The Bone Bed (23 page)

I drive south, cutting over to Garfield, to Oxford, working my way toward Harvard’s divinity school, to Norton’s Woods, where the American Academy of Arts and Sciences is dark on its densely wooded acres. The pavement hisses wetly beneath my tires, Machado right behind me as I turn off Kirkland and onto Irving Street. Our three-story Federal-style house is white, with black shutters and a slate roof, and I can’t tell if Benton is home. I pull into our narrow brick driveway and park to one side of the detached garage, and Machado stops on the street and waits as I get groceries and Shaw out of my car.

I unlock the door of the glassed-in porch, and the alarm begins to beep. Entering the code, I step inside and shove the door shut with my hip as Sock’s nails click over hardwood from the direction of the living room. Benton isn’t here. I can feel Shaw tense up inside the towel as Sock appears along the hallway, and I can’t properly greet him.

“We have a visitor,” I talk to our rescue brindle greyhound, who has a graying muzzle and is never in a hurry. “And you two are going to be friends.”

I turn on lights as I pass through rooms, and inside my kitchen of cherry cabinets and stainless-steel appliances I set down shopping bags and shut Shaw inside the pantry so she doesn’t wander off or hide. I take Sock out to the backyard, where my rose garden has lost its last blooms and the stained-glass window in the stairwell is backlit and vibrant. I apologize to Sock for getting home so late, and I know from e-mails that the housekeeper last let him out at five and gave him several treats. But he hasn’t been fed, unless Benton took care of it, and I feel like a negligent mother.

Sock is a lean, long-legged silhouette sniffing his pointed nose, moving like a shadow through the yard with its stone wall that neighborhood children like to climb over, and he has his favorite spots where there are no motion-sensor lights. Then he follows me back inside, and I feed him and pet him and begin to fill a sink with warm water as I gather towels and wonder where Benton is.

“I haven’t had a cat in a while,” I talk to her as I retrieve her from the pantry and she purrs. “And I know you aren’t going to be happy, but try to think of it as a spa.”

I pull a chair out from the kitchen table and place her in my lap and clip her claws.

“Well, it seems you’ve had that done before, but maybe not a bath. Cats hate water, or that’s what we’re told, but tigers like to swim, so who knows what’s true.”

I put on rubber gloves and lower her into the warm water, lathering her with flea shampoo and finishing with oatmeal, and she looks at me with her big, round eyes and I start to cry.

I don’t know why.

“You’re quite the sport.” I rub her with a big, soft towel. “I’ve never seen a cat that’s such a good sport.”

I wipe my eyes.

“You’re more like a dog.” I look at Sock, who is in his bed near the door. “Both of you orphaned rather much the same way.”

I cry some more.

“The people you were with aren’t around anymore, and then I bring you home with me and I realize it’s not the same.”

I can’t begin to imagine what animals remember or know, but Shaw may have been Peggy Stanton’s best friend and saw who killed her and can’t tell me. She can’t tell anyone. Now this mute witness is inside my house, sprawled out on her back on top of a towel, in a position no dignified cat would ever be in. I close the pocket doors and look in the freezer for what I might warm up, and I’m not interested in any of it. I open a bottle of Valpolicella and pour a glass, and decide on fresh pasta with a simple tomato sauce, and I return to the pantry. Shaw is by my feet.

I retrieve cans of whole peeled tomatoes and melt salted butter in a saucepan and add an onion sliced in half. She rubs against my legs, purring.

“If Benton were here we might grill Italian sausage outside,” I say to the cat. “Yes, it’s cold and wet, but that wouldn’t stop me. Don’t look worried. I won’t. Not out there in the dark all alone.”

It enters my mind that Machado hopefully has left, and I remember to reset the alarm, and I boil salted water. I set the coffee table in the living room and turn on the fire, and I drink more wine and try Benton several more times. His phone instantly goes to voicemail. It’s now close to one a.m. I could call Machado, but I don’t want to ask him where my husband is. I could call Douglas Burke, but hell would have to freeze over first, and I turn off the stove. I sit in front of the gas fire with Shaw in my lap and Sock snuggled next to me, both of them sleeping, and I drink, and when I’ve drunk enough I call my niece.

“Are you awake?” I ask, when Lucy answers.

“No.”

“No?”

“This is voicemail. How can I help you?” she says.

