’t he?”
“Won?” I clear my throat. “Won!” I exclaim. “They cut his face off and burned him up and you say he won?”
She waits for me to make the connection. When I offer her nothing further, she gets up and walks to the fire, lightly touching my shoulder as she passes. She tosses on another log and looks at me and says, “Kay, let me ask you. Why would they shoot him after the fact?”
I rub my eyes and sigh.
“Cutting off the face was part of the MO,” she goes on. “What Newton Joyce liked to do to his victims.” She refers to the evil male partner of the evil Carrie Grethen—a psychopathic pair that made Bonnie and Clyde seem like a Saturday morning cartoon from my youth. “Excise their faces and store them in the freezer as souvenirs, and because Joyce’s face was so homely, so scarred by acne,” Anna goes on, “he stole what he envied, beauty. Yes?”
“Yes, I suppose. As much we can go with any such theory about why people do what they do.”
“And it was important that Joyce do the excisions carefully and not damage the faces. Which is why he did not shoot his victims, certainly not in the head. He did not want to risk causing damage to the face, the scalp. And shooting is too easy.” Anna shrugs. “Quick. Maybe merciful. Far better to be shot than to have your throat cut. So why did Newton Joyce and Carrie Grethen shoot Benton?”
Anna stands over me. I look up at her. “He said something,” I answer slowly, finally. “He must have.”
“Yes.” Anna sits back down. “Yes, yes.” She encourages me with her hands, as if directing traffic to move across the next intersection. “What, what? Tell me, Kay.”
I reply that I don’t know what Benton said to Newton Joyce and Carrie Grethen. But he said something or did something that caused one or the other to lose control of the game. It was an impulse, an involuntary reaction when one of them pushed the gun to Benton’s head and pulled the trigger. Boom. And the fun was over. Benton felt nothing, was cognizant of nothing after that. No matter what they did to him after that, it didn’t matter. He was dead or dying. Unconscious. He never felt the knife. Maybe he never saw it.
“You knew Benton so well,” Anna says. “You knew his killers, or at least you knew Carrie Grethen—you’d had experiences with her in the past. What do you think Benton said and to whom did he say it? Who shot him?”
“I can’t . . .”
“You can.”
I look at her.
“Who lost control?” She pushes me farther than I ever thought I could go.
“She did.” I pull this up from the deep. “Carrie did. Because it was personal. She’d been around Benton from the old days, from the start, when she was at Quantico, at the Engineering Research Facility.”
“Where she also met Lucy long years ago, maybe ten years ago.”
“Yes, Benton knew her, knew Carrie, knew her probably as well as you can know any reptilian mind like hers,” I add.
“What did he say to her?” Anna’s eyes are riveted to me.
“Something about Lucy, probably,” I say. “Something about Lucy that would insult Carrie. He insulted Carrie, taunted her about Lucy, that’s what I believe.” I have a direct shunt from my subconscious to my tongue. I don’t even have to think.
“Carrie and Lucy were lovers at Quantico,” Anna adds another piece. “Both working on the artificial intelligence computer in the Engineering Research Facility.”
“Lucy was an intern, just a teenager, a kid, and Carrie seduced her. They were working on the computer system together. I got Lucy that internship,” I bitterly add. “I did. Me, her influential, powerful aunt.”
“Didn’
t lead to quite what you intended, did it?” Anna suggests.
“Carrie used her. . . .”
“Made Lucy gay?”
“No, I wouldn’t go that far,” I say. “You don’t make people gay.”
“Made Benton dead? Can you go that far?”
“I don’t know, Anna.”
“A volatile past, a personal history. Yes. Benton said something about Lucy, and Carrie lost control and shot him just like that,” Anna summarizes. “He did not die the way they planned.” She sounds triumphant. “He did not.”
