“It’s highly unusual for someone to visit this time of the night,” said the reed-thin woman with dark chocolate skin as she escorted us into the nursing home. “I’m sure the nursing home’s director won’t be happy about this. I mean, couldn’t it have waited until morning?”
“No,” David and I said in unison.
The woman frowned, drawing harder on the right, giving her face an uneven look. “Oh,” she said. “Okay. But you’re going to have to wait until I wake Professor Benoit and help him out of bed.”
We did as instructed, in the beige hallway with framed prints of forest scenes on the walls. Exhausted, I leaned on the railing, the one residents undoubtedly used during the day to prop themselves up when walking or to pull themselves along in their wheelchairs. The place smelled of antiseptic, and it looked clean, if not homey. A short time later, the nurse returned and motioned us inside.
“Please don’t stay too long,” she requested. “It’s late, and he needs his sleep. He’s a rather frail old man.”
“I heard that, Isabelle,” shouted a gravelly voice from inside the room.
“Well, it’s true, Professor,” she answered.
“Yes, but is truth always a defense?” the voice prodded. “I like to think of myself as merely age-disadvantaged.”
“Frail and ornery,” the nurse said as she turned to leave. Facing back toward the professor’s open door, she added, “And I hope you heard that, too!”
Inside the small room sat an elderly man with trim white hair. Nestled in a corner chair, a recliner, with his feet propped up, he chuckled softly, as if the enjoyment of the exchange with his night nurse lingered. The room was dark except for a long fluorescent light-bulb glowing over the bed, turned on with a pull cord. The light illuminated the right side of Professor Benoit’s craggy face but left the rest in shadow.
“Come in,” he said, his voice strong, even if his body was withered with age. “Come in, please, closer where I can see you. The nurse says you’re police officers?”
“Yes,” I said, leaning down to shake his hand. “Professor Benoit, I’m a Texas Ranger, Lieutenant Sarah Armstrong, and this is FBI Special Agent David Garrity.”
“Well, isn’t that impressive,” he said, taking my hand, then David’s, and grasping them warmly. “I’d say happy to meet you, but it is the middle of the night and there’s a hurricane coming, so I’d rather ask, why are you here?”
“You are Alex Benoit, who was a professor at Tulane University?” I asked. “You’re an expert in African symbolism?”
“Yes.” He may have once been a tall man, but he was so bent over with age, crumpled, it was impossible to tell. “I am Dr. Benoit from Tulane. And again, because it’s very late, and I’m very tired, why are you here?”
“We have a sketch we’d like you to look at,” David said, pulling my drawing of the man who’d called himself Alex Benoit from an envelope. “Please, does this person look familiar to you?”
The old man took the sketch in a twisted, disfigured arthritic hand, the joints swollen and painfully askew. “My glasses, please,” he said, motioning toward the nightstand. David grabbed the round wire frames and began to hand them to the man, then thought better of it and opened them up and helped him slip them on. The elderly man appeared not to notice, as if at peace with such concessions for his age. In the dim light, he looked at the drawing, and soon he closed his eyes and lowered his head, enveloped in a deep sadness. The hand that held the paper sank to his lap.
“What has he done?”
“You know this man?” I asked.
“Unless there’s some other explanation, this drawing resembles my son, Peter,” he said. “He’s why I moved to Houston, to be closer to him, so he could watch over me in my old age. That was a mistake. I knew he was troubled, but I didn’t really understand what he was capable of. If I had, I would have stayed far away. In all honesty, I believe the boy is mad.”
“Why would you say that?” David asked. “What did he do?”
“I was only living with him for a little more than a month, when he tried to kill me,” the old man said with a slight shudder, bringing his trembling right hand up to his forehead and pressing his palm above his eyes. “I would be dead now if it weren’t for the doctor who discovered I was being poisoned.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Why?” he repeated, his faded, aged eyes glancing up at me, questioning. “What are you asking?”
“Why did your son try to kill you? For money? Out of anger?”
The old man shook his head gently, and I saw confusion. “Who knows? I don’t know. I have no money. I live here on a long-term-care insurance policy, or I wouldn’t be able to afford such a nice place. My university pension is small, and it ends when I die. I have little else.”
“Don’t you have some idea?” David asked. “Why would he try to kill his own father? Something must have happened?”
The old man appeared at a loss for words, then simply shook his head and said, “In a place like this, you have a lot of time to consider the past. I’ve done that, and I’ve only come up with one answer to your question. I think my son wanted to kill me so he could watch me die.”
We learned that Alex Benoit had taught his son African symbolism, but in many ways, Peter’s studies were a disappointment. He’d barely finished high school. Although exceptionally bright, he was unable to focus on his studies and had gotten in trouble even as a boy, fights and angry outbursts. Most frightening, he’d once tied up a neighborhood girl for half a day and kept her hidden in a garage, while his parents and the girl’s mother scoured the neighborhood, searching for her.
“We did realize after that incident that Peter was disturbed. My wife and I thought we’d addressed his problems. For years, we sent Peter to therapy. The psychiatrist told us Peter had changed, that he was no longer dangerous. The therapist described what had happened with the girl simply as Peter acting out a natural curiosity, kind of a coming-of-age, where a boy searches for control and power. He said Peter had learned that his actions were inappropriate. We had no further such incidents,” Benoit said, again dropping his head and closing his eyes in deep sadness. “Peter grew up and moved on, and my wife and I traveled often. We spent a lot of time in Africa for my work. The result was that we saw less and less of our son. We heard he worked in restaurants in New Orleans for a long while. I don’t know that he forged any real relationships. I don’t believe he ever married or had a child, although I’m not certain. We saw him rarely. Four years ago, my wife died, on her deathbed lamenting that our only child hadn’t found his place in the world.”
“How did you end up in Houston?” I asked. “Why would you come to be near him, if you so rarely even saw him?”
“After his mother’s death, Peter called and reconnected with me. We rebuilt our relationship, or at least I thought we did,” the professor said, his aging face taut with worry and his eyes wet. “I lived alone in our old home, and I began falling and needed help, and Peter sounded so kind. It was such a relief to have him in my life, especially when he offered to take me in and watch over me. I moved to Houston and into his apartment with him. He was working then, lunches and at night, waiting tables in a little restaurant, and we had my pension and Social Security check. At first, all was well, but before long, I grew ill. One day, when Peter wasn’t home, I asked a neighbor to take me to a physician with a nearby office. I’d been asking Peter to, but he never had time. The poison showed up on my bloodwork, and as soon as the doctor called, I knew immediately that Peter hadn’t changed. If anything, he was worse.”
The old man hadn’t seen his son in more than two years, not since the murder attempt. He didn’t know where he’d been living and couldn’t help us with ideas about where his son could be found. “There’s only one thing I can do for you. I have a photograph of Peter on file at the front desk, along with instructions warning that security is to be called if he comes to visit me. Take the photograph. Perhaps it will help,” the old man said, reaching out and taking my hand. He held it and looked into my eyes. “Can you imagine being terrified of your own son?”