But most likely he’s simply behaving in character—a magpie carrying every glittery bit of gossip back to his nest. Information is his currency, and while he may not mean any harm, people like him are dangerous.
I GET UP FROM a chair bolted to the stainless-steel diamond-plate floor, and the mirror-polished metal is cold beneath my bare feet.
I was able to ditch my silk blouse, my skirt and suit jacket for a pair of teal-green scrubs but sadly I’m stuck with my scuffed clammy pumps. Storage bins in here include scene gear for all conditions except the Sahara Desert, which is what it feels like in Cambridge of late. But in general the CFC isn’t prepared for unrelenting extreme heat because it almost never happens in New England.
I can’t exactly trade my uncomfortable shoes for what’s available, which are rubber hip waders and waterproof fire boots, one size fits all. Opening a cabinet, I find a fresh pair of shoe covers with grip soles. I step back into my damp pumps, and the thin leather linings have become unglued and feel slimy against the bare soles of my feet. I pull on the booties but I won’t bother with coveralls or gloves yet. I check my phone again, and still nothing.
I’ve let Lucy know that I need her help, but I haven’t said why. I’m not about to immortalize my suspicions in writing or voice mails no matter how safe I’m told my communications are. Especially when my phone has been acting up the way it has, and Lucy is even more careful about leaving an electronic trail than I am. I wonder what she’s doing. I wonder if she’s working in her lab or the Personal Immersion Theater, the PIT.
Or maybe she’s with Janet and Desi, and as I envision the three of them I think what an extraordinary family they’ve become. Janet is an environmental attorney. She’s former FBI, and her history with Lucy includes college and Quantico. They practically grew up together, and I couldn’t ask for a better partner for my niece. I would choose Janet time and time again were it up to me. She’s humane, smart and gentle—as was her sister Natalie, who died a year ago this past summer.
Janet and Lucy have created an ideal home for Desi, all of us an extended family, a supportive and protective matrix. He would be an orphan otherwise, and what a loss that would be. Such an irresistible lovely boy, the incarnate Christopher Robin, my sister says, his blue eyes mesmerizing, his mop of light brown hair streaked blond by the sun.
Nine now, Desi is growing up fast, all legs and arms, and his face has become more angular. He’s nimble, fearless and scary smart, and I’ve begun to tease Lucy that at last she’s met her match. Who wouldn’t want to be part of a family unit like that? And I’m unpleasantly reminded of what Benton said before our dinner was interrupted.
He suggested that Dorothy and Marino might have more than a playful flirtation going on. Now she’s on her way here when she’s never bothered once the entire time I’ve lived and worked in the northeast. Marino has bonded with Desi, taking him fishing, teaching him how to play baseball, giving him his first taste of beer, and the track my thoughts are running along is too unpleasant to dwell on.
It’s distasteful if not enraging to imagine Dorothy with Desi. My selfish sister who couldn’t be bothered with Lucy. My male-addicted only sibling who always forgot about her daughter the instant the newest suitor was at the door. And now all I hear from Dorothy is Desi this and Desi that, as if there’s nothing she adores more than to nurture and attend to a child, especially a male child. It’s obscene. It’s the height of hypocrisy, and then I can’t bear to think about it anymore. I blank it out.
Dorothy should be landing at Logan fairly soon, assuming her plane hasn’t been further delayed. Lucy, Janet and Desi are probably picking her up, and that’s why Lucy isn’t getting back to me, I tell myself. She’s busy driving one of her demanding supercars or tricked-out armor-clad SUVs. But who knows what anybody is doing, including my husband. I have no idea what Benton’s phone call from Washington, D.C., was about. I haven’t a clue where he is.
It’s surreal that our dinner date has come to this, and then I click on the phone app for the security cameras we use to monitor the dogs. Sock and Tesla were in the living room a while ago. Now they’re sleeping in their memory-foam bed in the kitchen, and I back up the recording to when Page the dog sitter is walking in. Obviously Benton has let her know something has come up and we’re not certain when we’ll be home.
