Every member of law enforcement in Harris County had a photograph and a description of Peter Benoit. For three days, as Houston slowly awoke after the hurricane, we searched. We followed leads as far away as Louisiana and Arkansas and sent out bulletins to every state in the Union and down into Mexico and up into Canada. We would never give up on looking for Benoit, but his trail was cold. His dark blue SUV was found abandoned on a country road, in the middle of an intersection, a crossroads, with no explanation as to how he’d disappeared.
It did, however, seem that he made a stop before leaving the area. On the second day after the hurricane, my cell phone rang; it was the administrator at Alex Benoit’s nursing home. “One of the nurses found the professor dead this morning,” she said. “We’re having his body autopsied. His nose is bruised, and we’re thinking that it may be broken.”
“Sounds like suffocation,” I agreed. “Was his son seen near the home?”
At that moment, I remembered the photo he’d given us that night, the one of Peter Benoit that we’d taken from the main desk, the photo that was supposed to keep Alex Benoit safe so that his son would be recognized and barred from his room. So much had already happened, and now I worried that taking the photo had cost the old man his life.
“No, we didn’t see him, and we were watching for him. The local police were still supposed to be keeping an eye on the nursing home, but the old man’s son may have found a way to get past them. The professor’s window was broken from the inside,” she said. “We’ll keep you posted, but we’re pretty sure this isn’t natural causes.”
Everything had been slowed down by the hurricane, so it was nearly a week before we buried Sergeant George “Buckshot” Fields. So many attended the service that loudspeakers had to be set up outside the church to ensure all could hear the eulogy. His ex-wife left her new husband, Buckshot’s old friend, in California and came alone. At the service, Peggy held her daughter’s hand, comforting her at the loss of her father.
“Today we bury a fallen hero,” the preacher said. “Sergeant Fields was a great man, a righter of wrongs, a man loyal and true, one who could be trusted to always do what was right, even if it wasn’t easy. He was the father of a daughter he loved, one he will always love.”
From the church, we drove to a quiet cemetery north of Houston, where a grave yawned open below the bronze-colored casket. It was there that Buckshot would find eternal rest, under a crepe myrtle that flowered pure white. The tent the family sat under was the head of a triangular span of mourners so deep and so dense that if Buckshot looked down and saw how many cared about him, he would have been proud. When the preacher finished his final prayer, we walked away from the casket, still propped up on scaffolding over the open grave. I tried not to think of Buckshot’s body the last time I saw it, of the awful destruction of the fire.
Depressed from the lack of success at finding Benoit but having to admit we had no leads to follow, David and I took off the weekend after the funeral and left for the Hill Country. The power was still out at his house and at the ranch, along with a big chunk of Houston. I hadn’t wanted to go, but Mom insisted. She and Bobby were enjoying the quiet of no television and video games, watching Maggie play cards with Strings on the porch and working with the horses, while they ate all the baked goods Mom’s nerves had stockpiled before the hurricane hit. The generator, they insisted, made the house livable, especially since the newly arrived fall breezes kept the place cool. I wasn’t convinced, figuring what was really going on was that my entire family was conspiring to make sure David and I finally had time alone together.
We found a little B&B in the rolling hills west of Austin, on a horse ranch. Our second day there, we rode two of the owners’ Arabians. The place bordered a forest, and trails took us along a creek and down into ravines. When we arrived back at the small cottage we’d rented, we sat on the swing and held hands. Afterward, David, who’d brought three coolers full of supplies, started constructing dinner.
“Lord bless a man who can cook!” I exclaimed, chuckling, while I watched from the couch. My job had been to bring the wine for the trip, and my cheeks were flushed from a glass of red Zinfandel. I sized him up, forming my hands into a square to make a frame, and peered at him. “You know, you’d look cute in an apron.”
“Don’t get any ideas,” David said with a smirk. He put down a knife and the zucchini he’d been chopping and came over and nestled against my neck, whispering, “Although I’d be happy to dress up like a French maid if I thought you’d find the game playing inspiring.”
I ran my hands over his arms, felt the tightness of his muscles under the thin cotton shirt, and sighed. “You know, I’m tempted,” I admitted. I raised my face toward him, and he met me halfway with a warm, long, ravenous kiss. At that precise moment, my stomach rumbled, and I laughed. I put my hand on his cheek and looked into his eyes. “You know, I think you’d better feed me first.”
