Dust

18

Tall and thin, somewhere in his early forties, he sounded out of breath when he finally resumed contact with the dispatcher at around five forty-five a.m.

I remember my surprise that car 13 would be in Tech Square when moments earlier it had been several miles away on the Harvard campus, in my neighborhood. I figured the officer had abandoned that call when the possible car break-ins were reported, but G. B. Rooney offers a different story.

“I hadn’t gone two blocks when I noticed a subject inside a parked vehicle behind the Academy of Arts and Sciences on Beacon Street,” he explains. “It’s the area where the prowler was spotted running and he fit the description, at least close enough that I figured I’d better check him out.”

The way he says it piques my curiosity. Already I can tell that Rooney thought there was something unusual about this person and I can sense Benton’s quiet attention. The area Rooney described is very close to our house.

“Tall, slender, young, white. Dark pants and sneakers, a black hoodie with Marilyn Monroe on it,” Rooney recites like a police report. “I waited until he drove off and then I tailed him but not conspicuously. He headed directly to the projects on Windsor, which is why I happened to be in that location where the car breaks occurred, possibly gang-related. A lot of them in that area, kids going through parking lots and stealing what they can, plus vandalism. I’m in one parking lot and they’re in another one, smashing out windows or coming back for more. Unbelievable.”

“I’m assuming you ran the guy’s plate,” Marino says.

“A 2012 Audi SUV, blue, registered to a twenty-eight-year-old male with a Somerville address near the hockey rink at Conway Park — Haley Davis Swanson,” G. B. Rooney says.

“What?” Marino looks sucker punched. “Haley Swanson?”

“He has an uncle that lives in building two of the projects there on Windsor.”

“Haley Swanson is a man?” Marino’s eyes are bugging out of his head.

“I agree it’s an unusual name for a male. A family name, he told me. He goes by the nickname Swan.”

“This isn’t making a damn bit of sense.” Marino is thoroughly frustrated now.

He looks angry enough to have a stroke.

“Did you talk to this guy?” It’s Machado who asks. “Did you find out why he was parked behind the Academy of Arts and Sciences at the back of the woods there?”

“He told me he’d picked up coffees at Dunkin’ Donuts, the one on Somerville Ave, and one of them spilled so he pulled over to clean it up. There were two coffees in the front seat and one of them had spilled so he wasn’t making it up.”

“Did you ask what he was doing in the projects at the exact same time we’re working a death scene over here?”

Rooney looks confused. “I didn’t mention the death scene over here.”

Machado asks nothing further and I suspect I know why. He’s waiting to see if the officer volunteers that Haley Swanson was a friend of Gail Shipton’s. Machado wants to know if Rooney is aware that Haley “Swan” Swanson is the person who reported her missing and posted her disappearance and photograph on the Channel 5 website.

“What else do you know about him?” Machado then asks.

“He works for a local PR firm.” Rooney flips another page of his notepad.

It doesn’t appear he’s aware of the connection. It would seem that Haley Swanson didn’t mention Gail Shipton to Officer Rooney and that’s more than a little suspicious. Swanson had reported her missing and now it seems he might have been hiding behind my wall, watching my house? It seems illogical. Why would he have coffees? It doesn’t add up that he stopped for coffees and then decided to leave his car on Beacon Street and travel on foot through the rainy dark to spy on me.

“Was he wet when you talked to him? Did it look like he’d been out in the rain?” I ask Rooney, and Benton watches us with no expression but he’s listening carefully.

“He didn’t appear to be wet,” Rooney says. “I got the name of where he works.” He flips back several pages. “Lambant and Associates in Boston.”

“They specialize in crisis management.” Benton is scrolling through e-mails on his cell phone. “What in the legal world is known as spin doctoring in the court of public opinion.”

“I wonder if Gail Shipton retained them,” I suggest. “Maybe that’s how she became acquainted with Haley Swanson.”

“The firm’s well known to our Boston field office.” Benton doesn’t directly answer me. “They represent wealthy high-profile defendants, white-collar mainly, corrupt politicians, organized crime figures, an occasional celebrity athlete who gets involved in a scandal.”

He looks long and hard at Marino, then Benton says, “Recently Lambant and Associates handled the class-action suit relating to the pickup truck you had problems with, Pete. The case was thrown out of court. No damaging press, no harm done. In fact, the plaintiffs ended up looking like the bad guys for driving irresponsibly off-road in extreme conditions, souping up the rear axle, the frame, et cetera.”

“Total bullshit.” Marino’s face turns bright red. “Like your average person can afford a spin-doctoring firm. As usual, the little guy gets screwed.”

