“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
“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?”
“It’s not Marino,” Benton says. “His Suburban doesn’t have lights like that, and he has a front plate. This one doesn’t. It’s from out of state, a
state that doesn’t require a front plate, or it’s been removed or is covered with something.”
I turn around to look and the lights hurt my eyes. The SUV is only a few car lengths behind us.
“Maybe someone trying to pass us,” I wonder aloud.
“Well, let’s see, but I don’t think so.” Benton slows down, and so does the SUV. “I’ll make you pass us, how about that,” and he’s talking to the
driver behind us. “Grab the number from the rear plate as he goes by,” Benton says to me.
We are almost stopped in the road, and the SUV stops, too. It backs up quickly and makes a U-turn, going the other way, fish-tailing as it
speeds off in the snowy night on the snowy road. I can’t make out the plate on its rear bumper or any detail about the SUV except that it is dark and
large.
“Why would someone be following us?” I say to Benton as if he might know.
“I have no idea what that was,” Benton says.
“Someone was following us. That’s what that was. Staying too close because of the weather, because visibility is so bad you would have to
stay close or you could easily lose the person if they turned off.”
“Some jerk,” Benton says. “Nobody sophisticated. Unless he deliberately wanted us to know he was back there or thought we wouldn’t notice.”
“How’s it even possible? We just drove through a blizzard. Where the hell did it come from? Out of nowhere?”
Benton picks up his phone and enters a number.
“Where are you?” he says to whoever answers, and after a pause he adds, “A large SUV with fog lights, xenons, no front plate, on our ass.
That’s right. Made a U-turn and sped off the other way. Yes, on Route Two. Anything like that just pass you? Well, that’s weird. Must have turned off.
Well, if… Yes. Thanks.”
Benton places his phone back on the console and explains, “Marino’s a few minutes behind us, and Lucy’s right behind him. The SUV’s
vanished. If someone’s stupid enough to follow us, he’ll try again and we’ll figure it out. If the point was to intimidate, then whoever it is doesn’t know
his target.”
“Now we’re a target.”
“Anyone who knows wouldn’t try it.”
“Because of you.”
Benton doesn’t answer. But what I said is true. Anyone who knows anything about Benton would be aware of how foolhardy it is to think he can
be intimidated. I feel his hard edge, his steely aura. I know what he can do if threatened. He and Lucy are similar if confronted. They welcome it.
Benton’s simply cooler, more calculating and restrained than my niece will ever be.
“Erica Donahue.” That’s the first thought to come to mind. “She’s already sent one person to intercept us, and I doubt she realizes how
dangerous her son’s charming, handsome Harvard psychologist is.”
Benton doesn’t smile. “Wouldn’t make sense.”
“How many people know our whereabouts?” There is no point in trying to lighten the mood, which is unrelentingly intense. Benton has his own
caliber of vigilance. It is different from Lucy’s, and he is far better at concealing it. “Or my whereabouts. How many people know?” I go on. “Not just
the mother or the driver. What did Jack do?”
Benton speeds up again and doesn’t answer me.
“You’re not thinking Jack has some reason to intimidate us. Or try,” I then say.
Benton doesn’t reply, and we drive in silence and there is no sign of the SUV with the fog lamps and xenon headlights.
“Lucy suspects he’s drinking a lot.” Benton finally starts talking again. “But you should get that from her. And from Marino.” His tone is flat, and I
hear the unforgiveness in it. He has nothing but disdain for Fielding, even if he is silent about it most of the time.
“Why would Jack lie? Why would he try to influence anyone?” I’m back to that.
“Apparently, he’s been coming in late and disappearing, and he’s having his skin problems again.” Benton doesn’t answer my question. “I
hope to hell he’s not doing steroids on top of everything else, especially at his age.”
I resist the usual defense that when Fielding is acutely stressed, he has problems with eczema, with alopecia, and that he can’t help it. He’s
always been obsessed with his body, is a classic case of megarexia or muscle dysmorphia, and most likely this can be attributed to the sexual
abuse he suffered as a young boy. It would sound absurd to go down the list, and I’m not going to do it this time. For once, I won’t. I continue
checking my sideview mirror. But the xenon headlights and fog lamps are gone.
“Why would he lie about this case?” I ask again. “Why would he want to influence anybody about it?”
“I can’t imagine how you could make a kid stay still for that,” Benton says, and he’s thinking about Mark Bishop’s death. “The family was inside
the house and claim they didn’t hear screams, didn’t hear anything. They claim that Mark was playing one minute and the next he was facedown in
the yard. I’m trying to envision what happened and can’t.”
“All right. We’ll talk about that, since you’re not going to answer my question.”
“I’ve tried to picture it, to reconstruct it, and draw a blank. The family was home. It’s not a big yard. How is it possible no one saw someone or
heard anything?”
His face is somber as we drive past Lanes & Games, where Marino bowls in a league. What is the name of his team? Spare None. His new
buddies, law enforcement and military people.
“I thought I’ve seen it all, but I just can’t picture how it happened,” Benton again says, because he can’t or won’t tell me what is really on his mind
about Fielding.
“A person who knew exactly what he was doing.” I can envision it. I can imagine in painful detail what the killer did. “Someone who was able to
put the boy at ease, perhaps lure him into doing what he was told. Maybe Mark thought it was part of a game, a fantasy.”
