“Yesterday at five o’clock in the afternoon. We go to the Plough. I was there no more than two hours and then my friend drop me at my house and pick me up this morning.”
“The Plough on Mass Ave?” Marino says. “They got a pretty good Cuban sandwich. How often do you leave your truck here overnight, buddy?”
19
We follow railroad tracks past a generator shelter, then a plasma science and fusion center. Next is a sprawling magnet lab. Between chain-link fencing, through parking decks and dumpsters, over broken concrete and dead weeds, we walk. We take our time, looking for any sign of him.
Benton is sure this is the way the killer escaped before dawn. I don’t sense the slightest hesitation or misgiving and it’s difficult for me to imagine someone taking this route in the dark. I can’t envision stepping around mud and glass-slick wet iron and wood and winding past the backs of buildings that would have been deserted with lights out. One could get hurt. How could someone fleeing a crime scene see where he was going?
“You should have told me,” Benton says, not accusingly but quietly and with concern. “If you felt someone was watching you, why wouldn’t you say something?”
“I thought it was my imagination. Then I saw someone this morning and he ran off. Marino assumed at first it was a kid who intended to do a smash-and-grab.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Now he believes it was Haley Swanson.”
“It isn’t, and I think you know the bigger worry. But I’m home and if he didn’t know it before, he knows it now.” Benton says it as if he’s referring to a malevolent old friend.
“Because he’s watching,” I reply.
“That’s what he does. He watches and fantasizes, and of late you’ve been all over the news. This is someone who follows other cases.”
“You’re saying he intended to do something to me.”
“I’ll never give him that chance,” Benton says.
We reach massive HVACs and generators and liquid-nitrogen containers connected to stainless-steel transfer lines wearing thick icy sleeves. Tall light standards on cracked concrete tarmacs look like windmills, and smokestacks rise above flat roofs, tall and conical like missile silos and organ pipes. We give a wide berth to a helium truck as sadness wells up inside me. I don’t know where it’s from.
Benton has been away from home for not quite a month but it seems forever. He’s not the same or maybe it’s me who’s changed and I’m seeing him in a way I haven’t before. I feel shaken to my core. I’m afraid to trust his perceptions. I worry he’s personalizing and paranoid. I think of how many times I’ve warned him about getting too close to what he chases. When you dine with the devil use a long spoon, and I’ve repeatedly preached that to him, too.
I glance over at him and can’t read what might be wrong as he’s careful how he picks his way along in dirty orange rubber boots, his cashmere coat neatly folded over an arm. His suit is charcoal, his shirt deep blue, and his purple silk twill tie has a digital pattern of tiny computer on/off switches, a playful gift from Lucy.
Slanted sunlight on his face shows the smile lines at the corners of his eyes and the folds along the sides of his proud straight nose. The bright morning accentuates the finely etched wear and tear of time and his tall frame looks thinner than it did when I saw him last. He never eats enough when I’m not around.
“Did you do this with the others?” I’m going to dig it out of him.
This morning I’ve been witness to what I usually don’t watch and I insist on knowing all of it. Did he retrace the killer’s steps in the Washington, D.C., cases? Did he do exactly what he’s doing now?
“We’re talking very different settings.” His voice is more subdued than it was earlier. “In the first one, Klara Hembree, he pulled off a major road and cut through a security chain.” Benton keeps looking at his phone, a part of him in some other place that’s not a happy one.
“And he left a tool with a rock on top of it.”
“Yes.”
“Stolen?”
“A golf course shed was broken into.” He types a reply to someone as he walks, his expression vaguely angry. “A small metal shed where maintenance and landscaping equipment are kept. That’s where he got the tool, a cable cutter, meaning he knew what was inside the shed.”
“What’s the matter?” Something is.
“I’m not dropping everything and heading back into work right now. As if what I’m doing isn’t work.”
Ed Granby must be e-mailing him or someone on his behalf is.
“The killer knew his way around.” Benton glances at his phone again, irritably, then with no expression on his face. “He cut the security chain and drove along a cart path to the edge of the wooded picnic area where he posed her body. When I visited the scene several days later I found the tool with a rock on top of it behind the picnic area near railroad tracks.”
“He drove his vehicle through a golf course? That seems beyond risky. It strikes me as reckless.”
“There are security cameras in the parking lots of each location he picked and he would have been aware of that.” Benton bends down to pull up his socks inside the boots. “He thinks the way the police do. He knows what to look for and avoid. He does exactly what the police assume he won’t, such as breaking into a tool shed and driving through a golf course after dark because, as you put it, that would be interpreted as reckless. The police wouldn’t anticipate it or think to look.”
“But you would.” I watch him fuss with his pants cuffs, tucking them in.
“What I’m describing is exactly what I believe he did.” Benton straightens up and glances at his phone again and a spark of anger glints, then is gone. “I could see where his tires went over the path and into the grass. Goodyear mud tires associated with trucks and off-road sporting and that told me something about him.”
“Which is?”
