Richard Bolt

mystery and suspense writer; a founding member of MIT’s noted Media Laboratory, where, as a Senior Research Scientist, he led groundbreaking research in multi-modal human/computer interaction

Chapter 1

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

I’ve 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 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 100 yards beyond the Pierce Boathouse to catch my breath and take in the scene before me.

Above, the dark 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 goals crowded the edge of a mid-river flow. 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 surprisingly 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 jotting away for 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 a 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 and 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 facedown.

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 site except the joggers across the river. A lone car swept by, tires beating on the damp asphalt. Not many motorists at 7 AM 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 the 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 walls granite blocks gave me toe and hand holes 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 huge, 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 push the hair back from the face.

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

from Sailor Take Warning by Richard Bolt (Encircle Publications)