Port Mortuary (11 page)

“We’ll talk at the office.” Benton wants him to shut up.

“What the hell do we really know about him? What the fuck’s he up to? It’s damn time to quit protecting him. He’s sure as hell not protecting you,” he says to me.

“Let’s talk about this later,” Benton replies with a warning in his tone.

“Setting you up somehow,” Marino says to me.

“Now’s not the time to get into it.” Benton’s voice flattens out.

“He wants your job. Or maybe he just doesn’t want you to have it.” Marino looks at me as he digs his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket and steps away from my window. “Welcome home, Doc.” Flakes of snow blowing into the car are cold and wet on my face and neck. “Good to be reminded who you can really trust, right?” He stares at me as I roll up the glass.

Anticollision beacons flash red and white on the wingtips of parked jets as we drive slowly across the ramp toward the security gate, which has just swung open.

The Bentley drives through, and we are right behind it, and I notice its Massachusetts plate doesn’t have
livery
stamped on it, suggesting the car isn’t owned by a limousine company. I’m not surprised. Bentleys are unusual, especially around here, where people are understated and conservation-minded, even those who fly private. I seldom see Bentleys or Rolls-Royces, mostly Toyotas or Saabs. We pass the FBO for Signature, one of several flight services on the civilian side of the airfield, and I place my hand on the soft suede of Benton’s coat pocket without touching the creamy white envelope barely protruding from it.

“Would you like to tell me what just happened?” It appears he was given a letter.

“Nobody should know you just flew here or that you might be here, shouldn’t know anything about you personally or your whereabouts, period,” Benton says, and his face and voice are hard. “Obviously, she called the CFC and Jack told her. She’s certainly called there before, and who else but Jack?”

He says it as if it’s really not a question, and I have no idea what he is referring to.

“I can’t understand why he or anyone would talk to her, for Christ’s sake,” Benton goes on, but I don’t believe he doesn’t understand whatever it is he’s talking about. His tone says something else entirely. I don’t sense that he’s even surprised.

“Who?” Because I have no idea. “Who’s called the CFC?”

“Johnny Donahue’s mother. Apparently, that’s her driver.” Indicating the car up ahead.

The windshield wipers make a loud rubbery sound as they drag across the glass, pushing away snow that is turning to slush as it hits. I look at the taillights of the Bentley in front of us and try to make sense of what Benton is telling me.

“We should look at whatever it is.” I mean the envelope in his pocket.

“It’s evidence. It should be looked at in the labs,” he says.

“I should know what it is.”

“I finished evaluating Johnny this morning,” Benton then reminds me. “I know his mother has called the CFC several times.”

“How do you know?”

“Johnny told me.”

“A psychiatric patient told you. And that’s reliable information.”

“I’ve spent a total of almost seven hours with him since he was admitted. I don’t believe he killed anyone. There are a lot of things I don’t believe. But I do believe his mother would call the CFC, based on what I know,” Benton says.

“She can’t really think we would discuss the Mark Bishop case with her.”

“These days people think everything is public information, that they’re entitled,” he says, and it’s not like him to make assumptions and to indulge in generalities. His statement strikes me as glib and evasive. “And Mrs. Donahue has a problem with Jack,” Benton adds, and that comment strikes me as genuine.

“Johnny’s told you his mother has a problem with Jack. And why would she have an opinion about him?”

“Some of this I can’t get into.” He stares straight ahead as he drives on the snowy road, and the snow is falling faster and slashes through the headlights and clicks against glass.

I know when Benton is keeping things from me. Usually, I’m fine with it. Right now I’m not. I’m tempted to slide the envelope out of his pocket and look at what someone, presumably Mrs. Donahue, wants me to see.

“Have you met her, talked to her?” I ask him.

“I’ve managed to avoid that so far, although she’s called the hospital, trying to track me down, called several times since he was admitted. But it’s not appropriate for me to talk to her. It’s not appropriate for me to talk about a lot of things, and I know you understand.”

