“Can you remember where the footprints were?” Berger asks.
I show her. I follow my driveway around the side of the house and cut through the yard, straight out to the street.
“Which way did he go?” Berger looks up and down the dark, empty street.
“Don’t know,” I reply. “The snow was churned up and it was snowing again. We couldn’t tell which way he went. But I didn’t stay out here looking, either. I guess you’ll have to ask the police.” I think about Marino. I wish he would hurry up and get here, and 1 am reminded of why I called him. Fear and bewilderment crackle up my spine. I look around at my neighbors’ houses. I have learned to read where I live and can tell, by windows lit up, by cars in the driveway and newspaper deliveries, when people are home, which really isn’t often. So much of the population here is retired and wintering in Florida and spending hot summer months on the water somewhere. It occurs to me that I have never really had friends in my neighborhood, only people who wave when we pass each other in our cars.
Berger walks back toward the garage, hugging herself to keep warm, the moisture in her breath freezing and puffing out white. I remember Lucy as a child coming to visit from Miami. Her only exposure to the cold was Richmond, and she would roll up notebook paper and stand out on the patio, pretending to smoke, tapping imaginary ashes, not knowing I was watching through a window. “Let’s back up,” Berger is saying as she walks. “To Monday, December sixth. The day the body was found in the container at the Richmond Port. The body that we believe was Thomas Chandonne, allegedly murdered by his brother, Jean-Baptiste. Tell me exactly what happened that Monday.”
“I was notified about the body,” I begin.
“By whom?”
“Marino. Then minutes later, my deputy chief, Jack Fielding, called. I said I would respond to the scene,” I begin.
“But you didn’t have to,” she interrupts. “You’re the chief. We have a stinky, nasty decomposing body on an unseasonably warm morning. You could have let, uh, Fielding or whoever respond.”
“I could have.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“It was clearly going to be a complicated case. The ship was out of Belgium and we had to entertain the possibility that the body originated in Belgium, thus adding international difficulties. I tend to take the hard cases, the ones that will get a lot of publicity.”
“Because you like the publicity?”
“Because I don’t like it.”
We are inside my garage now and both of us are thoroughly chilled. I shut the door.
“And maybe you wanted to take this case because you’d had an upsetting morning?” Berger walks over to the large cedar locker. “You mind?” I tell her to help herself as I marvel again at the details she seems to know about me.
Black Monday. That morning, Senator Frank Lord, chairman of the judiciary committee and an old, dear friend, came to see me. In his possession was a letter Benton had written to me. I knew nothing about this letter. It would never occur to me thai while Benton was on vacation at Lake Michigan some years ago, he had written me a letter and instructed Senator Lord to give it to me should heBentondie. I remember recognizing the penmanship when Senator Lord delivered the letter to me. I will never forget the shock. I was devastated. Grief finally caught up with me and seized my soul, and this was precisely what Benton had intended. He was the brilliant profiler to the end. He knew exactly how I would react should something happen to him, and he was forcing me out of my workaholic denial.
“How do you know about the letter?” I numbly ask Berger.
She is looking inside the locker at jumpsuits, rubber boots, waders, heavy leather gloves, long underwear, socks, tennis shoes. “Please bear with me,” she says almost gently. “Just answer my questions for now. I’ll answer yours later.”
Later isn’t good enough. “Why does the letter matter?”
“I’m not sure. But let’s start with state of mind.”