Dust

8

Boats moored for the winter are shrink-wrapped in white plastic on the river, the red triangle Citgo sign glowing brightly over Fenway Park on the Boston side of the Harvard Bridge.

I check my phone again but there’s no word from Lucy. Fog hangs over the dark ruffled water as I ride inside Marino’s SUV, an ominous feeling tightening its grip on me. I’m not sure if my unsettledness is left over from the weekend or if it’s related to the prowler. I’m not sure if I’m sensing something else or am simply exhausted.

Marino is full of himself and his policing philosophies and plans. His assessments about crime trends couldn’t be more depressing or bleaker. He hasn’t stopped talking while I barely listen, my mind pulled into an ugly, dreadful place where I don’t want to be.

Put your hands up in the air!

Don’t shoot!

Words heard over a school intercom intrude upon my thoughts when I least expect it. I continue to be stunned that an exchange would be so banal between a mass murderer and his victims.

“Mimicry,” Benton offered an explanation that doesn’t satisfy. “Mimicking TV shows, movies, games. When people are reduced to their most primal impulses they talk like cartoons.”

“They cry out for their mothers. They beg. Yes, I know that and I know nothing. We know nothing, Benton,” I said to him over the phone late Saturday after I got home. “This is a new enemy.”

“Spectacle killings.”

“That sounds trivializing.”

“A dramatic public display, Kay. The dam began to crumble with Columbine. It’s not new, just the classification is. People have become addicted to attention, to fame. Profoundly disturbed individuals will kill and die for it.”

I still haven’t heard from Benton. I’m beginning to worry about him, too. My worldview changed dramatically after I believed he was dead. I’ve lost him before. I could lose him again. Most people don’t get even one miracle and I’ve had several. I fear I’ve used up my miracles and won’t be granted more.

Marino turns onto Fowler Street, a hyphen that connects Memorial Drive to a narrow unlighted alley. He wipes off the inside of the windshield again with his blue lint-free paper towel. I remember I need food. I remember that tomorrow is Benton’s birthday and I don’t know where he is. I’m so hungry my stomach is sour. Everything will get better once I eat, and for an instant I fantasize about what I’ll cook when I get home.

I will make my special stew. Veal, lean beef, asparagus, mushrooms, potatoes, onions, peppers, pureed tomatoes, heavy with fresh basil, oregano, crushed garlic, and red wine, with cayenne pepper. Simmering all day. Filling the entire house with its savory aroma. Everyone will be together and we’ll decorate for the holidays and eat and drink.

I text my niece a second time. “Where are you?”

I wait ten seconds and text her partner Janet next. “Trying to get hold of Lucy.”

Janet texts me right back. “Will let her know.”

It seems an odd reply, as if they don’t live together.

“Any area where you could possibly access the body we got a unit posted,” Marino is saying, and I tune back in. “Nobody enters or exists without our seeing.”

A patrol officer in a Cambridge cruiser flicks his light bar at us in a quick roll of red-blue. I lower and raise my window to clear condensation off the glass.

“What I call an invisible perimeter,” Marino repeats what he’s already told me. “Uniforms on foot and tucked out of sight in cruisers, keeping a scan going.”

“That’s a very good idea.”

“Yeah it’s a good idea because I’m the one who thought of it,” Marino says.

He’s going to be like this for a while, so grandiose it’s barely tolerable and having no idea how obnoxious he sounds. But I go along with it and ask, “Has any unusual activity been noticed so far?” I check my phone again.

When I texted Lucy the first time I asked if the names Gail Shipton and Double S meant anything to her. It’s unusual that she’s not gotten back to me. I have a feeling her silence spells trouble.

“Nope. Nothing out of the ordinary,” Marino answers my question. “But the guy could be anywhere. He could be watching through one of these thousands of windows,” he adds as his phone rings again.

Carin Hegel’s voice is tense and uncertain as it sounds from the SUV’s speakerphone. She begins by telling Marino that she spent most of yesterday with Gail Shipton in witness preparation for the trial.

