Kay Scarpet - The Last Precinct Part 33

"Marino's bringing it over." I finish kneading one portion of dough and wrap it tightly in plastic. "It was in Benton's briefcase in Philadelphia." I explain to them what Anna told me in her letter and Lucy helps clarify at least one point. She feels certain she mentioned the philosophy of The Last Precinct to Benton. She seems to recall that she was in the car with him one day and was asking him about the private consulting he had begun doing in his retirement. He told her it was going all right but it was difficult handling the logistics of running his own business, that he missed having a secretary and someone else answering the phone, that sort of thing. Lucy wistfully replied that maybe all of us ought to get together and form our own company. That was when she used the term The Last Precinctsort of "a league of our own," she says she told him.

I spread clean, dry dish toweJs over the countertop. "Did he have any idea you might be serious about really doing that some day?" I ask.

"I told him if I ever got enough money, I was going to quit working for the f.u.c.king government," Lucy replies.

"Well." I fit thinning rollers in the pasta machine and set them at the largest opening. "Anybody who knows you would figure it was only a matter of time before you made money doing something. Benton always said you were too much a maverick to last in a bureaucracy forever. He wouldn't be the least bit surprised over what's happening to you now, Lucy."

"In fact, it had already started happening to you from the start," McGovern points out to my niece. "Which is why you didn't last with the FBI."

Lucy isn't insulted. She has at least accepted that she made mistakes early on, the worst one being her affair with Carrie Grethen. She no longer blames the FBI for backing away from her until she finally quit. I flatten a piece of dough with my palm and crank it through the machine. "I'm wondering if Benton used your concept as the name of his mysterious file because he somehow knew The Last Precinctmeaning us would investigate his case some day," I offer. "That we are where he would end up, because whatever was begun with those hara.s.sing letters and all the rest of it wasn't going to stop, even with his death." I turn the dough back through the machine again and again until I have a perfect strip of pasta to lay flat over a towel. "He knew. Somehow he did."

"Somehow he always knew everything." Lucy's face is touched by deep sadness.

Benton is in the kitchen. We feel him as I make Christmas pasta and we talk about the way his mind worked. He was very intuitive. He always thought far ahead of where he was. I can imagine him projecting himself into a future after his death and imagining how we might react to everything, including a file we might find in his briefcase. Benton would know for a fact that if something happened to himand he clearly feared something wouldthen I most certainly would go through his briefcase, which I did. What he may not have antic.i.p.ated was that Marino would go through the briefcase first and remove a file that I would not learn about until now.

By noon, Anna has her car packed for the beach and her kitchen countertops are covered with lasagna noodles. Tomato sauce simmers on the stove. Parmesan reggiano and aged asa-gio cheeses are grated in bowls and fresh mozzarella rests in a towel and surrenders some of its moisture. The house smells like garlic and wood smoke, and Christmas lights glow while smoke drifts out the chimney, and when Marino arrives with all his typical noise and gaucheness he finds more happiness, than he has seen from any of us for a while. He is dressed in jeans and a denim shirt and laden with gifts and a bottle of Virginia Lightning moonshine. I catch the edge of a file folder peeking out from behind wrapped packages in a bag, and my heart skips.

"Ho! Ho! Ho!" he bellows. "Merry f.u.c.king Christmas!" It is his standard holiday line, but his heart isn't into it. I have a feeling he didn't spend the past few hours merely looking for the Tlip file. He has been through it. "I need a drink," he announces to the house.["_Toc37098933"]

CHAPTER 31.

IN THE KITCHEN, I SET THE OVEN AND COOK PASTA. I mix grated cheeses with ricotta and begin layering it and meat sauce between noodles in a deep dish. Anna stuffs dates with cream cheese and fills a bowl with salted nuts while Marino, Lucy and McGovern pour beer and wine or mix whatever holiday potion they want, which in Marino's case is a spicy b.l.o.o.d.y Mary made with his moonshine.

