The Bone Bed

thirty-eight

I WANT PASTA OR PIZZA AND HAVE ASKED BENTON TO stop on his way home, which won’t be anytime soon, he warned me, when we were leaving the CFC separately.

Both of us alone. Prepossessed and preoccupied. Off to where we need to go, and that is the sum of us individually and together. I know full well when something isn’t important to anyone but me.

Food,” I told my husband, as I was driving alone out of my parking lot. “God, I’m hungry. I’m starved,” I said on my way to handle what no one else can be bothered with, and I check my rearview mirror again and the dark blue Ford LTD is right behind me.

I follow the Charles River as it bends and snakes, curving like the corridors in my building, taking me where I’ve begun and ended, where I’ve been and will go, past the DeWolfe Boathouse again, past the Morse School playground again, heading in the direction of Howard Roth’s neighborhood again, on my way to Fayth House. The dark blue Ford is on my bumper, and I see the face with dark glasses in my rearview mirror.

Watching me, daring me. Brazenly following me.

Food and wine,” I told Benton over the phone a little while ago, when I didn’t know this would happen, and I’m shocked.

I’m incensed and disbelieving, and at the same time not sure why I’m surprised.

We will eat together, be together, all of us,” I said, alone and hungry and beginning to feel worn down by it all, a single question burning on the dark horizon of my dark thoughts.

I watch the car behind me, my heart turning hard like something vital dying and petrifying into my own bone bed of emotion. Now you’ve gone too far, I think. You’ve really gone too far, and I imagine dinner with Lucy, Benton, Marino. I’m hungry and angry and want to be with people I care about, and I’ve had enough, because it’s too much now. I turn right on River Street, and Douglas Burke turns, too, her dark glasses staring.

I pull into the parking lot of the Rite Aid at the intersection of Blackstone and River Streets, letting her know I’m aware that she’s been on my tail for the past ten minutes and I’m not going to be harassed by her and I’m not afraid of her, either. I roll down the window of my SUV, and we are driver’s door to driver’s door like two cops, like comrades, which we’re certainly not.

We’re enemies, and she’s openly letting me know it.

What is it, Douglas?” I’ve never been able to call her Doug or Dougie.

It’s all I can do to call her anything.

I wasn’t going to say this in front of them.” Her glasses are dark green or black, and the sun is low, the old low buildings of Cambridge casting long shadows, a low late-afternoon well on its way to the lowest time of the year around here, a New England brutal winter.

Out of professional respect, I didn’t bring it up with them in the room,” she says.

In front of them?” I ask, and she has no professional respect for anyone, least of all for me.

Her dark glasses stare.

You mean in front of Benton,” I assume.

I know about your niece.” She pushes those words out like animals shoved, herded, moved with aggression.

I don’t answer her.

Exploiting vulnerabilities in websites, harvesting information.” She talks snidely, as if she’s convinced she knows how to hurt me. “I love the way hackers describe what they do. Which in your niece’s case is nothing short of a brute-force attack on whatever server she’s interested in for the express purpose of obstructing justice.”

‘A brute-force attack’? I wonder who’s really doing that.” I look at her.

She points two fingers at her dark masked eyes and then points at me.

I’m watching,” she says dramatically. “Tell Lucy she’s not so damn smart after all, and you’re a co-conspirator to go along with her stunts, and for what? So she can find out something five minutes before we do? Before the FBI does? Because she’s jealous.”

Lucy’s not the sort to get jealous.” I sound perfectly reasonable. “But I think you might be.”

I’m sure it must be awful to be fired by the very thing you’re constantly surrounded by.”

Yes, that must be awful,” I say pointedly, because Douglas Burke is constantly surrounded by Benton and reminders of him, and she’s fired.

She’s fired as his partner and he wants her transferred to some distant place, and he may be suggesting more than that behind the scenes. Special Agent Douglas Burke isn’t fit to serve. She shouldn’t be carrying a gun or arresting anyone, and I advise her as diplomatically as I possibly can that it might not be wise for her to engage Lucy. It would not be prudent to simply show up on my niece’s property or to drop by unannounced or to follow her the way she’s just followed me.

You know her history, so I think you understand what I mean,” I say to Burke, who likely is aware of every firearm Lucy owns, every handgun and large-capacity weapon she has registered in Massachusetts and she has a license to carry.

Are you threatening me?” She smiles, and that is when I am certain that she is profoundly unstable and unwell and possibly violent.

It’s not my style to threaten people,” I tell her, and now I’m very concerned.

