The stepfather gets a peculiar expression, and his eyes brighten with tears. He sighs. “Lori’s allergic,” he says, as if that answers my question.
“He was always complaining about the way they treated that dog,” Mrs. White helps out. “Benny wanted to know if we could take Mr. Peanut. He wanted the dog and said he thought the Kiffins would give it up, but we couldn’t.”
“Because of Lori,” I infer.
“It was an old dog, too,” Mrs. White adds.
“Was?” I ask.
“Well, it’s real sad,” she says. “Right after Christmas, Mr. Peanut didn’t seem to be feeling well. Benny said the poor dog was shaking and licking itself a lot, like it was in pain, you know. Then maybe a week ago it must have gone off to die. You know how animals will do that. Benny went out looking for Mr. Peanut every day. It just broke my heart. That child sure did love that dog,” Mrs. White adds. “I think that’s the main reason he’d go over there—to play with Mr. Peanut—and he just searched high and low for her.”
“Was this when his behavior started changing?” I suggest. “After Mr. Peanut disappeared?”
“It was about that time,” Mr. White replies, and neither parent seems able to bear stepping inside Benny’s room. They cling to the doorway as if holding up the walls. “You don’t think he did something like that because of a dog, do you?” He is almost pitiful when he asks.
MAYBE FIFTEEN MINUTES later, Lucy and I heard out to the woods together, leaving the parents at the house. They have not been to the deer stand where Benny was hanged. Mr. White told me he knew about the stand and has seen it many times when he has been out with his metal detector, but neither he nor his wife can bring themselves to go out there right now. I asked them if they thought other people knew the spot where Benny died—I am worried about the curious having tramped around out there, but the parents don’t think anybody knows exactly where Benny’s body was found. Not unless the detective told people around here, Mr. White adds.
The field where we landed is between the house and the creek, a barren acre that doesn’t appear to have seen a plow in many years. To the east are miles of woods, the silo almost at the shore and jutting up rusty and dark like a tired, thick lighthouse that seems to look out across the water at The Fort James Motel and Camp Ground. As I imagine Benny visiting the Kiffins, I wonder how he got there. There is no bridge across the creek, which is about a hundred feet wide and has no outlet. Lucy and I follow the footpath through the woods, scanning everywhere we step. Tangled fishing line is caught in trees close to the water, and I note a few old shotgun shells and soft drink cans. We have walked no more than five minutes when we come upon the deer blind. It looks like a decapitated tree house that someone threw up in a hurry, with wooden rungs nailed up the trunk. A severed yellow nylon rope dangles from a crossbeam and stirs in a light cold breeze that blows off the water and whispers through trees.
We stop and are silent as we look around. I don’t see any trash—no bags or popcorn containers or any sign that Benny might have eaten out here. I get closer to the rope. Stanfield cut it about four feet from the ground and since Lucy is more athletic than I am, I suggest that maybe she could climb up into the stand and remove the rope properly. At least we can take a look at the knot on the other end. I take photographs first. We test the rungs nailed into the tree, and they seem sturdy enough. Lucy is bundled in a thick down-filled jacket that doesn’t seem to slow her down as she climbs up, and she is careful as she reaches the platform, pushing and tugging boards to make sure they can bear her weight. “Seems pretty sturdy,” she lets me know.
I toss up a roll of evidence tape and she opens a Buck Tool. One thing about ATF agents, they all carry their own portable tool kits that include knife blades, screwdrivers, pliers, scissors. It goes back to needing them at fire scenes, if for no other reason, to pull nails out of the soles of your steel-reinforced boots. ATF agents get dirty. They step in all sorts of hazards. Lucy cuts the rope above the knot and tapes the ends back together. “Just a simple double square knot,” she says, dropping the rope and tape down to me. “Just a good ol’ Boy Scout knot, and the end’s melted. Whoever cut the end, melted it so it wouldn’t unravel.”
That surprises me a little. I wouldn’t expect someone to bother with a detail like that if he were cutting off rope so he could hang himself with it. “Atypical,” I comment to Lucy when she climbs down. “Tell you what, I’m going to be bold and take a look.”
