The Bone Bed

twelve

IT’S THREE MINUTES PAST ONE WHEN WE REACH THE Longfellow Bridge connecting Boston to Cambridge.

On the other side, MIT’s playing fields and buildings have lost their charm, are squared shapes of dull grass, dark brick, and washed-out limestone beneath a thick tarp of gray clouds. Trees waiting for fall are suddenly skeletal, as if they’ve flung their parched leaves in despair, and the Charles River is roughly stirred by a blustery wind that matches my own agitation.

I read the text message again, wondering why I think it might say something different this time:

Just back in session after adjourning for lunch. Still on for 2. Sorry.—DS

I refrain from answering Dan Steward, the assistant U.S. attorney whose fault it partly or maybe mostly is that I’m being dragged into court at what couldn’t be a worse time or for a more ridiculous reason.

From now on I’ll communicate with him by phone or in person. Not in writing again ever, I promise myself, and I can’t get over it. How awful. I’m thinking in headlines, and most of all I’m worrying about the dead woman in the van behind us. She deserves my complete attention right now and won’t get it. This is wrong.

I’ve always lived over a microscope,” I comment to Marino. “Now I live under one, every bit of minutiae open for examination and opinion. I don’t know how we’re going to do this.” I tuck my phone back inside my jacket pocket.

You and me both. I got no idea who to call first, and I’m sure as hell not doing what the Coast Guard said and bringing in the FBI right off the bat, just hand it over to them on a silver platter because Homeland Security says so.” He is talking nonstop, and about something else. “A jurisdictional cluster f*ck. Jesus Christ, could be half a dozen different departments claiming this one.”

Or not. That’s the more likely story.”

A cluster f*ck if I ever saw one.”

Cluster f*ck seems to be his favorite new expression, and I suspect it came from Lucy. But who knows where he got it.

The FBI will want the case because it’s going to be big news. No way this won’t be high-profile, maybe a national headline. A rich old lady tied to a dog crate and dumped in the harbor. Assumed to be Mildred Lott. Then, when it turns out it’s not, it will be an even bigger story.”

‘A rich old lady’?”

You mind holding these?” He hands me his Ray-Bans. “Talk about the weather turning to crap. I got to go to the eye doctor, can’t see worth shit anymore. Need a perscription instead of just using over-the-counter.”

I’ve given up telling him the word is prescription.

Now my distance vision sucks, too.” He squints as he drives. “Pisses the hell out of me, everything blurry, can’t remember what they call it. Presbyphobia.”

Presbyopia. Old eyes.”

Goddamn nothing focuses anymore, like Mister Magoo.”

You know she’s rich for a fact? What makes you think that?” I place his sunglasses in my lap and adjust my vent, turning up the fan as we creep across the bridge in thick traffic. “And how do you know she’s old?”

She’s got white hair.”

Or platinum blond. It could be dyed. I have to look at her.”

Nice clothes. And her jewelry. I didn’t see it up close, but it looks like gold and a fancy watch. She’s old,” he insists. “At least seventy. Like she was out having lunch or shopping or something when she was grabbed.”

What she looks is very dehydrated and very dead. I don’t know how old or how rich, but robbery doesn’t appear to be the motive.”

Didn’t say it was.”

I’m saying it probably wasn’t. Assumptions are always dangerous,” I remind him. “Especially in a case like this, where all we may have to go on are physical descriptions we put out there in hopes she’s in a database. We say she’s elderly with long white hair, when in fact she’s in her forties with dyed blond hair, and we cause a big problem.”

Someone like that’s probably been reported missing,” Marino says.

You would think so, but we don’t know the circumstances.”

She would be reported for sure,” he asserts. “These days people notice when your newspapers pile up or your mailbox overflows. Bills don’t get paid and services get shut off. Appointments are missed, and finally someone calls the police to check on whoever it is.”

Often that’s true.”

Not to mention her family complaining that Mom or Grandmom hasn’t answered the phone in days or weeks.”

If there are family members who care,” I reply. “What I will tell you with a fair degree of certainty is she’s not an elderly shut-in with Alzheimer’s who wandered off and got lost and didn’t remember who she is or where she lives and somehow ended up in the bay tied to a boat fender and a dog crate.”

No kidding.”

She’s a homicide, and her body was concealed for a period of time, then transported and dropped overboard,” I add. “And obviously the way it was done is for some effect that isn’t clear.”

Some sick f*ck.”

It certainly seems malevolent.”

How long do you think she was kept?”

