But the Mallorys and Dions had somehow made it work. Perhaps it was for the sake of Charlotte, who would have been only twelve when her parents divorced. Like most children of divorce, she’d probably shuttled between two households, the poor little rich girl, bouncing between the homes of her mother, Dina, and her father, Patrick.
Jane turned to the last page in the file and found a brief addendum to the report:
Charlotte Dion, daughter of Dina Mallory, was reported missing April 24. Last seen in vicinity of Faneuil Hall while on school field trip. According to Detective Hank Buckholz, evidence points to likely abduction. Investigation continuing.
That addendum, dated April 28, was signed by Detective Ingersoll.
Two missing girls, Laura Fang and Charlotte Dion. Both of them were daughters of victims killed in the Red Phoenix, but nothing in this report indicated that this was anything more than a sad coincidence. It was just as Dr. Zucker had said. Sometimes there is no pattern, no plan, but merely the blind cruelty of fate, which keeps no running tally of who has suffered too much.
“You know, Rizzoli, all you had to do was ask me.”
She looked up to see Johnny Tam standing beside her desk. “Ask you what?”
“About the Red Phoenix massacre. I just ran into Frost. He told me you two have been hunting down all the files. If you’d just talked to me, I could have told you all about the case.”
“How would you know about it? You were like, what, eight years old when it happened?”
“I’m assigned to Chinatown so I have to know what goes on there. The Chinese still talk about the Red Phoenix, you know. It’s like a wound that never healed. And never will, because it’s all tied up in shame.”
“Shame? Why?”
“The killer was one of our own. And by our own, I mean all Chinese.” He pointed to the folders on her desk. “I reviewed that case file two months ago. I spoke to Lou Ingersoll. I read the ME’s reports.” He tapped his head. “The info’s all right here.”
“I didn’t know you were familiar with it.”
“Did it occur to you to ask me? I thought I was part of the team.”
She didn’t like the accusatory note in his voice. “Yes, you’re part of the team,” she acknowledged. “I’ll try to remember it. But things’ll go a lot easier for all of us if you got rid of that chip on your shoulder.”
“I just want to be right in front of the hunt. Not treated like the geeky backup guy, which happens way too often around here.”
“What do you mean?”
“Boston PD’s supposed to be one big, happy melting pot, right?” He laughed. “Bullshit.”
For a moment she studied him, trying to read his stony expression. Suddenly she recognized herself at his age, hungry to prove herself and resentful that, too often, she was ignored. “Sit down, Tam,” she said.
Sighing, he pulled up the nearest chair and sat. “Yeah?”
“You think I have no idea what it’s like to be a minority?”
“I don’t know. Do you?”
“Look around this place. How many female homicide detectives do you see? There’s one, and you’re talking to her. I know what it’s like having guys shut me out of the loop because I’m the girl and they think there’s no way I’m good enough to do the job. You just need to learn to deal with all the jerks and the bullshit, because there’s an endless supply of both.”
“It doesn’t mean we stop calling them on it.”
“For all the difference it makes.”
“You must have made a difference. Because now they accept you.”
She thought about whether that was true. Remembered what her life used to be like when she’d first joined the unit and had to put up with the snickers and the tampon jokes and the deliberate snubs. Yes, things were better now, but the war had been hard-fought and had taken years.
“It’s not complaining that makes the difference,” she said. “It’s all about doing the job better than anyone else.” She paused. “I hear you aced the exam for detective on your first try.”
His nod was curt. “Top score, as a matter of fact.”
“And you’re what? Twenty-five?”
“Twenty-six.”
“That’s working against you, you know.”
“What, the fact I’m seen as just another Asian geek?”
“No. The fact you’re still a kid.”
“Great. Yet another reason not to be taken seriously.”
“The point is, there’s a dozen different reasons to feel like you’re at a disadvantage. Some are real, some are in your head. Just deal with it and do the job.”
