He presses SEND and says, “Lapin’s phone is going straight to voice mail too.” He leaves a message for him to call right away, and then he says to me, “What the hell? They get beamed up by aliens?”

“If they’re out in the middle of this weather they may have their phones tucked away so they don’t get soaked. Or maybe they can’t hear them ring. Sometimes the cell phone service is disrupted when we have storms like this.” I watch large maple trees whipped and raked by the wind, the underside of their leaves flashing pale green. “But should we be worried, Marino? I don’t want to get them into trouble but I’d like it a whole lot less if they’re not all right.”

“It’s always the same damn no-win situation,” he says. “You can’t get hold of a cop and finally instigate a search? Then it turns out he’s watching TV somewhere and eating a Big Mac. Or he’s gotten drunk at lunch and is screwing his girlfriend.”

“We can only hope that’s what it is.” I look out at the rain, at the roll of yellow tape in the flower bed.

“You and me both.” Marino’s jaw muscles are flexing.

“Maybe one of them was securing the property when the skies opened up and that’s why only the front steps have tape across them and the roll was left where it is. Maybe the person got out of here in a hurry. This is a very bad storm.”

“Yeah it’s bad. But something’s not right.” Marino makes the understatement of the year. “First we think she’s an obvious accident. Now she’s a homicide and we can’t find her Range Rover and I don’t know where the hell my backup is. There should be two cruisers parked out here keeping an eye on the place. Hold on a second.”

He tries another number.

“Hey it’s me again back at the same address,” he says to whoever answers, a female I suspect based on his flirty tone. “Have any units been dispatched to the house here on Brattle since I left around ten-thirty hours? Specifically two-thirty-seven and one-ten? Anything from them?”

Units 237 and 110 are Hyde and Lapin, I presume, and Marino meets my eyes and shakes his head.

“Really? No contact at all? They haven’t responded to any radio calls in almost three hours? And they haven’t marked out of service or anything like that? Because that’s screwed up. They were coming back here from Dunkin’, were supposed to secure the perimeter and watch the place … Well the point being I need to talk to them, and I need to know who’s been on the property since I left. Okay? Get back to me as fast as you can.”

I watch water boil on bricks. The billowing rain is almost horizontal.