“The first is your safety, and after hearing what I’ve just told you about your accident, maybe you have a better idea why I want you in the treatment center. No one will know where you are. You will be perfectly safe. The other priority is to get you out of these snarls so your future isn’t jeopardized.”
“I’ll never be an FBI agent. It’s too late.”
“Not if we clear your name at Quantico and get a judge to reduce the DUI charge.”
“How?”
“You asked for a big gun. Maybe you’ve got one.”
“Who?”
“Right now all you need to know is your chances are good if you listen to me and do what I say.”
“I’ll feel like I’m being sent to a detention center.”
“The therapy will be good for you for a lot of reasons.”
“I’d rather stay here with you. I don’t want to be labeled an alcoholic the rest of my life. Besides, I don’t think I am one.”
“Maybe you aren’t. But you need to gain some insight into why you’ve been abusing alcohol.”
“Maybe I just like the way it feels when I’m not here. Nobody’s ever wanted me here anyway. So maybe it makes sense,” she said bitterly. We talked a while longer, then I spent time on the phone with airlines, hospital personnel, and a local psychiatrist who was a good friend. Edgehill, a well-respected treatment center in Newport, could admit her as early as the next afternoon. I wanted to take her, but Dorothy would not hear of it. This was a time when a mother should be with her daughter, she said, and my presence was neither necessary nor appropriate. I was feeling very out of sorts when the phone rang at midnight.
“I hope I didn’t wake you,” Wesley said.
“I’m glad you called.”
“You were right about the print. It’s a reversal. Lucy couldn’t have left it unless she made the cast herself.”
“Of course she didn’t make it herself. My God,” I said impatiently.
“I was hoping this would be over, Benton. ”
“Not quite yet.”
“What about Gault?”
“No sign of him. And the asshole at Eye Spy denies Gault was ever there.”
He paused.
“You’re sure you saw him?”
“I would swear to it in court.”
I would have recognized Temple Gault anywhere. Sometimes I saw his eyes in my sleep, saw them bright like blue glass staring through a barely opened door leading into a strange, dark room filled with a putrid smell. I would envision Helen the prison guard in her uniform and decapitated. She was propped up in the chair where Gault had left her, and I wondered about the poor farmer who had made the mistake of opening the bowling bag he had found on his land.
“I’m sorry, too,” Wesley was saying.
“You can’t imagine how sorry I am.” Then I told him I was sending Lucy to Rhode Island. I told him everything I could think of that I had not already told him, and when it was his turn to fill me in I switched the lamp off on the table by my bed and listened to him in the dark.
“It’s not going well here. As I’ve said, Gault’s vanished again. He’s screwing with our minds. We don’t know what he’s involved in and what he isn’t. We have this case in North Carolina and now one in England, and suddenly he shows up in Springfield and appears to be involved in the espionage that’s gone on at ERF.”
“There’s no appears to be about it, Benton. He’s been inside the Bureau’s brain. The question is, what are you going to do about it?”
“At present, ERF’s changing codes, passwords, that sort of thing. We’re hoping he’s not been in too deep.”
“Hope on.”
“Kay, Black Mountain’s got a search warrant for Creed Lindsey’s house and truck.”
“Have they found him?”
“No.”
“What does Marino have to say?” I asked.
“Who the hell knows?”
“You haven’t seen him?”
“Not much. I think he’s spending a lot of time with Denesa Steiner.”
“I thought she was out of town.”
“She’s back.”
“How serious is this with them, Benton?”