“I know it’s late.” I hear someone in the background, or I think I do. “Is that your TV?”

“What’s going on, Aunt Kay?” She’s not alone, and she’s not going to tell me.

twenty-seven

I WAKE UP WITHOUT THE ALARM AND FOR AN INSTANT
don’t know where I am or who’s in bed with me. Moving my hand under the covers, I feel Benton’s warm slender wrist and tapered fingers, and I go hollow inside as I feel what I was feeling in my dream. It was Luke I was with.

A dream so vivid, sensations linger where his hands and mouth had been, nerves alive and wanting, and I slide close to Benton and stroke the lean muscles of his bare chest and belly, and when I have roused him we do what we want and we don’t talk.

When nothing is left we shower and start again, hot water coming down hard, and he is hard, almost angry, our lust the way it was when we cheated and lied, desperate to satisfy what raged beneath our outward calm, and relief never lasted long. We could not stay away from each other and could not get enough, and I want it back.

“Where have you been?” I say into his mouth, and he moves me against the wet tile wall, and water is loud, and I ask him again.

He tells me he’s here without saying it, and I’m here and belong to him and there can be no denying it. We make love the way we did when it was wrong, when he had a wife he was unhappy with and daughters who had little use for him, and then for a long time he was gone.

He was nowhere and back, with me but not, and Marino made it worse, and touching felt different after that. Nothing was the same until betrayal and jealousy reset us like a bone mending badly that needed to be broken again. We had to hurt.

“Stay this time,” I say into his mouth, steamy water pouring over us. “Stay this time, Benton.”

When we are dressing he asks me what I was dreaming.

“What makes you think I dreamed anything?” I go through suits hanging in my closet, and it reminds me of looking through Peggy Stanton’s clothes.

“Doesn’t matter.” He stands in front of the full-length mirror, tying his tie.

“It matters or you wouldn’t ask.”

“Dreams are dreams unless they become something else.” He watches my reflection as I decide on unstylish pants and a sweater and practical ankle boots that are warm.

It will be a long day, hopefully not as long as yesterday, but I’m going to be comfortable in corduroys and a cable-knit cardigan, and it’s very cold, the temperature below freezing.

Ice has formed on bare trees and evergreens, as if they’ve been varnished or glazed with sugar, and as I move the shade to see the street below and imagine what driving might be like, Benton walks across hardwood and the rug and puts his arms around me and kisses my neck.

His hands rediscover what was all his moments ago, and he pushes under everything I’ve just put on.

“Don’t forget,” he says.

“I’ve never forgotten.”

“Lately you’ve forgotten. Yesterday you did.”

“Go ahead and say it.” I want him to say what he saw, to just go ahead and say it.

His hands are where he wants them.

“Did you?” he asks.

“Did I what?” I’m not going to make it easy for him. “You need to ask me what you want to know.”

“Did you tell him you would? Did you let him think you would?”

“I told him I wouldn’t.”

“He was touching you,” Benton says, as he touches me. “He thought you would. That you wanted it.”

“I told him I wouldn’t, and that’s the end of it,” I reply, and he moves me back to the bed.

“Is it really all there is? Has there been anything more?”

“There is nothing more than that.” I unbuckle his belt.

“Because if there’s more, I might kill him. I will, in fact, and get away with it.”

“You won’t.” I unzip his pants. “And you can’t get away with it.”

“I wanted to kill him in Vienna because I knew it then.”

“There’s nothing to know. There’s nothing more than you already know,” I reply, and I ask about her. “You’re going to wrinkle your shirt.” I ask about Douglas Burke. “I’m going to wrinkle it. I’m going to ruin it.”

White cotton and dark silk are smooth against my bare skin, and I ask him again, and then I don’t ask him anything else until we are in the kitchen and I’m feeding the dog and the cat.

“Shaw certainly seems to have made herself at home.” I spoon her food on a plate and set it on a mat near the pantry door. “It’s as if she’s always lived here, but I think it’s a good idea to shut her in the guest room, in a confined space, until she’s really familiar with the house. Although I have a feeling Bryce is going to want her. He’ll take one look at her and that will be that.”

“She should be checked by the vet.” Benton pours coffee, and he’s tall and straight in a dark suit, his silver hair damp and combed straight back.

He doesn’t answer me about Douglas Burke.

