“What he did to Howard Roth wasn’t exactly gentlemanly, and he certainly didn’t leave him flowers.”
“Howard Roth had no value.” Benton glances at another text message, and I wonder if it is Douglas Burke who is writing to him every other minute. “He was an object no better than the trash he dug through, and the killer assumed you wouldn’t value him, either. He assumed it would be a case that wouldn’t merit your attention.”
“Me specifically?”
“What it tells me is whoever he is, he doesn’t know you personally. I retract what I said earlier about my worrying he knows you, knows Marino. He knows about you, about your office, but he doesn’t know you,” Benton says, as if there can be no doubt about it. “He’s getting it wrong. He’s making mistakes. Maybe you could text Bryce to let them know we’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
It’s almost three p.m., and we’re going to be late for a meeting Benton scheduled in my TelePresence conference room, and I’m not happy that Douglas Burke has been included. I thought Benton made it perfectly clear that they couldn’t work together anymore.
“He stages his crimes in a premeditated and precise way, he’s obsessed with games that include framing people, and then is careless about fingerprints and blood?” I worry again that something might have gone on with Benton and Burke.
“He has reason to believe such evidence isn’t incriminating to him,” he says, as we go back to the CFC the way we came, following the river, and the water is dusky, the sky a pale blue haze. “For one thing, he probably assumed it wouldn’t be found. He didn’t think you’d look. That’s the important part, Kay. He didn’t assume you’d bother with anything you’ve bothered with. He doesn’t know you, not in the least,” he says that again.
Douglas Burke will be waiting in my conference room, and I’m not sure what I’ll do when I see her.
“There’s ridge detail all over the bottle,” I reply. “I didn’t even need dusting powder or an ALS to see that there’s enough minutiae for an identification.”
“But we don’t know whose identification.” Benton glances at his phone in his lap, at whatever’s just landed. “Could be Roth’s prints on there. Most likely he bought the malt liquor and drank it.”
“The important point is the killer didn’t even bother wiping off the bottle, which is really careless,” I repeat. “The smartest thing would have been to take it with him and toss it somewhere it would never be found.”
“Disposing of the weapon in a bag full of bottles and cans that Roth collected shows the killer’s complete disregard for his victim, his utter indifference.” Benton glances down at his phone again. “Roth was nothing to him, nothing more than an inconvenience, and the killer assumes everybody would feel that way because he doesn’t know how to feel any other way. He can’t project values onto you or anyone that he doesn’t have.”
“Onto me specifically?”
“Yes, onto you, Kay. He doesn’t know you.” Benton drums that in. “He can’t imagine what you’ll do or how you feel because he’s incapable of empathy. Therefore, he reads people wrong.”
“We’ll see about the print on Peggy Stanton’s rearview mirror, if it matches anything on the bottle.” I think out loud as I worry, and I don’t want to worry.
I want to trust Benton. I want to believe every word he’s told me.
“Maybe he left a print on her mirror but no hit in AFIS.” Benton scrolls through messages. “He’s not in the system. He’s someone no one would suspect. He’s never been arrested and has no reason for his prints to be in a database. He’s quite comfortable he’ll never be a suspect, and you’ve caused a problem he’s not expected. The question is whether he knows it by now.”
“I wish you wouldn’t look at that thing when you drive.” I take his phone from him. “If you do it when I’m with you, what do you do when I’m not?”
“Nobody you need to worry about, Kay.” He holds out his hand. “I don’t do anything when you’re not with me that you need to worry about.”
“I thought you talked to her.” I return his phone.
“She’s not leaving Marino alone. Probably the biggest reason to have this meeting.”
“But she’ll lay off him when she hears what we know,” I assume, because Burke certainly should.
“It’s ridiculous,” he says. “Marino’s prints, like yours, like mine, are on file for exclusionary purposes, and it’s not his fingerprint on Peggy Stanton’s rearview mirror. And he sure as hell didn’t murder Howard Roth. Marino was in Tampa when Roth was killed. The meeting will put an end to it.”