“Late twenties, early thirties. White,” Benton says. “Engages in high-risk activities, possibly extreme sports, has a career that isn’t regimented so he can come and go at irregular hours without attracting notice. He lives alone, has an IQ in the superior range but didn’t finish school. Charming, attractive, entertaining but easily offended if he thinks you’ve slighted him. In summary, a violent sexual psychopath with narcissistic and borderline traits. The ritualistic way he captures, controls, and kills his victims takes the place of sex with them. But the last two a week apart and now this one? He’s losing it, Kay.”
“And your colleagues don’t concur with you.”
“That’s putting it mildly.”
“You found the tire tracks because you looked for the unexpected, because you’re not the police.”
“I think differently from them,” he says, and his pants are bunching up again. “Christ, I can’t believe I’m walking around in these.” He bends down and tucks his cuffs back in.
“You think differently from the police, differently from your colleagues. But you can think like this killer.”
“Someone has to.” He resumes walking. “Someone has to honestly.”
“You sound awfully sure.”
“I am.”
“Does he do what you assume he won’t?”
“Not anymore.”
“You know what he’ll do. Like the Vicks.”
“That’s a hypothesis. It hasn’t been found at the other scenes but I can imagine the utility of him using it and I know where he could have gotten the idea.” Benton is having a hard time in the boots or maybe his aggravation has to do with me as I continue to question, digging deeper relentlessly.
“You can imagine it why?” I have to know how far down he’s sunk into his dark ugly hole.
“You’ve read the journal articles I’ve written about Albert Fish and before that my master’s thesis. Pain is ecstasy. A perfume that burns. Rubbing a mentholated vapor rub on your genitals so you don’t rape anyone. He prided himself on his self-control. All he did was strangle her and cook her into a
stew with vegetables and potatoes but he didn’t sexually molest her and he made sure he told her mother that. The buttocks were the tastiest part but at least he didn’t rape her.”
“You’re entertaining the possibility the killer used a vapor rub on his genitals.”
“It’s a reference I made to Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal, the flowers of evil, specifically to menthyl salicylate used in perfume, a fragrance of pain, which was what Albert Fish craved. Pain was his evil perfume. It gave him sexual pleasure to insert needles into his groin and rose stems into his penis. He loved being beaten with a nail-studded paddle. Why? Because at the age of five he was placed in an orphanage in Washington, D.C., stripped naked, and whipped in front of the other boys who bullied and teased him because the beatings gave him an erection. He rewired himself to enjoy pain. It was erotic to him.”
“Washington, D.C.” I point out the connection. “Are you considering that the Capital Murderer may be influenced by one of the most notorious killers in history?”
“We don’t know who’s read what I’ve published about a psychiatric phenomenon the likes of which no one had ever seen. He got away with his crimes for decades, was married the entire time with six kids. It’s suspected he enjoyed his own execution.” Benton recites all this as if it’s normal.
“I hope we’re not dealing with someone like that.”
“He would crave being that infamous. It would make sense he reads about notorious killers and vicariously lives the violent atrocities they’ve committed,” Benton says. “This is someone who spends most of his time in a deviant and violent fantasy world that’s rooted in events from his past. He’s wired to enjoy and be aroused by what most people would find appalling. Maybe he was born that way or maybe something happened in his childhood or more likely it’s both.”
“And you’ve told your colleagues what you’ve just told me.”
“They think I should quit while I’m ahead. I’m rich enough to do whatever the hell I want. That’s what they tell me. Enjoy your hard-earned family money is what they say. Spend more time in Aspen. Get a place in Hawaii.”
“They know about your concern that the killer might be reading what you’ve published and getting ideas from it.” I can’t imagine the reaction Benton would have gotten to such a suspicion.
“It didn’t start out my concern. Granby suggested it first, which makes matters worse,” Benton says to my surprise.
“That’s a terrible thing to accuse you of,” I reply.
“It feeds right into what he preaches, that the Bureau no longer should be involved in the, quote, profiling of the eighties and nineties, and the BAU should be absorbed into the Joint Terrorism Task Force,” Benton says. “Everything should be about combating terrorism and the types of mindless mass murders we’re seeing and not individual serial offenders. I’m obsolete and maybe I’m compounding the problem. People get my publications off the Internet. There’s no telling who sees them and we shouldn’t be in the business of dispensing provocative information that could inspire copycats.”
“He’s such a petty bureaucrat.” I try to be reassuring as we walk in the sun and the wind. “He resents the way you dress. He resents your car and your house and is none too fond of me no matter what he pretends about any of it. He resents that you basically started profiling, are a trendsetter and authority in the field, and he has no legacy. Granby will never be known for anything except that people like us talk badly about him.”
“Eventually he’ll force me out, and Marino didn’t help matters by alerting my office that I’m assisting in an investigation they know nothing about.” Benton stares down at his big orange feet as they slap against mud. “I’ve not talked to Granby, obviously. I’ve been a little busy.”
“What did Marino say?” I feel a rush of annoyance.
“Suggesting we find a time to have a meeting about the case. He wasn’t thinking.”
