“Yes.”
“He’s in custody? He’s been arrested? Or you’re just questioning him?”
“We have him, Kay.”
“I suppose it’s best.” I don’t know what else to ask except how Fielding is doing, which Benton doesn’t answer.
I wonder if Fielding had to be placed in a four-point restraint or maybe in a padded room, and I can’t imagine him in captivity. I can’t imagine him in prison. He won’t last. He will bat himself to death against bars like a panicked moth if someone doesn’t kill him first. It also crosses my mind that he is dead. Then it feels he is. The feeling settles numbly, heavily, as if I’ve been given a nerve block.
“We need to head out. I’ll explain as best I can, as best we know. It’s complicated; it’s a lot,” I hear Benton say.
He moves away, no longer touching me, and it is as if there is nothing holding me here and I will float out the window, and at the same time, there is the heaviness. I feel I’ve turned into metal or stone, into something no longer alive or human.
“I couldn’t let you know earlier as it became clear, not that all of it is clear yet,” Benton says. “I’m sorry when I have to keep things from you, Kay.”
“Why would he, why would anyone…?” I start to ask questions that can never be answered satisfactorily, the same questions I’ve always asked. Why are people cruel? Why do they kill? Why do they take pleasure in ruining others?
“Because he could.” Benton says what he always does.
“But why would he?” Fielding isn’t like that. He’s never been diabolical. Immature and selfish and dysfunctional, yes. But not evil. He wouldn’t kill a six-year-old boy for fun and then enjoy pinning the crime on a teenager with Asperger’s. Fielding’s not equipped to orchestrate a cold-blooded game like that.
“Money. Control. His addictions. Righting wrongs that go back to the beginning of his time. And decompensating. Ultimately destroying himself because that’s who he was really destroying when he destroyed others.” Benton has it all figured out. Everybody has it figured out except me.
“I don’t know,” I mutter, and I tell myself to be strong. I have to take care of this. I can’t help Fielding, I can’t help anyone, if I’m not strong.
“He didn’t hide things well,” Benton then says as I move away from the window. “Once we figured out where to look, it’s become increasingly obvious.”
Someone setting people up, setting up everything. That’s why it’s not hidden well. That’s why it’s obvious. It’s supposed to be obvious, to make us think certain things are true when maybe they aren’t. I won’t accept that the person behind all this is Fielding until I see it for myself. Be strong. You must take care of it. Don’t cry over him or anyone. You can’t.
“What do I need to bring?” I collect my coat off a chair, the tactical jacket from Dover that isn’t nearly warm enough.
“We have everything there,” he says. “Just your credentials in case someone asks.”
Of course they have everything there. Everything and everyone is there except me. I collect my shoulder bag from the back of my door.
“When did you figure it out?” I ask. “Figure it out enough to get warrants to find him? Or however it’s happened?”
“When you discovered the man from Norton’s Woods was a homicide, that changed things, to say the least. Now Fielding was connected to another murder.”
“I don’t see how,” I reply as we walk out together, and I don’t tell Bryce I’m leaving. At the moment I don’t want to face anyone. I’m in no mood to chat or to be cordial or even civilized.
“Because the Glock had disappeared from the firearms lab. I know you haven’t been told about that, and very few people are aware of it,” Benton says.
I remember Lucy’s comments about seeing Morrow in the back parking lot at around ten-thirty yesterday morning, about a half-hour after the pistol was receipted to him in his lab, and he couldn’t be bothered with it, according to Lucy. If she knew about the missing Glock, she withheld that crucial information, and I ask Benton if she deliberately lied by omission to me, the chief, her boss.
“Because she works here,” I say as we wait for the elevator to climb to our floor. It is stuck on the lower level, as if someone is holding open the door down there, what staff members sometimes do when they are loading a lot of things on or off. “She works for me and can’t just keep information from me. She can’t lie to me.”
“She wasn’t aware of it then. Marino and I knew, and we didn’t tell her.”
“And you knew about Jack and Johnny and Mark. About tae kwon do.” I’m sure Benton did. Probably Marino, too.
“We’ve been watching Jack, been looking into it. Yes. Since Mark was murdered last week and I found out Jack taught him and Johnny.”
I think of the photographs missing from Fielding’s office, the tiny holes in the wall from the hanging hooks being removed.
“It began to make sense that Jack took control of certain cases. The Mark Bishop case, for example, even though he hates to do kids,” Benton goes on, looking around, making sure no one is nearby to overhear us. “What a perfect opportunity to cover up your own crimes.”
Or some other person’s crimes, I think. Fielding would be the sort to cover for someone else. He desperately needs to be powerful, to be the hero, and then I remind myself to stop defending him. Don’t unless you have proof. Whatever turns out to be true, I’ll accept it, and it occurs to me that the photographs missing from Fielding’s office might have been group poses. That seems familiar. I can almost envision them. Perhaps of tae kwon do classes. Pictures with Johnny and Mark in them.
I wonder but don’t ask if Benton removed those photographs or if Marino did, as Benton continues to explain that Fielding went to great lengths to manipulate everyone into believing that Johnny Donahue killed Mark Bishop. Fielding used a compromised, vulnerable teenager as a scapegoat, and then Fielding had to escalate his manipulations further after he took out the man from Norton’s Woods. That’s the phrase Benton uses. Took out. Fielding took him out and then heard about the Glock found on the body and realized he’d made a serious tactical error. Everything was falling apart. He was losing it, decompensating like Ted Bundy did right before he was caught, Benton says.
“Jack’s fatal mistake was to stop by the firearms lab yesterday morning and ask Morrow about the Glock,” Benton continues. “A little later it was gone and so was Jack, and that was impulsive and reckless and just damn stupid on his part. It would have been better to let the gun be traced to him and claim it was lost or stolen. Anything would have been better than what he did. It shows how out of control he was to take the damn gun from the lab.”
“You’re saying the Glock the man from Norton’s Woods had is Jack’s.”
“Yes.”
“It’s definitely Jack’s,” I repeat, and the elevator is moving now, making a lot of stops on its way up, and I realize it is lunch-time. Employees heading to the break room or heading out of the building.
“Yes. The dead man has a gun that could be traced to Fielding once acid was used on the drilled-off serial number,” Benton says, and it’s clear to me that he knows who the dead man is.
“That was done. Not here.” I don’t want to think of yet something else done inside my building that I didn’t know.
“Hours ago. At the scene. We took care of the identification right there.”
“The FBI did.”
“It was important to know immediately who the gun was traced to. To confirm our suspicions. Then it came here to the CFC and is safely locked up in the firearms lab. For further examination,” Benton says.