suited certain political leaders back then. They wanted it to be true. The more, the better.”
“Those leaders are gone now, Kay.”
“You should make your phone calls, Benton. Call Douglas or whoever and tell them about Dawn Kincaid and who she probably is and the tests
I’ve ordered.”
“The Reagan administration is long gone, Kay.” Benton’s going to make me talk about it, and I’m convinced it’s been talked about before.
Briggs probably said something to him because Briggs knows damn well how haunted I am.
“What I did isn’t long gone,” I reply.
“You didn’t do a damn thing that was wrong. You have nothing to do with their deaths. I don’t have to know all the details to say that much,”
Benton says as he laces his fingers in mine, our joined hands gently rising and sinking in rhythm to Sock’s breathing.
“I feel as if I had everything to do with it,” I answer.
“You didn’t,” he says. “Other people did, and you were forced to be silent. Do you know how often it is I can’t tell what I know? My whole life has
been like that. The alternative is to make things worse. That’s the test. Does telling make it worse and cause others to be persecuted and killed.
Primum non nocere. First, do no harm. That’s what I weigh everything against, and I sure as hell know you do the same.”
I don’t want a lecture right now.
“Do you think she did it?” I ask as Sock breathes slowly, contentedly, as if he’s lived here always and is home. “Killed all of them?”
“Now I’m wondering.” He looks at his drink, and it turns the color of honey in the firelight.
“To put Jack out of his misery?”
“She probably hated him,” Benton says. “That’s why she would have been drawn to him, wanted to get to know him as an adult, if that’s what
she did.”
“Well, I don’t think he shackled Wally Jamison in his cellar and hacked him to death. If Wally came to the house in Salem willingly, probably it
was upon Dawn’s invitation, to see her. Maybe play out some fantasy, a game, a macabre sex game on Halloween. Maybe she did a similar thing
to Mark Bishop, and when she has them under control, under her spell, exactly where she wants them, she strikes. A rush, a thrill, for someone
diabolical like that.”
“Liam Saltz’s second wife, Eli’s mother, is South African,” Benton says. “As is her husband from that earlier marriage, Eli’s biological father,
and Eli was wearing a ring that likely was taken from the Donahue house, likely taken by Dawn along with the typewriter, the stationery. Maybe used
the duct tape to collect fibers, trace evidence, DNA from the Donahue house, while she was at it. Make it look like the letter really did come from the
mother, making sure that Johnny’s alibi was weakened further by it.”
“Now you’re thinking irrationally like me,” I reply wryly. “That’s what I believe happened, or close to it.”
“The game,” Benton muses in that tone he has when he hates what someone has done. “Games and more games, elaborate, intricate dramas.
I can’t wait to meet the fucking bitch. I really can’t wait.”
“Maybe you’ve had enough Scotch.”
“Not half enough. Who better to manipulate Johnny Donahue than someone like that, some attractive brain trust of a woman who’s older? To
plant the idea in that poor kid’s head that he murdered a six-year-old while he was delusional and having memory lapses because of drugs she was
spiking his meds with? Spiking Fielding’s meds with. Who knows who else? A poisonous person who destroys the people she’s supposed to love,
pays them back for every crime committed against her, and you pile on her genetic predisposition and maybe the same cocktail Fielding was on?”
“That would be the perfect storm, as they say.”
“Let’s see what kind of killing machine I can be and get away with it,” he says in that tone of his, and if I could look into his eyes, I know what
would be in them. Complete contempt. “And after it’s ended, no one is left standing but her. Fucking bulletproof.”
“You could be right.” And I remember the box I left in the car. “Why don’t you make your phone calls.”
“Borderline, sadistic, manipulative, narcissistic.”
“I guess some people are everything.” I set down my glass on the coffee table and ease Sock off my lap and onto the rug.
“Some people just about are.”
“I forgot the box Briggs left for me,” I say as I get up from the sofa. “And I’ll take Sock out back. You ready to go potty?” I ask the dog. “Then I’ll
warm up pizza. I don’t suppose we have anything for salad. What the hell have you eaten the entire time I’ve been gone? Let me guess. You run
over to Chang An for Chinese food and live on that for the next three days.”
“That would be really good right now.”
“You’ve probably been doing it every week.”
“I’d rather have your pizza anytime.”
