The video link landed on my phone at exactly 9:33 A.M., a little more than an hour ago. I recognized the alert from Lucy’s ICE line. It sounds like a C-sharp chord on an electric guitar, and immediately I pulled off my soiled gloves and stepped away from the body. I watched the recording and now it’s gone. Irretrievably gone. That’s what happened. That’s what I want to tell Marino. But I can’t and it’s making matters more difficult with him than they already were.

He doesn’t completely trust me. I’ve sensed it since my near miss in Florida.

Blame the victim.

Only I’m the victim this time, and in his mind it has to be my fault. That suggests I’m not who I used to be. At least not to him. He treats me differently. It’s difficult to pinpoint and define, subtle like a shadow that didn’t used to be there. I see it in front of me whenever he’s around, like the changing shades of blue and gray on a heaving sea. He blocks my sun. He makes reality shift when he shows up.

Doubt.

I think that’s mostly it. Marino doubts me. He hasn’t always liked me and in the beginning of my career he might have hated me and then for the longest time he loved me too much. But throughout it all he didn’t doubt my judgment. There’s plenty he criticizes and harps on but being erratic, irrational or unreliable was never on the list. Not trusting me as a professional is new and it doesn’t feel good. It feels damn terrible.

“The more I think about it the more I agree with you, Doc,” Marino continues to talk as I drive my big truck. “She hadn’t been dead all that long to be in such bad condition. I don’t know how we’re going to explain it to her mother. That and what lit up blue on the floor. A case that started out as no big deal and now there are questions, serious questions. And we can’t answer them. And why? Because for one thing we’re here in Concord and not in Cambridge getting to the bottom of things. How do I explain to Amanda Gilbert that you got a personal call and left her daughter’s body on the floor and just walked out?”

“I didn’t leave the body on the floor,” I reply.

“I meant it figuratively.”

“Literally the body is safely at my office and I didn’t just walk out. There’s nothing figurative about it. Everything has been left as is and we’ll be back soon. And it’s also not for you to explain, Marino, and at the moment I don’t intend to discuss details with Amanda Gilbert. Not to mention we need to confirm the dead woman’s identity first.”