Clearly she’s staying over, in pajama bottoms and a T-shirt, barefoot, no bra, and I don’t like it when she’s in the downstairs guest room. I don’t want to say such a thing out loud but it’s true and probably means I’m a selfish person. I sincerely dislike having anyone in our house but there’s no choice now that Tesla is in the mix. She needs training, socializing, and she shouldn’t be left without human companionship for long periods of time.
I watch Page filling the dog bowls with filtered water she pours from a pitcher. A friend of Lucy and Janet’s, she’s imposing, her upper-body strength from competitive swimming impressive, almost unbelievable for a female. It’s entered my mind that she might take steroids because I can’t quite believe her bulk is solely from long hours in the gym or some earlier stint in the Navy when she was accepted into the Basic Underwater Demolition or BUD training program for SEALs.
Tall with curly dark hair, all brawn, Page is the gentle giant with dogs, kind but in control. She couldn’t be more thoughtful or attentive toward an aging greyhound rescued from the racetrack or an English-bulldog puppy once abused by children and abandoned.
“Who’s gonna potty and then get a beddy-bye treat?” Page asks Tesla and Sock.
I hear their nails click furiously as they run to the back door.
WALKING THROUGH AN AIR-CONDITIONED cloud of LED light, I pause in the galley with its coffeemaker, small refrigerator, microwave and laminated white countertops.
Tossing empty water bottles into the recyclable trash, I look around at the workstations, equipment cases, forensic instruments, and multidrawer cabinets of tools and other supplies. I make sure there’s nothing else I need for what I’m about to do. I don’t think there is. And Harold and Rusty know the drill. On my way here I gave them my scene case and other necessities. They will have everything set up under the tent by the time I get there, and everything will be as it should.
But I’m restless and my mood is tense, my thoughts burdened. When I think of the second time I encountered the woman who I now believe is dead and about to become my patient, she literally rode off into the sunset. I don’t know where she went after that or when she finally entered the park, but it was completely dark by seven thirty.
Supposing she was killed around that time, it means that for the better part of two hours her body has been left out in the middle of a public park surrounded by Harvard student housing and other populated buildings. In an ideal situation I would have gotten her out of here a good hour ago.
This is taking too long but it’s not surprising. Things rarely go as quickly as we’d like, and in a difficult death investigation it’s the rule rather than the exception that very little goes as planned. But the world is less forgiving than it used to be, and already I’m preparing for criticism.
Someone will decide I didn’t show proper respect, that I carelessly left a dead body exposed for all to see. I’m callous and uncaring. Or I’m negligent. I’ll read about it in a blog or hear about it on YouTube. I always do.
CHAPTER 21
I SCROLL THROUGH THE LATEST news feeds, and so far so good.
There’s no mention of the police or personnel from my office working a bicycle accident, an assault or anything else at the edge of the Harvard campus. I see nothing about a dead body in a Cambridge park or even the most vague allusion to the developing situation on the waterfront that the alleged Interpol investigator mentioned to Marino.
I come across nothing I consider a cause for concern except what Benton told me earlier about the elevated terror advisory. I skim an online article in the Washington Post about the bulletin published earlier today:
… The Secretary of Homeland S
ecurity has issued a National Terrorism Threat Advisory alert due to an imminent threat against transportation hubs, tourist hot spots, and the sites of major public events such as sporting competitions and concerts. Of specific concern are possible planned attacks in Washington, D.C., Boston and their neighboring communities. This is based on detailed chatter U.S. intelligence has intercepted on the Internet suggesting these potential targets, and that self-radicalized homegrown actor(s) could strike with little or no notice …
When the status has gone from elevated to imminent the threat is considered credible and impending, and that makes me wonder about airport security. It will have been beefed up—especially in Boston. That may be why my sister’s plane was delayed. It could explain why the TSA was overwhelmed in Fort Lauderdale, the line of passengers out the terminal and on the sidewalk “unless you’re first class like me,” as my sister informed Lucy, who then passed it along to the rest of us.