“Just be careful, Aunt Kay. There are a few rusty nails sticking out. And watch out for splinters,” she says.
I am wondering if Benny might have adopted this old stand as a tree fort. I grip weathered gray boards one after the other and work my way up, grateful that I wore khakis and ankle boots. Inside the deer blind is a bench seat where the hunter can sit as he waits for an unsuspecting buck to wander into his sights. I test the seat by pushing against it, and it seems fine, so I sit. Benny was only an inch taller than I am, so I now have his view, assuming he came up here. I have a strong feeling that he did. Someone has been up here. Otherwise the floor of the stand would be thick with dead leaves, and it isn’t at all. “You notice how neat it is up here?” I call down to Lucy.
“It’s probably still being used by hunters,” she replies.
“What hunter is going to bother sweeping out leaves at five o’clock in the morning?” From this vantage point, I have a sweeping view of the water and can see the back of the motel and its dark and slimy swimming pool. Smoke curls out the chimney of the Kiffin house. I envision Benny sitting up here and spying on life as he sketched and perhaps escaped the sadness he must have felt since his father’s death. I can imagine only too well as I remember my own young life. The deer blind would be a perfect spot for a lonely, creative boy, and just a stone’s throw ahead at the water’s edge is a tall oak tree wearing kudzu around its trunk like spats. I can picture a red-tailed hawk sitting high up on a branch. “I think he might have drawn that tree over there,” I say to Lucy. “And he had a damn good view of the campground.”
“Wonder if he saw something,” Lucy floats this up to me.
“No kidding,” I reply grimly. “And someone might have been looking back,” I add. “This time of year with no leaves on the trees, he might have been visible up here. Especially if someone had binoculars and had a reason to be looking over this way.” Even as I say this, it occurs to me that someone might be looking at us right now. A chill touches my flesh as I climb back down. “You got your gun in that butt pack, don’t you?” I say to Lucy when my feet are on the ground. “I’d like to follow this path and see where it goes.”
I pick up the rope, coil it and tuck it inside a plastic bag, which I then shove into a coat pocket. The evidence tape goes inside my satchel. Lucy and I start out on the path. We find more shotgun shells and even an arrow from bow season. Deeper into the woods we walk, the path bending around the creek, no sound but trees groaning when the wind gusts and the snap of twigs beneath our feet. I want to see if the path might take us all the way around to the other side of the creek, and it does. It is a mere fifteen-minute hike to The Fort James Motel, and we end up in woods between the motel and Route 5. Benny certainly could have walked over here after church. There are half a dozen cars in the motel parking lot, some of them rentals, and a big Honda touring motorcycle is near the Coke machine.
Lucy and I walk toward the Kiffin house. I point out the campsite where we found the bed linens and baby carriage, and experience a combination of anger and sadness about Mr. Peanut. I don’t trust the story about the dog’s supposedly going off to die. I worry that Bev Kiffin did something cruel, maybe even poisoned her, and I intend to ask her what happened along with a number of other questions. I don’t care how Bev Kiffin reacts. After today, I am grounded, out of commission, suspended from my profession. I can’t know for a fact I will ever practice forensic medicine again. I might be fired and branded for life. Hell, I might end up in prison. I feel eyes on us as we climb the
Kiffins’ front-porch steps.
“Creepy place,” Lucy says under her breath.
A face peeks out from behind curtains and then ducks out of sight when Bev Kiffin’s older son catches me looking back at him. I ring the bell and the boy answers the door, the same boy I saw when I was here. He is big and heavy-set and has a cruel face speckled with acne. I can’t tell how old he is, but I place him at twelve, maybe fourteen.
“You’re the lady who was out here the other day,” he says to me with a hard look.
“That’s right,” I reply. “Can you tell your mother that Dr. Scarpetta is here and I need a word with her?”
He smiles as if he knows a mean secret that he thinks is funny. He stifles a laugh. “She ain’t in here right now. She’s busy.” His eyes get harder and wander in the direction of the motel.
“What’s your name?” Lucy asks him.
“Sonny.”
“Sonny, what happened to Mr. Peanut?” I casually ask.
“That dumb dog,” he says. “All we can figure is somebody stole her.”
