The Bone Bed (18 page)

“We don’t know if she had on the clothing when she got these bruises.” Luke returns to that thought as he returns to the table. “Knowing whether she was dressed or not when someone grabbed her upper arms would be an important fact, wouldn’t it? Stripping a prisoner is more about submission than anything else, isn’t it?”

“Depends on who is doing it to whom and why.”

“The logic of torture, a terrible thing to consider, but there is a logic to it. Humiliation, intimidation, controlling your prisoner by stripping him, hooding him. Or her,” he says. “I’m assuming she could have been bound at some point with some type of ligature that was soft and wouldn’t necessarily leave marks on her skin.”

“It’s possible.”

“I imagine him coming up behind her like this.” He holds up his hands to grip imaginary arms, orienting his fingertips and thumbs the way they would be if he grabbed someone by the upper arms from behind. “Maybe to forcibly move her from one place to another, such as if he forced her into a room or dragged her, were she unconscious. Or if she were tied up in a chair and he’s trying to make her give him information so he could steal her identity, for example. Her PIN, her passwords.”

I shine the lamp down her lower legs, brightly illuminating the tops and sides of her ankles and feet, and I find more brownish marks, only these are darker and drier and indistinct in their shape. Picking up the scalpel to make small incisions, I find the darkened areas of skin have lost elasticity, are extremely hard, with no evidence of hemorrhage to the underlying tissue. Not contusions but patterns caused by something else, and I find more of them on the tops of her bare feet and areas of her ankles.

We pull her on her side so I can check her back, and there are two more indistinct hard brown areas on the underside of her right elbow and forearm.

“I’ve got no idea,” I puzzle. “Absolutely none.”

“Some type of postmortem artifact?”

“Unlike any I’ve ever seen before.” I excise a small section of the hard brown skin for histology. “It’s like cutting through stiff leather. I can’t imagine what might cause that, swaths of skin as much as four by three inches.”

“Like freezer burn, perhaps?”

“No. She’d have it all over if she was in a freezer and it caused that.”

“But what about if certain parts of the body came in contact with metal inside a freezer?” he suggests.

“Then the skin would stick.”

I insert the tip of the scalpel blade into leathery flesh just below the left sternum and incise down and to the right, and then do the same on the left and cut straight down to the navel, detouring around it to the pubic bone. It’s like making a Y-incision in wet slippery leather, and I reflect back tissue, cutting through ribs, removing the breastplate of them. I make an incision beneath the jaw to remove the neck organs and tongue.

“Her hyoid’s intact.” I make notes on a body diagram as I work, the odor of decomposition overpowering now. “No sign of injury to the strap muscles, to soft tissue. No airway obstruction or aroma of chemical asphyxia, such as due to cyanide. No injury to the tongue.”

Luke peels back the scalp, and the air vibrates with the loud whining and grinding of the oscillating saw, and bone dust is suspended in the bright white light. I open the major blood vessels, the inferior vena cava, the aorta, finding what I expect, that they are empty, with dry diffuse hemolytic staining. I see no evidence of blockage or injury or disease, just a moderate amount of calcification, certainly not enough to kill her.

“The brain’s too soft to section,” Luke reports. “But I’m not seeing anything to suggest cerebral injury. Dura’s intact and free of staining.” He writes it down.

Her organs are decomposed. Her lungs are collapsed, reddish-purple and very soft, the airways devoid of water, froth, sand, or foreign material, the gallbladder dry and wrinkled, with no residual bile. With each minute we work it becomes abundantly clear that this is an autopsy of exclusion, of ruling out possible causes of death and leaving little doubt that she either asphyxiated or was poisoned. But it will be a while—days, at least—before we have a complete ethanol and drug screen of liver tissue.

“No petechiae I can find.” Luke opens each eye. “No irregular areas of hemorrhage to the sclera or the conjunctiva. Of course, that doesn’t rule out asphyxia by smothering or strangulation,” he adds, and he’s right.

While there are no abrasions or contusions, no injuries I might associate with smothering or strangulation, the absence of facial or scleral pinpoint hemorrhages called petechiae doesn’t mean that someone didn’t place a plastic bag over her head or tie a gag around her nose and mouth or ram a cloth down her throat that obstructed her breathing.

Her gastric contents are granular and dry like animal feed. I adjust the light and use a lens, moving the material around with forceps.

“Dried out, desiccated meat,” I observe. “If I can see it grossly, it wasn’t very digested when she died.”

“There’s very little in her small intestine,” Luke lets me know. “Almost nothing in her large intestine. It usually takes what? A good ten hours for food to completely clear?”

“It depends on a lot of things. How much she ate, whether she exercised, her hydration. Digestion varies considerably with individuals.”