I don’t have any updates directly from Dorothy. She can’t be bothered to tell me she’s running late or that she’s on the plane. I had to get the information secondhand, and even so I don’t know what to expect. I guess it really doesn’t matter since I’m not the one picking her up anyway, and I feel a twinge I recognize as disappointment with a sprinkle of hurt for good measure.
A part of me expects more of my only sister. I always have, and for me to feel that way after all I’ve been through with her is not only baseless it’s irrational. It’s time to get over it. Dorothy has always been exactly who she is, and for me to hope for anything better reminds me of a quote attributed to Einstein: Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
Dorothy is predictable. She does the same thing repeatedly and expects not a different result but the same one she got the last time she did whatever she wants with little regard for anyone else. So maybe she’s the sane one, I think ruefully, and as I go through my messages and alerts I’m surprised that General John Briggs just tried to get hold of me. For some reason I missed a call from his home phone minutes ago.
I have a special ring tone for all of his numbers, and I make sure my ringer is turned on. It is. But it was silent, and I don’t know why because our electronic communications are excellent in here. They have to be. Lucy makes sure of it in all of our vehicles, utilizing range extenders, boosters, repeaters or whatever it takes. And I’m seriously beginning to wonder if there’s something wrong with my smartphone. It isn’t one you can buy in a store or online, is virtually hack-proof according to Lucy. But maybe she’s wrong. It depends on who’s doing the hacking.
She’s constantly developing special apps and encryption software that aren’t available on the open market, doing everything possible to make sure our computers, radios, phones and other devices are as secure as anything can be in this day and age. But nothing is infallible. I touch the PLAY arrow, expecting to hear the voice of the chief of the Armed Forces Medical Examiners, the head of U.S. medical intelligence, my friend and former mentor Briggs.
But it’s his wife who tried to reach me, and I know instantly that her news won’t be good. A classic military spouse from an earlier more traditional era, Ruthie has devoted her life to her formidable husband, moving with him whenever his newest orders have come in, running interference and enabling him while she prays he doesn’t get hurt, kidnapped or killed in the destabilized war-ravaged hellholes he frequents.
Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Turkey, Cameroon, Yemen, and she’s never really sure. Often she’s not told but lives the anguish of knowing that whenever he boards a military transport jet or lands on an aircraft carrier she may never see him again. Her life has been Briggs and nothing but Briggs, and if she doesn’t want someone to access him, that person won’t, including me. Depending on what’s at stake, if he doesn’t want to deal with me directly, it’s Ruthie I hear from.
So I’m accustomed to her mediation, her triangulation, and now and then it tests my patience. But she sounds unusually raw and emotional in the message she’s just left, and I can’t tell if she’s been crying, drinking, is sick or maybe all of the above. I play the voice mail again. Then again, pausing at intervals, listening carefully, trying to determine if something is wrong with her or if she’s simply feeling bad about the reason she’s calling. I’m pretty sure I know what it is. I’ve been expecting it.
“Kay? It’s Ruthie Briggs,” she begins in her slow Virginia drawl, and she sounds tired and congested. “I’m hoping you’ll pick up. Are you there?” she says stuffily. “Hello, Kay?” She clears her throat. “Are you there? I know how busy you are but please pick up. Well when you get this please call me. I want to make sure you’ve been told …”
But her voice is muffled, and then it’s as if she’s swallowed her words and I can scarcely hear her. It occurs to me that she might be holding something, perhaps tissues in front of her face, and that she’s turning away from the phone as she speaks.
“For the next little while I’m at this number, then … Well as you can imagine there’s a lot to do, and I just can’t believe …” Her voice quavers. “… Well please call me as soon as you can.” In her befuddlement she leaves her phone number as if I don’t have it.
And the voice mail abruptly ends.
IF WHAT I SUSPECT has come to pass, there’s no reason for Ruthie to be upset. It couldn’t be helped, and at least the cancellation isn’t as last minute as it could have been.
