Coagulation and decomposition. I smell it. Then I don’t. An olfactory hallucination, the receptors of my first cranial nerve stimulated by something remembered and no longer there. I massage the back of my stiff neck and breathe deeply, the imagined stench replaced by the scent of antique wood and the citrus-ginger reed diffuser on the fireplace mantel. I detect a hint of smoke and burnt split logs from the last fire I built before Benton left town, before Connecticut. Before I got sick. I look at the clock.
“Dammit,” I mutter.
It’s almost five a.m. After Marino called I must have drifted back to sleep and now he’s in my driveway. I text him to give me fifteen minutes and I’ll be right down as I remember the Marino I was just talking to and drinking beer with in the humid heat. Every image, every word, of the dream is vivid like a movie, some of it factual shards of what really happened the summer I left Virginia for good a decade ago, some of it confabulated by my deepest disappointments and fears.
All of it is true in what it represents. What I knew and felt back then during the darkest of dark times. That Benton had been murdered. That I was being forced out of office, done in by politics, by white males in suits who didn’t give a damn about the truth, didn’t give a damn about what I’d lost, which felt like everything.
Lowering my feet to the floor, I find my slippers. I have a crime scene to work and Marino is picking me up like the old days, like our Richmond days. He’s predicting the case is a bad one and I have no doubt that’s what he wants. He wishes for some sensational homicide to reignite his lost self as he rises from the ashes of what he believes he wasted because of me.
“I’m sorry,” I tell Sock as I move him again and get up, weak, light-headed but much improved.
I’m fine. In fact, oddly euphoric. Benton’s presence surrounds me. He isn’t dead, thank God, oh thank God. His murder was faked, a brilliant contrivance by the brilliant FBI to protect him from organized criminals, from some French cartel he’d undermined. He wasn’t allowed to tell me he was alive and safe in a protected witness program. There could be no contact at all, not the slightest clue as he watched me from a distance, checking on me without my knowing. I felt him. I know I did. What I dreamed about it is true and there was a better way to do what was done and I won’t forgive the FBI for the years they ruined. Those years were broken and cruel as I languished miserably in the Bureau’s lies, my heart, my soul, my destiny commanded by an artless ugly precast building named after J. Edgar Hoover. Now Benton and I won’t allow such a thing, not ever. We’re each other’s first loyalty and he tells me things. He finds a way to let me know whatever he needs me to know so we never again go through such an outrageous ordeal. He’s alive and well and out of town. That’s all, and I try his cell phone to say I miss him and Happy Almost-Birthday
.
I get voice mail.
Next I try his hotel in northern Virginia, the Marriott where he always stays when he has business with his FBI colleagues at the Behavioral Analysis Unit, the BAU.
“Mr. Wesley has checked out,” the desk clerk tells me when I ask for Benton’s room.
“When?” I don’t understand.
“It was right as I was coming on duty around midnight.” I recognize the clerk’s voice, soft-spoken with a Virginia lilt. He’s worked at this same Marriott for years and I’ve spoken to him on many occasions, especially these past few weeks after a second and third murder occurred.
“This is Kay Scarpetta —”
“Yes, ma’am, I know. How are you? This is Carl. You sound a little stopped-up. I hope you don’t have the bug that’s going around. I hear it’s a bad one.”
“I’m just fine but thanks for asking. Did he happen to mention why he was checking out earlier than planned? He was supposed to be there until this weekend, last I
“Dammit,” I mutter.
It’s almost five a.m. After Marino called I must have drifted back to sleep and now he’s in my driveway. I text him to give me fifteen minutes and I’ll be right down as I remember the Marino I was just talking to and drinking beer with in the humid heat. Every image, every word, of the dream is vivid like a movie, some of it factual shards of what really happened the summer I left Virginia for good a decade ago, some of it confabulated by my deepest disappointments and fears.
All of it is true in what it represents. What I knew and felt back then during the darkest of dark times. That Benton had been murdered. That I was being forced out of office, done in by politics, by white males in suits who didn’t give a damn about the truth, didn’t give a damn about what I’d lost, which felt like everything.
Lowering my feet to the floor, I find my slippers. I have a crime scene to work and Marino is picking me up like the old days, like our Richmond days. He’s predicting the case is a bad one and I have no doubt that’s what he wants. He wishes for some sensational homicide to reignite his lost self as he rises from the ashes of what he believes he wasted because of me.
“I’m sorry,” I tell Sock as I move him again and get up, weak, light-headed but much improved.
I’m fine. In fact, oddly euphoric. Benton’s presence surrounds me. He isn’t dead, thank God, oh thank God. His murder was faked, a brilliant contrivance by the brilliant FBI to protect him from organized criminals, from some French cartel he’d undermined. He wasn’t allowed to tell me he was alive and safe in a protected witness program. There could be no contact at all, not the slightest clue as he watched me from a distance, checking on me without my knowing. I felt him. I know I did. What I dreamed about it is true and there was a better way to do what was done and I won’t forgive the FBI for the years they ruined. Those years were broken and cruel as I languished miserably in the Bureau’s lies, my heart, my soul, my destiny commanded by an artless ugly precast building named after J. Edgar Hoover. Now Benton and I won’t allow such a thing, not ever. We’re each other’s first loyalty and he tells me things. He finds a way to let me know whatever he needs me to know so we never again go through such an outrageous ordeal. He’s alive and well and out of town. That’s all, and I try his cell phone to say I miss him and Happy Almost-Birthday
.
I get voice mail.
Next I try his hotel in northern Virginia, the Marriott where he always stays when he has business with his FBI colleagues at the Behavioral Analysis Unit, the BAU.
“Mr. Wesley has checked out,” the desk clerk tells me when I ask for Benton’s room.
“When?” I don’t understand.
“It was right as I was coming on duty around midnight.” I recognize the clerk’s voice, soft-spoken with a Virginia lilt. He’s worked at this same Marriott for years and I’ve spoken to him on many occasions, especially these past few weeks after a second and third murder occurred.
“This is Kay Scarpetta —”
“Yes, ma’am, I know. How are you? This is Carl. You sound a little stopped-up. I hope you don’t have the bug that’s going around. I hear it’s a bad one.”
“I’m just fine but thanks for asking. Did he happen to mention why he was checking out earlier than planned? He was supposed to be there until this weekend, last I
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