He is in a weird mood and well on his way to getting drunk. The Tlip file is a black hole, still in the bag of presents, ironically under the Christmas tree. Marino knows what's in that file, but I don't ask him. n.o.body does. Lucy begins getting out ingredients for chocolate-chip cookies and two pies one peanut b.u.t.ter, the other key limeas if we are feeding the entire city. McGovern uncorks a Chambertin Grand Cru red burgundy while Anna sets the table, and the file pulls silently and with great force. It is as if all of us have made an unspoken agreement to at least drink a toast and get dinner going before we start talking about murder.

"Anybody else want a b.l.o.o.d.y?" Marino talks loudly and hangs out in the kitchen doing nothing helpful. "Hey, Doc, how 'bout I mix up a pitcher?" He yanks open the refrigerator and grabs a handful of Spicy Hot V8 juices and starts popping open the small cans. I wonder how much Marino had to drink before he got here and the safety comes off my anger. In the first place, I am insulted that he put the file under the tree, as if this is his idea of a tasteless, morbid joke. What is he implying? This is my Christmas present? Or is he so callous it didn't even occur to him that when he rather unceremoniously stuck the bag under the tree the file was still in it? He b.u.mps past me and starts pressing lemon halves into the electric juicer and tosses the rinds in the sink.

"Well, I guess n.o.body's gonna help me so I'll just help myself," he mutters. "Hey!" he calls out as if we aren't in the same room with him. "Anybody think to buy horseradish?"

Anna glances at me. A collective bad mood begins to settle in. The kitchen seems to get darker and chillier, and my anger itches. I am going to fire at Marino any minute, and I am trying so hard to hold back. It is Christmas, I keep telling myself. It is Christmas. Marino grabs a long wooden spoon and makes a big production of stirring his pitcher of b.l.o.o.d.y Marys as he slops in an appalling amount of moonshine.

"Gag." Lucy shakes her head. "At least use Grey Goose."

"Ain't a way in h.e.l.l I'm drinking French vodka." The spoon clacks as he stirs and then taps it on the lip of the pitcher. "French wine, French vodka. Hey. What happened to things Italian?" He exaggerates a New YorkItalian accent. "What happened to the neigh-ba-hood?"

"Nothing Italian about that s.h.i.t you're mixing," Lucy tells him as she gets a beer out of the refrigerator. "You drink all that, Aunt Kay will take you to work with her in the morning. Only you'll be lying down in a bag."

Marino chugs a gla.s.s of his dangerous concoction. "That reminds me," he says to no one in particular. "I die, she ain't cutting on me." As if I am not standing right there. "That's the deal." He pours another gla.s.s, and by now, all of us have stopped what we are doing. We stare at him. 'That's been bothering me for ten f.u.c.king years now." Another swallow. "d.a.m.n, this stuff will warm your toes. I don't want her slamming me around on one of those d.a.m.n steel tables and cutting me up like I'm a fish from the f.u.c.king market. Huh. I got a deal with the girls up front." A reference to my clerks in the front office. "No pa.s.sing my pictures around. Don't think I don't see what goes on up there. They compare d.i.c.k sizes." He chugs half a gla.s.s and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. "I've heard 'em do it. Especially c.l.i.t-ta." He makes a lewd play on Cleta's name.

He starts for the pitcher again and I put out my hand to stop him as my anger rushes forth in an army of harsh words. "That's enough. What the h.e.l.l's gotten into you? How dare you come here drunk and then get drunker. Go sleep it off, Marino. I'm sure Anna can find a spare bed. You're not driving anywhere and none of us care to be subjected to you right now."

He gives me a defiant, mocking stare as he lifts his gla.s.s again. "Least I'm being honest," he retorts. "Rest of you can pretend all you want that it's a good d.a.m.n day because it's f.u.c.king Christmas. Well, so f.u.c.king what? Lucy's quit her job so she don't get fired because she's a smart-a.s.s queer."

"Don't, Marino," Lucy warns him.