“I’ll send Bryce to get her at some point today, get her checked from stem to stern.” I open a can of dog food. “Are you coming by my office to see what we find with the car?”

“I have to deal with the Marino problem.”

“You’ll talk to him?”

“Talking to him doesn’t help anything. He’s been talked to enough, and there’s nothing else. And nothing happened, Kay,” Benton then says, and he’s referring to something else entirely. “Nothing happened, but not because of her. But because of me.”

He lets me know that Douglas Burke is attracted to him and has tried to do something about it. She might be in love with him, and when he says that, I know she is. I know she has it bad.

“That could be part of the problem.” He sips coffee and looks at me as I set Sock’s bowl on his mat, which is a safe distance from Shaw’s mat, although the two of them seem at peace with each other, as if they know what they’ve been through and wouldn’t deny any creature the courtesy of rescue.

“What do you mean, ‘
could
be’?”

“When we first started working together I really thought she was gay. So it’s been very confusing.” He hands me a coffee.

“How did you suddenly become so obtuse? What is it you do for a living? Suddenly you’re a blockhead?”

He smiles. “Not so astute when it comes to myself, maybe. I’m always the last to know.”

“Bullshit, Benton.”

“Maybe I didn’t want to know.”

“That’s the more likely story.”

“I would have bet you money she was gay.”

“Whatever she is, she shouldn’t have done what she did last night.”

“She knows that, Kay. And as bad as it was for you, it’s pretty terrible to be an FBI agent and lose control like that. She’s lost control. She has. Badly. And it will have to be addressed beyond my giving her hell about it.”

“You don’t want her.” I give him another chance to confess.

“I don’t want her like that, and in fact I was sure she wanted Lucy. She’d get unbelievably flustered around Lucy,” he says.

“Lucy could fluster Mother Teresa.”

“No, I mean it.” Benton opens the refrigerator and retrieves a jug of blood-orange juice and pours each of us a glass. “I’m trying to think of the last time when it was so obvious I was almost embarrassed. Doug was dropping me off at Hanscom, where Lucy was meeting me. She’d just shut down the helicopter and was walking across the tarmac, and Doug was so distracted I thought she might hit a parked plane.”

“When Lucy flew you to New York this past June, right before my birthday,” I recall. “That recently you didn’t get what was going on?”

“Her face was flushed, her hands were shaking, agitated, and she stared holes in her.”

“Sounds like Sudafed, or whatever else she’s on.”

“Now I’m wondering,” he says. “Now I’m really wondering.”

“It could be Lucy, too. She might have been reacting to Lucy,” I consider, as I get eggs from the refrigerator and begin cracking them in a bowl. “People aren’t always one thing. Almost never, if they’re honest about it. I’m not aware they really know each other, beyond Lucy making a point to avoid her and every other FBI agent if possible.”

“Could be something conflicted there.” Benton refills his cup and checks mine. “She’s asked me about her.”

“She’s asked you about Lucy?”

“She’s curious about Lucy’s FBI past. Why she left the Bureau. Why she left ATF.”

“What did you tell her?” I turn on the stovetop.

“Nothing.”

“She’s just curious, or are her questions an attempt to be critical? Maybe she wants to find out information that might make her feel superior to Lucy.”

“Doug’s competitive.”

“You probably don’t know the half of it.” I open a cabinet, deciding on cookware.

“I don’t talk about us, don’t confide in her, never have and wouldn’t.”

“I’m not surprised. You barely confide in me.”

“I know Doug takes all sorts of stuff, has real problems with allergies, but I’d never really given it a second thought.”

“Have you seen symptoms and behavior like this from the beginning?” I whisk eggs and melt butter in a saucepan. “What about when you first started working with her closely?”

“On and off and then on. These past few months? On all the time. Revved up like an overspeeding engine.” He drops English muffins in the toaster. “I thought it was her mood, her problem.”

“Her problem with you. There should be chopped asparagus and fresh basil on the top shelf. Refrigerator one. Fig preserves are in the door of refrigerator two.” I am overly diligent about having plenty of food in the house.

If I have a compulsion, it’s making sure I don’t run out of anything I might need for cooking, especially if the weather is taking a turn for the worse.

“When I finally realized what she felt, by then it was pretty bad, and I attributed it to her being anxious, stressed, when she was around me.” He sets the jar of preserves, the basil, and the asparagus on the counter near me. “Cheese?”

