ignore it, the louder she’ll get and the more she’ll volunteer.
“Late last week,” she says with energy. “Because you’re in charge and I’ve gotten nowhere with Dr. Fielding, and of course you understand my
concern, and this really is unacceptable if not criminal. So I wanted to complain, and I’m sorry about your coming home to that. When I realized who
you are, that it wasn’t some crank call, my first thought was it’s about my filing a complaint with your office, not anything as official as I’m making it
sound, at least not yet, although our lawyer certainly knows and the CFC’s legal counsel certainly knows. And now maybe I won’t need to file
anything. It depends on what you and I agree upon.”
Agree upon about what? I think but I don’t ask. She knew I was coming home, and that doesn’t fit with what she supposedly wrote to me, either.
But it fits with a driver meeting me at Hans-com Field.
“What is in the letter? Can you read it to me? Why can’t you?” she says again.
“Is it possible someone else in your family might have written to me on your stationery and borrowed your typewriter?” I suggest.
“And signed my name?”
I don’t answer.
“I’m assuming I supposedly signed whatever you got or you’d have no reason to think it’s from me other than an engraved address, which could
be my husband, who unavoidably is in Japan on business, has been since Friday, although it is the most inopportune time to be away. He wouldn’t
write such a thing, anyway. Of course he wouldn’t.”
“The letter purports to be from you,” I reply, and I don’t tell her it is signed “Erica” above her name typed in cursive and that the envelope is
addressed in an ornate script in the black ink of a fountain pen.
“This is very upsetting. I don’t know why you won’t read it to me. I have a right to know what someone said as if they’re me. I suppose our
attorney will have to deal with you after all, the attorney representing Johnny, and I assume it’s about him, this letter that’s a lie, a fraud. Probably the
dirty trick of the same ones who are behind all this. He was perfectly fine until he went there, and then he became Mr. Hyde, which is a harsh thing to
say about your own child. But that’s the only way I can think to say it so you understand how dramatically he was altered. Drugs. It must be, although
the tests are negative, according to our lawyer, and Johnny would never take them. He knows better. He knows what thin ice he already skates on
because of his unusualness. I don’t know what else it could be except drugs, that somebody introduced him to something that changed him, that
had a terrible effect, to deliberately destroy his life, to set him up….”
She continues to talk without pause, getting increasingly upset, as a knock sounds on my outer door and someone tries the knob, then at the
same time Bryce opens our adjoining door and I shake my head no at him. Not now. Then he whispers that Benton is at my door, and can he let him
in? And I nod, and he shuts one door and another opens.
I put Mrs. Donahue’s call on speakerphone.
Benton closes the door behind him as I hold up the letter to indicate whom it is I’m talking to. He moves a chair close to me while Mrs. Donahue
continues to speak, and I jot a note on a call sheet.
Says didn’t write it—not her driver or Bentley.
“… at that place,” Mrs. Donahue’s voice sounds inside my office as if she is in it.
Benton sits and has no reaction, and his face is pale, drained, and exhausted. He doesn’t look well and smells of wood smoke.
“I’ve never been there because they don’t allow visitors unless they have some special event for staff….” her voice continues.
Benton picks up a pen and writes on the same call sheet Otwahl? But it seems perfunctory when he does it. He doesn’t seem particularly
curious.
“And then you have to go through security on a par with the White House, or maybe more extreme than that,” Mrs. Donahue says, “not that I
know it for a fact, but according to my son, who was frightened and a wreck the last few months he was there. Certainly since summer.”
“What place are you talking about?” I ask her as I write another note to Benton.
Typewriter missing from her house.
He looks at the note and nods as if he already knew that Erica Donahue’s old Olivetti manual typewriter is gone, possibly stolen, assuming
what she’s just told me is true. Or maybe he somehow knows she’s told me this, and then it intrudes upon my thoughts that my office probably is
bugged. Lucy’s saying she has swept my office for covert surveillance devices likely means she planted them, and my attention wanders around the
room, as if I might find tiny cameras or microphones hidden in books or pens or paperweights or the phone I’m talking on. It’s ridiculous. If Lucy has
bugged my office, I’m not going to know. More to the point, Fielding wouldn’t know. I hope I catch him saying things to Captain Avallone, not
realizing the two of them were being recorded secretly. I hope I catch both of them in the act of conspiring to ruin me, to run me out of the CFC.
“… 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 wornout,
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
