The Pain Scale (7 page)

“Brad wanted a trophy wife. Sara was too good for that. But he never saw it. He never respected her. I’m not even sure he ever loved her.”

Whoa.

“Why do you say that?” Jen asked.

She didn’t answer right away. We waited.

“Well, aside from his attitude,” she said, weighing her words carefully as she spoke, “he cheated on her. More than once.”

Ding, ding, ding.

“You say cheat
ed
,” Jen said. “Past tense?”

“As far as Sara knew. He swore he’d stopped. But there had been at least three affairs. Probably more.” There was a kind of satisfaction in her voice. She was grieving her friend, but she was also glad to be nailing Brad to the wall.

“Do you know with whom?” I asked.

“Two were women he worked with. I don’t know their names. But the third time was with one of their former nannies. The first one they’d hired after Bailey was born. She worked for them for two years. And she worked him for almost that long.”

I said, “Do you remember her name?”

“Michelle something. I don’t think I ever knew the last name.”

Jen and I both made notes, and I knew she was wondering the same thing I was—had Bradley ever tried to put the moves on Joely?

“But he stopped cheating?” I asked.

“He said he did,” Catherine said. “And Sara believed him.”

“Did you?” Jen asked.

“No. But I never believed much of anything that Brad had to say. I made him for a politician the first time I met him, and he hasn’t ever done anything to change that opinion.”

Jen asked, “What did Sara see in him?”

“He can be charming when he cares to. It took her a long time to see through that.”

“But she did,” I said, “see through it.”

“Not until after Bailey was born.”

“She stayed with him for the kids,” Jen said.

“Yes. She thought it would be better for them. That she and Brad could work things out. As romantic as she was, she had a pragmatic side, too. She saw a better future for the kids with him than without him. She was willing to sacrifice.”

“Sounds noble,” I said. “Did she ever cheat on him?”

I thought I noticed a slight hesitation before she spoke, but I might have been mistaken. If it was there, it was subtle.

“No. And she was noble. That’s not a word I use very often, but she’s probably the noblest person I know.”

“That’s high praise.” Jen made a quick note in her book.

“Then again,” Catherine said, “I suppose it didn’t hurt that he’s good-looking and rich.” She finally managed that smile, but it was so sardonic and bitter it almost made me wince.

“See,” I said on our way back to the car, “told you he was a douchebag.”

“It’s a long way from douchebag to murderer.” She thought about that for a dozen or so steps. “You really like him for this?”

“I don’t know. We might get an idea if they ever let us talk to him. Maybe we should front Campos again.”

“Couldn’t hurt.”

In the passenger seat of the Crown Vic, I hit
R
EDIAL
on my cell. “Detective Danny Beckett for Julian Campos.” His assistant told me he was in a meeting, and I asked her to have him call me. “At least his secretary’s getting sick of me.”

“Well,” Jen said, “we take what we can get.”

We took Seventh Street back toward downtown. As we got close to the public golf course at Recreation Park, I saw a few
F
OR
S
ALE
signs on the residential side streets.

“Got some houses for sale. Want to take a look?”

“Alamitos Heights is a bit out of my price range,” she said.

“Let’s just drive around the block and check it out.”

She turned left on Terraine Avenue, and the first sign we saw was in front of a huge colonial-style house that seemed both too big and too grandiose for the neighborhood. The real estate agent’s sign in the front lawn had flyers in a plastic flip-top box mounted on the post.

I told Jen to pull over.

“No way.”

“Come on.”

“There’s no way I’m even looking at that.”

“I know. I just want to see.”

She gave up and pulled over to the curb. I hopped out of the car and grabbed a flyer.

“Five bedrooms. Four and a half baths. Open kitchen and great room. Swimming pool and large landscaped—”

I hadn’t come close to finishing reading the glossy flyer when she interrupted me. “How much?”

“You’re missing the point. You can’t put a price tag on”—I looked down at the brochure to make sure I got the phrasing just right—“‘luxury living at its finest.’”

“How much?”

“Two million, four hundred fifty thousand.”

“I knew I shouldn’t have told you until I actually found something.”

“No, come on. I can help. I’ll be good at this.”

She gave me one more wary glance at the stop sign on Sixth and Havana before looping back up to Seventh and our route back downtown.