“A stranger showed up in his yard and got him to play a game that involved having nails hammered into his head—or pretending to, which is
more likely,” Benton considers. “Maybe. But a stranger? I don’t know about that. I’ve missed talking to you.”
“It wasn’t a stranger, or at least didn’t seem like one to Mark. I suspect it was someone he had no reason to distrust—no matter what he was
asked to do.” I base this on what I know about his injuries or lack of them. “The body showed no signs that he was terrified and panicky, someone
trying to fight or escape. I think it’s likely he was familiar with the killer or felt inclined to cooperate for some reason. I’ve missed talking to you, but
I’m here now and you’re not talking to me.”
“I am talking to you.”
“One of these days I’m going to slip Sodium Pentothal into your drink. And find out everything you’ve never told me.”
“If only it worked, I would reciprocate. But then we’d both be in serious trouble. You don’t want to know everything. Or you shouldn’t. And I
probably shouldn’t, either.”
“Four p.m. on January thirtieth.” I’m thinking about how dark it would have been when Mark was murdered. “What time did the sun set that day?
What was the weather?”
“Completely dark at four-thirty, cold, overcast,” says Benton, who would have found out those details first thing if he was the one investigating
the case.
“I’m trying to remember if there was snow on the ground.”
“Not in Salem. A lot of rain because of the harbor. The water warms up the air.”
“So no footprints were recovered in the Bishops’ yard.”
“No. And at four it was getting dark and the backyard was in shadows because of shrubbery and trees,” Benton says, as if he’s the detective
on the case. “According to the family, Mrs. Bishop, the mother, went out at four-twenty to make Mark come into the house, and she found him
facedown in the leaves.”
“Why are we assuming he had just been killed when she found him? Certainly his physical findings would never allow us to pinpoint his time of
death to exactly four p.m.”
“The fact that the parents recall looking out the window at approximately a quarter of four and seeing Mark playing,” Benton says.
“‘Playing’? What does that mean exactly? What kind of playing?”
“Don’t know exactly.” Benton and his evasiveness again. “I’d like to talk to the family.” I suspect he’s already talked to them. “There are a lot of
missing details. But he was playing by himself in the yard, and when his mother looked out the window at around four-fifteen, she didn’t see him. So
she went out to make him come into the house and found him, tried to rouse him, and picked him up and rushed him inside. She called nine-oneone
at exactly four-twenty-three p.m., was hysterical, said that her son wasn’t moving or breathing, that she worried he had choked on something.”
“Why would she think he might have choked?”
“Apparently, before he went out to play, he’d put some leftover Christmas candy into his pocket. Hard candies, and the last thing she said to
him as he was going out the door was not to suck on candy while he was running or jumping.”
I can’t help but think that this is the sort of detail Benton would have gotten from the Bishops in person. I feel he has talked to them.
“And we don’t know what kind of playing he was doing? He’s by himself, running and jumping?” I ask.
“I just got involved in this case after Johnny confessed to it.” Benton is evasive again. For some reason, he doesn’t want to talk about what
Mark was doing in his backyard. “Mrs. Bishop later told police she didn’t see anybody in the area, that there was no sign of anybody having been
on their property, and she didn’t know until Mark got to the emergency room that he’d been murdered. The nails had been hammered in all the way,
and his hair hid them and there was no blood. And his shoes were missing. He was wearing a pair of Adidas while playing in the yard, and they
were gone and haven’t shown up.”
“A boy playing in his yard in the near dark. Again, hard to imagine he would cooperate with a stranger. Unless it was someone who
represented something he instinctively trusted.” I continue making that point.
“A fireman. A cop. The guy who drives the ice-cream truck. That sort of thing,” Benton considers easily, as if this is safe to talk about. “Or
worse. A member of his own family.”
“A member of his family would kill him in such a sadistic, hideous fashion and then take his shoes? Taking the shoes sounds like a souvenir.”
“Or supposed to look like one,” Benton says.
“I’m no forensic psychologist,” I then say. “I’m playing your role, and I shouldn’t. I’d like to see where it happened. Jack never went to the scene,
and he should have made a retrospective visit.” My mood settles lower as I say that. He didn’t go to Mark Bishop’s scene, and he didn’t go to
Norton’s Woods.
“Or another kid. Kids playing a game that turned deadly,” Benton says.
“If it was another kid,” I reply, “he was remarkably well informed anatomically.”
I envision the autopsy photographs, the boy’s head with his scalp reflected back. I envision the CT scans, three-dimensional images of four
two-inch iron nails penetrating the brain.
“Whoever did it couldn’t have picked more lethal locations to drive the nails,” I explain. “Three went through the temporal bone above the left
ear and penetrated the pons. One was nailed into the back of the skull, directed upward, so it damaged the cervicomedullary junction, or upper
cervical spinal cord.”
“How fast would that have killed him?”
“Almost instantaneously. The nail to the back of the head alone could have killed him in minutes, as little time as it takes to die after you can no
longer breathe. Injury at the C-one and C-two levels of the spinal cord interferes with breathing. The police, the prosecutor, a jury, for that matter,
would have a hard time believing another child could have done that. It seems that causing death, almost immediate death, was the intention, and it
was premeditated, unless the hammer and nails were at the scene, in the yard or house, and by all accounts they weren’t. Correct?”
