was mixed with hail, the early evening unnaturally dark.
“She saved you for last, and that’s what the jury goes away with—TV footage of a dead rich lady with long platinum-blond hair being pulled out of the water today.”
“I don’t think her hair’s platinum blond. I’m pretty sure it’s white.” I can barely talk.
“Reasonable doubt.” Marino wipes the inside of the glass with his jacket sleeve and turns up the defrost full blast. “If they didn’t have doubt before, they got it now.”
“Whether he’s found guilty or not isn’t my concern,” I reply. “I have no opinion one way or the other about whether he had something to do with his wife’s disappearance, and frankly, you shouldn’t have an opinion, either.”
“You know what they say. Everybody’s got one.”
At long last we are here, my metal-clad building an ominous tower in the storm, like the gray turret of a castle shrouded in fog, and I get an odd feeling that begins deep inside my gut, a chilly discomfort that moves up to my chest. The sensation reaches my brain as the black metal gate slides open along its tracks and Marino drives through, the Tahoe’s headlights slashed by rain and illuminating vehicles that shouldn’t be here. Benton’s black Porsche SUV is next to three unmarked sedans, as if he and his FBI colleagues have shown up to meet with me anyway when there just isn’t time, and it doesn’t make sense.
I sent Benton a text message the instant I was out of court and said tonight was impossible, as I still had the autopsy to do and it likely would be a complicated one. I might not be finished until nine or ten.
“Who’s here and why?” I puzzle, as Marino points a remote at the back of the building.
“That’s Machado’s Crown Vic. What the hell?”
The lights go on inside the bay, the heavy door cranking up, and in the widening space is the dark green low-slung hood of Lucy’s Aston Martin backed in next to my SUV.
We get out, the shutting of the Tahoe’s doors echoing off concrete, and I scan my thumb in the biometric lock. Then we’re inside the receiving area of the autopsy floor with no sign of the nighttime security guard, but I detect voices along the corridor. People talking, several of them, and as Marino and I approach ID, we find the door open wide. The yellow boat fender, dog crate, and other evidence are plainly visible inside on tables, and as we get closer to the large-scale x-ray room I can hear my technologist Anne. I hear Luke Zenner, and the security guard appears around the bend.
“Who unlocked ID?” I ask him. “Is everything all right, George?”
“You got company.” He talks to me and won’t look at Marino.
“So it seems.”
“Mr. Wesley and some of his people are in there with Anne and Dr. Zenner. Don’t know what it’s about.”
I don’t believe he doesn’t know, and he stares straight ahead as he walks off, jaw muscles clenching. The red light is illuminated over the door of the x-ray room, indicating the scanner is in use, and I’m not expecting my husband to be dressed the way he is, in running clothes, his silver hair wetly combed back. He’s with Cambridge Police Detective Sil Machado and FBI Special Agent Douglas Burke and another woman I’ve never seen before, very short dark hair, maybe in her mid-thirties. I’m startled. I feel betrayed.
“For the most part, it’s the opposite with CT,” Anne is saying from her work station, Luke sitting next to her in a chair he’s rolled up.
On the other side of the leaded glass, bare feet with shriveled toes and pink-painted clipped nails protrude from the bore of the eggshell-white Siemens SOMATOM Sensation scanner, and on video displays are images belonging to an Unidentified white female from MA Bay, I read. I can’t understand why Anne and Luke have started without me. I made it clear I didn’t want the body removed from the cooler. I gave a specific directive that the body wasn’t to be touched, that the doors to the ID and decomp rooms were to remain locked until I returned from court.
“What’s going on?” I meet Benton’s eyes and see what’s in them. “What’s happened?”
He’s in a crimson Harvard Medical School sweat suit and running shoes, a rain jacket draped over an arm, and I suspect he was at the gym when someone interrupted him. Probably