Benton doesn’t say anything as he speeds up, the snowflakes small again and sounding like grit hitting the car.
“Mrs. Donahue’s also clearly misunderstood Jack’s medical opinion.” I talk with conviction as another part of me won’t stop worrying about how I should handle her. I consider doing what Benton said and not calling her. I’ll have my administrative assistant, Bryce, contact her instead, first thing in the morning, and say I’m sorry but I’m not able to discuss the Mark Bishop case or any case. It’s important Bryce not give the impression that I’m too busy, that I’m unmoved by Mrs. Donahue’s distress, and that makes me think of PFC Gabriel’s mother again, of the painful things she said to me this morning at Dover. “I assume you’ve reviewed the autopsy report,” I say to Benton.
“Yes.”
“Then you know there is nothing in Jack’s report that mentions a nail gun, only that injuries caused by nails penetrating the brain were the cause of death.” I decide I can’t possibly let Bryce make such a call on my behalf. I’ll do it myself and ask Mrs. Donahue not to contact me again. I’ll emphasize it’s for her own protection. Then I’m filled with doubt, going back and forth on what to do with her, no longer so sure of myself. I’ve always had confidence in my ability to handle devastated people, bereft and enraged people, but I don’t understand what happened this morning. Mrs. Gabriel called me a bigot. No one has ever called me a bigot before.
“A nail gun hasn’t been ruled out by the people who count,” Benton informs me. “Including Jack.”
“I find that almost impossible to believe.”
“He’s been saying it.”
“First I’ve heard of it.”
“He’s been saying it to whoever will listen. I don’t care what’s in his written report, the paperwork you’ve seen,” Benton repeats as he looks in the rearview mirror.
“Why would he say something contrary to lab reports?”
“I’m simply relaying to you what I know for a fact that he’s been saying about a nail gun being the weapon.”
“Saying a nail gun was used is absolutely contrary to scientific and medical fact.” In my sideview mirror I see headlights far behind us. “A nail gun leaves tool marks consistent with a single mechanized blow, similar to a firing-pin impression on a cartridge case. Instead, what we have in this instance are tool marks on nails that are consistent with a handheld hammer, and there were hammer marks on the boy’s scalp and skull and underlying pattern contusions. Nail guns often leave a primer residue similar to gunshot residue, but Mark Bishop’s wounds were negative for lead, for barium. A nail gun wasn’t used, and I’m frankly amazed if what you’re implying is that the police, the prosecutor, believe otherwise.”
“Not hard to understand a number of things people choose to believe in this case,” Benton says, and he’s sped up, driving the speed limit.
I look in my sideview mirror again, and the headlights are much closer. Bright bluish-white lights blaze in my sideview mirror. A large SUV with xenon headlights and fog lamps.
“Wanting to believe that Johnny’s confession is true, as I’ve said,” Benton continues. “Wanting to think that it had to be a blitz attack, that Mark Bishop couldn’t have seen it coming or he would have struggled like hell. No one wants to think a child was held down and knew what was about to happen to him as someone drove nails into his skull with a hammer, for Christ’s sake.”
“He had no defense injuries, no evidence of a struggle, no evidence of being held down. It’s in Jack’s report. I’m sure you’ve seen it, and I’m sure he explained all this to the prosecutor, to the police.”
“I wish you’d done the damn autopsy.” Benton cuts his eyes to his mirrors.
“What exactly has Jack been saying beyond what I’ve read in his paperwork? Besides the possibility of a nail gun.”
Benton doesn’t answer me.
“Maybe you don’t know,” I then say, but I believe he does.
“He said he couldn’t rule out a nail gun,” Benton replies. “He said it isn’t possible to tell definitively. He said this after he was asked because of what Johnny claimed in his confession. Jack was specifically and directly asked if a nail gun could have been used.”
“The answer’s definitively no.”
“He would debate that with you. He said it isn’t possible to tell definitively in this case. He said it’s possible it was a nail gun.”
“I’m telling you it’s not possible, and it is possible to tell definitively,” I reply. “And this is the first I’ve heard about a nail gun except for what’s been on the Internet, which I have dismissed, since I dismiss most things in the news unless I am certain of the sources.”
“He suggested if you pressed a nail gun against someone’s head, you’d get what’s similar to the muzzle mark made by a contact gunshot wound. And it’s possible that’s what we’re seeing on the scalp and underlying tissue. And that’s why there’s no evidence of a struggle or that the boy knew what was happening.”
“You wouldn’t get a muzzle mark similar to a contact gunshot wound, and it’s not possible,” I reply. “The injuries I saw in photographs are hammer marks, and just because there was no evidence of a struggle doesn’t mean the boy wasn’t somehow coerced or coaxed or manipulated into cooperating. It sounds to me as if certain parties are choosing to ignore the facts of the case because of what they want to believe. That’s extremely dangerous.”
“I think Fielding is the one who might be ignoring the facts of the case. Maybe intentionally.”
“Good God, Benton. He might be a lot of things…”
“Or it’s negligence. It’s one or the other,” Benton says, and he has something in mind, I believe he does. “Listen. You did the best you could these past six months.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I know what it means. It means exactly what I’ve feared every single day that I’ve been gone.
“Remember when he was your fellow in the dark ages, in Richmond?” Benton is getting close to an area that is off-limits, even though he couldn’t possibly know it. “From day one, he couldn’t stand doing kids, that’s absolutely true, as you’ve pointed out. If a kid was coming in, he’d run like hell, sometimes disappearing days at a time. And you’d drive around, trying to find him, going to his house, his favorite bar, the damn gym or tae kwon do, drinking himself into a stupor or kicking the shit out of someone. Not that any of us like dealing with dead children, for Christ’s sake, but he’s got a real problem.”
I should have encouraged Fielding to go into surgical pathology, to work in a hospital lab, looking at biopsies. Instead, I mentored and encouraged him.
“But he took the Mark Bishop case,” Benton says. “He could have passed him off to one of your other docs. I just hope he didn’t lie; I sure as hell hope he didn’t do that on top of everything else.” But Benton thinks Fielding is lying. I can tell.
“On top of what else?” I ask as I look into my sideview mirror, wondering why Marino is on our bumper.
“I hope someone didn’t encourage him to suggest the possibility of a nail gun even if he knows better.” Benton has a way of looking in his mirrors without moving his head. All his years of undercover work, of watching his back because he really had to. Some habits never die.
“Who?” I ask.
“I don’t know.”
“You sound like you do know. You’re not going to tell me.” It is useless to push him. If he’s not telling me, it’s because he can’t. Twenty years of the dance and it never gets easier.
“The cops want this case solved, that’s for damn sure,” Benton says. “They want a nail gun to be the weapon, because it’s what Johnny has confessed to and because the thought is easier to deal with than a hammer. It concerns me that someone has influenced Jack.”
“Someone has? Or you’re just guessing that someone has.”
“It concerns me that it might be Jack who is influencing people,” Benton says next, and that’s what he really thinks.
“I wish Marino would get off our bumper. He’s blinding me with his damn lights. What’s he doing?”
“It’s not Marino,” Benton says. “His Suburban doesn’t have lights like that, and he has a front plate. This one doesn’t. It’s from out of state, a state that doesn’t require a front plate, or it’s been removed or is covered with