I find it impossible to believe that anyone would have stolen that old, worn-out dog. In the first place, she wasn’t friendly to strangers. If anything, I might have expected her to get hit by a car.
“Oh yeah? That’s too bad,” Lucy answers Sonny. “What makes you think somebody stole her?”
Sonny gets caught on this. He gets a vapid look in his eyes and starts to tell several lies and keeps interrupting himself. “Uh, some car pulled in at night. I heard it, you know, and a door shut and she was barking, then that was it. She was gone. Zack’s all tore up about it.”
“She disappeared when?” I want to know.
“Oh, I don’t know.” A shrug. “Last week.”
“Well, Benny was pretty torn up about it, too,” I comment, watching for his reaction.
That cold look in his eyes again. “The kids at school called him a sissy. And he was one, too. That’s why he killed himself. Everybody says so,” Sonny replies with stunning callousness.
“I thought the two of you were friends?” Lucy is getting aggressive with him.
“He bugged me,” Sonny answers. “Always coming over here to play with the dang dog. He wasn’t my friend. He was Zack and Mr. Peanut’s friend. I don’t hang out with no sissies.”
A motorcycle engine roars and rumbles to life. Zack’s face pops up in the window to the right of the front door, and he is crying.
“Did Benny come over here last Sunday?” I come right out and ask Sonny. “After church? Maybe twelve-thirty, one o’clock. Did he eat hotdogs with you?”
Sonny is caught again. He wasn’t expecting the detail about hotdogs and now he is in a bind. His curiosity overwhelms his untruthfulness and he says, “How’d you know we had hotdogs?” He frowns as the motorcycle we saw a few minutes ago rumbles and bumps along the dirt path that leads from the motel to the Kiffin house. Whoever is on it heads right toward us, dressed in red-and-black leather, his face obscured by a dark helmet with a tinted face shield. Yet there is something familiar about the person. The realization stuns me. Jay Talley stops and gets off his motorcycle, nimbly swinging a leg over the big saddle seat.
“Sonny, get in the house,” Jay orders. “Now.” He says this with cool ease, as if he knows the boy very well.
Sonny steps back inside the house and the door shuts. Zack has vanished from the window. Jay takes off his helmet.
“What are you doing out here?” Lucy asks him, and in the distance I spot Bev Kiffin walking this way, carrying a shotgun, coming from the direction of the motel, where I can only assume she has been with Jay. Red flags are popping up all over the place inside my head, and neither Lucy nor I make the connection fast enough. Jay is unzipping his thick leather jacket and almost instantly he has a gun in his hand, a black pistol relaxed by his side.
“Christ,” Lucy says. “For God’s sake, Jay.”
“I really wish you hadn’t come here,” he says to me in a calm, cold way. “I really wish you hadn’t.” He motions the gun toward the motel. “Come on. We’re going to have a little talk.”
Run. But there is no place to run. He might shoot Lucy if I run. He might shoot me in the back. He raises the pistol and points it at Lucy’s chest as he unfastens her butt pack. He of all people knows what is in it. He takes my satchel and pats me down, making sure he explores my body intimately, to degrade me, to put me in my place, to enjoy the fury that dances across Lucy’s face as she has to watch. “Don’t,” I quietly say to him. “Jay, you can stop now.”
He smiles and dark rage sparks in a face that could be Greek. It could be Italian. It could be French. Bev Kiffin reaches us and her eyes narrow as they fix on me. She wears the same red lumberman’s jacket she had on the other week, and her hair is tousled as if she has just gotten out of bed. “Well, well,” she says. “Some folks just never get the message they aren’t welcome, isn’t that right?” Her eyes slide to Jay and linger.
I know without being told that they have been sleeping together, and every word Jay has ever told me turns to fable. Now I understand why Agent Jilison McIntyre was perplexed when I said that Bev Kiffin’s husband was a truck driver for Overland. McIntyre was undercover. She did the company’s books. She would be aware of it if there was an employee named Kiffin. The only connection to that criminal-infested trucking company is Bev Kiffin herself, and the gun and drug smuggling that goes on is connected to the Chandonne cartel. Answers. I have them, and now it is too late.
