The Bone Bed

with a nozzle. The dry-ice blaster was on the other side of that wall, and that’s where Galbraith would turn it on, a heavy-duty aggressive machine with a hopper that could hold enough dry-ice pellets to blast frozen CO 2 for hours.
    Galbraith had adjusted the settings as low as they would go, the purpose of this particular piece of equipment not for removing mold or sludge or grease or old paint or varnish or corrosion. He didn’t use this monster machine to blast clean the inside of wine barrels but to kill human beings, running at a low pressure of eighty pounds per square inch, consuming sixty pounds of dry ice pellets per hour, the carbon dioxide level slowly rising as the temperature in the room dropped, and the noise of compressed air would have been terrible.
    Douglas Burke didn’t struggle with him, didn’t have a chance. I suspect he tricked her into stepping inside that room and then shut the door and locked it. The best she could do was try to shoot her way out, emptying her entire clip, but she couldn’t get the door open, and she likely had very little time to try.
    It’s really not possible for me to know how long she was alive, but by the time we got to her she was beginning to freeze-dry, was partially frozen inside that frigid airless chamber where one chair had been set in the middle of the reddish fiber–covered concrete floor. Where he sat Peggy Stanton so he could verbally abuse her, is Benton’s guess. Where he sat Mildred Lott, whom he didn’t know socially and who treated him
like a Lilliputian
, Galbraith told the FBI.
    •   •   •
    It is almost ten p.m. when Benton pulls in, and Sock gets up and lazily trots to the side door and Quincy bounds after him, and I’m glad they’re friends. The moon is distant and small over rooftops behind our Cambridge home, and the French stained-glass window is lit up over the staircase landings, its wildlife scenes bright like jewels from the backyard where Benton and I decide to sit. The low stone wall around the magnolia tree is cold, and I realize it is winter.
    “Not even Halloween yet and it’s cold enough to snow,” I say to Benton in the dark, and he has his arm around me, pulling me close.
    “Try not to be so pessimistic,” I say to him after hearing about his day, about how badly he thinks the case will go. “I’ve been telling myself the same thing all night. Don’t lecture Marino. Don’t lecture Lucy. Don’t be so damn hard on myself and assume nothing makes a difference.”
    “I wish he’d just go ahead and commit suicide in jail.” Benton sips straight Scotch. “There. I said it. Save the government a trial. But pieces of shit like that don’t kill themselves. Same damn dog and pony show all over again. I can’t believe Donoghue’s firm is going to represent him, probably will be Judge Conry again, and you’ll get dragged through it again.”
    “I won’t be called by her this time.” It won’t be Jill Donoghue subpoenaing me. “This is the prosecution’s case. It’s theirs to win.”
    “Dan Steward is a moron.”
    I remind him the evidence is compelling. Galbraith killed all of them, leaving partial prints on boxes of trash bags, on a malt liquor bottle and a pouch of cat treats, and the wooden fibers he tracked from what the police now call the
blasting house
were also on Peggy Stanton’s body and inside her car, where a fingerprint on the rearview mirror is his, and prints were found on checks he forged to pay her bills.
    The same wine-stained American oak fibers were inside an old lobster boat Galbraith kept in a marina, I remind Benton, trying to encourage him. Police found Peggy Stanton’s clothing and Mildred Lott’s nightgown in a drawer at his waterfront house on Cohasset Harbor, where he stored his once formidable mother’s personal belongings. Even a moron can’t lose a case like this, I say to Benton.
    “I’m confident we’re going to have DNA,” I assure him. “Paint samples from the lobster boat match the trace of paint on the bamboo pole, the same residue on the barnacle I removed from the leatherback. And that places his boat in the area where Peggy Stanton’s body was recovered, where he ran into the turtle, plus he had her cell phone and checks. He had Emma Shubert’s cell phone, and a range extender in his warehouse so he could log on to Logan’s wireless. And then there’s the rather glaring detail of Mildred Lott’s body.”
    I mention that it might be difficult