Chaos. Patricia Cornwell

      But it’s as if I’ve walked into a tornado. There’s so much flying around I can’t tell what’s up, down, inside out or backward.

      “Hold on,” I again say to him because I won’t discuss a case until no one can overhear me.

      “Turning off Kennedy … On Harvard Street now,” his voice is choppy.

      “Give me two more seconds. I’m finding someplace quiet,” I reply, and I can hear the sound of his engine as sirens wail in the background.

      Past Mrs. P’s empty station, Benton takes a right at the entryway’s round table with its sumptuous fragrant arrangement of cut lilies and roses. I keep going back to what he said just moments ago about an anticipated terrorist attack on the East Coast, possibly in the Boston area again. Now something has happened here in Cambridge, and he’s on the phone with Washington, D.C., as the terror alert is off the charts. I don’t like what I’m feeling.

      I don’t like the way Benton glanced at me as he said over the phone that he wasn’t aware of something, that he hadn’t been informed of whatever it is. As if there’s something happening in the here and now that he should know about, that both of us should. Whatever’s going on isn’t simply a local problem, and as I think this I also know I’m ahead of myself. The two of us getting important if not urgent calls simultaneously doesn’t mean they’re related. It could be a coincidence.

      But I can’t shake the ominous signals I’m picking up. I have a feeling I’m going to discover soon enough that Benton and I are about to have the same problem but won’t be able to discuss it much if at all. In our different positions we won’t handle it the same way, and we could even end up at odds with each other. It wouldn’t be the first time and certainly won’t be the last.

      “Doc …? Did you get the part about …? Interpol calling …?” Marino says, and I must have misheard him.

      “I can hardly understand you,” I reply in a loud whisper. “And I can’t talk. One second please.”

      Benton heads into the drawing room, and I wish the drapes had been pulled across the tall expansive windows. It’s completely dark out with only vague smudges of distant lamps pushing back the inkiness, and I’m conscious of the night and what might be in it, possibly close by, possibly watching. Maybe right under our very noses. I detect something sinister has been tampering with us all day and probably for longer than that.

      I return to the entrance, where I avoid the old corroded mirror on the wall, and I stand with my head bent, facing the front door but not really seeing anything as I listen to Marino over the phone.

      It’s difficult to hear everything he’s saying. We have at best a spotty connection, and I’m beginning to get jumpy. I don’t know who’s doing what or spying on whom, and in light of everything else it’s hard not to feel hunted and disoriented.

      “Okay, stop. You need to say that again only much more slowly.” I huddle near an ornate cast-iron umbrella stand, and I don’t want to believe this is happening. “What do you mean she’s already stiff?”

      “The first guy there checked her vitals said she’s already stiff,” Marino replies, and the connection is almost perfect suddenly.

      “And have you seen this yourself or is it what you’ve been told?” I reply because what he’s saying sounds completely wrong.

      “I was told.”

      “Were there any attempts at resuscitation?”

      “She was obviously dead,” Marino says clear as a bell.

      “That’s what you were told.”

      “Yeah.”

      “What was obvious about it?” I ask.

      “For one thing she was stiff. The squad didn’t touch her.”

      “Then how did they determine she’s stiff?”

      “I don’t know but apparently she is.” Marino again reminds me he hasn’t been to the scene.

      “As far as we know, the first responding officer is the only one who’s touched her?” I want to know.

      “That’s what I’ve been told.”

      “And what about her temp? Warm? Cool?”

      “Warm supposedly. But what do you expect when it’s still ninety degrees out? She could be out there all day and not cool off.”

      “I’ll have to see when I get there. But the rigor doesn’t make sense,” I tell Marino. “Unless she’s been out there much longer than one might initially assume. And that wouldn’t make sense either. Even in this weather there are still some people out and about, especially near the water. She would have been found long before now, I would think.”

      For rigor mortis to be obvious, the victim would have had to be dead for several hours at least, depending on what muscles are noticeably affected and how advanced the postmortem process has gotten. The high temperatures we’ve been having would escalate decomposition, meaning rigor would set in sooner. But it’s extremely unlikely that what Marino’s been told is correct. That’s also not surprising. Patrol officers are often the first responders, and they can’t always know what they’re looking at.

      “… Got him waiting with the twins … uh, who found the body …” Marino is saying, and then I lose the rest.

      “Okay. You must be in a bad space again.” I’m getting exasperated, but at least it sounds like he has the scene secured.

      But I can’t imagine what he meant when he said that Interpol was trying to call him.

      “Looks like someone was hiding in the trees, waiting,” he then says, and the connection is much better again. “That’s what I’m guessing. No eyes or ears.”

      “Not if it were the middle of the day,” I point out as I continue glancing around me, making sure no one can hear. “And if she’s been dead for hours as her alleged rigor would suggest? There would have been eyes and ears because it would have been broad daylight, possibly early or midafternoon.”

      “I agree with you. That part can’t be right.”

      “It doesn’t sound it. But I’ll see when I get there,” I repeat. “What else can you tell me?”

      Marino begins to describe what he knows about a violent death that may have happened within the past hour not even a mile from here. The woman’s body is on the fitness path along the river. Some of her clothing has been ripped off, her helmet more than twenty feet away, and there’s visible blood. It appears she died from a blow to the head, or that’s what the first responding officer told Marino.

      “He says you can see where she was struggling, moving around as her head was banged against the path,” Marino adds, but what I alert on is his mention of a helmet. “Like someone was waiting until she was passing through a thick clump of trees where nobody could see, then grabbed her and she fought like hell.”

      “What helmet?” I ask. “The victim was on a bicycle?”

      “It appears she was attacked while she was riding,” Marino answers, and I can hear his excitement in his tense tone while I feel a chill along my spine.

      I can’t help but think of my encounter earlier today, first at the repertory theater and then on the sidewalk along Quincy Street. Suddenly the young woman with the British accent is in my mind, and I wish she weren’t.

      “She was on the path that cuts through the middle of the park,” Marino is explaining, “and it happened in the spot where there’s a small clearing in a stand of trees. I’m thinking it was planned like that to ambush her.”

      “And her helmet was off and some twenty feet from the body?” It’s another detail that like her rigor defies logic, and I wonder what color the helmet is.

      I hope