Port Mortuary (38 page)

“… where he had his internship. That technology company that makes robots and things nobody is supposed to know about…” Mrs. Donahue is saying.

I watch Benton fold his hands in his lap, lacing his fingers as if he is placid when he’s anything but low-key and relaxed. I know the language of how he sits or moves his eyes and can read his restiveness in what seems the utter stillness of his body and mood. He is stressed-out and worn-out, but there is something else. Something has happened.

“… Johnny had to sign contracts and all these legal agreements promising he wouldn’t talk about Otwahl, not even what its name means. Can you imagine that? Not even something like that, what Otwahl means. But no wonder! What these damn people are up to. Huge secret contracts with the government, and greed. Enormous greed. So are you surprised things might be missing or people are being impersonated, their identities stolen?”

I have no idea what Otwahl means. I assumed it was the name of a person, the one who founded the company. Somebody Otwahl. I look at Benton. He is staring vacantly across the room, listening to Mrs. Donahue.

“… Not about anything, certainly not what goes on, and anything he did there belongs to them and stays there.” She is talking fast, and her voice no longer sounds as though it is coming from her diaphragm but from high up in her throat. “I’m terrified. Who are these people, and what have they done to my son?”

“What makes you think they’ve done something to Johnny?” I ask her as Benton quietly, calmly writes a note on the call sheet, his mouth set in a firm, thin line, the way he looks when he gets like this.

“Because it can’t be coincidental,” she replies, and her voice reminds me of the cursive typeface of her old Olivetti. Something elegant that is deteriorating, fading, less distinct and slightly bleary. “He was fine and then he wasn’t, and now he’s locked up at a psychiatric hospital and confessing to a crime he didn’t commit. And now this,” she says hoarsely, clearing her throat. “A letter on my stationery or what looks like my stationery, and of course it’s not from me and I have no idea who delivered it to you. And my typewriter is gone….”

Benton slides the call sheet to me, and I read what he wrote in his legible hand.

We know about it.

I look at him and frown. I don’t understand.

“… Why would they want him accused of something he didn’t do, and how have they managed to brainwash him into thinking he murdered that child?” Mrs. Donahue then says yet again, “Drugs. I can only assume drugs. Maybe one of them killed that little boy and they need someone as a scapegoat. And there was my poor Johnny, who is gullible, who doesn’t read situations the way others do. What better person to pick on than a teenager with Asperger’s….”

I am staring at Benton’s note.
We know about it.
As though if I read it more than once I’ll comprehend what it is he knows about or what it is that he and his invisible others, these entities he refers to as “we,” know about. But as I sit here, concentrating on Mrs. Donahue and trying to decipher what she is truly conveying while I cautiously extract information from her, I have the feeling Benton isn’t really listening. He seems barely interested, isn’t his typically keen self. What I detect is he wants me to end the call and leave with him, as if something is over with and it’s just a matter of finishing what has already ended, just a matter of tying up loose ends, of cleaning up. It is the way he used to act when a case had wrung him out for months or years and finally was solved or dropped or the jury reached a verdict, and suddenly everything stopped and he was left harried but spent and depressed.

“You started noticing the difference in your son when?” I’m not going to quit now, no matter what Benton knows or how spent he is.

“July, August. Then by September for sure. He started his internship with Otwahl last May.”

“Mark Bishop was killed January thirtieth.” It is as close as I dare come to pointing out the obvious, that what she continues to claim about her son being framed doesn’t make sense, the timing doesn’t.

If his personality began changing last summer when he was working at Otwahl and yet Mark Bishop wasn’t murdered until January 30, what she’s suggesting would mean someone programmed Johnny to take the blame for a murder that hadn’t happened yet and wouldn’t happen for many months. The Mark Bishop case doesn’t fit with something meticulously planned but as a senseless and sadistic violent attack on a little boy who was at home, playing in his yard, on a weekend late afternoon as it was getting dark and no one was looking. It strikes me as a crime of opportunity, a thrill kill, the evil game of a predator, possibly one with pedophilic proclivities. It wasn’t an assassination. It wasn’t the black-ops takeout of a terrorist. I don’t believe his death was premeditated and executed with a very certain goal in mind, such as national security or political power or money.