All along I’ve been primed for getting a call literally right before Briggs and I are supposed to be onstage at the Kennedy School. At least I’ve been given almost twenty-four hours’ notice, and it’s not like I haven’t been warned repeatedly. He’s told me from day one that he might not be able to appear with me tomorrow night. It all depends on the mood at the Pentagon and NASA, he’s said, and he’s apologized in advance for what’s probably just happened.
Most likely Ruthie tried to reach me to tell me I’m on my own tomorrow night. Briggs won’t be on the panel with me. So it’s not really a panel anymore because that leaves me alone onstage. But I’ll manage, and it occurs to me that were I to step outside the mobile command center I could see the imposing red-brick complex from here, tucked behind trees.
The Kennedy School backs up to the park, and I can’t help but think about how everything seems weirdly linked and familiar. It’s as if I’m traversing a landscape that’s turned out to be an intricate maze, and I don’t know how big it is, what it connects or how to get out.
I’m not going to learn anything further about why Briggs has had to cancel until I talk to him, assuming I can reach him. He also could have been deployed somewhere, and I know how much he hates to let anyone down, especially me. Big Army man that he is, he’ll duck a confrontation if it includes being the bearer of bad news. I redial his and Ruthie’s home number. No one answers, and I hear a peculiar clicking on the line.
“Ruthie, it’s Kay. I’m sorry I missed you,” I leave her a voice mail, and now I’m hearing an echo as if two of me are talking on top of each other. “For some reason my phone didn’t ring. I’m working an outdoor scene and may be in spots where the signal is bad or I can’t answer. But please keep trying me.”
Then I send a text to Harold and Rusty, making sure that one of our transport vans is on the way. It may have to wait awhile but let’s go ahead and get it here, I tell them.
10-4, Boss. Moving slow. Unavoidable. Stay cool ALAP, which is Rusty speak for as long as possible, and he includes a frowning, red-faced emoji.
On the right side of the trailer, beyond the galley, is a deep stairwell that leads outside. My Tyvek-covered shoes thud down the metal steps, and at the bottom I open the door. I emerge outside in the hot night and am blinded by blazing HID headlights. I hear the guttural rumble of a powerful engine. I smell high-octane gasoline exhaust that can’t be coming from the mobile command center’s auxiliary diesel generator. Then everything goes silent and black.
“Hello?” A thrill of fear touches the ro
ots of my hair as I hear the swish of grass, of someone walking fast. “Who is it? Who’s there?”
A lean figure materializes in the night like a ghost rushing toward me.
“AUNT KAY, IT’S ME. Don’t be startled,” Lucy says, but it’s too late.
My adrenaline is out the gate. Flustered, I click on my tactical light then point it down so I don’t blind her. Just as quickly I turn off the bloody thing, feeling foolish, then angry.
“Dammit, Lucy!” My heart is flying, my thoughts scattered like a flock of crazed birds. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.” My pulse pounds. “Jesus. It’s a good thing I don’t have a gun.”
“I don’t know if it’s a good thing. Especially now.”
“I could have shot you. I’m not joking.”
“There’s nothing to joke about, and I wasn’t sneaking.” She’s scanning all around us as if we’re not alone. “I just this second pulled up and saw you walking out. I was coming to find you.”
“Why?” I take a deep slow breath, and the hot air seems to barely fill my lungs.
“I’m glad you’re okay.” She looks at me, then back at the street, and up and around as if we’re about to be attacked.
“What do you mean especially now? What’s going on?” Something is, and she’s in high gear. “Why wouldn’t I be okay?”
“You’ve been leaving me messages,” she says, and I detect the brittleness in her voice, the flinty aggression. “So here I am. Let’s go inside.”
I recognize her mood and probably know what it means. “I didn’t demand we talk in person. I have a simple question, and a phone call would have been fine. I was going to ask you to search a name for me—”
“It’s too hot out here,” she cuts me off, not seeming to listen.
“What’s the matter?”
“I don’t like what’s going on.” Her staring eyes are deep-set shadows, her mouth grim.
“Someone’s dead, and there’s nothing to like about that or a lot of things at the moment.” But I know that’s not what she means.