“If you’ll try to remember that I’m part of the team. Let me do some of the legwork on the Red Phoenix, since I’m already up on it. I can make calls, talk to the victims’ families.”
“Frost already plans to interview Mrs. Fang again.”
“So I’ll talk to the other families.”
She nodded. “Fine. Now tell me where you’ve gone with the case already.”
“I first checked it out back in February, when I got assigned to District A-1 and I heard some of the Chinatown locals talking about it. I remembered the case from back when I was a kid in New York City.”
“You heard about it in New York?”
“If it’s big news and it involves someone Chinese anywhere in the country, trust me, the whole Chinese community gossips about it. Even in New York, we talked about the Red Phoenix. I remember my grandmother telling me how shameful it was that the killer was one of us. She said it reflected badly on everyone who was Chinese. It made us all look like criminals.”
“Geez. Talk about collective guilt.”
“Yeah, we’re really good at that. Grandma, she’d pitch a fit if I tried to leave the house wearing ripped jeans, because she didn’t want people to think all Chinese were slobs. I grew up with the burden of representing an entire race every time I stepped out the door. So, yeah. I already had an interest in the Red Phoenix. Then when that ad in The Boston Globe came out in March, I got even more interested. I read through the case file a second time.”
“What ad?”
“It came out on the thirtieth, the anniversary of the shooting. Took up about a quarter page in the local section.”
“I didn’t see it. What did the ad say?”
“It ran a photo of the cook, Wu Weimin, with the word innocent in bold letters.” He stared across the desks in the homicide unit. “When I saw that ad, I wanted it to be true. I wanted Wu Weimin to be innocent, just so we could erase that black mark against us.”
“You don’t really think he was innocent, do you?”
He looked at her. “I don’t know.”
“Staines and Ingersoll never doubted he was the shooter. Neither does Dr. Zucker.”
“But that ad got me thinking. It made me wonder if Boston PD got it wrong nineteen years ago.”
“Just because Wu was Chinese?”
“Because people in Chinatown never believed he did it.”
“Who paid for the ad? Did you ever find out?”
He nodded. “I called the Globe. It was paid for by Iris Fang.”
Jane’s cell phone rang. Even as she reached for it, she was processing that last piece of information. Wondering why, nineteen years after the event, Iris would buy an ad in defense of the man who had murdered her husband. Glancing at her phone, she saw that the incoming call was from the crime lab and she answered: “Rizzoli.”
“I’m looking at those hairs right now,” said criminalist Erin Volchko. “And I’ll be damned if I can identify what they are.”
It took a moment for Jane to shift her focus to what Erin was talking about. “You mean those hairs from the victim’s clothing?”
“Yes. The ME’s office sent over two strands yesterday. One was plucked off the dead woman’s sleeve, the other from her leggings. They have similar morphology and color, so they’re probably from the same source.”
Jane felt Tam watching her as she ask
ed: “Are these hairs real or synthetic?”
“These aren’t manufactured. They’re definitely organic.”
“So are they human?”
“I’m not sure.”
JANE SQUINTED INTO THE MICROSCOPE’S EYEPIECE, TRYING TO MAKE out some distinguishing feature, but what she saw through the lens looked scarcely different from all the other hairs that she’d seen over the years. She moved aside to let Tam have a peek.
“What you’re seeing on that slide is a guard hair,” said Erin. “Guard hairs function as an animal’s outer coat.”
“And that’s different from fur?” asked Tam.
“Yes, it is. Fur is from the inner coat, and it provides insulation. Humans don’t have fur.”
“So if this is a hair, what does it come from?”
“It might be easier,” said Erin, “to tell you what it doesn’t come from. The pigmentation is consistent throughout the shaft length, so we know it’s an animal whose hair has the same color from root to tip. There are no coronal scales, which eliminates rodents and bats.”
Tam looked up from the microscope. “What are coronal scales?”
“Scales are structures that make up the cuticle—the outside of the hair, like the scales of a fish. The patterns in which the scales line up are characteristic of certain animal families.”
