CHAPTER 28

THE DRIVER’S LICENSE COULD be fake,” he says. “These days technology makes it a piece of cake to counterfeit IDs that look like the genuine article.”

“It’s odd that whoever Elisa Vandersteel is she doesn’t seem to be on social media either,” I inform him. “What young person isn’t these days? And I came across nothing in the news about anyone with that name that might be her. But I only looked for a few minutes.”

“I agree it’s strange. Unless she had reason to stay below the radar.” Marino pulls down his white hood, patting dry his shiny head with paper towels. “Jesus, I’m sweating like a whore in church. Or she had a fake ID card, and there’s no such thing as an Elisa Vandersteel with that DOB and address. And maybe that’s why there’s no one with that name on social media.”

“Lucy’s working on it. Let’s see what she comes up with.” I tear open a packet of coveralls.

“More than she’s been coming up with, I sure as hell hope.” It’s an unfortunate dig at her failed efforts with Tailend Charlie, and I won’t get into it with him.

I scan the lighted area of the park inside the flat-topped block-shaped enclosure, my attention wandering over the grass, the hard-packed path, the laid-down bike and the body. The scene looks eerily undisturbed as if it’s not possible someone died violently here.

“How are we doing?” I ask Marino to fill me in on what might have developed since we last communicated. “Have you found anything interesting that we missed the first time? We’re going to want to wrap this up as quickly as we safely can. It’s awful in here, and I don’t want either of us or anyone else getting overheated.”

“Mostly I’ve been collecting what we already know about. The pieces of gold chain, the driver’s license. And her helmet, which didn’t look damaged to me.”

“Do you think Enya and Anya might have picked up other evidence?”

“Where would they hide it? I searched their knapsacks, and we’ve got the glasses, the skull pendant, the phone. Plus we found the shirt one of them threw up on in the bushes.”

“Unless they hid something somewhere,” I propose. “Money, for example. Credit cards, cash? The victim was riding her bike out here alone with no money and no keys?”

“All I can tell you is they swear they didn’t borrow anything else.” Marino takes off his gloves and unzips a small black Harley-Davidson cooler bag that belongs to him personally. “They turned their pockets inside out for me. Nothing.”

“I suppose it depends on whether they trust you enough to be truthful,” I reply as he lifts out a dripping bottle of water and offers it to me. “No thanks. I’m all set at the moment. It depends on whether you trust them in return,” I add about the twins. “Do you?”

“Hell, by now I’ve got them thinking they’re going to be sworn in as junior detectives any minute. So I’m pretty sure if they had anything else they would have handed it over.”

“I’m also curious about why they didn’t bother picking up the driver’s license.” I begin working the synthetic white pant legs over my horrible shoes. “It was still on the path when Investigator Barclay arrived. I’m wondering how it got where it was and why the girls took other things but left that for some reason.”

“Probably because, the way they figure,” Marino says, “a dead person’s ID would get them caught red-handed. It’s not like they thought it was fine and dandy to take the belongings of someone who’s been injured or in this case killed. Point being, at some level they know right from wrong. They were thinking finders, keepers. And they assumed the dead lady wasn’t going to need sunglasses, a phone or a gold skull pendant anymore.”

“They said that?”

“Pretty much.”

“Well she wouldn’t be needing money anymore either.”

“I know. But unless they’ve got it hidden in their underwear?” He gulps the water, and the bottle is almost empty when he returns it to the cooler bag. “But I’ll have Flanders check into that because there was no way in hell I was going to and be accused of manhandling them.”

“Let’s hope there’s nothing else they’ve squirreled away that the victim wasn’t going to need anymore.” I replay my encounters with the cyclist when we were in front of the Faculty Club.

I didn’t notice much in the way of jewelry.

“I didn’t see a watch, for example,” I pass on to Marino. “But the phone, the sunglasses and any other items Anya and Enya picked up and tucked inside their knapsacks will be a problem if this goes to court.”

“I hope they didn’t mess up anything that matters.” He splays his fingers, working his hands into new gloves. “Not that there’s anything much to mess up. So far I’m not seeing discernible footprints, no fresh cigarette butts. No blood drips or anything that might make you think there was a struggle. It’s like she was already dead when she hit the ground.”

“It certainly appears that she didn’t move.” I stand up and work my arms into the slippery white sleeves. “Based on what I’m seeing, I suspect once she was on the ground she was unconscious and dying,” I add as my phone rings.

It’s Lucy, and I put on my earpiece. I tell her I hope she’s found something.

“South Audley Street, Mayfair. Off Grosvenor Square,” she says.

“Elisa Vandersteel’s address?” I sit back down on top of the equipment box, and I look up at Marino.

“A six-thousand-square-foot house valued at around thirty million pounds,” Lucy tells me. “That’s the address on the driver’s license, and one of the reasons her name’s not coming up in ordinary searches is it’s not her or her family who lives there.”

“The address is fake then.”

“It’s not. The owner is the CEO of a tech company, William Portison. British, went to MIT, wife’s name is Diana.” Lucy’s voice sounds in my earpiece. “Does that mean anything to you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“That’s who owns the house where Elisa Vandersteel was living as an au pair for the past two years,” Lucy says with no lack of confidence. “It could explain why the Portisons’ ritzy Mayfair address is on her British driver’s license. And being an au pair might be why she’s not on social media. Not every employer wants that if they’re private and careful with their kids.”

“You might be right but it’s odd,” I reply.

“A lot of au pairs work in exchange for room and board,” Lucy says next. “They basically become part of the family.”

“Yes but usually not literally,” I reply. “I wouldn’t think living with a family entitles you to hijack their address and use it as your own. If the South Audley Street house isn’t Elisa Vandersteel’s legal residence, then it really shouldn’t be on her driver’s license or other forms of identification. If nothing else it presents a liability to the Portisons.”

