New York Times and Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, and The Wall Street Journal, and if one doesn’t mind news a day or two old,
there are fat papers from London, Berlin, and Paris. Sometimes we find La Nazione and L’espresso, and I read to us about Florence and Rome,
and we look at ads for villas to rent and fantasize about living like the locals, about exploring ruins and museums, the Italian countryside and the
Amalfi Coast.
The man pauses on the crowded sidewalk and seems to change his mind about something. He and Sock trot across the street, on
Massachusetts Avenue now, and I know where they are headed, or I think I do. A left on Quincy Street, and they are walking more briskly, and the
man has a plastic bag in his hand, as if Sock isn’t going to hold out much longer. Past the modern Lamont Library and the Georgian Revival brick
Harvard Faculty Club and Fogg Museum, and the Gothic stone Church of the New Jerusalem, and they turn right on Kirkland Avenue. It is the three
of us. I am with them, cutting over to Irving, turning left on it, minutes from Norton’s Woods, minutes from Benton’s and my house, listening to Five for
Fighting on the satellite radio… “even heroes have the right to bleed… “
I feel a growing sense of urgency with each step as we move closer to the man dying and the dog being lost in the bitter cold, and I desperately
don’t want it. I’m walking with them as if leading them into it because I know what’s ahead and they don’t, and I want to stop them and turn them
back. Then the house is on our left, three-story, white with black shutters and a slate roof, Federal style, built in 1824 by a transcendentalist who
knew Emerson, Thoreau, and the Norton of Norton’s Anthology and Norton’s Woods. Inside the house, Benton’s and my house, are original
woodwork and molding, and plaster ceilings with exposed beams, and over the landings of the main staircase are magnificent French stainedglass
windows with wildlife scenes that light up like jewels in the sun. A Porsche 911 is in the narrow brick driveway, exhaust fogging out of the
chrome tailpipes.
Benton is backing up his sports car, the taillights glowing like fiery eyes as he brakes for a man and his dog walking past, and the man has his
headphones turned toward Benton, maybe admiring the Porsche, a black all-wheel-drive Turbo Cabriolet that he keeps as shiny as patent leather. I
wonder if he will remember the young man in the bulky green coat and his black-and-white greyhound or if they really registered at the time, but I
know Benton. He’ll become obsessed, maybe as obsessed with the man and his dog as I am, and I search my memory for what Benton did
yesterday. Late afternoon he dropped by his office at McLean because he’d forgotten to bring home the case file of the patient he was to evaluate
today. A few degrees of separation, a young man and his old dog, who are about to be parted forever, and my husband alone in his car heading to
the hospital to pick up something he forgot. I’m watching it all unfold as if I’m God, and if this is what it’s like to be God, how awful that must be. I
know what’s going to happen and can’t do a thing to stop it.
3
I realize the van has stopped and Marino and Lucy are getting out. We are parked in front of the John B. Wallace Civil Air Terminal, and I stay put. I
continue to watch what is playing on the iPad as Lucy and Marino begin unloading my belongings.
Cold air rushes in through the open tailgate while I puzzle over the man’s decision to walk Sock in Norton’s Woods, in what’s called Mid-
Cambridge, almost in Somerville. Why here? Why not closer to where he lived? Was he meeting someone? A black iron gate fills the display, and it
is partially opened and his hand opens it wide, and I realize he has put on thick black gloves, what look like motorcycle gloves. Are his hands cold,
or is there another reason? Maybe he does have a sinister plan. Maybe he intends to use the gun. I imagine pulling back the slide of a ninemillimeter
pistol and pressing the trigger while wearing bulky gloves, and it seems illogical.
I hear him shake open the plastic bag, and then I see it as he looks down and I catch a glimpse of something else, what looks like a tiny
wooden box. A stash box, I think. Some of them are made of cedar and even have a tiny hygrometer in them like a humidor, and I recall the amber
glass smoking pipe on the desk inside the apartment. Maybe he likes to walk his dog in Norton’s Woods because it is remote and usually quite
private, and of little interest to the police unless there is a VIP or high-level event that requires security. Maybe he enjoys coming here and smoking
weed. He whistles at Sock, bends over, and slips the lead off him, and I can hear him say, “Hey, boy, do you remember our spot? Show me our
spot.” Then he says something that’s muffled. I can’t quite make it out. “And for you,” it sounds like he says, followed by, “Do you want to send
one…?” Or “Do you send one…?” After playing it twice I still can’t understand what he is saying, and it may be that he is bent over and talking into
his coat collar.
