“I’ll walk around, get some photos.” Marino turns on his flashlight and is careful stepping in the muck, sweeping the beam of light over puddles and red mud.
The MIT officer says to me, “I’m pretty sure he didn’t do anything to her out here, just left her so she’d be found really fast.”
I set down my scene case as he continues to offer his opinions, and with his strong jaw and perfect build he’s probably used to commanding attention. I remember him well from a case several weeks ago. An MIT freshman died suddenly and unexpectedly during wrestling practice.
“Drugs,” he adds. “That’s what I’m thinking.”
I don’t recall his name but I won’t forget Bryce following him and gawking when the officer appeared inside the large-scale x-ray room while I was using an embalming machine to inject contrast dye into the dead wrestler’s femoral artery, a procedure that would seem bizarre to someone unfamiliar with postmortem angiography. Three-dimensional computed tomography images revealed the cause of death before I touched the body with a blade.
“We’ve met before,” I say to him as I crouch down by my field case. “Earlier this month.”
“Yeah, that was pretty crazy. I thought for a minute you were a mad scientist pumping in fluids like you were trying to raise him from the dead. Andy Hunter,” he reintroduces himself, his gray eyes penetrating. “It turns out the kid’s father is a Nobel Prize winner. You’d think people that smart could have prevented their kid’s death with routine tests.”
“Abdominal aortic aneurysms are called a silent killer for a reason. Often there are no warnings or symptoms.” I snap open heavy plastic clasps.
“My grandfather died from a blown aneurysm.” Hunter stares at me, and when he was at the CFC several weeks ago he openly flirted. “Blue collar, no insurance, never went to the doctor. He had a bad headache one minute, was dead the next. I’ve thought about being screened but I’m phobic of radiation.”
“An MRI with contrast dye doesn’t emit radiation.” I settle closer to the anchored yellow tarp with its ominous shape underneath. “You’d be fine unless you have kidney damage.”
“Not that I know of.”
“Talk to your doctor,” Machado kids him. “You know, the one you pay?”
“Gail Shipton was last seen possibly between five-thirty and six last night at the Psi Bar. Is that still the story?” I ask him.
“Right, and we have a preliminary ID. A visual,” Machado says. “The photo that’s all over the news, it looks like her anyway. I realize we need to verify officially but in my mind this is Gail Shipton. She left the bar to talk on her phone around five-thirty, six p.m. Supposedly. That’s what we know.”
“I doubt it was raining when she stepped outside.” I tear off the perforated top from a box of exam gloves, the kind I like, latex-free, with textured fingertips. “She was out there for a while, at least seventeen minutes, based on the duration of the first call with someone who has a blocked number.”
“It wasn’t raining at the time she disappeared.” Machado’s deep-set eyes are curious as if he wonders what I’m getting at with my comments about the weather. “It didn’t start raining until later.”
“Do we know exactly when? What do you mean by ‘later’? I went to sleep around eleven and it wasn’t raining then but it looked like it was going to any minute.”
I notice Barbara Fairbanks’s crew is now in front of Simmons Hall, on Vassar Street, exactly as I expected.
“When I uncover her you’re going to need to hold something up as a barrier,” I say to Rusty and Harold. “We don’t want her on TV.”
“We’ve got plenty of sheets.”
“We’ll be ready if they head this way.”
“The storm started around midnight,” Machado answers my question. “Rain mixed with freezing rain and then just rain. But a monsoon.”
“If we consider the possibility that she was abducted at around six p.m., then whoever’s responsible knew the weather conditions or could guess what they might be by the time he disposed of her body out here.” I find two thermometers and a sterile retractable scalpel. “It would seem bad weather didn’t matter, that this person was comfortable in wet, nasty conditions.”
“When the mood strikes,” Andy Hunter says. “People used to these parts are used to the weather.”
I watch Barbara Fairbanks as she follows the fence, her camera crew behind her. They’ll have to film through chain-link but I’m not going to let them get even that. Marino’s not going to allow it either. He slogs through the mud in a hurry, back in our direction, while Rusty and Harold get sheets ready for a barricade.
“Toss me one,” Marino calls out and Rusty hurls a folded disposable sheet as if it’s a Frisbee.
Marino catches it in one hand. He rips off the cellophane wrapping as he sloshes through mud and puddles toward the TV crew. Shaking open the sheet, he holds it up against the fence, blocking the camera.
“Ah come on, man!” a crew member yells.
“I’m sure you already know this,” I say to Machado, “but Gail Shipton was involved in a lawsuit that’s due to go to trial in less than two weeks.”
I’m tempted to check my phone again but I don’t. It continues to nag at me that Lucy might have some connection to Gail Shipton, a computer engineer with a military-grade smartphone case. The fact that Lucy isn’t answering me is why I’m increasingly suspicious, and in fact I’ve about decided it’s true. Janet said she’d tell Lucy I was trying to contact her. When my niece ignores me something is up. It’s almost never good.
“I didn’t know anything about a lawsuit,” Machado says.
“Are you familiar with a financial company called Double S?” I ask him as Marino moves along the fence.
He’s holding up the sheet, moving as the crew moves, blocking their view.
“I can’t say that I am or know anything about a trial,” Machado answers and I can tell by the look on his face that I’ve given him something new to think about.
Maybe he’ll stop stubbornly assuming this young woman’s death is an accidental drug overdose. Maybe he’ll quit worrying about public relations and potentially bad press.
“Harold, if you and Rusty will stand right there,” I say to them, “I think we’ll be okay.”
Their disposable-sheet barricade goes up loudly like a sailboat tacking into the wind. Plastic rustles as I pull back the yellow tarp.
11
I’m disturbed again by the sight of her. I get the same feeling I did when I looked at the photographs Marino e-mailed to me earlier. The body is gracefully posed, draped in white in a red sea of mud.
Her eyes are barely open to the narrowest of slits as if she’s drifting off to sleep, her pale lips slightly parted, exposing the white edges of her upper teeth. I study the position of her arms, the dramatically cocked wrist, the hand slightly curled and resting on her belly. Plastic rustles again as I fold the tarp and hand it to Harold, instructing him to package it as evidence. I don’t want to lose any microscopic debris that might have been transferred to it.
“That’s pretty wild,” Rusty observes. “Maybe she’s supposed to look like a virgin.”
“How would you know what a virgin looks like?” Harold can’t resist another corny quip.
“Give me a minute.” I want them to be silent.
I’m not in the mood for sophomoric humor and I don’t want to hear their opinions right now. I continue studying the body, standing back, then walking around to get perspective as my misgivings grow. I scan flawless skin that is much too clean and hands uninjured and a face too peaceful and undamaged.