Chaos

“I’m still waiting for a name of this alleged witness who lied to one of your nine-one-one operators.” I’m not interested in hearing him obsess about conspiracists and the pandemonium they might create at the Kennedy School event.

“He wouldn’t identify himself to the operator who took the call,” Marino says. “He was probably using one of those track phones you can buy right there at the CVS. It’s one of those numbers you can’t trace to anyone. Not that we’re done trying, but that’s how it’s looking, and it’s pretty much what we’re up against these days.”

I pass through the shade of a huge old oak with low-spreading branches that are too lush and green for September. The early evening heat presses down like a flaming hand, flattening and scorching the life out of everything, and I switch my shopping bag to my other arm. My messenger-style briefcase also has gotten very heavy, packed with a laptop, paperwork and other personal effects, the wide strap biting into my shoulder.

“Where are you exactly?” Marino’s voice is cutting in and out.

“Taking a shortcut.” I’m not interested in giving him my precise whereabouts. “And you? You’re muffled every other minute or talking in a barrel. Are you in your car?”

“What’d you do, take the Johnston Gate so you can cut through the Yard to Quincy Street?”

“How else would I go?” I’m evasive now in addition to being slightly breathless as I trudge along.

“So you’re near the church,” he says.

“Why are you asking? Are you coming to arrest me?”

“As soon as I find my handcuffs. Maybe you’ve seen them?”

“Maybe ask whoever you’re dating these days?”

“You’re gonna exit the Yard through the gate across from the museums. You know, at the light that will be on your left on the other side of the wall.” It seems like a directive rather than an assumption or a question.

“Where are you?” as my suspicions grow.

“What I just suggested would be most direct,” he says. “Past the church, past the Quad.”

2

I walk through a black wrought-iron gate in the brick wall bordering the Yard, and I look up and down Quincy Street.

On the other side of it the entire block is taken up by the recently renovated brick-and-concrete Harvard Art Museum that includes six levels of galleries under a glass pyramid roof. I wait near a line of parked cars glaring in angled sunlight that is slowly waning, and I check the time and weather on my phone.

It’s still an oppressive ninety-three degrees at 6:40 P.M., and I don’t know what I was thinking a little while ago. But I simply couldn’t take it anymore as Bryce prattled nonstop while he drove along the river toward the Anderson Memorial Bridge, turning right at the red-roofed Weld Boathouse, following John F. Kennedy Street to Massachusetts Avenue.

I didn’t think I could listen to one more word, and I instructed him not to wait for me as I climbed out of the SUV in front of the college bookstore, The Coop. Harvard Square with its shops and Red Line subway stop is always populated even in the most miserable weather. There’s going to be foot traffic and a fairly steady panhandling population 24/7.

It wasn’t an appropriate place for Bryce to roll down his window and argue like a boy-toy lover with a lady boss mature enough to be a cougar. He wouldn’t listen or leave me, and started sounding slightly hysterical, which unfortunately is his personality. He wanted me to state “for the record” why I no longer desired his assistance and to inform him “chapter and verse” if he’d “done something.” He kept repeating that he just knew he’d “done something” and wouldn’t listen each time I denied it.

The curious were watching like hawks. A homeless man sitting on the sidewalk in front of CVS, shading himself with his cardboard sign, stared at us with the beady eyes of a magpie. It wasn’t exactly an ideal spot to park a vehicle that has OFFICE OF THE CHIEF MEDICAL EXAMINER and the CFC’s crest, the scales of justice and caduceus painted in blue on the doors. The SUV’s back windows are blacked out, and I understand the impact when one of our marked vehicles pulls up.

After I managed to shoo Bryce off, I shopped inside The Coop for gifts for my mother and sister. I made sure my clingy chief of staff really was gone when I finally emerged from the air-conditioning into the brutal heat, heading out on Brattle Street.

I swung by the American Repertory Theater, the ART in the Loeb Center, to pick up six tickets for Waitress, having reserved the best orchestra seats in the house. After that I backtracked on Massachusetts Avenue, cutting through the Yard and ending up where I am now on Quincy Street.

