Chaos

CHAPTER 10

I STEP AWAY FROM THE front door, pausing by the antique entryway table with its big flower arrangement.

Inside the drawing room Benton is discreetly tucked to one side of a window near the baby grand piano. He’s on the phone, his face hard and somber. There’s nobody else inside with him, and I wish I could tell him about the woman on the bicycle. He saw her too, and now the worst may have happened.

But I don’t get any closer. I know when not to disturb him, and I notice that Mrs. P is back at her station, her round old-fashioned glasses staring at me. As I glance at her she quickly looks down and begins to open menus, checking the printed pages inside. I can tell she senses something is wrong.

I can’t hear what Benton is saying to whoever he’s on the phone with, but I get the impression based on his tone that he’s not talking to the same person he was a moment earlier. I catch his eye and indicate I have to go, and he nods. Then he turns away. He doesn’t place his hand over his phone to ask what’s happening or offer what might be going on with him. And that makes me wonder if we really are being contacted about the same case.

But I don’t see how that would be feasible. At this stage there’s no reason I can think of for the FBI to be interested in a local death, possibly of a young woman from London named Elisa Vandersteel. But it’s disturbing that Marino mentioned the International Criminal Police Organization, Interpol. I don’t know why he did or if I might have misheard. But I can’t stop thinking of the cyclist with the blue helmet and Converse sneakers who called me the peanut-butter-pie lady.

I realize the ID found near her body might not be hers, but when I met her she sounded British, possibly from London, and my stomach clenches harder. I feel a sense of urgency that’s personal. As if I knew the woman who’s been killed. As if I might be one of the last people she ever spoke to or saw. And I will myself to control my thoughts.

I can’t say for a fact whose dead body is in the park or how the death occurred or why, I remind myself. I open the door and step out into the dark oven of the patio, where no one is sitting in the stifling night air. I follow the walkway, looking all around me with every step I take. I listen for the quiet nocturnal sounds of insects, of birds lifting off branches in a startled burst, their wings whistling.

I listen for the creaking of old trees, the rustle of leafy canopies or chirp of a katydid. But it’s dead quiet except for traffic that gusts like the wind, rushing, then lagging before it picks up again. I’m aware of the solid roughness of the bricks beneath my softly tapping shoes, mindful of the thick static air and the bright bug eyes of vehicles on Quincy Street.

I pass the same foliage and rockery I did earlier when I was with Benton, but it seems I’m on another planet now, surrounded by unfamiliar voids of lawn, and hulking dark shapes and shadows. Nothing moves except traffic beyond the split-rail paling silhouetted ahead. I can see the libraries sleepily lit up across the street in the Yard, where I was walking not even an hour and a half ago. I reach the sidewalk, and Marino’s SUV is parked at the curb behind Benton’s Audi.

It seems like déjà vu as I climb in and stare at the rear of my husband’s blacked-out Batmobile illuminated in the glare of headlights. Only he’s not in it now, and I feel a pang of loneliness as I see the empty dark space where he was sitting behind the wheel, watching us in the rearview mirror but a very short time ago.

Benton is still inside the Faculty Club, and I continue watching for him to emerge from the red front door, to see him illuminated in the entrance light as he steps outside and follows the walkway. But there’s no sign of him. He must still be on the phone, and it enters my mind that in the midst of all this chaos he has to take care of banal matters such as paying for a dinner we didn’t get to eat. I didn’t think of asking for the check. I simply walked out.

As I pull my door shut and set my briefcase by my feet, I ask Marino what else he instructed my two autopsy technicians Rusty and Harold to bring to the scene.

“And have they already left?” I pull my shoulder harness across me and the steel tongue snaps into the buckle that as usual I had to dig out of the crack in the seat. “Because I need protective clothing and a scene case. I don’t have anything with me, not even a pair of gloves. And there’s no time for me to stop by my office.”

“You need to relax,” Marino says. “I’ve got it covered.”

He looks the way he did when I saw him last, except he’s taken off his tie. I see it on the backseat, sloppily coiled like a polyester snake.

