“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-one-one 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?”
“A hammer, yes. But what house doesn’t have a hammer? And the tool marks don’t match. But you know that from lab reports. No nails like the ones that killed him. Those weren’t found at the family’s home, and no nail gun,” Benton says.
“These were L-head nails, typically used in flooring.”
“According to the police, no nails like that were found at the residence,” he repeats.
“Iron, not stainless steel.” I continue with details from photographs, from lab reports, and all the while I hear myself, I’m aware that I’m going over the case with Benton as if it’s mine. As if it’s his. As if we are working it the way we used to work cases in our early days together. “With traces of rust despite their protective zinc coating, which suggests they weren’t just purchased,” I go on. “That maybe they’d been lying around somewhere and exposed to moisture, possibly saltwater.”
“Nothing like that at the scene. No L-head flooring nails, no iron nails at all,” Benton says. “The father’s been spreading the rumor about a nail gun, at least publicly.”
“Publicly. Meaning he told the media,” I assume.
“Yes.”
“But when? He told the media when? That’s the important question. Where did the rumor come from and when? Do we know for a fact it started with the father, because if it did, that’s significant. It could mean he’s offering an alibi, suggesting a weapon he doesn’t have, that’s he trying to lead the police in the wrong direction.”
“We’re thinking the same thing,” Benton says. “Mr. Bishop might have suggested it to the media, but the question is, did someone suggest it to him first?”
I detect more subtleties. It occurs to me that Benton knows how the rumor about a nail gun started. He knows who started it, and it’s not difficult to guess what he’s implying. Jack Fielding is trying to influence what people think about this case. Maybe Fielding is the one behind the rumor that is now all over the news.
“We should do a retrospective. I’m trying to remember the name of the Salem detective.” There’s so much to do, so much I’ve missed. I hardly know where to start.
“Saint Hilaire. First name James.”
“Don’t know him.” I’m a stranger to my own life.
“He’s convinced of Johnny Donahue’s guilt, and I’m really concerned it’s just a matter of time before he’s charged with first-degree murder. We have to move fast. When Saint Hilaire reads what Mrs. Donahue just wrote to you, it will be worse. He’ll be more convinced. We have to do something quickly,” Benton says. “I’m not supposed to give a damn, but I do because Johnny didn’t do it and no jury is going to like him. He’s inappropriate. He misreads people, and they misread him. They think he’s callous and arrogant. He laughs and giggles when something isn’t funny. He’s rude and blunt and has no idea. The whole thing is absurd. A travesty. Probably one of the most classic examples of false confessions I’ve ever seen.”
“Then why is he still on a locked unit at McLean?”
“He needs psychiatric treatment, but no, he shouldn’t be locked up on a unit with psychotic patients. That’s my opinion, but no one’s listening. Maybe you can talk to Renaud and Saint Hilaire and they’ll listen to you. We’ll go to Salem and review the case with them. While we’re there, we’ll look around.”
“And Johnny’s breakdown?” I ask. “If his mother is to be believed, he was fine his first three years at Harvard and suddenly has to be hospitalized? He’s how old?”
“Eighteen. He returned to Harvard last fall to begin his senior year and was noticeably altered,” Benton said. “Aggressive verbally and sexually, and increasingly agitated and paranoid. Disordered thinking and distorted perceptions. Symptoms similar to schizophrenia.”
“Drugs?”
“No evidence whatsoever. Submitted to testing when he confessed
to the murder and was negative; even his hair was negative for drugs, for alcohol. His grad-school friend Dawn Kincaid is at MIT, and she and Johnny were working together on a project. She became so concerned about him she finally called his family. This was in December. Then a week ago, Johnny was admitted to McLean with a stab wound to his hand and told his psychiatrist that he’d murdered Mark Bishop, claiming he took the train to Salem and had a nail gun in a backpack, said he needed a human sacrifice to rid him of an evil entity that had taken over his life.”
“Why nails? Why not some other weapon?”
“Something to do with the magical powers of iron. And most of this has been in the news.”
I recall seeing something on the Internet about devil’s bone, and I mention that.
“Exactly. What iron was called in ancient Egypt,” Benton replies. “They sell devil’s bone in some of the shops in Salem.”
“Lashed together in an X that you carry in a red satin pouch. I’ve seen them in some of the witcheries. But not the same type of nails. The ones in the witcheries are more like spikes, are supposed to look antique. And I doubt they’re treated with zinc, that they’re galvanized.”
“Supposedly, iron protects against malevolent spirits, and thus the explanation for Johnny using iron nails. That’s his explanation. And his story’s completely unoriginal; as you just pointed out, it was one of the theories all over the news the days before he confessed to the murder.” Benton pauses, then adds, “Your own office has suggested black magic as a motive, presumably because of the Salem connection.”
“It’s not our job to offer theories. Our job is to be impartial and objective, so I don’t know what you mean when you say we suggested such a thing.”
“I’m just telling you it’s been discussed.”
“With whom?” But I know.
“Jack’s always been a loose cannon. But he seems to have lost what little impulse control he had,” Benton says.
“I think we’ve established that Jack is a problem I can no longer attempt to solve. What project?” I go back to what Benton mentioned about Johnny Donahue’s female MIT friend. “And what’s Johnny’s major?”