‘We’re supposed to be in Hilton Head,’ I muttered. ‘How did we suddenly end up in Philadelphia?’
‘It’s a bloody mess,’ he said.
Benton gently pulled away from me and took off his jacket. He draped it over my bed and unlocked the mini-bar.
‘The usual?’ he asked.
‘Just some Evian.’
‘Well, I need something stronger.’
He unscrewed the top of a Johnnie Walker.
‘In fact, I’ll make that a double, and the hell with ice,’ he let me know.
He handed me the Evian, and I watched him as he pulled out the desk chair and sat. I propped up pillows on the bed and made myself comfortable as we visited each other from a distance.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked. ‘Besides everything.’
‘The usual problem when ATF and the Bureau are suddenly thrown together on a case,’ he said, sipping his drink. ‘It makes me glad I’m retired.’
‘You don’t seem very retired,’ I said wryly.
‘That’s the damn truth. As if Carrie isn’t enough for me to worry about. Then I’m called in on this homicide, and to be honest, Kay, ATF has its own profilers and I don’t think the Bureau should be poking its nose into this at all.’
‘Tell me something I don’t know, Benton. And I don’t see how they’re justifying their involvement, for that matter, unless they’re saying this lady’s death is an act of terrorism.’
‘The potential link to the Warrenton homicide,’ he told me. ‘As you know. And it wasn’t hard for the unit chief to call state police investigators to let them know the Bureau would do anything to help. So then the Bureau’s invited in, and here I am. There were two agents at the fire scene earlier today, and already everybody’s pissed off.’
‘You know, Benton, supposedly we’re all on the same side,’ I said, and this same old subject made me angry again.
‘Apparently this one FBI guy who’s with the Philly field office hid a nine-millimeter cartridge at the scene to see if Pepper would hit on it.’
Benton slowly swirled Scotch in his glass.
‘Of course Pepper didn’t because he hadn’t even been told to go to work yet,’ he went on. ‘And the agent thought this was funny, saying something about the dog’s nose needing to go back to the shop.’
‘What kind of fool would do something like that?’ I asked, incensed. ‘He’s lucky the handler didn’t beat the hell out of him.’
‘So here we are,’ he went on with a sigh. ‘Same old shit. In the good ole days, FBI agents had better sense than that. They weren’t always flashing their shields in front of the camera and taking over investigations they aren’t qualified to handle. I’m embarrassed. I’m more than embarrassed, I’m enraged that these new idiots out there are ruining my reputation along with their own, after I worked twenty-five years . . . Well. I just don’t know what I’m going to do, Kay.’
He met my eyes as he drank.
‘Just do your good job, Benton,’ I said to him quietly. ‘Trite as that may sound, it’s all any of us can do. We’re not doing it for the Bureau, not for ATF or the Pennsylvania state police. It’s for the victims and potential victims. Always for them.’
He drained his glass and set it on the desk. The lights of Penn’s Landing were festive outside my window, and Camden, New Jersey, glittered on the other side of the river.
‘I don’t think Carrie’s in New York anymore,’ he then said as he stared out into the night.
‘A comforting thought.’
‘And I have no evidence for that beyond there being no sightings or any other indicators that she is in the city. Where is she getting money, for example? Often that’s how the trail begins. Robbery, stolen credit cards. Nothing so far to make us think she’s out there doing things like that. Of course, that doesn’t mean she isn’t. But she has a plan, and I feel quite confident that she’s following it.’
His profile was sharp in shadows as he continued staring out at the river. Benton was depressed. He sounded worn out and defeated, and I got up and went to him.