The Bone Bed

floor.
    “Calling my cell phone, too, at least those reporters who have my number. There’s huge speculation that the old lady you just pulled out of the bay is Mildred Lott. . . .”
    “No evidence of it.” I run a washcloth under hot water and clean up as best I can, and of course a shower right now is impossible.
    “You know? That someone obviously was holding her hostage all this time, or maybe her disappearance was faked back in the spring or how she’s been hiding and finally drowned herself? You should hear the theories.”
    “There’s nothing to make me think it’s her.” I pull on a new pair of pantyhose I retrieve from a cabinet.
    “Meaning her husband, Channing Lott, couldn’t have had anything to do with her death, since he’s considered a flight risk and has been in jail without bond since April?” Bryce has the remarkable ability of talking nonstop without seeming to take a breath. “So how could he possibly have killed her or paid someone else to some six months after she supposedly vanished?”
    I step into my pin-striped skirt and yank up the zipper in back. “I don’t want you releasing any information at all, not one word about this case, please.” I hurry into my blouse, fumbling with the buttons and tucking it in, disgusted by how quickly rumors can start and how difficult it is to disarm them. “Not even a hint of an opinion about whether the dead lady might be Mildred Lott or Emma Shubert or anyone. Understood?”
    “Well, of course. I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. I know what the press does with the slightest nothing.”
    I turn on the vanity light, dismayed by my reflection in the mirror over the sink. Pale. Completely washed out. Hair flat from wearing a neoprene dive hood and submerging my head in cold salt water. I drip Visine into my eyes.
    “I’m just warning you I’ve got no idea what might come up when you get in the stand, because they can ask you anything they want.” Bryce is still talking.
    I rub a dab of gel in my hair and muss it up to give it a little lift, and it still looks awful.

sixteen
    TRAFFIC IS BAD IN BOSTON, AND AVAILABLE PARKING IS nowhere to be seen at the John Joseph Moakley U.S. Courthouse, an architectural marvel of dark red brick and glass that embraces the harbor like graceful arms. I tell Marino to let me out.
    “Park where you can or drive around and wait for me. I’ll call you when I’m on my way down.” I have my hand on the door.
    “Hell, no.”
    “Right here is fine.”
    “No way. No telling what scumbag friends he’s got hanging around.” Marino means what scumbag friends Channing Lott might have.
    “I’m perfectly safe.”
    Marino scouts the parking lot, where there’s scarcely room for a bicycle, let alone a large SUV; then he stalks a Prius and curses when the driver gets out instead of pulling away.
    “Piece-of-shit green-machine crap,” he says, creeping off. “They should have reserved parking for expert witnesses.”
    “Please stop. Right here is perfect.”
    He targets the Barking Crab, with its yellow-and-red awning across the old iron swing bridge that spans Fort Point Channel.
    “I can probably find something over there, since it’s past lunchtime and too early for dinner.” He heads in that direction.
    “Stop.” I mean it. “I’m getting out.” I open my door. “Park anywhere you want. I’m so late I don’t care.”
    “How about staying put if I’m not there before you’re done? Don’t wander off, assuming it’s quick.”
    I hurry along the brick Harbor Walk, past The Daily Catch, to the waterfront, where there’s a park with wooden benches and thick hedges of flowering
Justicia,
an evergreen shrub that can’t have been selected by accident for a courthouse. Taking off my suit jacket, I push through a glass door that leads into a screening station where I’m greeted by court security officers, CSOs I know by name, retired cops now with the U.S. Marshals Service.
    “There she is.”
    “We’ve been wondering when you’re gonna turn up like a bad penny.”
    “On every TV channel. CNN, Fox, MSNBC, YouTube.”
    “I got a cousin in England who saw it on BBC, said the turtle you were working on was the size of a whale.”
    “Gentlemen? How are you?” I hand over my driver’s license even though they are used to me.
    “Couldn’t be better if we lied.”
    “Last time I was this good I forgot about it.”
    Typical men of the dark blue cloth, they fire off quips that