"McGovern quit her job, and I dunno what her deal is." Pokes a thumb at her, insinuating she may be of Lucy's same persuasion. "Anna's gotta move outta her own f.u.c.king house because you're here and being investigated for murder, and now you're quitting your job. No small f.u.c.king G.o.dd.a.m.n wonder, and we'll just see if the governor keeps you around. A private consultant. Yeah." He slurs his words and sways in the middle of the kitchen, his face blotchy red. "That'll be the day. So guess who's left? Me, myself and I." He slams the gla.s.s down on the counter and walks out of the kitchen, b.u.mping into a wall, knocking a painting crooked, stumbling into the living room.

"My G.o.d." McGovern quietly lets out a big breath.

"Redneck b.a.s.t.a.r.d," Lucy says.

"The file." Anna stares after him. "That is what is wrong with him."

MARINO is IN A DRUNKEN COMA ON THE LIVING room couch. Nothing stirs him. He does not move, but his snoring alerts us that he is both alive and not aware of what is going on inside Anna's house. The lasagna is cooked and staying warm in the oven, and a key lime pie chills inside the refrigerator. Anna has set out on the eight-hour drive to Hilton Head, despite my protests. I did all I could to encourage her to stay, but she felt she should go on. It is midafternoon. Lucy, McGovern and I have been sitting at the dining room table for hours, place settings moved out of the way, gifts still unopened under the tree, the Tlip file spread out before us.

Benton was meticulous. He sealed each item in clear plastic, and purple stains on some of the letters and envelopes indicate ninhydrin was used to process latent fingerprints. The postmarks are Manhattan, all with the same first three digits of a zip code, 100. It is not possible to know which branch posted the letters. All a three-digit prefix indicates is which city and that the mail wasn't processed through a home or business postage meter machine or at some rural station. In those instances, the postmark would be five digits.

There is a table of contents in the front of the Tlip file and it lists a total of sixty-three items dating from the spring of 1996 (about six months before Benton wrote the letter he wanted delivered to me after his death) to the fall of 1998 (mere days before Carrie Grethen escaped from Kirby). The first item is labeled Exhibit 1, as if it is physical evidence for a jury to see. It is a letter posted in New York on May 15, 1996, unsigned and computer-printed in an ornate, hard-to-read WordPerfect font that Lucy identifies as "Ransom."

Dear Benton, I'm the president of the Ugly Fan Club and you've been picked to he an honorary member! Guess what? Members get to be ugly for free! Aren 't you excited? More later...

This was followed by five more letters, all within weeks of each other, all making the same references to an Ugly Fan Club and Benton's becoming the newest member. The paper was plain, same Ransom font, no signature, same New York zip code, clearly the same author for all. And a very clever one until this person mailed the sixth letter and made a mistake, a rather obvious one to the investigative eye, which is why I am baffled that Benton didn't seem to catch it. On the back of the plain white envelope are writing impressions that are noticeable when I tilt the envelope and catch light at different angles.

I get a pair of latex gloves out of my satchel and put them on as I wander into the kitchen to find a flashlight. Anna keeps one on the counter by the toaster. Back in the dining room, I slip the envelope out of its plastic cover, hold it up by the corners and shine the flashlight on the paper obliquely. I catch the shadow of the indented word Postmaster and it becomes instantly clear to me what the author of this letter did.

"Franklin D.," I make out more words. "Is there a Franklin D. Roosevelt post office in New York? Because this definitely says N-Y, N-Y."

"Yes. The one in my neighborhood," McGovern says, her eyes getting wide. She comes over to my side of the table to get a closer look.

"I've had cases where people try to create alibis," I say, shining the light from different angles. "An obvious, shopworn one is you were in a different, very distant location at the time of the murder and therefore couldn't have done it. An easy way to do that is have mail posted from some remote location at or around the time the murder happens, thereby making it seem the killer couldn't be you because you can't be in two places at once."

"Third Avenue," McGovern says. "That's where the FDR post office is."

"We've got part of a street address; some of it's obliterated by the flap. Nine-something. Three A-V. Yes, Third Avenue. What you do is address the letter, put on the appropriate postage, then enclose it in another envelope addressed to the postmaster of whatever post office you want your letter mailed from. The postmaster is obliged to mail your letter for you, postmarked in that city. So what this person did was tuck this letter inside another envelope, and when he addressed that outer envelope, the impressions of what he wrote were left on the envelope underneath."

