The Bone Bed

the bat, just hand it over to them on a silver platter because Homeland Security says so.” He is talking nonstop, and about something else. “A jurisdictional cluster fuck. Jesus Christ, could be half a dozen different departments claiming this one.”
    “Or not. That’s the more likely story.”
    “A cluster fuck if I ever saw one.”
    Cluster fuck
seems to be his favorite new expression, and I suspect it came from Lucy. But who knows where he got it.
    “The FBI will want the case because it’s going to be big news. No way this won’t be high-profile, maybe a national headline. A rich old lady tied to a dog crate and dumped in the harbor. Assumed to be Mildred Lott. Then, when it turns out it’s not, it will be an even bigger story.”
    “‘A rich old lady’?”
    “You mind holding these?” He hands me his Ray-Bans. “Talk about the weather turning to crap. I got to go to the eye doctor, can’t see worth shit anymore. Need a perscription instead of just using over-the-counter.”
    I’ve given up telling him the word is
prescription
.
    “Now my distance vision sucks, too.” He squints as he drives. “Pisses the hell out of me, everything blurry, can’t remember what they call it. Presbyphobia.”
    “Presbyopia. Old eyes.”
    “Goddamn nothing focuses anymore, like Mister Magoo.”
    “You know she’s rich for a fact? What makes you think that?” I place his sunglasses in my lap and adjust my vent, turning up the fan as we creep across the bridge in thick traffic. “And how do you know she’s old?”
    “She’s got white hair.”
    “Or platinum blond. It could be dyed. I have to look at her.”
    “Nice clothes. And her jewelry. I didn’t see it up close, but it looks like gold and a fancy watch. She’s old,” he insists. “At least seventy. Like she was out having lunch or shopping or something when she was grabbed.”
    “What she looks is very dehydrated and very dead. I don’t know how old or how rich, but robbery doesn’t appear to be the motive.”
    “Didn’t say it was.”
    “I’m saying it probably wasn’t. Assumptions are always dangerous,” I remind him. “Especially in a case like this, where all we may have to go on are physical descriptions we put out there in hopes she’s in a database. We say she’s elderly with long white hair, when in fact she’s in her forties with dyed blond hair, and we cause a big problem.”
    “Someone like that’s probably been reported missing,” Marino says.
    “You would think so, but we don’t know the circumstances.”
    “She would be reported for sure,” he asserts. “These days people notice when your newspapers pile up or your mailbox overflows. Bills don’t get paid and services get shut off. Appointments are missed, and finally someone calls the police to check on whoever it is.”
    “Often that’s true.”
    “Not to mention her family complaining that Mom or Grandmom hasn’t answered the phone in days or weeks.”
    “If there are family members who care,” I reply. “What I will tell you with a fair degree of certainty is she’s not an elderly shut-in with Alzheimer’s who wandered off and got lost and didn’t remember who she is or where she lives and somehow ended up in the bay tied to a boat fender and a dog crate.”
    “No kidding.”
    “She’s a homicide, and her body was concealed for a period of time, then transported and dropped overboard,” I add. “And obviously the way it was done is for some effect that isn’t clear.”
    “Some sick fuck.”
    “It certainly seems malevolent.”
    “How long do you think she was kept?”
    “It depends on the conditions. Weeks, at least. Possibly months,” I reply. “It appears she was fully dressed when she died, and yes, I worry she was abducted. But it surprises me, if that’s the case, that there’s been nothing in the news. At least nothing I’m aware of. The police usually give us a heads-up.”
    “My point exactly. Unless she’s not from Massachusetts.”
    “There is that possibility, of course.”
    “Kind of sounds like the dinosaur lady missing in Canada.” He merges left onto Memorial Drive.
    “There’s no similarity I can see at a glance,” I tell him. “But I don’t know enough about Emma Shubert’s physical description. Just that she had short graying brown hair and was forty-eight when she disappeared.”
    “Plus, this lady’s still got both her ears,” he considers.
    “Assuming the photo of the ear sent to me is real