“And death.”
He laughed and took a sip. “So true.”
“You have any thoughts about the other girl who vanished? Laura Fang?”
“That was Sedlak’s case, rest his soul. But I did review it, because of the Red Phoenix connection. Didn’t find anything to make me think the abductions were related. I think Charlotte was a spontaneous spot and snatch. Laura, she was a different case. It happened right after school got out and she was walking home. One of her schoolmates saw Laura voluntarily climb into someone’s car, like she knew the driver. But no one got a license plate and the girl was never seen again. So that’s another body that’s never been found.” He stared at the bottles lined up on the other side of the counter. “Makes you wonder just how many skeletons are piled up in the woods, in the landfills. Millions of people missing in this country. All those bones. I can accept the fact I’m gonna die someday, as long as there’s a nice marker to tell the world it’s me buried there. But to never be found? To end up hidden under some weeds? That’s like you never even existed.” He shuddered. “Anyway, that’s the Charlotte Dion case in a nutshell. Does that help any?”
“I don’t know. Right now, it’s just one piece of a very confusing puzzle.” Jane waved to the bartender. “Let me have the tab.”
“No way,” said Buckholz.
“You just did me a favor, telling me about Charlotte.”
“I’m here all the time anyway. This seat, this bar. You know where to find me.” He looked down at her ringing cell phone. “I see you’re a girl in demand. Lucky you.”
“Depends who’s calling.” She answered her phone. “Detective Rizzoli.”
“I’m sorry to have to make this call.” It was a man’s voice, and he did indeed sound reluctant to be talking to her. “I believe you’re Detective Tam’s supervisor?”
“Yes, we work together.”
“I’m calling on behalf of all the victims’ families. We’d prefer not to deal with Detective Tam anymore. He’s managed to upset everyone, especially poor Mary Gilmore. After all these years, why are we being subjected to these questions again?”
Jane massaged her head, dreading the talk she would need to have with her younger colleague. You are a public servant. Which means you must not piss off the public. “I’m sorry, sir,” she said. “I didn’t catch your name.”
“Patrick Dion.”
She straightened. Looked at Buckholz, who was following the conversation with keen interest. Once a cop, always a cop. “Dina Mallory was your ex-wife?” she said.
“Yes. And it’s painful, being reminded of how she died.”
“I understand it’s difficult for you, Mr. Dion. But Detective Tam needs to ask these questions.”
“Dina died nineteen years ago. There was never any doubt about who killed her. Why is this coming up again?”
“I can’t really discuss it. It’s—”
“Yes, I know. It’s part of a current investigation. That’s what Detective Tam said.”
“Because it’s true.”
“Mark Mallory is livid about this, and it’s got both Mary Gilmore and her daughter upset. First we get those notes in the mail, and then Detective Tam starts calling us. We’d all like to know why this is happening now.”
“Excuse me,” she cut in. “What’s this about getting notes?”
“It’s been going on for six, seven years. Every March thirtieth they show up in our mailboxes, like some grim anniversary reminder.”
“What’s in these notes?”
“I always get a copy of Dina’s obituary. On the back, someone writes: Don’t you want to know the truth?”
“Do you still have those notes?”
“Yes, and Mary has hers. But Mark was so angry, he tossed his out.”
“Who’s sending these things? Do you know?”
“I have to assume they come from the same person who took out the ad in the Globe. That Iris Fang.”
“Why would Mrs. Fang be doing this?”
There was a long pause. “I hate to speak badly of Mrs. Fang. She lost her husband so I know she’s suffered, too. I feel sorry for her. But I think the issue is quite obvious.”
“What’s obvious?”
“The woman,” said Patrick, “is insane.”
BY THE TIME HER DOORBELL RANG, MAURA HAD THE DINNER TABLE set and a leg of lamb roasting in the oven. Teenage boys were notorious for their appetites, so she had brought home both a blueberry and an apple pie, had baked four potatoes and shucked half a dozen ears of corn. Did the boy eat salad? She didn’t know. During those desperately hungry days they’d spent together in the Wyoming wilderness, she and Rat had survived on whatever they could forage. She had watched him devour dog biscuits and tinned beans and tree bark. Surely he wouldn’t turn up his nose at lettuce, and he could probably use the vitamins. When she’d last seen him in January, he’d been pale and thin, and it was that undernourished boy she was cooking for tonight. No matter how the week goes, she thought, he will not leave my house hungry. It was the one detail she could prepare for, the one variable she could control.
Because everything else about his first visit to her house was fraught with unknowns.
She owed her life to Julian “Rat” Perkins, yet she scarcely knew him, and he scarcely knew her. Together they had fought to stay alive, and there was no more intimate bond two people could know than to stare death in the face together. Now they were about to find out if that bond could survive the acid test of a week in each other’s company, under civilized conditions.
At the sound of the doorbell, she dried her hands on a dish towel and hurried down the hall, aware that her heart was suddenly thumping hard. Relax, he’s only a boy, she thought as she opened the front door. And was almost knocked down when an enormous black dog reared up to greet her, its two front paws landing on her chest.
“Bear! Down, boy!” yelled Rat.
