Patricia Cornwell - Point of Origin

'That, TV commercials, magazine ads. She made a pretty good living. Drove a black Viper and lived in a damn nice house right on the ocean.'

'I'm wondering if you could e-mail photos and any reports to me.'

'Give me your address, and I'll see what I can do.'

'I need them fast, Investigator Stuckey,' I said.

I hung up and my mind was whirling. Each victim was physically beautiful and involved in photography or television. It was a common denominator that could not be ignored, and I believed that Marlene Farber, Austin Hart, Claire Rawley, and Kellie Shephard had been selected for a reason that was important to the killer. This was where everything unraveled. The pattern fit that of a serial killer, like Bundy, who selected women with long straight hair who resembled his estranged girlfriend. What didn't fit was Carrie Grethen. In the first place, she had been locked up in Kirby when the first three deaths had occurred, and her MO had never been anything like this.

I was baffled. Carrie was not there and yet she was. I dozed for a while in my chair, and at six A.M., I came to with a start. My neck burned from being bent in the wrong position, and my back was achy and stiff. I got up slowly and stretched, and knew what I had to do but wasn't certain I could. Just the thought filled me with terror, and my heart kicked in with violent force. I could feel my pulse pounding like a fist against a door, and I stared at the brown paper bags Marino had placed in front of a bookcase packed with law reviews. They were taped shut and labeled, and I picked them up. I followed the hallway to Benton's room.

Although we typically had shared my bed, the opposite wing of the house had been his. Here he had worked and stored his day-to-day belongings, for as both of us had gotten older, we had learned that space was our most reliable friend. Our retreats made our battles less bloody, and absences during the day made nights more inviting. His door was open wide, as he had left it. The lights were out, the curtains drawn. Shadows got sharper as I stood, frozen for an instant, staring in. It required all of the courage I had ever demonstrated in my life to turn on the overhead light.

His bed with its bold blue duvet and sheets was neatly made, because Benton was always meticulous, no matter his hurry. He had never waited for me to change his linens or attend to his laundry, and part of this was due to an independence and strong sense of self that never really relented, not even with me. He had to do it his way. In that regard, we were so much alike, I marveled we had ever gotten together. I collected his hairbrush from the dresser, because I knew it might be useful for a DNA comparison, should there be no other avenue for identification. I went to the small cherry bedside table to look at the books and thick file folders stacked there.

He had been reading Cold Mountain, and had used the torn flap of an envelope to mark his place not quite halfway through. Of course, there were the pages of the latest revision of a crime classification manual he was editing, and the sight of his scratchy penmanship crashed me to earth. I tenderly turned manuscript pages and trailed my fingers over the barely legible words he had penned as tears ambushed me again. Then I set the bags on the bed and ripped them open.

Police had hastily riffled through his closet and drawers, and nothing they had packed inside the bags was neatly folded, but rather bunched and rolled. One by one I smoothed open white cotton shirts and bold ties and two pairs of suspenders. He had packed two lightweight suits, and both of them were crinkled like crepe paper. There were dress shoes, and running clothes and socks and jockey shorts, but it was his shaving kit that stopped me.

Methodical hands had rummaged through it, and the screw cap to a bottle of Givenchy III was loose and cologne had leaked. The familiar sharp, masculine scent seized me with emotion. I could feel his smooth shaven cheeks. Suddenly, I saw him behind his desk in his former office at the FBI Academy. I remembered his striking features, his crisp dress and the smell of him, back then when I was already falling in love and did not know it. I neatly folded his clothing in a stack and fumbled, ripping and tearing open another bag. I placed the black leather briefcase on the bed and sprung open the locks.

Noticeably missing inside was the Colt Mustang.380 pistol that he sometimes had strapped to his ankle, and I found it significant that he had taken the pistol with him the night of his death. He always carried his nine-millimeter in its shoulder holster, but the Colt was his backup if he felt a situation to be threatening. This singular act indicated to me that Benton had been on a mission at some point after he had left the Lehigh fire scene. I suspected he had gone to meet someone, and I didn't understand why he hadn't let anybody know, unless he had become careless, and this I doubted.

I picked out his brown leather date book and flipped through it in search of any recent appointment that caught my eye. There were a hair cut, dentist's appointment, and trips coming up, but nothing penciled in for the day of his death except the birthday of his daughter, Michelle, the middle of next week. I imagined she and her sisters were with their mother, Connie, who was Benton's former wife. I dreaded the idea that eventually I would need to share their sorrow, no matter how they might feel about me.

He had scribbled comments and questions about the profile of Carrie, the monster who soon after had caused his death. The irony of that was inconceivable, as I envisioned him trying to dissect Carrie's behavior in hopes of anticipating what she might do. I didn't suppose he had ever entertained the notion that even as he had concentrated on her, she quite likely had been thinking about him, too. She had been planning Lehigh County and the videotape, and by now, most likely, was parading as a member of a production crew.

My eyes stumbled over penned phrases such as offender-victim relationship/fixation, and fusion of identity/erotomania and victim perceived as someone of higher status. On the back of the page, he had jotted patterned life after. How fits Carrie's victimology? Kirby. What access to Claire Rawley? Seemingly none. Inconsistent. Suggestive of a different offender? Accomplice? Gault. Bonnie and Clyde. Her original MO. May be on to something here. Carrie not alone. W/M 28-45? White helicopter?

Chills lifted my flesh as I realized what Benton had been thinking when he had been standing in the morgue taking notes and watching Gerde and me work. Benton had been contemplating what suddenly seemed so obvious. Carrie was not alone in this. She had somehow allied herself with an evil partner, perhaps while she was incarcerated at Kirby. In fact, I was certain that this allegiance predated her escape, and I wondered if during the five years she was there, she might have met another psychopathic patient who later was released. Perhaps she had corresponded with him as freely and audaciously as she had with the media and me.

It was also significant that Benton's briefcase had been found inside his hotel room, when I knew it had accompanied him earlier at the morgue. Clearly, he had returned to his room some time after leaving the Lehigh fire scene. Where he had gone after that and why remained a enigma. I read more notes about Kellie Shephard's murder. Benton had emphasized overkill, frenzied and disorganized. He had jotted, lost control and victim response not according to plan. Ruination of ritual. Wasn't supposed to happen like this. Rage. Will kill again soon.

I snapped shut the briefcase and left it on the bed as my heart ached. I walked out of the bedroom, turned off the light, and shut the door, knowing that the next time I entered it would be to clean out Benton's closet and drawers, and somehow decide to live with his resounding absence. I quietly checked on Lucy, finding her asleep, her pistol on the table by her bed. My restless wanderings took me to the foyer, where I turned off the alarm long enough to snatch the paper off the porch. I went into the kitchen to make coffee. By seven-thirty I was ready to leave for the office, and Lucy had not stirred. I quietly entered her room again, and the sun glowed faintly around the windowshade, touching her face with soft light.