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Chapter 30

Even with television and radio reporters covering the arrest of Olga Swenson in the evening news, Liz’s full solution to the crime, set to run in the next day’s Beantown Banner, was a scoop.

“That’s star-spangled reporting for you,” Dermott McCann admitted, lifting a drink to Liz at J.J. Foley’s, a Boston bar frequented by news reporters. “Great legwork,” he added, slapping her on the back and looking down at her legs.

Esther O’Faolin winced. Then she said, “Good job, Liz.”

“Nice that you had that forensics guy in your back pocket,” Dick Manning admitted. “How’d you get ahold of him?”

“That was thanks to Esther, actually. And Dermott, too. They insisted I cover a mystery writer’s conference at the Worcester Public Library.” Liz smiled as Cormac Kinnaird walked in and crossed the barroom where no Irish music played. “I was so fascinated by his bite marks presentation that the rest is history,” she said, winking, as Kinnaird arrived at her side and put an arm around her shoulder. “Here’s the good doctor himself.”

“Liz wrote about your assessment of the crime scene in Plymouth,” Esther said. “Because Olga Swenson confessed, we cut some of it to put the focus on the confession. But I’d like to hear more about it. I gather from what Liz wrote that if the Swenson woman hadn’t confessed and you hadn’t realized there was an ephemeral pond there, the identities of the skeletons might never have been discovered. The police would have thought the bones were too old to have anything to do with the case.”

“Possibly,” Kinnaird said, “although, under ordinary circumstances, the dental work should have been matched to Ellen Johansson’s in a matter of minutes on the police databases.”

“The guy who didn’t enter them into the system is in deep shit, I’ll bet,” the city editor said.

“Not as deep as it might have been if the Johansson case didn’t look like a possible voluntary absence,” Kinnaird said. “Remember, it was not clear murder was done. I think the error would have been caught more quickly once the bones were found if the ME had not been in Manhattan helping out with the remains from Ground Zero.”

“What about the cabbie’s teeth? Didn’t they have dental records for him on the database, too?” Jared asked.

“No one filed dental records for him. The only person who seems to have missed Samir Hasan was the manager of the taxi garage,” Liz said. “And he soon discovered Hasan had given him false information. Hasan was so successful in hiding his true identity that we still don’t know who he was. Ironically, he was killed based on mistaken identity, too. I wonder if somebody, somewhere, cared about him,” she added, running her fingers through her hair and looking across the barroom distractedly.

“Did Mrs. Swenson have any notion why the cabbie was in her daughter’s kitchen?” Jared asked Liz. “Or did she kill him before she could find out?”

“She told me she believed he was the same person who had masturbated at the sight of her scantily dressed daughter when Ellen was just eight years old. She said she shot him, not just because he had a bloody hand over her daughter’s mouth, but because he used an Arabic expression that made her think he was that person come back to threaten Ellen again. She would have liked me to think Ellen never knew about Karl’s perversions. Perhaps she didn’t, but it’s just as likely she killed to keep the family secret.”

“If it wasn’t the same guy, then why was the taxi driver in the kitchen?” Jared asked.

“I’m not sure we’ll ever know,” Liz said. “Ellen told her pen pal, Nadia, she’d taken a strange cab ride during which the driver communicated in Arabic on the two-way radio with another Arabic speaker. We know the word teena—the Arabic word for ‘fig’—was used in that conversation and it appeared in a list of words found in the cab’s glove compartment. Was this a code word used for some illegal operation, even a terrorist plot? Was the driver simply talking salaciously about a woman named Tina? We can’t be sure.”

“I’ll bet he had a terrorist connection,” Manning put in. “Probably he was sent to do Ellen in after she overheard something he said. Didn’t you say she spoke some Arabic?”

“Just a few words and phrases. If Hasan sought to eliminate Ellen,” Liz said, “why would he panic when the car dealers arrived at the Johansson house? Shouldn’t they have appeared to be welcome allies? It’s just as likely the cabbie came to warn her that something she’d overheard had put her in danger.”

“In any case, Ellen’s own mother did her in,” Esther said, apparently satisfied with that incontrovertible fact. Turning to Dr. Kinnaird, she added, “Tell us more about the ephemeral pond.”

“I worked under a great disadvantage, of course,” Kinnaird obliged, “since I didn’t have access to the police evidence from the scene of the crime until the department took me on as a consultant today. But while the police had the physical evidence, they did not know the crime scene was submerged with water a few months after the bodies were placed there. Ordinarily, this would make the remains appear less old than they are. Even if an expert had examined the bones with the organic shower in mind, he or she might think the bones had arrived there relatively recently, since pollen that had fallen during the wet season would not cover the bones in the ordinary way. Those bones would have been shielded from the rain of organic material by the water.”

“But surely not entirely?” Jared Conneely piped in.

“That’s right. Some pollen from all of the seasons during which the remains had been outdoors would potentially show up after careful analysis. But it would not be obvious on preliminary examination.”

“Why, then, did the bones seem older than they were?” René DeZona asked.