Who is he talking to? I don’t see anyone nearby, just the dog and the gloved hands, and then the camera angle shifts up as the man straightens
up and I see the park again, a vista of trees and benches, and off to one side a stone walkway near the building with the green metal roof. I catch
glimpses of people and conclude by the way they are bundled up for the cold that they aren’t wedding guests but most likely are walking in the park
just like the man is. Sock trots toward shrubs to leave his deposit, and his master moves deeper into the gracious wooded estate of ancient elms
and green benches.
He whistles and says, “Hey, boy, follow me.”
In shaded areas around thick clumps of rhododendrons the snow is deep and churned up with dead leaves and stones and broken sticks that
make me think morbidly of clandestine graves, of sloughed off skin and weathered bones that have been gnawed on and scattered. He is scanning,
looking around, and the hidden camera pauses on the three-tier green metal roof of the glass-and-timber building I can see from the sunporch at
Benton’s and my house. As the man turns his head, I see a door on the first floor that leads outside, and the camera pauses again on a woman with
gray hair standing outside the door. She is dressed in a suit and a long brown leather coat and is talking on her phone.
The man whistles and makes a gritty sound as he walks on the granite gravel path toward Sock, to pick up what the dog has left… “and this
emptiness fills my heart… “ Peter Gabriel sings. I think of the young soldier with the same name who burned up in his Humvee, and I smell him as
though his foul odors are still trapped deep inside my nose. I think of his mother and her grief and anger on the phone when she called me this
morning. Forensic pathologists aren’t always thanked, and there are times when those left behind act as if I am the reason their loved one is dead,
and I try to remember that. Don’t take it personally.
The gloved hands shake out the rumpled plastic bag again, the type one gets at the market, and then something happens. The man’s gloved
hand flies up at his head, and I hear the jostle of his hand hitting the headphones as if he’s swatting at something, and he exclaims, “What the…?
Hey… !” in a breathy, startled way. Or maybe it is a cry of pain. But I don’t see anything or anyone, just the woods and distant figures in it. I don’t see
his dog, and I don’t see him. I back up the recording and play it again. His black gloved hand suddenly enters the frame, and he blurts out, “What
the…?” then, “Hey… !” I decide he sounds stunned and upset, as if something has knocked the wind out of him.
I play it again, listening for anything else, and what I detect in his tone is protest and maybe fear, and, yes, pain, as if someone has elbowed
him or bumped him hard on a busy sidewalk. Then the tops of bare trees rush up and around. Chipped bits of slate zoom in and get large as he
thuds down on the path, and either he is on his back or the headphones have come off. The screen is fixed on an image of bare branches and gray
sky, and then the hem of a long black coat swishes past, flapping as someone walks swiftly, and another loud jostling noise and the picture changes
again. Bare branches and a gray sky but different branches showing through the slats of a green bench. It happens so fast, so unbelievably fast,
and then the voices and the sounds of people get loud.
“Someone call nine-one-one!”
“I don’t think he’s breathing.”
“I don’t have my phone. Call nine-one-one!”
“Hello? There’s… uh, yeah, in Cambridge. Yes, Massachusetts. Je-sus! Hurry, hurry; they fucking have me on hold. Je-sus, hurry! I can’t believe
this. Yes, yes, a man, he’s collapsed and doesn’t seem to be breathing… Norton’s Woods at the corner of Irving and Bryant… Yes, someone is
trying CPR. I’ll stay on… I’m staying on. Yes, I mean, I don’t… She wants to know if he’s still not breathing. No, no, he’s not breathing! He’s not
moving. He’s not breathing!… I didn’t really see it, just looked over and noticed he was on the ground, suddenly he was on the ground…”
I press pause and get out of the van, and it is cold and very windy as I walk quickly into the terminal. It is small, with restrooms and a sitting
area, and an old television is turned on. For a moment I watch Fox News and fast-forward the video on the iPad while Lucy leans against the front
desk and pays the landing fee with a credit card. I continue to stare at images of bare branches showing between the slats of green-painted wood,
certain now that the headphones ended up under a bench, the camera fixed straight up as the XM radio plays…. “Dark lady laughed and
danced… ” The music is louder because the headphones aren’t pressed against the man’s head, and it seems absurdly incongruous to be
listening to Cher.
listening to Cher.
