The Bone Bed

closed with a twist tie.
    Bloody streaks and swipes on dirty stained dark carpet and bloody drag marks soaked into the pile led from the living room to the basement door, and then blood was plainly visible where one would expect it to be if he were an accidental death. Drips and smears were on the six concrete steps leading to the basement, his unconscious body pushed down the stairs and then kicked and stomped where it landed. The killer made sure Roth wouldn’t survive and assumed no one would entertain the possibility he was a homicide, that it would never enter our minds.
    “He did make some effort to disguise what he’s done,” Benton points out, as we pass the boathouse, the old Polaroid building again. “He could have just showed up late at night and shot him, stabbed him, strangled him, but that would have been obvious. He got some of it right but not the rest of it, because he’s unable to anticipate what normal people do.”
    “He can’t imagine any of us caring.”
    “That’s right. Someone empty, hollow. He’s probably seen him around here.”
    Benton suspects the killer has noticed Roth in Cambridge, has been aware of him for months, observing the handyman wandering about looking for work and digging through trash cans and recycle bins, sometimes pushing a grocery cart. This killer is aware of everyone when he’s stalking his next victim, Benton says. He prowls, cruises, researches, observing patterns and calculating. He does dry runs, feeding his cruel fantasies.
    But that doesn’t mean he knew who Howard Roth was by name. The killer forged a hundred-dollar check that he likely sent in the mail as he continued to pay Peggy Stanton’s bills long after she was dead. But that doesn’t mean he had a clue that the Howard Roth whose check he wrote was the homeless-looking man he saw rooting through the trash in Cambridge.
    “What I’m sure of is he killed Roth when he did for a reason,” Benton says. “This was an expedient homicide devoid of emotion.”
    “Stomping and kicking him seems rather emotional.”
    “It wasn’t personal,” Benton replies. “He felt nothing.”
    “It could be construed as angry. In most stomping cases, there’s rage,” I reply.
    “He felt he needed to get it done. Like killing a bug. I’m wondering if he’d been to her house recently, if Roth had.” Benton’s looking down at his phone again. “Maybe wanting his money, and it was bad timing.”
    “If the killer happened to be stealing Peggy Stanton’s mail when Roth appeared, that would be bad timing, couldn’t be worse timing.” My building is in sight. “But I wouldn’t expect him to do that during daylight.”
    “We don’t know that Roth only went out during daylight. There are all-night markets all around where Peggy Stanton lived, a lot of them on Cambridge Street, a Shop Quik that’s open twenty-four-seven just around the corner from her,” Benton says. “He was going to go out no matter the hour if he ran out of beer, and he might have frequented her neighborhood because he wanted his money.”
    “After dark on a poorly lit street?” I reply. “Chances are Roth wouldn’t have gotten a good look at him, even if they were face-to-face.”
    “He felt he had reason, a need to play it safe.” Benton says the killer did. “He had reason enough to take the risk of following him home with the intention of murdering him.”
    We turn off Memorial Drive, and I imagine Howard Roth on his way to or from the Shop Quik. If he’d seen someone getting mail out of Peggy Stanton’s box he might have spoken to this person, inquired where she is or when she might be home and even explain why he was asking. A disabled vet, an alcoholic who goes through trash cans and recyclables, a part-time handyman described as harmless. Even if he looked the killer in the face, why was murdering Roth a chance worth taking?
    I wonder if the killer had some other reason for being familiar with Howard Roth, if they’d seen each other before. They may not have known each other by name but by sight, by context.
    “And the rest was easy,” Benton is saying, as we stop at the CFC gate, and my phone begins to ring.
    Bryce.
    “Follow a drunk home who doesn’t lock his door.” Benton reaches up to press the remote clipped to the visor.
    What does Bryce want that can’t wait until I’m inside? He knows I’m here. He can see us in the monitor on his desk, in almost any monitor in any area of the building, and I