“Possibly,” I reply, and I sweep the area around the pieces of the chain, looking for a pendant, ring, lucky charm, anything at all that might have been part of a necklace.

A skull, for example, like the cyclist had on. It was hard to miss when we met at the box office and then again on the sidewalk. I noticed a necklace with a gold skull, a cartoonish whimsical one. I remember she flipped it around to her back as she pedaled off, making sure the dangling chunk of metal was out of her way and didn’t hit her in the teeth as she rode, I can only suppose.

As I walk through the grass I don’t see her shirt, and I remember it was a beige tank top, a Sara Bareilles tour souvenir from several years earlier, I’m pretty sure. I see nothing like that. But I finally find her sneakers scattered, one here, the other way over there, off-white Converse, the laces still tied in bows as if she literally were scared out of her shoes.

I may not be sure of her name but I have little doubt that she’s the cyclist I saw earlier at the theater and then in front of the Faculty Club, and I keep myself in check. I can’t react to it. I can’t give any indication I have a personal reaction to anything I’m doing out here. And I make a decision as we set down cones, making notes and taking photographs. It’s time to give Marino a heads-up.

“I can’t prove this,” I say to him, “and I’m not sure it matters. But I may have seen her earlier tonight.”

“You’re shitting me.” He stops walking and stares at me as if I have five heads.

I briefly explain it to him, starting with my encounter at the American Repertory Theater, and then later in front of the Faculty Club.

“Benton and I both met her on the sidewalk,” I add. “And this would have been about six forty-five as the sun was setting. But it wasn’t dark yet.”

“If that’s who it is then she couldn’t have been dead very long when the girls found her,” he says. “We got the nine-one-one call at about seven thirty.”

“Which is why what Barclay said is illogical,” I answer. “If she’d been dead less than an hour when he checked for a pulse, she shouldn’t have been in full rigor or even an easily discernible stage of it.”

I glance back at the twin sisters, and their attention is all over the place as Barclay talks to them. I’m reminded that they aren’t as comfortable with him as they were with Marino, and it’s obvious. Since he was with them they’ve turned into a matching pair of frightened bookends, weary and wild-eyed.