Dust

27

At the security desk Ron is seated amid flat-paneled security displays, his office behind bulletproof glass. He slides open his window as I pick up the big black case log to sign in the latest. I copy what’s written on the body bag’s tag.

Heather Woodworth, F 32, Scituate, MA. Unresponsive in bed. Poss OD suicide.

An old South Shore name scribbled in ballpoint pen, a young woman who decided to end her life in her quaint seaside town, and I check the log for what else has come in. Five other cases in the CT scanner and on steel tables, in different stages of undress and dissection. Polysubstance abuse, an accidental shooting, a jump from the Zakim Bridge, an elderly woman who died alone in her house a hoarder, and the motor vehicle fatality I’ve heard about and I pause at the name.

Franz Schoenberg, M 63, Cambridge, MA. MVA.

The psychiatrist I noticed in the photographs I reviewed earlier this morning, I recall, slightly startled. His patient committed suicide days ago, jumped off a building right in front of him. Maybe that’s why he was out drinking and driving. More senseless tragedies. Most people dying the way they lived.

“What about her meds?” I ask the attendants.

“In a bag inside the pouch,” one of them says. “The empty bottles that were on the bedside table. Her kids had spent the night at her mother’s, thank God. Little ones, the oldest only five, the father killed exactly a year ago on his motorcycle. A neighbor she was supposed to give a music lesson to found her. She didn’t answer the door and it was unlocked. This was at exactly ten a.m.”

“She planned it, thought it out.” I slide the log through the window so Ron can enter the information into his computer and program the RFID bracelet that will go around the dead woman’s wrist.

“She didn’t want anyone home when she did it. She didn’t want to hurt anyone,” an attendant offers.

“Think again,” I reply. “Now the kids have no parents and will probably hate Christmas for the rest of their lives.”

“Apparently she’d been depressed.”

“I’m sure she was and now a lot of people will be, too. If you’ll lock this up for me…” I hand Ron my fanny pack.

“Yes, ma’am, Chief.” He bends down to enter the combination and gives me an update without my asking. “All is quiet, pretty much. A news van drove real slow past the front of the building several times.”

“Just leave her over there on the floor scale,” I tell the attendants. “Ron, can you let Harold or Rusty know a case just came in? She needs to be weighed and measured and gotten into the cooler until Anne can scan her. I’m not sure which doc. Whoever’s the least busy.”

“Yes, ma’am, Chief.” Ron tucks the fanny pack inside the safe and slams shut the heavy steel door. “That anchor lady you don’t like was here.”

“Barbara Fairbanks,” Lucy says. “She was filming the front of the building when I pulled in. She may have gotten footage of my SUV while I was waiting for the gate to open.”

“And she was hanging around out back after that, too, probably hoping to sneak in again while the gate is shutting,” Ron says. “She did that a few weeks ago and I threatened to have her arrested for trespassing.”

Former military police, he’s built like a granite wall, with dark eyes that are always moving. He walks out of his office and waits for the attendants to leave.

“We’ll need the stretcher back…?” one of them says.

“Yes, sir. When you pick her up.”

“Later today,” I promise them.

Through another door and down a ramp is the evidence bay, a windowless open space where scientists are covered from head to toe in white Tyvek protective clothing.

They’re setting up cyanoacrylate fuming equipment around a vintage green Jaguar that is under a blue tent. The roadster is twisted and smashed in, the roof peeled off, the long hood buckled, the shattered driver’s-side window streaked and spattered with dried blood, the trunk and bashed-in doors open wide. Trace evidence examiner Ernie Koppel is leaning in the driver’s side.

He looks up at me, his eyes masked by orange goggles, an alternate light source set up on a nearby cart. He holds the wand in his gloved hand, processing the car as if it’s connected to a homicide.

“Good morning, glad to see you back. One nasty bug. My wife had it.” His cheeks are rosy and round, tightly framed by white polyethylene, the same flashspun material used to wrap buildings, boats, and cars.

“Don’t catch it.”

“I’ve been spared so far, thank you, God. I saw what’s parked in the bay. That’s some ride you’ve got,” he says this to Lucy. “I was looking for the gun turret.”

