Port Mortuary

by Patricia Cornwell

  “You seem very invested in him.”

  “I hate it when people who are vulnerable are an easy out. Because someone is different and doesn’t act like the rest of us, he must be guilty of something.”

  “I’m sure the Essex County prosecutor wouldn’t be happy to hear you say that.” I’ve assumed that’s who hired Benton to evaluate Johnny Donahue, but Benton isn’t acting like a consultant, certainly not like one for the DA’s office. He’s acting like something else.

  “Misleading statements, lack of eye contact, false confessions. A kid with Asperger’s and his never-ending isolation and search for friends,” Benton says. “It’s not uncommon for such a person to be overly influenced.”

  “Why would someone want to influence Johnny to take the blame for a violent crime?”

  “All it takes is the suggestion of something suspicious, such as what a weird coincidence that you were talking crazy about going to Salem, and then that little boy was murdered there. Are you sure you hurt your hand when you stuck it in a drawer and got stabbed by a steak knife, or did it happen some other way and you don’t remember? People see guilt, and then Johnny sees it. He’s led to say what he thinks people want to hear and to believe what he thinks people want to believe. He has no understanding of the consequences of his behavior. People with Asperger’s syndrome, especially teenagers, are statistically overrepresented among innocent people who are arrested and convicted of crimes.”

  Snowflakes are suddenly large and blowing wildly like white dogwood petals in a violent wind. Benton downshifts the Tiptronic transmission and lightly touches the brakes.

  “Maybe we should pull over.” I can’t see the road as the headlights bounce off whiteness swarming all around us.

  “Some freakish storm cell, like a microburst.” He leans close to the steering wheel, peering straight ahead, as angry gusts of wind buffet us. “I think the best thing is to drive out of it.”

  “Maybe we should stop.”

  “We’re on pavement. I can see which lane we’re in. Nothing’s coming.” He looks in the mirrors. “Nothing’s behind us.”

  “I hope you’re right.” I’m not just talking about the snow. Everything seems ominous, as if sinister forces surround us, as if we’re being warned.

  “It wasn’t a smart thing for her to do. An emotional thing, maybe even a well-intended thing, but not smart.” Benton drives very slowly through chaotic whiteness. “It’s hearsay, but it won’t be helpful. It’s best you don’t call her.”

  “I’ll need to show the letter to the police,” I reply. “Or at least tell them about it, so they can decide what they want to do.”

  “She’s just made things worse.” He says it as if he’s the one deciding things. “Don’t get mixed up in this by calling her.”

  “Other than her trying to influence the medical examiner’s office, how has she made things worse?” I ask.

  “Several key points she incorrectly makes. Johnny doesn’t read horror or supernatural or violent fiction or go to movies like that, at least not that I’m aware of, and that detail won’t help him. Also, Mark Bishop wasn’t murdered mid-afternoon. It was closer to four. Mrs. Donahue may not realize what she just implied about her son,” Benton says as the white squall ends as suddenly as it began.

  Flakes are small and icy again, swirling like sand over pavement and accumulating in shallow drifts on the roadsides.

  “Johnny was at The Biscuit with his friend, that’s true,” Benton continues, “but according to him, he was there until two, not one. Apparently, he and his friend had been there numerous times, but I’m not aware of him having some rigid regimen of being there every Saturday with her from ten to one.”

  The Biscuit is on Washington Street, barely a fifteen-minute walk from our house in Cambridge, and I think of Saturdays when I’ve been home, when Benton and I have wandered into the small café with its chalkboard menu and wooden benches. I wonder if Johnny and his friend were ever in there when we were.

  “What does his friend say about what time they left the café?” I ask.

  “She claims she got up from the table around one p.m. and left him sitting there because he was acting strange and refused to leave with her. According to her statement to the police, Johnny was talking about going to Salem to get his fortune read, was talking wildly about that, and was still at the table when she walked out the door.”