“N
O BIG SURPRISES
,” Paula said to Jen and me, looking down at her clipboard over the top edge of her glasses. Carter had called it correctly at the crime scene. Sara had died of blood loss, although she had a subdural hematoma that would have done the job itself if she hadn’t bled out first. Bailey and Jacob had died of gunshot wounds. “There is some good news,” she continued. “Sara fought back. We found skin under her nails—enough for a DNA match of at least one of the suspects. We’ll run it.” Theoretically, at least, if a match were found, it could break the case and give us one or both of our murderers. With even the highest priority, though, the lab’s backlog would mean waiting weeks or even months for the results. I’d worked on a dozen cases in which the suspect was already convicted by the time the DNA came back. Still, the results could help us to confirm or eliminate suspects we came up with through other leads. The latter was the most likely. Even on a high-profile case like the Bentons’, we knew we’d have a long wait on our hands.

But still, things were moving.

It was a simple and straightforward autopsy report. It had seemed that way as we watched. Often, Paula would explain things we’d had no hint of during the procedure. Not this time. The bodies still lay covered on three parallel tables, Sara on the far left, then Bailey, then Jacob. Their shapes under the clean
white sheets troubled me more than most of the victims that I had seen. The smallness of the children’s outlines on the large tables left a knot in my stomach. “Thanks, Paula,” Jen said. She watched me stare at the bodies. “Ready?”

“Not quite.” I stepped in next to Sara and turned down the sheet to expose her face. Then I did the same for each of the children. They were purple white in the fluorescent glare. Sara’s face was bruised and swollen, but Bailey and Jacob looked surprisingly peaceful. Troublingly so, in fact. A sharp pain ran up my arm, and the air-conditioning felt suddenly too cold.

During one of my sessions with the pain psychologist, I had said, “Sometimes it seems like I just can’t get out of my own head.” She’d nodded in understanding.

Jen drove as we left the morgue and headed back down the 110 to the squad. I looked out the window. The bright sun reflected off of an Infiniti in the next lane, and I squinted behind my sunglasses.

“What’s up?” Jen asked.

I thought again of telling her about my previous night’s epiphany, about my temporary escape from the pain, but I was still afraid to speak of it out loud, as if giving voice to the experience might break the spell. Undo the magic. I needed to see if I could find that place again. Something in me resisted, but I forced my mind back to the autopsy room and to the faces of Sara Benton and her children. The more I focused on them, the less I focused on myself.

“I’m trying to get out of my head,” I said.

She looked like she understood what I meant, but she didn’t say anything more.

“This is Special Agent Young,” the feeb said, “and I’m Special Agent Goodman.” We were all in the lieutenant’s office: Ruiz, the two feds, Jen, and me. There weren’t enough chairs, so we stood in a loose circle around the desk. We exchanged handshakes.

“The bureau’s here at the request of the congressman,” Ruiz said.

“That’s right,” Goodman said. He was the older of the two—mid-forties, maybe—with a bit of gray at the temples. But aside from the age difference, the two agents might have been brothers—both had solid frames, an inch or so over six feet, strong jaws, medium-brown hair, brown eyes, and a general all-around white-breadiness. But then again, all feds look alike to me. “Congressman Benton’s asking that you keep us in the loop in terms of your investigation.”

“Must be nice to have connections,” I said. Ruiz and Jen both shot me disapproving looks, but Goodman’s demeanor was all warmth and reassurance.

“I know how it must sound, Detective,” he said. “But I want you to know we have no intention of interfering here or stepping on any toes. We just want you to provide as much information as is prudent. You can understand the congressman’s position, can’t you? He’s not used to feeling powerless, and this situation has him tied in knots. He needs to feel like he’s involved in some way, and that’s why we’re reaching out and asking for your help.”

I wasn’t used to that kind of candor from representatives of federal law enforcement agencies, and I almost regretted my snide comment.

Goodman was slick. I didn’t know what to say, but Ruiz didn’t wait. “Of course we’ll be happy to give you anything we can,” he said, matching Goodman in feigned sincerity. “Danny, Jen, why don’t you take the agents to the conference room and fill them in on the details?”

“Sure thing,” Jen said.

I seemed to be the only one lacking the requisite cordiality. One more thing to work on.

Half an hour later, we’d run down every significant detail of the case. Since we were also handing over copies of all of our reports, we didn’t give them anything they couldn’t have read for themselves. The satisfaction of holding out on sharing our own hunches and suspicions was limited by the fact that we didn’t really have any to keep to ourselves. Well, none aside from my virtual certainty that Bradley Benton III was a colossal dick. And I wasn’t ready to share that with one of Daddy’s lapdogs. Not yet, anyway.