Chaos

CHAPTER 20

TWICE NOW IN THE past forty minutes I’ve trekked alone through the clearing, following the path to the edge of the park where an auxiliary diesel generator hums in the dark.

I’m getting more frustrated with each minute that passes. I was hoping to be back at my headquarters before now, and yet I’ve scarcely started. The body should be in the CT scanner. I should be setting up my autopsy station.

Already I should have a good idea what happened to her, and I don’t. Not to mention hypervigilance is fatiguing. When you have to think about everything you do and say, and watch every place you touch or step, it wears you down. Especially in this weather.

It’s already 9:30 P.M. and the tent isn’t close to ready. I could put on the big show of hanging around outside instead of retreating to the quiet comfort of an air-conditioned monster truck. But there’s not much I can help with at the moment, and one thing I’ve learned over the years is to pace myself. If I don’t keep hydrated, if I’m not careful about overheating, if I don’t plan and strategize I won’t be much good to anyone.

The CFC’s mobile command center is the size of a small yacht hitched to a super-duty crew cab, white with the CFC crest and the state seal on the doors. There are no windows in the trailer. But inside it’s lit up and cool, a combination lounge and war room where first responders and other essential personnel can rest, work, teleconference, use computers, and safely store evidence destined for the labs. When I stopped in here the first time it was to drink water, change my clothes, and safeguard the packaged soiled T-shirt by locking it inside an evidence mini-refrigerator.

Now I’m back again, fortifying myself with more water and a protein bar while trying not to fantasize about the dinner I missed at the Faculty Club. I’m hungry and restless as I wait to hear from Lucy. She was pushy about having a discussion with me a while ago when I couldn’t talk. Now that I’m alone with a few minutes to spare, of course I can’t get hold of her. I’ll have to see what I can find out on my own about Elisa Vandersteel, and I sit down at a workstation.

Logging onto the computer, I spend a few minutes searching the name, and it gives me an uneasy feeling when nothing comes up, not a single file returned. I try the surname Vandersteel and Mayfair, London, and have no better luck, which is odd. It’s pretty difficult to avoid any mention on the Internet these days but if my searches can be trusted, it would seem that Elisa Vandersteel doesn’t exist.

She also isn’t on social media, it seems. I can’t find her on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, and that’s extremely unusual for someone young. The woman I noticed taping up recipes at the ART certainly didn’t seem shy or introverted. I also realize that doesn’t mean much. One can be confident and friendly but private, and maybe she’s had issues in the past that cause her to stay below the radar. But the more key words I enter without success, the more wary I get.

I think of the photograph of the UK driver’s license that Investigator Barclay showed me. I remember that the street listed in the Mayfair address was South Audley, not far from the American embassy. But I didn’t pay close attention to the house number. I search what I recall and nothing comes up, and I’m grateful that my routine searches aren’t the final word on Elisa Vandersteel.

I’m not Lucy. I can’t begin to approach her level of technical sophistication, and as soon as we have a private moment I’ll get her to search. I check my phone again, and can tell by the digits displayed in the icons of certain proprietary apps whether anything new has landed. Nothing has that I consider a priority at the moment, and I hope Lucy’s all right. When I think about what’s happened so far today I can easily imagine her state of mind. I have a very good idea what she’s thinking.

Or better put, who’s shadowing her thoughts, gaining on her in leaps and bounds right about now, and it’s depressing. It’s a falling off the wagon of sorts because an enemy, a nemesis will become an addiction if one’s not careful. Lucy isn’t and never has been. She can’t be. It’s too personal for her. She’s going to get worked up and paranoid in a way that Marino, Benton and I never have and won’t when it comes to a certain human virus who infected her decades ago.

I decide I may as well head back out into the elements to see how we’re coming along with the canopied barrier, which has been trickier than we anticipated. Spray-painting the footprint has been a frustration and a headache because we can’t turn on the auxiliary lights without exposing the entire scene to anyone who might be watching and ready with cameras. It’s very dark despite the multiple flashlights poking and prodding. The terrain is uneven, and there are tall hedges, benches and lampposts in the way.

