“And why might you be looking for Dr. Scarpetta?” Benton is friendly but firm, and he gives nothing away.
“I was sent here with a delivery, and the instructions I got is the party would be on Dr. Scarpetta’s helicopter or meeting it. What branch of service you with, or maybe you’re Homeland Security? I see it’s got a FLIR, a searchlight, a lot of special equipment. Pretty high-tech; how fast does it go?”
“What can I do for you?”
“I’m supposed to give something directly to Dr. Scarpetta. Is that you? I was told to ask for identification.” The driver watches Lucy and Marino carry my belongings out of the passenger and baggage compartments. The driver isn’t interested in me, not so much as a glance. I’m the wife of the tall, handsome man with silver hair. The driver thinks Benton is Dr. Scarpetta and that the helicopter is his.
“Let’s get you out of here before this turns into a blizzard,” Benton says, walking toward the Bentley in a way that gives the driver no choice but to follow. “I hear we’re getting six to eight inches, but I think we’re in for more, like we need it, right? What a winter. Where are you from? Not here. The south somewhere. I’m guessing Tennessee.”
“You can tell after twenty-seven years? Guess I need to work on talking Yankee. Nashville. Was stationed here with the Sixty-Sixth Air Base Wing and never got around to leaving. I’m not a pilot, but I drive pretty good.” He opens the passenger door and leans inside. “You fly that thing yourself? I’ve never been in one. I knew right away your chopper wasn’t air force. I guess if you’re CIA, you’re not going to tell me….”
Their voices drift back to me as I wait on the ramp where Benton left me. I know better than to follow him to the Bentley but am unwilling to sit inside our car when I have no idea who the man is or what delivery he’s talking about or how he knew someone named Scarpetta would be at Hanscom, either on a helicopter or meeting it, and what time it would land. The first person who comes to mind is Jack Fielding. It’s likely he knows my itinerary, and I check my iPhone. Anne and Ollie have answered my text messages and are already at the CFC, waiting for us. But nothing from Fielding.
“What is it?” I ask him as we shut our doors at the same time Marino opens the back and starts shoving in my boxes and bags.
Benton turns up the heat and doesn’t answer as more of my belongings are loaded, and then Marino comes around to my door. He raps a knuckle on the glass.
“Who the hell was that?” He stares off in the direction of the Bentley, and snow is falling thick and hard, frosting the bill of his baseball cap and melting on his glasses.
“Did many people know you and Lucy were heading out to Dover today?” Benton leans his shoulder against me as he talks to him.
“The general. And Captain What’s-her-name Avallone when I called trying to get a message to the Doc. And certain people at our office knew. Why?”
“Nobody else? Maybe a mention in passing to the EMTs, to Cambridge police?”
Marino pauses, thinking, and a look passes over his face. He’s not sure whom he told. He’s trying to remember, and he’s calculating. If he did something foolish, he won’t want to admit it, has heard quite enough about how indiscreet he is. He doesn’t intend to be chastised yet again, although, to be fair, he wouldn’t have had a reason to behave as if it was classified information that he and Lucy were flying to Delaware to pick me up. It’s not a state secret where I’ve been, only why I’ve been there, and I was supposed to come home tomorrow, anyway.
“No big deal if you did.” Benton seems to be thinking the same thing I am. “I’m just trying to figure out how a messenger knew to meet the helicopter here, that’s all.”
“What kind of messenger drives a Bentley?” Marino says to him.
“Apparently, the kind who’s been told your itinerary, including the helicopter’s tail number,” Benton replies.
“Goddamn Fielding. What the hell’s he doing? He’s fucking lost it, that’s what.” Marino takes off his glasses and then has nothing to wipe them with, and his face looks naked and strange without his old wire-rims. “I mentioned to a few people that you were probably coming back today instead of tomorrow. I mean, obviously certain people knew because of the problem we have with the dead guy bleeding and everything else.” He directs this at me. “But Fielding’s the one who knew exactly what you were doing, and he sure as hell knows Lucy’s helicopter, since he’s been in it before. Shit, you don’t know the half of it,” he adds darkly.
“We’ll talk at the office.” Benton wants him to shut up.
“What the hell do we really know about him? What the fuck’s he up to? It’s damn time to quit protecting him. He’s sure as hell not protecting you,” he says to me.
“Let’s talk about this later,” Benton replies with a warning in his tone.
“Setting you up somehow,” Marino says to me.
“Now’s not the time to get into it.” Benton’s voice flattens out.
“He wants your job. Or maybe he just doesn’t want you to have it.” Marino looks at me as he digs his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket and steps away from my window. “Welcome home, Doc.” Flakes of snow blowing into the car are cold and wet on my face and neck. “Good to be reminded who you can really trust, right?” He stares at me as I roll up the glass.
Anticollision beacons flash red and white on the wingtips of parked jets as we drive slowly across the ramp toward the security gate, which has just swung open.
The Bentley drives through, and we are right behind it, and I notice its Massachusetts plate doesn’t have
“Would you like to tell me what just happened?” It appears he was given a letter.
“Nobody should know you just flew here or that you might be here, shouldn’t know anything about you personally or your whereabouts, period,” Benton says, and his face and voice are hard. “Obviously, she called the CFC and Jack told her. She’s certainly called there before, and who else but Jack?”
He says it as if it’s really not a question, and I have no idea what he is referring to.
“I can’t understand why he or anyone would talk to her, for Christ’s sake,” Benton goes on, but I don’t believe he doesn’t understand whatever it is he’s talking about. His tone says something else entirely. I don’t sense that he’s even surprised.
“Who?” Because I have no idea. “Who’s called the CFC?”
“Johnny Donahue’s mother. Apparently, that’s her driver.” Indicating the car up ahead.
The windshield wipers make a loud rubbery sound as they drag across the glass, pushing away snow that is turning to slush as it hits. I look at the taillights of the Bentley in front of us and try to make sense of what Benton is telling me.
“We should look at whatever it is.” I mean the envelope in his pocket.
“It’s evidence. It should be looked at in the labs,” he says.
“I should know what it is.”
“I finished evaluating Johnny this morning,” Benton then reminds me. “I know his mother has called the CFC several times.”
“How do you know?”
“Johnny told me.”
“A psychiatric patient told you. And that’s reliable information.”
“I’ve spent a total of almost seven hours with him since he was admitted. I don’t believe he killed anyone. There are a lot of things I don’t believe. But I do believe his mother would call the CFC, based on what I know,” Benton says.
“She can’t really think we would discuss the Mark Bishop case with her.”