“So if she ate and the food hardly had begun to digest before she died,” he supposes, “chances are we’re talking only a couple of hours after her last meal?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

I tell him to weigh the gastric contents and place some of it in formalin so we can process it histologically.

“An iodine test for starch, napthol for sugar, Oil Red O for lipids. Hopefully we can pick out identifiable food particles on the stereomicroscope.” I explain the special stains I’ll want used.

We are working side by side, our backs to the door.

“So I’m going to make evidence rounds to tox, to histology, to trace, with special instructions,” Luke goes down the list. “What about SEM?”

“Maybe for botanicals.” I’m vaguely aware of a shift in the air behind me. “For stomatal comparisons. For example, is it napa cabbage? Is it Chinese broccoli? Is it bok choy? Is there any evidence of arthropods such as shrimp? Are there cellular structures that might be oats? Are there cereal grains that might be wheat?”

Luke turns around, and then I do.

“I’m wondering how much longer,” Benton says, from the open door he holds.

“Didn’t hear you come in,” Luke replies, as if making a point.

“We’re actually finishing up now.” I meet Benton’s eyes, and his are wary.

“Find anything helpful?” He stands in the doorway.

“The long answer is undetermined for now, pending toxicology and further studies.” I untie my gown in back. “The short answer is I don’t know.”

“Not even a guess?” Benton stares at what’s on the table, and the reason he doesn’t come closer isn’t because of the odor or the ugliness.

He isn’t bothered by such things. He’s bothered by something else.

“I’m not going to guess about what killed her.” I toss my gloves and shoe covers into a biohazard can. “But I can give you a long list of what didn’t.”

twenty-two

HEAVY RAINS HAVE TURNED TORRENTIAL, THE VIOLENT
storm unseasonable for fall, with high winds stripping trees of any leaves left and thunder cracking like a war going on. Water sprays the undercarriage of the SUV and splashes the glass, and Benton seems miles from me as I drive through the dark puddled streets of mid-Cambridge.

“It’s common sense that he can’t be involved,” he says from the passenger’s seat, where he’s alert to his surroundings and not looking at me.

“Whose common sense?” I try not to sound tense.

“Do you want him leaving his DNA inside her house?”

“Hopefully he wouldn’t, but of course not.” I try to sound reasonable.

Benton’s phone glows in the dark, and he types something on it.

“After he’s possibly already transferred his DNA to her personal effects, to her clothing?” He returns the phone to his lap. “Because I’m betting he handled all sorts of things.”

Wipers thud and the defrost blasts.

“I don’t care what protective shit he had on,” Benton then says. “These days you can get DNA from air.”

“Not quite,” I reply. “But he shouldn’t search her house.” I agree with that. “Although there’s no proof he knew her, ever met her, or had a clue someone stole her identity on Twitter. There’s no shred of evidence he’s done anything wrong.”

“It doesn’t look good.”

“It looks like what it is.” My anger glints. “Someone intended to implicate him.”

“We shouldn’t do anything to make it look worse.”

“So I lose my chief investigator because he got set up and made a fool of by whoever’s involved?” I’m frustrated, on the verge of furious, that the FBI suddenly assumes it has a say in how I run my office.

I’m angered by the suggestion that investigators I train leave their DNA everywhere.

“He was set up because he was an intended target,” I add.

“He needs to stay out of this case. He needs to stay away from the CFC for a while.”

“That’s what you think or what your colleagues think?” Lightning flashes and the sky looks bruised.

“It’s not for me to decide how Marino should be handled. It’s not appropriate for me to decide, in light of personal connections. In light of our history.” Benton doesn’t look at me, and I know when he’s wounded.

“It seems if anyone should decide, it’s the one who knows him best.”

“Yes, I know him,” he says.

“You certainly do. And your colleagues don’t.”

“Not the way I know him. You’re right about that. And maybe you should think about what I know.”

“I should think about what you know of Marino’s flaws.” It’s obvious what he’s alluding to, and I can’t stop this from where it’s going.

“Flaws. Christ,” he says.

“Don’t do this, Benton.”

“Yes, flaws,” he says.

“Goddammit, stop.”

“What a way to put it,” he says, in the voice of anger, of hurt.

“You’re finally paying him back?” I ask.

“Nothing more than a flaw or two.”

“You’re going to pay him back at last for a night when he was drunk and on medication?” I go ahead and say it. “When he was out of his mind?”

“The oldest excuse in the history of the world. Blame it on pills. Blame it on booze.”

“This isn’t helpful.”

“Plead insanity when you sexually assault someone.”

“Please don’t tell me what happened then has a bearing on decisions you’re making now,” I say to him. “I know you wouldn’t throw him to the wolves for a mistake he made years ago. One he couldn’t be sorrier for.”