The first attempt wasn’t working so we had to stop, and trying again has proven a worse mess than imagined. First Marino’s bright orange outline had to be painted over in black, then the area was measured again and reconfigured as we made sure we weren’t going to be setting the tent on top of evidence. The second attempt wasn’t much better, and as I’m thinking this I’m well aware that Marino, Rusty and Harold are still at it and will be for a while longer.

It’s become quite the engineering challenge to enclose the bicycle, the body, and as many personal effects as possible while avoiding bushes and trees, and causing any potential damage to the scene. But if they don’t manage to get the tent pitched fairly soon, I’m going to have to improvise. This has gone on too long already. It’s not according to plan, and someone’s going to say something. Probably Tom Barclay.

Marino wouldn’t allow him to accompany the twins to the police station, and the cocky and annoying investigator is still here, trying to watch everything I do while pretending he’s not. Maybe he’s hoping to learn something that might make him better at his job. Maybe he’s waiting for me to screw up.

But most likely he’s simply behaving in character-a magpie carrying every glittery bit of gossip back to his nest. Information is his currency, and while he may not mean any harm, people like him are dangerous.

I GET UP FROM a chair bolted to the stainless-steel diamond-plate floor, and the mirror-polished metal is cold beneath my bare feet.

I was able to ditch my silk blouse, my skirt and suit jacket for a pair of teal-green scrubs but sadly I’m stuck with my scuffed clammy pumps. Storage bins in here include scene gear for all conditions except the Sahara Desert, which is what it feels like in Cambridge of late. But in general the CFC isn’t prepared for unrelenting extreme heat because it almost never happens in New England.

I can’t exactly trade my uncomfortable shoes for what’s available, which are rubber hip waders and waterproof fire boots, one size fits all. Opening a cabinet, I find a fresh pair of shoe covers with grip soles. I step back into my damp pumps, and the thin leather linings have become unglued and feel slimy against the bare soles of my feet. I pull on the booties but I won’t bother with coveralls or gloves yet. I check my phone again, and still nothing.

I’ve let Lucy know that I need her help, but I haven’t said why. I’m not about to immortalize my suspicions in writing or voice mails no matter how safe I’m told my communications are. Especially when my phone has been acting up the way it has, and Lucy is even more careful about leaving an electronic trail than I am. I wonder what she’s doing. I wonder if she’s working in her lab or the Personal Immersion Theater, the PIT.

Or maybe she’s with Janet and Desi, and as I envision the three of them I think what an extraordinary family they’ve become. Janet is an environmental attorney. She’s former FBI, and her history with Lucy includes college and Quantico. They practically grew up together, and I couldn’t ask for a better partner for my niece. I would choose Janet time and time again were it up to me. She’s humane, smart and gentle-as was her sister Natalie, who died a year ago this past summer.

Janet and Lucy have created an ideal home for Desi, all of us an extended family, a supportive and protective matrix. He would be an orphan otherwise, and what a loss that would be. Such an irresistible lovely boy, the incarnate Christopher Robin, my sister says, his blue eyes mesmerizing, his mop of light brown hair streaked blond by the sun.

Nine now, Desi is growing up fast, all legs and arms, and his face has become more angular. He’s nimble, fearless and scary smart, and I’ve begun to tease Lucy that at last she’s met her match. Who wouldn’t want to be part of a family unit like that? And I’m unpleasantly reminded of what Benton said before our dinner was interrupted.

He suggested that Dorothy and Marino might have more than a playful flirtation going on. Now she’s on her way here when she’s never bothered once the entire time I’ve lived and worked in the northeast. Marino has bonded with Desi, taking him fishing, teaching him how to play baseball, giving him his first taste of beer, and the track my thoughts are running along is too unpleasant to dwell on.