“You have to order it special,” she says.

“When you get a minute?” I grab disposable gowns and shoe covers off a cart. “Obviously this isn’t a routine motor vehicle fatality. It’s quite the workup.”

“One more pass of the driver’s seat and you can fume it for prints,” he calls out to other scientists as he dims the lights.

“Did he have his seat belt on?” I tie my gown in back.

“Side impact — being belted wasn’t going to help him. Take a look at the left rear tire,” Ernie says.

I slip on shoe covers that make papery sounds as I move close to the car to see what he’s talking about. The tire is flat. That’s as much as I can tell.

“It was punctured with some type of sharp tool,” he explains.

“Are we sure it didn’t happen during the accident? For example, if he ran over a sharp piece of metal? Tires often are flat in bad accidents.”

“It’s too clean a puncture for that and it’s in the sidewall, not the tread,” Ernie says. “I’m thinking something like an ice pick that caused a slow leak and he lost control of his car. There’s a transfer of paint on the rear bumper, which I also find interesting. Unless the damage was already there? And I doubt that as meticulous as this car was.”

I see what he’s talking about, a small dent with a transfer of what looks like a reflective red paint.

“He may have had a flat tire and been swiped by someone,” I suggest.

“I don’t think so, not as low to the ground as this car is.” Lucy pulls shoe covers on. “If it was hit, it was by something else low to the ground or maybe a larger vehicle with a bumper guard. Some of them are reflective.” She takes a closer look. “Especially with gangs who trick their cars out like crazy, usually SUVs.”

“Give me one sec.” Ernie bends back inside the car, moving the wand, and I resume talking to Lucy about Gail Shipton.

It’s a subject I’m not finished with yet.

“A notebook was recovered from her purse,” I begin.

“Which was where?”

“The killer left it near the scene. Obviously he wanted it to be found. There was no money in her wallet but it’s hard to know if anything else was missing. Apparently he wasn’t interested in her notebook.”

I open the photograph I took at the construction site and show her the page with the odd encryption.

61: INC 12/18 1733 (<18m) REC 20-8-18-5-1-20.

“The last entry she made in it,” I explain. “Apparently right after she got off the phone with you, possibly moments before she was abducted. A small black notebook with pages that look like graph paper and there were stickers, red ones with an X in the middle. Do you have any ideas?”

“Sure.” Lucy works her arms into the sleeves of the gown, the synthetic material making slippery, crinkly sounds. “It’s a note in her rudimentary code that a first grader could break.”

“Sixty-one?” I start at the beginning of the encrypted string, standing shoulder to shoulder with Lucy, both of us looking at the picture on my phone.

“It’s her code for me,” she says as if it’s perfectly reasonable that Gail would have assigned a code to her. “The letters in my name correspond to numbers. L-U-C-Y is twelve, twenty-one, three, and twenty-five. If you add them up it equals sixty-one.”

“Did she inform you she had a code for you?”

“Nope.”

“INC is an incoming call,” I assume, “and twelve-eighteen is the date, which was yesterday, and the military time of seventeen-thirty-three.”

“Correct,” Lucy answers. “We talked for less than eighteen minutes, and REC means received, and in this case the rest of the numbers are the code for Threat. Same thing, the numbers correspond to letters of the alphabet. In summary I called her and she recorded the conversation as a threat. I threatened her. That’s the takeaway message, which of course is a lie.”

“Who was supposed to get this takeaway message?”

“It’s intended for whoever she might sic on me eventually. Her encryption isn’t meant to be secure,” Lucy says as if it’s nothing, as if Gail Shipton was a simpleton. “In fact, just the opposite. She wanted someone to find this and figure it out. She wanted it to be evidence at some point. She was cutting pages out of the notebook in case I ever got my hands on it. I wouldn’t find the incriminating entries, so she assumed. I wouldn’t know she was making false entries about me in a record she was keeping.”

“The notebook entries were meant to be evidence in her lawsuit or a different one?” I don’t understand.