It depends on the conditions. Weeks, at least. Possibly months,” I reply. “It appears she was fully dressed when she died, and yes, I worry she was abducted. But it surprises me, if that’s the case, that there’s been nothing in the news. At least nothing I’m aware of. The police usually give us a heads-up.”

My point exactly. Unless she’s not from Massachusetts.”

There is that possibility, of course.”

Kind of sounds like the dinosaur lady missing in Canada.” He merges left onto Memorial Drive.

There’s no similarity I can see at a glance,” I tell him. “But I don’t know enough about Emma Shubert’s physical description. Just that she had short graying brown hair and was forty-eight when she disappeared.”

Plus, this lady’s still got both her ears,” he considers.

Assuming the photo of the ear sent to me is real and is Emma Shubert’s. There are so many ifs.”

Marino eyes the rearview mirror, making sure the van transporting the body is behind us. “Well, maybe this one’s been reported missing and we’ll get lucky.”

I don’t think anything about this is going to be lucky for us. I can’t shake the feeling that nothing has been done since this woman vanished and died because no one close to her knows, not her neighbors, not her family or friends, and that’s odd. I also find it odd and contradictory that while it’s far from obvious who she is, the person responsible for disposing of her body didn’t bother removing her personal effects. A victim’s belongings can be quite useful to the police.

Why not get rid of her clothing and jewelry?

Why have her body found at all?

Of course, we might not have recovered her remains, I remind myself. I think of my shock when I first saw the way she was rigged underwater, one nylon rope around her neck, the other around her ankles. Had her tethers pulled her body apart, and I can’t help but suspect that was the intention, we might not have found a trace of her.

Right this minute we might be on our way back to the CFC with nothing to show for our efforts except a yellow boat fender, rope, rusty fishing gear, and a fragment of barnacle and broken bamboo with a trace of something greenish on them. Questions and possibilities race through my mind and offer nothing useful, only more confusion and a growing sense of dread.

Some evil manipulation, I think. Someone toying with us. Some malignant game being played out with deliberateness, and I suspect there will be no DNA on file, no police report, nothing on record, because those who count don’t know this lady has vanished from wherever she’s supposed to be. Chilled to the marrow, I turn up the heat and aim vents at my face and neck.

Really weird the way she was tied up.” Marino hasn’t stopped talking. “Maybe a different type of hog-tying. Then dump her and she gets tangled up with a dinosaur turtle. Geez, you’re going to kill me from heat stroke.”

He closes his vent and cracks open his window.

Let’s refrain from using the word dinosaur, please.” I repeat what I’ve said several times.

How come you’re in such a shitty mood?”

I’m sorry if I seem to be in a shitty mood.”

You seem it because you sure as hell are.”

I’m concerned and frustrated because I’m racing against the clock,” I reply. “I need to start on her right now. What I don’t need is to have this important window of time wasted by a court case where my appearance is simply frivolous. And good God, could the traffic be any slower?”

It’s always bad around here. Morning rush hour, lunchtime rush hour, late-afternoon rush hour. Between two and four a.m. is optimal,” he says. “And just remember, the more pissed you get, the more you give them what they want.”

How ironic that he of all people would be coaching me about the futility of allowing detractors to get me out of sorts.

She’s never going to be in better condition than she is right now,” I remind him.

There’s some stuff we can do. Don’t worry, Doc,” he says.

My office is just ahead, silo-shaped, with the glass dome on top, like a missile, a dumdum bullet, or, as some bloggers call it, a forensic erection. Seven stories of ultramodern construction sided in titanium and reinforced with steel. The descriptions and quips, most of them irreverent and vulgar, are endless, and tomorrow’s news likely will bristle with them.

Dr. Scarpetta returned to her forensic erection in Cambridge after testifying that Lott’s wife turned into soap.

I glance at my watch and feel another wave of anger. It’s exactly eight minutes past one, and I’m supposed to be in the witness stand in less than an hour. I can’t possibly begin the autopsy now, and I’m certainly not going to let anyone else do it. The entire situation is outrageous.

It’s a leatherback, and that’s what we need to call it.” I pick up on my earlier point and try to sound less aggravated. “It’s not helpful to the turtle or any of us if we continue referring to it as a dinosaur.”

Pam says leatherbacks are the last living dinosaur on earth.” Marino takes the left turn that leads to our back parking lot.

The problem is if you say things like that, some moron is going to set out in search of it as if it’s Nessie or Bigfoot.”

