The Pain Scale (3 page)

Ruiz and Jen came into the room behind me. He spoke first. “The man in the pictures is Bradley Benton the Third.”

That’s when I got it. He was in almost every picture. I scanned the rows. Bradley Benton III with guys in suits. Bradley Benton III on skis. Bradley Benton III on a boat with a big fish. Bradley Benton III in many places with many people wearing many outfits. There were even a few pictures with Bailey and Jacob. And, all the way on the left, a single image of him with Sara. A wedding photo. The one thing that was completely clear from the array was that Bradley was the star of the show.

“Bradley Benton?” I asked. “Any relation?”

“Yeah,” Ruiz said. “The victims are the daughter-in-law and grandchildren of our congressman.”

“Terrific,” I said.

That explained the high profile.

I looked back at the photo of Bradley and Sara. She was beaming like most brides on their wedding day, but he wore a smug expression on his face, and an overweening arrogance emanated from his eyes. Just the kind of look that made me want to Taser someone.

“What?” Jen asked me.

“I don’t like him.”

“No surprise there.”

“What do you mean?”

“When’s the last time you met a rich guy who didn’t make you want to puke?”

“Funny,” I said. “We have any idea where he is?”

“Yeah,” Ruiz said. “He’s on an airplane flying in from DC. His old man’s coming, too.”

“Does he know?” I asked.

“His attorney does. I imagine he’s spread the word.”

“You made the notification to the lawyer?”

“That’s the play they dealt. Told Benton’s chief of staff I was a cop; he put me straight through to the mouthpiece. He hemmed and hawed so much I just gave up and spit it out.”

“This is going to be a peach,” Jen said.

Ruiz’s cell rang. He checked the caller ID display and took it out of the room.

I went back to the photos on the wall. In one of the few that didn’t include Benton, Sara was standing on a playground between two swings. On her left was Bailey, on her right, Jacob. Her arms were open, and she had one hand on each child’s back and was just beginning to push. The family resemblance shone in their smiles, and the three of them seemed to share some deep and secret happiness.

An hour and a half later, we reconvened in the den. The lieutenant had called in the rest of the Homicide Detail to back us up. Marty Locklin and David Zepeda were the old hands, with almost fifty years on the job between them. Patrick Glenn was the newest addition to the squad. He’d been on loan from Computer Crimes while I was out on medical leave, and Ruiz was trying to make the reassignment permanent. We’d all torn the house apart on the assumption that the Bentons’ attorneys would get in the way once they arrived. We assumed Bradley probably had a whole host of things he’d rather not have the police looking at. The house’s status as a crime scene gave us quite a bit of latitude. Until someone protested, we were allowed to search just about anything. And we wanted to find out as much as we could before we had to start justifying our actions.

Ruiz eyeballed us. “Impressions?”

“It’s a mess,” I said. “The first thought is home invasion. The back door’s been forced. Looks like a safe’s been ripped out of one of the master bedroom closets with pry bars and a sledgehammer. But if you go with that, why torture Sara?”

Jen spoke next. “The combination to the safe?”

“Maybe,” I said. “But it was pretty hard core for that. Looks like these guys enjoyed what they did to her.”

Marty took a turn. “Coincidence? A couple of pervs who take scores see the chance to combine work with pleasure?”

Jen shook her head. “Crossover like that’s pretty rare. Usually the deviants aren’t big on multitasking. Too much of a distraction from the real business.” She’d spent three years in Sex Crimes before transferring to Homicide.

“And what about the kids?” Ruiz asked.

“Looks like a mob hit,” Dave said. “No wits.”

“It does,” I said. “But that doesn’t fit, either. They don’t usually kill kids. Too much heat—the percentages don’t add up.”

“Well,” Ruiz said, “nothing adds up here.” He looked down at his shoes. I thought a speech might be in the offing, but I was wrong. He went for terse. “Figure it out. There’s a storm coming, and it’s moving fast.” Well, terse and clichéd.

“Marty?” I asked.

He hooked a thumb at Dave and said, “We’ll get started on the canvass.”

Patrick held up an external hard drive. “Two computers. I copied both. Going to take them back to the squad and start digging.”

“Should you do that?” I asked.

“Well,” he said, “I
can
do it.” He shrugged.

I let it go.

After everyone else made their way out of the room, Jen and I were left alone.

My gaze drifted back over the photos of Benton. Twenty-two of them. Benton himself in twenty. What kind of man, I
wondered, had more pictures of himself than of his children? What kind of ego did that indicate? What kind of narcissism? I moved my eyes down the rows and studied his face. His eyes. His smile. There was something missing in every one.

A slicing pain wound its way up my arm like a twisting chain.

I knew.

I didn’t know how or why, but I knew.

Jen was watching me. “What?” she asked.

“He’s guilty,” I said.

“Well, good,” she said with mock relief. “That’ll save us a lot of work.”