“Don’t try to be nice,” I reply.
I walk into the kitchen for Sock’s lead and slip it around his neck and find a flashlight in a drawer, an old Maglite that Marino gave me aeons
ago, long and black aluminum, powered by fat D batteries, reminding me of the old days, when police used to carry flashlights the size of
nightsticks instead of everything being so small, like the SureFire lights Lucy likes and what Benton keeps in his glove box. I disarm the alarm
system and worry about Sock, about how cold it is, realizing as we go down the back steps in the dark that I didn’t bother with a coat for me, and I
notice that the motion-sensor light attached to the garage is out. I try to remember if it was out an hour or so ago when we got home, but I’m not
sure. There is so much to fix, so much to change, so much to do. Where will I start when tomorrow comes?
Benton didn’t lock the door to the detached garage, because what would be the point with an open window the size of a big-screen TV? Inside
the remodeled carriage house it is dark and bitterly cold, and air blows in through the open black square that I can barely make out, and I turn on the
Maglite and it doesn’t work. The batteries must be dead, and how stupid of me not to check before I left the house. I point the key at the SUV, and
the lock chirps but the interior light doesn’t go on because it’s a damn Bureau car, and Special Agent Douglas isn’t about to have an interior light
that comes on. I feel around on the backseat for the box, which is quite large, and I realize it won’t be easy to carry it and deal with Sock. In fact, I
can’t.
“I’m sorry, Sock,” I say to the dog as I feel him shivering against my legs. “I know it’s cold in here. Just give me a minute. I’m so sorry. But as
you’re discovering, I’m a very stupid person.”
I use the car key to slit the tape on top of the box and pull out a vest that is familiar even if I’ve not examined this particular brand, but I
recognize the feel of tough nylon and the stiffness of ceramic-Kevlar plates that Briggs or someone has already inserted into the internal pockets. I
tear open the Velcro straps on the sides to open up the vest so I can sling it over my shoulder. I feel the weight of the vest draped over me as I
shove the car door shut, and Sock jumps away from me like a rabbit. He yanks the lead out of my hand.
“It’s just the car door, Sock. It’s all right, come here, Sock….” I start to call out at the same time something else moves inside the garage near
the open window, and I turn around to see what it is, but it is too dark to see anything.
“Sock? Is that you over there?”
The dark, frigid air moves around me, and the blow to my back feels like a hammer hitting me between my shoulder blades, as if a loud hissing
dragon is attacking me, and I lose my balance.
A piercing scream and hissing, and a warm, wet mist spatters my face as I fall hard against the SUV and swing with all my might at whatever it
is. The Maglite cracks like a bat against something hard that gives beneath the weight of the blow and then moves, and I swing again and hit
something again, something that feels different. I smell the iron smell of blood and taste it on my lips and in my mouth as I swing again and again at
air, and then the lights are on and the glare is blinding and I’m covered with a fine film of blood as if I’ve been spray-painted with it. Benton is inside
the garage, pointing a pistol at the woman in a huge black coat facedown on the rubberized floor. I notice blood pooling under her right bloody
hand, and near it, a severed fingertip with a glittery white French nail, and near that, a knife with a thin steel blade and a thick black handle with a
release button on the shiny metal guard.
“Kay? Kay? Are you all right? Kay! Are you all right?”
I realize Benton is shouting at me as I crouch by the woman and touch the side of her neck and find her pulse. I make sure she is breathing and
turn her over to check her pupils. Neither of them is fixed. Her face is bloody from the Maglite smashing into it, and I am startled by the
resemblance, the dark blond hair cut very short, the strong features, and the full lower lip that look like Jack Fielding’s. Even the small ears close to
the sides of her head look like his, and I feel the strength in her upper body, her shoulders, although she isn’t a large person, maybe five-foot-six or -
seven and slender but with large bones like her dead father. All this is flooding my senses as I tell Benton to rush into the house and call 911, and to
bring a container of ice.
23
A warm front moved in during the night and brought more snow, this time a gentle snow that falls silently, muting all sound, covering everything that
is ugly, softly rounding whatever is sharp and hard.
