Marino has his own machine shop. He has a monster garage, and thinks nothing of building an addition to his house or overhauling the engine of his truck. On more than one occasion in the past he’s been the jack-of-all-trades I called in a pinch when I had a problem or electrical emergency. Especially in the earliest years when I lived alone, he was always over at my house for one reason or another, installing motion-sensor lights, repairing the garage door, changing the oil in my car, swapping out the garbage disposal.

“And it’s a damn good thing, right?” he says. “Or maybe all of us would have been fried the minute we started walking around out here.”

“That’s an unpleasant thought.” I step back on the path, looking at the lamp, at the pattern of broken glass.

The lightbulbs didn’t merely crack or shatter. They were exploded with enough force to send pieces and shards many yards away. The lamppost is about ten feet tall, and I can’t see the damage to the lantern. But clearly Marino has.

“The screws are still in the sockets, the three bulbs are totally destroyed.” His face is red and sweaty as he circles the lamppost, looking up, his hands on his hips. “For the most part the filaments are gone.”

“How can you see from here?” The lantern is too far above my head for me to look inside it.

“While they finished setting up, I used a stepladder and took photographs, which I can show you later,” Marino says. “The metal latch is missing, maybe explaining why the glass door is open, and the question once again is when. Did the exploding bulbs cause the little latch, the hook, to break off? Or was it even there to begin with? We’ll keep looking but it’s not showed up so far.”

I walk over to the bicycle on its side, and the rear tire is closest to the park entrance where Marino and I came in when we first got here. Apparently Elisa Vandersteel did the same thing, and I remember her pedaling through the Harvard Yard. I imagine her turning right off John F. Kennedy Street, entering the park from the east.

From there she would have followed the fitness path to the clearing, riding west as the sun slipped behind the trees and the shadows got darker and longer. Based on the position of the bike, something happened right here where I’m standing on the path, the iron lamp but several yards to my left. Her body ended up some ten feet away with glass in her hair, and her helmet is farther away than that.