Tess Gerritsen - The Silent Girl

Patrick Dion .

Gasping, she scrabbled away, sliding backward across the floor. Felt something heavy spin away from her hand. A gun. She reached for it, and the instant her fingers closed around the grip, she knew it was her own weapon. The gun that Patrick had taken from her. My old friend .

Footsteps creaked behind her and came to a halt.

Trapped in the light of the window, Jane was framed by moonglow that seemed as bright and inescapable as a searchlight. She looked up to see Mark’s silhouette standing above her.

“I was never here,” he said. “When the police come to talk to me, I’ll tell them I was home in bed the whole time. It was Patrick who killed all those girls and buried them in his yard. Patrick who killed you. And then he shot himself.”

Behind her, hand concealed in shadow, she clutched her weapon. But Mark already had his gun pointed at her. He would have the first shot, the best shot. There’d be no time for her to aim, no time to do anything but squeeze off the last bullet she would probably ever fire. Even as she lifted her weapon, she knew she was too slow, too late.

But at that instant Mark gasped in a startled breath and turned away from her, his attention shifting, his gun swinging toward someone-something-else.

Jane brought up her gun and fired. Three shots, four. Her reflexes on automatic. The bullets slammed into his torso and Mark staggered backward, collapsing against an end table. It gave way in a crash of splintering wood.

Pulse whooshing in her ears, Jane rose to her feet and stood over his body, her weapon aimed and ready should he miraculously spring back to life. He did not move.

But the shadows did.

It was just a whisper of air, utterly soundless. A flutter of black against black at the periphery of her vision. Slowly she turned toward the figure that stood cloaked in darkness. Though she was clutching a gun, though she could have fired, she did not. She simply stared at a face crowned with silvery fur. At jagged teeth that gleamed in the moonlight.

“Who are you?” she whispered. “What are you?”

A breath of wind brushed her face, and she blinked. When she opened her eyes again, the face was gone. Frantically she glanced around the room, searching for whatever had been standing there, but she saw only moonlight and shadow. Was it really here, or did I imagine it? Did I create a creature out of darkness and my own fear?

Through the window, a movement caught her eye. She looked out at the moonlit garden and saw it, then, darting across the lawn and vanishing into the cover of trees.

“Detective Rizzoli?”

With a start, Jane whirled around to see the two women in the doorway, Iris sagging heavily against Bella.

“She needs an ambulance!” said Bella.

“I am not as young as I once was,” groaned Iris. “Or as swift.”

Gently, Bella lowered her teacher to the floor. Cradling Iris in her lap she began to murmur in Chinese, words that she repeated again and again, as though chanting a magical spell. Words of healing.

Words of hope.

JANE STOOD AMONG THE JUMBLE OF BROOKLINE PD AND BOSTON PD vehicles parked in Patrick Dion’s driveway and watched the sun come up. She had not slept in twenty-four hours, had not eaten since lunch the day before, and her first glimpse of dawn was so dazzling that she closed her eyes, suddenly dizzy, and swayed backward against a police cruiser. When she opened her eyes again, Maura and Frost had emerged from the house and were now walking toward her.

“You should go home,” said Maura.

“That’s what everyone tells me.” She looked toward the residence. “You finished in there?”

“They’re bringing out the bodies now.”

Frost frowned as Jane bent down to pull on shoe covers. “You know, you probably shouldn’t go in the house,” he said.

“Like I haven’t already been in there?”

“That’s the point.”

He didn’t need to explain; she already understood. She’d been the one to take down Mark Mallory, and it was almost certainly her gun that had fired the bullet into Patrick Dion’s brain. Her weapon was now in the custody of ballistics, and she missed its weight on her belt.

The front door opened and the first stretcher came out, bearing one of the bodies. In silence they watched it roll toward the waiting morgue van.

“The older man had one bullet wound. Right temple, close range,” said Maura.

“Patrick Dion,” said Jane.

“I have a feeling we’re going to find gunshot residue on his right hand. Does that remind you of another crime scene?”

“The Red Phoenix,” said Jane softly. “Wu Weimin.”

“His death was called a suicide.”

“What are you going to call this one, Maura?”

Maura sighed. “We have no witnesses, do we?”

Jane shook her head. “Bella said that she and Iris were upstairs when it happened. They didn’t see it.”

“But there was another intruder in the house,” Frost pointed out. “You said you saw him.”

“I don’t know what I saw.” Jane looked toward the garden. There, last night by moonlight, she had caught a glimpse of something slipping into the woods. “I don’t think I’ll ever know.”

Maura turned as the second body was wheeled out of the house. “I could call Patrick Dion’s death a suicide, but it’s too similar to the Red Phoenix, Jane. It feels staged.”

“I think it’s meant to be similar. It’s meant to be an echo from the past. Justice completing its circle.”

“ Justice doesn’t qualify as a manner of death.”

Jane looked at her. “Maybe it should.”

“Hey, Frost! Rizzoli!” Detective Tam waved to them from a grove of trees, where he stood with a team of criminalists.

“What is it?” said Jane.

“Cadaver dog’s just scented on something!”

The missing girls . Surely there were more names that had not made it onto Ingersoll’s list, other girls who’d vanished in the years since Charlotte Dion disappeared. And what more convenient place to hide the bodies than in this private sanctuary, closed off from prying eyes? As they approached the CSU team, she saw the dog watching her with alert eyes, tail happily wagging. The dog was the only cheerful one among them. The men and women gathered in the shadow of those trees stood silent and grim-faced because they understood what most likely lay beneath their feet.

“The soil’s been disturbed here,” Tam said, pointing to a patch of bare earth under the trees. “It was covered with loose brush to conceal it.”

A recent burial. Jane looked around at the tree-shaded grounds and the dense shrubbery, at all the secret spots hidden by shade and brush. This was evil on a scale she could scarcely comprehend. How many bodies are lying here, she wondered. How many silent girls who will finally be able to speak? Suddenly she felt overwhelmed by the task ahead of them. She was bruised, hungry, and weary of death.

“Frost, I think I’ll leave this to you. I’m going home,” she said and walked away, back across the lawn. Back into the sunshine.

“Rizzoli,” said Tam. He followed her toward the driveway. “Just wanted to let you know, I spoke to the hospital a little while ago. Iris Fang is out of surgery and awake.”

“Is she going to be okay?”

“She took a bullet to the thigh and lost a lot of blood, but she’ll recover. She seems to be a pretty tough bird.”

“We should all be so tough.”

It was bright on that driveway with the morning sun in their faces. Tam pulled sunglasses from his pocket and slipped them on. “Maybe I should head over to the hospital? Get a statement from her?” he suggested.