Patricia Cornwell - Red Mist

“Why not,” I reply.

“If you have an extra key, it would be easier.”

I get up again and give him that, too. Then he’s gone, leaving Jaime and me alone, and I suspect that’s the point rather than the urgency of needing a six-pack of nonalcoholic beer or getting his van fixed after hours, when automotive-repair services likely are closed. Jaime probably instructed him to be on his way after he ate, or maybe she gave him some other signal I missed, and I can only assume that whenever it was Marino left the Boston area for his alleged vacation, he carried a go-bag for me. There can’t be any doubt that my sitting in Jaime’s apartment this moment was carefully planned.

Pushing off her blue leather slip-ons, she gets up from the couch, her stocking feet quiet on old pine flooring as she heads to the kitchen for the bottle of wine. She lets me know she has a very nice Scotch if I’d like something stronger.

“Not for me,” I reply, anticipating what tomorrow will bring.

“I think stronger might be better.”

“No, thank you. But help yourself.”

I watch her open a cabinet and find the Johnnie Walker Blue.

“What could the FBI or anyone possibly think they have on me?” I ask her.

“I believe in dealing proactively,” she replies, as if I asked a different question. “I never take anything for granted.”

She unscrews the metal cap from a blended Scotch so fine that it’s hard for me to imagine she bought it to drink alone. Possibly she thought she’d sit up half the night with me and get me to lower my defenses and agree to whatever she wants.

“Perception can be a lethal weapon,” she adds. “Which may be their point.”

“Whose point?” I ask, because I’m not sure that the person making a point isn’t Jaime.

Agenerous pour, neat with no ice, and she returns from the kitchen, the bottle of wine in one hand, her glass of Scotch in the other.

“Dawn Kincaid’s point. Her lawyers’ point,” Jaime says. “According to them, what happened to Dawn was self-defense. But not your self-defense. Hers.”

“It’s not hard to predict what she’s going to claim,” I reply. “That it was Jack who hacked to death Wally Jamison last Halloween and next hammered nails into six-year-old Mark Bishop’s head before going on to kill MIT grad student Eli Saltz, and finally committing suicide with his own gun. My deranged deputy chief who’s no longer around to defend himself did it all.”

“And then you, his deranged boss, attacked Dawn Kincaid.” Jaime sits back down, and I smell peat and burnt fruit as she sets her drink on the table.

“I’m not surprised she might conjure up a fabrication like that. I’d like to hear the part about her being on my property and ambushing me inside my garage at night after disabling the motion-sensor light in the driveway.”

“She showed up at your Cambridge home to get her dog,” Jaime answers. “You had her rescued greyhound, Sock, and she wanted him back.”

“Please.” I feel a rush of irritation.

“You’d removed the injection knife from Jack’s cellar earlier that day while working the crime scene….”

“The knife was gone long before I got there,” I interrupt, with increasing impatience. “Police will tell you they found its empty hard case and canisters of CO 2and that was all.”

“Police want her successfully prosecuted, don’t they?” She refills my wineglass. “They’re prejudiced against Dawn Kincaid, aren’t they? And the case against her is complicated by your FBI husband being involved. That’s not exactly impartial and objective, is it?”

“Are you implying Benton may have removed the injection knife from the scene or knows I did and would lie about such a thing? That either one of us would tamper with evidence or obstruct justice in any way?” I confront her, and it’s difficult knowing which side she’s on, but it doesn’t feel like mine.

“We’re not talking about me or what I might imply,” Jaime says. “We’re talking about what Dawn will say.”

“I’m not sure I understand why you might know what she will say.”

“She’ll claim that while you awaited her expected arrival on your property that night, you made sure you put body armor on,” Jaime replies. “You made sure the Maglite you carried with you didn’t work and loosened the bulb in the motion-sensor light by the garage so you could later claim you couldn’t see what happened. You claimed you swung the heavy metal flashlight blindly in the dark, a reflex when you supposedly were attacked, when in fact it was you who ambushed Dawn.”

“It was an old flashlight, and I didn’t test it before walking out of the house. I should have. And it certainly wasn’t me who loosened the bulb in the motion-sensor light.” I’m having a hard time disguising my annoyance.

“You were ready and waiting for her when she appeared to pick up Sock.” Jaime resettles herself more comfortably on the couch, placing a pillow in her lap and resting her arms on top of it.

“And it makes sense she would contact me and ask if she can drop by to get her dog when the police, the Feds, everybody, is looking for her?” I remark. “Who’s going to believe anything so illogical?”

“She’ll say she wasn’t aware the police were looking for her. She’ll say she wouldn’t have imagined anyone was looking for her, since she didn’t do anything wrong.”

Jaime reaches for her drink. The expensive Scotch is burnished gold in a cheap glass, and she’s beginning to sound a little drunk.

“She’ll say her beloved rescued greyhound, trained by her mother and entrusted to her care, was at her father’s house in Salem,” Jaime continues. “Dawn will say you took the dog home with you, stole him, and she wanted him back. She’ll say you attacked her and she managed to get the knife away from you, but in the process badly cut her hand, losing part of a finger and suffering nerve and tendon damage, and then you struck her in the head with the heavy metal flashlight. She’ll say that if Benton hadn’t appeared in the garage when he did, you would have finished the job. She’d be dead.”

“She’ll say all this, or has she already said it?” I put down my plate and look at her, and my appetite has tucked itself into a tight place, out of reach and done for the night. I couldn’t swallow another bite if I tried.

If I didn’t know better, I’d think that Jaime Berger is Dawn Kincaid’s counsel and has lured me to Savannah to tell me that. But I know it isn’t true.

“She’ll say it, and she has said it,” Jaime replies, grasping seaweed salad in the tips of her chopsticks. “She’s said it to her lawyers, and she’s said it in letters to Kathleen Lawler. Inmates can write to other inmates when they’re family. Dawn is clever enough to have begun addressing Kathleen as Mom. Dear Mom, she writes, signing them your loving daughter, ” she says, as if she’s seen these letters, and maybe she has.

“Has Kathleen written to her, as well?” I inquire.

“She says she hasn’t, but she’s not telling the truth,” Jaime says. “I’m sure you don’t want to hear it, Kay, but Dawn Kincaid is playing quite the role. A brilliant scientist who has lost the use of a hand and is suffering mental and emotional problems due to trauma and a concussion, which is being described as a significant head injury with lasting ill effects.”

“Malingering.”

“Pretty, charming, and now suffering dissociative states. Delusions and impaired cognition, which is why she was transferred to Butler.”

“Deliberate pretense.”

“Her lawyers attribute all of it to you, and you might expect a civil suit filed next,” Jaime says. “And your contact with her mother today and any communications in the past, in my opinion, have been unwise. It only serves to make your behavior more questionable.”