The Pain Scale (16 page)

Across the room, near the windows, three people sat on two large leather sofas. I assumed it was the congressman, his wife, and the elusive Bradley Benton III, but they were still about thirty feet away and the only light in the room was spilling in through the windows and backlighting the three figures, so I couldn’t tell for sure.

As Campos led us closer, one of the men stood up and I recognized the congressman’s bearing and posture. A few steps away, the angle of our view changed and I recognized Mrs. Benton. She was holding a younger man’s hand in both of hers, and when she stood up, it looked almost as if she were lifting his weight, too.

The congressman nodded at Jen and me, but his wife didn’t acknowledge us. She just stood next to her son.

He was tall. Six three or six four, with a swimmer’s build. His clothes were impeccable—expensive jeans and a pale-yellow silk button-down shirt. But his shoulders slumped, and his
poster-boy face was dull and worn. He looked liked he’d been on a days-long bender and we’d woken him somewhere in the middle of the first hour of sleeping it off.

“Mr. Benton,” Jen said with genuine compassion, “we’re very sorry for your loss.”

Bradley raised his head and parted his lips, but no sound came out. He stood there for a few seconds, looking bereft, turned his face back to his mother, who returned to him a sad hint of a smile. They both sat back down on the sofa. Only then did he finally close his mouth.

Campos gestured to the empty sofa across from them, and Jen and I sat down.

I took out my notebook and Jen began.

“We’ll make this as brief as we can,” she said. “When was the last time you saw your wife and children?”

Bradley tried to speak but was barely able to get out a whispered “I” before his eyes began filling with tears and he raised a hand to his mouth. He put his other arm across his midsection and bent forward as if he’d been overcome by stomach cramps.

Then he began to moan.

There’s a version of the pain scale with a chart designed specifically for children. It has a different cartoon face with its own unique expression for each number on the scale. The illustration over the zero looks like a smiley face. That over the ten resembles nothing so much as the face of the agonized little man in Munch’s
The Scream
.

Nothing on that chart came anywhere close to the expression on Bradley’s face.

Campos stood up. “I’m sorry, Detectives.” He motioned for us to stand up and began leading us back out the same way we’d come in. “He’s still not well enough to talk to you.”

I took another look at Bradley before I followed. Either he was in genuine pain or he was an amazingly talented actor. I knew I wouldn’t be able to stand there long enough to form an
educated guess as to which was the truth, so I turned and caught up with Jen and Campos.

Back out on the porch, he said to us, “Unfortunately, that’s how he’s been since he found out about his wife and children.”

I really wanted to mouth off to him, but Jen thanked him, put her hand on my elbow, and pulled me toward the cruiser before I had a chance to say anything we’d all regret later.

“So what was that?” Jen asked as the Bentons’ gate rolled closed behind us.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Still think he did it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think he was faking that.” We both looked out the windshield as we drove up through the winding streets and back out onto Bellflower Boulevard. “Maybe he did it, found out he didn’t have the spine he thought he did.”

“You want him to be the guy, don’t you?”

“It’s like you said. It would make our job easier.” I think she sensed the lie. I needed the challenge. The last thing I wanted was for the case to be easier. And if Bradley’s pain was real, easy wasn’t going to be very likely at all.

That night, as I went over the case files and felt the sharpness of the pain snaking up my arm and into my neck, I wondered about my disingenuous answer to Jen’s question that afternoon. I tried to be completely honest with myself. Of course I wanted to make the case. There was no question about that. But I also couldn’t deny that the more complicated the case became, the more it seemed to occupy my attention and to ease my awareness of my pain.

So what did I want, really?

I tried to focus my attention back on my notes but couldn’t do it. There wasn’t anything on TV even vaguely interesting that I hadn’t already seen. For a few minutes, I watched an episode of
House Hunters
that I had seen before but thought I could get through again because the hunt was in Portland, a city I’ve always been fond of, but that wasn’t enough. I knew the couple was just going to pick the wrong house again and not even making snarky comments to the screen would change that.

The banjo case was still next to the couch. I opened it and took out the five-string. The weight still surprised me. With the fingers of my left hand hovering over the frets, I ran my right thumb across the strings. I liked the sound. But then I tried to hold down a few random notes high on the neck and strummed again. What I heard made me grimace. I put the instrument away, fearing my neighbors would think I was torturing some kind of small animal.

In the kitchen, I tried to decide between vodka and Vicodin. I couldn’t make a decision, so I opened the cupboard over my oven and found a year-old bottle of Ambien. I’d given up on it when it didn’t seem to have any appreciable effect on my insomnia. Just for the hell of it, I took two of them and went to bed.

A few hours later, I drifted off just long enough to dream that I had discovered new evidence in the case of the traffic accident that took my wife’s life, proving that she had, in fact, committed suicide.

“Looks like most of his financials are joint accounts,” I said.