I pass the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts on my left, and I must look like a holy mess. After all the trouble I went to before my ill-advised ride, showering in my office, changing into a suit that’s now wrinkled and sweat-stained. I dabbed on Benton’s favorite Amorvero perfume that he finds in Italy. It’s the signature fragrance of the Hotel Hassler in Rome, where he proposed to me. But I can’t smell the exotic scent anymore as I sniff my wrist, waiting at an intersection. Heat rises in shimmering waves from the tar-smelling pavement, and I hear Marino’s big voice before I see him.

“You know what they say about mad Englishmen and dogs going out in this shit?”

I turn around at the garbled cliché and he’s stopped at a light, the driver’s window open of his unmarked midnight-blue SUV. Now I know why the reception was so bad when we talked a moment ago. It’s what I suspected. He’s been cruising the area looking for me, talking to people in the Square. He turns on his emergency flashers and whelps his siren, cutting between cars in the opposite lane, heading toward me.

Marino double-parks, climbs out, and I don’t think I’ll ever get used to seeing him in a suit and tie. Smart attire wasn’t designed with the likes of him in mind. Nothing really fits him except his own skin.

Almost six-foot-five, he weighs two hundred and fifty pounds give or take thirty. His tan shaved head is smooth like polished stone, his hands and feet the size of boats. Marino’s shoulders are the width of a door, and he could bench-press five of me he likes to brag.

He’s handsome in a primitive way with a big ruddy face, heavy brow and prominent nose. He has a caveman jaw and strong white teeth, and he tends to explode out of business clothes like the Incredible Hulk. Nothing dressy and off the rack looks quite right on him, and part of the problem is he shouldn’t be left to his own devices when he shops, which isn’t often or planned. It would be helpful if he would clean out his closets and garage occasionally but I’m pretty sure he never has.

As he steps up on the sidewalk I notice the sleeves of his navy-blue suit jacket are above the wrist. His trouser cuffs are high-waters that show his gray tube socks, and he has on black leather trainers that aren’t laced all the way up. His tie is almost color coordinated and just as unfashionable, black-and-red-striped and much too wide, possibly from the 1980s when people wore polyester bell-bottoms, Earth Shoes and leisure suits.

He has his reasons for what he wears, and the tie no doubt is woven of special memories, maybe a bullet he dodged, a perfect game he bowled, the biggest fish he ever caught or an especially good first date. Marino makes a point of never throwing out something that matters to him. He’ll wander into thrift shops and junk stores looking for a past he liked better than the here and now, and it’s ironic that a badass would be so sentimental.

“Come on. I’ll drop you off.” His eyes are blacked out by vintage Ray-Ban aviator glasses I gave to him a few birthdays ago.

“Why would I need a ride?” The entrance to the brick path leading from the concrete sidewalk to the Faculty Club is just up ahead, a minute’s walk from here at most.

But he isn’t going to take no for an answer. He steers me off the sidewalk, raising a big mitt of a hand to stop traffic as we cross the street. He’s not holding me but I’m not exactly free as he guides me into the front seat of his police vehicle, where I struggle awkwardly with my bags while the run in my panty hose races from my knee down to the back of my shoe as if trying to escape Marino’s madness.

I can’t help but think, Here we go again. Another spectacle. To some it might look like I’m being picked up and questioned by the police, and I wonder if I’ll be hearing that next.

“Why are you riding around looking for me, since it seems that’s what you’re doing?” I ask as he shuts the door. “Seriously, Marino.” But he can’t hear me.

He walks around and climbs into the driver’s seat, and the interior is spotless and tricked out with every siren, light, toolbox, storage chest and piece of crime-scene equipment known to man. The dark vinyl is slick and I smell Armor All. The cloth seats hardly look sat on, the console as clean as new and the glass sparkles as if the SUV was just detailed. Marino is meticulous about his vehicles. His house, office and attire are another story.

“Did I tell you how much I hate the damn phone?” he starts complaining as he shuts his door with a thud. “Some things we don’t need to be talking about on a wireless device that has access to every damn thing about your life.”

“Why are you dressed up?”

“I had a wake. Nobody you know.”

“I see.” I don’t really.

Marino isn’t the type to put on a suit and tie for a wake. He’ll barely do that for a funeral or a wedding, and he’s certainly not dressing up in weather like this unless he has a special reason he’s not saying.

