Chaos. Patricia Cornwell

and scorching the life out of everything, and I switch my shopping bag to my other arm. My messenger-style briefcase also has gotten very heavy, packed with a laptop, paperwork and other personal effects, the wide strap biting into my shoulder.

      “Where are you exactly?” Marino’s voice is cutting in and out.

      “Taking a shortcut.” I’m not interested in giving him my precise whereabouts. “And you? You’re muffled every other minute or talking in a barrel. Are you in your car?”

      “What’d you do, take the Johnston Gate so you can cut through the Yard to Quincy Street?”

      “How else would I go?” I’m evasive now in addition to being slightly breathless as I trudge along.

      “So you’re near the church,” he says.

      “Why are you asking? Are you coming to arrest me?”

      “As soon as I find my handcuffs. Maybe you’ve seen them?”

      “Maybe ask whoever you’re dating these days?”

      “You’re gonna exit the Yard through the gate across from the museums. You know, at the light that will be on your left on the other side of the wall.” It seems like a directive rather than an assumption or a question.

      “Where are you?” as my suspicions grow.

      “What I just suggested would be most direct,” he says. “Past the church, past the Quad.”

       2

      I walk through a black wrought-iron gate in the brick wall bordering the Yard, and I look up and down Quincy Street.

      On the other side of it the entire block is taken up by the recently renovated brick-and-concrete Harvard Art Museum that includes six levels of galleries under a glass pyramid roof. I wait near a line of parked cars glaring in angled sunlight that is slowly waning, and I check the time and weather on my phone.

      It’s still an oppressive ninety-three degrees at 6:40 P.M., and I don’t know what I was thinking a little while ago. But I simply couldn’t take it anymore as Bryce prattled nonstop while he drove along the river toward the Anderson Memorial Bridge, turning right at the red-roofed Weld Boathouse, following John F. Kennedy Street to Massachusetts Avenue.

      I didn’t think I could listen to one more word, and I instructed him not to wait for me as I climbed out of the SUV in front of the college bookstore, The Coop. Harvard Square with its shops and Red Line subway stop is always populated even in the most miserable weather. There’s going to be foot traffic and a fairly steady panhandling population 24/7.

      It wasn’t an appropriate place for Bryce to roll down his window and argue like a boy-toy lover with a lady boss mature enough to be a cougar. He wouldn’t listen or leave me, and started sounding slightly hysterical, which unfortunately is his personality. He wanted me to state “for the record” why I no longer desired his assistance and to inform him “chapter and verse” if he’d “done something.” He kept repeating that he just knew he’d “done something” and wouldn’t listen each time I denied it.

      The curious were watching like hawks. A homeless man sitting on the sidewalk in front of CVS, shading himself with his cardboard sign, stared at us with the beady eyes of a magpie. It wasn’t exactly an ideal spot to park a vehicle that has OFFICE OF THE CHIEF MEDICAL EXAMINER and the CFC’s crest, the scales of justice and caduceus painted in blue on the doors. The SUV’s back windows are blacked out, and I understand the impact when one of our marked vehicles pulls up.

      After I managed to shoo Bryce off, I shopped inside The Coop for gifts for my mother and sister. I made sure my clingy chief of staff really was gone when I finally emerged from the air-conditioning into the brutal heat, heading out on Brattle Street.

      I swung by the American Repertory Theater, the ART in the Loeb Center, to pick up six tickets for Waitress, having reserved the best orchestra seats in the house. After that I backtracked on Massachusetts Avenue, cutting through the Yard and ending up where I am now on Quincy Street.

      I pass the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts on my left, and I must look like a holy mess. After all the trouble I went to before my ill-advised ride, showering in my office, changing into a suit that’s now wrinkled and sweat-stained. I dabbed on Benton’s favorite Amorvero perfume that he finds in Italy. It’s the signature fragrance of the Hotel Hassler in Rome, where he proposed to me. But I can’t smell the exotic scent anymore as I sniff my wrist, waiting at an intersection. Heat rises in shimmering waves from the tar-smelling pavement, and I hear Marino’s big voice before I see him.

      “You know what they say about mad Englishmen and dogs going out in this shit?”

      I turn around at the garbled cliché and he’s stopped at a light, the driver’s window open of his unmarked midnight-blue SUV. Now I know why the reception was so bad when we talked a moment ago. It’s what I suspected. He’s been cruising the area looking for me, talking to people in the Square. He turns on his emergency flashers and whelps his siren, cutting between cars in the opposite lane, heading toward me.

      Marino double-parks, climbs out, and I don’t think I’ll ever get used to seeing him in a suit and tie. Smart attire wasn’t designed with the likes of him in mind. Nothing really fits him except his own skin.

      Almost six-foot-five, he weighs two hundred and fifty pounds give or take thirty. His tan shaved head is smooth like polished stone, his hands and feet the size of boats. Marino’s shoulders are the width of a door, and he could bench-press five of me he likes to brag.

      He’s handsome in a primitive way with a big ruddy face, heavy brow and prominent nose. He has a caveman jaw and strong white teeth, and he tends to explode out of business clothes like the Incredible Hulk. Nothing dressy and off the rack looks quite right on him, and part of the problem is he shouldn’t be left to his own devices when he shops, which isn’t often or planned. It would be helpful if he would clean out his closets and garage occasionally but I’m pretty sure he never has.

      As he steps up on the sidewalk I notice the sleeves of his navy-blue suit jacket are above the wrist. His trouser cuffs are high-waters that show his gray tube socks, and he has on black leather trainers that aren’t laced all the way up. His tie is almost color coordinated and just as unfashionable, black-and-red-striped and much too wide, possibly from the 1980s when people wore polyester bell-bottoms, Earth Shoes and leisure suits.

      He has his reasons for what he wears, and the tie no doubt is woven of special memories, maybe a bullet he dodged, a perfect game he bowled, the biggest fish he ever caught or an especially good first date. Marino makes a point of never throwing out something that matters to him. He’ll wander into thrift shops and junk stores looking for a past he liked better than the here and now, and it’s ironic that a badass would be so sentimental.

      “Come on. I’ll drop you off.” His eyes are blacked out by vintage Ray-Ban aviator glasses I gave to him a few birthdays ago.

      “Why would I need a ride?” The entrance to the brick path leading from the concrete sidewalk to the Faculty Club is just up ahead, a minute’s walk from here at most.

      But he isn’t going to take no for an answer. He steers me off the sidewalk, raising a big mitt of a hand to stop traffic as we cross the street. He’s not holding me but I’m not exactly free as he guides me into the front seat of his police vehicle, where I struggle awkwardly with my bags while the run in my panty hose races from my knee down to the back of my shoe as if trying to escape Marino’s madness.

      I can’t help but think, Here we go again. Another spectacle. To some it might look like I’m being picked up and questioned by the police, and I wonder if I’ll be hearing that next.

      “Why are you riding around looking for me, since it seems that’s what you’re doing?” I ask as he shuts the door. “Seriously, Marino.” But he can’t hear me.

      He