that we were not prepared to make any identification at this time, and then promise them that they would be the first to know if we had any news.”
“Which naturally made them think they were being given the brush-off.”
“I felt terrible the whole time, but Carlos had made me promise that I wouldn’t say more than that to them. They told Carlos that the reporter said I was the one that leaked the story. He told them, quite honestly, that neither of us had ever talked to that reporter, and no one that worked with either of us had ever mentioned the case to him. They weren’t entirely satisfied, and spoke of getting an attorney, but fortunately things never reached that point. Carlos deserves the credit for that.”
“What else did you do?”
“What?”
“I haven’t known you all that long, Ben, but I know you well enough to realize that you wouldn’t just say ‘no comment’ and wait for things to blow over.”
“I would have, if it weren’t for David. He got Ellen and some of the other graduate students together, hauled me out of bed in the middle of the night and said, ‘Bool and Bingle want to go looking for bones in the desert.’ We searched for six consecutive weekends. We found more of the first boy’s remains. We were just about to give up when Bingle finally found the second boy’s tibia — some distance from the first boy’s. After that, we made a more intensive search and recovered more.”
“Didn’t that make you feel better about it?”
“Not really. It was better for the family, but I still felt miserable about what I had done. The outcome isn’t the issue. Breaking that code of confidentiality was no more honorable on my part, just because we had found the second boy. It was just as likely that we could have searched and searched and never found him.”
We sat in silence for a while before he said, “Although the blame is mine, really, for behaving unethically in that situation—”
“Ben, aren’t you being a little hard on yourself?”
“Let me finish. I wanted to say — I do have a negative attitude toward the press. I was unfair to you. I apologize for that.”
“Apology accepted. We aren’t all as rotten as that idiot.”
“I know, I know — but one guy like that one is enough to make you wary for life. There was a little justice, though — he isn’t on the air anymore.”
“I’m not surprised. And Camille got what she deserved with him, I’m sure.”
“It didn’t last, either. She told David that the guy broke up with her when I refused to let him ‘cover’ our searches. I felt sorry for her, really.”
“Did you ever talk to her about it?”
“No. The only time I’ve seen her since then was when you were there, at the hospital. What would I say? ‘You betrayed me’? To her, that would have been something like saying, ‘Congratulations.’ Besides, I betrayed myself.”
“There’s only one question left, then,” I said. “When are you going to forgive yourself?”
He didn’t answer.
55
TUESDAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 26
Las Piernas
I had gone back to bed and had about an hour’s sleep when the phone rang. I looked at the clock. A little before six.
Frank answered the call. “Hi, Pete,” he said to his partner, then listened for a while. He sat up and started taking notes. “Okay, I’ll be there as soon as I can. Coroner’s already been notified? Good . . . yes, I’ll see you in a few.”
He hung up, stretched, and started getting dressed.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
He hesitated, then said, “The skull in the refrigerator? Looks as if he decided to let us have the rest of the body.”
I shuddered. “Where?”
“Apparently, he’s been keeping it on ice. A group of figure skaters got a rude surprise when they showed up at the local rink for practice this morning.”
“He broke into the ice-skating rink?”
“Yep. First officer on the scene said it looks as if the body is frozen solid. No head.” He paused in the act of putting on his holster. “Hope it’s the one belonging to our skull. He’d probably think it was damned amusing to have more than one out there and mix and match them.”
“You should tell Ben. He’s been trying to do the identification on the skull. Maybe he’ll be able to help out.”
Frank didn’t want to leave me alone, so he hesitated to ask Ben to go with him. So I promised not to write about events at the skating rink for the
If the skating rink hadn’t been fairly close to the vet’s office, I’m not sure Ben would have followed Frank and me over there that morning. Sometimes, looking back on it, I’ve wished the two buildings had been farther apart.
There were several black-and-whites parked outside the rink; Frank went in first, while I talked to Ben in the parking lot. A few minutes later, Frank escorted me to what he had decided was a safe place to wait — safe for me,
