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

I get a pair of latex gloves out of my satchel and put them on as I wander into the kitchen to find a flashlight. Anna keeps one on the counter by the toaster. Back in the dining room, I slip the envelope out of its plastic cover, hold it up by the corners and shine the flashlight on the paper obliquely. I catch the shadow of the indented word Postmaster and it becomes instantly clear to me what the author of this letter did.

"Franklin D.," I make out more words. "Is there a Franklin D. Roosevelt post office in New York? Because this definitely says N-Y, N-Y."

"Yes. The one in my neighborhood," McGovern says, her eyes getting wide. She comes over to my side of the table to get a closer look.

"I've had cases where people try to create alibis," I say, shining the light from different angles. "An obvious, shopworn one is you were in a different, very distant location at the time of the murder and therefore couldn't have done it. An easy way to do that is have mail posted from some remote location at or around the time the murder happens, thereby making it seem the killer couldn't be you because you can't be in two places at once."

"Third Avenue," McGovern says. "That's where the FDR post office is."

"We've got part of a street address; some of it's obliterated by the flap. Nine-something. Three A-V. Yes, Third Avenue. What you do is address the letter, put on the appropriate postage, then enclose it in another envelope addressed to the postmaster of whatever post office you want your letter mailed from. The postmaster is obliged to mail your letter for you, postmarked in that city. So what this person did was tuck this letter inside another envelope, and when he addressed that outer envelope, the impressions of what he wrote were left on the envelope underneath."

Lucy has come behind me, too, and is leaning close to see. "Susan Pless's neighborhood," she says.

Not only that, but the letter, which is by far the most vile, is dated December 5, 1997_the same day Susan Pless was murdered:

Hey Benton,

How are you, soon-to-be-ugly boy. Just wondering_ Got any idea what it's like to look in the mirror and want to commit suicide? No? Will soon. Wiiiilllll soooonnnn. Gonna carve you up like a Christmas turkey and same goes for the Chief Cunt you screw when you got time off from trying to figure out people like me amp; you. Can't tell you how much l'm-a-gonna (to quote Southerners) like using my big blade to open her seams. Quid pro quo, right? When you gonna learn to mind your own business?

I imagine Benton receiving these sick, crude missives. I imagine him in his room at my house, sitting at the desk with laptop opened and plugged into a modem line, his briefcase nearby, coffee within reach. His notes indicate he determined the font was Ransom and then contemplated the significance. To obtain release by paying a price. To buy back. To deliver from sin, I read his scribbles. I might have been down the hallway in my study or in the kitchen at the very moment he was reading this letter and looking up "ransom" in the dictionary, and he never said a word. Lucy volunteers that Benton

wouldn't have wanted to burden me, and nothing helpful

would have come from my knowing. I couldn't have done anything about it, she adds.

"Cactus, lilies, tulips." McGovern goes through pages of the file. "So someone was anonymously sending him flower arrangements at Quantico."

I start picking through dozens of message slips that simply have "hang-up" written on them and the date and time. The calls were made to his direct line at the Behavioral Science Unit, all tracing back to out of area on Caller ID, meaning they were probably made on a cell phone. Benton's only observation was pauses on the line before hanging up. McGovern informs us that flower orders were placed with a Lexington Avenue florist that Benton apparently checked out, and Lucy calls directory assistance to see if that same florist is still in business. It is.

"He makes a note here about payment." It is so hard for me to look at Benton's small, snarled penmanship. "Mail. The orders were placed by mail. Cash, he has the word 'cash.' So it sounds like the person sent cash and a written order." I flip back to the table of contents. Sure enough, exhibits fifty-one through fifty-five are the actual orders received by the florist. I turn to those pages. "Computer-generated and unsigned. One small arrangement of tulips for twenty-five dollars with instructions to send it to Benton's Quantico address. One small cactus for twenty-five dollars, and so on, envelopes postmarked New York."

"Probably the same thing," Lucy says. "They were mailed through the New York postmaster. Question is, where were they mailed from originally?"

We can't know that without the outer envelopes, which certainly would have been tossed into the trash the instant post office employees opened them. Even if we had those envelopes, it is highly unlikely the sender wrote out his return address. The most we could have hoped for was a postmark.

"Guess the florist just assumed he was dealing with some nutcase who doesn't believe in charge cards," McGovern comments. "Or someone having an affair."

"Or an inmate." I am, of course, thinking of Carrie Grethen. I can imagine her sending out communications from Kirby. By slipping the letters in an outer envelope addressed to a postmaster, at the very least she prevented the hospital staff from seeing who she was sending the letters to, whether it was to a florist or to Benton directly. Using a New York post office makes sense, too. She would have had access to various office branches through the telephone directory, and in my gut I don't think Carrie was concerned about anyone's supposing the mail originated in the same city where she was incarcerated. She simply didn't want to alert Kirby staff, and she was also the most manipulative person on this planet. Everything she did had its reason. She was just as busy profiling Benton as he was her.

"If it's Carrie," McGovern somberly remarks, "then you do have to wonder if she in any form or fashion was at least privy to Chandonne and his killings."

"She would get off on it," I reply with anger as I push back from the table. "And she would know damn well that by writing a letter to Benton dated the same day as Susan's murder, it would send him through the ceiling. He'd make that connection, all right."

"And picking a post office located in Susan's neighborhood," Lucy adds.

We speculate, postulate and go on until late afternoon, when we decide it is time for Christmas dinner. After rousing Marino, we tell him what we have discovered and continue to talk as we eat greens, sweet onions and tomatoes drenched in sweet red vinegar and cold-pressed olive oil. Marino shovels in food as if he hasn't eaten in days, stuffing lasagna into his mouth while we debate and speculate and beg the question: If Carrie Grethen was the person harassing Benton and she had some link to the Chandonne family, was Benton's murder more than a simple act of psychopathy? Was his slaying an organized crime hit disguised to seem personal, senseless, deranged, with Carrie the lieutenant who was more than eager to carry it out?

"In other words," Marino says to me with his mouth full, "was his death like what you're accused of."

The table falls silent. None of us quite get his meaning, but then I do. "You're saying, if there was a real motive for his murder but it was disguised to look like a serial killing?"

He shrugs. "Just like you being accused of murdering Bray and disguising it to look like Wolfman did it."

"Maybe why Interpol got so hot and bothered," Lucy considers.

Marino helps himself to excellent French wine he gulps down like Gatorade. "Yeah, Interpol. Maybe Benton got all tangled up with the cartel somehow and…"

"Because of Chandonne," I interrupt as my focus sharpens and I think I am on the trail that might just lead to the truth.