Bending at the waist, he bowed. “Whatever my lady wishes.”
Dinner disappeared quickly, a feast of sautéed veggies and chicken breast, along with a salad I splashed with a light vinaigrette. Afterward, we sat together on the porch swing, breathing in the crisp air, a blanket warming our legs. I thought back to the hurricane. It had been a full week since I’d left David that voice mail, the one that I’d concluded by confiding that I loved him. He hadn’t mentioned it once. He’d also said nothing about the decision hanging over both of us, whether or not he’d move to Denver and try one more time to reconcile with his ex-wife.
I winnowed a place for my head on his shoulder and wondered if he’d heard my confession or if the cell phone tower, in the middle of the storm, had chosen that moment to send out static instead of my profession of love. I wondered where life would take us and if we had a future together. It was then that he stood up and took me by the hands. “It’s time to go inside, where it’s warm.”
“It’s pretty nice out here,” I said, acting as if I didn’t understand.
“Inside, woman,” he ordered with a laugh. “Your chef commands.”
A roguish look in his eyes, he led me inside, locked the door, then escorted me to the bedroom and the four-poster bed. There, he peeled off my T-shirt and unhooked my bra, a white lace one I’d purchased in my continuing effort to be more of a girl. I let it fall from my shoulders, then drop to the old wood floor. The cool air made me shiver, and David leaned in to kiss me, cupping my breasts in his strong, warm palms while I slowly unbuttoned his shirt. When I finished, I pushed his shirt to the side and unlatched his belt, the buckle a silver one with a star I’d given him months earlier, calling it his rodeo belt and saying that wearing it would make him a real Texan.
Our bodies naked, we rolled onto the bed, clutching each other. Not satiated by mere food, our mouths were desperate for each other. He stroked my body, and I felt every nerve take notice, an excitement that left me longing for more. Soon, he was on top of me, and I kneaded his muscular shoulders as he rose and fell, my legs wrapped around his strong thighs. I pushed against him, and he writhed, rocking and bringing me along with him, heightening the enjoyment and the thrill of each passing moment. Finally, a warm release, a throwing back of the head in what could have been mistaken for agony, and we both cried out.
Afterward, we spooned together, him behind me, smelling of sex and food. His left arm lay beneath me, wrapped around my chest, and his right hand played with the flesh between my thighs. I groaned.
“This isn’t fair, David,” I whispered. “It’s really not.”
“What?” he asked, mischievousness lacing his voice. “What’s not fair?”
“This isn’t fair,” I said. “Making me want you like this.”
At that he released his hold on me, and I regretted my words. He moved away, and I rolled onto my back and looked up at him. Before I could speak, he ran his hands lightly over my sides and down my thighs and then lifted me up until my hips were off the bed. Again on top of me, he made love to me, transporting me to a place I couldn’t go alone.
When it was over, we again lay together. In the morning we’d go home, and I needed to know.
“David,” I said as he held me tight, “I don’t want to ruin this, but I deserve an answer.”
At first he said and did nothing, only lay still and held me. Then he slowly unfolded, releasing me. He sat on the side of the bed, his eyes deeply troubled, immensely sad. He never said a word, but I knew.
“You’re moving to Denver,” I said. “You brought me here to say good-bye.”
“I do love you, Sarah,” he said with a melancholy half smile. “When I heard you say that on my voice mail, that you love me, I understood that I feel the same way. I want you to believe that I do love you.”
Shaking my head as if it were too strange a turn of events, I asked, “Then, why?”
“Because I have to,” he said, moving closer and wiping a tear off my cheek. “Because I love Jan, too. She wanted the divorce, I didn’t. I never completely stopped loving her. Because we were married for a decade, and we have a fifteen-year-old son I want to be a father to.”
“I can understand that,” I said, thinking I needed to step back, to not protest. It was his life. His family. I wasn’t proud of it, but I had to ask. “But what’ll be different now? Your ex-wife couldn’t live with you on the job before, the long hours, the time on the road. Your situation hasn’t changed.”
From the look on his face, his lips knotted in a crooked frown, I knew he’d thought long and hard about just that. “You’re right,” he admitted. “Absolutely right. And maybe it won’t work. But I have to try.”