I’d rather work with Jefferson at Boston P.D.,” Marino then says, as if it’s up to him to pick a homicide detective and sidestep what I have a feeling will end up being the FBI. “Technically, the outer harbor is Boston.”

I’m not sure of that at all,” I reply. “It depends on the latitude and longitude, and I don’t know enough about navigation to tell from the coordinates we got whether the water she was recovered from might be within the seaward boundary of Hull, Cohasset, or even Quincy. Add to that the question of where she went in and also where she died, where she was abducted from, assuming she was abducted. It probably will end up being FBI, no invitation needed.”

They’ll sink their teeth into it like a damn pit bull and take over the investigation on prime time.” He reaches up to the visor and presses the remote control that opens our gate. “I’m sure Benton will love getting his hands on this one,” he adds, as if my FBI criminal intelligence analyst husband leads a sheltered life.

Nobody wants something like this,” I reply, as the gate slides open. “That’s my bigger worry. That everyone will treat it like a hot potato. But more important than any of this is what we can do to establish her identity as quickly as possible. We need to enter a physical description of her and her personal effects into NamUs.”

The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System is a relatively new central database for people who have vanished. It’s a chance at least to connect the missing with the unidentified or unclaimed dead, but again, I have a strong feeling this woman’s disappearance hasn’t been reported.

No matter what, we’ll do that before the day’s end. We’ll want to e-mail radiographs, her dental charts, any distinct body features,” I continue going down the list as we drive into the back lot. “Put in a call to Ned or whoever might be available later this afternoon.”

Ned Adams is one of several area dentists also certified in odontology and on call for us.

We need to get some pictures before court.” Marino parks the Tahoe in front of the bay.

Absolutely.” I reach down to pick up the trash bag of my wet field clothes.

And her temp, since we didn’t do that on the boat,” he says. “Probably the same as the bay, fifty-one degrees. Maybe one or two degrees higher, because the Coast Guard boat and back of the van will be warmer than the water.”

Yes, we’ll get it now, and then I need a few minutes to change back into my suit. I sure can’t go like this.” I climb out clad in the gray fleece liner, my orange down coat, and wet boots with no socks.

Not unless you want everyone to think you’re a whack job,” Marino says, as the bay door begins to clatter up, the white windowless van stopping in front of it.

We need photos, and most of all, swabs, because the quicker we can get her DNA profile in NamUs and especially NDIS, the better.” I continue going through what needs to be done immediately.

PERK her, clean up really fast, and get to court.” I hold on to a thread of hope that law enforcement somewhere has entered this missing woman into the National DNA Index System.

Tell Bryce to contact Dan and let him know we just got back from a difficult scene and I’m hurrying as fast as I can. Damn waste,” I then mutter. “Ridiculous. Pure harassment. Unadulterated effort to interfere and create a spectacle.”

Yeah, you’ve only said it fifty times.” Marino grabs the scene cases out of the back of the SUV, and I gather the evidence bags of the fishing gear Pamela Quick gave to me and the barnacle I extracted from the leatherback.

We walk into the bay, the van rumbling in behind us and parking. The driver’s door swings open, and Toby hops out in his investigative uniform, a baseball cap pulled over his shaved head, a fad I’m sure Marino started, and it never fails to amaze me the influence he has without seeming to be aware of it. At least half of my male investigators now shave their heads as glossy smooth as cue balls and have got tattoos, including Toby, whose left arm is a solid sleeve of what reminds me of subway graffiti.

No one is immune to the Marino effect, as I’ve come to call the need his investigators have to emulate him for better or worse. I’m told that Sherry’s gotten Mortui vivos docent tattooed on her back and has taken up boxing, and Barbara now rides a Harley.

What’s the plan?” Toby pulls on gloves and opens the tailgate. “You want her in decomp? I assume she’s a homicide, probably dead first and dumped so she would sink, right? Really weird shit. Any idea who she is?”

We need a few minutes with her before she goes into the cooler, and don’t assume nothing,” Marino says gruffly.

You’ll do her in the morning?”

I’m definitely not waiting until the morning,” I answer him. “As soon as I’m out of court I’m back here. She’s going to be in bad shape very fast. Let’s bring her straight into decomp, and we’ll get a temperature and some photos. We can weigh and measure her later.”

Toby unlocks the wheels of the stretcher with its black body bag that looks oversized and pitifully flat, as if what’s zipped inside has shrunk in transit.

What about the other stuff?” he asks.

In the back of the cargo area are the black plastic–covered shapes of what was recovered from the bay.