I’m not afraid to solve this case, you know,” she then says. “Unlike others, it seems. I’m not afraid, and I can’t be bribed.”

I’m concerned about her, about her safety. I’m concerned about other people, too.

I’m not intimidated or influenced by someone’s political connections or money,” she says, “not in bed with federal judges and U.S. attorneys, not stupid enough to believe that someone in jail doesn’t have people on the outside doing his bidding. A small price to pay. Locked up half a year in exchange for getting rid of the wife you’ve grown to hate.”

And you know that. You know he hated her? Where did you get that?” I stop myself from arguing with someone who can’t possibly be logical.

I just want to know why you’re protecting him. It’s obvious why you’d protect your niece, but why Channing Lott?”

You need to stop this,” I reply, because she is beyond being reasoned with.

What has he promised you?”

You need to stop this before it goes any further.”

He came to see you,” she says. “Now, isn’t that just perfect. What else did he say to you, Kay? The missing dog? How scared his wife was and on and on, pleading his case with you while your niece is crashing through firewalls and you’re trying to run me out of town, trying to ruin me? And you think you can?”

I don’t want you to ruin yourself.”

I warn her she’s going to have a serious problem if she continues to follow me, continues to make inflammatory and accusatory statements, that I’m the one feeling threatened.

You need to go back to your field office,” I say to her, because I have a strong feeling about what she intends to do, and I remember every word Benton said about her and the way she used to act around Lucy, and at the same time I know better.

It isn’t just pseudoephedrine, whatever drugs she’s on. It’s what Douglas Burke has to prove, and she’s not going to listen because she can’t.

He’s so much better off with me.” She means Benton is.

The ultimate case Douglas Burke must solve in her life isn’t a bank robbery or serial murders but the crime of her own existence. I don’t know what happened to her, probably when she was a child. I also don’t care.

He knows it, too,” she says to me, through the open window of her Bureau car. “It’s a shame you don’t want what’s best for him. Trying to sabotage me isn’t going to help your pathetic excuse for a marriage, Kay.”

Go back to your office and talk to someone.” I am careful not to sound provocative. “Tell someone what you just told me, share the information, maybe with your SAC, with Jim.” I say it clinically, dispassionately, almost kindly. “You need to talk to someone.”

She needs help, and she’s not going to get it, and I have a strong feeling about what she’s going to do, and when I drive away toward mid-Cambridge, I let Benton know.

I think she intends to confront Channing Lott.” I leave him a voicemail because he’s not answering his phone. “She’s over the edge, and someone needs to intervene. Someone needs to stop her immediately to protect her from herself.”

I pull into a Starbucks to get a coffee, a double shot, black, as if that will help me collect my thoughts, as if caffeine will calm me, and I sit in my car for a few minutes and try Benton again. Next I text him, making sure he somehow gets the message that he needs to intervene without delay before Douglas Burke does something foolish, dangerous, possibly irreparable. She’s unstable and obsessed and armed. I drop my unfinished coffee in the trash and drive off, wondering if I should warn Lucy and decide against it. I’m not sure what she might do.

It is dark, the sun below a blackened horizon when I reach Fayth House, a brick complex, tidy and relatively modern, with deliberately placed flowerbeds and trees. A silver SUV is pulling out as I turn in, leaving very few cars in the parking lot, and I suspect most of the residents in the retirement community don’t drive. I walk inside a pleasant lobby with blue carpet and blue furniture and silk flowers, and Americana prints and posters on the walls that remind me of Peggy Stanton’s checks.

The receptionist is a stout woman with frizzy brown hair and thick glasses, and I ask her who’s in charge.

Which resident are you here to see?” she says, with a cheerful smile.

I ask her if there is a director. I realize it’s after hours, but is there someone in administration I can talk to? It’s important, I let her know.

I don’t believe Mrs. Hoyt has left yet. She had a late meeting.” The receptionist picks up the phone to make sure, and I notice a fall arrangement of fresh flowers on a table behind her, burgundy Asiatic lilies, purple lisianthus, orange roses, and yellow oak leaves.

A floral delivery with no card. Someone, possibly the receptionist, has taped to the vase a piece of paper from a Fayth House memo pad, a name with a room number written on it that I can’t make out from where I stand. But I recognize It’s her Bday written in large print and underlined.

Cindy? There’s someone here to see you? I’m sorry,” the receptionist says to me. “What’s your name?”

I’m directed to an office at the end of a long hallway that takes me past a brightly decorated dining room where residents are finishing dinner, some of them in wheelchairs, a lot of walkers and canes by the tables. The beauty salon is closed for the night, and an elderly man is playing the piano in a music room, and a cleaning cart is parked outside the library. I notice boxes of commercial trash-can liners, a hundred to a carton, the same brand I found inside Howard Roth’s house.

