“What makes you think I’d be talking to her?”
“You used to work for her.”
Marino hesitates, glancing over at me.
I shake my head. I’ve not said anything to her. I don’t know why she would be aware that Marino used to work for me. His recent departure from the CFC hasn’t been in the news. It’s a detail not generally known or even of interest.
“Has Gail been threatened by anyone involved in your case?” Marino asks. “Anyone in particular we might want to be looking at?”
“The trial starts in less than two weeks. Connect the dots, Detective Marino. This can’t be a coincidence. Do you think it’s her? The body found at MIT? It sounds like that’s what you’re thinking.”
“To be honest, it’s not looking good.”
“Oh God. Dear God.”
“If the worst turns out to be true, would that be enough to stop the trial?” Marino asks. “I’m looking for a motive here if we confirm and we’ve definitely not done that yet.”
“It would be all the more reason to go forward. The evil bastards.” Her voice trembles. “But the answer is yes about the motive.” She struggles to steady herself, clearing her throat. “You have no idea what these people are like or their connections, about as far up as it goes, I suspect. That’s as much as I’m saying over my phone, which is probably tapped, and not long ago someone tried to hack into my firm’s computer. That’s all I’m saying but it should be enough.”
“If you think of anything we need to know right away, you got my number.” Marino doesn’t want to hear anything else. Not over the phone. Not when there seems to be a suggestion of organized crime or political corruption or possibly both.
9
The portable light tower I saw on the news illuminates a muddy red infield where a yellow tarp is staked down by blaze-orange crime scene flags that flutter in the wind. The body is protected from the elements and the curious, the scene secured by Sil Machado and two uniformed officers. They restlessly pace, waiting for me.
“You got any idea why she’d want to talk to you?” Marino asks me about what Carin Hegel just said.
“Probably for the same reason other people do,” I reply. “But beyond the obvious questions I’m always asked? No, except I ran into her at the federal courthouse last month and she alluded to a case she has that involves very bad people. Thugs, she called them, and I got the impression she was worried about her safety. So I’m assuming that might be what she was just referring to. It’s possible she’s done a lot of digging and has discovered that Double S is involved in a number of unsavory things.”
“What does she expect you to do about it?”
“People vent. They know they can say anything to me.”
“Crooks. I pretty much can’t stand rich people anymore.”
“Lucy’s okay. And Benton. Not everybody who’s wealthy is bad.”
“At least Lucy earned what she’s got.” Marino has to get in a dig about Benton’s old family money.
“I have no idea how she could have found out you don’t work for me anymore.”
“Obviously someone told her.”
“I can’t imagine why it would be a topic of conversation.”
“Someone with Cambridge PD might have said something to her,” Marino says. “Or someone at the CFC.”
“I can’t imagine why,” I repeat.
On the other side of the fenced-in fields and across Vassar Street, the dormitory called Simmons Hall is a massive aluminum-clad construction of cubed solids and voids that shines like a silvery space station. I note two more uniformed officers on the sidewalk in front of it, and a jogger not slowing his pace while a bicyclist in reflective clothing disappears toward the football stadium.
“Sounds to me like she’s got good reason to worry Gail’s been murdered,” Marino then says.
“She very well may be worrying exactly that. And she may have good reason, considering the details she’d know about Double S.”
“In other words, what Carin Hegel’s really worried about is herself, worried about her case. A case she’s making a fortune from,” Marino says cynically. “Did I tell you how much I hate lawyers?”
“It will be getting light in about an hour.” I’m not interested in hearing another diatribe about litigation lawyers, or “bottom feeders,” as Marino calls them. “We need to get the body out of here soon.”
I watch the jogger, a distant figure in black, barely visible. For some reason he’s caught my eye, graceful and lean and light on his feet in running tights, a small person, possibly a young student. MIT gets them before they’re old enough to leave home, fourteen or fifteen and stunningly gifted. He jogs through a parking lot and is swallowed by the darkness in the direction of Albany Street.
“Dumping a body in the wide open for all the world to see under normal circumstances. But this isn’t exactly Normalville.” Marino looks around as he drives slowly. “He probably came down this same alley unless he accessed the area from the other side, from Vassar Street, which would have put him practically on top of the MIT Police Department in order to get back here. Those are the only two ways if you’re driving. And he had to have a vehicle to transport her unless he carried her out of one of the dorms or apartment buildings. Whatever he did, he dumped her right in the middle of everything. Crazy as shit.”
“Not crazy but deliberate,” I reply. “He was surrounded by an audience of people who don’t look.”
“You got that right. And MIT’s even worse than Harvard, a hundred times worse,” Marino says as if he’s an expert in academia. “They have to hand out deodorant and toothpaste in the library because the kids live in there like it’s a homeless shelter, especially this time of year. Final exams week. You get a B, you kill yourself.”
“Your comrades have done a good job being low-key,” I point out, figuring he’ll take credit for that, too. “It’s not obvious what’s going on unless you happen to see news feeds on the Internet.”
“Nothing’s obvious to the Einsteins around here. I’m telling you, they’re not in the same world as you and me.”
“I’m not sure I want them in the same world as you and me.”
We reach a sprawling red brick residential complex called Next House, where garden plots are dead and bare branches reach over the narrow pavement and shiver in the wind. Then the alley takes a hard right past a red steel tetrahedral sculpture, and we drive toward the parking lot, fenced-in and bordered by trees. The security arm has been raised, frozen in the open position.
The only vehicles inside are police cars and one of my CFC windowless vans, white with our crest on the doors, the caduceus and scales of justice in blue. My transport team has arrived. Rusty and Harold see us and climb out of the van’s front seat.
“This is where I’d come in if it was me,” Marino summarizes as we drive in.
“Assuming you had a way to access this parking lot. It’s not open to the public.”
“It is if you drive through over there.”
He indicates the far side of the lot flanking Vassar Street, where a chain-link pedestrian gate is wide open and moving in the wind. A car could fit through easily but it would require driving over the sidewalk and the curb directly across the street from the MIT red brick and blue tile police station.
“If that’s what he did, it was brazen.” Everywhere I look I see fencing, gates, and parking that are off-limits to people who don’t have magnetic swipes and keys.
There is nothing welcoming if you don’t belong here. Like Harvard, MIT is a private, exclusive club, about as private and exclusive as it gets.
“Maybe not all that brazen at two or three o’clock in the morning when it’s pouring rain,” Marino says. “There’s no other way to get in here unless you have a swipe to raise the gate.”