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Chapter 26

After leaving the book dealer, Liz drove the Tracer to the Banner parking lot and stopped in at the city desk, only to learn that she’d been put on another mall story. This time the assignment was to interview store managers about the drop in customer numbers in response to terrorist-inspired fears of gathering in public spaces. Liz drove to the closest mall she could think of, the CambridgeSide Galleria, a snazzy shopping complex in Cambridge, across the Charles River from Boston.

Inside the mall she met Banner photographer Jim Collins, who shot photos of the unpopulated place from the top of an escalator. This turned out to be a good spot to get comments from a sampling of the few who had decided to shop, terrorist threat or not.

“I’m getting married next week,” one young woman told Liz defiantly. “I’m not letting al-Qaeda prevent me from buying my bridesmaids their gifts!”

“Let ’em try to shoot me!” a belligerent older man wearing a Veterans of Foreign Wars baseball cap declared. “They’ll regret it!”

Despite the small number of shoppers, excellent quotes were easy to get. With time to spare, Liz and Jim decided to cover two more shopping venues, Boston’s upscale Newbury Street and then more humble Washington Street, also known as “Downtown Crossing.” Thanks to the dearth of shoppers, it was unusually easy to find parking spaces on Newbury Street. They decided to walk a block over to Boylston Street, where the very posh toy emporium FAO Schwarz seemed a great choice to represent this shopping district. What did well-heeled parents think about spending big bucks on playthings now?

“You can’t buy security, I know,” one mother said, “but you can buy together time. I’m purchasing this horribly complicated Taj Mahal model to show my son the beauty of another culture’s architecture and to give our family something to do together. I’m uneasy about taking my kids to public places at the moment, so I figure we’ll be spending more time together at home.”

With answers like this, Liz knew she had the makings of a sidebar, if hard news about the terrorist attack aftermath didn’t grab all the space in the paper. Thinking ahead, she got contact information from the woman for a possible family page piece about family time as an antidote to terror. The toy store interviews were so productive and time-consuming that Jim Collins had to leave her so he could cover another story. Outside the store, feeding the parking meter, Liz realized she did not have enough time to walk to Downtown Crossing after all, a pedestrian mall where parking was nonexistent.

Instead, she returned to Newbury Street and strolled along it for several blocks. Rejecting a ladies’ hat shop, several beauty salons, and some art galleries that were all too posh to provide contrast with FAO Schwarz, she made her way on foot back to Boylston Street. Running parallel to Newbury Street, this thoroughfare offered a mix of shopping, from the posh toy shop and elegant Shops at Prudential Center mall to discount pharmacies. Scanning the stores, she made her way to a place bearing the sign “Puttin’ on the Ritz: Off-Price Remainders.” The customers here were all female, and the well-heeled matrons and homeless women seeking warmth in the chill of the autumn afternoon represented two extreme ends of the economic scale. None of them seemed eager to talk with Liz, so she killed fifteen minutes by pushing designer leather jackets around on their rack, while trying to overhear shoppers’ chatter about what was on their minds. The effort was fruitless for the purposes of Liz’s article, since the bargain hunters were mostly shopping solo and those who spoke to one another seemed absorbed in talking about the fact that the shop stamped the word “Ritz” in hot pink on the trendy designer labels, but she did get a great buy on a leather jacket.

If anyone were to interview me about this expenditure, she thought, I’d say it is an indulgence along the lines of comfort food. A guilty pleasure.

Before Liz could return to the Tracer, her cell phone rang. It was Cormac Kinnaird.

“Where are you, Liz?” he demanded. “Have you heard the news?”

“Has there been another attack?”

“No, thank God, no. But some hikers in a state park out near Plymouth have turned up the remains of two bodies in a wooded area. I’m surprised your editor hasn’t called you.”

“Someone else might be assigned to this. When and how did you hear about this?”

“Just now, on the radio. I know I won’t have access to the heart of the scene, but I’m heading out there anyway. You might be able to barge in on it better as a reporter.”

“What do you know about the scene?”

“Two sets of skeletal remains, that’s all the police are saying.”

“Let me contact the newsroom and I’ll call you right back.”

Liz was in luck. Thanks to the fact that Dick Manning was following up on a bomb scare, Dermott okayed her heading out to Forges Field Recreational Area in Plymouth County, where the remains had been found.

