“Because Lucy and I were trying to see if there’s anything else we could figure out about the bogus nine-one-one call made by someone using voice-changing software,” he says, and that addresses at least some of what I’ve been wondering.
Unsurprisingly, Lucy picked up on the subtle but odd uniformity of what we suspect is an altered voice on the audio clip. She must have said something to Marino and also to Benton.
“She’s in her lab,” Marino says. “Or she was right before I called you.”
“Then what?” I ask him as we speed through the middle of the Harvard campus. “You’re with her at the CFC, and what happened next?”
There are more people out now, on the sidewalks, walking through the Yard. But certainly it’s nothing close to the usual crowds, the typical hustle and bustle of Cambridge, which I’ve always said is a concentrated version of any huge metropolis in the world and all the problems and advantages that go with it.
“Then I get the call from Clay,” Marino says.
“Do I know him?”
“Tom Barclay.”
“The investigator?”
“Yeah.”
“I see,” I reply, and this changes things.
I look out the windows, and the park and the river are just minutes ahead. I can see the brick Widener Library with its teal cupola, and the stone slate-roofed department of linguistics. I’m surprised and unsettled by what Marino just told me. If Tom Barclay was the source of the information, that’s unfortunate.
“I see,” I again say. “So it wasn’t a patrol officer who was the first responder.”
“Nope. It was Clay,” Marino answers, and Clay, or Investigator Barclay as I know him, recently was transferred from property crimes to the major case unit.
I haven’t really worked with him directly but one of my medical examiners had a case with him earlier in the week and complained about him. Barclay is much too sure of himself and doesn’t know when to shut up. He may have attended the crime-scene academy but that doesn’t give him the expertise to identify and interpret artifacts such as rigor and livor mortis, and other changes that occur after death. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing when you’re cocky.
“The detail about rigor is perplexing and troublesome,” I tell Marino over the thunder of his driving like a rocket. “He’s been around dead bodies before.”
“Not many.”
“But some. And he should recognize certain obvious postmortem changes,” I add, “and hopefully not confuse or misrepresent them. But it would seem like a strange mistake to make if he’s stated for the record that she’s already going into rigor when in fact she’s not. And he shouldn’t be stating anything to you that you in turn pass on to me. All of it constitutes a paper trail, a record that we might wish we didn’t have.”
I emphasize for the record because Marino’s relaying to me what Investigator Barclay reported could become problematic if it’s documented or circulated. The dead woman and any associated biological evidence are my legal jurisdiction, meaning I’m present in an official capacity.
I’m not here as Marino’s mother, wife, friend, partner, mentor or pal, and very little is private anymore. Unfortunately, any information we exchange doesn’t constitute some sort of legally protected small talk. We can get asked anything when we’re under oath.
“Clay’s new. He’s never worked a homicide, and he thinks he’s a genius. Beyond that what can I tell you?” Marino replies. “I guess we’ll see for ourselves, but he said she was stiff. He touched her and she felt as stiff as a mannequin. That’s what he told me.”
“If he wasn’t sure or didn’t know, I wish he hadn’t said it.” This is disappointing and may come back to bite us. “It’s worse because it’s a detective saying it.”
“I know,” Marino says. “That’s why I’m always telling him and everyone else to think before you open your damn pie hole and be careful what you write, e-mail and post on freakin’ Facebook.”
At Harvard Square, the SUV’s strobing red and blue lights bounce off street signs and are reflected in the windows of buildings and cars we pass. I remind him of Interpol, steering him there.
“Why were you called?” I want to know.
“The million-dollar question.”
“And when was this?”
“Let me roll back the tape so you can appreciate the timing,” Marino says. “First I get the call from Clay. I tell Lucy I gotta go and am heading downstairs—”
“You were actually with her in her lab when Investigator Barclay called you?” I ask, and Marino nods, explaining he’d just gotten there and they were getting started going over the 911 recording.
“Then my phone rings and it’s Barclay. He says he’s at a homicide scene in JFK Park on the riverbank.”
“Did he actually use the word homicide?” I ask. “Because I wish he hadn’t said that either.”
“He said it looked like an attempted sexual assault, and that she was beaten to death.”
“I don’t know why you bothered to pick me up.” Cops like Barclay can create dangerous problems. “It appears he’s happy to do my job.” I’m going to have to have a word with him before the night is over. “Why did I bother interrupting my dinner?”
“Yeah he pisses me off too,” Marino says. “You got no idea. Talk about someone who doesn’t look before he leaps. It never occurs to him that maybe he’s not a damn expert at whatever it is.”
“I hope he’s not freely offering these same opinions to everyone he talks to,” I add, “because this is how misinformation ends up all over the place. Let’s get back to Interpol. Tell me about the phone call.”
“Like I was saying, Clay asked me to meet him at the scene. Then he wanted to know if he should contact your office, and I said I would take care of it. By the time I’d walked out of Lucy’s lab, taken the elevator down to the lower level and was getting in my car in the parking lot, my phone was ringing again,” Marino tells the story loudly, over the noise of the engine.
