“Tell her. It’s okay,” he reassures them. “She’s a doctor and is trying to help.”
But it’s not quite the right thing to say. The twins stare in the direction of the body as if it’s not too late for a doctor’s intervention.
“I’m a doctor who works with the police,” I explain to them without using any of the buzzwords like medical examiner, coroner or forensic pathologist. “We need to find out what might have happened to the person you discovered. It’s my job to figure out now she got hurt and died.”
“She must’ve wrecked,” Enya in yellow says. “Or someone jumped out at her maybe because she couldn’t see very well. You ride slow because you can’t see? And then a bad person is waiting to get you.”
“It was too dark,” the other sister says.
“Too dark to be riding a bicycle through the park?” I go with their train of thought, and they nod.
“So what made you decide to walk through here?” Marino asks. “Did you worry about how dark it is?”
“No because we do it all the time.”
“Not all the time,” Anya in pink disagrees. “Not usually after dark but our pizza was slow.”
“Because you added sausage. Even though I didn’t want it.”
“So what if I did?”
“You got here and it was dark. And you weren’t scared walking through here alone?” Marino asks, and they shake their heads.
“We watch out for cars. And there’s no cars through the park. Mom doesn’t like us walking around cars.”
“We don’t come here in the rain, though.”
“We only walk through here sometimes. Not in the winter or when it’s too cold near the water.”
“Mostly when it’s hot.”
“Mom gives us money for food when she doesn’t feel good.”
“She doesn’t feel good today.”
“She’s very tired.”
“She’s asleep and doesn’t want to get up.”
I look from one face to the other, from Anya to Enya. Or maybe it’s Enya to Anya. Both of them have on stretch shorts with drawstrings, and tees with tulip hems. As I continue to ask questions, they tell me the same story I heard from Barclay. They got close to the body but didn’t touch it, and their eyes jump around as they describe this. When I ask them how long they waited before they called the Cambridge police, neither of them replies, and they won’t look at me.
I ask Enya, the sister in yellow, if she made the call, and she shakes her head, no.
“What about you?” I ask Anya in pink.
“No.” She shakes her head vigorously, and now both of them stare at me.
“Maybe you’ll let me see your phone,” Marino says. “I’m betting one or both of you have a phone, right?” And the girls indicate they don’t. “So neither of you called the police?” Marino asks. “Now come on. Somebody had to, right? How’d we know about it if you didn’t call us?”
“I didn’t call the police,” Enya says slowly in her blunted tone.
As both of them continue to assert what seems a blatant lie, I get a sneaking suspicion it isn’t. I have an idea what might have happened.
WE KNOW THE CAMBRIDGE police received a 911 call about a person down in the park, and that would indicate the girls had access to a phone. But if they literally don’t own the phone in question, then that might suggest they used one that belongs to someone else.
To this equation I add my earlier observation when I briefly looked at the bicycle on the path. The phone holder on the handlebars is empty. If the woman I met earlier was Elisa Vandersteel, as I suspect, then I saw her clamp her iPhone into the holder before she rode off across Quincy Street and into the Yard. So what happened to her phone after that? I might know, and if I’m right it could explain why Anya and Enya are swearing they don’t have a phone.
Maybe they don’t—not one of their own. They claim they didn’t call the police, and very possibly they couldn’t have. Not literally if the phone didn’t belong to them—not if it was locked and they didn’t have the password. They absolutely couldn’t dial the Cambridge Police Department. They couldn’t even call 911 without getting past the locked screen, and I doubt they’d know how to do that in emergencies unless someone had shown them.
I propose this to Enya in yellow. I ask her if she knows what an iPhone is, and she does. It would seem her mother has one, and yes she understands about swiping the locked screen to the right, to the password keypad. At the bottom on the left side is the word emergency. All you have to do is touch it and you’re given a dial pad that allows you to enter your country’s emergency three-digit number, which is 911 in this case.
So neither Enya nor Anya dialed the Cambridge Police Department’s general number. One of the sisters pressed EMERGENCY, and then entered 911, afterward pressing SEND. Literally, that’s what Anya in pink—not Enya in yellow—admits to having done.
“How’d you know to do something like that?” Marino acts impressed.
“Mom showed us,” they say in unison.
“She showed you how to use her phone in case there’s ever an emergency?” I suggest, and they nod.
“If we need to call an ambulance,” Anya adds.
“Is that what you thought you were calling? You thought you were asking for an ambulance?” I ask, and they verify that was their intention.
“Then you didn’t think about the police,” Marino picks up where I leave off. “You didn’t know the police would come if you called for help. That’s not who you were asking for.”
They confirm that they didn’t want the police and never intended for them to come. They tell us they wanted to help her, and the police don’t help anybody. The police are who you call when you want to get someone into trouble.
“When someone’s mean,” Anya says, “and you have to lock them up in jail.”
