Someone had loved her. The pink leggings proved it—the sort of garment a young mother might spot in a store and coo over, a miniature version of ones she herself might have worn not so long ago.
Baby Doe’s mouth was studied. Her first molars had come in, but not her second. Her teeth had been brushed regularly and were in good condition. There were no marks on her body, no signs of abuse or trauma. She appeared well nourished and well cared for, yet no one had reported her missing.
The pink cotton leggings were a brand sold only at Target, toddler size three. The word toddler made it all too real. Too painful to read and too painful to write. Imagine this child in life, wearing her pink cotton leggings, barefoot, her toes tipped in pink. Now imagine her toddling.
Well nourished and well cared for. Baby Doe appeared to be in perfect health, except for the fact that she was dead.
No one had reported her missing. How was it even possible? In a walk-in cooler on Albany Street, the little girl waited. She had been assigned a bar code and zipped into a plastic bag.
An investigation was mounted. Tides were analyzed. The beach at Deer Island faced eastward. The Coast Guard calculated reverse drifts. In salt water, at high tide, how far would a twenty-four-pound bag be carried? The terrible power of mathematics: there was, apparently, a formula for this.
The autopsy showed no drugs in her system, no pathogens, toxins, or diseases. A cause of death could not be determined. Suffocation seemed likely, but impossible to prove.
DNA was extracted. The child’s hair and clothing and blanket were combed for pollen. Incredibly, though she’d spent God knows how long in the icy Atlantic, specimens were found.
The pollen samples were sent to a lab in Houston.
The girl’s DNA was compared with databases of missing children. Incredibly, this was someone’s job. The missing children numbered in the thousands. No match was ever found.
The pollen analysis showed local pine and oak pollen mingled with soot. Baby Doe was a Boston girl.
A forensic artist made a composite image, using Adobe Photoshop: chubby cheeks and blue eyes, red-gold hair the texture of cotton candy. The hair made her distinctive even in Boston, a city with more than its share of redheads. Someone, surely, would recognize that hair.
The composite image appeared on television, in newspapers, on billboards. At city hall, a press conference was held. Police appealed to the public for assistance. A tip line was established, a toll-free number. Text GIRL to 61717.
The tip line was inundated. Calls from concerned neighbors, from day care workers, from frantic grandparents. The most agonizing ones came from parents whose kids had been taken by DCF. Their children were safe in state custody, they were told again and again. No one actually believed this. The state, the world entire, could not be trusted. Your child was safe only in your arms.
The composite image was seen by sixty million people.
On the beach at Deer Island, an impromptu shrine was erected. Strangers left flowers and stuffed animals, a dozen Hello Kitties. A candlelight vigil was held.
The tips kept coming, more hay for the haystack. A funeral home in Worcester offered to bury the child free of charge—“To save her,” the Globe reported, “from a pauper’s grave.”
The mystery was solved in the most banal way imaginable. A drunk at a bar overheard a conversation, a young couple arguing. The woman and her boyfriend were questioned by police.
The man, Mark Keohane, was indicted for second-degree murder. The child’s mother, Lisa James, was charged as an accessory after the fact. Security video showed Keohane tossing a black contractor’s bag from the Tobin Bridge while his pickup truck idled nearby. Sitting at the wheel was Lisa James.
The security video went viral. Mark Keohane had confessed to the murder, but it was Lisa James who was called a monster—the woman who’d helped him dispose of the body, who had failed to protect her own child.