“… People who don’t understand Asperger’s assume those who have it are violent, are almost nonhuman, don’t feel the same things the rest of us do or don’t feel anything. People assume all sorts of things because of what I call
unusualness,
not sickness or derangement but unusual. That’s the disadvantage I mean.” Mrs. Donahue is talking rapidly and with no ordered sequence to her thoughts. “You point out behavior changes that are alarming and other people think it’s just him. Just Johnny because of his unusualness, which is a sad disadvantage, as if he needed yet one more disadvantage. Well, that’s not what this is, not about his unusualness. Something horrific got started when he did at that place, at Otwahl last May….”

It also enters my mind what Benton mentioned hours earlier, that Mark Bishop’s death might be connected to others: the football player from BC, who was found in the Boston Harbor last November, and possibly the man who was murdered in Norton’s Woods. If Benton is right, then Johnny Donahue would have to be framed for all three of these homicides, and how could he be? He was an inpatient at McLean when the killing occurred in Norton’s Woods, for example. I know he couldn’t have committed that homicide, and I fail to see how he could be set up to take the blame for it unless he wasn’t on the hospital ward, unless he was on the loose and armed with an injection knife.

Benton writes another note.
We need to go.
And he underlines it.

“Mrs. Donahue, is your son on any medications?” I ask.

“Not really.”

“Prescription or perhaps over-the-counter medications?” I inquire without being pushy, and it requires effort on my part, because my patience is frayed. “Maybe you can tell me anything at all he might have been taking before he was hospitalized or any other medical problems he might have.”

I almost say “might have had,” as if he is dead.

“Well, a nasal spray. Especially of late.”

Benton raises his hands palms up as if to say
This isn’t news.
He knows about Johnny’s medication. His patience is frayed, too, and signs of it are breaking through his imperviousness. He wants me to get off the phone and to go with him right now.

“Why of late? Was he having respiratory problems? Allergies? Asthma?” I ask as I pull a pair of gloves out of the dispenser and hand them to Benton. Then I give him the manila envelope containing the ring.

“Animal dander, pollens, dust, gluten, you name it, he’s allergic, has been treated by allergists most of his life. He was doing fine until late summer, and then nothing seemed to work very well anymore. It was a very bad season for pollens, and stress makes things worse, and he was increasingly stressed,” she says. “He did start using a spray again that has a type of cortisone in it. The name just fled from me….”

“Corticosteroid?”

“Yes. That’s it. And I’ve wondered about it in terms of it affecting his moods, his behavior. Things such as insomnia, ups and downs, and irritability, which, as you know, became extreme, culminating in him having blackouts and delusions, and ultimately our hospitalizing him.”

“He started using it again? So he’s used the corticosteroid spray before?”

“Certainly, over the years. But not since he started a new treatment, which meant he didn’t need shots anymore. For about a year it was like a magical cure; then he got bad again and resumed the nasal spray.”

“Tell me about the new treatment.”

“I’m sure you’re familiar with drops under the tongue.”

I’m not aware that sublingual immunotherapy has yet to be approved by the FDA, and I ask, “Is your son part of a clinical trial?” I scribble another note to Benton.

Spray and drops to the labs stat.
And I underlined
stat,
which means
statim,
or immediately.

“That’s right, through his allergist.”

I look at Benton to see if he knows about this, and he glances at my note as he puts on the gloves, and next he glances at his watch. He’s going to look at the ring only because I asked him to. It’s as if he’s already seen it or already knows it isn’t important or has his mind made up. Something has ended. Something has happened.

“… What’s called an off-label use that his doctor supervises, but no more trips to his office for shots every week,” Mrs. Donahue says, and she seems momentarily soothed as she talks about her son’s allergies instead of everything else, her pain in remission, but it won’t last.