“He probably still thinks we believe it was an accident.” I’m not thinking about Marino but the person Burke should be looking for.
I’m thinking about the killer.
“Unless he’s been following us,” I add. “In that case, he might know what we do. If he’s cruising around, watching us.”
“I doubt it.”
“Why?”
“He’s not nervous,” Benton says. “This person is confident and never imagines he’s making mistakes. He never imagined you’d spray everything with chemicals, that you’d find blood he didn’t bother to clean up.”
“He couldn’t have cleaned it up,” I reply. “Not all of it.”
It wasn’t apparent to the unaided eye, a medium-velocity impact spatter I associate with blunt force. Varying sizes of elongated drops were on the left side of the recliner, on the brown vinyl armrest, and on the dark brown paneled wall left of where I believe Howard Roth’s head was when he was struck hard enough to lacerate his scalp and fracture his skull.
The bloodstain pattern that glowed violet for me told the heartless story of him asleep or passed out drunk in front of the TV when a murderer walked in a door that apparently was never locked. Roth was struck once in the back of the head with a malt liquor bottle that the killer placed inside a trash bag he closed with a twist tie.
Bloody streaks and swipes on dirty stained dark carpet and bloody drag marks soaked into the pile led from the living room to the basement door, and then blood was plainly visible where one would expect it to be if he were an accidental death. Drips and smears were on the six concrete steps leading to the basement, his unconscious body pushed down the stairs and then kicked and stomped where it landed. The killer made sure Roth wouldn’t survive and assumed no one would entertain the possibility he was a homicide, that it would never enter our minds.
“He did make some effort to disguise what he’s done,” Benton points out, as we pass the boathouse, the old Polaroid building again. “He could have just showed up late at night and shot him, stabbed him, strangled him, but that would have been obvious. He got some of it right but not the rest of it, because he’s unable to anticipate what normal people do.”
“He can’t imagine any of us caring.”
“That’s right. Someone empty, hollow. He’s probably seen him around here.”
Benton suspects the killer has noticed Roth in Cambridge, has been aware of him for months, observing the handyman wandering about looking for work and digging through trash cans and recycle bins, sometimes pushing a grocery cart. This killer is aware of everyone when he’s stalking his next victim, Benton says. He prowls, cruises, researches, observing patterns and calculating. He does dry runs, feeding his cruel fantasies.
But that doesn’t mean he knew who Howard Roth was by name. The killer forged a hundred-dollar check that he likely sent in the mail as he continued to pay Peggy Stanton’s bills long after she was dead. But that doesn’t mean he had a clue that the Howard Roth whose check he wrote was the homeless-looking man he saw rooting through the trash in Cambridge.
“What I’m sure of is he killed Roth when he did for a reason,” Benton says. “This was an expedient homicide devoid of emotion.”
“Stomping and kicking him seems rather emotional.”
“It wasn’t personal,” Benton replies. “He felt nothing.”
“It could be construed as angry. In most stomping ca
ses, there’s rage,” I reply.
“He felt he needed to get it done. Like killing a bug. I’m wondering if he’d been to her house recently, if Roth had.” Benton’s looking down at his phone again. “Maybe wanting his money, and it was bad timing.”
“If the killer happened to be stealing Peggy Stanton’s mail when Roth appeared, that would be bad timing, couldn’t be worse timing.” My building is in sight. “But I wouldn’t expect him to do that during daylight.”
“We don’t know that Roth only went out during daylight. There are all-night markets all around where Peggy Stanton lived, a lot of them on Cambridge Street, a Shop Quik that’s open twenty-four-seven just around the corner from her,” Benton says. “He was going to go out no matter the hour if he ran out of beer, and he might have frequented her neighborhood because he wanted his money.”
“After dark on a poorly lit street?” I reply. “Chances are Roth wouldn’t have gotten a good look at him, even if they were face-to-face.”