“For the reason this young man suggests,” Kinnaird said, pointing to Jared. “There was, indeed, organic material in that pond. Remember, the area is surrounded by white and pitch pines. Stewing in that pond each year is pitch from those trees, loading that water with tannin. Bathed in a sort of acidic tea, the remains were immersed in a kind of natural preservative. To some extent, those bones were on the road to mummification. Think of the bog people archeologists have discovered.”

“Wasn’t the ME getting a grip on this, now that he’s back from New York? He told me today he thought the bones must have been placed there more recently,” Dick Manning said.

“Yes, but it was the hair found with the bones that still gave him pause. I discussed that with him this afternoon. He was puzzled at how the bones could appear so old and stained while rather well-preserved hair was found under the skulls. If he’d known a seasonal pond was there, he might have figured it out. I told him about the pond and the preservative effects of tannin. The tannin not only stained the bones. It also acted as a dye when it was absorbed into Ellen Johansson’s hair. Samir Hasan’s hair was already black. That’s why initial reports indicated the two victims were dark-haired.”

“The bog people all had dark hair, too,” Jared volunteered. “I’ve seen pictures of them. But they were preserved, skin and all. Their skin looked like leather! But there was no skin on the bones in Plymouth.”

“Unlike the bog people, our two victims were not immediately plunged into water. Remember, they lay out in the elements, where animals could strip those bones. Water only covered the bones after the snow melt formed the ephemeral pond—some would call it a vernal pool—in the spring.”

Dick Manning was not convinced. “How can you be so sure about the pond?” he asked. “There might be some ponds in there, but that’s a big woods. What if the science teacher is wrong about that pond’s location? Isn’t it dry there now?”

“I examined the area myself, after the police were through with restricting the scene. Even in this dry season, I know that depression holds water in the spring. I can tell from the signature species—plant and animal life that exists only under specific conditions. I found certain salamanders, sedges, white-bracted boneset, and bladderwort there. These are signatures of a vernal pool. Even that tall grass, where the deer lay down, is evidence that standing water prevented the encroachment of other shrubs and ground cover there. Yes, there is no doubt this is the site of an ephemeral pond.”

To his credit, Dick heard Kinnaird out. Then he said, “Another round to celebrate Liz’s success? It’s on me.”

Liz embraced her rival.

“I’m wondering why that Christmas plant you tested was never sprayed with luminol,” Dick said.

“Olga had Hasan carry it out of the kitchen,” Liz said. “She wanted to ‘keep his hands busy.’”

“But wasn’t it in my photo, which was taken after that?” DeZona asked.

“The poinsettia labeled for the aftercare teacher did remain in the kitchen. Veronica gave her teacher the unlabeled plant that Hasan had carried into the living room.”

Just then, ever-helpful editorial assistant E.A. Tenley entered the bar. “I saw your story for tomorrow’s paper, Liz,” she enthused. “What a scoop!”

“A front-pager if I ever saw one!” Jared said.

“Actually, not,” the editorial assistant said. “I’m sorry to tell you, Liz. I saw the edition.”

“We had to lead with breaking news out of Ground Zero,” Dermott told Liz. “But don’t worry. We gave you a front-page teaser.”

Dick returned with a pint of ale for Liz. “Have a whole pint, not just half. You’re in the big time now, kiddo,” he said and walked off to deliver another drink to Esther O’Faolin.

Over the pint, Liz asked Kinnaird, “Was it inevitable that this case would be solved, Cormac? I mean, it looks like the bodies would have been identified in any case and the timing established, but do you think there was any chance Olga Swenson might not have been identified as the perpetrator?”

“Not with the information you assembled—the photo of her tossing the cell phone into the lake, for instance.”

“But what if I didn’t . . .”

“Didn’t report what you know? It might have been pinned on someone innocent, like Erik.”

“But if the evidence was only circumstantial . . .”

“Look, Liz,” the doctor said, taking her elbow and leading her across the room. As the two seated themselves at a small table across from each other on tall stools, Kinnaird leaned forward. “That way leads to disaster.”

“What way?”

“Second-guessing yourself. It’s never a good idea. It’s morally incumbent upon us as professionals to report what we know. We can’t let misguided emotions get in our way. That’s all there is to it.”

Liz looked doubtful.

“Remember, you had the guts to phone the police, despite Tom’s urging you not to.”

“It was more than guts, Cormac. There was that photograph of the wedding ring necklace on Veronica. But there was something else, too.”

She shuddered as her companion waited patiently for her to continue.

“It was the lake,” Liz said. “She never faced the lake. I had to wonder if she protected her daughter from Karl’s perversion by pushing him through the ice. But there’s no evidence to support . . .” She broke off and raised her hands to her temples.

“I’ll say it again. You can’t afford to let your emotions take over.”

The doctor held out his hands, palms up, hands that had opened countless cadavers. Slowly, he moved his right hand to grip his own pint glass of lager. Silently, he held open his left hand and regarded the calloused fingertips his companion had once kissed, one by one. His face and his voice softened.

“Actually,” the doctor added, “that’s not all there is to it, as we both know. Like me, you’ll have to find a way to make peace with what you’ve set in motion. You’ve got to find a way to live with it.” Standing up, he took her hand in his calloused grip. “Now, let’s get out of this place and find some music.”