Book of the Dead (56 page)

    
“I imagine she hasn’t changed,” Benton says.

    
“People like her rarely do. Sometimes they burn out as they get older. In her case, she’s likely worse. As Marilyn will be. As she already is.”

    
“I imagine she hasn’t changed much, either. Although her mother blames her daughter’s personality disorder on you,” Benton says.

    
“And we know that’s not what happens. She doesn’t have a Paulo-induced personality disorder. She came by it honestly.”

    
“This isn’t amusing.”

    
“Certainly, it isn’t.”

    
“Where is he?” Benton asks. “And you know exactly who I mean.”

    
“In those long-ago days, a person was still a minor at age sixteen. Do you understand?”

    
“And you were twenty-nine.”

    
“Twenty-two. Gladys would insult me by making me that much older. I’m sure you can understand why I had to leave,” Dr. Maroni says.

    
“Leave or flee? If you ask Dr. Self, it’s the latter when she describes your hasty exit of several weeks ago. You were inappropriate with her and fled to Italy. Where is he, Paulo? Don’t do this to yourself, and don’t do it to anyone else.”

    
“Would you believe it if I told you she was inappropriate with me?”

    
“It doesn’t matter. That’s not what I give a goddamn about. Where is he?” Benton says.

    
“Statutory rape is what they would have called it, you know. Her mother threatened it and, indeed, wanted to believe Marilyn wouldn’t have sex with a man she happened to meet during spring break. She was so beautiful and exciting, and offered her virginity, and I took it. I did love her. I did flee from her, this is true. I recognized she was toxic way back then. But I didn’t return to Italy as I led her to believe. I returned to Harvard to finish medical school, and she never knew I was still in America.”

    
“We’ve done DNA, Paulo.”

    
“After the baby was born, she still didn’t know. I wrote her letters, you see. And had them mailed from Rome.”

    
“Where is he, Paulo? Where’s your son?”

    
“I begged her not to get an abortion, because it’s against my religious beliefs. She said if she had the baby, I would have to raise it. And I did the best I could with what turned out to be a miscreant, a devil with a high IQ. He spent most of his life in Italy, and some of his time with her until he turned eighteen. He’s the one who is twenty-nine. Perhaps Gladys was playing her usual games…. Well. In many ways, he belongs to neither of us and hates both of us. Marilyn more than me, although when I saw him last, I feared for my safety. Perhaps my life. I thought he was going to attack me with a piece of ancient sculpture, but I managed to soothe him.”

    
“This was when?”

    
“Right after I got here. He was in Rome.”

    
“And he was in Rome when Drew Martin was murdered. At some point, he returned to Charleston. We know he was just in Hilton Head.”

    
“What can I say, Benton? You know the answer. The tub in the photograph is the very tub in my apartment at Piazza Navona, but then you didn’t know I live at Piazza Navona. If you had, you might have asked me questions about my apartment so near the construction site where Drew’s body was found. You might have wondered about the coincidence of my driving a black Lancia over here. He probably killed her in my apartment and transported her in my car, not too far. Perhaps a block. In fact, I’m sure he must have. So maybe I would have been better off if he had struck me in the head with that ancient sculpted foot. What he’s done is unthinkably reprehensible. But then, he’s Marilyn’s son.”

    
“He’s your son.”

    
“He’s an American citizen who didn’t want to go to a university and continued his foolishness by joining the American Air Force to be a photographer in your fascist war, where he was wounded. His foot. I believe he did it to himself after he put his friend out of his misery by shooting him in the head. But regardless, if he were unbalanced before he went, he was cognitively and psychologically unrecognizable when he came back. I admit I wasn’t the father I should have been. I sent him supplies. Tools, batteries, medical necessities. But I didn’t go to see him after it was over. I didn’t care. I admit it.”

    
“Where is he?”

    
“After he joined the Air Force, I washed my hands of him. I admit it. He amounted to nothing. After all that – after my sacrificing so much to keep him on this earth when Marilyn would have had it otherwise – he amounted to nothing. Imagine the irony. I spared his life because the church says abortion is murder, and look what he does. He kills people. He killed them over there because it was his job, and now he kills them because it’s madness.”

    
“And his child?”

    
“Marilyn and her patterns. Once she has a pattern, try to break it – told the mother to keep him just as I told Marilyn to keep our son. It probably was a mistake. Our son isn’t fit to be a father, even if he loves his son very much.”

    
“His little boy is dead,” Benton says. “Starved and beaten to death and left in a marsh to be eaten by maggots, crabs.”

    
“I’m sorry to hear it. I never met the child.”

    
“Such compassion you have, Paulo. Where’s your son?”

    
“I don’t know.”

    
“You must realize how serious this is. Do you want to go to prison?”

    
“The last time he was here, I walked him out, and on the street, where it was safe for me to say it, I told him I never wanted to see him again. There were tourists at the construction site where Drew’s body was found. There were piles of flowers and stuffed animals. I saw all this as I told him to go away and never come back, and if he didn’t honor my wishes, I would go to the police. Then I had my apartment very thoroughly cleaned. And I got rid of my car. And I called Otto to offer my assistance in the case, because it was important for me to know what the police knew.”

