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She works quickly while he bites his lip. He waves his hands to cool the burning while he tries not to cry.
"You are brave," she says, lowering the lid of the toilet and sitting on it. "You want to tell me why you started cutting yourself? Someone said it began several years ago."
He hangs his head.
"You can tell me." She takes both his hands. "We're friends, aren't we?"
He slowly nods.
"These people came," he whispers. "I heard cars. My aunt went outside, so I did too, only I hid. And they pulled this lady out of a car and she was trying to scream but they had her tied up." He points to his mouth, indicating a gag. "Then they pushed her into the cellar."
"The wine cellar?"
"Yes."
Scarpetta recalls Mrs. Guidons insistence that she tour the wine cellar. Fear raises the hairs on the back of her neck. She is here. She doesn't know who else is here, except Albert, and someone could drive up at any moment.
"One of the people with the tied-up lady was a monster." Albert's voice rises almost to a squeal as his eyes widen in terror. "Like I've seen on TV, in scary movies, with these sharp teeth and long hair. I was so afraid he saw me behind the bush!"
Jean-Baptiste Chando
"And then my doggie, Nestle. She never came home again!" He begins to cry.
Scarpetta hears the front door open and close, then footsteps downstairs.
"Is there a phone up here?" Scarpetta whispers to Albert.
Terrified, he wipes away tears.
She repeats her question urgently.
He stares at her, paralyzed.
"Go lock yourself in your room!"
He touches the wounds on his stomach, then rubs them, causing them to bleed.
"Go! Don't make any noise."
He walks quickly, quietly down the hall and turns into a room.
For several minutes she waits, listening to footsteps until they stop. The footsteps sound like those of a man, relatively heavy, but not the sharp sound of hard leather against wood. He starts walking again, and Scarpetta's heart hammers as he seems to head toward the stairs. She hears him on the first step and walks out of the bathroom, because she does not want him-and she is certain he is Jean-Baptiste Chando
At the top of the stairs she freezes, gripping the railing with all her might, looking down the staircase at him, the sight of him draining the blood from her head. She shuts her eyes and opens them again, thinking he will go away. Slowly, she takes one step at a time, holding on to the railing, staring. Midway, she sits down, staring.
Benton Wesley doesn't move as he too stares. His eyes glisten with tears that he quickly blinks away.
"Who are you?" Scarpetta's voice sounds miles away. "You aren't him." "I am."
She begins to cry.
"Please come down. Or would you like me to come up and get you?" He doesn't want to touch her until she is ready. Until he is ready, too.
She gets up and slowly walks down the stairs. When she reaches him, she backs away, far away.
"So you're part of this, you bastard. You goddamn bastard." Her voice shakes so violently that she can barely speak. "So I guess you'd better shoot me, because now I know. What you've been doing all this time I thought you were dead. With them!" She looks at the stairs, as if someone is standing there. "You are one of them!"
"I'm anything but," he says.
Digging into a pocket of his suit jacket, he takes out a folded piece of white paper. He smooths it open. It is a National Academy of Justice envelope, just like the photocopy Marino showed her-the photocopy of the envelope containing the letters Chando
Benton drops the envelope to the floor where she can see it.
"No," she says.
"Please, let's talk."
"You told Lucy where Rocco was. You knew what she'd do!"
"You're safe."
"And you set me up to see him. I never wrote to him. It was you who wrote a letter supposedly from me, claiming I wanted to come see him and make a deal."
"Yes."
"Why? Why would you subject me to that? To make me stare at that man, that awful excuse for life?"
"You just called him a man. That's right. Jean-Baptiste Chando
"You had no right to control my life, to manipulate me that way!"
"Are you sorry you went?"
For an instant, she is speechless. Then she says, "You were wrong. He didn't die."
"I didn't anticipate his seeing you would give him cause to stay alive. I should have known. Psychopaths like him don't want to die. I suppose
because he pled guilty in Texas, where he knew he would be death-eligible, I was fooled into thinking he really did want…"
"You were wrong," she accuses him again. "You've had too damn much time to play God. And I don't know what you've turned into, some, some…"
"I was wrong, yes. I miscalculated, yes. Became a machine, Kay."
He said her name. And it shakes her to her soul.
"There is no one here to hurt you now," he then says.
"Now?"
"Rocco is dead. Weldon Wi
"Jay?"
Benton flinches. "I'm sorry. If you still care."
"About Jay?" Confusion spins. She feels dizzy, about to faint. "Care about him? How could I? Do you know everything?"
"More than everything," he replies.
124
INSIDE THE KITCHEN, THEY SIT at the same butcher-block table where Scarpetta talked to Mrs. Guidon on a night Scarpetta scarcely remembers.
"I got in too deep," Benton is saying.
They are sitting across from each other.
"It was here, in this place of theirs, where a lot of the major players come to do their dirty business at the port and the Mississippi. Rocco. Weldon Wi
"You've met him?"
"Many times," Benton says. "Here in this house. He found me amusing and much nicer to him than the others were. In and out, you name it. Guidon was the matron of the manor, you might say. As bad as the rest of them."
"Was?"
Benton hesitates. "I saw Wi
"You killed them."
"I had no choice," Benton repeats.
Scarpetta nods.
"Six years ago, another agent was working with me, Minor. Riley Minor. Supposedly from around here. He did something stupid, I'm not sure what. But they did their number on him." Benton nods in the direction of the wine cellar. "The torture chamber, where they make everybody talk. There are old iron rings in the walls from the slave days, and Talley was fond of heat guns and other means of deriving information. Quickly.
"When I saw them dragging Minor into the cellar, I knew the operation was over and I got the hell away."
"You didn't try to help him?"
"Impossible."
She is silent.
"If I hadn't died, I would have, Kay. If I hadn't died, I could never have been around you, Lucy, Marino. Ever. Because they would have killed you, too."
"You are a coward," she says, drained of emotion.
"I understand your hating me for all I made you suffer."
"You could have told me! So I wouldn't suffer!"
He looks at her for a long moment, remembers her face. It hasn't changed much. None of her has.
"What would you have done, Kay, had I told you my death had to be faked and I would never see you again?" he asks.
She doesn't have the answer she thought she might. The truth is, she wouldn't have allowed him to vanish, and he knows it. "I would have taken my chances." Grief closes her throat again. "For you, I would have."
"Then you understand. And if it's any consolation, I've suffered. Not a day has gone by when I didn't think of you."