The Bone Bed

while.”
    “That’s what you think or what your colleagues think?” Lightning flashes and the sky looks bruised.
    “It’s not for me to decide how Marino should be handled. It’s not appropriate for me to decide, in light of personal connections. In light of our history.” Benton doesn’t look at me, and I know when he’s wounded.
    “It seems if anyone should decide, it’s the one who knows him best.”
    “Yes, I know him,” he says.
    “You certainly do. And your colleagues don’t.”
    “Not the way I know him. You’re right about that. And maybe you should think about what I know.”
    “I should think about what you know of Marino’s flaws.” It’s obvious what he’s alluding to, and I can’t stop this from where it’s going.
    “Flaws. Christ,” he says.
    “Don’t do this, Benton.”
    “Yes, flaws,” he says.
    “Goddammit, stop.”
    “What a way to put it,” he says, in the voice of anger, of hurt.
    “You’re finally paying him back?” I ask.
    “Nothing more than a flaw or two.”
    “You’re going to pay him back at last for a night when he was drunk and on medication?” I go ahead and say it. “When he was out of his mind?”
    “The oldest excuse in the history of the world. Blame it on pills. Blame it on booze.”
    “This isn’t helpful.”
    “Plead insanity when you sexually assault someone.”
    “Please don’t tell me what happened then has a bearing on decisions you’re making now,” I say to him. “I know you wouldn’t throw him to the wolves for a mistake he made years ago. One he couldn’t be sorrier for.”
    “Marino throws himself to the wolves. He’s his own wolf.”
    I drive past a construction site where bulldozers parked in muddy rivers of rainwater remind me of prehistoric creatures stranded, of floods, of life swept away. My every thought is dark and morbid and honed by the fear that Benton stood silently inside the doorway of the decomp room to send me a message. I fear the flaws he’s really talking about aren’t Marino’s. They’re mine.
    “Please don’t punish him because of me,” I say quietly. “He’s not a predator. He’s not a rapist.”
    Benton doesn’t respond.
    “He’s certainly not a murderer.”
    Benton is silent.
    “Marino’s been framed; if nothing else he’s been discredited, been humiliated by Peggy Stanton’s killer.” I look at Benton as he stares straight ahead. “Please don’t use it as an opportunity to punish.” I mean as an opportunity to punish me.
    The SUV splashes through water that has pooled in low-lying areas, broken branches littering the street, as neither of us speak, and the silence convinces me of what I suspect. The space between us is vast and empty, as rain billows in sheets and dead leaves dart and swarm in the dark like bats.
    “He was set up, yes. That much I believe,” Benton finally says, almost wearily. “God knows why anyone would bother. He’s perfectly capable of setting himself up. He doesn’t fucking need help.”
    “Where is he? I hope he’s not alone right now.”
    “With Lucy. He’s managed to make his compromised position much worse because of his rude defensive behavior.”
    I glance in the mirrors, my eyes watering in glaring headlights as cars go past.
    “Acting like a defiant, uncooperative total jerk,” Benton continues, and his tone has changed, as if he let me know what he wants me to know, and it’s enough.
    “I’m not surprised he’s beside himself,” I hear myself say, as I’m realizing something else entirely.
    The observation windows that overlook the autopsy rooms didn’t enter my mind at the time.
    “I can only imagine his embarrassment and anger,” I add, but that’s not what’s got my attention.
    I didn’t think of the teaching labs. It never occurred to me that anybody might be in them with the lights turned off.
    “He certainly can be his own worst enemy.” I keep talking while my thoughts course along a different track.
    Benton was up there watching, and during certain moments it couldn’t have been more obvious. I didn’t move away. I didn’t try to stop it, because I couldn’t, because I wanted it. I desired him in the midst of what was dead and horrible, when the urgency to feel alive can override what is logical.
    “His rages, his insults; he was completely uncooperative,” Benton is saying, and I’m barely listening.
    Luke asked me and I thought about it, wondered where and when as I entertained fleeting plans about