If a special ops team rolls out on this high-profile property it will be extremely embarrassing and difficult to justify if it’s discovered there was no need. Furthermore such a dramatic display will be one more thing to explain to Chanel Gilbert’s wealthy Hollywood mother. She’s already going to be a force to reckon with. I’m sure of that.

“The rear lens assembly is fastened with stainless number one size Phillips screws but it looks like someone used a regular or number two size screwdriver,” Marino describes over the phone as he looks at the damaged left taillight. “Or maybe a knife or who knows what? Because of the one screw left. The head’s all buggered up like someone used the wrong tool.”

I imagine Carrie Grethen. Would she use the wrong tool? It doesn’t sound like her but who else would leave me such a grisly gift, and what’s the rest of the story?

“I realize it’s not likely but yeah I think we have to entertain the possibility he could be inside.” Marino is talking on the phone about Hyde again as he stares at the dark silent house. “But how would he have gotten in on his own? I didn’t leave him a key. And if he’s incapacitated inside, for example, what happened to his car? Yeah, yeah. Exactly. That’s all I’m asking. Let’s clear the house but we do it on the lowdown. I want to be real careful what goes out over the air. I don’t want a freakin’ carnival at a multimillion-dollar house by the Harvard campus.”

Marino tells him to bring several sets of dry clothes, and he describes my size as men’s medium before I can tell him that will be a tent on me. He ends that call and makes another one. I realize he’s talking to his contact at the phone company, probably the same technical operations manager he always gets hold of when he needs a warrant or wishes to bypass waiting for one. Marino recites two cell phone numbers that I assume belong to Hyde and Lapin. He wants to ping locations. Then we wait.

“It’s going to take fifteen or twenty before we know anything, Doc.” Marino struggles to pull gloves over his wet hands. “And I already feel like crap. I hope like hell I didn’t just make a bad mistake. It’s kind of like nothing we do this minute is right. If we leave it’s wrong. If we stay out here on the driveway it’s wrong. If we go inside the house it’s wrong. If we ask for help it’s wrong and if we don’t it’s wrong. There’s not a damn thing we can do that even makes sense except to wait for Ajax and his guys to roll up.”