I see her face. I see her wide crazed eyes and the lust smoldering in them as she cut Lucy with the Swiss Army knife. It was the same way Carrie looked at me when she fired the spear gun, and the clattering and clanging in the back of the truck continues. Marino is making the point that the noise wasn’t there earlier.

“And no one has been inside,” he’s saying. “I mean there’s no way anyone went inside it while we were at Lucy’s? You sure? You positive the truck was locked while you were blocking that FBI asshole’s car? Did one of them go inside the truck? Maybe looking for an extra key so they could move it? Did someone try to force open a door and broke something and that’s what we hear rolling around?”

“I’m sure it was locked.” I think I am but now that he’s mentioned it I can’t swear to it.

Uncertainty begins to pick at me. When I packed up my equipment midmorning it was right after I got the first Depraved Heart video clip. Maybe I was distracted as I arranged the large plastic cases in the back of the truck. Maybe I forgot to lock the tailgate doors. It’s something I do automatically with a key that also sets and unsets the alarm.

I never leave the back, the cab or any of the access panels unlocked for a number of reasons. Defense attorneys, for example. They’d harangue me about it on the witness stand. They’d have jurors doubting the integrity of any evidence I collected including the dead body itself.

“Jesus,” Marino mutters as whatever is loose in back rolls again and stops with a clank.

“We’re almost there,” I reply. “I’m going to look.”

Chapter 29

CHAPTER 29

CARS IN CAMBRIDGE ARE FEW. THEY MOVE SLOWLY with their lights on as we drive near the Harvard campus, headed back to Brattle Street, one of the most prestigious addresses in the United States.

Former residents include George Washington and Longfellow, and the handsome timber-frame two-story house where Chanel Gilbert died was built in the late 1600s. Painted a dusky blue, it’s symmetrical with black shutters, a gray slate roof and a central chimney. Over the centuries most of the original estate was subdivided and sold off, and the only way to reach it is a shared driveway of old interlocking brick pavers in a herringbone pattern.

I carefully bump along in my big truck and park in front, listening to rain pummel and splatter. As I look around I get an uneasy feeling. I get more than one of them. They’re coming in waves as trees rock and thrash in the wind and rain, and I turn off the wipers and the headlights, and the glass is flooded. Ours is the only vehicle in the driveway and that’s not right.