The Last Precinct - Cornwell Patricia - Страница 17

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I rub my eyes and sigh.

"Cutting off the face was part of the MO," she goes on. "What Newton Joyce liked to do to his victims." She refers to the evil male partner of the evil Carrie Grethen_a psychopathic pair that made Bonnie and Clyde seem like a Saturday morning cartoon from my youth. "Excise their faces and store them in the freezer as souvenirs, and because Joyce's face was so homely, so scarred by acne," Anna goes on, "he stole what he envied, beauty. Yes?"

"Yes, I suppose. As much we can go with any such theory about why people do what they do."

"And it was important that Joyce do the excisions carefully and not damage the faces. Which is why he did not shoot his victims, certainly not in the head. He did not want to risk causing damage to the face, the scalp. And shooting is too

easy." Anna shrugs. "Quick. Maybe merciful. Far better to be shot than to have your throat cut. So why did Newton Joyce and Carrie Grethen shoot Benton?"

Anna stands over me. I look up at her. "He said something," I answer slowly, finally. "He must have."

"Yes." Anna sits back down. "Yes, yes." She encourages me with her hands, as if directing traffic to move across the next intersection. "What, what? Tell me, Kay."

I reply that I don't know what Benton said to Newton Joyce and Carrie Grethen. But he said something or did something that caused one or the other to lose control of the game. It was an impulse, an involuntary reaction when one of them pushed the gun to Benton's head and pulled the trigger. Boom. And the fun was over. Benton felt nothing, was cognizant of nothing after that. No matter what they did to him after that, it didn't matter. He was dead or dying. Unconscious. He never felt the knife. Maybe he never saw it.

"You knew Benton so well," Anna says. "You knew his killers, or at least you knew Carrie Grethen_you'd had experiences with her in the past. What do you think Benton said and to whom did he say it? Who shot him?"

"I can't…"

"You can."

I look at her.

"Who lost control?" She pushes me farther than I ever thought I could go.

"She did." I pull this up from the deep. "Carrie did. Because it was personal. She'd been around Benton from the old days, from the start, when she was at Quantico, at the Engineering Research Facility."

"Where she also met Lucy long years ago, maybe ten years ago."

"Yes, Benton knew her, knew Carrie, knew her probably as well as you can know any reptilian mind like hers," I add.

"What did he say to her?" Anna's eyes are riveted to me.

"Something about Lucy, probably," I say. "Something about Lucy that would insult Carrie. He insulted Carrie, taunted her about Lucy, that's what I believe." I have a direct shunt from my subconscious to my tongue. I don't even have to think.

"Carrie and Lucy were lovers at Quantico," Anna adds another piece. "Both working on the artificial intelligence computer in the Engineering Research Facility."

"Lucy was an intern, just a teenager, a kid, and Carrie seduced her. They were working on the computer system together. I got Lucy that internship," I bitterly add. "I did. Me, her influential, powerful aunt."

"Didn't lead to quite what you intended, did it?" Anna suggests.

"Carrie used her…"

"Made Lucy gay?"

"No, I wouldn't go that far," I say. "You don't make people

gay"

"Made Benton dead? Can you go that far?"

"I don't know, Anna."

"A volatile past, a personal history. Yes. Benton said something about Lucy, and Carrie lost control and shot him just like that," Anna summarizes. "He did not die the way they planned." She sounds triumphant. "He did not."

I rock quietly, looking out at a gray morning that has become full of bluster. The wind exerts itself in fierce gusts that fling dead branches and vines across Anna's backyard, reminding me of the angry tree hurling apples at Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. Then Anna gets up with no announcement, as if an appointment is up. She leaves me to go about other business in her house. We have talked enough for now. I decide to retreat to the kitchen, and that is where Lucy finds me around noon after her workout. I am opening a can of whole tomatoes when she walks in, the early stages of a marinara sauce simmering on the stove.

"Need some help?" She looks at sweet onions, peppers and mushrooms on the cutting board. "Kind of hard getting around with only one hand."

"Pull up a stool," I tell her. "You can be impressed with my fending for myself." I exaggerate bravado as I finish opening the can with no help, and she smiles as she moves a bar stool from the other side of the counter and sits. She is still in her running clothes and has a look in her eye, a secret light, reminding me of the river catching the sun very early in the morning. I steady an onion with two fingers of my immobilized left hand and begin to slice.

"Remember our game?" I lay the onion slices flat and begin to chop. "When you were ten? Or can't you remember back that far? I certainly will never forget," I say in a tone meant to remind Lucy what an impossible brat she was as a child. "Bet you have no idea how many times I would have put you on admin leave, given the choice." I dare to push that painful truth. Maybe I am feeling bold because of my naked talk with Anna, which has left me unnerved and at the same time exhilarated.

"I wasn't that bad." Lucy's eyes dance because she loves to hear what a little terror she was when she was a child and would come stay with me.

I drop handfuls of chopped sweet onions in the sauce and stir. "Truth Serum. Remember that game?" I ask her. "I'd come home, usually from work, and I could tell by the look on your face that you'd been up to something. So I'd sit you in that big red chair in the living room, remember? It was by the fireplace in my old house in Windsor Farms. And I'd bring you a glass of juice and tell you it was truth serum. And you'd drink it and confess."

"Like the time I formatted your computer while you were gone." She is laughing hard.

"Ten damn years old and you format my hard drive. I about had a heart attack," I recall.

"Hey, but I did back up all your files first. I just wanted to give you a bad moment." She is really enjoying this.

"Well, I almost sent you home." I wipe the fingertips of my left hand with a dishtowel, careful that my cast doesn't smell like onions as I experience a wave of sweet sadness. I don't

really remember why Lucy came to stay with me on her first visit to Richmond, but I was not the child-rearing type and was new in the job and under tremendous pressure. There was some sort of crisis with Dorothy. Maybe she ran off and got married again, or maybe I was a sucker. Lucy adored me and I wasn't accustomed to being adored. Whenever I would visit her in Miami, she would follow me all over the house, everywhere I went, tenaciously moving with my feet like a soccer ball.

"You weren't going to send me home." Lucy is challenging me, but I catch the doubt in her eyes. The fear of not being wanted is based on fact in her life.

"Only because I felt inadequate to take care of you," I reply, leaning against the sink. "Not because I wasn't crazy about you, little rat fink that you were." She laughs again. "But no, I wouldn't have sent you home. Both of us would have been devastated. I couldn't." I shake my head. "Thank God for our little game. It was about the only way I could get to what was going on inside of you or what mischief you had engaged in while I was off somewhere, at work, whatever. So do I need to pour you juice or a glass of wine, or are you going to just go on and tell me what's happening with you? I wasn't born yesterday, Lucy. You aren't staying in a hotel for the heck of it. You're up to something."

"I'm not the first woman they've run off," she starts in.

"You would be the best woman they've run off," I answer.

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