Lucy has come behind me, too, and is leaning close to see. "Susan Pless's neighborhood," she says.

Not only that, but the letter, which is by far the most vile, is dated December 5, 1997the same day Susan Pless was murdered: Hey Benton, How are you, soon-to-be-ugly boy. Just wondering Got any idea what it's like to look in the mirror and want to commit suicide? No? Will soon. Wiiiilllll soooonnnn. Gonna carve you up like a Christmas turkey and same goes for the Chief c.u.n.t you screw when you got time off from trying to figure out people like me & you. Can't tell you how much l'm-a-gonna (to quote Southerners) like using my big blade to open her seams. Quid pro quo, right? When you gonna learn to mind your own business?

I imagine Benton receiving these sick, crude missives. I imagine him in his room at my house, sitting at the desk with laptop opened and plugged into a modem line, his briefcase nearby, coffee within reach. His notes indicate he determined the font was Ransom and then contemplated the significance. To obtain release by paying a price. To buy back. To deliver from sin, I read his scribbles. I might have been down the hallway in my study or in the kitchen at the very moment he was reading this letter and looking up "ransom" in the dictionary, and he never said a word. Lucy volunteers that Benton wouldn't have wanted to burden me, and nothing helpful would have come from my knowing. I couldn't have done anything about it, she adds.

"Cactus, lilies, tulips." McGovern goes through pages of the file. "So someone was anonymously sending him flower arrangements at Quantico."

I start picking through dozens of message slips that simply have "hang-up" written on them and the date and time. The calls were made to his direct line at the Behavioral Science Unit, all tracing back to out of area on Caller ID, meaning they were probably made on a cell phone. Benton's only observation was pauses on the line before hanging up. McGovern informs us that flower orders were placed with a Lexington Avenue florist that Benton apparently checked out, and Lucy calls directory a.s.sistance to see if that same florist is still in business. It is.

"He makes a note here about payment." It is so hard for me to look at Benton's small, snarled penmanship. "Mail. The orders were placed by mail. Cash, he has the word 'cash.' So it sounds like the person sent cash and a written order." I flip back to the table of contents. Sure enough, exhibits fifty-one through fifty-five are the actual orders received by the florist. I turn to those pages. "Computer-generated and unsigned. One small arrangement of tulips for twenty-five dollars with instructions to send it to Benton's Quantico address. One small cactus for twenty-five dollars, and so on, envelopes postmarked New York."

"Probably the same thing," Lucy says. "They were mailed through the New York postmaster. Question is, where were they mailed from originally?"

We can't know that without the outer envelopes, which certainly would have been tossed into the trash the instant post office employees opened them. Even if we had those envelopes, it is highly unlikely the sender wrote out his return address. The most we could have hoped for was a postmark.

"Guess the florist just a.s.sumed he was dealing with some nutcase who doesn't believe in charge cards," McGovern comments. "Or someone having an affair."

"Or an inmate." I am, of course, thinking of Carrie Grethen. I can imagine her sending out communications from Kirby. By slipping the letters in an outer envelope addressed to a postmaster, at the very least she prevented the hospital staff from seeing who she was sending the letters to, whether it was to a florist or to Benton directly. Using a New York post office makes sense, too. She would have had access to various office branches through the telephone directory, and in my gut I don't think Carrie was concerned about anyone's supposing the mail originated in the same city where she was incarcerated. She simply didn't want to alert Kirby staff, and she was also the most manipulative person on this planet. Everything she did had its reason. She was just as busy profiling Benton as he was her.

"If it's Carrie," McGovern somberly remarks, "then you do have to wonder if she in any form or fashion was at least privy to Chandonne and his killings."

"She would get off on it," I reply with anger as I push back from the table. "And she would know d.a.m.n well that by writing a letter to Benton dated the same day as Susan's murder, it would send him through the ceiling. He'd make that connection, all right."

"And picking a post office located in Susan's neighborhood," Lucy adds.

