We approach a clump of trees with full canopies that offers a perfect place for a predator to lie in wait. Marino points this out to me as we walk deeper inside shadows where the dead and the living are gathered, waiting for us. It feels uncanny and weird as if we’re headed to a surprise party where everyone crouches in the dark until the guest of honor appears and the lights switch on.

I remember the early years when we really didn’t have to worry about cameras everywhere and huge indiscretions trending on the Internet before I can finish an autopsy or get lab results. In the old days every Tom, Dick and Harry weren’t filming with cell phones. By the time photo journalists showed up with telescopic lenses, the body was either gone, safely zipped up in a pouch, or detectives would be gathered around holding up sheets or their coats to protect a victim’s privacy. Life and death are much more complicated now.

“I don’t think this was random,” Marino is saying. “Someone knew her patterns.”

“Do we know if she had patterns?” It’s my way of cautioning him again about jumping to conclusions, but it’s a waste of breath.

“Everybody has patterns,” he says, and I listen as I wait for Rusty and Harold to rumble up in our diesel mobile command center.

I’m wondering where they’re going to park it and what commotion it’s going to generate in the very lap of Eliot House. Looming over the park is one of the biggest housing complexes on the campus with its seven brick buildings and numerous courtyards that remind me of Oxford and Cambridge or the palace of Versailles. I imagine students peering out their windows and venturing outside.

The truck will be spotted immediately, and if people zoom in or get closer they’ll see OFFICE OF THE CHIEF MEDICAL EXAMINER and the CFC crest and Massachusetts state seal on the doors. I expect that any minute the Harvard campus will begin waking up to the stunningly sad realization that someone has been killed virtually under its proverbial nose. The second we turn on the lights we’re going to need more uniforms for crowd control.

“Because there’s nothing to stop people from ducking under the tape,” I say to Marino as we inch our way through the woods. “There’s nothing to stop traffic on the bridge from detouring so people can drive through the park to rubberneck. This could become a major fiasco pretty fast.”

“I’ll bring in more units when we’re ready,” he says, and I begin to make out the scene materializing several hundred feet ahead. “If I make the request now? A squadron of cars roll in and only draw more attention. The minute the tent’s up, I’ll request backups, as many as it takes.”