“Well you look nice, and you smell good. Let me see. Cinnamon, sandalwood, a hint of citrus and musk. British Sterling always reminds me of high school.”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“I didn’t know we had a subject.”

“I’m talking about spying. Remember when the biggest worry was someone riding around with a scanner,” he says. “Trying to hack into your house phone that way? Remember when there weren’t cameras in your face everywhere? I stopped by the Square a while ago to see who might be hanging around, and some snotty asshole college kid started filming me with his phone.”

“How do you know it was a college kid?”

“Because he looked like a spoiled little brat in his flip-flops, baggy shorts and Rolex watch.”

“What were you doing?”

“Just asking a few questions about what they might have seen earlier. You know, there’s always the usual suspects hanging out in front of The Coop, the CVS. Not as many in this heat but they’d rather be free and footloose in the great unwashed outdoors than in a nice shelter out of the elements. Then the kid was pointing his phone at me like I’m going to shoot someone for no reason and maybe he’ll get lucky and catch it on film. Meanwhile some damn drone was buzzing around. I hate technology,” he adds grumpily.

“Please tell me why I’m sitting here because clearly I don’t need a ride since I’ve already arrived at my destination.”

“Yeah you don’t need a ride, all right. I’d say the damage is already done.” He looks me up and down, his sunglasses lingering too long on the run in my hose.

“And I’m sure you didn’t pick me up just to tell me that.”

“Nope. I want to know what’s really going on with Bryce.” Marino’s Ray-Bans seem to pin me in my seat.

“I didn’t know anything was—beyond his being more frazzled and annoying than usual.”

“Exactly. And why might that be? Think about it.”

“Okay, I’m thinking about it. Possibly because of the heat and how busy work has been. As you well know we’ve had an overload of weather-related cases, and he and Ethan are having trouble with that same abusive neighbor, and let’s see … I believe Bryce’s grandmother had her gallbladder removed the other week. In other words there’s been a lot of stress. But who the hell knows what’s going on with him or anyone, Marino?”

“If there’s a reason we shouldn’t trust Bryce, now’s the time to spill it, Doc.”

“It seems to me we’ve discussed this enough,” I say over the blasting air-conditioning, which is going to chill me to my marrow because my clothes are so damp. “I don’t have time to ride around with you right now, and I need to make some effort to clean up before dinner.”

I start to get out, and he reaches for my arm again.

3

“Stay.” He says it as if he’s addressing his German shepherd Quincy, who’s currently not in the cage in back. As it turns out, in addition to being a failed cadaver dog, he’s also a fair-weather man’s best friend.

Named after the legendary medical examiner on TV, this Quincy doesn’t venture out to any crime scene when the conditions are inclement. I suspect Marino’s furry sidekick is safely at home right now on his Tempur-Pedic bed in the den with the air-conditioning and DOGTV on.

“I’m going to drop you off the last damn fifty feet. Sit and enjoy the cool,” Marino says.

I move my arm because I don’t like being grabbed even gently.

“You need to hear me out.” He shoves the gearshifter in drive. “Like I said, I didn’t want to go into it over the phone. We sure as hell can’t know who’s spying anymore, right? And if Bryce is compromising the CFC’s security or yours I want us to find out before it’s too late.”

I remind Marino that we use personal proprietary smartphones and have the benefit of encryption, firewalls and all sorts of special and highly secure apps. It’s unlikely that our conversations or e-mails can be hacked. My computer-genius-niece Lucy, the CFC cyber-crimes expert, makes very sure of that.

“Are you talking with her at all about any of this?” I ask. “If you’re so worried we’re being spied on don’t you think you could take it up with her? Since that’s her job?”

Just as I’m saying this my phone rings and it’s Lucy requesting her own version of FaceTime, meaning she’d like us to see each other as we talk.

“What timing,” I say right off as her keenly pretty face fills the display on my phone. “We were just talking about you.”

“I’ve only got a minute.” Her eyes are green lasers. “Three things. First, my mom just called and her plane is going to be delayed a little bit. Well, I shouldn’t say a little bit even if that’s how she described it. We don’t know for how long at this point. And I’m not a hundred percent sure what’s going on with air traffic control. But there’s a hold on all outbound traffic at the moment.”

