The Pain Scale (21 page)

“Professor Catanio?” I said.

She was surprised to see us, but the expression passed quickly from her face and was replaced with a gracious smile. “Hello, Detectives,” she said. “Please come in.”

“Sorry to stop by unannounced,” Jen said.

“Oh, it’s no problem. What can I do for you?”

“There have been a few developments in the case,” Jen said. “And we were hoping you might be able to give us a bit more information.”

“Of course,” she said.

“We’ve come across some new evidence that confirms Bradley Benton’s infidelity,” I said. “And, honestly, goes quite a bit farther than that.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” Jen said. “Were you aware that he was accused of rape?”

The professor’s eyes widened and her lips parted for a fraction of a second. But the surprise quickly turned into something else. Something very unpleasant. “No,” she said. “But I can believe it. When was this?”

I glanced at Jen. She gave me a slight nod.

I told Catherine the date mentioned in the DVD from Sara’s safe; she did a bit of silent mental calculation and said, very quietly, “Yes.”

“Yes what?” Jen asked, only slightly louder.

“The timing’s right.”

“The timing for what?”

“For when Sara finally gave up on him. I knew roughly when it happened. Her attitude changed. She actually became less angry and hurt. I thought she’d somehow been able to make some kind of peace with his behavior. Maybe she had. Maybe. I think that’s when she gave up the last of her hope that she could save their marriage. That’s when she gave up on him.”

“Did she ever tell you that?” Jen asked.

“No, she was very good at maintaining the front. But something changed in her. It was subtle. I doubt anyone else would have even noticed it.”

“Do you think she might have been planning to leave him?”

“I didn’t. But I’ve been thinking quite a bit about Sara and Bradley. Now, I have to say, I do think that’s a possibility.”

That didn’t completely confirm our suspicions that Sara might have been using the DVD as leverage in a potential divorce proceeding, but it certainly supported them. And it strengthened my belief that Bradley may indeed have had a motive for killing his wife.

“We need to ask you something else,” I said. “The rape accusation came from a former nanny. With what you told us before, we’re starting to see a very distinct pattern in Bradley’s behavior.”

“I understand,” she said.

“Do you know how many other nannies the Bentons have had?”

She counted in her head. “Four, I think.”

“Did they fit the same profile? Were they all young? Attractive? College aged?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. She was sitting up straighter in her chair than she had before, and there was a level of tension in her posture that I hadn’t seen before.

“We know he victimized at least one of them. Do you think he might have done the same to the others?”

She nodded, her anger now palpable in the small room.

In the car, Jen asked, “So what were you trying to do back there?”

“I wanted to get her riled up. See how much she had on Bradley.”

“Did you really need to push so many of her buttons?”

“Maybe not. But I thought the vulnerable college student angle would get to her teacher instincts.”

“It did,” she said. “She was seething when we left.”

“I’m confident she gave us everything she had,” I said, trying to put a pleasant spin on it.

“Me too. Just hope she doesn’t pop a cap in Bradley’s ass.”

“I’m not sure that would be such a bad thing.”

“I wish you were joking,” she said.

Joely lived with her parents in Costa Mesa, close to the South Coast Plaza. Fortunately, they were both still at work when we got there.

We parked on the street in front of the olive-green house, and she opened the door before we could ring the bell. She’d been waiting.

“Hello,” she said as she led us into the kitchen. It looked like it had been remodeled. The house itself was a relatively typical Orange County midsixties three-bedroom tract home, but the granite countertops and veneered cabinets weren’t original to that period. Her family wasn’t rich, but they weren’t poor, either.

“How are you holding up?” Jen asked.

“Okay, I guess.” As soon as the two of us sat down at the table, she asked, “Can I get you guys something to drink?”

“No, thank you,” Jen said. “We’re fine.”

I wondered if we should have asked for coffee so Joely would have something to focus on other than the questions we were going to ask her. She sat down across from us at the oval oak-topped table.

“This is your parents’ house?” I asked.

“Yes,” Joely said. “I lived in the dorms freshman year, but I didn’t really like it, so I came back home.”

“UCI, right?”

“Yes,” she said.

“What are you majoring in?”

“Education.”

“You want to be a teacher,” I said. “What grade level?”

“I’m not sure yet. Elementary. Probably third or fourth?” She was easing up a bit and becoming more comfortable. That was good.

“No class today?”

“No. I have a two-day-a-week schedule this quarter. They’re really long days, but it’s better that way for work.” She seemed as if she were going to continue but stopped as she remembered
what had happened to Bailey and Jacob. “I guess I don’t need to worry about that now, though.”

“I’m sorry,” Jen said to Joely, who was beginning to tear up.

There was a box of tissues on the counter on the other side of the room. I got up and brought it back to the table. Joely took one.

“Do you know who did it yet?” Joely asked.

“Not yet,” I said.

Jen picked up the ball. “But that’s why we’re here. We just need to ask you a few more questions.”

