Dr. Saltz suspects Eli got involved with a treacherous and unauthorized technology at Otwahl, found himself in the midst of DARPA research gone bad, gone frighteningly wrong, and was about to warn his humanitarian Nobel laureate stepfather and to offer proof and to beg him to put a stop to it. Fielding put a stop to Eli because Fielding was using these dangerous drugs, perhaps helping to distribute them, but mostly my deputy chief with his lifelong lust for strength and physical beauty and his chronic aches and pains was addicted. That’s the theory behind Fielding’s vile crimes, and I don’t believe it is that simple or even true. But I do believe other comments Benton has continued to make. I was too good to Fielding. I’ve always been too good to him. I’ve never seen him for what he is or accepted his potential to do real harm, and therefore I enabled him.
Snow turned to freezing rain where the ocean warms the air, and the power is still out from downed lines in this area of Salem Neck called Winter Island, where Jack Fielding owns a historic investment property I had no idea about. To get to it you have to pass the Plummer Home for Boys, a lovely mossy green mansion set on a gracious spread of lawn overlooking the sea, with a distant view of the wealthy resort community of Marblehead. I can’t help but think about the way things begin and end, the way people have a tendency to run in place, to tread water, to really not get beyond where and how it all started for them.
Fielding stopped his life where it took off for him so precipitously, in a picturesque setting for troubled youths who can no longer live with their families. I wonder if it was deliberate to pick a spot no more than a stone’s throw from a boys’ home, if that factored into his subconscious when he decided on a property I’m told he intended to retire to or perhaps sell for a profit in the future when the real-estate market turns around and after he’d finished much-needed improvements. He’d been doing the work on the house and its outbuilding himself and doing it poorly, and I’m about to see the manifestation of his disorganized, chaotic mind, the handiwork of someone profoundly out of control, Benton has let me know. I’m about to see the way my enabled protege lived and ended.
“Are you still with us? I know you’re tired,” Benton says as he touches my arm.
“I’m fine.” I realize he’s been talking and I tuned him out.
“You don’t look fine. You’re still crying.”
“I’m not crying. It’s the sun. I can’t believe I left my sunglasses somewhere.”
“I’ve said you can have mine.” His dark glasses turn toward me as he creeps along the sandy, gritty-sounding road in the glaring sun.
“No, thank you.”
“Why don’t you tell me what’s going on with you, because we’re not going to have a chance to talk for a while,” he says. “You’re angry with me.”
“You’re just doing your job, whatever it is.”
“You’re angry with me because you’re angry at Jack, and you’re afraid to be angry at him.”
“I’m not afraid of what I feel about him. I’m more afraid of everyone else,” I reply.
“Meaning what, exactly?”
“It’s something I sense, and you don’t agree with me, so we should leave it at that,” I say to him as I look out the window at the cold, blue ocean and the distant horizon, where I can make out houses on the shore.
“Maybe you could be a little more specific. What do you sense? Is this a new thought?”
“It isn’t. And it’s nothing anybody wants to hear,” I answer him as I stare out at the bright afternoon while we continue to troll for a place to park.
I’m not really helping him look for a spot. Mostly I’m sitting and staring out the window while my mind goes where it wants to, like a small animal darting about, looking for a safe place. Benton probably thinks I’m pretty useless. He’s aided and abetted my uselessness by waiting this long to come get me for something that’s been going on for hours. I’m showing up in medias res, as if this is a musical or an opera and it’s no big deal for me to wander in during the middle or toward the end, depending on which act we’re in.
“Christ, this is ridiculous. You would think someone would have left us something. I should have had Marino put cones out, save us something.” Benton vents his anger at parked cars and the narrow street, then says to me, “I want to hear whatever it is. New thought or not. Now, while we have a minute alone.”
There is no point in saying the rest of it, of telling him again what I sense, which is a calculating, cruel logic behind what was done to Wally Jamison, Mark Bishop, and Eli Goldman, behind what happened to Fielding, behind everything, a precisely formulated agenda, even if it didn’t turn out as planned. Not that I know the plan in its entirety, maybe not even most of it, but what I sense is palpable and undeniable, and I won’t be talked out of it. Trust your instincts. Don’t trust anything else. This is about power. The power to control people, to make them feel good or frightened or to suffer unbearably. Power over life and death. I’m not going to repeat what I’m sure sounds irrational. I’m not going to tell Benton yet again that I sense an insatiable desire for power, that I feel the presence of a murderous entity watching us from a dark place, lying in wait. Some things are over, but not everything is, and I don’t say any of this to him.
“I’m just going to have to tuck it in here, and the hell with it.” He isn’t really talking to me but to himself, easing as close to a rock wall as he can so we don’t stick halfway out into the slick, sandy street. “We’ll hope some yahoo doesn’t hit me. If so, he’ll be in for an unpleasant surprise.”
I suppose he means it wouldn’t be fun to realize the door you just dinged or the bumper you just scraped or the side you just swiped is the property of the FBI. The SUV is a typical government vehicle, black with tinted glass and cloth seats, and emergency strobes hidden behind the grille, and on the floor in back are two coffee cups neatly held in place inside their cardboard to-go box along with a balled-up food bag. The war wagon of a busy agent who is tidy but not always in a convenient spot to toss out trash. I didn’t know that Douglas was a woman until Benton referred to the special agent who’s assigned this car as “she” a little while ago while he was telling me about her running the license plate of the Bentley that met us at Hanscom last night, a 2003 four-door black Flying Spur personally owned by the CEO of a Boston-based niche service company that supplies “discreet concierge-minded chauffeurs” who will drive any vehicle requested, explaining why the Bentley didn’t have a livery license plate.
The reservation was made online by someone using an e-mail address that belongs to Johnny Donahue, an inpatient at McLean with no Internet access when the e-mail was sent yesterday from an IP address that is an Internet cafe near Salem State College, which is very close to here. The credit card used belongs to Erica Donahue, and as far as anybody knows, she doesn’t do anything online and won’t touch a computer. Needless to say, the FBI and the police don’t believe she or her son booked the Bentley or the driver.
The FBI and the police believe Fielding did, that he likely got access to Mrs. Donahue’s credit card information from payments she made to the tae kwon do club for lessons her son took until he was told not to come back after he tried to kick his instructor, my deputy chief, a grandmaster with a seventh-degree black belt. It isn’t clear how Fielding might have gained access to Johnny’s e-mail account unless he somehow manipulated the vulnerable and gullible teenager into giving him the password at some point or learned it by some other means.
The chauffeur, who isn’t suspected of anything except not bothering to research Dr. Scarpetta before he delivered something to her, received the assignment from dispatch, and according to dispatch, no one who works at the elite transportation company ever met the alleged Mrs. Donahue or talked to her over the phone. In the notes section of the online reservation, an “exotic luxury car” was requested for an “errand” with the explanation that further instructions and a letter to be delivered would be dropped off at the private driving company’s headquarters. At approximately six p.m., a manila envelope was slipped through the mail slot in the front door, and some four hours later, the chauffeur showed up at Hanscom Field with it and decided that Benton was me.