I’m keenly aware of their disproportionately small heads, their thin upper lips and flat midfaces. They probably won’t get much taller, will have an ongoing struggle with their weight, and their small eyes are spaced far apart like a nonpredatory animal, a horse or a giraffe. The thick glasses, hearing aids, the silver braces on their teeth and everything else indicate a catastrophic failure that likely happened in utero.

Possibly it was due to what the unborn twins were exposed to, and if what I suspect is correct, it’s unspeakably tragic. It’s careless and cruel. Fetal alcohol syndrome is preventable. Just don’t drink during pregnancy, and I wonder if the two girls are in special classes in school. I worry how functional they are, and what obstacles we face in using them as witnesses in this case.

I wonder how much I can rely on what they tell me now about how they happened upon the body and what they might have tampered with. Are they cogent? Are they truthful? And what kind of parents or guardians would allow them to wander about at night or at all?

I feel anger stir like an ember glowing hotly when it’s fanned. Then Barclay is next to Marino and me, showing us the photograph on his phone of Elisa Vandersteel’s driver’s license.

“That’s what I found on the path,” Barclay says proudly, as if he discovered the smoking gun. “Obviously, I didn’t pick it up. I thought I’d wait until you got here.” He directs this to Marino as I look at the photograph on the phone display.

Elisa Ann Vandersteel. DOB: 12–04–1998. London, and the post code is the exclusive area of Mayfair, on South Audley Street near the Dorchester Hotel and the American embassy. The photograph could be the woman I encountered twice earlier today, but I’m not certain.

I’m not going to say anything to Marino or anybody else until I have more information. Any sightings of the victim are important in determining when she died, and I’m mindful of being cautious about what I pass along without verification. Not that driver’s-license portraits are very good in general, but in this one Elisa Vandersteel is heavier than the cyclist I met. The face in the picture is broader, and the brown hair is short, whereas the young woman in Converse sneakers was lean and had a ponytail. But we don’t know how old the photograph is. She might look very different now.

“Anything else?” I ask. “Any other personal effects. A lot of cyclists have bike packs or saddlebags for their wallets, keys and other belongings.”

I don’t add that I don’t remember seeing something like that when I encountered the cyclist on Quincy Street. But Barclay says he didn’t see a bag of any sort attached to the bicycle or nearby.