If someone has tampered with Johnny’s medications, it might explain why his allergies got bad again. What he was placing under his tongue or spraying up his nose might have been sufficiently altered chemically to render the medications ineffective, not to mention extremely harmful. I look at Benton as he examines the signet ring. He has no expression on his face. I hold up a sheet of stationery so he can see the watermark. He has no visible reaction, and I notice a cobweb in his hair. I reach over and remove it, and he returns the ring to the envelope. He meets my eyes and widens them the way he does at parties and dinners when he’s telegraphing
Let’s go now.

“… Johnny takes several drops under his tongue daily, and for a while had excellent results. Then it stopped working as well, and he’s been miserable at times. This past August he resumed the spray but only seemed to get worse, and along with it were these very disturbing changes in his personality. They were noted by others, and he did get in trouble for acting out, was kicked out of that class, as you know, but he wouldn’t have harmed that child. I don’t think Johnny was even aware of him, much less would do something….”

Benton takes off the gloves and drops them in the trash. I point at the envelope, and he shakes his head.
Don’t ask Mrs. Donahue about the ring.
He doesn’t want me to mention it, or maybe it isn’t necessary for me to bring it up to her because of what Benton knows that I don’t, and then I notice his black tactical boots. They are covered with gray dust that wasn’t there earlier when we were talking in Fielding’s office. The legs of his black tactical pants also are quite dusty, and the sleeves of his shearling coat are dirty, as if he brushed up against something.

“… It was the main thing I wanted to ask, more of a personal matter directed at him as a man who teaches martial arts and is supposed to abide by a code of honor,” Mrs. Donahue says, grabbing my attention back, and I wonder if I’ve misunderstood her. I can’t possibly have heard what I just did. “It was that more than the other, not at all what you assumed or what he told you. Lying, I’m sure, because as I’ve said, if he claims I called him to ask for details about what was done to that poor child, then he was lying. I promise I didn’t ask about Mark Bishop, who wasn’t known to us personally, by the way. We only saw him there sometimes. I didn’t ask for information about him….”

“Mrs. Donahue, I’m sorry. You’re cutting in and out.” It’s not really true, but I need her to repeat what she said and to clarify.

“These portable phones. Is this better? I’m sorry. I’m pacing as I talk, pacing all over the house.”

“Thank you. Could you please repeat the last few things you said? What about martial arts?”

I listen with another jolt of disbelief as she reminds me of what she assumes I know, that her son Johnny is acquainted with Jack Fielding through tae kwon do. When she called this office several times to talk to Fielding and eventually to complain to me, it is because of this relationship. Fielding was Johnny’s instructor at the Cambridge Tae Kwon Do Club. Fielding was Mark Bishop’s instructor, taught a class of Tiny Tigers, but Johnny didn’t know Mark, and certainly they weren’t in the same class, weren’t taught together, Mrs. Donahue is adamant about that, and I ask her when Johnny started taking lessons. I tell her I’m not sure about the details and must have an accurate account if I’m to deal appropriately and fairly with her complaint about my deputy chief.

“He’s been taking lessons since last May,” Mrs. Donahue says while my thoughts scatter and bounce like caroms. “You can understand why my son, who’s never really had friends, would be easily influenced by someone he adores and respects….”

“Adores and respects? Do you mean Dr. Fielding?”

“No, not hardly,” she says acidly, as if she truly hates the man. “His friend was involved in it first, has been for quite some time. Apparently, a number of women are quite serious about tae kwon do, and when she began working with Johnny and they became friends, she encouraged him, and I wish he hadn’t listened. That and, of course, Otwahl, that place and whatever goes on there, and look what’s happened. But you can certainly imagine why Johnny would want to be powerful and able to protect himself, to feel less picked on and alone when the irony, of course, is that those days for him really were gone. He wasn’t bullied at Harvard….”