Chapter 1

I didn’t know it was a body when I first saw it.

I’d been up all night in my office at MIT’s Cognitive Computing Laboratory trying to finish a research proposal. With dawn coming on, both my thoughts and my ability to express them had become pretty muddy. When you’re a 38-year-old associate professor instead of an 18-year-old freshman, pulling an all-nighter doesn’t come that easy. To revive my flagging brain, I’d put on my parka and headed for a brisk pre-dawn walk around the Charles River basin.

From the MIT campus in Cambridge, I’d gone over the Harvard Bridge to Boston, west along the river past Boston University, then back to Cambridge over the Cottage Farm Bridge where a right turn onto Memorial Drive gets you headed back to MIT. Heading east on this last leg of my circuit, I stopped about a hundred yards beyond the Pierce Boathouse to catch my breath and take in the scene before me.

Above, the dawn sky had a roseate cast. A raw December wind swept toward me from across the Charles. The river was partly frozen—thin sheets of gray-green ice alternating with large patches of open water. A covey of squawking gulls crowded the edge of a mid-river floe.

On the opposite bank, below Boston’s landmark CITGO sign, I could just make out two tiny figures swinging along the jogging path. They and I seemed the only ones up and about at this hour, though the dearth of people in sight was not surprising early on a Sunday morning.

Directly below me, a sheer eight-foot drop to river level, a pair of heavy timbers floated in the choppy water. Each was about a foot wide, and maybe fifteen feet long. Joined at the far end, the timbers formed an upside-down “V,” the point jutting away from me out into the river, the two butt ends secured to the embankment wall by a pair of rusty iron shackles.

A patch of wet cloth bobbed up against the far tip of one timber. It was of shiny material, a deep maroon. Its surface bellied up, and rippled in the wind.

I idly tried to make some sense of the fabric. A tarpaulin blown off a boat? A sleeping bag someone had tossed over the railing? An old raincoat? A brief lull in the wind collapsed the cloth enough to reveal a dark blob at its farther edge. A blob that began to look for all the world like a head with a glistening cap of black hair. My pulse leapt as my brain put it together: a parka, with someone inside floating face down.

My first thought was to call the police. But, as I turned to go, I thought maybe that person was still alive.

I looked around. No one in sight except the joggers across the river. A lone car sped by, tires beating on the damp asphalt. Not many motorists at seven a.m. on a Sunday. If there was going to be a rescue, it was up to me, and I had better move fast.

I swung myself over the railing and set my feet on the narrow granite ledge between me and the sheer drop to water level. The timbers looked big and buoyant enough to support me.

Gripping the bottom rung of the railing, I lowered myself as far as my arms could reach. Crevices between the wall’s granite blocks gave me toe- and handholds to go the last couple of feet to the nearest floating timber.

I dropped to my hands and knees and crawled out toward the body. As I neared it, I could make out “Massachusetts Institute of Technology” stitched in script letters across the back of the parka.

I grasped the collar of the parka with both hands and, with a great heave, pulled the body’s head and shoulders up from the water and partly onto the timber. Water sheeted over the top of the head, plastering the thick, dark hair down flat. I clung tightly to the collar with one hand, and with the other I pushed the hair back from the face.

Good God! I knew this body! It was Justin. Justin Marsh, my graduate assistant.

I squeezed his cheeks. They were hard and rubbery, and icy cold. Water gushed out of his mouth as I turned his head to look for a pulse from his jugular, just to make sure of what I already knew. He was gone. I couldn’t help him.

His eyes were tightly closed. With my free hand I pushed back the lid of his left eye. Why I did that, I don’t know. Maybe I still hoped to see some glimmer of life.

The socket was empty.

I lurched back, letting go of the collar, and Justin’s head and shoulders sloshed back into the water. Waves of nausea passed through me. I could scarcely think. All I knew was that somehow I had to lash his body to the timbers so the wind wouldn’t push him out into the river.

I yanked the nylon waist cord out from my windbreaker. A heavy iron ring, maybe six inches across, protruded from the point where the two timbers joined. If I could just get the cord under Justin’s arm, maybe I could tie him to the ring.

Making a loop of the cord and holding it in my hand, I stretched out flat along the timber. I scooped my arm beneath the water where I judged Justin’s left forearm must be dangling. I made several tries, plunging my arm and shoulder deep into the water. I shuddered as my hand at last found his. The fingers were rock hard and bent like claws. I worked the cord loop under and around them, and pulled up.

I had looped the arm. Rising to my knees, I gave the cord a tug to get it up firmly under the armpit. I knotted the cord down snugly on the arm, then fastened the other end of the cord to the iron ring.

For some terrible moments, I stared at Justin’s body, wrapped in its sodden clothing. He was someone I had known. Spoken with. Worked with. Now, in this icy water, he’d become a thing…

I crawled back along the timber to the embankment wall, then climbed back to street level and raced across Memorial Drive to the lobby of MIT’s Ashdown House, and, for the first time in my life, dialed 911.