It was midafternoon as she drove southeast from Boston, leaving the urban scene behind and entering a sandy landscape of scrub pines, blueberry bushes, and cranberry bogs. Ordinarily, a visit to such a scene would provide welcome recreation, but that was not the case now. Grateful that this was not happening a few weeks later, when the change from daylight-saving to standard time would plunge the area into darkness within an hour, Liz nevertheless made haste to arrive while a reasonable amount of daylight remained.

The recreational area was well named. Home to a playground, two baseball diamonds, and a few soccer or football fields, it looked like a regional gathering place for team practices and intramural sports. Extensive parking lots were filled with vehicles that spoke of school sports and the suburban lifestyle: bright yellow school buses, minivans, and SUVs. Parents, team coaches, and uniform-clad kids were now clustered in the playground area, the children’s faces rosy with excitement. Unable to approach the scene of the crime, they focused their attention on the access road to the recreational area. It was lined with police and rescue vehicles, the latter sadly useless in the circumstances. Flashing lights and radioed conversation kept the scene lively.

Pulling on her new jacket against the afternoon chill, Liz clipped her Banner I.D. card on her chest pocket, grabbed a reporter’s notebook, and strode into the underbrush far to the left of the obvious path to the crime scene: Liz knew it was unlikely she would get very close to the scene before being barred by the police, but at least she might get a sense of the lay of the land.

And, covered with white pines, pitch pines, and tangled underbrush, the landscape could only be described as undulating. Visible chiefly because of bright lights set up in advance of dusk, the center of police activity was located at the bottom of a depression. Liz shivered to think it was walking distance from a center of kids’ activity and wondered if the hikers who had come across the skeletons were young people—and if they remained in the vicinity.

“Hey, you!” a policeman bellowed at her just then. “This is a crime scene. You can’t walk in here.”

“I know, detective,” she said, looking at his badge. “I’m Liz Higgins from the Beantown Banner and I was trying to get a sense of the lay of the land here.”

“I’m not in charge of talking with the press. You’ll have to talk with the sergeant.”

“Can you just confirm a few things that are already reported, like who found the remains?”

“I guess so, but don’t use my name. It was a pair of bird nuts and their daughter.”

“Are they still here? Do you know their names and the girl’s age?”

“You’ll have to ask them. They’re sitting in a cruiser back there.” He nodded toward the line of police cars along the access road. “You’d better get out of here, now.”

Thanking the detective, Liz made her way to the last cruiser in the line of police cars. Leaning on its trunk, Mick Lichen was haranguing a police officer about getting access to the trio of hikers. Clad in jeans, hiking boots, and fleece jackets in complementary colors, and wearing horrified facial expressions, the family looked like an L.L. Bean ad gone wrong. The red-eyed daughter, who clung to her father, looked to be about fourteen years old.

“It’s a free country. You can’t prevent them from commenting on what they saw,” Lichen argued loudly.

“No, I can’t, Mr. Lichen. But I can make a request, and these good people can choose to honor it in the interest of seeing this crime solved.”

“Is that what you want? To be silenced?” Lichen said to the family.

“Leave us alone, please,” the mother said.

Lichen stalked off too soon. His challenge seemed to stir the fourteen-year-old.

“Why are you letting the police shut us up?” she demanded, wrenching herself free of her father’s embrace and getting out of the cruiser.

“If the criminal doesn’t know everything the police have discovered, it may make it easier to catch him,” her father began.

“But it’s too late for the dead people, anyway, isn’t it?” the teen cried. “I want to tell what I saw. It was gross stepping on those bones. Really gross!”

“You can tell me,” Liz said, stepping in to introduce herself.

“My name is Jessica Sobel,” the girl announced, thrusting away the hand her father raised to signal her to keep quiet.

“Maybe it’s better that she talks, John,” said the woman. “I’m Joy Sobel and this is my husband, John,” she said to Liz.

“My dad’s a science teacher,” Jessica said. “He’s always dragging us along on nature hikes.”

“In preparation for my classes at Plymouth High School,” John explained. “We were looking for birds that migrate and birds that remain here through the winter. Down in that protected hollow we found plenty of chickadees—that’s our state bird you know—as I expected we would.”

“Why would the chickadees favor that hollow?”

“It’s the site of an ef—”

“Of f-ing corpses!” Jessica interrupted. “Cut the lecture, Dad! Those birds were flying around landing on the bushes and trees, probably eating bugs from the bodies.” Jessica shivered.