“So we can track Bradley without raising any red flags,” Patrick said. “Can’t we do that anyway? We always have to look at the spouse, right?”

“We do. But this gives us a little bit of cover if it really is Bradley. Down the road, a sharp defense lawyer could argue that we focused exclusively on him when there were other viable suspects.”

“But there are other viable suspects, right?”

“Right. We just need to keep turning over rocks.”

“Starting with Bradley’s.”

“Yeah. Can you set up an alert so I’ll get a text message whenever he uses a credit or debit card?”

“You’re joking, right?”

“No.” I left it at that because I wasn’t sure if the joke he was referring to was that it was so easy to do or so hard. I should have known enough about Patrick’s abilities by that point to realize it was the former.

A few hours later, as Jen and I were tossing ideas back and forth, Patrick came in with his giant MacBook Pro under his arm and sat down at his desk. “Hey, guys,” he said. “Check these out.” He flipped open the computer as we flanked him and looked over his shoulders.

“What is it?” I asked.

“ATM surveillance photos. From the Wells Fargo on PCH and Main in Seal Beach.”

On the screen, he had pulled up a series of distorted fish-eye photos of a scruffy man in sunglasses and a Dodgers cap. “That look like anyone you know?”

“Taras Shevchuk?”

Pat pulled his mug shot and placed it side by side on the screen with a zoomed-in ATM photo. The two images looked like the same man.

“He has a checking account in his own name. He took out as much cash as he could two days in a row.”

“When was this?” I asked.

“Yesterday afternoon at about three fifteen, and the day before half an hour earlier.”

“How much was he able to get?” Jen asked.

“Both transactions combined, eight hundred bucks.”

I didn’t figure he’d be spending much of it on gondolas. Tiffany would be disappointed.

But why would Shevchuk be hitting the same ATM in Seal Beach the same time two days in row?

“He hasn’t been seen at any of his regular hangouts for the last few days,” I said to Jen and Pat, “but he’s not running.”

“He’s hiding, though,” Pat said.

“But something’s keeping him local,” Jen said.

“Nearly local. If he’s staying someplace close to the ATM, he’s across the Orange County line.”

Jen raised her eyebrows. “That would turn the heat down a little.”

“But why wouldn’t he go farther?” I asked.

“Could it have something to do with the safe?”

Patrick said, “Did you ever find out what was in it?”

“No,” I said. “We’re still waiting on an answer from the Bentons’ lawyer. That was on our list for our interview with Bradley, but we didn’t even get close to it.”

Pat absentmindedly tapped his fingers on his desk. In the lull in our conversation, the noise seemed particularly loud.

“Jen’s right,” I said. “It’s got to be what’s in the safe. Otherwise, he’d be a lot farther away. Must be something that’s only valuable here.”

“Information?” she asked.

“Could it be something political? Something on the congressman? Maybe on Bradley?”

“Hang on.” Patrick’s fingers stopped. “We know Turchenko’s a dimwit. Even if Shevchuk is the brains, how sharp can he be?”

I thought it over. “True. Unless there’s some other connection. Some kind of loyalty.”

“Honor among thieves?” Jen sounded doubtful.

I didn’t think we’d figure it out then, so I changed the subject. “Think it’s worth sitting on the ATM for a few hours this afternoon?”

“I’m up for it.” Pat grinned. “You never take me out anymore.”

O
NE OF THE
Wells Fargo branches in Seal Beach is located in a shopping center anchored by a Pavilions supermarket and a CVS pharmacy. Jen and I sat in her 4Runner and watched the ATM while Patrick was on the edge of the lot keeping a lookout on the front door of the bank.

Jen likes to shop in rich-people grocery stores, so I couldn’t really be blamed for giving her a hard time. “I can handle this if you want to go buy some soy milk and free-range chicken. Maybe a gluten-free scone.”

“I’d love to. Want me to pick you up some Cool Ranch Cheetos?”

“If there were such a thing as Cool Ranch Cheetos, I would be unbelievably turned on right now.”

People came and went. We’d arrived two hours before the time of Shevchuk’s earliest withdrawal, and it was now almost half an hour after his latest. It was a long shot that he would show, but it was all we had on him. Still, I was wondering how long we should wait, and I figured Jen and Pat were, too.

I called Pat and watched him across the parking lot as he answered his phone.

“What’s up?” he said.

“How long do you think we should give him?”

“A while yet. Might have been a coincidence that he hit the bank at such similar times.”

“How’s it going over there? Want to rotate? Come over here and sit with Jen?”

“Probably draw more attention than it’s worth. Let’s just sit tight for a while longer.”

We hung up and went back to watching the cars come and go.

When we were just about ready to throw in the towel, a battered Dodge Neon pulled into the lot. It stood out among the newer and more expensive local cars. It might have been the oldest in the lot. The driver pulled around the corner and parked a few slots away from Pat.