ammunition and extra guns if they’re planning on mass murder. But I agree with you. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is a high-profile place, and we should find out who got married there yesterday and who the guests were.”
“I figure you’re a member,” Marino says to me. “Maybe you got a contact for getting a list of members and a schedule of events.”
“I’m not a member.”
“You’re kidding.”
I don’t offer that I haven’t won a Nobel Prize or a Pulitzer and don’t have a Ph.D., just an M.D. and a J.D., and they don’t count. I could remind him that the Academy may not be relevant anyway, because nonmembers can rent the building. All it takes is connections and money. But I don’t feel like giving Marino detailed explanations. He shouldn’t have called Briggs.
“Good news and not so good about the recordings.” Lucy reaches over the back of the seat and hands me her iPad. “Good news, as I’ve pointed out, is it doesn’t appear anything’s been deleted, at least not recently. Which could be an argument in favor of him being the one doing the spying. You might speculate that if someone had him under surveillance and has something to do with his death, that person likely would have logged on to the web address and scrubbed the hard drive and SD before people like us could look.”
“Or how about remove the damn radio and headphones from the damn scene?” Marino says. “If he was being stalked, hunted down, and whoever’s doing it whacked him? Well, if it was me, I’d grab the headset and radio and keep walking. So I’m betting he was the one doing the recording. I don’t believe for a minute someone else was. And I’m betting this guy was involved in something, and whatever the reason for the spy equipment, he was the only one who knew about it. What sucks is there’s no recording of the perp, of whoever whacked him, which is significant. If he was confronted by someone while he was walking his dog, why didn’t the headphones record it?”
“The headphones didn’t record it because he didn’t see the person,” Lucy replies. “He wasn’t looking at whoever it was.”
“Assuming there was a person who somehow caused his death,” I remind both of them.
“Right,” she says. “The headphones pretty much pick up whatever the wearer is looking at, the camera on the crown of his head, pointing straight out like a third eye.”
“Then whoever whacked him came up from behind,” Marino states conclusively. “And it happened so fast the victim never even turned around. Either that or it was some kind of sniper attack. Maybe he was shot with something from a distance. Like a dart with poison. Aren’t there some poisons that cause hemorrhaging? May sound far-fetched, but shit like this happens. Remember the KGB spy poked with an umbrella that had ricin in the tip? He was waiting at a bus stop, and no one saw a thing.”
“It was a Bulgarian dissident who worked for the BBC, and it’s not a certainty it was an umbrella, and you’re getting deeper into the woods without a map,” I tell him.
“Ricin wouldn’t drop you in your tracks, anyway,” Lucy says. “Most poisons won’t. Not even cyanide gas. I don’t think he was poisoned.”
“This isn’t helpful,” I answer.
“My map is my experience as a cop,” Marino says to me. “I’m using my deductive skills. They don’t call me Sherlock for nothing.” He taps his baseball cap with a thick index finger.
“They don’t call you Sherlock at all.” Lucy’s voice from the back.
“It’s not helpful,” I repeat, looking at his big shape as he drives, at his huge hands on the wheel, which rubs against his gut even when he’s in what he considers his fighting shape.
“Aren’t you the one always telling me to think outside the box?” Defensiveness hardens his tone.
“Guessing isn’t helpful. Connecting dots that might be the wrong dots is reckless, and you know it,” I say to him.
Marino has