The Last Precinct - Cornwell Patricia (читаем книги онлайн TXT) 📗

"So now what?" I mutter, looking around my garage as if I have never seen it before. "What am I supposed to drive?"

"Your alarm went off around eleven o'clock Friday night," Berger is all business again. She is firm and no-nonsense again. She returns to our mission of retracing Chandonne's steps. "The cops arrive. You take them in here and find the door open about eight inches." Obviously, she has seen the incident report of the attempted breaking and entering. "It was snowing and you found footprints on the other side of the door." She steps outside and I follow. "The footprints were covered with a dusting of snow, but you could tell they led around the side of the house, up to the street."

We stand on my driveway in the raw air, both of us without coats. I stare up at the murky sky and a few flakes of snow coldly touch my face. It has started again. Winter has become a hemophiliac. It can't seem to stop precipitating. Lights from my neighbor's house shine through magnolias and bare trees, and I wonder how much peace of mind the people of Lock-green have left. Chandonne has tainted life for them, too. I wouldn't be surprised if some people move.

"Can you remember where the footprints were?" Berger asks.

I show her. I follow my driveway around the side of the house and cut through the yard, straight out to the street.

"Which way did he go?" Berger looks up and down the dark, empty street.

"Don't know," I reply. "The snow was churned up and it was snowing again. We couldn't tell which way he went. But I didn't stay out here looking, either. I guess you'll have to ask the police." I think about Marino. I wish he would hurry up and get here, and 1 am reminded of why I called him. Fear and bewilderment crackle up my spine. I look around at my neighbors' houses. I have learned to read where I live and can tell, by windows lit up, by cars in the driveway and newspaper deliveries, when people are home, which really isn't often. So much of the population here is retired and wintering in Florida and spending hot summer months on the water somewhere. It occurs to me that I have never really had friends in my neighborhood, only people who wave when we pass each other in our cars.

Berger walks back toward the garage, hugging herself to keep warm, the moisture in her breath freezing and puffing out white. I remember Lucy as a child coming to visit from Miami. Her only exposure to the cold was Richmond, and she would roll up notebook paper and stand out on the patio, pretending to smoke, tapping imaginary ashes, not knowing I was watching through a window. "Let's back up," Berger is saying as she walks. "To Monday, December sixth. The day the body was found in the container at the Richmond Port. The body that we believe was Thomas Chandonne, allegedly murdered by his brother, Jean-Baptiste. Tell me exactly what happened that Monday."

"I was notified about the body," I begin.

"By whom?"

"Marino. Then minutes later, my deputy chief, Jack Fielding, called. I said I would respond to the scene," I begin.

"But you didn't have to," she interrupts. "You're the chief. We have a stinky, nasty decomposing body on an unseasonably warm morning. You could have let, uh, Fielding or whoever respond."

"I could have."

"Why didn't you?"

"It was clearly going to be a complicated case. The ship was out of Belgium and we had to entertain the possibility that the body originated in Belgium, thus adding international difficulties. I tend to take the hard cases, the ones that will get a lot of publicity."

"Because you like the publicity?"

"Because I don't like it."

We are inside my garage now and both of us are thoroughly chilled. I shut the door.

"And maybe you wanted to take this case because you'd had an upsetting morning?" Berger walks over to the large cedar locker. "You mind?" I tell her to help herself as I marvel again at the details she seems to know about me.

Black Monday. That morning, Senator Frank Lord, chairman of the judiciary committee and an old, dear friend, came to see me. In his possession was a letter Benton had written to me. I knew nothing about this letter. It would never occur to me thai while Benton was on vacation at Lake Michigan some years ago, he had written me a letter and instructed Senator Lord to give it to me should he_Benton_die. I remember recognizing the penmanship when Senator Lord delivered the letter to me. I will never forget the shock. I was devastated. Grief finally caught up with me and seized my soul, and this was precisely what Benton had intended. He was the brilliant profiler to the end. He knew exactly how I would react should something happen to him, and he was forcing me out of my workaholic denial.

"How do you know about the letter?" I numbly ask Berger.

She is looking inside the locker at jumpsuits, rubber boots, waders, heavy leather gloves, long underwear, socks, tennis shoes. "Please bear with me," she says almost gently. "Just answer my questions for now. I'll answer yours later."

Later isn't good enough. "Why does the letter matter?"

"I'm not sure. But let's start with state of mind."

She lets that sink in. My state of mind is the bull's-eye of Caggiano's target, should I end up in New York. More immediately, it is what everyone else seems to be questioning.

"Let's assume if I know something, the opposing counsel does, too," she adds.

I nod.

"You get this letter out of the blue. From Benton." She pauses and emotion flickers across her face. "Let me just say…" She looks away from me. "That would have undone me, too, totally. I'm sorry for what you've been through." She meets my eyes. Another ploy to make me trust her, bond with her? "Benton is reminding you a year after his death that you've probably not dealt with his loss. You've run like hell from the pain."

"You can't have seen the letter." I am stunned and outraged. "It's locked in a safe. How do you know what it says?"

"You showed it to other people," she reasonably replies.

I realize with the little bit of objectivity I have left that if Berger hasn't talked to everyone around me, including Lucy and Marino, she will. It is her duty. She would be foolish and negligent if she didn't. "December the sixth," she resumes. "He wrote the letter on December the sixth, nineteen-ninety-six, and instructed Senator Lord to deliver it to you on the December the sixth following Benton's death. Why was that date special to Benton?"

I hesitate.

"Thick skin, Kay," she reminds me. "Thick skin."

"I don't know the significance of December the sixth, exactly_except Benton mentioned in the letter that he knew Christmas is hard for me," I reply. "He wanted me to get the letter close to Christmas."

"Christmas is hard for you?"

"Isn't it hard for everybody?"

Berger is silent. Then she asks, "When did your intimate relationship with him begin?"

"In the fall. Years ago."

"Okay. In the fall, years ago. That's when you began your sexual relationship with him." She says this as if I am avoiding reality. "When he was still married. When your affair with him began."

"That's right."

"Okay. This past December the sixth, you get the letter and later that morning responded to the scene at the Richmond port. Then you came back here. Tell me exactly what your routine is when you come straight home from a crime scene."

"My scene clothes were double-bagged in the trunk of my car," I explain. "A jumpsuit and tennis shoes." I keep staring at the empty space where my car should be. "The jumpsuit went into the washing machine, the shoes into a sink of scalding water with disinfectant." I show her the shoes. They are still parked on the shelf where I left them to dry more than two weeks ago.

"Then?" Berger walks over to the washing machine and dryer.

"Then I stripped," I tell her. "I took off everything and put it in the washing machine, started it up and went inside the house."