“Especially when I’m alone.” He knows that about me, for God’s sake.
“And you started getting this weird feeling after Benton left for D.C.?”
“Not as long ago as that. He’s been gone for about a month, right after the second and third murders happened. I don’t think I noticed anything unusual as long ago as that.” He’s fishing to see if Benton’s cases have spooked me, abductions and murders Marino knows nothing about except what little has been reported in the news.
“Okay. When exactly did you start feeling weird?”
“Since I got back from Connecticut. Saturday night is when I first had the feeling.” My wallet, keys, credentials, badge, flashlight go inside the bag, which hugs my hip when I slip the strap over my shoulder.
Marino watches me, and I know what he’s concluded. What I went through over the weekend was traumatic and I’m paranoid, and, more to the point, I don’t feel as safe as I did when he worked for me. He wants to believe I feel his absence deeply, that life’s not as settled as it was, and it isn’t. I open a cabinet above the sink.
“Well, that’s understandable,” he says.
“What I’ve sensed has nothing to do with that, I promise.” I set a can of Sock’s food and a pair of gray nitrile examination gloves on the counter.
“Really? You want to tell me why you suddenly think it’s necessary to wear a gun to a crime scene? One you’re going to with me?” He continues to push because he wants to believe I’m scared.
Most of all he wants to believe I need him.
“You don’t even like guns,” he then says.
“It’s not a matter of what I like.” I talk to the rhythm of the can opener cutting through metal. “I also don’t happen to think that guns are something one should have feelings for. Love, hate, like, or dislike should be reserved for people, pets, food. Not firearms.”
“Since when do you wear one or even bother taking the trigger lock off?”
“How would you know what I bother with? You’re not around me most of the time and not at all lately.” I empty the can into Sock’s bowl as he waits by his mat, his pointed face looking at me.
“Well, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I don’t work for you anymore and all of a sudden you arm yourself everywhere.”
“I don’t arm myself everywhere but certainly when I’m in and out of the house all hours of the night, here alone,” I reply.
Marino gulps down the last of the fizzy water and quietly belches.
“It’s the oldest trick in the book to wait until someone disarms the alarm and goes out with the dog.” I feed Sock with my gloved hand, meatballs of grain-free whitefish and herring, making sure he doesn’t eat too fast and aspirate food.
My rescued companion is prone to pneumonia. Eating too fast is left over from early years at the racetrack when he wasn’t always fed.
“You really don’t think I’d do that unarmed,” I say reasonably as I return to the entryway.
Marino places his glass in the sink and follows me, our coats dripping slowly on the floor.
“How many cases have we seen where the stalker knows his intended victim has a dog and starts watching for patterns?” I remind him, and maybe I want to make him feel bad.
He walked off the job. He didn’t bother to share his news. Since I’ve been sick he’s not called once to check on me. I set the alarm and hurry us out of the house while Sock is preoccupied with a sweet-potato treat. A second one is in my pocket and Quincy knows it, he always does. He tugs after me down the steps and along the walkway.
The rain is letting up, and it’s unseasonably warm, in the low fifties, and it wouldn’t seem possible that we’re less than a week away from Christmas, were it not for the tasteful wreaths on doors, the red ribbons and bows on lampposts. We’ve not had a hard freeze yet, the weather temperate for December and overcast, but it won’t last. This weekend it’s supposed to snow.
“At least I don’t have to worry about you handling a gun safely.” Marino helps Quincy into his crate and latches the door. “Since I’m the one who taught you how to shoot.”
Quincy sits on his fleece pad and stares intently at me with bright brown eyes.
“I don’t want to mess up his training,” I say wryly as I produce the sweet-potato treat.
“It’s a little late now,” Marino says as if his dog’s complete lack of discipline must be my fault like everything else.
Quincy pokes his nose through the wire siding. I can hear him chewing as I settle into the front seat.
Marino starts the engine and reaches for his portable radio. He contacts the dispatcher and requests that any units in the area be on the lookout for a young white male who might be casing properties on the northern edge of Harvard, last seen running toward the Academy of Arts and Sciences. Car 13 immediately answers that he’s a few blocks south, near the Divinity School.
“Any further description?” car 13 asks.
“Bareheaded, possibly rather slight, possibly a juvenile,” I quietly remind Marino. “Possibly on foot.”
“No hat,” he says over the air. “Last seen running toward the woods in the direction of Beacon.”
7
Marino’s unmarked SUV is fully loaded with a scanner, radio, siren, and grille lights. Storage boxes and drawers keep equipment organized and out of sight, the dark fabric upholstery and carpet spotlessly clean. I feel his pride in his “ride,” as he used to refer to his Crown Vic during his Richmond days.
“It looks quite new and in very good shape. And a hybrid. You’ve gone green. I’m impressed.” I run my finger over the Armor All — shellacked dash. “Slick as glass. One could ice-skate on it.”
“V-four, two-liter EcoBoost, can you believe it?” he grumbles. “The department just got brand-new twin turbo V-sixes but those are going to the brass. What happens when I’m in a pursuit?”
“You win the prize for a small carbon footprint.” I look out my window for the prowler who was on the other side of the wall behind my house.
“May as well go giddy-up to a turtle. It’s like giving us water pistols so we save on ammo.”
“That’s not exactly analogous.” I can’t help but smile at his silliness, vintage Marino grousing.
“My last car before I left Richmond was a V-eight Interceptor. I could go a hundred and fifty friggin’ miles an hour in that baby.”
“Fortunately I can’t imagine ever needing to go that fast in Cambridge unless you’re an aircraft.” I don’t see anybody out at all.
For several minutes we don’t pass a single car as I wonder why someone might be spying on me, possibly since I got home from Connecticut. I don’t believe this is about a smash-and-grab. Who is it? What does he want?
“Benton should have come home.” Marino drives the speed limit through the Harvard campus, thirty-five miles an hour, about as fast as anyone needs to go around here. “Sick as hell and all by yourself? Not to mention what you just went through.” He has to bring that up again, and he’ll continue bringing it up.
“Benton couldn’t have helped anything by coming home,” I reply, but it isn’t true.
If someone is casing our house or stalking me it would have been very helpful having him around and I don’t like it when he’s gone. Recent weeks have been long and hard and maybe I shouldn’t have told him I was fine and didn’t need him because it wasn’t true at all. Maybe I should have been selfish.
“You shouldn’t have been left alone. I wish I’d known what was going on with you.”
Marino would have known had he bothered to ask, and I look out my window at Harvard’s brick-and-glass art museum flowing past. The Harvard Faculty Club is dressed for the holidays, and the Houghton and Lamont Libraries are formidable brick shapes behind old trees inside the Harvard Yard. Tires sizzle over wet pavement. Quincy quietly snores in back, asleep in his crate, and Marino’s police radio is busy.