His skin was pitted down his neck and into the open shirt he wore, and I could only imagine his shame as an adolescent, and the mockery and derisive laughter of his peers. I had known young men like him as I was growing up, those disfigured by birth or disease and unable to enjoy the entitlement of youthfulness or being the object of love.

So he had robbed others of what he did not have. He had destroyed as he had been destroyed, the point of origin his own miserable lot in life, his own wretched self. I did not feel sorry for him. Nor did I think that he and Carrie were still here in this city, or even anywhere around. She had gotten what she’d wanted, at least for now. The trap I had set had caught only me. She had wanted me to find Benton, and I had.

The final word, I felt sure, would be what she eventually did to me, and at the moment, I was too beaten up to care. I felt dead. I found silence in sitting on an old, worn marble bench in the riotous tangle of Joyce’s overgrown backyard. Hostas, begonias, and fig bushes fought with pampas grass for the sun, and I found Lucy at the edge of intermittent shadows cast by live oak trees, where red and yellow hibiscus were loud and wild.

“Lucy, let’s go home.”

I sat next to my niece on cold, hard stone I associated with cemeteries.

“I hope he was dead before they did that to him,” she said one more time.

I did not want to think about it.

“I just hope he didn’t suffer.”

“She wants us to worry about things like that,” I said as anger peeked through my haze of disbelief. “She’s taken enough from us, don’t you think? Let’s not give her any more, Lucy.”

She had no answer for me.

“ATF and the police will handle it from here,” I went on, holding her hand. “Let’s go home, and we’ll move on from there.”

“How?”

“I’m not sure I know.” I was as truthful as I could be.

We got up together and went around to the front of the house, where McGovern was talking to an agent out by her car. She looked at both of us, and compassion softened her eyes.

“If you’ll take us back to the helicopter,” Lucy said with a steadiness she did not feel, “I’ll take it on in to Richmond and Border Patrol can pick it up. If that’s all right, I mean.”

“I’m not sure you should be flying right now.” McGovern suddenly was Lucy’s supervisor again.

“Trust me, I’m fine,” Lucy replied, and her voice got harder. “Besides, who else is going to fly it? And you can’t leave it here on a soccer field.”