Chaos

CHAPTER 14

WE FOLLOW THE SAME dirt footpath we just drove over, gradually veering off it and into the grass. Dry and several inches deep, it whispers against my shoes and tickles my bare ankles as we watch where we step, moving deeper into the wooded park, toward the hard-packed sandy fitness path that winds through the middle of it.

The tall iron lamps are few and far between. They would offer little more than vague yellowish smudges as you sit on a bench or take a stroll at night. It’s very dark in here, and I have my small tactical light while Marino has his phone flashlight pointed out and slightly down.

In his other hand he tugs the heavy-duty black plastic scene case that’s big enough for a small body. Its wheels make a quiet gritty crunch as he rolls it along, leading the way, both of us careful not to trample evidence or stumble. So far we haven’t seen anything that might make us stop and plant a small colorful cone.

The parched grass is a carpet of brownish-green sharp little blades in the glare of our lights, and my scuffed tan leather shoes are vivid. I can hear fragments of conversation up ahead, what sounds like children talking in excited quiet voices. It’s not a happy excitement but a different brand of cortisol-fueled enthusiasm that I associate with fear, with shock. But there’s something else I’m picking up. The childish sounds don’t strike me as normal.

They bring to mind haunted places with otherworldly conversations that drift on the air in creepy tales. Here, then gone, the laughter of dead children frolicking in the woods, of dead children picking berries and playing hide-and-seek or tag.

The peculiar disembodied voices in the distance ahead remind me of horror movies, and I feel a chill touch the back of my neck as the park spreads out darkly, peacefully, on either side of the fitness path where someone has died. Someone I may have met twice earlier today, and I continue to hope I’m mistaken.

We approach a clump of trees with full canopies that offers a perfect place for a predator to lie in wait. Marino points this out to me as we walk deeper inside shadows where the dead and the living are gathered, waiting for us. It feels uncanny and weird as if we’re headed to a surprise party where everyone crouches in the dark until the guest of honor appears and the lights switch on.

I remember the early years when we really didn’t have to worry about cameras everywhere and huge indiscretions trending on the Internet before I can finish an autopsy or get lab results. In the old days every Tom, Dick and Harry weren’t filming with cell phones. By the time photo journalists showed up with telescopic lenses, the body was either gone, safely zipped up in a pouch, or detectives would be gathered around holding up sheets or their coats to protect a victim’s privacy. Life and death are much more complicated now.

“I don’t think this was random,” Marino is saying. “Someone knew her patterns.”

“Do we know if she had patterns?” It’s my way of cautioning him again about jumping to conclusions, but it’s a waste of breath.

“Everybody has patterns,” he says, and I listen as I wait for Rusty and Harold to rumble up in our diesel mobile command center.

I’m wondering where they’re going to park it and what commotion it’s going to generate in the very lap of Eliot House. Looming over the park is one of the biggest housing complexes on the campus with its seven brick buildings and numerous courtyards that remind me of Oxford and Cambridge or the palace of Versailles. I imagine students peering out their windows and venturing outside.

The truck will be spotted immediately, and if people zoom in or get closer they’ll see OFFICE OF THE CHIEF MEDICAL EXAMINER and the CFC crest and Massachusetts state seal on the doors. I expect that any minute the Harvard campus will begin waking up to the stunningly sad realization that someone has been killed virtually under its proverbial nose. The second we turn on the lights we’re going to need more uniforms for crowd control.

“Because there’s nothing to stop people from ducking under the tape,” I say to Marino as we inch our way through the woods. “There’s nothing to stop traffic on the bridge from detouring so people can drive through the park to rubberneck. This could become a major fiasco pretty fast.”

“I’ll bring in more units when we’re ready,” he says, and I begin to make out the scene materializing several hundred feet ahead. “If I make the request now? A squadron of cars roll in and only draw more attention. The minute the tent’s up, I’ll request backups, as many as it takes.”

I count the silhouettes of the six battery-powered LED spotlights that have been set up on tripods. They’re perched about like tall praying mantises, quiet and dark as if sleeping.

I see the shapes of uniformed cops milling around, talking in the hushed way people do when it’s dark. The sound of childish voices is an indistinct and perplexing staccato in the impenetrable background. I can’t determine the source but it’s eerie, as if the dark wooded area is haunted by agitated sprites.