“Please assure me we’re keeping the lights off.” It’s not possible I’m going to relax. “We turn on portable floodlights and we may as well send out invitations and a press release.”

“Remember where I used to work? Remember who used to take care of all that and still knows how?” He checks his mirrors. “I know the drill.” His eyes are darting and he’s sweating. “I guess Benton’s staying?” Marino stares at the Faculty Club, boxy and dignified in the distant dark.

A pale gold light fills the tall twelve-paned windows, and I can see inside the drawing room, the masculine leather furniture, the sparkling chandelier, the gleaming baby grand, and I look for Benton. But there’s no way he’s lingering in front of windows for all the world to see.

“I’m not sure what he’s doing,” I reply. “He was on the phone with Washington when I was leaving.”

“Let me guess,” Marino says, and right off he’s assuming Benton’s call is related to what’s just happened in John F. Kennedy Park.

“I don’t have any idea,” I reply as we pull away from the curb. “I don’t know what’s going on but he did mention earlier that the terror alert is elevated.”

Marino turns on his emergency lights but not his siren. “Something’s going on, Doc. I’m just telling you. And he’s not passing along the info because that’s what the FBI does, doesn’t matter that you’re married to them.”

“I’m not married to the FBI. I’m married to Benton.” I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.

“If the reason he’s on the phone with Washington is the Vandersteel case, there’s no way he’s going to tell you,” Marino says as if he knows my husband better than I do. “He could be talking to Interpol, which might explain the call I got-that’s assuming news of the case here has shot up the chain already, and if so I’d like to know how the hell that’s possible. But Benton won’t tell you shit unless it suits his purposes because right now he’s the Feds. And yeah, you’re married to them. Or maybe worse? He is.”

“This is several times now that you’ve mentioned Interpol.” I’m not interested in hearing his disparagements of Benton, the FBI or anything else at the moment. “Why?” I ask.

“They didn’t call you too, did they?” Marino glances at me, his brown eyes glaring and bloodshot.

“No.” I’m mystified. “Why would they and about what?”

MARINO GUNS A RIGHT on Harvard Street, and the route he takes basically will retrace my steps from my earlier ill-fated walk.

Only now it’s completely dark, and the stars and quarter moon are blotted by a hot haze that for days has been filmy over the horizon, intensifying the colors at twilight from pastel tints to wide brushstrokes of gaudy orange, magenta and deep rose.

“Let me start at the beginning and spell it out,” Marino says. “I was actually on my way to the CFC.”

“What for?” I look at his wide-eyed flushed face as he streaks past apartment buildings, a bookshop, a bank, a café and other businesses that form blurred chains of light on either side of the two-lane road.

“Because Lucy and I were trying to see if there’s anything else we could figure out about the bogus nine-one-one call made by someone using voice-changing software,” he says, and that addresses at least some of what I’ve been wondering.

Unsurprisingly, Lucy picked up on the subtle but odd uniformity of what we suspect is an altered voice on the audio clip. She must have said something to Marino and also to Benton.

“She’s in her lab,” Marino says. “Or she was right before I called you.”

“Then what?” I ask him as we speed through the middle of the Harvard campus. “You’re with her at the CFC, and what happened next?”

There are more people out now, on the sidewalks, walking through the Yard. But certainly it’s nothing close to the usual crowds, the typical hustle and bustle of Cambridge, which I’ve always said is a concentrated version of any huge metropolis in the world and all the problems and advantages that go with it.

“Then I get the call from Clay,” Marino says.

“Do I know him?”

“Tom Barclay.”

“The investigator?”

“Yeah.”

“I see,” I reply, and this changes things.

I look out the windows, and the park and the river are just minutes ahead. I can see the brick Widener Library with its teal cupola, and the stone slate-roofed department of linguistics. I’m surprised and unsettled by what Marino just told me. If Tom Barclay was the source of the information, that’s unfortunate.

“I see,” I again say. “So it wasn’t a patrol officer who was the first responder.”