Lucy walks close to me, her face concrete. She shows no reaction as we are walked at gunpoint past rusty campers that I suspect are unoccupied for a reason. “Drug labs,” I say to Jay. “You making designer drugs out here, too? Or maybe just storing assault rifles and other things that end up on the street and kill people?”
“Kay, shut up,” he softly says. “Bev, you take care of her.” He indicates Lucy. “Find her a nice room and make sure she’s comfortable.”
Kiffin smiles a little. She taps the back of Lucy’s leg with the shotgun. We are at the motel now, and I scan parked cars and find no sign of another human being. Benton flashes in my mind. My heart pounds and the realization roars through my brain. Bonnie and Clyde. We used to refer to Carrie Grethen and Newton Joyce as Bonnie and Clyde. The killing couple. All along we have been so certain they were responsible for Benton’s murder. Yet we have never known for a fact who he was meeting that afternoon in Philadelphia. Why did he go off alone and not tell any of us? He was smarter than that. He never would have agreed to meet Carrie Grethen or Newton Joyce or even a stranger with information, because he would never have trusted a stranger with so-called information when he was in a city trying to track down a cunning, evil serial killer like Carrie. I stop in the parking lot as Kiffin opens a door and waits for Lucy to walk ahead of her into one of those rooms. Room 14. Lucy doesn’t look back at me, and the door shuts after her and Kiffin.
“You killed Benton, didn’t you, Jay.” I state it as a fact.
He lays a hand on my back, the pistol pointed and touching me as he pauses behind me and says for me to open the door. We enter room 15, the same room Kiffin showed me when I wanted to see what kind of mattresses and linens she used in this dump. “You and Bray,” I say to Jay. “That’s why she sent letters from New York, trying to make it seem they were from Carrie, to make Benton assume they were written from up there where she was locked up in Kirby.”
Jay shuts the door and waves the gun almost wearily, as if I am tiresome and he is not enjoying this. “Sit down.”
My eyes wander up to the ceiling, looking for eyebolts. I wonder where the heat gun is and if it is part of my fate. I keep standing where I am, near the dresser with its Gideon Bible, this one not opened to any special chapter about vanity or anything else. “I just want to know if I slept with the person who killed Benton.” I am looking right at Jay. “You’re going to kill me? Go ahead. But you already did that when you killed him. So I guess you can kill me twice, Jay.” It is o
dd, I feel no fear, only resignation. My pain, my anguish is over my niece, and I wait for the sound of a shotgun to rock these walls. “Can’t you just leave her out of it?” I ask anyway, and Jay knows I mean Lucy.
“I didn’t kill Benton,” he says, and he has the livid face of people who walk up and shoot a president. Pale, no expression, a zombie. “Carrie and her asshole friend did that. I made the call.”
“The call?”
“Called him to meet. That wasn’t too hard. I’m an agent,” he enjoys reminding me. “Carrie handled it from there. Carrie and that whacko scarface she got hooked up with.”
“So you set him up,” I say, simply. “Probably helped Carrie escape, too.”
“She didn’t need much help. Just some,” he replies with no inflection. “She was like a lot of people in this business. They get into the goods and fuck up an already fucked-up brain. She started doing her own thing. Years ago. If you guys hadn’t solved the problem, we would have. She was at the end of her usefulness.”
“Involved in the family business, Jay?” My eyes pin his. The gun is by his side and he leans against the door. He has no fear of me. I am like a bowstring wound too tightly, about to snap, waiting, listening for any sound next door. “All these women murdered—how many of them did you sleep with first? Like Susan Pless.” I shake my head. “I just want to know if you helped out Chandonne or did he follow you and help himself to what you left behind?”
Jay’s eyes focus more sharply on me. I have probed the truth.
“You know, you’re much too young to be Jay Talley, whoever he was,” I say next. “Jay Talley with no middle name. And you didn’t go to Harvard, and I doubt you ever lived in Los Angeles, not as a child. He’s your brother, isn’t he, Jay? That horrible deformity who calls himself a werewolf? He’s your brother, and your DNA is so close that on a routine screening you could be identical twins. Did you know your DNA is the same as his on a routine screening? At a four-probe level, the two of you are exactly the same.”
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