He had an unsettling energy that made her edgy and uncomfortable, and she imagined that whatever he did was thought out quickly and done in a hurry, and that it was his nature to dominate whatever he touched.
“A couple of tables away from where you were busy looking at that guy found in the East River, floating off the shore of Ward’s Island?” he said. “I can tell you don’t remember me. Question was whether he was tired of life and jumped off the footbridge, or someone hastened his journey to the Great Beyond, or maybe he’d had a heart attack and fell off the embankment. One of Pester Lester’s cases. Turns out, she failed to connect the dots—didn’t recognize the telltale fern-like pattern on his torso was—guess what? Arborization from being struck by lightning, which she had ruled out because she didn’t find any burns in his socks, the bottom of his shoes, shit like that. You used a compass to show his belt buckle was magnetized, which is typical in lightning strikes, right? Anyway, you wouldn’t remember me. Was in and out, grabbing a couple bullets that needed to go to the labs.”
He pulled an evidence form out of the back pocket of his half-mast voluminous jeans, unfolded it, and started filling it out, leaning over the desk, so close to her his elbow brushed against her shoulder as he wrote, obliging her to move her chair. He handed her the form and the pen, and she filled out the rest and signed it. Then he took the envelopes of Oscar Bane’s evidence and left.
“Needless to say,” Benton remarked, “Berger’s got her hands full with him.”
“He’s in her squad?”
“No, that might make it easier. Then maybe she could control him, at least a little,” Benton said. “He’s rather ubiquitous. Whenever a case is high-profile, he somehow manages to show up. Such as the lightning death he mentioned. And by the way, he probably won’t forgive you for not remembering him, which is why he had to point it out three times.”
Benton leaned back in his fake leather chair and was quiet as Scarpetta scanned paperwork on the other side of the small scarred desk.
He loved the straight bridge of her nose, the strong lines of her jaw and cheekbones, and the deliberate but graceful way she moved when she did the slightest thing, such as turning a page. In his mind, she looked no different than the first time they’d met, when she’d appeared in the doorway of her conference room, her blond hair out of place, no makeup on, the pockets of her long white lab coat filled with pens, tissues, pink telephone slips for calls she had no time to return but somehow would.
He’d recognized on the spot that for all of her strength and seriousness, she was thoughtful and kind. He’d seen it in her eyes during that first encounter, and he saw it in them now, even when she was preoccupied, even when he had hurt her yet again. He couldn’t imagine not having her, and felt a pang of hatred pierce him, hatred of Marino. What Benton had immersed himself in all of his adult life was now inside his home. Marino had let the enemy in, and Benton didn’t know how to make it leave.
“What time did the police arrive at the scene? And why are you staring at me?” Scarpetta asked without looking up at him.
“About quarter past six. I messed things up. Please don’t be angry with me.”
“Notified how?” She turned a page.
“Nine-one-one. He claims he found Terri’s body around five, but he didn’t call nine-one-one until six. Nine minutes past six, to be exact. The police were there within minutes. About five minutes.”
When she didn’t answer him, he picked up a paper clip, started unbending it. He didn’t used to fidget.
“They found the outer door locked,” he said. “There are three other apartments in the building, no one home, no doorman. The police couldn’t get into the building, but her apartment’s on the ground floor, so they went around to the back, to the windows, and through a gap in the curtains they saw Oscar in the bathroom, cradling a woman’s body. She was covered by a blue towel. He was crying hysterically, holding her, stroking her. The cops rapped on the glass until they got his attention and he let them in.”
He was talking in choppy sentences, his brain sluggish and slightly disorganized, probably because he was extremely stressed. He worked on the paper clip. He watched her.
After a lengthy silence, she looked up at him and said, “Then what? Did he talk to them?”
She’s comparing notes,he thought. Wants to line up what I know with what Oscar said to her. She’s being clinical, impersonal, because she’s not going to forgive me, he thought.
“I’m sorry. Please don’t be angry with me,” he said.
She held his gaze and said, “I’m wondering why she had nothing on but a bra and a robe. If a stranger was at her door, would she answer it like that?”
“We can’t work through it now.” Benton meant their relationship, not the case. “Can we put it on a shelf?”
It was the way they phrased it when private matters presented themselves in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Her lingering gaze and the way her eyes turned a deeper shade of blue told him she would. She would put it on a shelf for now because she loved him, even if he didn’t deserve it.
“It’s a good question. The way she might have been dressed when she answered the door,” he said. “I have a few observations, when we get to that part.”
“What exactly did Oscar do when the police were inside the apartment with him?” she asked.
“He was sobbing, knees buckling, yelling. So insistent on returning to the bathroom that two officers had to hold on to him while they tried to get him to talk. He said he cut off the flex-cuff. It was on the bathroom floor near a pair of scissors he said he’d removed from the cutlery block in the kitchen.”
“Did he call it a flex-cuff at the scene? Or is that what the police called it? Where did the term flex-cuff come from? It’s important we know who said it first.”
“Don’t know.”
“Well, someone knows.”
Benton bent the paper clip into a figure-eight as what they’d placed on the shelf kept falling off. At some point they would talk, but talking didn’t fix broken trust any more than it fixes broken bones. Lies and more lies. The necessary axis of his life was lies, all well intended or professionally and legally necessary, which was why, in fact, Marino was a threat. The foundation of Marino’s relationship with her had never been lies. When he forced himself on her, he wasn’t showing contempt or hate or trying to humiliate. Marino was taking what he wanted when she wouldn’t give it, because it was the only way he could kill an unrequited love he could no longer survive. His betrayal of her was actually one of the most honest things he’d ever done.
“And we don’t know what’s become of the ligature she was strangled with,” Benton said. “It appears the killer removed it from her neck after she was dead and left with it. Police suspect it was another flex-cuff.”
“Based on?”
“Would be unusual to bring two different types of ligatures to the scene,” Benton said.
He worked the straightened paper clip back and forth until it broke.
“And of course it’s assumed the killer brought the flex-cuff—or cuffs—with him. Not exactly the sort of thing most people have lying around the house.”
“Why remove the flex-cuff from her neck and leave with it, and not bother with the one around her wrists? If that’s what happened,” she said.
“We don’t know this person’s mind. Not much to go on except circumstances. I suspect it comes as no surprise to you they think Oscar did it.”
“Based on?”
“Either the killer had a key or she must have let him in, and as you pointed out, she was wearing a bathrobe, not much else. So let’s talk about that. Why was she so comfortable, so trusting? How did she know who was buzzing the outer door? There’s no camera, no intercom. The implication, in my opinion, is she was expecting someone. She unlocked the outer door after dark when the building was empty, then she unlocked her apartment door. Or someone did. Violent offenders love holidays. Lots of symbolism, and nobody’s around. If Oscar killed her, last night was an ideal time to do it and stage it as something else.”
“That’s what the police believe happened, I assume you’re saying.”
She’s making comparisons again,Benton thought. What does she know?
“To them it makes the most sense,” he replied.
