“Lucy and I both were around her only once.” He adjusts the defrost while inching along, an accident up ahead. “This wasn’t long after Gwen moved in, we were with her maybe an hour and a half max trying to help out.”
“How did you get involved with her in the first place? Because you both live in the same development?” I’m thinking of my sister, having an idea I know the answer.
“DOROTHY MET HER FIRST,” he confirms my suspicions.
Apparently, Gwen told her that the reason she moved to Old Town was to get away from an ex-boyfriend who’s been stalking her. She gave that as the reason for taking the job at Thor Laboratories.
“In a lot of ways her ex, Jinx Slater, fits the bill of someone who could be violent. But what’s happened might not have anything to do with him,” Marino says.
“Where was Gwen before moving here?” I’m wondering what she told Marino and Lucy compared to what I know from August Ryan.
“Boston, where her ex still lives.” Marino offers me a pack of gum, and I shake my head no thanks. “After MIT, she went to work in that huge lab up there, Red Feather Biomedical.” He crams two sticks of gum into his mouth because he’s desperate to smoke.
“Like Thor they’re in the business of artificial human organs, skin, brain machine interfacing, that sort of thing.” I give him the upshot, blue lights flashing ahead, traffic cops detouring drivers around a crashed black SUV.
For a moment my heart stops. Benton drives a black SUV, but this one is a BMW. It’s not him.
“What can you tell me about the dead lady from Friday night, Doc?” Marino begins his inevitable probing.
“That she’s a homicide, a sexually violent one,” I reply.
“Yeah, I think the whole world knows that much,” he says, and I don’t respond.
He and Lucy would be aware of what’s been in the media, which is very little, I’ve made sure. They’ve not seen the body from Friday night, and prior to this I’ve not mentioned the case to them. It’s none of their concern, neither of them officially involved. Except now they could be.
“Some job we did.” He tightly grips the steering wheel, the veins roping in his thick wrists, and he was formidable enough before dating my sister.
But now he’s quite the land mass, spending hours daily on cardio and lifting weights, and I have to say he’s never looked fitter.
“What a way to start a business, right?” He blows out an exasperated clove-scented breath.
“You need to calm down, and let’s not overrun our headlights. Maybe quit tailgating so we don’t rear-end someone,” I continue backseat driving.
This stretch of King Street is heavily wooded and residential, and gracious homes on generous lots are decorated for the season. Lampposts and columns are wrapped in blue and white lights that flicker in the soupy overcast. Christmas trees glitter through windows, candles glowing cozily.
“I’m pissed at myself for not paying enough attention. Now I sure wish I had,” Marino says. “But I couldn’t have seen this coming. If Jinx Slater did it, how’d he find her? She’d gone to a lot of trouble making sure nobody knows where she is.”
“Or that’s what she told you,” I reply. “But assuming she’s telling the truth, he might have tracked her down, that wouldn’t surprise me. It’s getting harder to hide in this high-tech world with cameras watching from everywhere including outer space.”
“But I don’t know why she’d turn off the alarm and open the door, assuming that’s what she did,” he says.
As afraid of him as she claimed to be, she would have freaked out if he showed up at the guard gate, much less on her doorstep. She would have called 911, Marino supposes.
“Or she could have called me for that matter,” he adds, his four-wheeler growling over pavement, the oversize tires splashing through puddles. “She had my number, and Dorothy and I were home last Friday night. I would have been there in two minutes.”
“So far, Gwen’s phone hasn’t shown up.” I tell him that much while scrolling through messages I’ll deal with later. “It sounds like she has an alarm system, and that’s important. What about cameras around the townhome’s perimeter or at least covering the entrance?”
“We recommended it but she was worried about hacking. She said she keeps the alarm on all the time while she’s home.”
“Did she have the security system installed herself?”