It’s distasteful if not enraging to imagine Dorothy with Desi. My selfish sister who couldn’t be bothered with Lucy. My male-addicted only sibling who always forgot about her daughter the instant the newest suitor was at the door. And now all I hear from Dorothy is Desi this and Desi that, as if there’s nothing she adores more than to nurture and attend to a child, especially a male child. It’s obscene. It’s the height of hypocrisy, and then I can’t bear to think about it anymore. I blank it out.

Dorothy should be landing at Logan fairly soon, assuming her plane hasn’t been further delayed. Lucy, Janet and Desi are probably picking her up, and that’s why Lucy isn’t getting back to me, I tell myself. She’s busy driving one of her demanding supercars or tricked-out armor-clad SUVs. But who knows what anybody is doing, including my husband. I have no idea what Benton’s phone call from Washington, D.C., was about. I haven’t a clue where he is.

It’s surreal that our dinner date has come to this, and then I click on the phone app for the security cameras we use to monitor the dogs. Sock and Tesla were in the living room a while ago. Now they’re sleeping in their memory-foam bed in the kitchen, and I back up the recording to when Page the dog sitter is walking in. Obviously Benton has let her know something has come up and we’re not certain when we’ll be home.

Clearly she’s staying over, in pajama bottoms and a T-shirt, barefoot, no bra, and I don’t like it when she’s in the downstairs guest room. I don’t want to say such a thing out loud but it’s true and probably means I’m a selfish person. I sincerely dislike having anyone in our house but there’s no choice now that Tesla is in the mix. She needs training, socializing, and she shouldn’t be left without human companionship for long periods of time.

I watch Page filling the dog bowls with filtered water she pours from a pitcher. A friend of Lucy and Janet’s, she’s imposing, her upper-body strength from competitive swimming impressive, almost unbelievable for a female. It’s entered my mind that she might take steroids because I can’t quite believe her bulk is solely from long hours in the gym or some earlier stint in the Navy when she was accepted into the Basic Underwater Demolition or BUD training program for SEALs.

Tall with curly dark hair, all brawn, Page is the gentle giant with dogs, kind but in control. She couldn’t be more thoughtful or attentive toward an aging greyhound rescued from the racetrack or an English-bulldog puppy once abused by children and abandoned.

“Who’s gonna potty and then get a beddy-bye treat?” Page asks Tesla and Sock.

I hear their nails click furiously as they run to the back door.

WALKING THROUGH AN AIR-CONDITIONED cloud of LED light, I pause in the galley with its coffeemaker, small refrigerator, microwave and laminated white countertops.

Tossing empty water bottles into the recyclable trash, I look around at the workstations, equipment cases, forensic instruments, and multidrawer cabinets of tools and other supplies. I make sure there’s nothing else I need for what I’m about to do. I don’t think there is. And Harold and Rusty know the drill. On my way here I gave them my scene case and other necessities. They will have everything set up under the tent by the time I get there, and everything will be as it should.

But I’m restless and my mood is tense, my thoughts burdened. When I think of the second time I encountered the woman who I now believe is dead and about to become my patient, she literally rode off into the sunset. I don’t know where she went after that or when she finally entered the park, but it was completely dark by seven thirty.

Supposing she was killed around that time, it means that for the better part of two hours her body has been left out in the middle of a public park surrounded by Harvard student housing and other populated buildings. In an ideal situation I would have gotten her out of here a good hour ago.

This is taking too long but it’s not surprising. Things rarely go as quickly as we’d like, and in a difficult death investigation it’s the rule rather than the exception that very little goes as planned. But the world is less forgiving than it used to be, and already I’m preparing for criticism.

Someone will decide I didn’t show proper respect, that I carelessly left a dead body exposed for all to see. I’m callous and uncaring. Or I’m negligent. I’ll read about it in a blog or hear about it on YouTube. I always do.