“He felt he had reason, a need to play it safe.” Benton says the killer did. “He had reason enough to take the risk of following him home with the intention of murdering him.”
We turn off Memorial Drive, and I imagine Howard Roth on his way to or from the Shop Quik. If he’d seen someone getting mail out of Peggy Stanton’s box he might have spoken to this person, inquired where she is or when she might be home and even explain why he was asking. A disabled vet, an alcoholic who goes through trash cans and recyclables, a part-time handyman described as harmless. Even if he looked the killer in the face, why was murdering Roth a chance worth taking?
I wonder if the killer had some other reason for being familiar with Howard Roth, if they’d seen each other before. They may not have known each other by name but by sight, by context.
“And the rest was easy,” Benton is saying, as we stop at the CFC gate, and my phone begins to ring.
Bryce.
“Follow a drunk home who doesn’t lock his door.” Benton reaches up to press the remote clipped to the visor.
What does Bryce want that can’t wait until I’m inside? He knows I’m here. He can see us in the monitor on his desk, in almost any monitor in any area of the building, and I press answer.
“Watch and wait.” Benton drives in. “Let him go through a few quarts and pass out in his chair. He probably never knew what hit him.”
“I’m pulling in now,” I say to my chief of staff.
“Oh my God, have I got news.” He’s so keyed up I have to turn my volume down.
“There should be people waiting for us—” I start to say.
“You were expecting them? Oh, Lord. I made them wait in the lobby.”
“You what?”
“Love, love the cat. Little Shaw’s in perfect cat health.” He says purrfect. “Okay, hold on, I’m calling Ron now, gonna get him on his cell, sure am sorry. It would be helpful if you’d let me know things like this, for God’s sake. Ron? You can escort them up immediately. I didn’t know they were expected; no one tells me anything.
“I certainly apologize, but if you would just inform me? I had no idea?” Bryce is back to me, and I can’t get in a word. “Well, Shaw almost got all A-pluses. A touch of dry skin, a little anemic, vet says it’s best she’s not left alone all the time, since she used to be with someone rather constantly until the bad thing happened, not to mention she’s been traumatized. And Ethan works out of his home office three days a week, and I think we should keep her, especially after the scare with Indy, who’s fine, thanks for asking—”
“Bryce!” I interrupt him for the third time.
“What!”
“Why would you make the FBI wait in our lobby,” I ask. “Or have them escorted up by security?”
“No. Oh, no, the two women agents? Not them. Oh, Lord, I didn’t realize . . . They’re in the war room and not who I meant, oh, shit.” He sounds shocked. “Hold on, hold on, let me catch him. Ron! Don’t escort them up. You’re with them now? Oh, shit,” he says.
thirty-four
I FAULT HIM FOR NOT MAKING AN APPOINTMENT AND then showing up unannounced at the CFC, but I can’t say he has no right to talk to me. I decide that Channing Lott and his companions are to be brought upstairs.
“Just give me a minute to get settled,” I instruct Bryce over my cell phone. “Take them into the break room, get them water, coffee. I can see them for a few minutes only. Please explain I’m late for a meeting. I’ll text you when I’m ready, and you can bring them to my office.”
I push the elevator button for the seventh floor and know what Benton is going to insist on, but it’s out of the question.
“Kay, I should be with you—” he begins, and I don’t let him finish.
I shake my head. “It’s no more appropriate for you to sit in on whatever he wants to discuss than it would be if he were any family member, any other loved one of the deceased. He’s the husband of someone whose case is mine.”
“Her body’s not been found. She’s not your case.”
“I’ve been consulted about her, and he knows it. I’ve testified about her in his trial, and in his mind she’s my case. She has to be somebody’s case, for God’s sake, because it’s highly improbable she’s still alive. Let’s face it, she’s no more alive than Emma Shubert is.”
“You can’t make that connection based on fact.” The way he says it is revealing.
“I know when people aren’t going to walk through a door ever again, Benton.” I study him carefully. “Those women are dead.”
