Benton touches a button in the center console and my window hums down, and I look out into the foggy night, watching an agent materialize in black tactical clothes, his carbine across his waist, his index finger ready above the trigger guard. If he didn’t know whose car this is, he will have run the tag while we’ve been sitting here. He’s not aggressive but he’s not relaxed.
His unsmiling face is in my open window, young, with a buzz cut, nice-looking and lean like all of them, what Lucy calls Stepford Cops, automatons identically programmed and physically crafted, and she would know since she used to be one of them. Federal agents whose polish, power, and camera-ready presence make America look great, she says.
It’s all too easy to hero-worship and emulate and my niece couldn’t have been more enamored when she started out with them as an intern while still in college. There’s nothing more impressive and sexier than the FBI, she’ll tell you now, until you run head-on into their lack of practical experience and absence of checks and balances. Until you are confronted by an Ed Granby, who answers to Washington, I think, and I’m no friendlier than the agent when I inform him who I am and that I’m clearing the scene.
I don’t offer my credentials with its shield. I’ll make him ask and he looks past me at Benton, who says nothing and ignores him, and all of it has the intended effect. Uncertainty twitches on the agent’s face as he recognizes an impatient authority that has no fear of him and then something else is there. The agent smiles and I sense his aggression just before he puts Benton in his place.
“How you doing tonight, Mr. Wesley?” He rests an arm along the length of the carbine strapped around his shoulder, crouching down lower. “Nobody said you were still here but I figured you wouldn’t just leave a car like this and catch a ride with someone.”
“I wouldn’t,” Benton says with complete indifference to what the agent is implying.
His expensive sports car was noticed and maybe it was a given that we were still on the grounds and looking around but we’re inconsequential. We aren’t part of the huge machinery and nobody cares. We aren’t a threat and maybe even Granby doesn’t think we are and then a second agent appears from around the side of the van I can’t see from where I am, a pretty woman in fatigues with her hair in a ponytail pulled through the back of her baseball cap. She moves close to her colleague and smiles at me.
“How’s everybody doing?” she says as if it’s a fine evening.
“The weapon you’re looking for may have come from the big barn.” I look back in the direction of it but from here it’s out of sight around a bend in the driveway. “A knife used on horse hooves, a long wooden handle with a very sharp blade that’s hooked at the end.”
“The murder weapon might be in the barn?” The male agent doesn’t take his eyes off us.
“One would think he didn’t run into the barn after killing three people and return the knife.” I say it blandly. “But I would expect you’d find other hoof knives and it’s quite possible he was in there earlier. That’s the important point. You might want to pass that on to your evidence response team.”
“What are you basing this on?” the female agent asks, more curious than concerned.
“The injuries to the victims’ necks are consistent with the knife I described and unless he brought one with him to the scene he got it from the property. I don’t know what else could have caused the incisions I saw.”
“You’re sure it’s a certain type of knife?” she asks as if it matters to her and I can tell it doesn’t.
“I am.”
“So we shouldn’t be looking for a variety of knives like kitchen knives.”
“It would be a waste of your time and unnecessarily burden the labs.”
“I’ll make sure we take a look.” The male agent removes his hand from the window frame and backs away from the car. “You folks have a nice Christmas.”
The two of them move sawhorses to the side and we drive through, in first gear, then second, and Benton guns the powerful engine before shifting into third, his way of saying fuck you. It’s as close as he can get to saying it and it occurs to me that Granby may have said it first. He may be saying it to us right now.
As I reach Lucy on my cell phone I’m already uneasy about what Ed Granby may have put into place. I feel a spike of paranoia and my thoughts begin to race.
It’s more than possible if not a certainty he knows we’ve been here unauthorized for the past hour and he did nothing about it because he’s secretive and calculating. He’s a consummate politician and wouldn’t want to give the appearance that he escorted the chief medical examiner of Massachusetts from the scene of a triple homicide that’s all over the news.
He would look dirty and as if he’s hiding something. He would look exactly like what he is. And while he wouldn’t have hesitated to have Benton escorted off the grounds, Granby isn’t stupid. He’d be sneakier than that with me. He’d hold off having his evidence response team or any other agents swarm Double S until Benton and I were gone and suddenly my electronic communications don’t seem safe. Nothing does.
“We’re just leaving and I’ll make this succinct.” It’s my way of letting Lucy know I intend to be careful about what I say.
“Sure,” she answers.
“I don’t know when we’ll be home and I’m worried about Sock.” She knows I’m getting to something else because Janet picked up my dog around five when our housekeeper Rosa left and Lucy’s already assured me of that.
“He’s fine and by the way Rosa said if you’re not going to put up a tree, she will. That’s assuming Bryce doesn’t barge in and do it first.”
“I’m going to take care of it,” I reply.
“And Sock can’t go home tonight.”
What she’s saying is I can’t and Benton shouldn’t either. The killer has been on our property before and we can’t predict how deranged he is but he’s deranged enough. Right now Sock is probably napping at Lucy’s house, which isn’t far from here, and I wish there were time to drop by. I wish life were settled and safe enough to have a nice late supper with my family and my dog.
“Who’s still at the office?” I ask.
“Bryce, security, me. Marino’s out with Machado. The docs are done and have left.”
“Anne’s gone home?”
“She and Luke went to get something to eat and I don’t know where she’ll go after that but both of them said they’ll come back in if you need them.”
I’ve had my suspicions Anne might be sleeping with the handsome, womanizing Luke Zenner. I don’t care but it won’t last and that’s fine as long as she doesn’t care either.
“It won’t be necessary,” I reply, “but let them know they need to be very careful. There’s reason to be concerned about the stability of the person the FBI is looking for.”
“I guess so since he murdered four people in a twelve-hour period and no telling what’s next.”
“Are you okay?” I’m asking about what she’s doing, which is going through Double S’s server. “Any inquiries about location or status?”
“Roger that.”
The FBI knows we have the server and the CFC has been contacted.
“The usual paperwork that will take a little while,” Lucy adds.
She’s stalled them.
“But I couldn’t be better.” She continues to follow my cue, saying nothing obvious or direct.
“When I get there I’ll go straight into the PIT if it’s been set up.”