“No, no, Jessica,” John said. “Any insect life associated with the deceased was long gone. There were only bones there, Honey.”

“‘The deceased’!” the teen mimicked her father. “Always the professor! Can’t you just say ‘dead guys’?”

“Jessie, Jessie!” her mother soothed. “Try not to upset yourself.” She turned to Liz. “It seemed so idyllic at first,” she said. “John was just pointing out the tall grass all pressed down where the deer had slept on it, and then my daughter stumbled on the bones.”

“Did you see anything else, Mr. Sobel?”

“If you mean did I see a murder weapon, the answer is no. Naturally, we were trying to rush our daughter away from the area.”

“What about clothing, shoes, a handbag—anything like that?”

“Nothing. I’m no expert, but I thought the bones looked very old. They were very brown, as if they were tea- or coffee-stained. I guess they looked so old, I didn’t expect to see any clothes or shoes with them.”

As more reporters discovered the family’s location, René DeZona arrived and joined the crush of press focusing in on the family. Liz lingered long enough to take down her sources’ ages, as told to a television anchor, and then returned to the Tracer to phone in her story. Dusk was falling when she arrived back at her car, where she found Cormac Kinnaird tying his shoe with his foot up on her bumper.

“Any luck viewing the scene?” he asked.

“No. You?”

“No access either, but I talked with one of the officers. The ME for Plymouth is in Manhattan helping out at Ground Zero. They’ve got a new guy covering this. He’ll likely keep information close to his chest, hoping to make a name for himself here.”

“That’s not good news.”

“You’re right about that. But the weather report is. With a downpour predicted for tomorrow afternoon, he’ll make haste to move those bones. We’ll have to be ready to reconnoiter as soon as the police finish scouring the area.”

“Won’t that leave us without the hope of finding any evidence? They will have grabbed it all.”

“Take a look around you. It’s a tall order to thoroughly scrutinize this place, and remember, it’s a green medical examiner on this case. By the way, did you find out what took those hikers to this particular spot?”

“The man’s a high-school science teacher. He was making a dry run for a school nature walk, with his wife and reluctant daughter in tow.”

“If he knows the area, he might be useful to us. See if you can get him to join us when we come back here.”

“Good idea. Why are you so interested in these remains, Cormac? Do you think they could belong to Ellen and the cabbie?”

“From what we know, the bones sound older than nine months old. That would seem to eliminate Ellen. Let’s just say, I’m eager to see a certain reporter at work.”

Before calling in her story, Liz made an effort to get a comment from the police spokesman and to talk with Stu Simmons, the assistant medical examiner on the scene. The former offered, “No comment,” and the latter remained with the remains. After Jared Conneely took her information over the phone, Liz made the hour-and-a-half drive back to Gravesend Street while listening avidly to the radio all along the way. Amid much focus on September eleventh aftermath stories—especially interviews of New Englanders whose kin had been killed in the hijacked jets or in the Twin Towers—little attention was paid to the discovery of human remains in the Forges Field Recreational Area. Brief reports added little to the facts Liz had already gleaned at the scene. Liz did learn, however, that police planned to scour the woods around Forges Field at dawn.

Back at Gravesend Street, she found her refrigerator stocked with milk, orange juice, fresh eggs, and an unfamiliar bowl containing homemade fruit salad. On the kitchen counter, weighed down with six cans of cat food and a package of English muffins, she found a note from Tom.

“See you tomorrow? I’ll be changing the billboard here,” it read.

Liz gave him her answer by phone. “I’m planning to be in Plymouth County at sunrise,” she said, “so I don’t think I’ll be here. But thank you for all the goodies! Now, I’ve got to call the science teacher who discovered the remains, to see if he can meet me.”

John Sobel was eager to meet Liz at dawn, but warned that he’d have to leave the recreational area by 7:45 in order to get to school. The science teacher knew just when the sun was slated to rise and set a time for them to meet.

Hungry, Liz served some fruit salad into a bowl, sliced an English muffin in two, and placed the halves in her toaster. She pushed the toaster handle and the button on her phone answering machine down simultaneously. What she heard on the answering machine was somewhat surprising, since the caller had avoided her for some months.