  I find it interesting that Benton would have looked at a police statement or know the details of what a witness said. His role isn’t to determine guilt or innocence or even to care but to evaluate if the patient is telling the truth or malingering and is competent to stand trial.

  “Someone with Asperger’s would have a hard time with the concept of a fortune being read or cards being read or anything of that nature,” Benton is saying, and the more he tells me, the more perplexed I am.

  He’s talking to me as if he’s a detective and we’re working the case together, yet he’s cryptic when it comes to Jack Fielding. There’s nothing accidental about it. My husband rarely lets information slip, even if he gives the appearance otherwise. When he thinks I should know information he can’t tell me, he finds a way for me to figure it out. If he decides it’s best I don’t know, he won’t help me. It’s the frustrating way we live, and at least I can say I’m never bored with him.

  “Johnny can’t think abstractly, can’t comprehend metaphors. He’s very concrete,” Benton is saying.

  “What about other people inside the café?” I ask. “Could anybody in the café verify what the friend said or what Johnny claims?”

  “Nothing more definitive than he and Dawn Kincaid were in there that Saturday morning,” Benton says, and I don’t remember when I’ve seen him so disturbed by someone he has evaluated. “Don’t know about it being a weekly routine, and by the time Johnny confessed, several days had passed. Amazing what shitty memories people have, and then they start guessing.”

  “Then all you have is what Johnny says and now what his mother says in this letter,” I reiterate what I’m hearing. “He says he left The Biscuit at two, which might not have given him enough time to get to Salem and commit the murder at around four. And his mother is saying he left at one, which could have given him enough time to do it.”

  “As I said, it’s not helpful. What’s in his mother’s letter is quite bad for him. So far the only real alibi anyone can offer that might show his confession is bullshit is a problematic timeline. But an hour makes all the difference, or it could.”

  I imagine Johnny getting up from his table at The Biscuit at around one p.m. and heading to Salem. Depending on traffic and when he was actually out of Cambridge or Somerville and heading north on I-95, he could have been at the Bishops’ house in the historic district by two or two-thirty.

  “Does he have a car?” I ask.

  “He doesn’t drive.”

  “A taxi, the train? Not a ferry this time of year. They don’t start running again until spring, and he would have had to board it in Boston. But you’re right. Without a car, it would have taken him longer to get there. An hour would make a difference for someone who had to find transportation.”

  “I just don’t understand where she got that detail,” Benton says. “Well, maybe from him. Maybe he’s changed his story yet again. Johnny said he left The Biscuit at two, not one, but maybe he’s changed that rather critical detail because he thinks it’s what someone wants to hear. However, it would be unusual, very unusual.”

  “You were just with him this morning.”

  “I’m not the one who would influence him to change a detail.”

  Benton is saying that the detail is new and he doesn’t believe that Johnny has changed his story about what time he left the café. It would seem Mrs. Donahue simply made a mistake, but when I try to imagine that, something feels wrong.

  “How would he have gotten to Salem at all?” I ask.

  “He could have taken a taxi or a train, but there’s no evidence he did e
ither. No sightings of him, no receipts found, nothing to prove he was ever in Salem or had any connection with the Bishop family. Nothing except his confession,” Benton says as his eyes cut to the rearview mirror. “And what’s important about that is his story is exactly what’s been in the news, and he changes the details as news accounts and theories change. That part of his mother’s letter is accurate. He parrots details word for word. Including if somebody suggests a scenario or information—leads him, in other words. Suggestibility, vulnerable to manipulation, acting in a way that generates suspicion, hallmark signs in Asperger’s.” He glances in the mirror again. “And attention to detail, to minutiae that can seem bizarre to others. Like what time it is. He’s always maintained he left The Biscuit at two p.m. Three minutes past two, to be exact. You ask Johnny what time it is or what time he did something, and he’ll tell you practically to the second.”

  “So why would he change that detail?”

  “In my opinion, he wouldn’t.”

  “Seems like he’d be better off saying he left earlier if he really wants people to believe he murdered Mark Bishop.”

