“That big white chopper hovering over us the whole damn time you were getting her out of the water,” Marino decides. “I should have noticed the tail number, dammit.”

I try to wiggle the ring from side to side, puzzling over its size and that it fits snugly on her index finger when it shouldn’t, and I wonder if she originally wore it on a smaller finger or if the ring is hers at all. If it fits her index finger now, it wouldn’t have at death, because when a body begins to mummify, it becomes extremely dried out and literally shrinks the same way fruits, vegetables, and meats do inside a dehydrator. Jewelry, shoes, and clothing won’t fit the way they did in life, and I imagine someone moving the body from wherever it was concealed and rearranging her jewelry or perhaps dressing her a certain way before she was tethered and dumped into the bay.

Why?

To make sure the ring was found? To make sure her personal effects were?

“I made a note of the tail number, wrote it down,” I’m saying to Marino, as I’m pondering these other things. “We can have it checked out with the FAA database.”

“It probably will come back to the bank financing it or some meaningless limited liability company; same thing Lucy does. So when the cops are behind one of her batmobiles or batcycles, they can’t run her plate and figure out who she is, and air traffic controllers can’t connect that sweet radio voice of hers with a name.”

His Tyvek-covered feet make a slippery sound as he moves around.

“Almost none of these choppers, even news ones, come back to anything that’s helpful,” he says. “Especially if they’re privately owned. When I started out as a cop, the world wasn’t so friggin’ anonymous. And you’re going to be late as hell. No way you can make it by two unless you’ve got a jetpack.”

“The white helicopter with red and blue stripes on the tailboom struck me as private or corporate.” I pick up her left hand, holding it in my two gloved ones, and I look at the watch fastened snugly around her wrist with a black silk strap. “Except for the camera mounted on it. Assuming it was a video camera and not a FLIR. But either is unusual for private or corporate aircraft.”

“Pretty sure I’ve never seen that bird around here.” Marino shakes open a second sheet. “Which is a little weird, because most of them end up flying right past us over the river on what’s called the Fenway Route, in and out of Logan. Sure as hell got no idea what TV station it might be, if any, or how the hell they’d know we were out there and what we were doing. I know Judge Conry likes you, but you’re pushing your luck.”