“This time the call’s from an unknown number. You know, when a call comes up with a row of zeros? Like when caller ID is blocked and it’s not somebody in your contacts list?” he says. “So I answered, and it was Washington, D.C.”
CHAPTER 11
IT WAS INTERPOL,” MARINO states as if there can be no doubt about it.
I ask him how he could be so sure. “You said the number was blocked. So I’m not clear on how you knew who was calling,” I add, and other drivers are moving out of our way.
“The person identified himself as an investigator from their Washington bureau, the NCB, and said he was trying to reach Investigator Peter Rocco Marino of the Cambridge Police Department.”
Interpol’s United States headquarters, the National Central Bureau (NCB), reports directly to the attorney general. And neither the NCB nor Interpol’s global headquarters in France would be interested in any U.S. case unless there’s reason to suspect criminal activity that extends beyond our national borders. That thought brings me back to the cyclist with the British accent, and I hope she’s not dead.
I envision her blue helmet with the unbuckled chin strap, and I should have said something. I should have told her to fasten it.
“I asked the NCB guy what he was calling in reference to, and he said he was aware of the developing situation in the park on the waterfront,” Marino explains.
“Those were his exact words? The developing situation?” Now I’m really baffled.
“I swear to God. And I’m thinking, What the hell? What situation could he know about? How could he know there’s a body in the park by the water here in Cambridge?”
“I don’t understand …” I start to say.
“I asked how he could be aware of any situation period around here,” Marino talks over me. “What was his source? And he said that was classified.”
“I don’t understand,” I repeat myself. “How is it possible that Interpol’s call to you was in reference to Elisa Vandersteel,
assuming that’s who’s dead?” It’s completely illogical. “Was her name mentioned?”
“No, but he was talking about a sudden death. That was how he phrased it, a sudden death that had international consequences, which is why Interpol is involved,” Marino says.
“Elisa Vandersteel would have international consequences,” I reply, “since she’s not American. Once again, that’s assuming the driver’s license is the dead woman’s.”
“It felt like that was the situation he was referencing. That he somehow knew about it.”
“Tell me how it’s possible? I’ve never heard of something like this happening,” I reply. “The local media hasn’t even caught wind of it yet. Is there something on the Internet I’ve not been told about? How could Interpol know about a death before you’ve been to the scene or called the medical examiner?”
“I asked Lucy if anything had been tweeted or whatever,” he says. “I called her right after I hung up from talking to the Interpol investigator. Nothing’s out there about the Vandersteel case that we know of. Assuming that’s who she is. But you’re right. It seems Interpol knew before either of us did, and I don’t understand that either.”
Marino’s portable radio is charging upright in the console, and it hasn’t escaped my notice that there’s very little chatter. In fact it’s so quiet I forget the radio is in the car until I notice it. I’ve heard nothing go over the air that might alert anyone about the dead body awaiting us at the park.
“But how would Interpol investigators or analysts know about a body found in a Cambridge park near the water in the past thirty-some-odd minutes?” I ask. “I’m sorry, something’s off about this, Marino. And it’s not the way the process works. Local law enforcement requests assistance because there might be an international interest—”
He interrupts, “I know how it’s supposed to work. You think this is my first friggin’ rodeo?”
“I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of Interpol initiating contact about a homicide scarcely anyone knows about yet,” I emphasize. “We don’t know she’s a homicide for that matter. We also haven’t verified the victim’s identity. We don’t know a damn thing.”
“All I can tell you is the investigator who called said he was from their counterterrorism division. He said he understood we have a situation,” Marino uses that word again. “A death with international consequences, and I got the feeling he was thinking about terrorism, based on the words he used. I sure as hell wish I had a recording of what he said.”
“And where did the information come from?” I’m going to keep pounding that drum. “Just because a British driver’s license was found on a bike path? And how would he even know about that unless Barclay told him? This is absurd.”
“When I asked him how the hell he could know about anything going on in Cambridge, and why he was calling me directly, he said they’d received e-mailed information that listed my name and number as the contact.” Marino stares straight ahead, and he must be thinking the same thing I am, but he won’t want to admit it.
“Interpol doesn’t work that way.” I’m not going to back down because this is something I know about, and Marino has been duped. “And they don’t hire psychics with crystal balls who can predict cases before the rest of us know about them, last I heard.” I instantly regret saying this because he’ll take it as a slight directed at him, when it’s not. “It’s implausible if not impossible that they could know about a scene and a dead body we’ve not so much as looked at yet.”
“Well I’m not the one who’s pals with the secretary-general,” Marino replies with a sarcastic snap. “Maybe you should call him up and ask him how the hell they found out so damn fast.”
I’ve been to Interpol’s headquarters in Lyon, France, numerous times, and am on friendly terms with the secretary-general Tom Perry, who’s actually American, a Rhodes scholar, a former head of the National Institute of Justice, and a bona fide Renaissance man.
“If need be I will,” I reply reasonably, ignoring Marino’s sting, careful of my tone because I don’t want to argue with him. “How was it left?” I ask.
