“I just want to know why you’re protecting him. It’s obvious why you’d protect your niece, but why Channing Lott?”
“You need to stop this,” I reply, because she is beyond being reasoned with.
“What has he promised you?”
“You need to stop this before it goes any further.”
“He came to see you,” she says. “Now, isn’t that just perfect. What else did he say to you, Kay? The missing dog? How scared his wife was and on and on, pleading his case with you while your niece is crashing through firewalls and you’re trying to run me out of town, trying to ruin me? And you think you can?”
“I don’t want you to ruin yourself.”
I warn her she’s going to have a serious problem if she continues to follow me, continues to make inflammatory and accusatory statements, that I’m the one feeling threatened.
“You need to go back to your field office,” I say to her, because I have a strong feeling about what she intends to do, and I remember every word Benton said about her and the way she used to act around Lucy, and at the same time I know better.
It isn’t just pseudoephedrine, whatever drugs she’s on. It’s what Douglas Burke has to prove, and she’s not going to listen because she can’t.
“He’s so much better off with me.” She means Benton is.
The ultimate case Douglas Burke must solve in her life isn’t a bank robbery or serial murders but the crime of her own existence. I don’t know what happened to her, probably when she was a child. I also don’t care.
“He knows it, too,” she says to me, through the open window of her Bureau car. “It’s a shame you don’t want what’s best for him. Trying to sabotage me isn’t going to help your pathetic excuse for a marriage, Kay.”
“Go back to your office and talk to someone.” I am careful not to sound provocative. “Tell someone what you just told me, share the information, maybe with your SAC, with Jim.” I say it clinically, dispassionately, almost kindly. “You need to talk to someone.”
She needs help, and she’s not going to get it, and I have a strong feeling about what she’s going to do, and when I drive away toward mid-Cambridge, I let Benton know.
“I think she intends to confront Channing Lott.” I leave him a voicemail because he’s not answering his phone. “She’s over the edge, and someone needs to intervene. Someone needs to stop her immediately to protect her from herself.”
I pull into a Starbucks to get a coffee, a double shot, black, as if that will help me collect my thoughts, as if caffeine will calm me, and I sit in my car for a few minutes and try Benton again. Next I text him, making sure he somehow gets the message that he needs to intervene without delay before Douglas Burke does something foolish, dangerous, possibly irreparable. She’s unstable and obsessed and armed. I drop my unfinished coffee in the trash and drive off, wondering if I should warn Lucy and decide against it. I’m not sure what she might do.
It is dark, the sun below a blackened horizon when I reach Fayth House, a brick complex, tidy and relatively modern, with deliberately placed flowerbeds and trees. A silver SUV is pulling out as I turn in, leaving very few cars in the parking lot, and I suspect most of the residents in the retirement community don’t drive. I walk inside a pleasant lobby with blue carpet and blue furniture and silk flowers, and Americana prints and posters on the walls that remind me of Peggy Stanton’s checks.
The receptionist is a stout woman with frizzy brown hair and thick glasses, and I ask her who’s in charge.
“Which resident are you here to see?” she says, with a cheerful smile.
I ask her if there is a director. I realize it’s after hours, but is there someone in administration I can talk to? It’s important, I let her know.
“I don’t believe Mrs. Hoyt has left yet. She had a late meeting.” The receptionist picks up the phone to make sure, and I notice a fall arrangement of fresh flowers on a table behind her, burgundy Asiatic lilies, purple lisianthus, orange roses, and yellow oak leaves.
A floral delivery with no card. Someone, possibly the receptionist, has taped to the vase a piece of paper from a Fayth House memo pad, a name with a room number written on it that I can’t