Tess Gerritsen - The Silent Girl

There is a knock on the door, and Bella steps into the office. She is flushed from the exertions of teaching class, and her short black hair stands up, stiff with sweat. She dips her head in a bow.

“ Sifu , the last class of the day has left. Will you need me?”

“Wait a moment. We are just finishing here.”

It is clear to the two detectives that I have nothing more to offer them, and they turn to leave. As they walk to the door, Rizzoli pauses and regards Bella. It is a long, speculative look, and I can almost see the thoughts whirring in her head. Mei Mei was five years old when she vanished. How old is this young woman? Could it be possible? But Rizzoli says nothing, merely nods goodbye and walks out of the studio.

After the door shuts, I say to Bella: “We are running out of time.”

“Do they know?”

“They’re closer to the truth.” I draw in a deep breath, and it worries me that I cannot cast off the new fatigue that now drags me down. I am fighting two battles at once, one of them against the enemy that smolders in my own bone marrow. I know that one of these enemies is certain to take my life.

The only question is, which one will kill me first?

NOW THERE WERE THREE MISSING GIRLS.

Jane sipped lukewarm coffee and ate a chicken salad sandwich as she reviewed her growing stack of folders. On her desk were files on Jane Doe, the Red Phoenix massacre, and the disappearances of Laura Fang and Charlotte Dion. She’d started a new file on yet another missing girl: Mei Mei, the cook’s daughter who had vanished along with her mother nineteen years ago. Mei Mei would be twenty-four years old now, perhaps married and living under a different name. They had no photos of her, no fingerprints, no idea what she looked like. She might not even reside in the country. Or she could be right under their noses, teaching martial arts in a Chinatown studio, Jane thought, and she pictured Iris’s stony-faced assistant, Bella Li, whose background they were already looking into.

Of the three girls, Mei Mei was the only one likely to be alive. The other two were almost certainly dead.

Jane turned her attention back to Laura Fang and Charlotte Dion. To the startling connection between them, despite the gulf that separated their lives. Charlotte was wealthy and white. Laura was the daughter of struggling Chinese immigrants. Charlotte grew up in a Brookline mansion, Laura in a cramped Chinatown apartment. Two such different girls, yet both had lost parents in the restaurant shooting, and now their files shared equal space on Jane’s desk in the homicide unit-not a place where anyone wanted to end up. Paging through their files, she heard the echo of Ingersoll’s last words to her: It’s all about what happened to those girls .

Were these the girls he’d meant?

PATRICK DION’S ESTATE looked no less impressive the second time she saw it.

Jane drove between the twin stone pillars onto the private road that took her past birch trees and lilacs and up the rolling lawn to the massive Colonial. As she pulled up under the porte cochere, Patrick emerged from the house to greet her.

“Thank you for seeing me again,” she said as they shook hands.

“Is there news about Charlotte?” he asked, and it was painful to see the hope in his eyes, to hear the tremor in his voice.

“I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear about the reason for my visit,” she said. “I’m afraid I don’t have anything new to report.”

“But you said on the phone that you wanted to talk about Charlotte.”

“This is in connection to our current investigation. The murder in Chinatown.”

“What does that have to do with my daughter?”

“I’m not sure, Mr. Dion. But there’ve been developments that make me think Charlotte’s disappearance is connected with another missing girl.”

“That was already explored years ago, by Detective Buckholz.”

“I’d like to look at it again. Even though it’s been nineteen years, I won’t let your daughter be forgotten. Charlotte deserves better than that.”

She saw him blink away tears, and she knew that for him the loss was still raw, the pain still alive. Parents never forget.

With a weary nod, he said: “Come inside. I’ve brought her things down from the attic, as you requested. Please take as long as you need to look through them.”

She followed him into the foyer and was once again impressed by gleaming hardwood floors, by oil portraits that appeared to be at least two centuries old. She could not help comparing this house with Kevin Donohue’s residence, with its pedestrian furniture and shopping mall art. Old money versus new money. Patrick led her into the formal dining room, where Palladian windows looked out over a lily pond. On the rosewood dining table, large enough to seat a dozen guests, was a collection of cardboard boxes.

“This is what I saved,” he said sadly. “Most of her clothes, I finally gave away to charity. Charlotte would have approved, I think. She cared about that sort of thing, feeding the poor, housing the needy.” He looked around at the room and gave an ironic laugh. “You probably think it sounds hypocritical, don’t you? Saying that while I live in this house, on this property. But my daughter really did have a good heart. A generous heart.” He reached into one of the boxes and lifted out a pair of frayed blue jeans. Stared at it, as if he could still see them clinging to his daughter’s slim hips. “Funny, how I never could bring myself to give these away. Blue jeans never go out of style. If she ever comes back, I know she’ll want them.” Gently he set them back in the box and breathed out a long sigh.

“I’m so sorry, Mr. Dion. About bringing all this pain back to you. Would it be easier for you if I looked through these boxes on my own?”

“No, I’ll need to explain things. You won’t know what some of it means.” He reached into a different box and pulled out a photo album. Clutched it for a moment, as if reluctant to release it. When he held it out to Jane it was with both hands, a precious offering that she took with equal reverence. “This is what you probably want to see.”

She opened the cover. On the first page was a photo of a young blond woman holding a red-faced newborn, the baby swaddled like a tiny mummy in a white blanket. OUR CHARLOTTE, EIGHT HOURS OLD was written beneath it with the extravagant loops and flourishes of a woman’s hand. So this was Dina when she was still Patrick’s fresh-faced bride. Before Arthur Mallory stepped into their lives and fractured their marriage.

“Charlotte was your only child?” Jane asked.

“Dina insisted that we have only one. At the time, I was fine with it. But now…”

Now he regrets it, she thought. Regrets pouring all his love and hopes into a child he would one day lose. She turned the pages and studied other photos of Charlotte as a blue-eyed, golden-haired toddler. Occasionally Dina appeared, but Patrick was in none of the photos, except as an elusive shadow cast at the edge of the frame while he held the camera. Jane turned to the final page in the album, the year Charlotte turned four years old.

Patrick handed her the next volume.

The years seemed to accelerate in this second album, the girl growing, changing every few pages. After the flurry of attention devoted to a child’s first years, after the novelty of new parenthood wears off, taking photos becomes an afterthought, the camera brought out only when the special occasion calls for it. A fifth-birthday party. A first ballet recital. A visit to New York City. Suddenly that cherubic toddler transformed into a glum-faced adolescent, posing in her school uniform at the front gate of the Bolton Academy.