Marino and I realize without having to say it that the girls weren’t deliberately misleading us about the phone and who they did or didn’t call. It’s clear there are limitations in what they comprehend, and an emergency isn’t the same thing as a crime. One requires medics. The other the police. What this might suggest is that at first the sisters weren’t sure the victim was dead, and they weren’t assuming she’d been attacked. Their immediate thought was she’d had an accident, and their response was to get medical help, which is exactly as their mother has taught them, it seems.
“You weren’t asking for the police to come.” Marino makes sure. “You wanted an ambulance.”
“Yes.”
“Did you think she was alive?” He’s going to keep asking until he gets a satisfactory answer.
“She didn’t move.”
“And the bad smell.” Anya in pink wrinkles her nose.
“Can you describe it?” I ask.
“It smelled like mom’s blow dryer when it won’t work.”
“You noticed an odor that reminded you of your mother’s blow dryer?” I try to decipher what she means, pretending it’s the first I’ve heard of a strange smell.
I’m not going to let on that Barclay told me something similar.
“It gets too hot,” Enya says.
“An electrical smell?” I suggest as I think of the broken lamp.
“If you thought somebody had done something bad to her would you have called the police?” Marino then asks, and after a pause the girls shake their heads in unison.
They shrug and say they don’t know. Then he points toward the clearing, asking them to remember their initial impression when they saw the bike and the woman on the ground. They continue to assert that they thought she was in an accident at first.
“You wanted to help her,” he says, and they nod. “You saw she was hurt,” and they nod again.
“We didn’t want her getting more hurt.”
“Like if another bike might run over her,” Anya in pink says, and her handoff couldn’t be smoother.
“That’s the danger when someone’s down in the middle of the path, right
?” Marino doesn’t miss a beat. “Maybe you moved her out of the way a little? So no one would run over her?” he asks, and they nod.
It’s as simple as that.
“What happened to make you sick?” Marino asks either one of them since we don’t know who did what.
“My stomach,” Enya says.
“And the shirt you cleaned up with?” Marino boldly powers forward. “Did she have it on when you first saw her?” He assumes the girls removed the shirt from the body, but they shake their heads, no, and they don’t look unnerved.
They don’t look the least bit frightened or unhappy anymore.
“It was in the bushes where the thing was. It scared me and made me sick.” Anya points.
“Hmm,” Marino frowns. “I’m wondering if it’s the same bushes where we just found it.”
“All I did was see what it was. And then something was in there.” Her eyes suddenly widen behind her glasses. “It tried to kick me and I screamed.”
“Who do you think it was?” Marino asks as if her comment was normal.
“It might have been a deer.”
“And maybe she heard it too as she was riding past, and it scared her. So she wrecked.”
“Did you actually see a deer?” I ask.
“I heard it,” Anya says excitedly. “I heard it running away.”
“What about you?” Marino asks Enya.
“I heard it too!” she exclaims the way kids do when they realize everyone is eager to hear a story they’re telling. “I heard it run away in the dark, and then the policeman got here.”
“So let me make sure I get this straight,” Marino says. “You heard something run out of the bushes, and then Investigator Barclay showed up. You got any idea how many minutes passed between when you heard the commotion in the bushes and when Barclay got here?”
“One minute,” Enya says.
“I don’t know,” Anya chimes in.
“One minute and I don’t know?” Marino looks at both of them. “Which is it?”
“Maybe more than one minute. I don’t know.”
“I was scared and then he was walking toward us. Are we in trouble?” Enya looks uncertain again.
“Now why would you be in trouble?” Marino asks.
“I don’t know.”
“Hmm.” He pauses, puts on the big act of entertaining an unhappy thought. “Wait a minute. Hold the phone. Have you done something I don’t know about? Something that you’re worried might get you in trouble?”
Technically, the answer is yes. It appears they’ve tampered with a crime scene and perhaps tried to abscond with an expensive phone taken from a dead person. Even if they borrowed it initially, it would appear they intend to keep it unless there’s a better explanation for what happened to it. But I think it’s safe to say they won’t be held accountable—nor should they be. I’m not sure they know better.
Then as if Enya can read my mind she picks up her knapsack, which is in the grass by her feet. It’s pink with small hearts, and her sister’s is just like it. Enya digs into a front pocket and slides out an iPhone in an ice-blue case—like the one I saw the cyclist clamp into the holder on her handlebars.
Marino doesn’t touch the phone. He doesn’t act surprised and certainly not suspicious or judgmental. He opens a brown paper evidence bag and holds it in front of Enya. He instructs her to drop the phone inside it.
“Well now that’s really helpful,” he says to both girls, and I can imagine Barclay’s smoldering resentment when he finds out what Marino’s just done. “You know what I can’t figure out?” He looks at both of them.
“What?”
“How you got hold of this. How did you manage that?”
Anya in pink admits with a hint of pride that she saw the phone “on the handlebars” and “borrowed” it.
“That was a pretty smart idea to borrow the phone to call for help,” Marino says, and they look pleased.
He wants to know if they’d mind him taking a peek at what’s inside their knapsacks. Maybe there’s something else they have that might be helpful.
“Okay,” Enya says, and she takes his hand.
She presses it to her face as if she might love him.
