I believe that such special caretakers are created unequally. For better or worse we’re not all the same. I’ve always known this. Give me a few strong Scotches and I’ll admit I’m really not quote normal and never have been. I’m not afraid of death. I rarely notice its artifacts beyond what they have to say to me. Odors, fluids, maggots, flies, vultures, rodents. They contribute to the truths I seek, and it’s important I recognize and respect the life that preceded the failed biology I examine and collect.

All this is to say that I’m unbothered by what most people find upsetting and disgusting. But not by anything that has to do with Lucy. I love her too much. I always have. Already I feel responsible and to blame, and maybe that’s the point as I recognize the plain vanilla dorm room in the recording that’s just ambushed me. I’m the master designer, the authority figure, the doting aunt who put her niece in that room. I put Mister Pickle there.

He looks pretty much the same as when I spirited him away from that dusty Richmond shop and cleaned him up at the beginning of my career. I realize I don’t remember the last time I saw him or where. I have no idea if Lucy lost him, gave him away or has him packed in a closet. My attention flickers as loud spasms of coughing sound several rooms away inside this beautiful house where a wealthy young woman is dead.

“Jesus! What is this? Typhoid Fucking Mary?” It’s Cambridge Police Investigator Pete Marino carping, talking, joking with his colleagues the way cops do.

The Massachusetts state trooper whose name I don’t know is getting over a “summer cold” supposedly. I’m beginning to wonder if what he really has is whooping cough.

“Listen meat puppet. You fucking give me what you got? You get me sick? How about standing over there.” More of Marino’s bedside manner.

“I’m not contagious.” Another salvo of coughing.

“Jesus! Cover your fucking mouth!”

“How am I supposed to do that with gloves on?”

“Then take them off dammit.”

“No way. It won’t be me leaving DNA in here.”

“Oh really? Coughing doesn’t spray DNA from one end of the house to the other every time you hack up your toes?”

I tune out Marino and the trooper, keeping my eyes on the display of my phone. Seconds tick by on the video and the dorm room stays empty. Nobody is there but Mister Pickle on Lucy’s military-looking uncomfortable, ungenerous bed. It’s as if the white sheets and tan blanket have been spray-painted on the narrow thin mattress with its single flat pillow, and I hate beds made as tight as a drum. I avoid them every chance I get.