“She probably wanted to intimidate me eventually and I just sat back and watched. She’d get a settlement from Double S and then she’d want what’s next. She’d make the claim she’d invented every aspect of the drone phone. She wouldn’t have to pay a dime, would simply own all of it.” Lucy speaks calmly, matter-of-factly. “And she’d claim credit for work she could never do on her own. That would have been almost as valuable as the money. She wasn’t exactly feeling great about herself. The whole thing’s pathetic.”

“If she was cutting out the negative entries about you,” I reply, “then what was the evidence she intended to intimidate you with?”

“First of all, it’s a joke.”

“I fail to see anything funny about it.”

“It’s no damn wonder she got taken advantage of,” Lucy says. “The reason the pages look like graph paper is because they’re from a smart notebook. What she would do is photograph every page, digitizing her entries, including her fraudulent ones, so they could be searched by keywords or tags like the sticker with the X. Then she’d remove the paper and ink false entries about me by cutting out the pages she’d photographed so that the only record to turn up would be the electronic one.”

“Which you were aware of.” I know what that means.

It’s exactly as I suspect. Whatever Gail was up to, no matter how clever she believed she was, Lucy was onto all of it. She wouldn’t hesitate to search Gail’s pocketbook or her car or apartment for that matter. It would be business as usual for her to hack into whatever she wanted, and I recall what Marino said about there being not a single photograph on Gail’s phone. Lucy had deleted them, including ones Gail had taken of the lies she recorded in her notebook.

“She was building a case against me and had been for months. Pretty soon she would have what she wanted and I needed to be out of her way, or at least that was what she’d fooled herself into believing,” Lucy says in a measured way that is meant to hide what hurt must be buried somewhere. “You know what Nietzsche said. Be careful who you pick as an enemy because that’s who you become most like.”

“I’m sorry she became your enemy.”

“I’m not talking about me. I’m talking about Gail and Double S. She was well on her way to becoming just as bad as they are.”

I watch a fingerprint examiner work dials on a distribution box connected to thick bright red power cords snaking over the epoxy-painted floor. Cyanoacrylate humidifiers, evaporators, and fans begin to whir as Ernie heads in our direction, pulling off his gloves and dropping them into the trash. I hand him packaged evidence and a pen.

“I can see you’re up to your ears today,” I say as he initials what I’m receipting to his lab. “I apologize for adding to it.”

“Another unfortunate story that may get even more unfortunate.” Ernie indicates the mangled Jaguar as he takes off his goggles. “A psychiatrist has a fight with his wife and heads to the pub, which is about to get sued for serving him alcohol when he was impaired. Supposedly. Luke says his STAT alcohol is below the legal limit. What killed this man is somebody punctured his tire and he swerved out of control into a guardrail and an autopsy’s not going to tell you that. The skid marks do. And the hole in the tire. Question is, did the damage occur while he was parked at the pub or while his car was at his house? Who had access? Or did someone puncture his tire and then follow him to add an extra shove, explaining the paint transfer?”

“Juveniles, typically gangs,” Lucy says. “There have been a number of tire slashings in the Cambridge area of late. Kids stab the tires of half a dozen cars in a lot and hide out and watch the fun. Then they tailgate one of their victims to have the extra fun of watching the tire go flat and rob the person when he finally pulls over. A car like this would cost you more than a hundred grand if it’s in mint condition. The assumption would be if they caused him to crash he might be worth robbing.”

“Well, now their little prank may have just killed someone.” Ernie mops his forehead with his Tyvek sleeve.

“Why do you think I have run-flat tires?” Lucy walks around the wreckage, peering inside at what looks like the original saddle leather interior, the rosewood gearshift and steering wheel, blood and gray hair everywhere. “The question’s going to be whether other cars parked at the pub last night were similarly damaged.”

“I’ll pass it along because it’s a very good point,” Ernie says. “What else can I do for you?” he asks me.

I tell him about the fibers and fluorescing residue and the ointment that smells like a mentholated vapor rub.

“If you could check the residue in SEM because I have a hunch about the elemental composition. It may be something that’s showed up in an earlier case in Maryland. There’s also a fence post that might have been damaged by a tool coming in,” I add.

“Who’s doing what?” He wants to know the order of examination.

