The Pain Scale (8 page)

“That’s everything we have with any apparent aesthetic value.”

“Aesthetic value?” Special Agent Goodman asked.

“Long story,” Jen said.

“Thank you.” He extended his hand. “We appreciate your help.”

“You’re welcome,” Jen said, shaking his hand.

“Special Agent Young,” I said. He gave me a quizzical nod, which I returned.

After they left, I asked Jen, “Why do you suppose they call all FBI agents ‘special’?”

“Julian Campos, please.”

“Just a moment, Detective.”

“Detective Beckett?”

“That’s me, Julian.”

“How many times is this today?”

“More than a few, less than a lot.”

“I think we might define our terms differently.”

“Maybe so.”

“What can I do for you?”

“I assume Mr. Benton the younger is still incapable of speech?”

“Just as he was an hour and a half ago.”

“Figured as much. But I have a question for him.”

“I can attempt to pass it on. Of course, I can’t guarantee anything.”

“Of course.”

“What’s your question?”

“We need to know what was in the safe.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah. ‘Ah.’ Can you run that by your client between the sedatives?”

“Detective, I’m not certain I appreciate your tone.”

“I’m fairly sure you don’t. I’ll see what I can do about that.”

“Do. And I’ll ask Bradley your question and get back to you.”

“Or you can just tell me when I call back in an hour.”

It was after five when Jen and I sat at our desks and reviewed the case. We talked through the few concrete facts we had so far, attempting to reinterpret the details in such a way that something might break free and emerge as a relevant piece of information.

Nothing did.

“So I guess we’re waiting,” Jen said. She was right. We were. Waiting for ballistics, for the interview with Benton, for the GMC van, for anything.

In my left hand, I squeezed the racquetball I keep next to my phone. My physical therapist told me it was beneficial for my injury, but I also find it a good way to pass the time while I am thinking. I just have to remind myself to switch hands every now
and again so I don’t wind up looking like a left-handed professional bowler.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“I think you should hang it up for today.”

“Just me?”

“You’ve got your thing, don’t you?”

Jen has a third-degree black belt in aikido and volunteers as a teacher in a city program for at-risk youth. I once saw her give a demonstration to a group of teenage gangbangers and wannabes from some of the poorest areas of Long Beach. She held up a PR 24 side-handle baton in one hand and a hundred-dollar bill in the other, promising the money to anyone who could hit her with the nightstick. Half a dozen of them lined up to take their shot. Each and every one wound up pinned facedown on the mat, hoping she’d stop before breaking bones. The only thing she did break was the C-note, buying me fish and chips for lunch at E. J. Malloy’s.

She’s studied enough Shotokan to break bricks, too. I know she could kick my ass without raising her heart rate.

“Isn’t this a big one?” I asked.

“It is. Hector’s testing for his brown belt tonight.”

He’d been one of her first students, and one of her proudest achievements. He was the first of his three brothers to stay out of the East Side Longos.

“How long has it been?”

“Almost since the beginning. Four years.”

“Think he’ll make it?”

“I hope so.” She shut down her computer, turned off her desk lamp, and picked up her bag. “Don’t work too late,” she said.

“I won’t. Have a good time.”

Patrick called it a day soon after. As he left, he handed me a Post-it note that read,
B
AILEY0426
.

“What’s this?”

“Sara’s password.”

“Password? For what?”

“Facebook, Gmail, and just about everything else, it looks like.”

“Bailey’s birthday,” I said. I’d had to type it into forms several times already in the course of the investigation.

“Yeah. Bad enough to use such a predictable password. But to use it for everything?” He looked at me and thought he saw something. “Danny, you don’t use the same password for everything, do you?”

“Of course not.”

He didn’t look like he believed me.

I knew we’d probably have to comb through Sara’s e-mail at some point, but I decided to look first at her Facebook page. I’d only been out on sick leave for a bit over a year, but in that time, dissecting a victim’s Facebook page had gone from being something you did when you started running out of things to do to one of the first steps in building a victimology.

I opened up Sara Gardener-Benton’s account and started with the basics. Under her name it said,
Went to Marina High School * Lives in Long Beach, California * Married to Bradley Benton III * Born on November 24
. Bradley’s name wasn’t highlighted. No page for him. Did that mean the rumors about him running for office were true and he didn’t want any drunken exploits from his college days showing up online? Or just that he’d managed to avoid being bitten by the social media bug infecting just about everybody else? Her privacy settings were set to the highest levels, which I found, for some inexplicable reason, to be reassuring.

On Sara’s profile page, I discovered she liked the music of Neko Case and Wilco, listed her political views as moderate, her favorite quotation as “You’re gonna need a bigger boat,” and when it came to TV, preferred
Arrested Development
. So aside from the questionable politics, she had good taste.

