“Thirty-three,” Marino answers his radio.
The dispatcher informs him that the owner of the pickup truck is a fifty-one-year-old male named Enrique Sanchez. He works maintenance for MIT. He has no outstanding warrants and no prior arrests except for a DUI reckless-driving charge in 2008. He’s been contacted and is en route. Benton doesn’t say I told you so. He says nothing.
“I need to head to my office,” I let everyone know as I walk over to my field case.
I open it and begin gathering the packaged fluorescent residue I collected with stubs and the fibers and Vicks-like ointment. I seal the evidence in envelopes that I label and tuck inside my bag as a car engine sounds nearby. I glance up as a black-and-white Cambridge cruiser appears on the street behind us.
“I’ll get the evidence to the labs expeditiously but if you don’t mind I’ll leave my case here,” I say to Marino. “We’re going to walk back to the office and I’d rather not carry it. I figure you can bring it when you come by during the autopsy. Benton’s shoes and luggage are in your SUV and those will need to be dropped off, please.” I’m careful not to sound like I’m giving him orders.
The cruiser stops behind the black pickup truck and a uniformed officer climbs out. He has a notepad in hand and the name on his shiny steel nameplate is G. B. Rooney.
“I didn’t want any of this going out over the air,” he says to Marino and Machado. “The call I responded to earlier? The one on Windsor?”
“Man, you got to be more specific than that,” Machado says.
G. B. Rooney pauses with uncertainty, his eyes cutting to Benton and me.
“They’re okay. Benton Wesley with the FBI. Dr. Scarpetta, the chief medical examiner,” Marino introduces us in a blasé way as I realize that G. B. Rooney is car 13.
Earlier this morning he responded to the call about my prowler and then he wasn’t answering his radio for a while.
18
Tall and thin, somewhere in his early forties, he sounded out of breath when he finally resumed contact with the dispatcher at around five forty-five a.m.
I remember my surprise that car 13 would be in Tech Square when moments earlier it had been several miles away on the Harvard campus, in my neighborhood. I figured the officer had abandoned that call when the possible car break-ins were reported, but G. B. Rooney offers a different story.
“I hadn’t gone two blocks when I noticed a subject inside a parked vehicle behind the Academy of Arts and Sciences on Beacon Street,” he explains. “It’s the area where the prowler was spotted running and he fit the description, at least close enough that I figured I’d better check him out.”
The way he says it piques my curiosity. Already I can tell that Rooney thought there was something unusual about this person and I can sense Benton’s quiet attention. The area Rooney described is very close to our house.
“Tall, slender, young, white. Dark pants and sneakers, a black hoodie with Marilyn Monroe on it,” Rooney recites like a police report. “I waited until he drove off and then I tailed him but not conspicuously. He headed directly to the projects on Windsor, which is why I happened to be in that location where the car breaks occurred, possibly gang-related. A lot of them in that area, kids going through parking lots and stealing what they can, plus vandalism. I’m in one parking lot and they’re in another one, smashing out windows or coming back for more. Unbelievable.”
“I’m assuming you ran the guy’s plate,” Marino says.
“A 2012 Audi SUV, blue, registered to a twenty-eight-year-old male with a Somerville address near the hockey rink at Conway Park — Haley Davis Swanson,” G. B. Rooney says.
“What?” Marino looks sucker punched. “Haley Swanson?”
“He has an uncle that lives in building two of the projects there on Windsor.”
“Haley Swanson is a man?” Marino’s eyes are bugging out of his head.
“I agree it’s an unusual name for a male. A family name, he told me. He goes by the nickname Swan.”
“This isn’t making a damn bit of sense.” Marino is thoroughly frustrated now.
He looks angry enough to have a stroke.
“Did you talk to this guy?” It’s Machado who asks. “Did you find out why he was parked behind the Academy of Arts and Sciences at the back of the woods there?”
“He told me he’d picked up coffees at Dunkin’ Donuts, the one on Somerville Ave, and one of them spilled so he pulled over to clean it up. There were two coffees in the front seat and one of them had spilled so he wasn’t making it up.”
“Did you ask what he was doing in the projects at the exact same time we’re working a death scene over here?”
Rooney looks confused. “I didn’t mention the death scene over here.”
Machado asks nothing further and I suspect I know why. He’s waiting to see if the officer volunteers that Haley Swanson was a friend of Gail Shipton’s. Machado wants to know if Rooney is aware that Haley “Swan” Swanson is the person who reported her missing and posted her disappearance and photograph on the Channel 5 website.
“What else do you know about him?” Machado then asks.
“He works for a local PR firm.” Rooney flips another page of his notepad.
It doesn’t appear he’s aware of the connection. It would seem that Haley Swanson didn’t mention Gail Shipton to Officer Rooney and that’s more than a little suspicious. Swanson had reported her missing and now it seems he might have been hiding behind my wall, watching my house? It seems illogical. Why would he have coffees? It doesn’t add up that he stopped for coffees and then decided to leave his car on Beacon Street and travel on foot through the rainy dark to spy on me.
“Was he wet when you talked to him? Did it look like he’d been out in the rain?” I ask Rooney, and Benton watches us with no expression but he’s listening carefully.
“He didn’t appear to be wet,” Rooney says. “I got the name of where he works.” He flips back several pages. “Lambant and Associates in Boston.”
“They specialize in crisis management.” Benton is scrolling through e-mails on his cell phone. “What in the legal world is known as spin doctoring in the court of public opinion.”
“I wonder if Gail Shipton retained them,” I suggest. “Maybe that’s how she became acquainted with Haley Swanson.”
“The firm’s well known to our Boston field office.” Benton doesn’t directly answer me. “They represent wealthy high-profile defendants, white-collar mainly, corrupt politicians, organized crime figures, an occasional celebrity athlete who gets involved in a scandal.”
He looks long and hard at Marino, then Benton says, “Recently Lambant and Associates handled the class-action suit relating to the pickup truck you had problems with, Pete. The case was thrown out of court. No damaging press, no harm done. In fact, the plaintiffs ended up looking like the bad guys for driving irresponsibly off-road in extreme conditions, souping up the rear axle, the frame, et cetera.”
“Total bullshit.” Marino’s face turns bright red. “Like your average person can afford a spin-doctoring firm. As usual, the little guy gets screwed.”
I’m afraid he’s going to launch into his truck tirade again. But he manages to control himself.
“I’m simply suggesting Swanson might know who you are,” Benton adds. “If he worked on that case for his firm, he would have come across your name since you were one of the plaintiffs.”
“It looks like we got a lot to check out here.” Machado is making notes. “Starting with the exact nature of Swanson’s relationship with Gail Shipton. And where he was around the time she went out to make her phone call last night and disappeared. And why he reported her missing and hasn’t bothered to show up at the department and give us whatever information he’s got. I’d say we might have a suspect.”