CHAPTER 20
TWICE NOW IN THE past forty minutes I’ve trekked alone through the clearing, following the path to the edge of the park where an auxiliary diesel generator hums in the dark.
I’m getting more frustrated with each minute that passes. I was hoping to be back at my headquarters before now, and yet I’ve scarcely started. The body should be in the CT scanner. I should be setting up my autopsy station.
Already I should have a good idea what happened to her, and I don’t. Not to mention hypervigilance is fatiguing. When you have to think about everything you do and say, and watch every place you touch or step, it wears you down. Especially in this weather.
It’s already 9:30 P.M. and the tent isn’t close to ready. I could put on the big show of hanging around outside instead of retreating to the quiet comfort of an air-conditioned monster truck. But there’s not much I can help with at the moment, and one thing I’ve learned over the years is to pace myself. If I don’t keep hydrated, if I’m not careful about overheating, if I don’t plan and strategize I won’t be much good to anyone.
The CFC’s mobile command center is the size of a small yacht hitched to a super-duty crew cab, white with the CFC crest and the state seal on the doors. There are no windows in the trailer. But inside it’s lit up and cool, a combination lounge and war room where first responders and other essential personnel can rest, work, teleconference, use computers, and safely store evidence destined for the labs. When I stopped in here the first time it was to drink water, change my clothes, and safeguard the packaged soiled T-shirt by locking it inside an evidence mini-refrigerator.
Now I’m back again, fortifying myself with more water and a protein bar while trying not to fantasize about the dinner I missed at the Faculty Club. I’m hungry and restless as I wait to hear from Lucy. She was pushy about having a discussion with me a while ago when I couldn’t talk. Now that I’m alone with a few minutes to spare, of course I can’t get hold of her. I’ll have to see what I can find out on my own about Elisa Vandersteel, and I sit down at a workstation.
Logging onto the computer, I spend a few minutes searching the name, and it gives me an uneasy feeling when nothing comes up, not a single file returned. I try the surname Vandersteel and Mayfair, London, and have no better luck, which is odd. It’s pretty difficult to avoid any mention on the Internet these days but if my searches can be trusted, it would seem that Elisa Vandersteel doesn’t exist.
She also isn’t on social media, it seems. I can’t find her on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, and that’s extremely unusual for someone young. The woman I noticed taping up recipes at the ART certainly didn’t seem shy or introverted. I also realize that doesn’t mean much. One can be confident and friendly but private, and maybe she’s had issues in the past that cause her to stay below the radar. But the more key words I enter without success, the more wary I get.
I think of the photograph of the UK driver’s license that Investigator Barclay showed me. I remember that the street listed in the Mayfair address was South Audley, not far from the American embassy. But I didn’t pay close attention to the house number. I search what I recall and nothing comes up, and I’m grateful that my routine searches aren’t the final word on Elisa Vandersteel.
I’m not Lucy. I can’t begin to approach her level of technical sophistication, and as soon as we have a private moment I’ll get her to search. I check my phone again, and can tell by the digits displayed in the icons of certain proprietary apps whether anything new has landed. Nothing has that I consider a priority at the moment, and I hope Lucy’s all right. When I think about what’s happened so far today I can easily imagine her state of mind. I have a very good idea what she’s thinking.
Or better put, who’s shadowing her thoughts, gaining on her
in leaps and bounds right about now, and it’s depressing. It’s a falling off the wagon of sorts because an enemy, a nemesis will become an addiction if one’s not careful. Lucy isn’t and never has been. She can’t be. It’s too personal for her. She’s going to get worked up and paranoid in a way that Marino, Benton and I never have and won’t when it comes to a certain human virus who infected her decades ago.
I decide I may as well head back out into the elements to see how we’re coming along with the canopied barrier, which has been trickier than we anticipated. Spray-painting the footprint has been a frustration and a headache because we can’t turn on the auxiliary lights without exposing the entire scene to anyone who might be watching and ready with cameras. It’s very dark despite the multiple flashlights poking and prodding. The terrain is uneven, and there are tall hedges, benches and lampposts in the way.
The first attempt wasn’t working so we had to stop, and trying again has proven a worse mess than imagined. First Marino’s bright orange outline had to be painted over in black, then the area was measured again and reconfigured as we made sure we weren’t going to be setting the tent on top of evidence. The second attempt wasn’t much better, and as I’m thinking this I’m well aware that Marino, Rusty and Harold are still at it and will be for a while longer.
It’s become quite the engineering challenge to enclose the bicycle, the body, and as many personal effects as possible while avoiding bushes and trees, and causing any potential damage to the scene. But if they don’t manage to get the tent pitched fairly soon, I’m going to have to improvise. This has gone on too long already. It’s not according to plan, and someone’s going to say something. Probably Tom Barclay.
Marino wouldn’t allow him to accompany the twins to the police station, and the cocky and annoying investigator is still here, trying to watch everything I do while pretending he’s not. Maybe he’s hoping to learn something that might make him better at his job. Maybe he’s waiting for me to screw up.