“The plaintiff’s case goes on first and she’s my first witness. Obviously she’s my most important one and we were trying to get a good start before the holidays,” the Boston lawyer says in her distinctive alto voice with its strong Massachusetts accent that makes me think of the Kennedys.

“What time did you finish yesterday?” Marino asks.

“She left my firm around four p.m. and not long afterward something important came up that I needed to address with her. I sent her a text message asking her to call me, which she did, but we got disconnected. Is she all right?”

“When did you get disconnected?”

“Hold on and I’ll check my phone so I can give you the exact time. Do we know if she’s all right?”

We head deeper into a part of the MIT campus where student residential buildings and fraternity houses are brick with limestone trim. They crowd the alley to our left, and to our right is the vast open area of tennis courts and playing fields behind a high chain-link fence. In the distance the luminescence of police lighting is an eerie nimbus.

“At five fifty-seven p.m. she called me.” Carin Hegel is back. “She told me she was at the Psi Bar and had stepped outside where it was quiet. I brought up what I wanted to discuss with her —”

“And what was that?” Marino asks.

“I’m not at liberty…It’s privileged — attorney-client privilege.”

“Maybe now’s not a good time to hide behind privilege, Ms. Hegel. If you know anything that might help us —”

“What I can tell you is this,” she interrupts. “I was talking to Gail and it took me a minute or so to realize she was gone.”

“What do you mean gone?” Marino drives slowly along the narrow, dark alleyway, the headlights bright on wet pavement.

“The call was lost.”

“And you didn’t hear anything? Like maybe she said something to someone? Maybe someone approached her?”

A tense pause and she says, “The call was dropped so I heard nothing at all.”

“What about right before it was dropped? You didn’t hear anything?”

“Before that she was talking. Is Gail all right?” Carin Hegel’s voice is demanding and as unyielding as concrete. “What is this about her being reported missing? You left me a message that she’s been reported missing and it’s on the Internet. Apparently she was last seen at the very bar she called me from, a place she frequents. An MIT hangout that’s not far from where the body’s been found, the one on the news. Is that true?”

“It’s true that a body has been found.”

“Has something happened to Gail? Do we know that for sure?” Carin Hegel, known as a pit bull of a litigator who never loses a case, sounds terrified now.

“Is there any reason your lawsuit that’s about to go to trial might be a threat to her personal safety?” Marino asks.

“Oh God. It’s her.”

“That’s not been confirmed yet.”

“Is Dr. Scarpetta involved in this? I need to talk to her. I need you to tell her that there are matters we need to discuss,” she says. “Please tell her it’s imperative we speak.”

“What makes you think I’d be talking to her?”

“You used to work for her.”

Marino hesitates, glancing over at me.

I shake my head. I’ve not said anything to her. I don’t know why she would be aware that Marino used to work for me. His recent departure from the CFC hasn’t been in the news. It’s a detail not generally known or even of interest.

“Has Gail been threatened by anyone involved in your case?” Marino asks. “Anyone in particular we might want to be looking at?”

“The trial starts in less than two weeks. Connect the dots, Detective Marino. This can’t be a coincidence. Do you think it’s her? The body found at MIT? It sounds like that’s what you’re thinking.”

“To be honest, it’s not looking good.”

“Oh God. Dear God.”

“If the worst turns out to be true, would that be enough to stop the trial?” Marino asks. “I’m looking for a motive here if we confirm and we’ve definitely not done that yet.”

“It would be all the more reason to go forward. The evil bastards.” Her voice trembles. “But the answer is yes about the motive.” She struggles to steady herself, clearing her throat. “You have no idea what these people are like or their connections, about as far up as it goes, I suspect. That’s as much as I’m saying over my phone, which is probably tapped, and not long ago someone tried to hack into my firm’s computer. That’s all I’m saying but it should be enough.”

“If you think of anything we need to know right away, you got my number.” Marino doesn’t want to hear anything else. Not over the phone. Not when there seems to be a suggestion of organized crime or political corruption or possibly both.