Tess Gerritsen - The Silent Girl

“He said he’d be here.”

Jane backed into the street and peered up at the rusting fire escape and boarded-up windows. Only last week, she and the crime scene unit had walked this same block of rooftops searching for bullet casings. Just around the corner was the alley where Jane Doe’s severed hand had been found. This street, this building, seemed to be ground zero for everything that had happened. “Looks like it’s been abandoned a long time. Center of town, you’d think it’d be prime real estate.”

“Except for the fact it’s a crime scene. Tam says that in this neighborhood, they really believe in ghosts. And a haunted building’s bad luck.” He paused, staring up the alley. “I wonder if that’s our man coming?”

The elderly Chinese man walked with a limp, as if he had a bad hip, but he moved with surprising alacrity in his bright white Reeboks, easily stepping over a trash bag as he negotiated his way along the uneven pavement. His jacket was several sizes too large, but he wore it with panache, like a nattily dressed professor out for a night stroll.

“Mr. Kwan?”

“Hello, hello. You Detective Frost?”

“Yes, sir. And this is my partner, Detective Rizzoli.”

The man smiled, revealing two bright gold teeth. “I tell you now, I always follow the law, okay? Okay? Everything always legal.”

“Sir, that’s not why I called you.”

“Very good location here, Knapp Street. Three apartment upstairs. Downstairs, very good space for business. Maybe restaurant or store.”

“Mr. Kwan, we’d just like to look around inside.”

“Behind, two places for tenant to park car…”

“Is he going to show it or sell it to us?” muttered Jane.

“… development company in Hong Kong doesn’t want to manage anymore. So they sell for very good price.”

“Then why hasn’t it sold?” asked Jane.

The question seemed to take him aback, abruptly cutting off his sales patter. Eyeing her in the gloom, his wrinkles deepened into a scowl. “Bad thing happen here,” he finally admitted. “No one wants to rent or buy.”

“Sir, we’re here only to look at the place,” said Frost.

“Why? Empty inside, nothing to see.”

“This is police business. Please just open the door.”

Reluctantly, Kwan pulled out an enormous set of keys that clanked like a jailer’s ring. In the dim alley, it took an excruciatingly long time for him to find and insert the correct key in the padlock. The gate swung open with a deafening screech, and they all stepped into what had once been the Red Phoenix restaurant. Mr. Kwan flipped the light switch, and a single bare bulb came on overhead.

“Is that the only light in here?” Jane asked.

The realtor looked up at the ceiling and shrugged. “Time to buy lightbulbs.”

Jane moved to the center of that gloomy space and looked around the room. As Kwan had said, the place was empty, and she saw a bare linoleum floor, cracked and yellow with age. Only the built-in cashier counter offered any hint that this had once been a restaurant dining room.

“We have it cleaned, painted,” said Mr. Kwan. “Make it just like it was before, but still no one wants to buy.” He shook his head in disgust. “Chinese people too superstitious. They don’t even like to come inside.”

I don’t blame them, thought Jane as a cold breath seemed to whisper across her skin. Violence leaves a mark, a psychic stain that can never be scrubbed away with mere soap and bleach. In a neighborhood as insular as Chinatown, everyone would remember what had happened in this building. Everyone would shudder as they walked past on Knapp Street. Even if this building were torn down and another erected in its place, this bloodied ground would remain forever haunted in the minds of those who knew its ugly past. Jane looked down at the linoleum, the same floor where blood had flowed. Although the walls were repainted and the bullet holes plastered over, in the seams and nooks of this floor, chemical traces of that blood still lingered. A crime scene photo that she had earlier studied suddenly clicked into her head. It was an image of a crumpled body lying amid fallen take-out cartons.

Here is the spot where Joey Gilmore died .

She looked across the cashier counter, and the memory of another crime scene photo superimposed itself on that patch of floor: the body of James Fang, his glasses askew, dressed in his trim waiter’s vest and black pants. He had crumpled into the nook behind the register, dollar bills scattered around him.

She turned. Stared at the corner where a four-top table had once been. She imagined Dina and Arthur Mallory sitting at that table, sipping tea, warming themselves after the chill of a March night. That image suddenly vanished, replaced by the police photos taken hours later. Arthur Mallory, still in his chair, slumped forward over the spilled teacups. And a few feet away his wife, Dina, lying facedown on the floor, her chair tipped over in her panic to escape. Standing in this vacant room, Jane could hear the echo of gunshots, the clatter of breaking china.

She turned toward the kitchen, where the cook had died. Suddenly she did not want to step through that doorway. It was Frost who walked in first, who flipped the light switch. Again, only a single bulb came on. She followed him, and in the dim glow she saw the blackened cookstove, a refrigerator, and stainless-steel countertops. The concrete floor was pockmarked with wear.

She moved to the cellar door. Here, with his body blocking that door, was where Wu Weimin, the cook, had drawn his final breath. Staring down, she almost imagined that the floor was darker here, the concrete still stained with old blood. She remembered how eerily intact his face had been, except for the lone bullet hole punched into his temple. That bullet had ricocheted within his skull, shredding gray matter, but it had not immediately killed him. They knew this because of how copiously he had bled during his final moments while his heart continued to pump and his wound spilled a waterfall that poured down the cellar steps.

She opened the door and peered down a wooden stairway that descended into darkness. A light cord dangled overhead. She gave it a tug, but nothing happened; this bulb had burned out.

Frost crossed the kitchen to another door. “Does this lead outside?”

“Goes to back of building,” said Mr. Kwan. “Parking.”

Frost opened the door and saw another locked gate. “The alley’s here. Report said this is how the cook’s wife walked in. She heard a gunshot, came down to check on her husband, and found him dead in the kitchen.”

“So theoretically, if that door was unlocked, any intruder could have come in that way,” said Jane.

Kwan looked back and forth at the two detectives, and he seemed confused. “What intruder? Cook, he kill himself.”

“We’re reexamining the incident, Mr. Kwan,” said Frost. “Just to be certain nothing was missed.”

The realtor shook his head in dismay. “That was very bad thing for Chinatown,” he muttered, no doubt surrendering all hope of unloading this cursed building. “Better to forget about it.” He squinted at his watch. “If you finished now, we leave, okay? I lock up.”

Jane glanced up toward the second floor. “Wu Weimin and his family lived on the second floor. Could you take us up to their apartment?”

“Nothing to see,” said Kwan.

“Nevertheless, we need to look at it.”

He sighed deeply, as though they were asking him for a favor beyond all human measure. Once again he took out his heavy key ring and went through the painstaking process of locating the right key. Judging by how many were jangling on that enormous ring, this man controlled half the properties in Chinatown. At last, he found the right one and led them out the kitchen exit, into the back alley.