I rock quietly, looking out at a gray morning that has become full of bluster. The wind exerts itself in fierce gusts that fling dead branches and vines across Anna’s backyard, reminding me of the angry tree hurling apples at Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. Then Anna gets up with no announcement, as if an appointment is up. She leaves me to go about other business in her house. We have talked enough for now. I decide to retreat to the kitchen, and that is where Lucy finds me around noon after her workout. I am opening a can of whole tomatoes when she walks in, the early stages of a marinara sauce simmering on the stove.
“Need some help?” She looks at sweet onions, peppers and mushrooms on the cutting board. “Kind of hard getting around with only one hand.”
“Pull up a stool,” I tell her. “You can be impressed with my fending for myself.” I exaggerate bravado as I finish opening the can with no help, and she smiles as she moves a bar stool from the other side of the counter and sits. She is still in her running clothes and has a look in her eye, a secret light, reminding me of the river catching the sun very early in the morning. I steady an onion with two fingers of my immobilized left hand and begin to slice.
“Remember our game?” I lay the onion slices flat and begin to chop. “When you were ten? Or can’t you remember back that far? I certainly will never forget,” I say in a tone meant to remind Lucy what an impossible brat she was as a child. “Bet you have no idea how many times I would have put you on admin leave, given the choice.” I dare to push that painful truth. Maybe I am feeling bold because of my naked talk with Anna, which has left me unnerved and at the same time exhilarated.
“I wasn’t that bad.” Lucy’s eyes dance because she loves to hear what a little terror she was when she was a child and would come stay with me.
I drop handfuls of chopped sweet onions in the sauce and stir. “Truth Serum. Remember that game?” I ask her. “I’d come home, usually from work, and I could tell by the look on your face that you’d been up to something. So I’d sit you in that big red chair in the living room, remember? It was by the fireplace in my old house in Windsor Farms. And I’d bring you a glass of juice and tell you it was truth serum. And you’d drink it and confess.”
“Like the time I formatted your computer while you were gone.” She is laughing hard.
“Ten damn years old and you format my hard drive. I about had a heart attack,” I recall.
“Hey, but I did back up all your files first. I just wanted to give you a bad moment.” She is really enjoying this.
“Well, I almost sent you home.” I wipe the fingertips of my left hand with a dishtowel, careful that my cast doesn’t smell like onions as I experience a wave of sweet sadness. I don’t really remember why Lucy came to stay with me on her first visit to Richmond, but I was not the child-rearing type and was new in the job and under tremendous pressure. There was some sort of crisis with Dorothy. Maybe she ran off and got married again, or maybe I was a sucker. Lucy adored me and I wasn’t accustomed to being adored. Whenever I would visit her in Miami, she would follow me all over the house, everywhere I went, tenaciously moving with my feet like a soccer ball.
“You weren’t going to send me home.” Lucy is challenging me, but I catch the doubt in her eyes. The fear of not being wanted is based on fact in her life.
“Only because I felt inadequate to take care of you,” I reply, leaning against the sink. “Not because I wasn’t crazy about you, little rat fink that you were.” She laughs again. “But no, I wouldn’t have sent you home. Both of us would have been devastated. I couldn’t.” I shake my head. “Thank God for our little game. It was about the only way I could get to what was going on inside of you or what mischief you had engaged in while I was off somewhere, at work, whatever. So do I need to pour you juice or a glass of wine, or are you going to just go on and tell me what’s happening with you? I wasn’t born yesterday, Lucy. You aren’t staying in a hotel for the heck of it. You’re up to something.”
“I’m not the first woman they’ve run off,” she starts in.
“You would be the best woman they’ve run off,” I answer.
“Remember Teun McGovern?”
“I’ll remember her for the rest of my life.” Teun—pronounced Tee-Un—McGovern was Lucy’s ATF supervisor in Philadelphia, an extraordinary woman who was wonderful to me when Benton was killed. “Please don’t tell me something’s happened to Teun,” I worry.
“She quit about six months ago,” Lucy replies. “Seems ATF wanted her to move to L.A. and be the SAC of that field division. The worst assignment on God’s earth. Nobody wants L.A.”