“The investigator said the Washington headquarters, the NCB, was contacted but didn’t say by who. He said it was protected information, the same shit I use as an excuse all the time. So I didn’t think much about it,” Marino explains, but I can tell he’s thinking about it now.
“This is sounding too much like the nine-one-one complaint,” I reply, in hopes he’ll make the same connections I am.
I’d rather he draw his own conclusion so he doesn’t kill the messenger.
“Yeah, and the guy coughed.”
“Who did?”
“The Interpol guy coughed several times and I remember wondering if he had a cold. And now that I’m thinking about it, the person who left the bogus nine-one-one coughed too.”
Marino has a hard edge to his glumness, and his face is deep red.
“I’m beginning to think that whoever murdered Elisa Vandersteel has anonymously reported his own damn case to Interpol because he wants the entire damn planet to know about it,” he then says above the noise of his car, and I can see his pulse pounding in his neck. “And God only knows who else has been contacted.”
That may be Marino’s biggest worry. But it’s not mine.
THE ANGRIER HE IS the calmer I get.
“There had to be a source,” I persist anyway, because I deal with international cases far more often than Marino does, and I know the routines and the protocols. “Did a police officer contact Interpol? In other words did another cop contact the NCB in Washington about the Cambridge case? Because that shouldn’t be classified.”
“Got no idea who the source was but somebody sure as hell told somebody something,” he almost yells over the roar of his engine. “Hell no, Barclay didn’t, though. He wouldn’t without clearing it with me. He wouldn’t even think of it.”
“Interpol’s very careful who it talks to. You have to be authenticated and verified.” I gently lead him closer to what will most assuredly be an unpalatable truth.
“I don’t think it was a phone call. It sounds like they got an e-mail,” Marino says, and the ugliness he’s about to face is going to enrage him.
I look at his profile inside the dark SUV, at the big dome of his bald head, his strong nose, and the hard set of his heavy mandible.
“I do know that e-mail is the quickest and simplest way to report something to them,” he’s saying. “The forms and everything are right there on the Internet. They’ve got it all on a website. It’s easy but it’s also going to be monitored and traceable.”
“So we certainly would expect that the Washington office of Interpol, the NCB, would know if an e-mailed tip was bogus,” I say pointedly. “In other words, the NCB should know if it weren’t from a real member of the law enforcement community or someone else in an authorized position to report an incident or a threat.” I know what I’m suspicious of, and Marino doesn’t like the tack I’m taking.
“You sure as hell would think so,” he says with a hint of defensiveness, which is what I expect because he should know what’s coming.
He should have figured it out before I did, but it’s an unpleasant truth. And those take longer. They’re harder to swallow.
“And it also could be that Interpol hasn’t been contacted by anyone legitimately,” I suggest. “And that you weren’t either,” I add, and he acts as if he didn’t hear me.
“You would think the investigator who called me could have helped out a little by saying they weren’t sure the tip was credible, that maybe some whack-a-do is jerking everybody around.” Now Marino sounds personally offended, and he continues to ignore what I just said. “But I took what I was told at face value.”
“Are you absolutely certain it was an Interpol investigator who called you?” I begin to confront Marino with what I suspect, and he’s silent.
To borrow his colorful and bewildering vernacular, this is the real piece of cake,
the poison in the ink, the snake under the tent, and the elephant in the woodpile. I’m asking him who he was really talking to, because all the signs point at his having been played for a fool. Or at least that’s exactly how it’s going to feel to him.
“I’m wondering what made you believe it was Interpol on the phone besides what the person claimed?” I try that approach next, and I can feel Marino getting stubborn like concrete setting.
Then he says, “I guess the only way I’m going to know is if I try to call the asshole back.”
He picks up his cell phone from his lap. He unlocks it and reluctantly hands it to me as if he’s turning over evidence that will get him into a world of trouble.
“Open it to my notepad,” Marino says with his unblinking eyes fixed on the road, “and you’ll see the number. Just click on the app and you can see where I typed what he gave me.”
“Why? So you could call him back and report what we’re about to find?”
“Hell if I know. He just gave me a number and said to update him, that we’d touch base tomorrow,” Marino says, and this is sounding only more like a taunt, a hoax, with every second that passes.
Throughout my career I’ve worked closely with Interpol. We’ve always enjoyed a close relationship because when it comes to death and violence the world is a small place. It gets smaller all the time, and it’s increasingly common for me to deal with color-coded international notices about fugitives and people who have vanished or turn up dead and nameless in the United States.
I also deal with Americans who die abroad, and now and then a decedent turns out to be undercover law enforcement or a spy. I know how to dance the dance with the Department of Justice, the Pentagon, the CIA, the United Nations Security Council and various international police agencies and criminal tribunals. I can honestly say that what Marino is describing to me isn’t at all the way the process works.
“Then you want me to call this?” I look at what he typed in an electronic note, a phone number with a Washington, D.C., area code.
“Why not?” he says, and he’s like a pressure cooker about to blow.