“These days people think everything is public information, that they’re entitled,” he says, and it’s not like him to make assumptions and to indulge in generalities. His statement strikes me as glib and evasive. “And Mrs. Donahue has a problem with Jack,” Benton adds, and that comment strikes me as genuine.
“Johnny’s told you his mother has a problem with Jack. And why would she have an opinion about him?”
“Some of this I can’t get into.” He stares straight ahead as he drives on the snowy road, and the snow is falling faster and slashes through the headlights and clicks against glass.
I know when Benton is keeping things from me. Usually, I’m fine with it. Right now I’m not. I’m tempted to slide the envelope out of his pocket and look at what someone, presumably Mrs. Donahue, wants me to see.
“Have you met her, talked to her?” I ask him.
“I’ve managed to avoid that so far, although she’s called the hospital, trying to track me down, called several times since he was admitted. But it’s not appropriate for me to talk to her. It’s not appropriate for me to talk about a lot of things, and I know you understand.”
“If Jack or anyone has divulged details about Mark Bishop to her, that’s about as serious as it gets,” I reply. “And I do understand your reticence, or I think I do, but I have a right to know if he’s done that.”
“I didn’t know what you know. If Jack’s said anything to you,” he says.
“About what specifically?”
I don’t want to admit to Benton and most of all to myself that I can’t remember precisely when I talked to Fielding last. Our conversations, when we’ve had them, have been perfunctory and brief, and I didn’t see him at all when I was home for several days over the holidays. He had gone somewhere, presumably taken his family somewhere, but I’m not sure. Long months ago, Fielding quit sharing the details of his personal life with me.
“Specifically, this case, the Mark Bishop case,” Benton says. “When it happened, for example, did Jack discuss it with you?”
Saturday, January 30, six-year-old Mark Bishop was playing in his backyard, about an hour from here in Salem, when someone hammered nails into his head.
“No,” I answer. “Jack hasn’t talked about it with me.”
I was in Dover when the boy was murdered, and Fielding took the case, which was extraordinarily out of character, and I thought so then. He’s never been able to deal with children but for some reason decided to deal with this one, and it shocked me. In the past, if the body of a child was en route to the morgue, Fielding absented himself. It made no sense at all that Fielding would take the Mark Bishop case, and I’m sorry I didn’t return home, because that was my first impulse. I should have acted on it, but I didn’t want to do to my second in command what Briggs just did to me. I didn’t want to show a lack of faith.
“I’ve reviewed it thoroughly, but Jack and I haven’t discussed it, although I certainly indicated I would make myself available if there was a need.” I feel myself getting defensive and hate it when I get that way. “Technically, it’s his case. Technically, I wasn’t here.” I can’t stop myself, and I know it sounds weak, like I’m making excuses, and I feel annoyed with myself.
“In other words, Jack hasn’t tried to share the details. I should say he’s not shared his details,” Benton says.
“Consider where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing,” I remind him.
“I’m not saying it’s your fault, Kay.”
“What’s my fault? And what do you mean
“I’m asking if you’ve asked Jack about it. If maybe he’s avoided discussing it with you.”
“You know how he is when it’s kids. At the time, I left him a message that one of the other medical examiners could handle it, but Jack took care of it. I was surprised he did, but that’s how it went. As I’ve said, I’ve reviewed all of the records. His, the police, the lab reports, et cetera.”
“So you really don’t know what’s going on with it.”
“It seems you’re saying I don’t.”
Benton is silent.
“Know what’s going on in addition to the latest? The confession made by the Donahue boy?” I try again. “Certainly I know what’s been in the news, and a Harvard student confessing to such a thing has been all over it. Obviously, what you’re getting at is there are details I’ve not been told.”