“And you said that coronal scales are on rodents.”
She nodded. “This hair lacks spinous scales as well, which tells us it didn’t come from a cat, a mink, or a seal.”
“Are we going down the whole list of animal species?” asked Jane.
“To some extent, this is a process of elimination.”
“And so far you’ve eliminated rats, bats, and cats.”
“Correct.”
“Great,” muttered Jane. “We can cross Batman and Catwoman off our list of suspects.”
Sighing, Erin pulled off her glasses and massaged the bridge of her nose. “Detective Rizzoli, I’m just explaining how difficult it is to identify an animal hair using only light microscopy. These morphologic clues help me eliminate some animal groups, but this specimen isn’t like anything I’ve encountered in this lab.”
“What else can you eliminate?” asked Tam.
“If it were deer or caribou, the root would be wineglass-shaped, and the hair would be coarser. So it’s not in the deer family. The color argues against raccoon or beaver, and it’s too coarse for rabbit or chinchilla. If I were to go by the shape of the root, the diameter, and the scale pattern, I’d say it’s most similar to human hair.”
“Then why couldn’t it be human?” asked Jane.
“Take another look in the microscope.”
Jane bent down to peer into the eyepiece. “What am I supposed to focus on?”
“Notice how it’s fairly straight, not kinked like a sexual hair from the pubic or underarm regions.”
“Making this a head hair?”
“That’s what I thought at first. That this was a human head hair. Now focus on the medulla, the central core of the strand. It’s like a channel running down the length of the hair. There’s something very strange about this specimen.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“The medullary index. It’s the ratio between the diameter of the medulla and the diameter of the hair. I’ve looked at countless human specimens and I’ve never seen a medulla this wide in a head hair. In humans, the normal index is less than a third. This is more than half the diameter of the strand. It’s not just a channel, it’s a huge, honking pipe.”
Jane straightened and looked at Erin. “Could it be some kind of medical condition? A genetic abnormality?”
“None that I know of.”
“Then what is this hair?” asked Tam.
Erin took a deep breath, as though trying to find the right words. “In almost every other way, this looks human. But it’s not.”
Jane’s startled laugh cut through the silence. “What are we talking about here? Sasquatch?”
“I’m guessing it’s some sort of nonhuman primate. A species I can’t identify with microscopy. There are no epithelial cells attached, so the only DNA we can look at would be mitochondrial.”
“It would take forever to get those results,” said Tam.
“So there’s one more test I’m thinking about,” said Erin. “I found a scientific article out of India, about electrophoretic analysis of hair keratin. They have a huge problem with the illegal fur trade, and they use this test to identify the furs of exotic species.”
“Which labs can run that test?”
“There are several wildlife labs in the US I can contact. It may turn out to be the quickest way to identify the species.” Erin looked at the microscope. “One way or another, I’m going to find out what this hairy creature is.”
RETIRED DETECTIVE HANK BUCKHOLZ looked like a man who’d fought a long, hard war with devil alcohol and had finally surrendered to the inevitable. Jane found him in his usual spot, sitting at the bar in J. P. Doyle’s, staring into a glass of scotch. It wasn’t even five PM yet, but by the looks of him Buckholz had already gotten a good head start for the evening, and when he stood up to greet her, she noticed his unsteady handshake and watery eyes. But eight years of retirement could not break old habits, and he still dressed like a detective, in a blazer and oxford shirt, even if that shirt was frayed around the collar.
It was still early for the usual crowd at Doyle’s, a favorite hangout for Boston PD cops. With one wave, Buckholz was able to catch the bartender’s attention. “Her drink’s on me,” he announced, pointing to Jane. “What would you like, Detective?”
“I’m good, thanks,” said Jane.
“Come on. Don’t make an old cop drink alone.”
She nodded to the bartender. “Sam Adams lager.”
“And a refill for me,” added Buckholz.
“You want to move to a table, Hank?” asked Jane.
