The Front (13 page)

“Why would he call the police? If he's the one who killed her,” Stump wonders.

“Back to the facts as stated in these reports. Another question.” He looks through photographs. “It's supposedly raining by the time the cops arrive. They're all over the scene. Or should be. You notice anything unusual about that?”

Stump looks at the photographs, and it doesn't take her long to observe. “The carpet. A cream color that shows dirt. It's raining and all these people in and out? Why is the carpet clean?”

“Exactly,” Win agrees. “Maybe not as many cops in there as we're supposed to believe? Maybe somebody cleaned up the place just enough to get rid of incriminating evidence? Let's keep going.”

“Postmortem took place at a funeral home? That's unusual, too, isn't it?” Stump says.

“Not back then.” Flipping a page of his legal pad.

“Cause of death, asphyxiation from being strangled with a ligature, which was the bra tied around her neck.” She reads on. “Petechiae of the conjunctivae. Hemorrhage over the back of the larynx and soft tissue over the cervical spine.”

“Consistent with strangulation,” Win says. “What about other injuries? Bruises, cuts, bite marks, broken fingernails, broken bones, whatever.”

Stump scans the report, studies diagrams, says, “Looks like she had bruises around her wrists. . . .”

“You mean ligature marks. From her wrists being tied to the chair legs.”

“Not just those,” Stump says. “It also says there are marks around her wrists
consistent with fingertip bruises. . . .
”

“Suggesting he grabbed her wrists or gripped them tightly.” Win keeps making notes. “She struggled with him.”

“Not possible they're postmortem? From him dragging the body, moving it when he positioned it?”

“Someone grabbed her wrists while she still had a blood pressure,” Win says. “You don't bruise when you're dead.”

“Same kind of bruises around her upper arms,” Stump says. “And also her hips, buttocks, ankles. It's like everywhere he touched her, it turned into a bruise.”

“Keep going. What else?”

“You're right about broken fingernails,” she says.

“Defensive. She may have scratched him,” Win says. “I hope they swabbed under her nails. Although they didn't do DNA testing back then. But they could have checked for ABO blood types.”

The reports are there. Swabs were taken of various orifices. Negative for seminal fluid. Nothing from under her nails, Stump tells him. Maybe they didn't look. Forensic investigations were different back then, to put it mildly.

“What about a tox report?” Win asks, writing in his unique shorthand. Abbreviations and spelling that only he can decipher. “Any mention of alcohol, drugs?”

A few minutes of going through the file and she finds a report from the chemical laboratory on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston. “Negative for drugs and alcohol, although this is interesting.” She holds up a police report. “States in the narrative that she was suspected of drug use.”

“No drugs in the apartment?” Win frowns. It makes no sense. “What about alcohol in the apartment?”

“Looking,” she says.

“Anything on her autopsy report that might indicate she had a history of alcohol abuse, drug abuse?”

“No mention that I can find.”

“Then why would someone suggest she might have a history of drug use? What about her trash? Anything found in her trash? What about her medicine cabinet? What was removed from the scene?”

“Here we go,” Stump says. “A used syringe with a bent needle in a wastepaper basket. In the bathroom. And in the medicine cabinet, a vial of an unknown substance.”

“Certainly the vial must have gone to the lab. The syringe, as well. No report on those?”

“Evidence, evidence . . .” Talking to herself, looking through the files. “Yes, the syringe and vial were submitted. Negative for drugs. Says the vial had, and I quote, ‘an oily solution in it with unknown particulate.' ”

“Keep going,” Win says, writing as fast as he can. “What else was recovered from the scene?”

“Her clothes,” Stump reads. “Skirt, blouse, stockings, shoes . . . You can see them in the photos. Her purse, wallet. A keychain with a Saint Christopher's medal—glad he protected her—and two keys. One an apartment key, the other a key to her office at Perkins, it says here. Those things were by the door, on the floor. Dumped out of her purse.”

“Let me look again.” Win takes all of the photographs from her, spends some time studying each one.

The scene, the morgue. Nothing he didn't notice earlier, except the scenario is making less sense to him. Her bed was made, and it appears she was dressed for work when she was attacked. A vial found, a used syringe, an unknown substance. Negative drug and alcohol screen.

“Dermatitis on her torso. A rash,” Stump reads. “Maybe some sexually transmitted disease? Examination conducted by a Dr. William Hunter, Harvard's Department of Legal Medicine.”

“Used to do the medico-legal investigations for the state police,” Win says. “Back in the late thirties, the forties. Started by Frances Glessner Lee, this amazing woman into forensics way before her time. Unfortunately, the department she funded doesn't exist anymore.”

“You think any of the evidence would still be left?” Stump asks. “Maybe at the Boston ME's office?”

“Wasn't around back then,” Win says. “Not until the early eighties. Pathologists at Harvard worked cases as a public service. Any existing records would be at Countway Medical Library at Harvard. But they don't warehouse evidence. And digging around in there could take years.”

He looks at photographs taken in Janie Brolin's bedroom. Ransacked drawers, clothing scattered on the floor. Perfume bottles, a hairbrush on top of a dresser, and something else. A pair of dark glasses.

Puzzled, he says, “Why do people who are blind or visually impaired wear dark glasses?”

Stump replies, “I guess to alert others that they're blind. And for self-conscious reasons—to cover their eyes.”

“Right. It's not about the weather. About it being sunny,” Win says. “I'm not saying that blind eyes aren't sensitive to light, but that's not why blind people wear dark glasses, including indoors. Here.” He shows Stump the photograph. “If she were dressed for work, waiting to be picked up, and was ready to go, then why were her dark glasses in her bedroom? Why wasn't she wearing them? Why didn't she have them with her?”

