Doubt.
I think that’s mostly it. Marino doubts me. He hasn’t always liked me and in the beginning of my career he might have hated me and then for the longest time he loved me too much. But throughout it all he didn’t doubt my judgment. There’s plenty he criticizes and harps on but being erratic, irrational or unreliable was never on the list. Not trusting me as a professional is new and it doesn’t feel good. It feels damn terrible.
“The more I think about it the more I agree with you, Doc,” Marino continues to talk as I drive my big truck. “She hadn’t been dead all that long to be in such bad condition. I don’t know how we’re going to explain it to her mother. That and what lit up blue on the floor. A case that started out as no big deal and now there are questions, serious questions. And we can’t answer them. And why? Because for one thing we’re here in Concord and not in Cambridge getting to the bottom of things. How do I explain to Amanda Gilbert that you got a personal call and left her daughter’s body on the floor and just walked out?”
“I didn’t leave the body on the floor,” I reply.
“I meant it figuratively.”
“Literally the body is safely at my office and I didn’t just walk out. There’s nothing figurative about it. Everything has been left as is and we’ll be back soon. And it’s also not for you to explain, Marino, and at the moment I don’t intend to discuss details with Amanda Gilbert. Not to mention we need to confirm the dead woman’s identity first.”
“For the sake of the argument,” Marino replies, “let’s assume it’s Chanel Gilbert because who else would it be? Her mother is going to ask a shitload of questions.”
“My answer is simple. I’ll say we need to confirm identification. We need more details and reliable witness accounts. We need undisputed facts that tell us when her daughter was last seen alive, when she last e-mailed or made a phone call. That’s the missing link. We find that out and I have a better chance of knowing when she died. The housekeeper is important. She’s the one who may have the best information.”
I hear myself using words such as reliable, fact and undisputed. I’m being defensive because of what I sense from him. I feel his doubt. I feel it like a glowering mountain looming over me.
“I’m suspicious of the housekeeper to tell you the truth,” he says. “What if she’s involved and is the one who turned off the air-conditioning?”
“Was she asked about it?”
“Hyde said it was already like that when he got to the house. She didn’t seem to know anything about why it was so hot.”
“We need to sit down with her. What’s her name?”
“Elsa Mulligan, thirty years old, originally from New Jersey. Apparently she moved to this area when Chanel Gilbert offered her the job.”
“Why New Jersey?”
“That’s where they met.”
“When?”
“Does it matter?”
“Right now we have so many questions everything matters,” I reply.
“I got the impression Elsa Mulligan hadn’t worked for Chanel all that long. A couple years? I’m not sure. That’s about as much as I know since she wasn’t still at the house when I got there. I’m passing on what Hyde said. She told him that when she let herself in through the kitchen door she could smell this horrible odor like something had died, and yep something sure had. The house was hot as shit and she got a whiff and followed it into the foyer.”
“Did Hyde feel she was being truthful? What’s your gut tell you?”
“I’m not sure of anything or anyone,” Marino says. “Usually we can at least count on the dead body to tell us the truth. Dead people don’t lie. Just living people do. But Chanel Gilbert’s body isn’t telling us shit because the heat escalated decomp, confusing things and I wonder if a housekeeper would know something like that.”
“If she watches some of these crime shows she could.”
“I guess so,” he says. “And I don’t trust her. And I’m getting an increasingly bad feeling about the case and wish to hell we hadn’t walked out on it.”
“We didn’t walk out on it, and you’ll be the problem if you keep saying that.”
“Really?” He looks at me. “When’s the last time you did something like this?”
The answer is never. I don’t take personal calls in the middle of a scene and interrupt what I’m doing. But this was different. I heard an alert tone from Lucy’s emergency line, and she’s not the sort to overreact or cry wolf. I had no choice but to check on whether something terrible has happened.
“What about the burglar alarm being on when she arrived this morning?” I ask Marino. “You told me the housekeeper turned it off. Are we sure it was armed when she unlocked the door?”
“It was turned off at seven-forty-four, which is when she told Hyde she got there. Quarter of eight is exactly what she said.” Marino takes off his sunglasses, starts cleaning them on the hem of his shirt. “The alarm company log verifies the alarm was turned off at that time this morning.”
“What about last night?”
“It was set, disarmed and reset multiple times. The last time it was armed was close to ten P.M. The code was entered and after that none of the door contacts were broken. In other words it doesn’t appear someone set the alarm and then left the house. It’s like the person was in for the night. So maybe Chanel was still alive then.”
“Assuming she’s the one who reset the alarm. Does she have her own code that only she uses?”
“No. There’s just one and it’s shared. The housekeeper and Chanel used the same dumbass code. One-two-three-four. Sounds like Chanel wasn’t particularly security conscious.”
“With her Hollywood background that would surprise me. I wouldn’t expect her to be trusting. And one-two-three-four is usually the default code when a security system is installed. The expectation is you’ll change the code to something difficult to guess.”
“Obviously she didn’t bother.”
“We need to find out how long she’s lived there, how often she’s in Cambridge. While I didn’t have a chance to look around I can say the house didn’t feel all that lived in.” As I explain this I’m desperate to tell him the truth about why we’re rushing to Lucy’s house.
I want to show him the video but I can’t. Even if I were able to I couldn’t let him see it. Legally I wouldn’t dare. I can’t prove who sent it or why. The video could be a setup, a trap, maybe one cooked up by our own government. Lucy admits on film to being in possession of an illegal firearm, a fully automatic machine gun that Carrie accuses her of stealing from my husband Benton—an FBI agent. Any violation involving a Class III weapon is serious trouble, the very trouble Lucy doesn’t need. Especially now.
Over recent months the police and the Feds have been watching her. I don’t know how closely. Because of her prior relationship with Carrie almost everyone