I was working on a comeback when we heard the scream.

I
SUPPOSED THE
real problem with the pain scale itself as a diagnostic tool was the patient’s capacity for imagination. At one support group for chronic pain sufferers I attended, we spent the first twenty minutes complaining about the folly of the scale and about the incredible extremities of pain we could imagine. Anyone who has dealt with the medical establishment’s treatment of chronic pain in the last few years has encountered this phenomenon. We’re asked to rate our pain on a scale of one to ten. To assign it a numerical value. One: no pain at all. Ten: the worst pain imaginable. So you can see why what we are capable of envisioning is a significant factor in our estimation.

Pain does strange things to you. Chronic pain especially so. It changes you. Your feelings. Your thoughts. Your beliefs. Even your imagination. Things that were once abstractions become tangible. Suffering, true suffering, becomes something that is no longer an only vaguely considered possibility but a palatable, day-to-day reality.

You learn to imagine the unimaginable.

And to live in pain is to encounter the darkest possibilities of your imagination.

When you did what I did every day, those possibilities were very dark indeed.

It turned out that the scream had come from the nanny. By the time Jen and I made our way to the kitchen, she was sitting rigid on a chair at the corner of the breakfast nook. Ruiz was next to her, a fatherly hand on her shoulder and comforting words trickling out of his mouth. We stood back as he eased her into the requisite questions.

Her name was Joely Ryan, and she’d been working for the Bentons for a little over a year. She was blonde and cute, early twenties, and she seemed like someone accustomed to being in the presence of wealth but not someone born to it. Her demeanor held too much deference to the lieutenant’s authority for it to have developed in any kind of excessive privilege. And her distress was almost surely genuine.

Ruiz motioned Jen and me to the table. “Joely,” he said, “this is Detective Tanaka and Detective Beckett. They’re going to ask you some more questions.”

She nodded and removed a fresh tissue from the box on the table to dab at her cheeks.

Jen took Ruiz’s spot at the table as I leaned back against the large granite-topped counter that dominated the kitchen. I noticed a large Post-it note on the stainless refrigerator door. In large black handwriting, it read:

D
ON’T FORGET!
L
UNCH W
/C
AT
W
ED
12

I looked at my watch. It was after 2:00. Sara missed her lunch. I made a note and turned my attention back to the table.

“I know this is difficult,” Jen said. “But can you think of anyone who might have wanted to hurt Mrs. Benton or the children?”

Joely shook her head.

“How about Mr. Benton?”

She looked up at Jen. “No.”

“Have you noticed anything unusual or out of the ordinary recently?”

“Like what?”

“Changes in anyone’s behavior, changes in schedules or the way the Bentons liked to do things, new people around, strangers. Anything at all.”

“No.” Joely shook her head again and wiped her nose.

Jen let things sit for a moment.

“Well,” Joely went on, “just tiny things. Like today.”

“What happened today?”

“The kids were supposed to be in school. Sara hardly ever keeps them home, but they both had that bug that’s going around, so she asked if I could come early. I wouldn’t even be here yet—” Her voice caught in her throat.

Jen gave Joely time to compose herself, asked her a few more questions, then told her we’d probably need to talk to her again. Gave her a business card in case she thought of anything in the meantime.

We were back in the den before either of us said it out loud.

I said, “Looks like the kids are dead...”

“...because,” Jen continued, “they had a cold.”

We had the run of the house for another half an hour. Then the weather changed and a cold front blew in. Brad’s lawyers showed up.

The alpha had short, well-tended hair glistening with some sort of product and a gunmetal-gray suit that looked like it cost more than my car.

Ruiz led him and a quarter dozen of his minions out onto the back patio, where Jen and I were tossing out some preliminary ideas. He introduced us as the leads on the investigation.

“I’m Julian Campos,” he said, extending a hand. “I’m the Bentons’ attorney.” His handshake felt like he’d been working on it with a personal trainer. “These are my associates from Sternow and Byrne. We’re here to help in whatever way we can.”

“Is Mr. Benton with you?” I asked.

“Presently, he’s understandably distraught. He’s seeking assistance from the family’s physician.”

“We’ll need to talk to him as soon as possible.”

“Of course. In the meantime, is there any way we can be of assistance?” The pergola overhead cast zebra-striped shadows across him.

“You can stay out of the way.”

“Of course.”

The gaggle of lawyers melted into the background. But as soon as Campos closed his mouth, they spread out through the house and started taking photos and writing down everything they saw.

Jen and I split up and walked the house one more time to make sure we’d caught everything there was to catch. Although they were smart enough to stay away from the rooms in which the murders took place, it seemed like I couldn’t turn around without seeing another attorney.

After we had covered the entire scene again, we met up with Ruiz in the foyer.

“Well?” he said.

“I think we’re covered,” I said. “But I don’t like all the lawyers.”

“Why?” He looked at me. “You got something to hide?”