  “It’s not that he wants people to believe it. It’s that he believes it. Not because of what he remembers but because of what he doesn’t remember and because of what’s been suggested to him.”

  “By whom? Sounds like he confessed before he was ever a suspect and interrogated. So he wasn’t enticed into a false confession by the police, for example.”

  “He doesn’t remember. He’s convinced he suffered a dissociative episode after he left The Biscuit at two p.m., somehow got to Salem and killed a boy with a nail gun—”

  “He didn’t,” I interrupt. “That much I can tell you with certainty. He didn’t kill Mark Bishop with a nail gun. Nobody did.”

  Benton doesn’t say anything as he speeds up, the snowflakes small again and sounding like grit hitting the car.

  “Mrs. Donahue’s also clearly misunderstood Jack’s medical opinion.” I talk with conviction as another part of me won’t stop worrying about how I should handle her. I consider doing what Benton said and not calling her. I’ll have my administrative assistant, Bryce, contact her instead, first thing in the morning, and say I’m sorry but I’m not able to discuss the Mark Bishop case or any case. It’s important Bryce not give the impression that I’m too busy, that I’m unmoved by Mrs. Donahue’s distress, and that makes me think of PFC Gabriel’s mother again, of the painful things she said to me this morning at Dover. “I assume you’ve reviewed the autopsy report,” I say to Benton.

  “Yes.”

  “Then you know there is nothing in Jack’s report that mentions a nail gun, only that injuries caused by nails penetrating the brain were the cause of death.” I decide I can’t possibly let Bryce make such a call on my behalf. I’ll do it myself and ask Mrs. Donahue not to contact me again. I’ll emphasize it’s for her own protection. Then I’m filled with doubt, going back and forth on what to do with her, no longer so sure of myself. I’ve always had confidence in my ability to handle devastated people, bereft and enraged people, but I don’t understand what happened this morning. Mrs. Gabriel called me a bigot. No one has ever called me a bigot before.

  “A nail gun hasn’t been ruled out by the people who count,” Benton informs me. “Including Jack.”

  “I find that almost impossible to believe.”

  “He’s been saying it.”

  “First I’ve heard of it.”

  “He’s been saying it to whoever will listen. I don’t care what’s in his written report, the paperwork you’ve seen,” Benton repeats as he looks in the rearview mirror.

  “Why would he say something contrary to lab reports?”

  “I’m simply relaying to you what I know for a fact that he’s been saying about a nail gun being the weapon.”

  “Saying a nail gun was used is absolutely contrary to scientific and medical fact.” In my sideview mirror I see headlights far behind us. “A nail gun leaves tool marks consistent with a single mechanized blow, similar to a firing-pin impression on a cartridge case. Instead, what we have in this instance are tool marks on nails that are consistent with a handheld hammer, and there were hammer marks on the boy’s scalp and skull and underlying pattern contusions. Nail guns often leave a primer residue similar to gunshot residue, but Mark Bishop’s wounds were negative for lead, for barium. A nail gun wasn’t used, and I’m frankly amazed if what you’re implying is that the police, the prosecutor, believe otherwise.”

  “Not hard to understand a number of things people choose to believe in this case,” Benton says, and he’s sped up, driving the speed limit.

  I look in my sideview mirror again, and the headlights are much closer. Bright bluish-white lights blaze in my sideview mirror. A large SUV with xenon headlights and fog lamps. Marino, I think. And behind him, I hope, is Lucy.

  “Wanting to believe that Johnny’s confession is true, as I’ve said,” Benton continues. “Wanting to think that it had to be a blitz attack, that Mark Bishop couldn’t have seen it coming or he would have struggled like hell. No one wants to think a child was held down and knew what was about to happen to him as someone drove nails into his skull with a hammer, for Christ’s sake.”

  “He had no defense injuries, no evidence of a struggle, no evidence of being held down. It’s in Jack’s report. I’m sure you’ve seen it, and I’m sure he explained all this to the prosecutor, to the police.”