Voices off camera are urgent and excited, and I hear the sounds of feet and the distant wail of a siren as my niece chats with an older man, a
retired fighter pilot now working at Dover part-time as a fixed base operator, he is happy to tell her.
“… In ‘Nam. So that would have been, what, an F-Four?” Lucy chats with him.
“Oh, yeah, and the Tomcat. That was the last one I flew. But Phantoms were still around, you know, as late as the eighties. You build them right
and they last like you wouldn’t believe. Look how long the C-Five’s been around. And still some Phantoms in Israel, I think. Maybe Iran. Nowadays
those left in the US, we use them for unmanned targets, as drones. One hell of an aircraft. You ever seen one?”
“In Belle Chasse, Louisiana, at the Naval Air Station. Took my helicopter down there to help with Katrina.”
“They’ve been experimenting with hurricane-busting, using Phantoms to fly into the eye.” He nods.
The screen on the iPad goes black. The headphones weren’t recording anymore, and I’m convinced that when the man fell to the ground they
must have ended up some distance away under a bench. The motion sensor wasn’t detecting enough activity to prevent it from dozing, and that’s
curious to me. How exactly did his headphones get knocked off and end up where they did? Maybe someone kicked them out of the way. It could
have been accidental if that’s what happened, perhaps by a person trying to help him, or it could have been deliberate by a person who was
covertly recording him, stalking him. I think of the hem of the black coat flapping by, and I fast-forward intermittently, looking for the next images,
listening for sounds, but nothing until four-thirty-seven p.m., when the woods and the darkening sky swing wildly, and bare hands loom large and
paper crackles as the headphones are placed inside a brown bag, and I hear a voice say, “… Colts all the way.” And another voice says, “Saints
are gonna take it. They got…” Then murky darkness and muffled voices, and nothing.
Finding the TV remote on the arm of a couch inside the terminal, I switch the channel to CNN and listen to the news and watch the crawl, but not
a word about the man on the video clips. I need to ask about Sock again. Where is the dog? It’s not acceptable that no one seems to know. I fix on
Marino as he enters the sitting area, pretending not to see me because he is sulking, or maybe he regrets what he’s done and is embarrassed. I
refuse to ask him anything, and it feels as if the missing dog is somehow his fault, as if everything is Marino’s fault. I don’t want to forgive him for emailing
the video clips to Briggs, for talking to him first. If I don’t forgive Marino for once, maybe he’ll learn a lesson for once, but the problem is I’m
never quite able to convince myself of any case I make against him, against anyone I care about. Catholic guilt. I don’t know what it is, but already I
am softening toward him, my resolve getting weaker. I feel it happening as I search channels on the television, looking for news that might damage
the CFC, and he walks over to Lucy, keeping his back to me. I don’t want to fight with him. I don’t want to hurt his feelings.
I walk away from the TV, convinced at least for the moment that the media doesn’t know about the body waiting for me in my Cambridge
morgue. Something as sensational as that would be a headline, I reason. Messages would be landing nonstop on my iPhone. Briggs would have
heard about it and said something. Even Fielding would have alerted me. Except I’ve heard nothing from Fielding about anything at all, and I try to
call him again. He doesn’t answer his cell phone, and he’s not in his office. Of course not. He never works this late, for God’s sake. I try him at his
home in Concord and get voicemail again.
“Jack? It’s Kay,” I leave another message. “We’re about to take off from Dover. Maybe you can text or e-mail me an update. Investigator Law
hasn’t called back, I assume? We’re still waiting for photographs, and have you heard anything about a missing dog, a greyhound? The victim’s
dog, named Sock, last seen in Norton’s Woods.” My voice has an edge. Fielding is ducking me, and it’s not the first time. He’s a master at
disappearing acts, and he should be. He’s staged enough of them. “Well, I’ll try you again when we land. I assume you’ll meet us at the office,
probably sometime between nine-thirty and ten. I’ve sent messages to Anne and Ollie, and maybe you can make sure they are there. We need to
take care of this tonight. Maybe you could check with Cambridge PD about the dog? He might have a microchip….”
It sounds silly to belabor my point about Sock. What the hell would Fielding know about it? He couldn’t be bothered to go to the scene, and
