Tess Gerritsen - The Silent Girl

“So we have to put up with that harassment,” said Mark, pointing to the mailings on the coffee table. “And we can’t get her to stop sending them.”

“But there’s no proof she’s sending them,” said Frost.

“Well, we do know she’s the one behind this ,” said Mark, and he pulled from his pocket a folded clipping from The Boston Globe . It was the quarter-page ad that Detective Tam had earlier described to Jane, a stark box enclosed in black. Under the word INNOCENT was a smiling photo of the Red Phoenix cook, Wu Weimin. Beneath the photo was the date of the massacre, and a single sentence: THE TRUTH HAS NEVER BEEN TOLD.

“With this ad, it’s now gotten much worse,” said Mark. “Now she’s got the whole city paying attention to her delusions. Where does this stop? When does it stop?”

“Have any of you actually spoken to Mrs. Fang about this?” Jane looked around the room, and her gaze settled on Mark Mallory.

He snorted. “I, for one, wouldn’t waste my time talking to her.”

“Then you haven’t gone to her residence? Tried to confront her?”

“Why are you asking me ?”

“You seem the angriest about this, Mr. Mallory,” she observed. But was he angry enough to break into Iris’s home? To stab a warning into her pillow? She didn’t know Mark well enough to have a sense of what he was capable of.

“Look, we’re all upset,” said Patrick, although his voice sounded weary more than anything else. “But we also know that it would be unwise to establish any contact with the woman. I called Detective Ingersoll last week, thinking he might intervene on our behalf. But he hasn’t returned my call yet.”

“He’s out of town this week,” said Jane. She collected the mailings and slipped them into evidence bags. “We’ll speak to him about this when he returns. In the meantime, please let me know if you receive anything else like this.”

“And we’d appreciate it if you kept us informed,” said Patrick.

Again, she shook hands with them all. Again, Mark’s grasp was a brusque sign-off, as if he’d already decided the police were useless to him. But Patrick’s hand lingered around hers, and he walked them to the door, clearly reluctant to see them go.

“Please call me anytime,” he said. “About this matter, or…” He paused, and a shadow seemed to pass over his eyes. “Anything else.”

“We’re sorry this had to come up again, Mr. Dion,” said Jane. “I can see it’s hard for you.”

“Especially since it’s so closely connected to the… other event.” He paused, his shoulders drooping. “I assume you know about my daughter.”

Jane nodded. “I spoke to Detective Buckholz about Charlotte.”

Just the mention of his daughter’s name made his face contract in pain. “Dina’s death was difficult. But nothing compares to losing a child. My only child. These mailings, and that ad in the newspaper, they bring it all back. That’s what really hurts, Detective. That’s why I want this stopped.”

“I’ll do what I can, Mr. Dion.”

Although they had already shaken hands, he grasped hers once again, a farewell that left her depressed and silent as she and Frost walked back to her car. She unlocked the doors but did not immediately climb in. Instead she stared across the lawn, at the trees, at garden paths that led into the deepening shadows of afternoon. He owns all this, yet he has nothing, she thought, and you can see it in his face. In the drooping mouth, the hollows under his eyes. Nineteen years later, the ghost of his daughter still haunted him, as it would haunt any parent. Having a child meant your heart was always at the world’s mercy.

“Detectives?”

Jane turned to see Mrs. Gilmore coming down the porch steps. She walked toward them with grim determination, her spine bent forward in a dowager’s hump.

“I have to say this before you leave. I know Patrick and Mark are convinced that the matter’s been settled. That there’s no question about what happened in the restaurant. But what if they’re wrong? What if we really don’t know the truth?”

“So you do have doubts,” said Jane.

The woman’s mouth tightened into hard lines. “I’ll admit this. My son, Joey, wasn’t a saint. I raised him to be a good boy, I really tried. But there were so many temptations, and it’s easy to fall in with the wrong people.” She stared hard at Jane. “You probably know that Joey got into trouble.”

“I know he was working for Kevin Donohue.”

At the mention of that name, Mrs. Gilmore spat out: “Piece of crap! The whole Donohue clan is. But my Joey, he admired power and he liked easy money. He thought Donohue was the one who’d show him the ropes. By the time he realized what was involved, he couldn’t get out of it. Donohue wouldn’t let him.”

“You think he had your son killed?”

“It’s what I’ve wondered from the start.”

“There was no evidence for it, Mrs. Gilmore.”

The woman hacked out a cough, noisy and bronchial. “You think Donohue couldn’t buy off a few cops? He could throw any investigation.”

“That’s a serious charge.”

“I’m a Southie girl. I know what goes on in this town, and I know what money can buy.” Her eyes narrowed, her stare fixed on Jane. “I’m sure you do, too, Detective.”

The implied charge made Jane stiffen. “I’ll give your concerns the attention they deserve, Mrs. Gilmore,” she said evenly and slid into her car. As she and Frost drove away, she saw the woman in the rearview mirror, still standing in the driveway and glaring after them.

“That,” muttered Jane, “is not a nice old lady.”

Frost gave a disbelieving laugh. “Did she just accuse us of taking bribes?”

“That’s exactly what she did.”

“And she looked so sweet.”

“To you, they’re all sweet. You’ve never met one you didn’t like.” Or one who didn’t like you .

Frost’s cell phone rang. As he answered it, she thought about how easily Frost always managed to charm the older ladies. He certainly seemed to have made inroads with Iris Fang, a woman who was still young enough to be both handsome and formidable. She remembered what Patrick had said about her: Deeply traumatized. Delusions of grandeur. Believes she’s descended from warriors . Iris might be delusional, but someone real had broken into her residence and stabbed a knife into her pillow. Whose cage did you rattle, Iris?

Frost sighed as he hung up the cell phone. “Guess our day’s not over yet.”

“Who was that?”

“The realtor for the Knapp Street building. I’ve been trying to get hold of him all day. He says he’s on his way out of town tonight, but if we want to see the place, he’ll meet us in an hour.”

“I take it we’re headed back to Chinatown?”

Frost nodded. “Back to Chinatown.”

IN THE FADING TWILIGHT, KNAPP STREET WAS A SHADOWY CANYON, cast in gloom between four-story brick buildings. Jane and Frost stood outside what had once been the Red Phoenix restaurant and tried to peer inside, but beyond the barred windows, Jane saw only thin curtains that were tattered and almost translucent with age.

Frost looked at his watch. “Mr. Kwan’s now fifteen minutes late.”

“Don’t you have a cell number for him?”

“I don’t think he has a cell. I played phone tag with him all day through his office.”

“A realtor who doesn’t have a cell phone?”

“I just hope we understood each other. He had a pretty strong Chinese accent.”

“We could really use Tam here. Where is he?”