I’m afraid he’s going to launch into his truck tirade again. But he manages to control himself.

“I’m simply suggesting Swanson might know who you are,” Benton adds. “If he worked on that case for his firm, he would have come across your name since you were one of the plaintiffs.”

“It looks like we got a lot to check out here.” Machado is making notes. “Starting with the exact nature of Swanson’s relationship with Gail Shipton. And where he was around the time she went out to make her phone call last night and disappeared. And why he reported her missing and hasn’t bothered to show up at the department and give us whatever information he’s got. I’d say we might have a suspect.”

Benton doesn’t comment. His attention drifts back to the railroad tracks.

“We’ll check with the Psi and find out if anyone remembers who she was with and if it was Swanson and do they know him,” Marino says.

“You want my personal opinion?” Rooney leans against the hood of his cruiser and digs his hands into the pockets of his jacket. “It’s not politically correct but I feel I should say it. I’m not sure he’s a male. I don’t know the extent of it but if you heard him talk you might think he’s a female. He could pass for one anyway. It wasn’t something I could question him about, obviously. If he had gender reassignment or is taking hormones, I couldn’t exactly ask and it doesn’t have anything to do with anything, I guess.”

“Does he present himself as a female?” Machado inquires.

“All I can tell you is at first I thought he was one. When I questioned him in the projects, I said, ‘What’s a nice young lady like you doing here at this hour?’ He didn’t correct me, and I’m pretty sure he had a bra on. He definitely has breasts. He claimed he has an uncle who lives over there, a Vietnam vet, disabled, right there in the middle of all the drug-related crime we know goes on. And that was my other suspicion. Maybe Swanson’s got a side business going, maybe that’s why he can afford an expensive, brand-new SUV. I pushed him pretty hard about what he was doing there and he said he sometimes drops by to see his uncle before heading into Boston to work and he brings coffee. His story checked out. He does have a disabled uncle who lives there. I got his name, and all of it will be in my report.”

“Get it to me ASAP,” Marino snaps, and he feels foolish.

He talked to Haley Swanson around one a.m. and had no idea about any of this.

“That’s it?” Machado asks Rooney. “He offered no clue why he was driving around Cambridge? Or why he was parked near Harvard on Beacon Street? You sure it’s because he spilled coffee as opposed to him maybe casing the neighborhood? He mention Dr. Scarpetta’s house or knowing where it is?”

“Why would he care about where we live?” Benton asks.

Rooney gives both of us a blank look as he shifts his position on the cruiser’s hood, careful his duty belt doesn’t scratch the paint.

“Someone was prowling around your house this morning and I had units looking, that’s why,” Marino answers before I can, and Benton stares at me and then he stares at the railroad tracks again. “Like maybe this guy’s been spying on the Doc,” Marino adds with satisfaction, pleased he might know something about me that Benton doesn’t.

“It’s not a PR guy who’s possibly dealing drugs in the projects,” Benton says as if there can be no debating it. “That’s not who you need to be worried about. The type of person you’re looking for doesn’t kill people and then report them missing and give his damn name to a detective he asks for by name.”

“And you can’t possibly know that,” Marino replies. “We’re going to find Swanson and he’s got some talking to do.”

“He said he’d had a bad night, was upset and driving around, went home to shower and change clothes, then picked up coffees before heading into Boston,” Rooney summarizes.

“He was upset?” Machado says. “Did he look upset?”

“I thought he seemed nervous and upset. He seemed scared. But then a lot of people do when they’re being questioned by the police.” Rooney turns around as an old white Chevy panel van with ladders on top veers off Vassar Street, heading toward us. “There are no outstanding warrants on him. There was no reason to hold him.”

“Yeah, well now there is,” Marino retorts.

A heavyset man’s tense face stares out at us from the van’s front passenger seat and his door flies open before the van is completely stopped. He trots to the black pickup truck and it’s obvious he’s the owner, Enrique Sanchez, and that he’s frightened. In jeans, a windbreaker, and scarred work boots, he has the red nose and puffiness, the big gut, of a heavy drinker.

“I leave it here when I ride with friends. If we have a beer,” he says loudly in a heavy Spanish accent, his wide eyes darting at each of us.

Benton gives me a signal and we start walking toward the railroad tracks.

“You left here when and had a beer where?” Marino asks Enrique Sanchez, stepping closer to him.

“Yesterday at five o’clock in the afternoon. We go to the Plough. I was there no more than two hours and then my friend drop me at my house and pick me up this morning.”

“The Plough on Mass Ave?” Marino says. “They got a pretty good Cuban sandwich. How often do you leave your truck here overnight, buddy?”