“Naw, I like it right here. This is my stool. Always has been. Besides,” he added, glancing around at the nearly empty room, “who’s here to listen in? This is such an old case, no one’s paying attention anymore. Except for maybe the family.”
“And you.”
“Yeah, well, it’s hard to let go, you know? All these years later, the ones I never closed, they still keep me up at night. The Charlotte Dion case especially, because it ticked me off when her father hired a PI to follow up on it. Implication being I’m a lousy cop.” He grunted and took a gulp of scotch. “All that money he wasted, just to prove that I didn’t miss anything.”
“So the PI never got anywhere, either?”
“Nope. That girl just plain vanished. No witnesses, no evidence except her backpack, left in the alley. Nineteen years ago, we didn’t have nearly as many surveillance cameras around to catch anything. Whoever snatched her did it quick and clean. Had to be a spur-of-the-moment thing.”
“How do you figure that?”
“It was a school field trip. She went to this fancy boarding school, the Bolton Academy, out past Framingham. Thirty kids came into the city on a private bus to walk the Freedom Trail. Their stop at Faneuil Hall was a last-minute decision. Teacher told me the kids got hungry, so that’s where they went for lunch. I’m thinking the perp spotted Charlotte and just moved in.” He shook his head. “Talk about a high-profile snatch. Patrick Dion’s a venture capitalist and he was in London when it happened. Flew home on his own private jet. Considering who he was, and his net worth, I expected there’d be a ransom demand. But it never came. Charlotte just dropped off the face of the earth. No clues, no body. Nothing.”
“Her mother was killed in the Red Phoenix restaurant just a month before that.”
“Yeah, I know. Rotten luck in that family.” He sipped his scotch. “Money can’t stop the Grim Reaper.”
“You think that’s all it was? Rotten luck?”
“Lou Ingersoll and I talked and talked about it. We couldn’t see a way to tie the two events together, and we looked at
it every which way. Custody fight over Charlotte? Nasty divorce? Money?”
“Nothing?”
Buckholz shook his head. “I’ve gone through a divorce myself, and I still hate the bitch. But Patrick Dion, he and his ex-wife stayed friends. He even got along with her new husband.”
“Even though Arthur ran off with Patrick’s wife?”
He laughed. “Yeah, can you figure? They started off two happy families. Patrick, Dina, and Charlotte. Arthur, Barbara, and their son, Mark. Both kids attended that snooty Bolton Academy, which is how the families met. They started having dinners together. Then Arthur hooks up with Patrick’s wife, and everyone gets divorced. Arthur marries Dina, Patrick gets custody of twelve-year-old Charlotte, and they all go on being friends. It’s unnatural, I tell ya.” He set down his glass. “The normal thing would’ve been to hate each other.”
“Are you sure they didn’t?”
“I guess it’s possible they hid it. It’s possible that five years after their divorce, Patrick Dion stalked his ex-wife and her husband to that restaurant and shot them in a fit of rage. But Mark Mallory swore to me that everyone was friendly. And he lost his own father in that shooting.”
“What about Mark’s mother? Was she hunky-dory about losing her husband to another woman?”
“I never got a chance to talk with Barbara Mallory. She had a stroke a year before the shooting. The day Charlotte vanished, Barbara was in a rehab hospital. She died a month later. Yet another bad-luck family.” He waved at the bartender. “Hey, I need another one here.”
“Um, did you drive, Hank?” asked Jane, frowning at his empty glass.
“It’s okay. I promise, this’ll be my last.”
The bartender set another scotch on the counter and Buckholz just stared at it, as though its mere presence was enough to satisfy him for the moment. “So that’s the story in a nutshell,” he said. “Charlotte Dion was seventeen, blond, and gorgeous. When she wasn’t attending that boarding school, she lived with her rich daddy. She had everything going for her, and then—poof. She’s snatched off a street. We just haven’t found her remains yet.” He picked up the scotch, his hand now steady. “Hell of a thing, life.”