Patricia Cornwell - Point of Origin

'You don't think they did that to, to…?' Lucy started to say, her fists clenched in her lap.

'To Benton?' I raised my voice more. 'Do I think they took his face, too?'

I kicked the paneled wall and leaned against it. Inside I went still and my mind felt dark and dead.

'Carrie knew he could imagine everything she might do to him,' I said in a slow, low voice. 'She would have enjoyed every minute of it as he sat there, shackled. As she taunted him with the knife. Yes. I think they did that to him, too. In fact, I know it.'

The last thought was almost impossible to complete.

'I just hope he was already dead,' I said.

'He would have been, Aunt Kay.'

Lucy was crying, too, as she came to me and wrapped her arms around my neck.

'They wouldn't have taken the chance that someone might hear him scream,' she said.

Within the hour, I passed on news of the latest developments to Teun McGovern, and she agreed that it was critical for us to find out who Carrie's partner was, if possible, and how she might have met him. McGovern was more angered than she would show when I explained what I suspected and knew. Kirby might be our only hope, and she concurred that in my professional position, I had a better chance of making that visit successfully than did she. She was law enforcement. I was a physician.

Border Patrol had ferried a Bell JetRanger to HeloAir, near Richmond lnternational Airport, and Lucy wanted to take off this minute and fly through the night. I had told her this was out of the question, if for no other reason than once we got to New York, we had no place to stay, and certainly we couldn't sleep on Ward's Island. I needed a chance first thing in the morning to alert Kirby that we were coming. It would not be a request, but a statement of fact. Marino thought he should accompany us, but I would not hear of it.

'No cops,' I told him when he dropped by my house at almost ten in the evening.

'You're out of your friggin' mind,' he said.

'Would you blame me if I were?'

He stared down at worn-out running shoes that had never been given a chance to perform their primary function in this world.

'Lucy's law enforcement,' he said.

'As far as they're concerned, she's my pilot.'

'Huh.'

'I have to do this my way, Marino.'

'Gee, Doc, I don't know what to say. I don't know how you can deal with any of this.'

His face was deeply flushed, and when he looked up at me, his eyes were bloodshot and filled with pain.

'I want to go because I want to find those motherfuckers,' he said. 'They set him up. You know that, don't you? The Bureau's got a record that some guy called Tuesday afternoon at three-fourteen. Said he had a tip about the Shephard case that he'd only give to Benton Wesley. They gave the usual song and dance, that sure, everybody says the same thing. They're special. Got to talk to the man direct. But this informant had the goods. He said, and I quote, Tell him it's about some weirdo woman I saw at Lehigh County Hospital. She was sitting one table away from Kellie Shephard.'

'Damn!' I exclaimed as rage thundered in my temples.

'So as best we know, Benton calls the number this asshole left. Turns out to be a pay phone near the grocery that got burned,' he went on. 'My guess is, Benton met up with the guy - Carrie's psycho partner. Has no idea who he's talking to until BOOM!'

I jumped.

'Benton's got a gun, maybe a knife to his throat. They cuff him, double-locking with the key. And why do that? Because he's law enforcement and knows that your average Joe don't know about double-locking. Usually, all cops do is click shut the jaws of the cuff when they're hauling somebody in. The prisoner squirms, the cuffs tighten. And if he manages to get a hairpin or something similar up there to override the ratchets, then he might even spring himself free. But with double-locking, no way. Can't get out without a key or something exactly like a key. It's something Benton would've known about when it was happening to him. A big bad signal that he was dealing with someone who knew what the shit he was doing.'

'I've heard enough,' I said to Marino. 'Go home. Please.'

I had the beginning of a migraine. I could always tell when my entire neck and head began to hurt and my stomach felt queasy. I walked Marino to the door. I knew I had wounded him. He was loaded with pain and had no place to shoot, because he did not know how to show what he felt. I wasn't even sure he knew what he felt.

'He ain't gone, you know,' he said as I opened the door. 'I don't believe it. I didn't see it, and I don't believe it.'

'They will be sending him home soon,' I said as cicadas sawed in the dark, and moths swarmed in the glow of the lamp over my porch. 'Benton is dead,' I said with surprising strength. 'Don't take away from him by not accepting his death.'

'He's gonna show up one of these days.' Marino's voice was at a higher pitch. 'You wait. I know that son of a bitch. He don't go down this easy.'

But Benton had gone down this easy. It was so often like that, Versace walking home from buying coffee and magazines or Lady Diana not wearing her seat belt. I shut the door after Marino drove away. I set the alarm, which by now was a reflex that sometimes got me into trouble when I forgot I had armed my house and opened a slider. Lucy was stretched out on the couch, watching the Arts and Entertainment network in the great room, the lights out. I sat next to her and put my hand on her shoulder.

We did not speak as a documentary about gangsters in the early days of Las Vegas played on. I stroked her hair and her skin felt feverish. I wondered what was going on inside that mind of hers. I worried greatly about it, too. Lucy's thoughts were different. They were distinctly her own and not to be interpreted by any Rosetta stone of psychotherapy or intuition. But this much I had learned about her from the beginning of her life. What she didn't say mattered most, and Lucy wasn't talking about Janet anymore.

'Let's go to bed so we can get an early start, Madame Pilot,' I said.

'I think I'll just sleep in here.'

She pointed the remote control and turned down the volume.

'In your clothes?'

She shrugged.

'If we can get to HeloAir around nine, I'll call Kirby from there.'

'What if they say don't come?' my niece asked.

'I'll tell them I'm on my way. New York City is Republican at the moment. If need be, I'll get my friend Senator Lord involved, and he'll get the health commissioner and mayor on the warpath, and I don't think Kirby will want that. Easier to let us land, don't you think?'

'They don't have any ground-to-air missiles there, do they?'

'Yes, they're called patients,' I said, and it was the first time we had laughed in days.

Why I slept as well as I did, I could not explain, but when my alarm clock went off at six A.M., I turned over in bed. I realized I had not gotten up once since shortly before midnight, and this hinted of a cure, of a renewing that I desperately needed. Depression was a veil I could almost see through, and I was beginning to feel hope. I was doing what Benton would expect me to do, not to avenge his murder, really, for he would not have wanted that.

His wish would have been to prevent harm to Marino, Lucy, or me. He would have wanted me to protect other lives I did not know, other unwitting individuals who worked in hospitals or as models and had been sentenced to a terrible death in the split second it took for a monster to notice them with evil eyes burning with envy.

Lucy went running as the sun was coming up, and although it unnerved me for her to be out alone, I knew she had a pistol in her butt pack, and neither of us could let our lives stop because of Carrie. It seemed she had such an advantage. If we went on as usual, we might die. If we aborted our lives because of fear, we still died, only in a way that was worse, really.