I sit up in bed inside the master bedroom on the second floor of the house in Cambridge, and snow is coming down, piling in the bare
branches of an oak tree on the other side of the big window nearest me. A moment ago a fat gray squirrel was there, perfectly balanced on the
smallest twig, and we were eye to eye, his cheeks moving as he stared through the window at me while I sifted through the paperwork and
photographs in my lap. I smell old paper and dust and the medicine smell of the wipes I used on Sock, who I suspect hadn’t had his ears cleaned in
recent memory, maybe not ever, not the way I cleaned them. He didn’t like it at first, but I talked him into it with a soft voice and a sweet-potato treat
that Lucy brought by when she gave me a container of the same wipes she uses on her bulldog. The miconazole-chlorhexidine is good for
pachydermatis, I made the mistake of mentioning to my niece very early this morning when she stopped by to check on me.
Jet Ranger wouldn’t appreciate being called a pachyderm, Lucy retorted. He’s not an elephant or a hippopotamus, and there’s only so much
one can do about his weight. She has him on a new diet for seniors, but he can’t exercise because of his bad hips, and the snow gives him a rash
on his paws for some reason, and his legs are too short for snow this deep, so he can’t go on even the briefest walk this time of year, she went on
and on, and I’d truly offended her. But that’s the way Lucy can get when she’s worried and scared, and most of all she’s upset she wasn’t here last
night. She’s angry she wasn’t here to deal with Dawn Kincaid, but I’m not sorry in the least. I can’t say I’m proud of myself for giving someone a
linear skull fracture and a concussion, but if Lucy had been in the garage instead of me, there would be one more person dead. My niece would
have killed Dawn Kincaid for sure, probably shot her, and there are enough people dead.
It’s also possible that Lucy wouldn’t have survived the encounter, I don’t care what she says. It depends on two details that made the difference
in my still being here and Dawn Kincaid being locked up on the forensic ward of an area hospital. I don’t think she was expecting me to walk into
the garage. I think she was lurking on the other side of the gaping window, waiting for me to take Sock into the dark backyard. But I surprised her by
entering the garage first to get what I’d left in the car, and by the time she slipped through the big space where the window was supposed to be, I’d
already opened the box and slung the level-4-A tactical vest over my shoulder. When she stabbed at my back with the injection knife, it hit a nyloncovered
ceramic-Kevlar plate, and the terrific jolt caused by that absolute stopping action caused her fingers to slide along the blade. She cut three
fingers to the bone and severed the tip of her pinkie at the same time she was releasing the CO, and a mist of her blood sprayed all over me.
My point to Lucy was that unless she’d caused Dawn to lose the surprise element for the attack and unless Lucy also just happened to have on
body armor or at least have it draped over her torso, she might not have been as fortunate as I was. So my niece should stop saying it’s a damn
shame she wasn’t here last night, claiming that she sure as hell would have taken care of things, as if I didn’t, because I did, even though it was luck.
I think I took care of things just fine and only hope I can take care of a far more important matter that hasn’t killed me yet but at times has certainly
felt like it might.
“She’d told me there had been catcalls and ugly comments,” Mrs. Pieste is telling me over the phone as I go over her daughter’s case with her.
“Calling her a Boer. Telling the Boers to go home, and as you know, that’s Afrikaans for farmer but really meant to disparage all white South
Africans. And I kept telling the man from the Pentagon that I didn’t care about the reason, whether it was Noonie and Joanne being white or
American or assumed to be South African. And, of course, they weren’t South African. I didn’t care why. I just didn’t want to believe the suffering he
described.”
“Do you remember who that man from the Pentagon was?” I ask.
“A lawyer.”
“It wasn’t a colonel in the army,” I hope out loud.
“It was some young lawyer at the Pentagon who worked for the secretary of defense. I don’t remember his name.”
Then it wasn’t Briggs.
“A fast-talking one,” Mrs. Pieste adds disdainfully. “I remember I didn’t like him. But I wouldn’t have liked anybody who told me the things he
did.”
“The only comfort I can offer out of all of this,” I repeat, “is Noonie and Joanne didn’t suffer the way you’ve been led to believe. I can’t say with
absolute certainty that they weren’t aware of being smothered, but it is extremely likely they weren’t aware because they were drugged.”
“But that would have been tested for,” Mrs. Pieste’s voice says, and she has a Massachusetts accent, can’t pronounce R’s, and I didn’t realize
she’s originally from Andover. After Noonie’s murder, the Piestes moved to New Hampshire, I just found out.