Marino and I duck under the yellow perimeter tape, which is where I thought it would be. We enter a clearing in the trees where the body is half on the path, and half on the grass. I can make out the paleness of her bare arms and legs, and the whiteness of her sports bra and light color of her shorts. She’s on her back with her legs straight but splayed, her arms up and spread as if she’s been positioned in an X.

What I see sends a mixed message of mockery, of sexual degradation-and also nothing like that. At first glance it seems she’s been displayed to shock whoever discovers her, but it’s unusual that her shorts and bra are still on. Typically when a body is lewdly, hatefully displayed it’s nude. Often other contemptuous touches are inserted and added to further disgrace and disfigure, and I’m not seeing anything like that yet.

But I’ve also learned the hard way to be overly conservative about making assumptions based on previous cases I’ve worked. A detail in one death may mean something else entirely in another. As we get closer I make out that the bicycle is on its side in the middle of the unpaved gritty path. I recognize the tall broad-shouldered Cambridge investigator Tom Barclay off to one side, near the trees, about fifty feet from the body. The spritelike voices I’ve been hearing belong to the two girls he’s with, and they look too young to be out alone at this hour. But it’s hard to tell.

They could be ten or twelve or maybe slightly older, and they’re identical twins, one in pink, the other in yellow. Restless like two plump little birds, they turn their heads in synchrony, their eyes darting about, and it’s obvious there’s something not quite right about them. As we approach I can see that Barclay is shining a light on whatever he’s holding. He’s asking a question I can’t quite hear.

“I might have,” the girl dressed in pink drawls loudly in the voice of one who doesn’t hear very well as she peers at what Barclay is showing the two of them on his phone, and Marino and I get closer.

“I don’t know. Usually there’s lots of people and I stay out of the way of bikes,” the girl in yellow says slowly in the same blunted tone, and no matter what I was told, I can’t quite believe what I’m seeing in the uneven illumination, the chiaroscuro created by our flashlights.

During one of our badly connected phone conversations as Marino was on his way to pick me up, he mentioned twins. I didn’t give it much thought but to stand before them especially under the circumstances is extremely disconcerting. I find myself literally doing a double take as I look from one to the other, both of them dark-haired with identical unflattering helmetlike cuts.

The matching unstylish glasses they have on remind me of yearbook pranks, of inking nerdy black frames on the face of a rival’s photograph. The girls are built the same, under five feet tall and heavy. They wear striped T-shirts, shorts and sandals that fortunately for me don’t match. If the twins weren’t wearing different colored clothing I’m not sure I could tell them apart.

“Wait here, okay? You know what to do, don’t you? You stay right here and don’t go anywhere. Stay. And I’ll be back.” Barclay talks to the girls as if they’re a lower order of a pet such as a rabbit or a lizard.

He strides toward us, and I check my phone to see if there’s any word from Rusty and Harold.

I HEAR THE TRUCK as I’m about to call, and I press END.

The rumble of the diesel engine is unmistakable, and I look back in the direction of John F. Kennedy Street. I can see headlights cutting through the park as a white CFC truck that’s bigger than an ambulance bumps off the pavement and creeps under trees. The low-hanging branches scrape the boxy metal roof, making a terrible screeching sound that has the effect of nails on a chalkboard.

“Good. Maybe we can get going here so we can figure out who we need to be notifying and talking to,” Barclay says too authoritatively as he reaches Marino and me. “The sooner we can process the scene and get the body to the morgue, the better,” he adds as Marino ignores him.

My eyes have adjusted to the contrasting shades of light and shadow, and I can better make out the twins some distance from us where Barclay was a moment ago. A female uniformed officer is with them now, asking if they need water or food. She wants to know if they’d like to wait in an air-conditioned patrol car. She says it as if they’ve been asked this before, and they shake their heads no. I have a pretty good idea what will happen next.

In a while she’s going to transport them to the department and place them in a daisy room, as police call a comfortable nonthreatening setting they use for interviews with children. A counselor will be in to talk to and evaluate the girls, but the female officer isn’t going to mention that out here in the middle of the park.

She’s not going to explain that the twins will be treated the same way abused children are, and I can’t help but feel judgmental. It’s not appropriate for me to have personal opinions about cases I work, but it’s inevitable some things are going to hit me harder than others. I’m not good with bad parents, bad caretakers and bad pet owners.