“Parmesan is already grated. And you’re in charge of the preserves.” I slide the jar back in his direction. “It will be good on the muffins.”

I need to get to the store today. There probably won’t be time. I uncover Parmigiano-Reggiano I grated late last night and asparagus I chopped while I was waiting for Benton to come home. I whisk the eggs, adding salt and pepper.

“Pseudoephedrine is structurally similar to amphetamine and has been used for performance enhancement.” I tear the basil leaves and mix them in. “It’s commonly abused by athletes, for example, causing euphoria, boundless energy, and people can get dependent, taking it three or four times a day or even more. Some use it to lose weight because it’s an appetite suppressant.”

“She certainly doesn’t need to lose weight.”

“Maybe that’s why.”

“I’m suggesting she request a transfer to a different field office.”

“You suggested it or you’re going to suggest it?” I turn the heat down very low. “And how did the moment of enlightenment happen after you’d gone all this time supposedly assuming she’s gay?”

“When we went to Quantico together in August.” He checks the muffins and presses the levers back down. “She wanted to come into my room, and it became quite apparent what her interest was, and I made it very clear it wasn’t going to happen.”

“And last night?” I open the oven door to make sure the broiler is heating up. “When she dropped you off to pick up your car and you didn’t get home until some two hours later? By which time I’d gone through half a bottle of wine by myself and dinner was ruined.”

“We sat in your parking lot talking,” he says, and I believe him. “She can’t get over it.”

“She can’t get over you.”

“I guess not. No.”

“I guess even an FBI agent can have a personality disorder. Narcissist? Borderline? Sociopath, or a little dash or all three? What is she? Because I know you know.”

“I don’t expect you to feel sorry for her, Kay.”

“Good.” I grab potholders. “Because I don’t.”

I lift the stainless-steel saucepan off the induction stovetop and place it inside the oven on the top shelf.

“This will take all of ten seconds, and I’m quite sure the muffins must be done,” I say. “She tries to seduce my husband, wants Marino to go to jail and basically accuses me of being a liar and resorts to interrogation methods reminiscent of rubber hoses.”

“She probably needs a leave of absence.”

“It was her intention to degrade if not annihilate the competition.”

“She probably needs to see someone.” He pops up the muffins and quickly drops them on a plate and butters them. “She needs to be away from Boston and, quite frankly, away from me. I need her away from me.”

Lightly brown on top, the frittata is done, and I slide it out of the saucepan and onto a platter and slice it like pizza while Benton continues telling me his concerns about Douglas Burke.

“The problem is, you seek counseling, especially if you need to be on meds, it’s not just your own private business.” He carries our coffees and silverware to the breakfast table by the window. “With the Bureau, nothing is just your own private business. So she doesn’t want help even though she needs it.”

“Are you worried she might be a danger to herself?”

“I don’t know.”

“If you don’t know, that’s the same as saying yes.” I pull out a chair, and the morning beyond the window is getting light and a car going by on the street is moving slowly, carefully, because of ice. “If you don’t know if she’s safe for herself or maybe others, then you have to assume she isn’t. What do you do about that?”

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to talk to Jim.”

Jim Demar is the special agent in charge of the Boston Field Office.

“Unfortunately, it will give a life to something.” He spreads fig preserves on half a muffin, which he offers to me. “She could be put on administrative leave with pay, which wouldn’t be the worst thing if it gives her time to get her head straight, maybe get her moved and let her start fresh.”

“Where?”

“I’m going to recommend Louisville, Kentucky, where she’s from. A new office there, a great facility and lots of opportunity. Maybe the Joint Terrorism Task Force or the Intelligence Fusion Center or foreign counterintelligence or public corruption.”

“Whatever gets her mind off of you,” I reply.

“I’m sure she’ll be fine. It’s just not a good fit for her around here.”

•   •   •

I think about that as I drive back to the CFC,
not a good fit
, and yet Douglas Burke’s problem has nothing to do with Boston and everything to do with Benton. He’s being naïve, and it concerns me, and I contemplate how strange it might seem to almost anyone that my husband the profiler can be thick, downright dense. I’ve never been in this exact predicament. I’ve never had to deal with someone obsessed with my husband quite to this degree, and he doesn’t see it the way I do. Douglas Burke is dangerous to herself and I’m not sure to whom else.