A SAC is a special agent in charge, and very few women in federal law enforcement end up running entire field divisions. Lucy goes on to tell me McGovern’s answer was to resign and start a private investigative business of sorts. “The Last Precinct,” she says, getting more animated by the moment. “Pretty cool name, right? Based in New York. Teun’s rounding up arson investigators, bomb guys, cops, lawyers, all kinds of people to help out, and in less than six months she’s already got clients. It’s sort of turned into a secret society. There’s a real buzz on the street. When shit hits, call The Last Precinct—where you go when there’s nowhere left.”
I stir the simmering tomato sauce and taste a little. “Obviously you’ve been keeping up with Teun since you left Philadelphia.” I drip in a few teaspoons of olive oil. “Darn. I guess this will be all right, but not for the salad dressing.” I hold up the bottle and frown. “You press olive oil with the pits still in, it’s like squeezing oranges with the rind still on and you get what you deserve.”
“Why is it I don’t assume Anna is an aficionado of things Italian?” Lucy dryly comments.
“We’ll just have to educate her. Grocery list.” I nod at a notepad and pen by the phone. “First item, extra virgin olive oil Italian integrate style—pitted before pressed. Mission Olives Supremo is a nice one, if you can find it. Not a trace of bitterness.”
Lucy makes notes. “Teun and I have stayed in touch,” she informs me.
“You’re somehow involved in what she’s doing?” I know this is where the conversation is headed.
“You could say that.”
“Crushed garlic. In the refrigerated section, in little jars. I’m going to be lazy.” I pick up a bowl of lean ground beef that I have thoroughly cooked and patted free of grease. “Not a good time for me to crush garlic myself.” I stir the beef into the sauce. “How involved?” I go into the refrigerator and open drawers. Anna doesn’t have fresh herbs, of course.
Lucy sighs. “God, Aunt Kay. I’m not sure you want to hear it.”
Until very recently, my niece and I have talked little and not in depth. We have seen each other seldom over the past year. She moved to Miami, and both of us retreated behind bunkers after Benton’s death. I try to read the stories hiding in Lucy’s eyes and instantly begin to entertain possibilities. I am suspicious about her relationship with McGovern and was last year when all of us were called out to a catastrophic arson scene in Warrenton, Virginia, a homicide disguised by fire that turned out to be the first of several masterminded by Carrie Grethen.
“Fresh oregano, basil and parsley,” I dictate the grocery list. “And a small wedge of Parmesan Reggiano. Lucy, just tell me the truth.” I look for spices. McGovern is about my age and single—or at least she was single last time I saw her. I shut a cupboard door and face my niece. “Are you and Teun involved?”
“We weren’t that way.”
“Weren’t?”
“Actually, you’re one to talk,” Lucy says without rancor. “What about you and Jay?”
“He doesn’t work for me,” I reply. “I certainly don’t work for him. I don’t want to talk about him, either. We’re talking about you.”
“I hate it when you dismiss me, Aunt Kay,” she quietly says.
“I’m not dismissing you,” I offer as an apology. “I just worry when people who work together get too personal. I believe in boundaries.”
“You worked with Benton.” She points out another of my exceptions to my own rules.
I tap the spoon on the side of the pot. “I’ve done a lot of things in life that I tell you not to do. I tell you not to do them because I made the mistake first.”
“Did you ever moonlight?” Lucy stretches her lower back and rolls her shoulders.
I frown. “Moonlight? Not that I recall.”
“Okay. Truth serum time. I’m a felonious moonlighter and Teun’s biggest backer—the major stockholder for The Last Precinct. There. The whole truth. You’re going to hear it.”
“Let’s go sit.” I direct us to the table and we pull out chairs.
“It all began accidentally,” Lucy begins. “A couple years ago, I created a search engine for my own use. Meanwhile, all I was hearing about was the fortunes people were making on Internet technology. So I said what the hell and sold the search engine for three quarters of a million dollars.”