“Nope. It was Clay,” Marino answers, and Clay, or Investigator Barclay as I know him, recently was transferred from property crimes to the major case unit.

I haven’t really worked with him directly but one of my medical examiners had a case with him earlier in the week and complained about him. Barclay is much too sure of himself and doesn’t know when to shut up. He may have attended the crime-scene academy but that doesn’t give him the expertise to identify and interpret artifacts such as rigor and livor mortis, and other changes that occur after death. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing when you’re cocky.

“The detail about rigor is perplexing and troublesome,” I tell Marino over the thunder of his driving like a rocket. “He’s been around dead bodies before.”

“Not many.”

“But some. And he should recognize certain obvious postmortem changes,” I add, “and hopefully not confuse or misrepresent them. But it would seem like a strange mistake to make if he’s stated for the record that she’s already going into rigor when in fact she’s not. And he shouldn’t be stating anything to you that you in turn pass on to me. All of it constitutes a paper trail, a record that we might wish we didn’t have.”

I emphasize for the record because Marino’s relaying to me what Investigator Barclay reported could become problematic if it’s documented or circulated. The dead woman and any associated biological evidence are my legal jurisdiction, meaning I’m present in an official capacity.

I’m not here as Marino’s mother, wife, friend, partner, mentor or pal, and very little is private anymore. Unfortunately, any information we exchange doesn’t constitute some sort of legally protected small talk. We can get asked anything when we’re under oath.

“Clay’s new. He’s never worked a homicide, and he thinks he’s a genius. Beyond that what can I tell you?” Marino replies. “I guess we’ll see for ourselves, but he said she was stiff. He touched her and she felt as stiff as a mannequin. That’s what he told me.”

“If he wasn’t sure or didn’t know, I wish he hadn’t said it.” This is disappointing and may come back to bite us. “It’s worse because it’s a detective saying it.”

“I know,” Marino says. “That’s why I’m always telling him and everyone else to think before you open your damn pie hole and be careful what you write, e-mail and post on freakin’ Facebook.”

At Harvard Square, the SUV’s strobing red and blue lights bounce off street signs and are reflected in the windows of buildings and cars we pass. I remind him of Interpol, steering him there.

“Why were you called?” I want to know.

“The million-dollar question.”

“And when was this?”

“Let me roll back the tape so you can appreciate the timing,” Marino says. “First I get the call from Clay. I tell Lucy I gotta go and am heading downstairs-”

“You were actually with her in her lab when Investigator Barclay called you?” I ask, and Marino nods, explaining he’d just gotten there and they were getting started going over the 911 recording.

“Then my phone rings and it’s Barclay. He says he’s at a homicide scene in JFK Park on the riverbank.”

“Did he actually use the word homicide?” I ask. “Because I wish he hadn’t said that either.”

“He said it looked like an attempted sexual assault, and that she was beaten to death.”

“I don’t know why you bothered to pick me up.” Cops like Barclay can create dangerous problems. “It appears he’s happy to do my job.” I’m going to have to have a word with him before the night is over. “Why did I bother interrupting my dinner?”

“Yeah he pisses me off too,” Marino says. “You got no idea. Talk about someone who doesn’t look before he leaps. It never occurs to him that maybe he’s not a damn expert at whatever it is.”

“I hope he’s not freely offering these same opinions to everyone he talks to,” I add, “because this is how misinformation ends up all over the place. Let’s get back to Interpol. Tell me about the phone call.”

“Like I was saying, Clay asked me to meet him at the scene. Then he wanted to know if he should contact your office, and I said I would take care of it. By the time I’d walked out of Lucy’s lab, taken the elevator down to the lower level and was getting in my car in the parking lot, my phone was ringing again,” Marino tells the story loudly, over the noise of the engine.

“This time the call’s from an unknown number. You know, when a call comes up with a row of zeros? Like when caller ID is blocked and it’s not somebody in your contacts list?” he says. “So I answered, and it was Washington, D.C.”