“What’s she being told?” I ask as my heart sinks.

“They’re changing gates or something. Mom and I didn’t talk long but she said it may be closer to ten thirty or eleven by the time she gets here.”

It’s nice of my sister to let me know, it flashes in my mind. As busy as Benton and I are, and she wouldn’t think twice about making us wait at the airport half the night.

“Second, the latest just landed from Tailend Charlie.” Lucy’s eyes are moving as she talks, and I try to figure out where she is. “I haven’t listened to it yet. As soon as I’m freed up from the nine-one-one bullshit call I will.”

“I assume what was sent was another audio clip in Italian,” I point out because Lucy isn’t fluent and wouldn’t be able to translate all or possibly any of it.

She says yes, that at a glance the latest communication from Tailend Charlie is like the other eight I’ve received since the first day of September. The anonymous threat was sent at the same time of day, is the same type of file and the recording is the same length. But she hasn’t listened, and I tell her we’ll deal with it later.

Then she asks, “Where are you? In whose car?” She’s vivid against a backdrop of complete darkness, as if she’s in a cave.

Yet her rose-gold hair is shiny in ambient light that wavers like a movie is playing in the background. Shadows flicker on her face, and it occurs to me she might be inside the Personal Immersion Theater, what at the CFC we call the PIT.

I tell her I’m with Marino, and that brings her to the third and most important point; she says, “Have you seen what’s on Twitter?”

“If you’re asking then I’m sure it’s not good,” I reply.

“I’m sending it to you now. Gotta go.” And then Lucy is gone from the small rectangular screen just like that.

“What?” Marino is scowling. “What’s on Twitter?”

“Hold on.” I open the e-mail Lucy just sent, and click on the tweet she cut-and-pasted. “Well as you suspected, there appears to be a video of you talking to some of the usual suspects in Harvard Square.”

I show it to him and can feel his wounded pride as he watches the distant figure of himself lumbering about, barking questions at homeless people loitering in front of various businesses. Marino herds one man in and out of the shade as this person tries to duck questions in a most animated fashion. The indistinguishable noise of Marino raising his voice while the man shuffles from pillar to post is embarrassing. And the caption is worse. OccupyScarpetta with a hashtag.

“What the hell?” Marino says.

“I guess the gist is that you’re territorial about me and were asking a lot of questions because of it. I presume that’s how my name ended up in the tweet.” His lack of a response answers my question. “But I doubt it will do any real damage except to your ego,” I add. “It’s silly, that’s all. Just ignore it.”

He isn’t listening, and I really do need to go.

“I’d like a minute to clean up.” It’s my way of telling Marino I’ve had enough of being held hostage in his truck full of gloom and doom. “So if you’ll unlock the doors and release me please? Maybe we can talk tomorrow or some other time.”

Marino pulls away from his illegal double-parking spot. He eases to the curb in front of the Faculty Club, set back on acres of grassy lawn behind a split-rail paling.

“You’re not taking this seriously enough.” He looks at me.

“Which part?”

“We’re under surveillance, and the question is who and why. For sure someone’s got Bryce tagged. How else can you explain the marijuana tattoo?”

“There’s nothing to explain. He doesn’t have a tattoo of any description.”

“He does. Specifically, a marijuana leaf, as it was referred to in the call,” Marino says.

“No way. He’s so afraid of needles he won’t even get a flu shot.”

“Obviously you don’t know the story. The tattoo is right here.” Marino leans over and jabs a thick finger at his outer left ankle, which I can’t see very well from where I’m sitting even if I knew to look. “It’s fake,” he says. “I guess you didn’t know that part.”

“It would seem I don’t know much.”

“The marijuana leaf is a temporary tattoo. It’s a joke from last night when he and Ethan were with friends. And typical of Bryce? He figured he could wash it off before he went to bed, but a lot of these temporary tattoos can last for the better part of a week.”

“Obviously you’ve talked to him.” I look at Marino’s flushed shiny face. “Did he reach out to you?”

“I got hold of him when I heard about the nine-one-one call. When I asked him about the tattoo he sent me a selfie of it.”

