He took his glasses off again, because he was secretly agitated.
‘As long as Carrie Grethen is around, so is he. The evil twins,’ he added.
In fact, they were not twins, but had bleached their hair and shaved it close to their skulls. They were prepubescently thin and androgenously dressed alike when I last saw them in New York. They had committed murder together until we had captured her in the Bowery and I had killed him in the subway tunnel. I had not intended to touch him or see him or exchange one word with him, for it was not my mission in this life to apprehend criminals and commit judicial homicide. But Gault had willed it so. He had made it happen because to die by my hand was to bond me to him forever. I could not get away from Temple Gault, though he had been dead five years. In my mind were gory pieces of him scattered along gleaming steel rails and rats moiling out of dense shadows to attack his blood.
In bad dreams his eyes were ice blue with irises scattered like molecules, and I heard the thunder of trains with lights that were blinding full moons. For several years after I had killed him, I avoided autopsying the victims of train deaths. I was in charge of the Virginia medical examiner system and could assign cases to my deputy chiefs, and that was what I had done. Even now, I could not look at dissecting knives with the same clinical regard for their cold sharp steel, because he had set me up to plunge one into him, and I had. In crowds I saw dissipated men and women who were him, and at night I slept closer to my guns.
‘Benton, why don’t you shower and then we’ll talk more about our plans for the week,’ I said, dismissing recollections I could not bear. ‘A few days alone to read and walk the beach would be just what you need. You know how much you love the bike trails. Maybe it would be good for you to have some space.’
‘Lucy needs to know.’ He got up, too. ‘Even if Carrie’s confined at the moment, she’s going to cause more trouble that involves Lucy. That’s what Carrie’s promising in her letter to you.’
He walked out of the kitchen.
‘How much more trouble can anybody cause?’ I called after him as tears rose in my throat.
‘Dragging your niece into the trial,’ he stopped to say. ‘Publicly. Splashed across The New York Times. Out on the AP, Hard Copy, Entertainment Tonight. Around the world. FBI agent was lesbian lover of deranged serial killer . . .’
‘Lucy’s left the FBI with all its prejudices and lies and preoccupations with how the mighty Bureau looks to the world.’ Tears flooded my eyes. ‘There’s nothing left. Nothing further they can do to crush her soul.’
‘Kay, this is about far more than the FBI,’ he said, and he sounded spent.
‘Benton, don’t start . . .’ I could not finish.
He leaned against the doorway leading into my great room, where a fire burned, for the temperature had not gotten above sixty degrees this day. His eyes were pained. He did not like me to talk this way, and he did not want to peer into that darker side of his soul. He did not want to conjure up the malignant acts Carrie might carry out, and of course, he worried about me, too. I would be summoned to testify in the sentencing phase of Carrie Grethen’s trial. I was Lucy’s aunt. I supposed my credibility as a witness would be impeached, my testimony and reputation ruined.
‘Let’s go out tonight,’ Wesley said in a kinder tone. ‘Where would you like to go? La Petite? Or beer and barbecue at Benny’s?’
‘I’ll thaw some soup.’ I wiped my eyes as my voice faltered. ‘I’m not very hungry, are you?’
‘Come here,’ he said to me sweetly.
I melted into him and he held me to his chest. He was salty when we kissed, and I was always surprised by the supple firmness of his body. I rested my head, and the stubble on his chin roughed my hair and was white like the beach I knew I would not see this week. There would be no long walks on wet sand or long talks over dinners at La Polla’s and Charlie’s.