Tess Gerritsen - The Silent Girl

It was two AM, way too early in the morning for anyone to be so damn chatty, but Detective Jane Rizzoli let her partner babble on about his latest date as she focused on driving. To her tired eyes, every streetlamp seemed too bright, every passing headlight an assault on her retinas. An hour ago, she’d been warmly cocooned in bed with her husband; now she was trying to shake herself awake as she navigated traffic that had inexplicably slowed to a stall and crawl at an hour when sane citizens should be home sleeping.

“You ever eat there?” Frost asked.

“What?”

“Ocean City restaurant. Liz ordered these great clams with garlic and black bean sauce. It’s making me hungry just thinking about it. I can’t wait to go back for more.”

“Who’s Liz?” said Jane.

“I told you about her last week. We met at the health club.”

“I thought you were seeing someone named Muffy.”

“Maggie.” He shrugged. “That didn’t work out.”

“Neither did the one before her. Whatever her name was.”

“Hey, I’m still trying to figure out what I want in a woman, you know? It’s been, like, forever since I was on the market. Man, I had no idea there were so many single girls around.”

“Women.”

He sighed. “Yeah, yeah. Alice used to pound that into my head. You’re supposed to say women now.”

Jane braked at a red light and glanced at him. “You and Alice talk very much these days?”

“What’s there to talk about?”

“Ten years of marriage, maybe?”

He looked out the window at nothing in particular. “There’s nothing else to say. She’s moved on.”

But Frost hasn’t, thought Jane. Eight months ago, his wife, Alice, had moved out of their home. Ever since, Jane had been subjected to a chronicle of Frost’s frantic but joyless adventures with women. There’d been the buxom blonde who told him she was wearing no underwear. The frighteningly athletic librarian with the well-thumbed copy of the Kama Sutra. The fresh-faced Quaker who drank him under the table. He related all these tales with a mingling of bewilderment and wonder, but it was sadness, more than anything else, that she saw in his eyes these days. By no means was he a bad catch. He was lean and fit and good-looking in a bland sort of way, so dating should be easier for him than it had been.

But he still misses Alice .

They turned onto Beach Street, driving into the heart of Chinatown, and were nearly blinded by the flashing rack lights of a Boston PD cruiser. She pulled up behind the cruiser and they stepped out, into the bone-chilling dampness of a spring night. Despite the ungodly hour, there were several onlookers gathered on the sidewalk, and Jane heard murmurs in both Chinese and English, everyone no doubt posing the universal question: Does anyone know what’s going on?

She and Frost walked down Knapp Street and ducked under the strand of police tape, where a patrolman stood guard. “Detectives Rizzoli and Frost, homicide,” she announced.

“It’s over there” was the cop’s terse response. He pointed down the alley at a dumpster, where another cop stood guard.

As Jane and Frost approached, she realized that it wasn’t the dumpster the cop was guarding, but something lying on the pavement. She halted, staring down at a severed right hand.

“Whoa,” said Frost.

The cop laughed. “That was my reaction exactly.”

“Who found it?”

“Folks on the Chinatown Ghost Tour. Some kid in the group picked it up thinking it was fake. It was fresh enough to still be dripping blood. Soon as he realized it was real, he dropped it right where it is now. Guess they never expected that on the tour.”

“Where are these tourists now?”

“They were pretty freaked out. They all insisted on going back to their hotels, but I got names and contact info. The tour guide’s some local Chinese kid, says he’s happy to talk to you whenever you want. No one saw anything except the hand. They called nine one one, and dispatch thought it was a practical joke. It took us a while to respond ’cause we got held up dealing with some rowdies over in Charlestown.”

Jane crouched down and shone her flashlight on the hand. It was a startlingly clean amputation, the severed end crusted over with dried blood. The hand appeared to be a woman’s, with pale and slender fingers and a disconcertingly elegant manicure. No ring, no watch. “It was just lying here on the ground?”

“Yeah. Fresh meat like that, rats’d be at it pretty quick.”

“No nibbles that I can see. Hasn’t been here long.”

“Oh, I spotted something else.” The cop aimed his flashlight and the beam landed on a dull gray object lying a few yards away.

Frost moved in for a closer inspection. “This is a Heckler and Koch. Expensive,” he said. He glanced at Jane. “It’s got a suppressor.”

“Did any of the tourists touch the gun?” asked Jane.

“No one touched the gun,” the cop said. “They never saw it.”

“So we’ve got a silenced automatic and a freshly severed right hand,” said Jane. “Who wants to bet they go together?”

“This is a really nice piece,” said Frost, still admiring the weapon. “Can’t imagine anyone tossing something like this.”

Jane rose to her feet and looked at the dumpster. “Have you checked in there for the rest of the body?”

“No, ma’am. I figured a severed hand was more than enough to call you folks straight in. Didn’t want to contaminate anything before you got here.”

She pulled a pair of gloves out of her pocket. As she snapped them on, she felt her heart starting to thump hard, in anticipation of what she’d find. Together she and Frost lifted the lid, and the stench of rotting seafood rose up and smacked them in the face. Battling nausea, she stared down at crushed cardboard boxes and a bulging black garbage bag. She and Frost looked at each other.

“You wanna do the honors?” he asked.

She reached in, tugged on the bag, and immediately knew that it didn’t contain a corpse. It wasn’t heavy enough. Grimacing at the smell, she untied the bag and looked inside. Saw shrimp and crab shells.

They both backed away, and the dumpster lid swung shut with a thunderous clang.

“No one at home?” the cop asked.

“Not in there.” Jane looked down at the severed hand. “So where’s the rest of her?”

“Maybe someone’s scattering parts all over town,” said Frost.

The cop laughed. “Or maybe one of these Chinese restaurants cooked her up and served her in a nice stew.”

Jane looked at Frost. “Good thing you ordered the clams.”

“We did a walk-around already,” the patrolman said. “Didn’t find anything.”

“Still, I think we’ll take a stroll around the block ourselves,” said Jane.

Together, she and Frost moved slowly along Knapp Street, their flashlights cutting through the shadows. They saw shards from broken bottles, scraps of paper, cigarette butts. No body parts. The buildings rising on either side had dark windows, but she wondered if eyes were watching from those unlit rooms above, tracking their progress down the silent passage. They would have to make this same inspection again by daylight, but she did not want to miss any time-sensitive clues. So she and Frost inched their way up the alley to another strand of police tape blocking off access from Harrison Avenue. Here were sidewalks and streetlights and traffic. Yet Jane and Frost continued their painstaking circle around the block, from Harrison to Beach Street, gazes sweeping the ground. By the time they’d finished their circuit and were back at the dumpster, the crime scene unit had arrived.

“Guess you didn’t find the rest of her, either,” the cop said to Jane and Frost.