    
“I don’t believe you don’t know where he is,” Benton says. “I don’t believe you don’t know where he stays or lives or – more likely right now – hides. I don’t want to go to your wife. I’m assuming she hasn’t a clue.”

    
“Please leave my wife out of this. She knows nothing.”

    
“Maybe you know this,” Benton says. “Your dead grandson’s mother. Is she still with your son?”

    
“It is like what I had with Marilyn. We sometimes pay a lifelong price for enjoying sex with someone. These women? They get pregnant on purpose, you know. To keep you on a tether. It’s a strange thing. They do it and then don’t want the child because what they really wanted was you.”

    
“That’s not what I asked.”

    
“I’ve never met her. Marilyn tells me her name is Shandy or Sandy and she’s a whore. And stupid.”

    
“Is your son still with her? That’s what I asked.”

    
“They had the child in common. But that’s it. The same story again. The sins of the father. Events repeating themselves. Now I truly say, I wish my son had never been born.”

    
“Marilyn knows Shandy, obviously,” Benton says. “That brings me to Marino.”

    
“I wouldn’t know him or what he has to do with this.”

    
Benton tells him. He informs Dr. Maroni of everything except what Marino did to Scarpetta.

    
“So you’d like me to analyze it for you,” Dr. Maroni says. “Based on my knowing Marilyn, based on what you’ve just said. I would venture a guess that Marino made a very big mistake by sending an e-mail to Marilyn. It woke her up to possibilities, you see, that had nothing to do with why she was at McLean. Now she can get back at the one person she truly hates. Kay, of course. What better way than to torment the people she loves.”

    
“She’s the reason Marino met Shandy?”

    
“My guess. But not the entire reason for why Shandy got so interested in him. There is the boy. Marilyn doesn’t know. Or she didn’t. She would have told me. For someone to do such a thing would not appeal to Marilyn.”

    
“She has about as much compassion as you do,” Benton says. “She’s here, by the way.”

    
“You mean New York.”

    
“I mean Charleston. I got an anonymous e-mail with information I won’t discuss, and I traced the IP to the Charleston Place Hotel, recognized the Machine Access Code. Guess who’s staying there.”

    
“I warn you to be careful what you say to her. She doesn’t know about Will.”

    
“Will?”

    
“Will Rambo. When Marilyn started becoming famous, he changed his name from Willard Self to Will Rambo. He picked Rambo, a nice enough Swedish name. He’s anything but a Rambo, and that’s at least some of his problem. Will is quite small. He’s a good-looking boy but small.”

    
“When she got e-mails from the Sandman, she had no idea it was her son?” Benton says, and it is jarring to hear the Sandman referred to as a boy.

    
“She didn’t. Not consciously. As far as I know, she still doesn’t. Not consciously, but what can I say about what she knows in the deep caves of her mind? When she was admitted at McLean and told me about the e-mail, the image of Drew Martin…”

    
“She told you?”

    
“Of course.”

    
Benton would like to leap through the phone and grab him around the throat. He should go to prison. He should go to hell.

    
“As I look back, it’s tragically clear. Of course, I had a suspicion all along but never mentioned it to her. I mean, from the beginning when she called me with the referral, and Will knew she would do exactly that. He set her up for it. Of course, he had her e-mail address. Marilyn is very generous about an occasional e-mail to people she doesn’t have time to see. He started sending these rather bizarre e-mails that he knew would captivate her, because he’s just sick enough to understand her perfectly well. I’m sure he was amused when she referred him to me, and then when he called my office in Rome to make an appointment, that, of course, resulted in our having dinner, not a clinical interview. I was concerned about his mental health, but it never occurred to me he might kill someone. When I heard about the murdered tourist in Bari, I was in denial.”

    
“He raped a woman in Venice, too. Another tourist.”

    
“I’m not surprised. Let me guess. After the war began. Each time he was deployed, he got worse.”

    
“Then the case notes weren’t really from appointments you had with him. Obviously, he’s your son and was never a patient.”

    
“I fabricated the notes. I expected you to guess it.”

    
“Why?”

    
“So you would do this. Find him yourself, because I could never turn him in. I needed you to ask the questions so I could answer them, and now I have.”

    
“If we don’t find him quickly, Paulo, he’ll kill again. There must be something else you know. You must have a picture of him?”

    
“Not a recent one.”

    
“E-mail what you’ve got.”

    
“The Air Force should have what you need. Perhaps his fingerprints and his DNA. Certainly a photograph. It’s better you get such things from them.”

    
“And by the time I go through all those hoops,” Benton says, “it will be too goddamn late.”

    
“I won’t be back, by the way,” Dr. Maroni says. “I’m certain you won’t try to bring me back but will leave me alone because I have shown you respect, so you will show me some. It would be futile, anyway, Benton,” he says. “I have many friends over here.”