We speculate, postulate and go on until late afternoon, when we decide it is time for Christmas dinner. After rousing Marino, we tell him what we have discovered and continue to talk as we eat greens, sweet onions and tomatoes drenched in sweet red vinegar and cold-pressed olive oil. Marino shovels in food as if he hasn't eaten in days, stuffing lasagna into his mouth while we debate and speculate and beg the question: If Carrie Grethen was the person hara.s.sing Benton and she had some link to the Chandonne family, was Benton's murder more than a simple act of psychopathy? Was his slaying an organized crime hit disguised to seem personal, senseless, deranged, with Carrie the lieutenant who was more than eager to carry it out?

"In other words," Marino says to me with his mouth full, "was his death like what you're accused of."

The table falls silent. None of us quite get his meaning, but then I do. "You're saying, if there was a real motive for his murder but it was disguised to look like a serial killing?"

He shrugs. "Just like you being accused of murdering Bray and disguising it to look like Wolfman did it."

"Maybe why Interpol got so hot and bothered," Lucy considers.

Marino helps himself to excellent French wine he gulps down like Gatorade. "Yeah, Interpol. Maybe Benton got all tangled up with the cartel somehow and..."

"Because of Chandonne," I interrupt as my focus sharpens and I think I am on the trail that might just lead to the truth.

Jaime Berger has been our uninvited Christmas guest. She has shaded my thoughts all afternoon. I can't stop thinking about one of the first things she asked when we met in my conference room. She wanted to know if anyone had profiled Chandonne's Richmond murders. She was so quick to bring that up and so clearly believes profiling is important. Certainly, she would have had someone profile Susan Pless's murder and I am increasingly suspicious that Benton very well may have known about that case.

I get up from the table. "Please be home," I say out loud to Berger, and I experience a growing sense of desperation as I dig in my satchel for her business card. On it is her home number and I call from Anna's kitchen where no one can hear what I say. A part of me is embarra.s.sed. I am also frightened and mad. If I am wrong, I will sound foolish. If I am right, then she should have been more open with me, d.a.m.n it, d.a.m.n her.

"h.e.l.lo?" A woman answers.

"Ms. Berger?" I say.

"Hold on." The person calls out, "Mom! For you!"

The minute Berger gets on the line I say, "What else don't I know about you? Because it's becoming patently clear that I don't know much."

"Oh, Jill." She must mean the person who answered the phone. "Actually, they're from Greg's first marriage. Two teenagers. And today I'd sell them to the first bidder. h.e.l.l, I'd pay someone to take them.

"No, you wouldn't!" Jill says in the background and laughs.

"Let me get to a quieter spot." Berger talks as she moves into some other area of wherever it is she lives with a husband and two children she has never mentioned to me, even after all the hours we spent together. My resentment simmers. "What's up, Kay?"

"Did you know Benton?" I ask her straight up.

Nothing.

"Are you there?" I speak again.

"I'm here," she says and her tone has gotten quiet and serious. "I'm thinking how best to answer you...."

"Why not start with the truth. For once."

"I've always told you the truth," she replies.

"That's ridiculous. I've heard even the best of you lie when you're trying to manipulate someone. Suggesting lie detectors, or the big needle truth serum to get people to 'fess up, and there's also such a thing as lying by omission. The whole truth. I demand it. For G.o.d's sake, did Benton have something to do with the Susan Pless case?"

"Yes," Berger replies. "Absolutely yes, Kay."

"Talk to me, Ms. Berger. I've just spent the entire afternoon going through letters and other weird things he received before he was murdered. They were processed in the post office located in Susan's neighborhood."

A pause. "I'd met Benton numerous times and my office has certainly availed itself of the services the behavioral science unit has to offer. Back then, at least. We actually have a forensic psychiatrist we use now, someone here in New York. I'd worked with Benton on other cases over the years, that's my point. And the minute I learned about Susan's murder and went to the scene, I called him and got him up here. We went through her apartment, just as you and I went through the Richmond crime scenes."

"Did he ever indicate to you that he was getting strange mail and phone calls and other things? And that just possibly there was a connection between whoever was doing it and whoever murdered Susan Pless?