I turn away to look in the sideview mirror at cars moving past. It occurs to me that I don’t know what Benton is driving tonight. It could be his Porsche Cayenne Turbo S or his Audi RS 7. It could be a bureau car. I was busy with the dogs, with Sock and Tesla, when my husband left this morning at dawn, and I didn’t see or hear him drive away.

“The tattoo’s a problem, Doc,” Marino says. “It gives credibility to the phone call. It pretty much proves that whoever complained about you and Bryce disturbing the peace saw you—unless there’s some other reason this person knows about the tattoo and what the two of you were wearing.”

I recognize the sound of a turbocharged engine changing pitch, and I listen as it gets closer, louder.

“You’re still picking her up tonight?” Marino asks.

“Who?” I watch Benton’s blacked-out RS 7 coupe glide past slowly, downshifting, sliding into the space in front of us.

“Dorothy.”

“That’s the plan.”

“Well if you need any help I’m happy to get her,” Marino says. “I’ve been meaning to tell you that anything I can do, just say the word. Especially now since it’s sounding like she’s going to be so late.”

I don’t recall telling him that my sister was coming—much less who was picking her up at the airport. He also didn’t just hear this for the first time when Lucy called a moment ago. It’s obvious he already knew.

“That’s nice of you,” I say to him, and his dark glasses are riveted to the back of the Audi as Benton maneuvers it so close against the curb that a knife blade barely would fit between it and the titanium rims.

The matte-black sedan rumbles in a growly purr like a panther about to lunge. Through the tinted back windshield I can make out the shape of my husband’s beautiful head, and his thick hair that’s been white for as long as I’ve known him. He sits straight and wide-shouldered, as still as a jungle cat, his gray-tinted glasses watching us in the rearview mirror. I open my door, and the heat slams me like a wall when I step back out into it, and I thank Marino for the ride even though I didn’t want it.

I watch Benton climb out of his car. He unfolds his long lank self, and my husband always looks newly minted. His pearl-gray suit is as fresh as when he put it on this morning, his blue-and-gray silk tie perfectly knotted, his engraved antique white-gold cuff links glinting in the early evening light.

He could grace the pages of Vanity Fair with his strong fine features, his platinum hair and horn-rim glasses. He’s slender and ropy strong, and his quiet calm belies the iron in his bones and the fire in his belly. You’d never know what Benton Wesley is truly like to look at him right now in his perfectly tailored suit, hand-stitched because he comes from old New England money.

“Hi,” he says, taking the shopping bag from me but I hold on to my briefcase.

He watches Marino’s dark blue SUV pull back out into traffic, and the heat rising off the pavement makes the air look thick and dirty.

“I hope your afternoon’s been better than mine.” I’m conscious of how wilted I am compared to my perfectly put-together husband. “I’m sorry I’m such a train wreck.”

“What possessed you to walk?”

“Not you too. Did Bryce send out a be on the lookout for a deranged woman with a run in her stockings prowling the Harvard campus?”

“But you really shouldn’t have, Kay. For lots of reasons.”

“You must know about the nine-one-one call. It would seem to be the headline of the day.”

He doesn’t answer but he doesn’t need to. He knows. Bryce probably called him because I doubt Marino would.

4

A bicycle bell jingles cheerily on the sidewalk behind us, and we step out of the way as a young woman rides past.

She brakes in front of us as if she might be going to the same place we are, and I offer a commiserating smile when she dismounts, wearing sporty dark glasses, hot and red-faced. Unclipping the chin strap of her robin’s-egg-blue bike helmet, she takes it off, and I notice her pulled-back long brown hair, her blue shorts and beige tank top. Instantly I get a weird feeling.

I take in her blue paisley printed neckerchief, her off-white Converse sneakers and gray-and-white-striped bike socks as she stares at her phone, then at the Georgian brick Faculty Club as if expecting someone. She types with her thumbs, lifts her phone to her ear.

“Hey,” she says to whoever she’s calling. “I’m here,” and I realize the reason she’s familiar is I met her about a half hour ago.

She was at the Loeb Center when I was buying the theater tickets. I remember seeing her as I wandered into the lobby to use the ladies’ room. At most she’s in her early twenties, and she has a British accent, what strikes me as a slightly affected or theatrical one. I was aware of it when she was talking with other staff and several actors at the American Repertory Theater.