I thought of the photograph of the general in the dress mess jacket. He was slender and not particularly tall. His face was strong, eyes unwavering, but he did not look unkind.
'Luther Gault also served in Korea,' Wesley went on. 'For a while he was assigned to the Pentagon as the assistant chief of staff, then it was back to Ft. Lee as the deputy commander. He finished his career in MAC-V.'
'I don't know what that is,' I said.
'Military Assistance Command — Vietnam.'
'After which he retired to Seattle?' I said.
'He and his wife moved there.'
'Children?'
'Two boys.'
'What about the general's interaction with his brother?'
'I don't know. The general is deceased and his brother will not talk to us.'
'So we don't know how Gault might have wound up with his uncle's boots.'
'Kay, there is a code with Medal of Honor winners. They are in their own class. The army gives them a special status and they are stringently protected.'
'That's what all this secrecy is about?' I said.
'The army isn't keen on having the world know that their Medal of Honor-winning two-star general is the uncle of one of the most notorious psychopaths our country has seen. The Pentagon is not exactly keen on having it known that this killer — as you have already pointed out — may have kicked several people to death with General Gault's boots.'
I got up from my chair. 'I'm tired of boys and their codes of honor. I'm tired of male bonding and secrecy. We are not kids playing cowboys and Indians. We're not neighborhood children playing war.' I was drained. 'I thought you were more highly evolved than that.'
He stood up, too, as my pager went off. 'You're taking this the wrong way,' he said.
I looked at the display. The area code was Seattle, and without asking Wesley's permission I used his phone.
'Hello,' said a voice I did not know.
'This number just paged me,' I was confused.
'I didn't page anybody. Where are you calling from?'
'Virginia.' I was about to hang up.
'I just called Virginia. Wait a minute. Are you calling about Prodigy?'
'Oh. Perhaps you talked to Lucy?'
'LUCYTALK?'
'Yes.'
'We just this minute sent mail to each other. I'm responding to the gold foil query. I'm a dentist in Seattle and a member of the Academy of Gold Foil Operators. Are you the forensic pathologist?'
'Yes,' I said. 'Thank you so much for responding. I'm trying to identify a dead young woman with extensive gold foil restorations.'
'Please describe them.'
I told him about Jane's dental work and the damage to her teeth. 'It's possible she was a musician,' I added. 'She may have played the saxophone,'
There was a lady from out here who sounds a lot like that,'
'She was in Seattle?'
'Right. Everyone in our academy knew about her because she had such an incredible mouth. Her gold foil restorations and dental anomalies were used in slide presentations at a number of our meetings,'
'Do you recall her name?'
'Sorry. She wasn't my patient. But it seems I remember hearing she was a professional musician until she was in some terrible accident.
That was when her dental problems began,'
The lady I'm talking about has a lot of enamel loss,' I said. 'Probably from overbrushing,'
'Oh absolutely. The lady out here did, too,'
'It doesn't sound to me as if the lady out there was a street person,' I said.
'Couldn't be. Someone paid for that mouth,'
'My lady was a street person when she died in New York,' I said.
'Geez, that makes me sad. I guess whoever she was, she really couldn't care for herself,'
'What is your name?' I asked.
'I'm Jay Bennett,'
'Dr. Bennett? Do you remember anything else that might have been said during one of these slide presentations?'
A long silence followed. 'Okay, yes. This is very vague,' He hesitated again. 'Oh, I know,' he said. The lady out here was related to someone important. In fact, that might be who she lived with out here before she disappeared.'
I gave him further information so he could call me again. I hung up the phone and met Wesley's stare.
'I think Jane is Gault's sister,' I said.
'What?' He was genuinely shocked.
'I think Temple Gault murdered his sister,' I repeated. 'Please tell me you didn't already know that.'
He got upset.
'I've got to verify her identity,' I said, and I had no emotion left in me right now.
'Won't her dental records do that?'
'If we find them. If she still has X rays left. If the army stays out of my way.'
'The army doesn't know about her.' He paused, and for an instant his eyes were bright with tears. He looked away from me. 'He just told us what he did when he sent the message from CAIN today.'
'Yes,' I said. 'He said CAIN killed his brother. The description of Gault with her in New York sounded more like two men than a woman and a man.' I paused. 'Are there other siblings?'
'Just a sister. We've known she lived on the West Coast but have never been able to locate her because apparently she doesn't drive. DMV has no record of a valid license. Truth is, we've never been certain she is alive.'
I said to him, 'She's not.'
He flinched and looked away.
'She hadn't lived anywhere — at least not in recent years,' I said, thinking of her pitiful belongings and malnourished body. 'She'd been on the street for a while. In fact, I'd say she survived out there all right until her brother came to town.'
His voice caught and he looked wrecked as he said, 'How could anyone do something like that?'
I put my arms around him. I did not care who walked in. I hugged him as a friend.
'Benton,' I said. 'Go home.'
17
I spent the weekend and the New Year at Quantico, and though there was considerable mail on Prodigy, verifying Jane's identity was not promising.
Her dentist had retired last year and her Panorex X-rays had been reclaimed for silver. The missing films, of course, were the biggest disappointment, for they might have shown old fractures, sinus configurations, bony anomalies, that could have effected a positive identification. As for her charts, when I touched upon that subject, her dentist, who was retired and now living in Los Angeles, got evasive.
'You do have them, don't you?' I asked him point-blank on Tuesday afternoon.
'I've got a million boxes in my garage.'
'I doubt you have a million.'
'I have a lot.'
'Please. We're talking about a woman we're unable to identify. All human beings have a right to be buried with their name.'