When I said nothing, he wrapped his arms around me. “Don’t hate me for this, Sarah. Please, try to understand.”
“I’d never hate you,” I said, meaning it, yet feeling a coldness in the room. I grabbed the green comforter and pulled it up around me. “But you said you love me, and I don’t understand.”
A tense pause, and then David whispered, “If Bill came back, if somehow something happened and your dead husband walked into this room, think about it. You said you love me, but wouldn’t you still love him? Wouldn’t you want to put your family back together, to restore what you had? Wouldn’t you leave me to be with him and give Maggie her mother and her father?”
My head bowed. He was right. We spent the rest of that night lying together, holding each other, and in the morning, we drove home in silence.
Maybe in another world it could have all ended there, David dropping me off at the ranch the next morning and Mom eyeing me and seeing my sadness. She slipped her arms around me and walked me inside our home, where Strings played the guitar in the kitchen while Maggie sang along. That night, I sat on the porch rocking chair and wondered if there was any place safe for love. If somewhere love always won. My mind drifted back to my last night with David, then from David to Bill, and I questioned what it would be like never to leave the confines of a lover’s arms, never to have to confront the hard realities that wait with a rising sun and a new day. If such a place exists, I haven’t found it.
Yet I’m no stranger to life’s contrasts, the good and the bad.
Sometimes I believe I live in two worlds: one with those I love, my family and my friends, and the other, the day-to-day horrors of my work, where I regularly confront the certainty that evil exists. In this second world, joy is too often replaced by sadness, celebration by grief, and exhilaration by tragedy. Love is the most vulnerable of all. It falls victim to fear, anger, jealousy, and even greed.
In one week; I’d suffered the pain of losing a good friend, the joy of saving a little lost boy, and the resigned sadness of watching the man I love drive away, perhaps never to return. It seemed that just when I convinced myself that good would triumph and that someday all might be right with the world, someone, God, the devil, someone, felt compelled to slap me on the side of the head and shout, “Pay attention, Sarah. Take heed. Never let down your guard. Never take for granted what waits around the next corner.”
At my office the following week, the phone rang. Sylvia Vogel, the prosecutor on the Warner case, had news. “We’re going to arrest Crystal Warner,” she said. “We got an indictment from the grand jury.”
“What about the immunity agreement?” I asked, surprised.
“Crystal shouldn’t have been so cocksure. She should have had her attorney involved. I wrote it so narrowly, we didn’t have any problem finding exceptions,” Sylvia said, sounding as pleased as I was at the turn of events. “All Crystal has immunity for is selling the kid. We’re going to hit her with a restaurant menu of other charges, including child endangerment and lying to law enforcement personnel.”
“Ah,” I said, smiling. “Maybe there is justice, at least now, this one time. Maybe the bad will be punished.”
“Yeah,” Vogel said, her voice a hoarse cough. “Maybe. At least we can hope.”
Afterward, I walked into Buckshot’s office. His daughter had already come and taken all she’d wanted, mementos to remember her father by. I knew what I was looking for, something that summed up the friend I’d lost, something to keep him near. What I chose was a small glass vial filled with lead buckshot, taken from the hide of a rustler, the very buckshot that christened George Fields with his nickname.
Back in my office, I placed the remembrance on my desk, proud to have it center stage. I fingered it, wondering if we’d ever find Peter Benoit, if he’d ever pay for his crimes, especially murdering my friend. Then, before heading home to the ranch, I decided to tackle the stack of mail in my in-box. I was halfway through when I found a handwritten envelope with no return address. I cut it open with the pewter letter opener Mom had given me for Christmas a few years earlier, the one with a horse-head handle, and then slipped out a single sheet of unlined white paper. My hands trembled, and images of the small skulls waiting in my workroom flashed into my mind. How many times had I thought about those two unidentified children while looking for Joey? How many times had I wondered if the cases could be connected?
When I read the short note tucked inside the envelope, I no longer had to wonder. I knew.
Lieutenant Armstrong,
Thank you for the lesson. What I learned: it’s easier when their mothers simply agree to disappear and not report them missing. Current tally:
Benoit….….….…..2
Armstrong….……1
The game will be continued.