She laughed as the dog gave her a sloppily joyful lick on her face. Then it dropped to all fours, tail wagging, and barked. Maura smiled at the boy, who looked thoroughly appalled by his companion’s bad manners. “Well?” she said. “Aren’t you going to give me a hug, too?”
“Hello, ma’am,” he said and awkwardly wrapped long arms around her. She was startled by how much bigger he seemed, how much muscle he’d put on since she’d last seen him. Was it possible for a boy to grow so much in only a few months?
“I missed you, Rat,” she murmured. “I missed you both so much.”
Footsteps creaked on the porch stairs and the boy suddenly pulled away from her, as though embarrassed to be seen hugging her. Maura looked at the man now standing behind Rat. Anthony Sansone had always seemed a forbidding figure, physically imposing, his face impossible to read, but on this gloomy afternoon, he was smiling as he set down Rat’s backpack on the porch.
“There you go, Julian,” he said.
“Thank you for driving him all the way to Boston,” she said.
“It was a pleasure, Maura. It gave us a chance to talk.” He paused, his gaze searching her face, and as always he seemed to see too much. “It’s been a long time since we spoke. How are you?”
“I’m fine. Busy.” She forced a smile. “I never have any shortage of clients. Would you like to come in for a bit?”
He looked at the boy, who’d been glancing back and forth between them, following their conversation with great interest. “No, I should let you and Julian catch up. Are you two going to be fine for the week?”
“I have to go in to work Monday and Tuesday, but starting Wednesday I have some time off. We’ll take a tour of the city.”
“Then I’ll pick you up next Saturday, Julian,” said Sansone, extending his arm to him.
The man and boy shook hands. It was an oddly formal farewell, but between these two it seemed perfectly natural, and just what was expected. Rat waited until Sansone returned to his car and drove away. Only then did he look at Maura.
“We talked about you,” he said. ??
?On the drive down.”
“All good things, I hope.”
“I think he likes you. A lot.” Rat picked up his backpack. “But he’s kind of strange.”
People could say the same about you, she thought, looking at the boy. About both of us. She draped an arm around him and felt him flinch at the unaccustomed affection. For too long, the boy had lived like a wild animal, foraging in the Wyoming mountains, and in his eyes she still saw traces of the abandoned child. The world had not been kind to Julian Perkins, and it would take time for him to trust another human being.
They walked into the house, and the boy glanced around the living room. “Where did Bear go?”
“I think he’s already made himself at home here. I bet he’s discovered all the goodies in the kitchen.”
That was indeed where they found him, gobbling up the lamb trimmings that she’d placed in the ceramic dog bowl. She had never owned a dog, and the bowl was brand-new, as was the extra-large dog bed and the leash and the flea powder and the cans of Alpo stacked in the closet. Where the boy went, so did Bear, which meant that this week she was sharing her house with two alien creatures, a dog and a teenager. In the oven, drippings from the roasting lamb sizzled and she saw the boy lift his nose, like a beast scenting his supper.
“Dinner should be ready in an hour. Let me show you your room,” she said and frowned at his backpack. “Where’s your suitcase?”
“This is all I brought.”
“Then it looks like you and I need to go shopping for clothes.”
“No, I don’t really need anything,” he said as they walked up the hall. “We all wear uniforms at the school.”
“This room’s yours.”
Bear trotted in first, but the boy hesitated in the doorway, as if wondering whether a mistake had been made. It suddenly struck Maura what an absurdly feminine room this was for a boy and a dog. Reluctantly Rat stepped into the room and surveyed the white duvet, the vase of freshly cut flowers on the dresser, and the pale green Turkish rug. He touched nothing, as if these were all museum pieces and he was afraid to break something. Carefully he set his backpack in a corner.
“How is school?” she asked.
“It’s okay.” He knelt down to unzip the backpack. Out came two shirts, a sweater, a pair of trousers, all neatly rolled up.
“So you like being at Evensong? You’re happy there?”
“It’s different from my old school. People are nice to me.” It was a matter-of-fact statement, said without self-pity, and it revealed how painful his life must once have been. She had read his files from Wyoming, so she knew about his fistfights in the school yard, the taunts he’d endured about his ragged clothes and his fractured family. So many people, from his social worker to his psychologist, had warned her that the boy was too troubled, that taking him into her life could lead to consequences she’d regret. Now she watched that troubled boy calmly unpack his clothes and hang them neatly in the closet, and she thought: Thank God I never listened to them. To any of them.
“Have you made friends at school?” she asked. “Do you like the other students?”
“They’re a lot like me,” he said. He opened a dresser drawer and placed socks and underwear inside.
She smiled. “You mean they’re special.”
“They don’t have parents, either.”
This was news to her. When Sansone had told her he was offering the boy a scholarship to the Evensong School, he had emphasized the institution’s academic strengths and rural campus, its international faculty and superb library. He had said nothing about it being a school for orphans.
“Are you sure about that?” she asked. “There must be some parents who come to visit.”
“Sometimes I see someone’s aunt or an uncle. But I’ve never met anyone’s mom or dad. He says we’re each other’s family now.”
“He?”