“Liz, it’s Erik. I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch. I hope you can help me. The police won’t tell me anything. Could it be Ellen and that cabdriver they’ve found out near Plymouth? Oh . . .” The call was cut off as Erik was distracted by something.

Liz froze in the act of hanging up her receiver and stared at the telephone number on her machine’s caller-I.D. display. She had memorized it nine months ago. The call had been made from Ellen’s cell phone—a phone that had been unaccounted for since Ellen’s disappearance. What was Erik doing with that phone? Had he placed the calls that came through from that phone in June and in August? The only reason to do that would be to make it look as if his wife was in the vicinity—alive and well enough to phone on Veronica’s birthday and again in August. Up till now, the calls from Ellen’s cell phone had provided hope. But if Erik had been making them, then another conclusion seemed chillingly likely: Erik had reason to toss red herrings on the path of the investigation, leading police astray as they sought the truth about his wife.

Liz knew she should inform the police immediately. Instead, she unplugged her answering machine, locked it in the car’s trunk, drove straight to Fenwick Street, and surprised Erik by knocking on his door. Finding that Veronica had a friend visiting, she convinced Erik to take a walk to the Newton City Hall Common. Noting that he carried a receiver for his portable phone with him as he left the house, she asked, “Do you also carry your cell phone with you at all times?”

“Absolutely,” he said, taking his phone from his pocket. “If Ellen gets in touch, I want to be available.”

“Do you know what time it is?” Liz asked. “I’m on tight deadline today,” she fibbed.

Erik turned on the cell phone and showed its small screen to Liz. The time and date were shown there.

“Thanks, Erik. What are your thoughts on the phone calls from Ellen’s cell?”

“My thoughts? I can hardly separate them from my emotions on this. Intellectually, I know someone other than Ellen might be making these calls, just to suggest she is somewhere near us. If that’s the case, and Ellen is the victim of foul play, her victimizer has added cruel insult to injury.”

Liz noted an odd formality in Erik’s speech. Was this his way of feeling some sense of sanity in a situation he could not control, or was it an indication of guilt?

“I don’t really believe that the calls are from Ellen,” Erik went on, “but I can’t help hoping that they are, especially the attempt to reach me on August eighteenth. I haven’t pointed this out to anyone else, but Ellen and I first met eleven years ago on that date. In any case, the calls have been an unbearable tease, especially for Veronica.” Erik paused. “I’m surprised you’re asking me about the cell phone calls on this day of all days. I had hoped you might have something to tell me that would shed light on the bodies found near Plymouth. Tell me the bones can’t be hers,” he pleaded.

“Observers say the bones seem too old. But there’s nothing conclusive. Erik, I have to ask you, why did you pick up Ellen’s cell phone today and call me? Was it because, in your distress about the discovery of the bones, you grabbed the wrong cell phone? Where have you hidden it all this time?”

“What? I don’t know what you’re talking about! Are you suggesting I have Ellen’s cell? That’s madness!”

“Her cell number came up on my caller I.D. when you called to ask about—”

“That’s impossible! Look, here’s the number of my cell.” He pushed a button on his cell phone, revealing its telephone number. “It’s a digit off from Ellen’s. The last part of mine is 4441; hers is 4440.”

“4440 came up on my caller I.D. And you were the speaker.”

“That’s inexplicable! I tell you, I don’t have Ellen’s phone.” At the sound of sirens, Erik looked toward Commonwealth Avenue frantically. “Did you report this to the police?” he cried out.

“Not yet, Erik. I wanted to see what you had to say first.”

“Then why are they here?” he said, turning distraught eyes on the reporter as several officers arrived.

“The line was bugged with your permission, sir,” an officer said. “Come along with us now.”

“Stay with Veronica until my mother-in-law arrives, would you?” Erik pleaded. “She’s on her way with groceries for us.”

“Of course, Erik,” Liz said.

Turning towards Fenwick Street, Liz ran across the common. Fortunately, it seemed Veronica had not heard the commotion. Liz could see her through the window engrossed in a video cartoon on the television. Liz waited on the front steps, a quiet guardian for Veronica, until the grandmother arrived. Grateful it was not her report but rather the traced call that had summoned the police, she nevertheless ached for the child whose father was now under arrest.

Liz called in her story to the city desk and then drove to Newton Police Headquarters, where she volunteered to answer questions and turned over her answering machine to authorities. Only after all this did she return home to get some food and rest.