It wasn’t simply her showing off and rubbing my nose in it. Not during the holidays or later at Easter, on Bryce’s birthday or Ethan’s and most recently and significantly Desi’s. She’s sent a deli basket, scented candles, potpourri, and treats for their pets. Desi got a Miami Heat jacket and a check, and I remember that Dorothy also called him.

All this when she didn’t used to give any of us the time of day, really. Certainly she never paid attention to my chief of staff on the rare occasion she would call me at work. Until not so long ago she was condescending and dismissive to Bryce on the phone. She had no interest in Desi until his mother died. Dorothy never wanted to come north for a visit until now, and I wonder how often she and Bryce talk.

I will myself not to think about this now. Each gritty step I take along the unpaved path draws me closer to a young woman who shouldn’t be dead no matter the cause. Still nameless and a mystery, she patiently awaits me inside a tent beyond the woods on the far side of the clearing.

Now that I’m seeing what Rusty and Harold have been struggling with for the better part of two hours, I understand what a job it was—or to quote Rusty’s favorite shopworn pun, what an undertaking. Several acres away, the rectangular enclosure could accommodate a small wedding or a funeral.

The pitch-dark boxy shape blocks out tall old trees and shrubs, and the vague stars and quarter moon. I no longer can see the smudged lamps, the lights reflected in the river or the spreading empire of Boston neighborhoods and skyscrapers on the other side.

As I walk closer it’s as if I’m reaching the end of the earth or diving in a shallow reef that abruptly drops off thousands of feet to the lightless bottom of the sea. I have the eerie sensation of floating in outer space, of being jettisoned to some awful remembered place where I don’t want to be. And what continues to enter my mind is something Benton began to say at the beginning of our time together what now seems a different life ago.

I remember his exact words long before we had any concept of how trite and understated they one day would prove to be:

Carrie Grethen hasn’t finished ruining people.

That was the simple prediction Benton Wesley, the FBI’s legendary profiler, made long before we knew who she was, long before she was apprehended. He continued to predict her malevolence after she was indicted and convicted, and he didn’t stop voicing his warnings when she was locked up on the women’s ward of Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center in New York City.

CHAPTER 27