The twin sisters are young and impaired, and what sort of person would allow them to be out and about unchaperoned, especially after dark? Is anybody wondering why they aren’t home and where they are?

“We can turn on the lights whenever you’re ready,” Barclay tells us rather than asks.

“The problem, Clay, is the minute we do it’s like we’ve lit up a baseball field,” Marino answers in an artificial avuncular tone, as if the young investigator is dim-witted and useless but a nice enough boy. “And if you build it, they’ll sure as hell come. So nope, Clay.” Marino says the name every chance he gets. “Not yet, right Doc?” He looks at me.

“Flashlights only for now,” I agree, and the diesel sound gets louder, then stops as the engine is cut. “It’s going to be difficult enough when people start noticing our mobile command center parked out here in addition to all the police cars.” I look at the twins watching us with owl eyes. “It’s pretty obvious there’s something going on, and I don’t want to draw attention until we can set up a barrier.”

I explain that right now the body is exposed to anyone who happens by or trains a telescopic lens on it. I can’t turn the lights on, and I can’t work without them, and it’s a familiar catch-22. I wouldn’t think of examining the body in situ without lighting if I’m given the choice, and I can’t cover her with a sheet before I examine her or I run the risk of disturbing or displacing evidence. So for the moment we’re stuck in the dark with only flashlights, and my attention wanders back to the twins again. I can’t stop looking at them.

I’m keenly aware of their disproportionately small heads, their thin upper lips and flat midfaces. They probably won’t get much taller, will have an ongoing struggle with their weight, and their small eyes are spaced far apart like a nonpredatory animal, a horse or a giraffe. The thick glasses, hearing aids, the silver braces on their teeth and everything else indicate a catastrophic failure that likely happened in utero.

Possibly it was due to what the unborn twins were exposed to, and if what I suspect is correct, it’s unspeakably tragic. It’s careless and cruel. Fetal alcohol syndrome is preventable. Just don’t drink during pregnancy, and I wonder if the two girls are in special classes in school. I worry how functional they are, and what obstacles we face in using them as witnesses in this case.

I wonder how much I can rely on what they tell me now about how they happened upon the body and what they might have tampered with. Are they cogent? Are they truthful? And what kind of parents or guardians would allow them to wander about at night or at all?

I feel anger stir like an ember glowing hotly when it’s fanned. Then Barclay is next to Marino and me, showing us the photograph on his phone of Elisa Vandersteel’s driver’s license.

“That’s what I found on the path,” Barclay says proudly, as if he discovered the smoking gun. “Obviously, I didn’t pick it up. I thought I’d wait until you got here.” He directs this to Marino as I look at the photograph on the phone display.

Elisa Ann Vandersteel. DOB: 12-04-1998. London, and the post code is the exclusive area of Mayfair, on South Audley Street near the Dorchester Hotel and the American embassy. The photograph could be the woman I encountered twice earlier today, but I’m not certain.

I’m not going to say anything to Marino or anybody else until I have more information. Any sightings of the victim are important in determining when she died, and I’m mindful of being cautious about what I pass along without verification. Not that driver’s-license portraits are very good in general, but in this one Elisa Vandersteel is heavier than the cyclist I met. The face in the picture is broader, and the brown hair is short, whereas the young woman in Converse sneakers was lean and had a ponytail. But we don’t know how old the photograph is. She might look very different now.

“Anything else?” I ask. “Any other personal effects. A lot of cyclists have bike packs or saddlebags for their wallets, keys and other belongings.”

I don’t add that I don’t remember seeing something like that when I encountered the cyclist on Quincy Street. But Barclay says he didn’t see a bag of any sort attached to the bicycle or nearby.

“That doesn’t mean there wasn’t one,” he adds. “It might have been stolen by whoever did this.”

“And we don’t know if this is a homicide.” I’m just going to keep saying it. “We don’t know anything yet.” I return his phone to him.

“How many people have you had to chase off since you got here?” Marino asks him what’s gone on since the call was broadcast over radio.

“A handful have wandered in or tried to.”

“How close did they get?” Marino has yet to really look at him while they talk.

“They didn’t get anywhere near.”

“At least not the ones we know about.” Marino abruptly walks off in the direction of the twins.

“A couple of students, three to be exact,” Barclay tells his retreating back. “I turned them away before they could see anything. They couldn’t see there’s a dead body,” he directs this at me, and I wonder what he was doing before he showed up here.