“Marino throws himself to the wolves. He’s his own wolf.”

I drive past a construction site where bulldozers parked in muddy rivers of rainwater remind me of prehistoric creatures stranded, of floods, of life swept away. My every thought is dark and morbid and honed by the fear that Benton stood silently inside the doorway of the decomp room to send me a message. I fear the flaws he’s really talking about aren’t Marino’s. They’re mine.

“Please don’t punish him because of me,” I say quietly. “He’s not a predator. He’s not a rapist.”

Benton doesn’t respond.

“He’s certainly not a murderer.”

Benton is silent.

“Marino’s been framed; if nothing else he’s been discredited, been humiliated by Peggy Stanton’s killer.” I look at Benton as he stares straight ahead. “Please don’t use it as an opportunity to punish.” I mean as an opportunity to punish me.

The SUV splashes through water that has pooled in low-lying areas, broken branches littering the street, as neither of us speak, and the silence convinces me of what I suspect. The space between us is vast and empty, as rain billows in sheets and dead leaves dart and swarm in the dark like bats.

“He was set up, yes. That much I believe,” Benton finally says, almost wearily. “God knows why anyone would bother. He’s perfectly capable of setting himself up. He doesn’t fucking need help.”

“Where is he? I hope he’s not alone right now.”

“With Lucy. He’s managed to make his compromised position much worse because of his rude defensive behavior.”

I glance in the mirrors, my eyes watering in glaring headlights as cars go past.

“Acting like a defiant, uncooperative total jerk,” Benton continues, and his tone has changed, as if he let me know what he wants me to know, and it’s enough.

“I’m not surprised he’s beside himself,” I hear myself say, as I’m realizing something else entirely.

The observation windows that overlook the autopsy rooms didn’t enter my mind at the time.

“I can only imagine his embarrassment and anger,” I add, but that’s not what’s got my attention.

I didn’t think of the teaching labs. It never occurred to me that anybody might be in them with the lights turned off.

“He certainly can be his own worst enemy.” I keep talking while my thoughts course along a different track.

Benton was up there watching, and during certain moments it couldn’t have been more obvious. I didn’t move away. I didn’t try to stop it, because I couldn’t, because I wanted it. I desired him in the midst of what was dead and horrible, when the urgency to feel alive can override what is logical.

“His rages, his insults; he was completely uncooperative,” Benton is saying, and I’m barely listening.

Luke asked me and I thought about it, wondered where and when as I entertained fleeting plans about how to get away with it. I said no and felt yes, what Benton accused me of in Vienna true.

“I had to leave the room at one point so I didn’t lose it with him.” What I hear Benton saying is he left the conference room upstairs.

He’s making sure I know what he did, checking on us from behind the darkened glass of a teaching lab.

“All because he had to start a relationship with a complete stranger in cyberspace, for Christ’s sake,” Benton says.

“Welcome to modern life,” I reply bleakly. “People do it every day.”

“No one I know.”

“Marino’s been as voraciously lonely and as empty as a black hole ever since Doris left, and that was almost longer ago than they were married. He’s had nothing but meaningless encounters ever since, most of them with women who hurt him, take advantage, are a horror show.”

“He’s certainly had his turn at being the horror show, the one doing the hurting,” Benton says, and I don’t argue with him.

I can’t possibly.

“No one I work with meets people on the goddamn Internet.” He makes that point again.

“That’s rather difficult for me to believe.”

“No one I work with is that stupid,” he says. “The Internet’s the new mafia. It’s what the FBI infiltrates undercover and spies on. We don’t go there for our fucking personal lives.”

“Well, Marino can be that stupid,” I reply. “He’s that lonely and misses his wife and misses being a cop and fears getting old and has no insight about any of it.”

I drive slowly along 6th Street, the Cambridge Police Department’s headquarters shrouded by rain, Art Deco lights glowing blue in the fog.

“What I don’t understand is how someone might think anything’s accomplished by making it appear he was tweeting a woman who clearly couldn’t have been alive while it was going on,” I then say.

“How long she’s been dead isn’t going to be clear to everyone.”

“You saw her body. What’s left of it.”

“It all depends on the interpretation.” He makes his point in a way that’s disturbing, as if it might be one that’s been made before.

“The ‘interpretation’?” I repeat rather indignantly. “It’s clear she’s been dead for months.”

“Clear to me, but I’m not most people,” Benton says. “It depends on what TV shows they watch. They hear the word
mummified
and expect she was wrapped in bindings and found in a pyramid.”

I can barely make out the charter school and biotech buildings we pass, the lighting in most parts of Cambridge notoriously bad.