“Dammit. That’s unfortunate. It was stupid. He was flaunting himself and whenever he does that he has terrible judgment. And he has to pick on you, Benton. Especially right now because he’s not feeling much confidence.”
“It doesn’t matter why. But I wish he hadn’t done it.”
“Besides, they’ve asked you to retire before. They always change their minds because the people with good sense realize your value.”
“This case may be what finally does me in.” He tucks his phone into his pants pocket. “Especially if there’s a perception that I’ve helped someone become a better murderer.”
“That’s preposterous, and it may not be true he’s read anything you’ve written.”
“It could have given him ideas. But it didn’t make him kill anyone. It doesn’t work like that. Granby’s changed who and what I am to everyone and I can’t stop it.”
“What you’re describing is disturbing.” I’m more direct. “I’ll just say it. I’m worried about you and your state of mind.”
He gently grips my elbow as we maneuver around thick mud. He touches the small of my back the way he does when he’s letting me know he’s here. Then he watches where he’s stepping, not close anymore, and I feel the distance between us, a cool emptiness. I feel unsettled and anxious. Nothing feels safe, and I find myself looking around, wondering if we’re being watched or followed.
“Tell me how you’re doing, Kay.” He glances at me and he continues his sweep, looking around and straight ahead, his profile keen.
“I’m fine. How about you? Besides not eating or sleeping enough. Who’s chasing who?” I go ahead and say it.
“You’re probably not fine. In fact, I know you’re not. When what we believe we’ve mastered is no longer predictable we’re not fine. The world suddenly is a very scary place. It loses its charm.”
“Charm,” I repeat ironically, stonily. “The world lost its charm when I first met death. We were unhappily introduced when I was twelve and have been together ever since.”
“And now you’ve met something you can’t dissect. No matter how many times you take it apart you won’t figure it out.”
He’s not talking about Washington or Cambridge. He’s talking about Connecticut. I don’t answer right away as we walk. I pause to put my coat back on as the wind picks up sharply. I dig my hands into my pockets and they’re stuffed with dirty gloves. I look for a trash can but there isn’t one.
“Let’s be honest, the world’s always been a scary place with very little charm.” I try to brush it off as I’ve brushed off the flu, as I brushed off the death of my father when I was young, as I’ve brushed off so much since Benton has known me.
“You’ve been drawing from a well that you never knew was bottomless and you just found out the unlimited depth of inhumanity,” he says. “A type of senseless slaughter you can’t solve because it’s already over by the time you get there, decimating a shopping mall, a church, a school. And I can’t profile who will do it next, what demented empty person will strike out of nowhere. Granby’s right about that much at least.”
“Don’t give him any credit.”
“All I can do is predict the aftermath because such a person does it only once. Then he’s dead and we’re looking for the next one.”
“How many next ones?” The anger raises its head again. I feel the hot breath on my neck and don’t want anything to do with it.
“The more it happens, the more it will,” Benton says. “The lowest common denominator used to be what’s primal no matter how perverted. Murder, rape, torture, cannibalism, even the public executions the Romans orchestrated to entertain Colosseum crowds. But nothing in history is like this. Committing mass murder as if it’s a video game. Killing children, babies, unloading high-capacity magazines into crowds of strangers, creating a gruesome spectacle for fame. No, you’re not fine, Kay. Neither of us is.”
“A lot of the first responders will quit.” I look down where I walk. “It was too much for even the experienced ones, the EMTs and police I met. Those who got there first were like zom
bies, doing everything they were supposed to do but nobody was home. It was as if a light had gone out inside of them forever.”
“You won’t quit.”
“I wasn’t first, Benton.” I step around bent rebar and a railroad spike half buried in the rocks.
“You saw the same thing they did.”
I slip my arm around him and feel the slimness of his waist as I lean my head against his shoulder and breathe in the subtle smell of him, his skin, his cologne, the wool of his jacket warming in the sun.
“You’re projecting about me,” he says into my hair. “I’m not straying out of bounds but you’re worried you are. You’re projecting your fears about yourself onto me. That’s what happens when something really gets to you. No matter what we see, we’re never ready for the next thing that’s inconceivably awful.”
“Well, that sounds grim. With all you and I have dedicated ourselves to? And the world is more screwed up than it’s ever been. Sometimes I wonder why we bother.”
“No you don’t.”
“You’re right,” I reply. “I don’t wonder. I don’t know any better and maybe that’s worse.”
“Do you have that little flashlight you usually carry?” he asks.
We’ve reached an institute for brain research where the train tracks bore through the building, literally through the middle of it, a tunnel maybe half a block long. It’s semi-dark inside and at least ten degrees cooler and I get out the flashlight and turn it on. I illuminate our way as pebbles we dislodge click against one another and chink against iron rails, reminding me of the sounds behind the wall at the back of our yard. Leaves and sticks disturbed, a rock or piece of brick dislodged, and then the young male running.
Reemerging into the bright, rain-scrubbed morning, I return the flashlight to my bag and we step over puddles in gravel, reaching a stretch of mud that has washed over the tracks in a thin gray slick. Both of us see the impression at the same time, what looks like a bare footprint.
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