Again Benton doesn’t answer. I imagine Fielding talking to Johnny Donahue’s mother. It’s possible Fielding gave her details about where I would be tonight, and she sent her driver to deliver an envelope to me, although the driver didn’t seem to know Dr. Scarpetta was a woman. I look at Benton’s black shearling coat. In the dark, I can make out the vague white edge of the envelope in his pocket.
“Why would anyone from your office talk to the mother of the person who’s confessed to the crime?” Benton’s question sounds more like a statement. It sounds rhetorical. “We absolutely sure nothing was leaked to the media about your leaving Dover today, maybe because of this case?” He means the man who collapsed in Norton’s Woods. “Maybe there’s a logical explanation for how she knew. A logical explanation other than Jack. I’m trying to be open-minded.”
It doesn’t sound like he’s trying to be open-minded at all. It sounds like he believes Fielding told Mrs. Donahue for a reason, one I can’t begin to fathom. Unless it’s what Marino said minutes ago, that Fielding wants me to lose my job.
“You and I both know the answer.” I hear the conviction in my tone and realize how certain I am of what Jack Fielding could be capable of. “Nothing’s been in the news that I’m aware of. And even if Mrs. Donahue found out that way, it doesn’t explain her knowing the tail number of Lucy’s helicopter. It doesn’t explain how she knew I was arriving by helicopter or would land at Hanscom or at what time.”
Benton drives toward Cambridge, and the snow is a blizzard of flakes that are getting smaller. The wind is beating the SUV, gusting and shoving, the night volatile and treacherous.
“Except the driver thought you were me,” I add. “I could tell by the way he was dealing with you. He thinks you’re Dr. Scarpetta, and Johnny Donahue’s mother certainly must know I’m not a man.”
“Hard to say what she knows,” Benton answers. “Fielding’s the medical examiner in this case, not you. As you said, technically, you have nothing to do with it. Technically, you’re not responsible.”
“I’m the chief and ultimately responsible. At the end of the day, all ME cases in Massachusetts are mine. I do have something to do with it.”
“It’s not what I meant, but I’m glad to hear you say it.”
Of course it’s not what he meant. I don’t want to think about what he meant. I’ve been gone. Somehow I was supposed to be at Dover and at the same time get the CFC up and running without me. Maybe it was too much to ask. Maybe I’ve been deliberately set up for failure.
“I’m saying that since the CFC opened, you’ve been invisible,” Benton says. “Lost in a news blackout.”
“By design,” I reply. “The AFME doesn’t court publicity.”
“Of course it’s by design. I’m not blaming you.”
“Briggs’s design.” I give voice to what I suspect Benton is getting at.
He doesn’t trust Briggs. He never has. I’ve always chalked it up to jealousy. Briggs is a very powerful and threatening man, and Benton hasn’t felt powerful or threatening since he left the FBI, and then there is a past Briggs and I share. He is one of very few people still in my life who predates Benton. It feels as if I was barely grown up when I first met John Briggs.
“The AFME didn’t want you giving interviews about the CFC or publicly talking about anything relating to Dover until the CFC was set up and you were finished with your training,” Benton goes on. “That’s kept you out of the limelight for quite a while. I’m trying to remember the last time you were on CNN. At least a year ago.”
“And coincidentally, I was supposed to step back into the lime-light tonight. And coincidentally, CNN was canceled. The third time it’s been canceled, as my return here was delayed and delayed.”
“Yes. Coincidentally. A lot of coincidences,” Benton says.
Maybe Briggs has compromised me and done so intentionally. How brilliant it would be to groom me for a bigger job, the biggest job so far, while systematically making me less visible. To silence me. Ultimately, to get rid of me. The idea of it is shocking. I don’t believe it.
“Whose coincidences, that’s what you would need to know,” Benton then says. “And I’m not stating as fact that Briggs did anything Machiavellian. He’s not the entire Pentagon. He’s just one gear in a very big machine.”
“I know how much you dislike him.”
“It’s the machine I don’t like. It’s always going to be there. Just make sure you understand it so you don’t get
