‘I think I should go see what she wants,’ I finally said into his warm, damp neck.
‘Not in a million years.’
‘New York did Gault’s autopsy. I don’t have those photographs.’
‘Carrie knows damn well what medical examiner did Gault’s autopsy.’
‘Then why is she asking me, if she knows?’ I muttered.
My eyes were closed as I leaned against him. He paused and kissed the top of my head again and stroked my hair.
‘You know why,’ he said. ‘Manipulation, jerking you around. What people like her do best. She wants you to get the photos for her. So she can see Gault mangled like chopped meat, so she can fantasize and get off on that. She’s up to something and the worst thing you could do is respond to her in any way.’
‘And this GKSWF — something or other? Like out of a personal?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘And the One Pheasant Place?’
‘No idea.’
We stayed a long time in the doorway of this house I continued to think of singularly and unequivocally as my own. Benton parked his life with me when he was not consulting in big aberrant cases in this country and others. I knew it bothered him when I consistently said I this and my that, although he knew we were not married and nothing we owned separately belonged to both of us. I had passed the midline of my life and would not legally share my earnings with anyone, including my lover and my family. Maybe I sounded selfish, and maybe I was.
‘What am I going to do while you’re gone tomorrow?’ Wesley got back to that subject.
‘Drive to Hilton Head and get groceries,’ I replied. ‘Make sure there’s plenty of Black Bush and Scotch. More than usual. And sunblock SPF 35 and 50, and South Carolina pecans, tomatoes, and Vidalia onions.’
Tears filled my eyes again, and I cleared my throat.
‘As soon as I can, I’ll get on a plane and meet you, but I don’t know where this case in Warrenton is going to go. And we’ve already been over this. We’ve done it before. Half the time you can’t go, the rest of the time it’s me.’
‘I guess our lives suck,’ he said into my ear.
‘Somehow we ask for it,’ I replied, and most of all I felt an uncontrollable urge to sleep.
‘Maybe.’
He bent down to my lips and slid his hands to favorite places.
‘Before soup, we could go to bed.’
‘Something very bad is going to happen during this trial,’ I said, and I wanted my body to respond to him but didn’t think it could.
‘All of us in New York again. The Bureau, you, Lucy, at her trial. Yes, I’m sure for the past five years she has thought of nothing else and will cause all the trouble she can.’
I pulled away as Carrie’s sharp, drawn face suddenly jumped out of a dark place in my mind. I remembered her when she was strikingly pretty and smoking with Lucy on a picnic table at night near the firing ranges of the FBI Academy at Quantico. I could still hear them teasing in low playful voices and saw their erotic kisses on the mouth, deep and long, and hands tangled in hair. I remembered the strange sensation running through my blood as I silently hurried away, without them knowing what I had seen. Carrie had begun the ruination of my only niece’s life, and now the grotesque coda had come.
‘Benton,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to pack my gear.’
‘Your gear is fine. Trust me.’
He hungrily had undone layers of my clothing, desperate for skin. He always wanted me more when I was not in sync with him.
‘I can’t reassure you now,’ I whispered. ‘I can’t tell you everything is going to be all right, because it won’t be. Attorneys and the media will go after Lucy and me. They will dash us against the rocks, and Carne may go free. There!’
I held his face in my hands.
‘Truth and justice. The American way,’ I concluded.
‘Stop it.’
He went still and his eyes were intense on mine.