The Bone Bed

testify as to how long she’s been dead.
    A jury would find such postmortem artifacts confusing, would be baffled by the idea of an intact body showing up in the Massachusetts Bay some six months after the person allegedly was a murder for hire. I also accept the distinct possibility that Channing Lott is a consummate sociopath, a poseur and manipulator who knew all eyes were on him during that pivotal moment when the news footage began to play. Maybe he intended to look sympathetic to whoever was watching, and he did.
    “He may very well be acquitted, and if the jury has reasonable doubt, then that’s the right verdict,” I reply, and what I’d like to do this very minute is go home.
    I want Advil, a long hot bath, and Scotch on the rocks, and I want to talk to Benton. I want to hear what he has to say about what just transpired in federal court. What are the rumors about Judge Joseph Conry that might help explain his anger toward me and unwillingness to sustain a single objection Dan Steward raised, few that there were? Then again, maybe I don’t want to know. It won’t change anything that’s happened.
    “Well, no way in hell the jury’s going to convict him.” Marino leans forward, squinting, trying to see through billowing sheets of water, the lights of oncoming traffic blinding. “All Donoghue had to do was introduce the suggestion that Mildred Lott’s body just turned up now or might turn up later or maybe she’s not even dead. Showing that news clip was something, a picture worth a thousand words, even though it’s probably not her.”
    “It’s not. Unless her medical records are fabricated and her height has shrunk.”
    “Well, it looks like everything else shrunk.”
    “Not her bones. Mildred Lott was supposed to be five-eleven, and this lady isn’t close to that.”
    “You got to give her credit, though.” Marino continues talking about Jill Donoghue, because he saw every second of what she did, having found a seat in the back of the courtroom without my being aware.
    He was there for the entire ordeal, witnessing the judge’s tirade and my punishment of a fine some five times stiffer than what’s typical, not that I’ve ever been fined before. That judicial fireworks display was a perfect opening for what Donoghue did next, to build me up as a qualified expert before implying that I’m a feminist home wrecker, a medical experimenter guilty by association of snatching Japanese body parts and perhaps even indirectly to blame for atom bombs being dropped. Marino saw all of it and has chatted about nothing else as we’ve driven endlessly, slowly, miserably, through high winds and pounding rain that a few minutes ago was mixed with hail, the early evening unnaturally dark.
    “She saved you for last, and that’s what the jury goes away with—TV footage of a dead rich lady with long platinum-blond hair being pulled out of the water today.”
    “I don’t think her hair’s platinum blond. I’m pretty sure it’s white.” I can barely talk.
    “Reasonable doubt.” Marino wipes the inside of the glass with his jacket sleeve and turns up the defrost full blast. “If they didn’t have doubt before, they got it now.”
    “Whether he’s found guilty or not isn’t my concern,” I reply. “I have no opinion one way or the other about whether he had something to do with his wife’s disappearance, and frankly, you shouldn’t have an opinion, either.”
    “You know what they say. Everybody’s got one.”
    At long last we are here, my metal-clad building an ominous tower in the storm, like the gray turret of a castle shrouded in fog, and I get an odd feeling that begins deep inside my gut, a chilly discomfort that moves up to my chest. The sensation reaches my brain as the black metal gate slides open along its tracks and Marino drives through, the Tahoe’s headlights slashed by rain and illuminating vehicles that shouldn’t be here. Benton’s black Porsche SUV is next to three unmarked sedans, as if he and his FBI colleagues have shown up to meet with me anyway when there just isn’t time, and it doesn’t make sense.
    I sent Benton a text message the instant I was out of court and said tonight was impossible, as I still had the autopsy to do and it likely would be a complicated one. I might not be finished until nine or ten.
    “Who’s here and why?” I puzzle, as Marino points a remote at the back of the building.
    “That’s Machado’s Crown Vic. What the