“If Jack or anyone has divulged details about Mark Bishop to her, that’s about as serious as it gets,” I reply. “And I do understand your reticence, or I think I do, but I have a right to know if he’s done that.”

“I didn’t know what you know. If Jack’s said anything to you,” he says.

“About what specifically?”

I don’t want to admit to Benton and most of all to myself that I can’t remember precisely when I talked to Fielding last. Our conversations, when we’ve had them, have been perfunctory and brief, and I didn’t see him at all when I was home for several days over the holidays. He had gone somewhere, presumably taken his family somewhere, but I’m not sure. Long months ago, Fielding quit sharing the details of his personal life with me.

“Specifically, this case, the Mark Bishop case,” Benton says. “When it happened, for example, did Jack discuss it with you?”

Saturday, January 30, six-year-old Mark Bishop was playing in his backyard, about an hour from here in Salem, when someone hammered nails into his head.

“No,” I answer. “Jack hasn’t talked about it with me.”

I was in Dover when the boy was murdered, and Fielding took the case, which was extraordinarily out of character, and I thought so then. He’s never been able to deal with children but for some reason decided to deal with this one, and it shocked me. In the past, if the body of a child was en route to the morgue, Fielding absented himself. It made no sense at all that Fielding would take the Mark Bishop case, and I’m sorry I didn’t return home, because that was my first impulse. I should have acted on it, but I didn’t want to do to my second in command what Briggs just did to me. I didn’t want to show a lack of faith.

“I’ve reviewed it thoroughly, but Jack and I haven’t discussed it, although I certainly indicated I would make myself available if there was a need.” I feel myself getting defensive and hate it when I get that way. “Technically, it’s his case. Technically, I wasn’t here.” I can’t stop myself, and I know it sounds weak, like I’m making excuses, and I feel annoyed with myself.

“In other words, Jack hasn’t tried to share the details. I should say he’s not shared his details,” Benton says.

“Consider where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing,” I remind him.

“I’m not saying it’s your fault, Kay.”

“What’s my fault? And what do you mean
‘his’
details?”

“I’m asking if you’ve asked Jack about it. If maybe he’s avoided discussing it with you.”

“You know how he is when it’s kids. At the time, I left him a message that one of the other medical examiners could handle it, but Jack took care of it. I was surprised he did, but that’s how it went. As I’ve said, I’ve reviewed all of the records. His, the police, the lab reports, et cetera.”

“So you really don’t know what’s going on with it.”

“It seems you’re saying I don’t.”

Benton is silent.

“Know what’s going on in addition to the latest? The confession made by the Donahue boy?” I try again. “Certainly I know what’s been in the news, and a Harvard student confessing to such a thing has been all over it. Obviously, what you’re getting at is there are details I’ve not been told.”

Again Benton doesn’t answer. I imagine Fielding talking to Johnny Donahue’s mother. It’s possible Fielding gave her details about where I would be tonight, and she sent her driver to deliver an envelope to me, although the driver didn’t seem to know Dr. Scarpetta was a woman. I look at Benton’s black shearling coat. In the dark, I can make out the vague white edge of the envelope in his pocket.

“Why would anyone from your office talk to the mother of the person who’s confessed to the crime?” Benton’s question sounds more like a statement. It sounds rhetorical. “We absolutely sure nothing was leaked to the media about your leaving Dover today, maybe because of this case?” He means the man who collapsed in Norton’s Woods. “Maybe there’s a logical explanation for how she knew. A logical explanation other than Jack. I’m trying to be open-minded.”

It doesn’t sound like he’s trying to be open-minded at all. It sounds like he believes Fielding told Mrs. Donahue for a reason, one I can’t begin to fathom. Unless it’s what Marino said minutes ago, that Fielding wants me to lose my job.