"I see," is all she says.

"See? What the h.e.l.l do you see?"

"I see you know," she answers me. "Question is, how?"

I tell her about the Tlip file. I inform her that it appears Benton had the doc.u.ments checked for fingerprints and I am wondering who did that and where and what the results might have been. She has no idea but says we should run any latent prints through the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, known as AFIS. "There are postage stamps on the envelopes," I inform her. "He didn't remove them and he would have had to if he wanted them checked for DNA."

It has only been in recent years that DNA a.n.a.lysis has become sophisticated enough, because of PCR, to make it worthwhile to a.n.a.lyze saliva, and just maybe whoever affixed postage stamps to the envelopes did so by licking them. I am not sure that even Carrie would have known back then that licking a stamp might give up her ident.i.ty to us. I would have known. Had Benton showed these letters to me, I would have recommended he have the stamps examined. Maybe we would have gotten results. Maybe he wouldn't be dead.

"Back then a lot of people, even those in law enforcement, just didn't think about things like that." Berger is still talking about the postage stamps. "Seems like all cops do these days is follow people for their coffee cups or sweaty towels, Kleenex, cigarette b.u.t.ts. Amazing."

1 have an incredible thought. What she is saying has brought to mind a case in England where a man was falsely accused of a burglary because of a cold hit on the Birmingham-based National DNA Database. The man's solicitor demanded a retest of the DNA recovered from the crime, this time using ten loci, or locations, instead of the standard six that had been used. Loci, or alleles, are simply specific locations on your genetic map. Some alleles are more common than others, so the less common they are and the more locations used, the better your chances for a matchwhich isn't literally a match, but rather a statistical probability that makes it almost impossible to believe the suspect didn't commit the crime. In the British case, the alleged burglar was excluded upon retesting with additional loci. There was a one-in-thirty-seven-million chance of a mismatch, and sure enough, it happened.

"When you tested the DNA from Susan's case, did you use STR?" I ask Berger.

STR is the newest technology in DNA profiling. All it means is we amplify the DNA with PCR and look at very discriminating repeated base pairs called Short Tandem Repeats. Typically, the requirement for DNA databases these days is that at least thirteen probes or loci be used, thus making it highly improbable that there will be any mismatches.

"I know our labs are very advanced," Berger is saying. "They've been doing PCR for years."

"It's all PCR unless the lab is still doing the old RFLP, which is very reliable but just takes forever," I reply. "In 1997, it was a matter of how many probes you usedor loci. Often in first screening of a sample, the lab may not do ten, thirteen or fifteen loci. That gets to be expensive. If only four loci were done in Susan's case, for example, you could come up with an unusual exception. I'm a.s.suming the ME's office still has the extraction left in their freezer."

"What sort of bizarre exception?"

"If we're dealing with siblings. Brothers. And one left the seminal fluid and the other left the hair and saliva."

"But you tested Thomas's DNA, right? And it was similar to Jean-Baptiste's but not the same?" I can't believe it. Berger is getting agitated.

"We also did that just days ago with thirteen loci, not four or six," I reply. "I'm a.s.suming the profiles had a lot of the same alleles, but also some different ones. The more probes you do, the more you come up with differences. Especially in closed populations. And when you think of the Chandonne family, theirs is probably a very closed population, people who have lived on Ile Saint-Louis for hundreds of years, probably married their own kind. In some cases, inbreedingmarrying cousins, which might also account for Jean-Baptiste Chandonne's congenital deformity. The more people inbreed, the more they up their chances for genetic glitches.

"We need to retest the seminal fluid from Susan's case," Berger decides.

"Your labs would do that anyway, since he's up on murder charges," I reply. "But you might want to encourage them to make it a priority."

"G.o.d, let's hope it doesn't turn out to be someone else," she says in frustration. "Jesus, that would be awful if the DNA doesn't match when they do the retest. Talk about really s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up my case."

She is right. It certainly would. Even Berger might have a hard time making a jury believe that Chandonne killed Susan if his DNA doesn't match the DNA of the seminal fluid recovered from her body.