I clicked on her Friends list. She had 172 of them. Aside from several family members whose names had come up so far in the investigation, only Catherine Catanio’s name rang any bells. We
might need to dig deeper into the list at a later point, but for now, we could leave it.

There were more than two hundred photos and two dozen videos. I didn’t look at all of them, but from my cursory examination, it appeared that they were more or less the same files as those stored on her computer and phone. Again, something we might need to investigate in more detail later.

I spent a few more minutes examining Sara’s Wall. Fortunately, she wasn’t a prolific poster, and her status updates tended toward the straightforward:
Sara Gardener-Benton is hoping her sweeties get well soon. Sara Gardener-Benton is wishing she picked up the Costco lasagna instead of making it from scratch.
Going back a few days, I found one gem: Black Swan
Best Actress? WTF?

I kept poking around for a while, but without going deep and doing a comparison with the other case materials—a task that would take a very long time to complete—I wasn’t going to find out much more about Sara.

Logging off, I thought about Jen. It was ten minutes after eight. I wondered if she’d think that I’d worked too late.

I picked up a six-pack of Sam Adams at Ralphs, parked my car at home, and walked six blocks to Harlan Gibbs’s house. He was an LA County deputy sheriff who’d retired after thirty-five years on the job. We’d met the previous year during the case on which I’d nearly lost my hand. He’d lived across the street from the victim, a high-school English teacher with whom he’d formed a fatherly bond. Her loss was a hard one for him to bear, and I’d taken to visiting him every week or two for lunch or an evening drink.

I rounded the corner and saw him sitting on his front porch, the fringe of thin white hair around his bald head backlit by the bare hundred-watt bulb next to the door. He raised a hand in greeting as I crossed the lawn.

“Harlan,” I said, “good to see you.”

“Saw you on the news today.”

“Yeah?” I sat down in the empty white plastic chair next to him.

“Yeah. You did a real nice job of standing there behind all the important people.” He didn’t smile, but there was a hint of playfulness in the gravel of his voice.

“Least I’m on the job. Could just be spending all my time sitting on the porch and spying on the neighbors.”

“You just go ahead and make fun. We haven’t had a crime on this street since...” His voice trailed off, and I knew we were both thinking about Elizabeth Anne Williams.

We gave her a moment of silence.

“Who’s renting the place now?”

“Nice young couple. Just had a baby. They won’t be there long, though. They’ll need another bedroom.” The guesthouse Beth had lived in had only one.

“I ran into her sister a few weeks ago.”

“The lesbian?”

“Yeah. She’s doing well. Their mother moved out here. Got a little house up by City College. They’re picking up the pieces.”

We were quiet a while. Harlan opened two beers and passed one of the bottles to me. I wondered what he was thinking. Was he picking up the pieces? How much time did he spend sitting on the porch and staring at her house? But who was I to be critical? How many sleepless nights had I spent thinking about Beth? And I hadn’t even known her. Not while she was alive.

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” he said, looking off into the distance. I tried to follow his gaze, but I was unable to tell where it fell, if anywhere at all. He didn’t finish the thought, and I didn’t push him to.

So we sat. I didn’t check my watch, but it seemed like a long time.

Finally, he spoke. “Went to the doctor last week.”

Uh-oh.

“Been having stomach problems.”

“You mentioned that the last time I was here.”

“Yeah. It’s been getting worse.”

“What did the doctor say?”

“Says I have a ‘mass.’”

“What does that mean?”

“Means I see the oncologist tomorrow.”

Shit. “You want some company?”

“Got some. Cynthia’s coming in from Ontario.”

I’d never met his daughter, and he didn’t talk about her often. My impression had always been that he cared deeply about her but that their relationship was distant and maybe more strained than he would have liked.

I didn’t know what to say. So I settled for “Fuck.”

“Yeah.”

Another long silence. A cricket started chirping somewhere on the side of his house. Pinpricks of pain climbed my arm.

“You worked Homicide,” I said.

“For a bit, yes.”

“Then you know what I’m about to say isn’t bullshit. It’s just going to sound like it is.” Every death investigator I have ever known has uttered the phrase “I’m sorry for your loss,” or some variation of it, literally more times than they can count. It sounds trite and clichéd and insincere. The truth is that it is rarely any of these things. It is virtually always said with honesty and earnestness. We say nothing more because the sentiments we want to express can’t be given voice. Words simply can’t capture them in any meaningful or satisfactory way. So I hoped he understood when I said, “I’m sorry.”

“I know, Dan.” The corners of his eyes wrinkled when he spoke. “You didn’t even need to preface it.”

A
S SOON AS
I left Harlan, the pain worsened. The sharp, needling sensation began in my palm and shot up my arm and into my shoulder and neck. I stretched as I walked, pulling my left hand this way and that, rolling my shoulder to the front and back, angling and twisting my head from side to side. Other than making me look odd, it didn’t accomplish much.