“Well it seems they didn’t stop her from using it when she moved to London two years ago and got the license,” Lucy says. “She lists it on a number of things and got mail there. So I assume they knew what she was doing.”

“Moved from where?” I ask.

“CANADA,” LUCY SAYS IN my earpiece. “She exchanged her driver’s license for a British one. And the obvious reason to do that would be if she planned to drive in the UK for more than twelve months.”

She goes on about it with a certainty that perplexes me, and I’m not going to ask how she’s managed to find out all this. When I searched the Internet for Elisa Vandersteel I came up empty. But I don’t know where Lucy looked. Possibly the Deep Web, the Undernet, and I don’t venture into the Bermuda Triangle of cyberspace, where terrorists and deviants prowl, and unsuspecting people and their property are wrecked and forever lost.

Lucy reminds me rather constantly that nothing is private anymore. Maybe what I’m seeing with the Tailend Charlies of the world is simply the price of doing business these days. But I admit I hate it. At times I feel like Rip Van Winkle waking up to discover decades have passed. Only it feels more like a century. Life used to be more civilized than it’s become, that’s for sure.

“And it’s likely her work visa was up or a problem of one sort or another,” Lucy adds as if she’s had access to a dossier, “which explains why she’s no longer in London.”

“The woman I met earlier today definitely sounded British, not Canadian,” I reply. “In fact, my first thought was that she might be from London.”

“Elisa Vandersteel was in London for the past two years but not from there.”

“And before that?”

“A student at Leicester University, and before that it was Toronto, where she was born.”

“And do we have any idea why she was in Cambridge?” I ask. “It would seem she has something to do with the repertory theater or the musical Waitress since that’s where I ran into her the first time.”

“She’s not a student here,” Lucy says as if it’s common knowledge. “Her name also doesn’t come up with the ART, the Loeb Center, Waitress, or anything related or even similar. Maybe she was a volunteer or something. It will be easy enough to find out.”

“I’m wondering if she might have been living with someone here the same way she was in London.” I tell her about the young man she kissed in front of the Faculty Club.

“That’s my guess. She’s staying with someone, explaining why I’m not finding anything to indicate she has an address in the greater Boston area. There’s nothing listed in her name. No rentals. Nothing owned. Not even a hotel room or sublet that I’m seeing so far,” Lucy says, and I feel Marino’s curious stare.

“We got an ID?” he asks, and I indicate it’s looking that way.

The UK driver’s license found on the fitness path is genuine. The dead woman is twenty-three-year-old Elisa Vandersteel, a college graduate, a former au pair. But we won’t release her name publicly until we’ve gotten a confirmation with DNA or dental charts and have notified her next of kin. For now Marino and I will assume this is who we’re dealing with, and I feel stunned all over again.

I feel horrible. Actually I’m not even sure how I feel, how I should feel, how anybody should feel. It’s as if I had a chance to change Elisa Vandersteel’s destiny, and I didn’t. She was in front of me twice today mere hours before her death. But it made no difference. If only I could have stopped her. If only I’d suggested she fasten the chin strap of her helmet or that she get out of the heat. Maybe I could have gotten her to think twice.

Maybe she would have changed the ultimate route she took or changed something, anything at all. If only I could have delayed or diverted her, maybe told her not to ride alone after dark through a deserted park. Of course I didn’t know she was going to do that. I didn’t know enough to tell Elisa Vandersteel a damn thing that might have prevented her from dying. And I need to stop this or I’ll drive myself crazy.

“Her father was Alexander Vandersteel, and he committed suicide in 2009 at the age of forty-one,” Lucy tells me what she’s finding so far, and I hear keys click in the background as she continues her searches. “I got his obituary right here, and it looks like he ran a charity that got decimated by some Madoff-like investment scam. He hanged himself from a rafter in the garage,” she says, and I can’t imagine a detail like that was in his obituary.

“What about Elisa’s mother?” I stand up and zip the coveralls to my chin but save the dreaded hood for later.

“Not sure yet,” Lucy says. “But her parents were divorced.”

“So let me see if I have this straight. The father’s dead, who knows about the mother, and they were divorced,” I repeat. “I guess we go to plan B because it would seem that Elisa Vandersteel’s familial relationships may not help us with her identity.”

I sit back down and start pulling on a new pair of shoe covers.

“We’re probably not going to be able to confirm who she is,” I add, “until we recover certain personal items such as her toothbrush, her hairbrush.”

“I’m guessing she was staying with someone around here,” Lucy says. “And I can promise that somebody at the theater is going to have at least some of the answers we need. I thought I’d wander over there before everyone’s gone for the night, just do a little snooping, maybe find out where the boyfriend lives and where she’s been staying. I’ll find something.”

I glance at the time on my phone. The evening performance at the repertory theater will have ended more than an hour ago.

“How will you explain your interest?” I inquire. “We want to be careful about word getting out.”

“Oh I forgot. I’m new at this,” says my former FBI, ATF agent niece who spent years undercover and doesn’t need my coaching.

I tell her to be careful, and she says she’ll see me later.

“Probably back at the office at some point,” she adds, and I don’t ask if Dorothy and her mountain of luggage are in the car with Janet and Desi yet.

I end the call, not inclined to bring up my sister in front of Marino, who watched me the entire time I was on the phone. I have a feeling he’s thinking about her but I’m not going to give him an entrée to talk about it. If what Benton said is true and Marino and Dorothy have started something unbeknownst to me, I don’t want to hear it now. I have enough to deal with.

“Ready?” I say to him.

Загрузка...