“You’re the first stop for everything except DNA. I’m hoping to get lucky with the vapor rub and then it will be your turn,” I answer. “Possibly we’ll be able to tell by the chemical composition exactly what it is.”

“Maybe not the brand,” he considers dubiously, “but menthol for sure. An alcohol found naturally in mint oils, plus eucalyptus, cedar leaf, camphor, turpentine, to mention a few. A home remedy that’s been around forever and people can be extremely creative what they use it for.”

“Have you ever had it show up in a case?” I ask.

“Well, let’s see. Anal swabs were positive for it in a possible sex crime, this was years ago. It turned out the victim was using a vapor rub to treat hemorrhoids. We recovered it from someone’s scalp, which the police thought might be part of some kinky ritual or maybe the decedent was demented. A treatment for dandruff, we found out. I once had a case of a homemade vaporizing lamp with an open flame. Unfortunately it exploded and a toddler was killed. And then there are people who apply the stuff on open wounds and to chapped lips, and camphor can be toxic.”

I explain the petroleum-based ointment was found in the grass of an athletic field and that one theory is it could be a muscle rub and unrelated to Gail Shipton’s death.

“Certainly it would be a similar composition,” Ernie ponders. “Although pain-relieving ointments tend to be more potent with higher levels of certain oils. I’m not sure we’ll be able to tell.”

“It might not matter. Maybe we’ll get lucky with DNA,” I reply. “But I’m having a hard time envisioning why someone would be digging into a jar of a vapor rub outside in the rain.”

“It depends on what he was using it for,” Ernie explains. “He might not have been wiping it on himself or on his skin.”

“Then on what?” I ask.

“Some people saturate nasal strips with Vicks to help their breathing, snoring, sleep apnea.”

“That would be a weird thing to do outside in the middle of the night,” Lucy comments as I recall Benton’s dark ramblings, what struck me as a disturbing non sequitur about the depraved killer Albert Fish.

Inhaling a sharp odor to block out distractions, to focus. Pleasure laced with pain, a fragrance that contains methyl salicylate, and Benton worries about the influence he’s had. He fears that the Capital Murderer may have read journal articles that reference Les Fleurs du Mal, the flowers of evil. What I remember about Baudelaire’s poetry from my college years is its cruel sensuousness and his view that human beings are slaves toiling through their uncertain, fleeting lives. I found him as depressing as Edgar Allan Poe at a time when I still held the belief that people were inherently good.

I peel off my gloves and ask Ernie to let me know when he has anything and then my phone rings.

“Nothing for you to do about right now,” Bryce tells me as Lucy and I leave the evidence bay. “Just a heads-up. Marino overheard a call on that channel he loves to monitor constantly on his radio? When he scans for other area frequencies — you know, like he’s always done? What I call snooping?”

“What kind of call?” I ask.

“Apparently a Concord PD dispatcher mentioned NEMLEC. It sounds very secretive, whatever it is, nothing on the news so far. I’ve been checking every other second. Marino asked if I knew if anybody’s dead and I said only everybody in this place. Beyond that, he wouldn’t give me any information, but I’m assuming it’s probably something big if the local troops are being called out.”

“Is he responding?”

“Well, you know he will now that’s he’s Sherlock. Maybe they need a K-nine, one that rides around in the car all day.”

Marino must have volunteered his services to the North Eastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council, comprised of more than fifty police departments that share equipment and special expertise such as motorcycle units, SWAT, bomb techs, and crime scene investigation. If NEMLEC mobilizes, the situation is serious.

“Make sure one of the scene vehicles is gassed up and ready to go just in case,” I tell Bryce.

“No offense but who’s supposed to do that these days? Harold and Rusty are busy with autopsies, I can’t ask the scientists or the docs, and I wouldn’t think of asking Lucy. Is she standing right there? I hope she hears me. Until we hire Marino’s replacement, and even then there’s no guarantee…Wait. Are you asking me to play gas station attendant?”

“No worries. I’ll take care of it myself.” I don’t need another reminder that Marino’s quitting has changed everything for me. “I’m off to find Anne. See if Gloria can drop by x-ray so I can turn over DNA evidence to her.”