“Mr. Sansone.” Rat closed the dresser drawer and looked at her. “He asks about you all the time.”
Maura felt her face redden and she focused on Bear, who was turning around and around in the dog bed, getting a feel for this new luxury. “What sort of things does he ask?”
“If you’ve written me any letters lately. If you’re ever coming to visit the school. Whether you’d like to teach a class there.”
“At Evensong?” She shook her head. “I’m not sure a class in forensic pathology is appropriate for high school students.”
“But we’re learning a lot of cool stuff. Last month, Ms. Saul showed us how to build a Roman catapult. And they let me teach a class on animal tracks, because I know so much about it. We even dissected a horse.”
“Really?”
“He broke his leg, and they had to put him down. We cut him open and studied his organs.”
“Didn’t you find that upsetting?”
“I’ve dressed deer. I know what dead things look like.”
Yes, you do, she thought. In Wyoming, he had watched a man bleed to death. She wondered whether he sometimes startled awake at night, as she did, haunted by the memories of what had happened to them both in the mountains. He seemed so calm and controlled as he set his schoolbooks on the dresser, as he took his toothbrush into the bathroom, all his emotions shuttered up tight. He is more like me than I care to admit.
In the kitchen, her cell phone was ringing.
“Can I go outside and see the yard?” he asked.
“Go ahead. Let me get this call.”
She walked into the kitchen and pulled the cell phone out of her purse. “Dr. Isles,” she answered.
“This is Detective Tam. I’m really sorry to be calling you on the weekend.”
“Not a problem, Detective. How can I help you?”
“I wondered if I could ask your opinion on an old homicide. It happened nineteen years ago, a shooting in a Chinatown restaurant. There were five victims. At the time, they called it a murder-suicide.”
“Why are you pursuing something that happened nineteen years ago?”
“It could be connected to our Jane Doe on the rooftop. It may be the reason she came to Chinatown. It seems she was seeking out people who knew about that restaurant shooting.”
“What do you want me to do, exactly?”
“Review the autopsy reports on those five people, particularly the shooter’s. Tell us if you agree with the conclusions. The pathologist who performed them is no longer with the ME’s office, so I can’t ask him.”
From the kitchen window, she saw Rat and the dog were outside and circling the yard, as though hunting for a way out, an escape into the wider world. He was a boy meant for the wilderness.
“I’m busy this week,” she said. “You might try asking Dr. Bristol instead.”
“But I was really hoping …”
“Yes?”
“I’d rather have your opinion, Dr. Isles. I know you always tell it like it is, no matter what. I trust your judgment.”
That startled her, because it was not an opinion shared among Boston PD’s rank and file these days. She thought of the stares and cold silence she’d endured from police officers during the past week. Thought of all the different ways they had made her feel like the enemy.
“I’ll be home this evening,” she said. “You can drop off the files anytime.”
IT WAS AFTER NINE PM when Bear began barking at the front door. Maura opened it to find Detective Tam standing on her porch. He and the dog warily regarded each other for a moment, but after a few exploratory sniffs, Bear signaled his approval by trotting back into the house, allowing the visitor to enter. Tam moved with the same coiled energy that she’d noticed when they’d met in Chinatown, and he paused in her foyer, head alertly swiveling toward the sound of the running shower. He didn’t ask the question, but she could read it in his eyes.
“I have a houseguest staying with me this week,” she said.
“I’m sorry about intruding on your weekend.” He handed her a bundle of photocopied pages. “That’s all five autopsy re
ports, plus the Boston PD report filed by Detectives Ingersoll and Staines.”
“Wow. It looks like you put a lot of effort into this.”
“This is my first homicide case. Freshman effort, you know?” He pulled a flash drive out of his pocket. “They wouldn’t let me take any originals out of the ME’s office, so I scanned the photos and X-rays for you. I realize it’s an overwhelming amount of work, and I’m sorry about dumping this on you.” As he pressed the flash drive into her hand, he looked straight at her, as though to emphasize how important this was to him, and that he was placing all his confidence in her.
Flushing at his touch, she looked down at the flash drive. “Before you leave, let me make sure these files load up on my computer,” she said. They went into her office and as she booted up her laptop, Tam eyed the dog, who had followed them and now sat at Tam’s feet, watching this new visitor.
“What kind of dog is this?” Tam asked.
“I have no idea. Probably shepherd, plus some wolf or husky. He belongs to my houseguest.”
“You’re a very nice hostess, letting your guest bring a dog.”
“I owe my life to that dog. As far as I’m concerned, he can stay anywhere he wants.” She inserted the flash drive, and after a moment a series of thumbnail photos appeared on the monitor. She clicked on the first, revealing a grisly view of a woman’s nude body on the autopsy table. “Looks like this loads up fine. I can’t promise when I’ll review them, but I can tell you it won’t be until next week.”
“I really appreciate this, Dr. Isles.”
She straightened and looked at him. “Drs. Bristol and Costas are both very good pathologists. You can trust their judgment as well. Is there a reason you didn’t go to them?”
He paused, turning toward the sound of the shower shutting off. Bear’s ears pricked up, and he trotted out of the office.