All of it will go to trace, but not now,” I tell him. “Let’s get everything inside ID.”

I instruct him to cover a table with disposable sheets and place all of the items inside, and to document them with photographs and lock the door. When I’m back from court I’ll remove the wrappings, take a look and find out what interest or questions the police or FBI might have in the fishing gear, the boat fender, and all the rest. We’ll submit all this to trace evidence first thing tomorrow morning, I tell Toby, and I ask him to give Ernie Koppel, the section chief, a heads-up about what’s coming.

Everything locked up tight and secured,” I repeat. “Nobody’s to touch anything without clearing it with me first.”

They lift the stretcher out, slam shut the tailgate, and roll the body inside and toward the decomp room as the bay door begins to loudly crank back down. I stop by the security guard’s window and check the sign-in log again, relieved that no other cases have come in since I last looked. The two motor-vehicle fatalities have been autopsied, their bodies picked up by funeral homes. That leaves the blunt-force trauma and possible drug overdose suicide to be released. Luke Zenner did those autopsies, I notice, and that’s what I’ve come to expect. It’s his nature to request the most complicated cases or assign them to himself because he wants experience and loves a challenge.

Is there anything I need to know about?” I ask Ron, through his open window.

No, ma’am, Chief,” he answers from inside his office, where security monitors mounted on three walls are split into quadrants, each showing exterior and interior areas of special interest for surveillance. “It’s been real quiet. Just two pickups, with another on the way.”

We’ll be in decomp for a few minutes, then I’ve got court,” I let him know. “Hopefully they won’t hold me up too long. Marino and I will be coming straight back here to take care of this post.”

You going to do her today?” he says, to my surprise.

I haven’t mentioned or indicated to him or anyone in my building that the victim in this case is a woman. Only Marino and Toby know.

Yes. No matter how late it is,” I reply, as I fill in the log. “Since we don’t know who she is, let’s enter her as an unidentified white female found in the Massachusetts Bay.”

He begins typing into fields of a software package that programs a Radio Frequency Identification, or RFID, chip embedded in a smart label. Checking scene notes for the GPS coordinates, I give those to him, too, as Toby reappears, pushing an empty gurney in a hurry and loudly shoving open the door that leads out of the autopsy floor and into the bay. A laser printer sounds, and Ron slides out a yellow silicone bracelet and the smart label embedded with the information I just gave him about our most recently accessioned case.

What have you been hearing?” I question him casually, as security cameras pick up Toby rolling the gurney toward the white transport van.

Well, Toby said we have a Jane Doe coming in, that it could be the lady who’s been missing, the one you’re going to court about,” Ron says. “I guess you also were filmed by some TV crews while you were out there.”

What makes you think it was TV crews, as in more than one?” I ask while I watch Toby from different angles on split screens.

He parks the gurney at the back of the van, points the key to unlock it, and I notice his lips are moving. It occurs to me he’s probably listening to his iPod as usual and singing along. But that’s not right, either. He appears to be talking emphatically. In fact, he looks agitated, as if he’s arguing with someone.

From what I saw, you were in different locations, on different boats, at different times,” Ron describes. “The Coast Guard, the fireboat with a bunch of people from the aquarium. Some of it was filmed from the air. I do know that because you could hear the chopper in the background. But I’m not sure about all of it.”

Toby is on the phone. He’s wearing in-ear headphones that are connected to his iPhone, which is in a back pocket of his cargo pants. Maybe he’s fighting with his girlfriend again, and he shouldn’t be fighting with anyone or having any sort of personal conversation, period. He should be paying attention to his job, to his handling of evidence. It’s one of my most common complaints that staff devote just as much time to their personal lives as they do to their work, as if it’s perfectly fine to get paid for fighting with a partner or shopping online or chatting on Facebook or Twitter.

You were doing something with what’s for sure the biggest turtle I ever saw,” Ron continues, and I’m barely listening. “Then you’re in the water getting her out. An old lady, it looks like, tied up with yellow rope.”

You saw footage of me getting her out of the water?” I watch Toby cover the gurney with the sheet and open the tailgate, and he’s scowling now, clearly unhappy with whatever someone is saying over the phone. “Do you happen to know which TV station it was?”

No, ma’am, Chief. That I can’t tell you for a fact,” Ron says. “Because it’s not just on the local stations. CNN, for sure, and a Yahoo headline on the Internet about a prehistoric monster turtle, and that’s the exact words, and a dead body tied to a cage that the turtle got tangled up with. I think it’s pretty much all over the Internet, pretty much everywhere.”