the light coming and a hangman that struck me as the ramblings of a deranged individual. Delusional messages and voice mails aren’t uncommon. My Cambridge Forensic Center email address and phone number are public information. Lucy always traces unsolicited electronic communications and lets me know if there is anything I should worry about. I vaguely recall her telling me the tweet was sent from a hotel business center in Morristown, New Jersey.
I need to ask her about it. In fact I’ll do it now. Her cockpit is wireless, her flight helmet Bluetooth enabled. For that matter she’s probably already landed, and I slide my phone out of a pocket of my jacket. But before I get the chance someone is calling me first. The ringtone sounds like an old telephone. Detective Pete Marino, and I recognize his mobile number in the display, not his personal phone but the one he uses on the job.
If he were calling to say happy birthday or have a nice trip he wouldn’t be on his Cambridge police BlackBerry. He’s careful about using his departmental equipment, vehicles, email or any form of communication for anything remotely personal. It’s one of life’s many ironies and contradictions when it comes to him. He certainly wasn’t like that all the years he worked for me.
“Oh God,” I mutter. “This had better not be what I think it is.”
“Sorry to do this to you, Doc,” Marino’s big voice sounds in my earpiece. “I know you got a plane to catch. But you need to be aware of what’s going on. You’re my first call.”
“What is it?” I begin slowly pacing the yard.
“We got one on Farrar Street,” he says. “In broad daylight, plenty of people around and nobody heard or saw a thing. Just like the other ones. And the victim selection bothers the shit out of me, especially the timing with Obama coming here today.”
“What other ones?”
“Where are you right now?” he asks.
“Benton and I are in the backyard.”
I feel my husband’s eyes on me.
“Maybe you should go inside and not be out in the open. That’s the way it happens,” Marino says. “People out in the open going about their business …”
“What other ones? What people?” I look around as I pace.
Sock is sitting, his ears folded back. Benton gets up from the bench, watching me. It continues to be a beautiful peaceful morning but it’s a mirage. Everything has just turned ugly.
“New Jersey right after Christmas and then again in April. The same M.O.,” Marino says and I interrupt him again.
“Hold on. Back up. What’s happened, exactly? And let’s not compare the M.O. to other cases before we know the facts.”
“A homicide not even five minutes from you. We got the call about an hour ago …”
“And you’re just notifying my office now? Or more specifically, notifying me?”
He knows damn well that the more quickly the body can be examined in situ and transported to my office, the better. We should have been called instantly.
“Machado wanted to secure the scene.”
Sil Machado is a Cambridge PD investigator. He and Marino are also good friends.
“He wanted to make sure there’s not an active shooter still there waiting to pick off someone else. That’s what he said.” Marino’s tone is odd.
I detect hostility.
“The information we’ve got so far is the victim felt someone was after him. He’d been jumpy of late, and that’s true in the two Jersey cases,” Marino says. “The victims felt they were being watched and screwed with and then out of the blue they’re dead. It’s a lot to explain and right now we don’t have time. The shooter may still be in the area even as we speak. You should stay inside until I get there. I’m maybe ten minutes out.”
“Give me the exact address and I’ll get myself there.”
“No way. Not happening. And wear a vest.”
I watch Benton fold the paper and pick up his coffee, his happy demeanor eclipsed by what he senses. Life is about to change on us. I already know it. I look at him, my expression somber as I stop pacing and pour my espresso into the mulch. I did it without even thinking. A reflex. A relaxing cheerful day has ended as abruptly as a plane slamming into a mountain socked in by fog.
“You don’t think this is a case that Luke or one of the other docs can handle?” I ask Marino but I already know the answer.
He’s not interested in dealing with my deputy chief, Luke Zenner. Marino isn’t going to settle for any of my other medical examiners.
“Or we can send in one of our investigators if that would suffice. Jen Garate certainly could handle it and Luke can do the post immediately.” I try anyway. “He’s probably in the autopsy room. We have five cases this morning.”
“Well now you got six. Jamal Nari,” Marino says as if I should know who he’s talking about.
“Shot in his driveway as he was getting groceries out of his car between nine-forty-five and ten,” Marino says. “A neighbor noticed him down on the pavement and called nine-one-one exactly one hour and eight minutes ago.”
“How do you know he was shot if you haven’t been to the scene yet?” I check my watch. It’s eight minutes past eleven.
“He’s got a nice hole in his neck and another one where his left eye used to be. Machado’s there and has already gotten the wife on the phone. She told him some weird shit’s been happening in the past month and Nari was concerned enough to start changing his patterns, even his car. At least that’s what Machado’s passed on to me.” That tone again.
Hostility, and it makes no sense. The two of them go to baseball and hockey games together. They ride Harleys, and Machado is largely responsible for convincing Marino to resign as my chief forensic investigator and go back to policing. This was last year. I’m still adjusting to his empty office at the CFC and his new habit of telling me what to do. Or thinking he can. Like right now. He’s demanding my presence at a death scene as if I have no say about it.
“I’ve already got a few emailed pictures,” Marino explains. “Like I said it reminds me of the lady killed in New Jersey two months ago, the one whose mother I went to high school with. Shot while she was waiting for the Edgewater Ferry, people everywhere and no one heard or saw a damn thing. Once in the back of the neck, once in the mouth.”
I remember hearing about the case and the original suspicion that it was a murder for hire, possibly domestic related.
“In December it was the guy getting out of his car at his restaurant in Morristown,” Marino continues as my mind jumps to the peculiar poem again.
It was tweeted from a hotel in Morristown. Copperhead. My attention wanders back to the seven pennies on the wall.
“And I was there for that one, during the holidays, hanging out with some of my cop buddies, so I went to the scene. Shot once in the back of the neck, once in the gut. Solid copper bullets, high-speed velocities with so little frag we can’t do positive