“It was raining, a dark, gloomy day . . .”

“But blind people don't wear dark glasses because of the weather. You just said it yourself,” he says.

“Maybe she forgot them for some reason. Maybe she was in the bedroom when someone showed up, interrupted her. Could be a number of reasons.”

“Maybe,” he says. “Maybe not.”

“What are you thinking?”

“I'm thinking we should go get something to eat,” Win says.

Nine p.m. The FBI's field office in Boston. Special Agent McClure uses the Cyber Task Force's network sniffer to capture Internet traffic of interest.

Specifically, data that fit the profile of e-mail sent from Monique Lamont's IP address and received from another address, also in Cambridge. She's been busy of late, and McClure has to surf through all of her communications, even if they couldn't possibly have anything to do with terrorism and the suspicion she's funding it through a Romanian children's-relief fund that may very well be connected to a nonprofit organization called FOIL. The FBI is becoming increasingly convinced there's a growing terrorist cell in Cambridge, and Lamont is financially supporting it.

Wouldn't surprise McClure in the least. All those radical students—Harvard, Tufts, MIT—who believe the Constitution ensures that they can do and say pretty much anything they want, even if it's anti-American. For example, holding demonstrations to oppose the war in Iraq, rallying for separation of church and state, disrespecting the flag, and, most personally offensive to the Bureau, vehement attacks on the Patriot Act, which rightly allows the very thing McClure is this moment doing: spying on a private citizen without a court order so other private citizens can be protected from other terrorist attacks or the fear of them. Understandably, there are misfires. Bank accounts, medical records, e-mails, telephone conversations that turn out to be unfortunate violations of people who turn out to have no terrorist involvement whatsoever.

The way McClure views it, however, is that almost everyone who is spied on is guilty of something. Like that John Deere salesman in Iowa a few months back who suddenly came up with enough cash to pay off the fifty thousand dollars he owed various credit-card companies. When his account was automatically flagged, further investigation revealed he had a second cousin whose college roommate's nephew married a woman whose sister's stepdaughter was, for a while, the lesbian lover of a woman whose best friend was a secretary at the Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Ottawa. Maybe the John Deere salesman wasn't involved in terrorism, but as it turned out, he was buying marijuana allegedly for medical purposes because of alleged nausea due to chemotherapy treatments.

McClure reads an e-mail sent to Lamont in real time.

Special Agent McClure forwards the e-mail to Jeremy Killien at Scotland Yard, and writes:

The hell with it,
McClure thinks twice. Who cares what time it is over there? Scotland Yard guys can be yanked out of bed the same way FBI agents can. Why should Killien get special consideration? In fact, it would be a pleasure to annoy Detective Superintendent Sherlock. The damn Brits. What have they done except focus on Lamont because of her latest publicity stunt, which caused them to find out she's under investigation, which in turn forced the Bureau to step things up so the Yard doesn't take the credit. It wasn't the Brits who first flagged her as a potential terrorist threat, after all, and now they think they can storm in and steal the Bureau's thunder.

McClure makes the call.

A couple of British-sounding rings, and Killien's sleepy British voice.

“Read your e-mail,” McClure says to him.

“Hold on.” Not exactly gracious about it.

McClure can hear Killien carrying the portable phone into another room. Hears keys clicking, muttering “damn bloody slow” and “almost got it up. Well, that didn't come out right, did it. There we are. Good God. Don't like the sound of that.”

“I think we need to move on it,” McClure advises. “Don't see how it can wait. Question's whether you want to be here. On such short notice. I understand it's not . . .”

“No option there,” Killien interrupts. “I'll make my arrangements straightaway.”

 

 

 

Win apologizes for serving tomatoes that aren't homegrown.

“As if I don't know. I happen to be an expert in produce,” Stump says, sitting some distance from him in his living room. “In fact, you'll probably think this is an awful confession for me to make, but my real job is my market. My father started it from nothing, and it would break his heart if I let him down. But about tomatoes. An insider's tip. Best ones are from Ver rill Farm, but we've got a couple months to go, depending on how much rain we get. I love being a cop, but the market loves me back.”

The lights are low, his apartment filled with the tantalizing aroma of hickory-smoked bacon. Fresh tomatoes or not, the BLT Win fixed tastes about as good as anything she's ever eaten, and the French Chablis he opened is crisp and clean and perfect. Stump looks out at a typical Cambridge view. Old brick buildings, slate roofs, and lighted windows. When he suggested getting something to eat, she assumed he meant a late-night dinner, was excited and unnerved when he suggested his place. She should have said no. She watches him eating his sandwich and sipping his wine, and feels even more certain that she should have said no. When he lit a candle on the coffee table and turned out the lights, she knew for a fact she'd just made a tactical error.

She sets down her place, says, “I really should be going.”

“Not polite to eat and run.”

“You can call me tomorrow if you need more help. But . . .” She starts to get up but seems to be made of stone.

“You're scared of me, aren't you?” he says in the soft, moving light. “Were scared of me long before I got thrown into this case and then pulled you down with me.”

“I don't know you. And I tend to be wary of the unfamiliar. Especially if I try to put together pieces and they don't fit.”

“What pieces?”

“Where do I start?”

“Wherever you want. Then I'll get to all your pieces that don't fit.” His eyes pick up the candlelight.

“I think I need another glass of wine,” she says.

“Was just about to do that.” He refills their glasses, the leather couch creaking as he moves close.