I walk on to the administrative offices and knock on the open door of the one at the end where Mrs. Hoyt, young and very pregnant, is putting on her coat. I introduce myself and shake her hand and she seems puzzled.

Yes, I recognized the name when Betty just told me,” she says. “Do you have family here? I saw you on the news yesterday. That huge turtle on the fireboat and then the poor woman. What can I help you with? Do you have family here?” she again asks. “I would think I would know.”

She sits down at the desk with her coat on.

Or maybe you’re considering Fayth House for someone?”

I take a chair across from her and reply that my mother lives in Miami and is stubborn about leaving her house even though she probably shouldn’t be on her own anymore. What a lovely place this is, I say.

I’m wondering if you know who Howard Roth is,” I begin. “He was local and lived just a few blocks from here. He did odd jobs, was a handyman off and on.”

Yes.” She opens a bottle of water and pours some in a coffee cup. “He was nice enough, with some problems, though, and I heard about what happened. That he fell down his stairs. Very sad; his life was tragic.” She looks at me as if to say she doesn’t understand.

She can’t imagine why I’m here about him.

I ask her about volunteers and if they might include a Cambridge woman named Peggy Stanton.

I don’t know what happened,” Mrs. Hoyt replies. “She just stopped coming. Why do you ask?”

Then you knew her?”

She looks at me, baffled, and of course she has no reason to be aware that Peggy Stanton is dead.

Okay,” she says, and she’s starting to get upset. “Please don’t tell me . . .”

For a moment she looks as if she might cry.

Well, what a lovely woman. You wouldn’t be here if it was nothing,” she says.

When was the last time you saw her?” I ask.

I don’t recall exactly.” She nervously types on her keyboard. “I can check. It’s easy enough to take a look at our volunteer schedule. We have such a wonderful group of people who make the lives of the residents so much better, people who bring joy and hope where there wouldn’t be any for so many of them. I’m sorry. I’m talking too much. I’m just a little flustered.”

She asks me what happened, and I tell her Peggy Stanton is deceased. We plan to release the information to the media first thing in the morning, but a body has been positively identified as hers.

Good God, what a shame. Oh, Lord,” she says. “Dear God. How awful. Well, I thought it was the spring, and I’m right. This is terribly upsetting. When the residents know, they’ll be heartbroken. She was so popular, had been helping out here for many years.”

The last time Peggy Stanton was here was the night she vanished, April twenty-seventh, a Friday, when she ate dinner with a group she was working with, a collage that night, the residential administrator explains.

It was a true passion with her,” she says. “Teaching arts and crafts, working with your hands. Peggy was just very involved in improving self-esteem, reducing anxiety and depression in seniors, and when you actually shape something with your bare hands and watch it evolve into a work of art? There just isn’t better therapy,” she adds, and she describes Peggy Stanton as a fine woman shattered by personal devastation, by unimaginable loss.

She had a healing touch, you might say. Maybe because of what she’d been through in her own life. She was just starting the residents on pottery,” she explains. “But then she didn’t come back.”

She assumed Peggy Stanton had gone to Florida, perhaps to her lake cottage in the Chicago area.

I wasn’t concerned, just a bit disappointed, as we’d been investigating kilns,” she says, and I think of Peggy Stanton’s basement, of work recently done and of the unusual tools on the table down there.

Not for baking but for pottery, and I ask her if Peggy Stanton might have been thinking about installing a kiln in the basement of her home and if she might have hired Howard Roth on occasion to do an odd job or two. Very possibly, she says, but she can’t be sure, and she offers to give me a tour of Fayth House.

I’ve held you up enough,” I reply, and I thank her as a chime sounds on my phone.

A text message from Lucy.

Who is Jasmine? I read, as I’m leaving.

Mildred Lott’s missing dog that turned up later, I text her back in the dark, returning to my SUV, which is next to another SUV that wasn’t parked there earlier.

A silver Jeep Cherokee with a silver mesh grille right next to me when the whole damn parking lot is practically empty, and I get an eerie feeling, a sensation that flutters.

Missing??? Then why’s she outside at night calling it?

About to get in the car & will call, I reply.

The silver Jeep Cherokee that passed me a little while ago when I first got here, it occurs to me. The same one I saw earlier in my own parking lot or one just like it. I point my key to unlock my SUV while part of me wants to run, and another text chimes.

Jasmine! Jasmine! Where are you? Come!