  “I wish you’d done the damn autopsy.” Benton cuts his eyes to his mirrors.

  “What exactly has Jack been saying beyond what I’ve read in his paperwork? Besides the possibility of a nail gun.”

  Benton doesn’t answer me.

  “Maybe you don’t know,” I then say, but I believe he does.

  “He said he couldn’t rule out a nail gun,” Benton replies. “He said it isn’t possible to tell definitively. He said this after he was asked because of what Johnny claimed in his confession. Jack was specifically and directly asked if a nail gun could have been used.”

  “The answer’s definitively no.”

  “He would debate that with you. He said it isn’t possible to tell definitively in this case. He said it’s possible it was a nail gun.”

  “I’m telling you it’s not possible, and it is possible to tell definitively,” I reply. “And this is the first I’ve heard about a nail gun except for what’s been on the Internet, which I have dismissed, since I dismiss most things in the news unless I am certain of the sources.”

  “He suggested if you pressed a nail gun against someone’s head, you’d get what’s similar to the muzzle mark made by a contact gunshot wound. And it’s possible that’s what we’re seeing on the scalp and underlying tissue. And that’s why there’s no evidence of a struggle or that the boy knew what was happening.”

  “You wouldn’t get a muzzle mark similar to a contact gunshot wound, and it’s not possible,” I reply. “The injuries I saw in photographs are hammer marks, and just because there was no evidence of a struggle doesn’t mean the boy wasn’t somehow coerced or coaxed or manipulated into cooperating. It sounds to me as if certain parties are choosing to ignore the facts of the case because of what they want to believe. That’s extremely dangerous.”

  “I think Fielding is the one who might be ignoring the facts of the case. Maybe intentionally.”

  “Good God, Benton. He might be a lot of things…”

  “Or it’s negligence. It’s one or the other,” Benton says, and he has something in mind, I believe he does. “Listen. You did the best you could these past six months.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I know what it means. It means exactly what I’ve feared every single day that I’ve been gone.

  “Remember when he was your fellow in the dark ages, in Richmond?” Benton is getting close to an area that is off-limits, even though he couldn’t possibly know it. “From day one, he couldn’t stand doing kids, that’s absolutely true, as you’ve pointed out. If a kid
was coming in, he’d run like hell, sometimes disappearing days at a time. And you’d drive around, trying to find him, going to his house, his favorite bar, the damn gym or tae kwon do, drinking himself into a stupor or kicking the shit out of someone. Not that any of us like dealing with dead children, for Christ’s sake, but he’s got a real problem.”

  I should have encouraged Fielding to go into surgical pathology, to work in a hospital lab, looking at biopsies. Instead, I mentored and encouraged him.

  “But he took the Mark Bishop case,” Benton says. “He could have passed him off to one of your other docs. I just hope he didn’t lie; I sure as hell hope he didn’t do that on top of everything else.” But Benton thinks Fielding is lying. I can tell.

  “On top of what else?” I ask as I look into my sideview mirror, wondering why Marino is on our bumper.

  “I hope someone didn’t encourage him to suggest the possibility of a nail gun even if he knows better.” Benton has a way of looking in his mirrors without moving his head. All his years of undercover work, of watching his back because he really had to. Some habits never die.

  “Who?” I ask.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You sound like you do know. You’re not going to tell me.” It is useless to push him. If he’s not telling me, it’s because he can’t. Twenty years of the dance and it never gets easier.

  “The cops want this case solved, that’s for damn sure,” Benton says. “They want a nail gun to be the weapon, because it’s what Johnny has confessed to and because the thought is easier to deal with than a hammer. It concerns me that someone has influenced Jack.”

  “Someone has? Or you’re just guessing that someone has.”

  “It concerns me that it might be Jack who is influencing people,” Benton says next, and that’s what he really thinks.

  “I wish Marino would get off our bumper. He’s blinding me with his damn lights. What’s he doing?”