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 fuck.”
“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