He says nothing because he believes it, too. He knows more than he’s saying. I think of the meeting I’m about to be quite late for, but whatever is happening will have to wait.
“What if Channing Lott really didn’t have anything to do with his wife’s disappearance and people like me won’t talk to him?” I ask.
“People like you?”
“I have to, Benton.”
“This is dangerous, Kay.”
“We’re obliged to respect that he’s been acquitted of her murder for hire, and what’s dangerous is to assume he’s not grieving, not distraught, not devastated.” I’m firm. It’s not negotiable. “I won’t have the FBI sitting in. In fact, the FBI has interfered with my office enough.”
“I’m not trying to interfere. I’m trying to protect you.”
“I know you are.” I look at him and can see how unhappy he is. “And I can’t allow it.”
He realizes when arguing will be fruitless, and while I always listen to his opinions and what he warns me about, I have to handle my responsibilities the way I know is right. If I weren’t his wife he’d never make the suggestion he just did. Inside the CFC there are no suspects, no innocent or guilty, only people dead or desolate. Channing Lott is the bereft, and to ignore him would be a violation of what I’m sworn to do.
“He’s not going to hurt me,” I say to Benton. “He’s not going to attack me inside my own building.”
“I’m not worried about what he’s going to do,” he says. “I’m worried about what he wants.”
“I’ll meet you and your colleagues in a few minutes. I’ll be fine.”
We get off on my floor, and I watch Benton walk away, tall and lank in his dark suit, his hair thick and silver, his stride purposeful and confident, the way he always walks, but I feel his reluctance. He heads toward the TelePresence conference room, which is referred to as the war room, and I go the other way.
I follow the curved corridor to my office and unlock the door, taking a moment to inspect myself in the mirror over the bathroom sink, to wash my face, brush my hair and teeth, and put on lipstick. Of all days to wear a pair of shapeless old corduroys and what looks like a fisherman’s cable-knit sweater, and plain black ankle boots.
It’s not what I would have picked, had I known I was meeting this notoriously powerful man who many still believe orchestrated the murder of his wife, and for an instant I consider changing into investigative field clothes, cargo pants, a
shirt with the CFC crest. But that’s silly, and there isn’t time.
I text Bryce and ask him to please remind our uninvited guests it will have to be quick, that I’m late for another meeting. I don’t mind making the FBI wait, truth be told, especially making Douglas Burke wait; I wouldn’t mind making her wait for a hundred years. But I want an out if I need it. I don’t know what Channing Lott has planned or why he’s brought people with him.
I hear Bryce in the corridor being his usual hyperfluent self, and he can’t help it. His need to talk is like his need for air. He opens my door as he’s knocking on it, and Channing Lott is there in a dove-gray suit and gray shirt with no tie. He is quite striking, with his long white hair braided in back, and he shakes my hand warmly and looks me in the eye, and for an instant I think he’s going to hug me. It takes a moment to regain my composure and recognize the man and woman accompanying him.
“We can sit here.” I show them to the brushed-steel table. “I see Bryce made sure you have something to drink.”
“This is Shelly Duke, my chief financial officer, and Albert Galbraith, my chief of operations,” Lott says, and I remember the two of them huddled close and looking at the harbor outside the courthouse when I was going through security yesterday afternoon.
Attractive, well-paid executives finely dressed, in their late thirties, early forties, I would guess, neither of them as warm or friendly as their boss, whose blue eyes are intense, his face vibrant as he gives me his complete attention. When we are seated, I ask him what I might help him with.
“First and most important, I want to thank you, Dr. Scarpetta.” Lott says what I was afraid he might. “What you were put through couldn’t have been a good time.” He means what happened in court, and I’m reminded unpleasantly of being fined by the judge and Lott’s own attorney attempting to impeach me on every front.
“There is nothing to thank me for, Mr. Lott,” I reply, as I think of his helicopter filming me. “I’m a public servant doing my job.”
“Without prejudice,” he says. “You did it without preconception or prejudice. You simply stated what was true, and you didn’t have to.”
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