“Okay,” she said, dabbing at the corners of her eyes with a Kleenex. As far as I could tell, she wasn’t wearing any makeup, but she wiped at the tears as carefully as if she were.

“What we have to ask might make you uncomfortable,” Jen said. “But please think about the questions and be as honest as you can, all right?”

“Yes,” she said.

“In the time that you worked for the Bentons, was there anything at all unusual about Mr. Benton?”

“Unusual? In what way?”

“In any way,” Jen said. “Anything that comes to mind.”

“No. I can’t think of anything at all.”

“Was he a good boss?”

“Well, I really thought of Mrs. Benton as more of my boss. But he was always nice and everything. Why? Do you think he had something to do with—”

“Oh, no,” Jen said. “Nothing like that. We’re wondering if there might have been someone trying to get back at him for some reason.”

“Okay. Because I can’t imagine him doing anything like that.”

“Would you say you liked Mr. Benton?”

“Well, I guess so. I didn’t know him that well. He worked a lot, so I knew Mrs. Benton a lot better. She was awesome.” A second wave of tears began forming.

“That’s what everyone says about her,” Jen said. “A lot of people feel like you do.” Jen paused and let that thought take hold. “Just a few more questions,” Jen said.

“Okay,” Joely said.

“You said Mr. Benton never did anything that made you feel uncomfortable. Did you know that he had been accused of making advances toward one of the family’s previous nannies?”

“No. I—” The astonishment in her expression told us everything we needed to know. “Really? I can’t believe he’d ever do anything like that. He was always so nice.”

Jen asked a few follow-up questions to take Joely’s attention away from the bombshell and then wrapped up the interview.

As she opened the door for us, she asked, “When you find the people who did this, will it feel any better?”

Hearing the ache in her voice, I couldn’t bear to tell her the truth. “Yes,” I lied. “Yes, it will.”

“W
ELL, ACCORDING TO
the postmortem,” Patrick said, “Shevchuk died from a bullet wound to the head.”

“Anything turn up we didn’t expect?”

“Nope.” He sat down at his desk and reached for his mouse. “Any news on the driver?”

“Jen’s at his autopsy right now. I’m surprised you didn’t pass her in the hall. We didn’t get an ID off the prints. Maybe they’ll find something on the table that will help.”

Unlike me, Patrick can hold a completely coherent conversation while working on the computer. I am never sure how he does it.

He said, “I hope so. If it doesn’t, where do we go next?”

“Who handled the canvass of the shopping center across the street from Pavilions?”

“Marty, I think, and some uniforms.”

“Did he say anything about it?”

“I haven’t had a chance to talk to him, but if he’d have found anything, he’d have let us know, right?”

“Anything big, yeah. Maybe he found something small.”

Patrick said he’d seen him on the way in, so I went looking and found him downstairs hitting on a uniform patrol sergeant named Gretchen Murphy, who seemed happy for the distraction from the report she was working on.

“Marty,” I said, “you got a minute?”

He looked at Gretchen with a put-upon expression and said, “Guess they can’t handle things upstairs without me. Excuse me for a minute?”

She rolled her eyes. “Sure thing, Pops.”

Marty winced and sucked air in through his clenched teeth. “Ouch.”

Gretchen grinned and nodded at me. I returned her smile and followed Marty into the hall. “Really?” I said. “Gretchen Murphy? Isn’t she about your daughter’s age?”

“A little older, I think,” he said matter-of-factly. His third marriage had ended more than a year ago, and he had decided that he only wanted to be involved with women who were on the job, certain that it had been his wife’s lack of understanding of the difficulties involved in police work that had been their undoing. I didn’t pretend to know better. My wife and I had been having problems of our own when she’d died in a car accident. Unlike Marty, though, I hadn’t been involved with anyone in what seemed like a very long time.

“Did you get anything on the Seal Beach canvass?” I asked.

“Nothing, really. The receptionist in the optometrist’s office saw a guy getting into the backseat of the SUV. White, average height, dark hair.”

“Getting in? Did she see where he came from?”

“No,” Marty said. “I asked her if he might have just gotten out of the front and into the back, and she just said ‘maybe.’”

“And that was it?”

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s it.”

“So far, so good,” Ruiz said. He’d met with the department brass and tried to get some idea of whether or not they’d let us hold on to the Seal Beach murders.

“They’re not trying to hand it off to the feds?”

“Not so far, but the wind can change pretty quick. And the feds haven’t come knocking yet.”

“But for now, it’s ours, right?”

“For now.”

Jen found us in the lieutenant’s office. “Nothing new on the driver except a tattoo. The coroner thought it might be military.”

“Well,” Ruiz said, “at least it’s something.”

“How are we on overtime?” I asked.

“Let’s keep it tight for now, all right?” he said.

Outside in the squad room, Jen said to me, “You’re not going to call it a day yet, are you?”