“You and I both know the answer.” I hear the conviction in my tone and realize how certain I am of what Jack Fielding could be capable of. “Nothing’s been in the news that I’m aware of. And even if Mrs. Donahue found out that way, it doesn’t explain her knowing the tail number of Lucy’s helicopter. It doesn’t explain how she knew I was arriving by helicopter or would land at Hanscom or at what time.”

Benton drives toward Cambridge, and the snow is a blizzard of flakes that are getting smaller. The wind is beating the SUV, gusting and shoving, the night volatile and treacherous.

“Except the driver thought you were me,” I add. “I could tell by the way he was dealing with you. He thinks you’re Dr. Scarpetta, and Johnny Donahue’s mother certainly must know I’m not a man.”

“Hard to say what she knows,” Benton answers. “Fielding’s the medical examiner in this case, not you. As you said, technically, you have nothing to do with it. Technically, you’re not responsible.”

“I’m the chief and ultimately responsible. At the end of the day, all ME cases in Massachusetts are mine. I do have something to do with it.”

“It’s not what I meant, but I’m glad to hear you say it.”

Of course it’s not what he meant. I don’t want to think about what he meant. I’ve been gone. Somehow I was supposed to be at Dover and at the same time get the CFC up and running without me. Maybe it was too much to ask. Maybe I’ve been deliberately set up for failure.

“I’m saying that since the CFC opened, you’ve been invisible,” Benton says. “Lost in a news blackout.”

“By design,” I reply. “The AFME doesn’t court publicity.”

“Of course it’s by design. I’m not blaming you.”

“Briggs’s design.” I give voice to what I suspect Benton is getting at.

He doesn’t trust Briggs. He never has. I’ve always chalked it up to jealousy. Briggs is a very powerful and threatening man, and Benton hasn’t felt powerful or threatening since he left the FBI, and then there is a past Briggs and I share. He is one of very few people still in my life who predates Benton. It feels as if I was barely grown up when I first met John Briggs.

“The AFME didn’t want you giving interviews about the CFC or publicly talking about anything relating to Dover until the CFC was set up and you were finished with your training,” Benton goes on. “That’s kept you out of the limelight for quite a while. I’m trying to remember the last time you were on CNN. At least a year ago.”

“And coincidentally, I was supposed to step back into the lime-light tonight. And coincidentally, CNN was canceled. The third time it’s been canceled, as my return here was delayed and delayed.”

“Yes. Coincidentally. A lot of coincidences,” Benton says.

Maybe Briggs has compromised me and done so intentionally. How brilliant it would be to groom me for a bigger job, the biggest job so far, while systematically making me less visible. To silence me. Ultimately, to get rid of me. The idea of it is shocking. I don’t believe it.

“Whose coincidences, that’s what you would need to know,” Benton then says. “And I’m not stating as fact that Briggs did anything Machiavellian. He’s not the entire Pentagon. He’s just one gear in a very big machine.”

“I know how much you dislike him.”

“It’s the machine I don’t like. It’s always going to be there. Just make sure you understand it so you don’t get chewed up by it.”

Snow clicks and bounces against glass as we pass stretches of open fields and dense woods, and a creek runs hard against the guardrail to our right as we pass over a bridge. The air must be colder here, the snow small and icy as we drive in and out of pockets of changing weather that I find unsettling.

“Mrs. Donahue knows that the chief medical examiner and director of the CFC, someone named Dr. Scarpetta, is Jack’s boss,” Benton then says. “She had to know that if she went to the trouble to have something delivered to you. But maybe that’s all she knows,” he summarizes, offering an explanation for what just happened at the airport.

“Let’s look at whatever it is.” I want the envelope.

“It should go to the labs.”

“She knows I’m Jack’s boss but doesn’t know I’m a woman.” It seems preposterous, but it’s possible. “Even though all she had to do was Google me.”

“Not everybody Googles.”

I’m reminded of how easy it is for me to forget that there are still technically unsophisticated people in the world, including someone who might have a chauffeur and a Bentley. Its taillights are far ahead of us now on the narrow two-lane road, getting smaller and more distant as the car drives too fast for the conditions.