“It doesn’t help matters that he was at Logan around the same time you got the anonymous e-mail relating to Emma Shubert’s disappearance.” He gets to that, and nothing would surprise me.

“He’s never been to Alberta, Canada, and wouldn’t know the first thing about anonymizing software or proxy servers, Benton.”

“As far as anyone knows.”

“What possible motivation could he have, even if he were able to?” I ask.

“I’m not the one who thinks he might.”

“Others think he could have something to do with Emma Shubert.” I want him to spell it out.

“Or have something to do with what was e-mailed to you. It’s all part of the same discussion,” he says, and it’s ridiculous, and I tell him that, but I’ve seen ridiculous things before, the wildest of goose chases.

I know better than to dismiss any notion investigators might get into their heads.

“I’m worried it’s someone who knows him, Kay.”

“These days anybody can know anybody, Benton.”

“A paleontologist has vanished and is presumed dead, and you’re sent a photo of a severed ear,” he says. “Mildred Lott has vanished, her husband on trial for her murder, and then his helicopter films you while you’re getting Peggy Stanton’s body out of the bay just hours before you’re supposed to testify. I’m worried whoever’s doing this—”

“Whoever? As in one person?”

“Connections. There are too many. I don’t believe it’s coincidental.”

“You think it’s one person doing all of it?” I ask.

“If you want to get away with something, do it by yourself. And I worry this person knows Marino, knows you. Maybe knows all of us.”

“It doesn’t have to be someone who knows him or any of us,” I disagree. “If you search Peter Rocco Marino on Twitter you can find him. You can find so much about any of us on the Internet it’s rather terrifying.”

“Why would this person look for him on Twitter to begin with? Unless there’s a personal reason to get him into serious trouble?”

“Lucy set him up on Twitter in early July. When he moved into his new house,” I recall. “When did he and
Pretty Please
start tweeting each other?”

“He claims she tweeted him first. He says this was late August, close to Labor Day, maybe the weekend before. That she said she was, quote, ‘a fan
.
’”

“A fan of Jeff Bridges’ or of Marino’s?”

“Exactly. Because he’s such an idiot,” Benton says. “Using the avatar of a character from some bowling movie, calling himself
The Dude.
From which Marino instantly concluded that she must be a bowling enthusiast, meaning they have something in common.”

I slow to a stop in Peggy Lynn Stanton’s neighborhood, the headlights shining through rain, illuminating the dark street and the cars lining both sides of it.

“I’ll go through all the tweets, his e-mails, his phone records, whatever it takes,” Benton says. “Because I’m the one who will get him out of this mess he’s made, isn’t that the irony?”

Houses are old but not historic or expensive for Cambridge, single-family and occupied, charming and pristinely kept, and so close together it would be difficult for a person to walk between them.

“He assumed she bowls, or she said she did?” I ask.

Yards are small or nonexistent, parking coveted. Neighbors would be keenly aware of vehicles that don’t belong here.

“I don’t know in detail what was tweeted back and forth between them, but he seems to have the impression she’s an avid bowler. Or was.”

I try to imagine forcing a woman from her house, and I can’t see it. I can’t imagine someone screaming or causing any sort of disturbance that wouldn’t be witnessed. We sit in silence in the drumming rain, distant lightning like a flash going off as thunder rolls. I don’t believe Benton thinks Peggy Lynn Stanton was killed in her house or abducted from it, and I ask him that.

“The fact is we don’t know,” he says. “Doug has her own opinion, but it’s not necessarily mine.”

“Tell me yours.”

“I’ll tell you who.”

“Do you have a suspect in mind?”

“I know who he is, in his late twenties at least but probably older.” Benton scans where we are on the dark rainy street. “Intelligent, accomplished, blends in but is isolated emotionally. Doesn’t get close. Those who think they know him don’t.”

“‘Him’?”

“Yes.” Benton looks at cars; he looks at houses. “Familiar with boating. Likely has a boat or access to one.”

I think about Marino’s obsession with the CFC getting a boat, and I wonder who else he’s said this to.

“Needs no help operating it, is skillful enough to pilot it alone.”

Benton rolls down his window and stares out at the dark.

“A smooth talker, glib, completely confident he can convince anyone of anything, including police, the Coast Guard.”

He’s unmindful of the rain blowing in.

“If his boat broke down or he got stopped while he had a dead body on board, he would be certain he could charm and convince and no one would know. Someone fearless. Someone with financial means.”

Marino has a captain’s license issued by the Coast Guard.

“A narcissistic sociopath,” Benton says, to the rain and the night. “A sexual sadist whose arousal comes from causing fear, from tormenting, from degrading, from controlling.”

“So far I’ve found no evidence of sexual assault,” I let him know.