Tess Gerritsen - The Silent Girl

What was going on between Mark and Charlotte? Had he followed her to offer his support?

In the next shot, Patrick was leaning over to awkwardly embrace Barbara, the two discarded spouses comforting each other. It was an artfully composed image, with the embrace reflected in a casket’s gleaming surface.

The final shot was of the crowd as it dispersed, their backs turned from the twin grave sites. A metaphor, perhaps, of how the living always move on with their lives. In that final photo, Charlotte was once again visible, walking beside her father, Patrick’s arm firmly wrapped around her waist. But Charlotte’s head was turned in a backward glance toward her mother’s grave, and on her face was a desperate look of yearning, as if she longed to throw herself atop her mother’s coffin. That same mother who had walked out of her life five years earlier.

Jane set down the photo, overwhelmed with sadness for Charlotte. She thought of her own mother, thought of all the ways Angela annoyed her. But never once did Jane doubt that her mother loved her and would give her own life for her, just as Jane would give her own life for Regina without a second thought. When Dina divorced Patrick and left the family, Charlotte had been only twelve, that tender age at childhood’s end. Even with a devoted father, there were secrets that a girl could learn only from her mother, the secrets of womanhood. Who was there to teach you, Charlotte?

At lunchtime, Jane went downstairs to the cafeteria for coffee and a ham sandwich. She brought both up to eat at her desk, fueling up not with pleasure but out of sheer necessity. She wiped mayonnaise from her fingers and turned to her computer to review the digital file of crime scene photos from the Ingersoll residence. As she cycled through the images of his home and remembered the smell of the shrubbery along the walkway, the glow of his TV screen through the window, she felt her heart begin to thump hard. That was the night I should have died . She took a deep breath and forced herself to focus on the photos and critically view the scene with a calmer perspective. She studied the kitchen, where Ingersoll lay with blood pooled around his head. Clicked to the photo of his home office with the ransacked drawers, the bare desktop where a computer must have been. During their last phone conversation, Ingersoll told Jane that someone had broken into his house. This was the chaos that he’d found when he got home from his fishing trip: the evidence of a burglary. Finally she clicked on a photo of the bedroom, where Ingersoll’s closed suitcase still sat on the floor. He’d never had the chance to unpack.

She advanced to the photos of his Ford Taurus, which was parked on the street in front of the residence. The car was still littered with the detritus of a long road trip: empty coffee cups, a wadded Burger King sack, a Bangor Daily newspaper. That night she’d been covered in blood and shaken by what had happened in the alley, so she had not personally searched the car but had left that task to Frost and Tam. Frost reported finding a week-old receipt in the glove compartment from a Greenville, Maine, gas station. It corroborated the daughter’s statement that Ingersoll had left for a fishing trip up north.

She went back through all the photos again, clicking through image after image. Living room, dining room, kitchen, bedroom. When she did not find what she was searching for, she picked up the phone and called Frost.

“Did you find a tackle box anywhere in the house?” she asked.

“Um, no. I don’t remember seeing one.”

“Who goes fishing without a tackle box?”

“Maybe he rented everything up at the camp where he was staying.”

“You talked to the manager up there?”

“Yeah. But I didn’t ask him about fishing gear.”

“I’ll give him a call.”

“Why?”

“Just strikes me as odd, that’s all.” She hung up and pulled out the page with Ingersoll’s call log. Scanning down it, she spotted a 207 area code. Ingersoll had made the call from his landline on April 14.

She dialed the number. It rang five times, and a male voice answered with a no-nonsense: “Loon Point.”

“This is Detective Jane Rizzoli, Boston PD. May I ask who I’m speaking to?”

“Joe. Did you folks have another question?”

“Excuse me?”

“Someone else called from Boston PD yesterday. Spoke to my son Will.”

“That would have been Detective Frost. Where is Loon Point located, exactly?”

“We’re on Moosehead Lake. Got a dozen nice little cabins up here.”

“You had a guest up there recently, name of Ingersoll.”

“Yeah, Will said you folks were asking about him. It was my wife who checked him into the cabin, but she’s not here today. All I can tell you is he stayed five days, pretty much kept to himself.” He paused and yelled to his son: “Will, you wanna help those folks unload the gear from their boat? They’re already tied up at the dock!” Then, back to Jane: “Sorry, ma’am. Starting to get busy around here. Really want to help you and all, but there’s not much more to say. We were sorry to hear the man died.”

“Was that the first time Mr. Ingersoll stayed at Loon Point?”

“Don’t remember seeing him before.”

“How long have you worked there?”

“Since it opened. I own the place. Look, I gotta get off and help some guests.”

“One last question. Did Mr. Ingersoll rent any fishing gear while he was there?”

“Yeah, he did. Will helped him choose a rod and reel. Don’t think he caught much, though.”

She glanced at her ringing cell phone. “Thank you, Mr…”

“Patten. You have any more questions, just call back.”

She hung up the desk phone, picked up her cell phone, and saw the call was from the crime lab. “Rizzoli.”

Criminalist Erin Volchko answered: “I’ve seen some pretty surprising things over the years, but this just might take the cake.”

“What are we talking about?”

“That metallic fragment that came over from the ME’s office. It was embedded in the cervical spine of Jane Doe.”

“Yeah. A fragment from the blade.”

“It’s unlike any metal I’ve ever come across.”

FROST AND TAM WERE WAITING FOR HER IN THE CRIME LAB WHEN Jane walked in. So was a man she’d never met before, a soft-spoken African American gentleman whom Erin introduced as Dr. Calvin Napoleon Cherry from Harvard’s Arthur Sackler Museum.

“When I realized what this metal might be, I asked Dr. Cherry to take a look at it,” said Erin. “If anyone has an answer, it’ll be him.”

Dr. Cherry responded with an embarrassed laugh. “You make me sound far too impressive.”

“Well, your name shows up on half the published articles on this subject. I can’t imagine there’s any better expert to consult.”

“What is your role at the Sackler Museum, Dr. Cherry?” asked Jane.

He gave a modest shrug. “I’m curator of their weapons collection. I wrote my doctoral thesis on the metallurgic analysis of blades. Specifically, the blades of China and Japan. They’re closely related, even though the methods of craftsmanship diverged centuries ago.”

“So you think this blade was made in Asia?”

“I’m almost certain it was.”

“You can tell that with just a fragment?”

“Here,” said Erin, settling down in front of her computer. “Let me show you the images I sent to Dr. Cherry earlier this week. These are micrographs of the fragment.” She tapped the keyboard, and on the monitor they saw an image of gray swirls and waves.