Tess Gerritsen - The Silent Girl

“Everything look okay?” asked Will.

“I wish I’d brought my husband here. He’d love this place.”

“Bring him back next time.” Will gave her a salute and turned to leave. “Once you get settled in, come over to the lodge for dinner. I think we’re having beef stew.”

After he left, she sank into a rocking chair on the screened porch and sat watching the sunset burn a fire in the lake. Insects hummed, and the sound of lapping water made her drowsy. She closed her eyes and did not see the visitor approach her cabin. Only when she heard the knock did she look out to see the blond woman standing outside the screen door.

“Detective Rizzoli?” the woman said.

“Come in.”

The woman stepped inside, careful to keep the door quiet as it swung shut. Even in the shadowy porch, Jane could see the woman’s resemblance to Will and Samantha, and she knew that this was their mother. She also knew, without a doubt, what her name was. It was Ingersoll’s oddly timed fishing trip that had made Jane focus on Loon Point, a trip on which he’d brought no tackle box. This was the real reason Ingersoll had come to Maine: to visit the woman who now stood on Jane’s cabin porch.

“Hello, Charlotte,” said Jane.

The woman glanced through the screen, scanning the area for anyone within earshot. Then she looked at Jane. “Please don’t ever use that name again. My name is Susan now.”

“Your family doesn’t know?”

“My husband does, but not the children. It’s just too hard to make them understand. And I never want them to know what kind of man their grandfather…” Her voice trailed off. With a sigh she sank into one of the rocking chairs. For a moment the only sound was the creak of her chair on the porch.

Jane stared at the woman’s profile. Charlotte-no, Susan-was only thirty-six, yet she looked much older. Years in the outdoors had freckled her skin, and her hair already had silvery streaks. But it was the pain in her eyes that aged her the most, pain that had left deep creases and a haunted gaze.

Leaning her head back against the rocker, Susan stared off at the darkening lake. “It started when I was nine years old,” she said. “One night, he came into my room while my mother was sleeping. He told me I was old enough. That it was time for me to learn what all daughters were supposed to do. We’re supposed to please our daddies.” She swallowed. “So I did.”

“Didn’t you tell your mother?”

“My mother?” Susan’s laugh was bitter. “My mother’s concerns never extended beyond her own selfish interests. After she started her affair with Arthur Mallory, it took her only two months to fly the coop. She never looked back. I’m not sure she even remembered that she had a daughter. So I was left behind with my father, who was only too happy to retain custody. Uncontested, of course. Oh, a few times a year, I was scheduled to spend weekends with Mom and Arthur, but she pretty much ignored me. Arthur was the only one who showed me any real kindness. I didn’t know him well, but he seemed like a decent man.”

“What about his son, Mark?”

There was a long silence. “I didn’t realize what Mark was,” she said softly. “He seemed perfectly harmless when our families first got together. Soon we were all seeing way too much of each other. Dinners at our house, then at Mark’s. We got along so swimmingly. The trouble was, my mom and Arthur were getting along better than I realized at the time.”

“It seems that your father and Mark were getting along rather well, too.”

Susan nodded. “Like best friends. It was as if my dad finally found the son he’d always wanted. Even after my parents divorced, Mark would come over to visit Dad. They’d go downstairs to Dad’s workshop and build birdhouses or picture frames. I had no idea what was really going on down there.”

A lot more than woodworking, thought Jane. “You didn’t think it was strange, the two of them spending so much time together?”

“I was mostly relieved to be left alone. It was around then, when I was thirteen, that my dad stopped coming to my room at night. At the time I didn’t know why. Now I realize that was when the first girl disappeared. When I was thirteen, and my dad found someone else to amuse him. With Mark’s help.” Susan ceased rocking and sat very still, her gaze fixed on the lake. “If I’d known, if I’d realized what Mark really was, my mother and Arthur would still be alive.”

Jane frowned. “Why do you say that?”

“I’m the reason they went to the Red Phoenix restaurant that night. They were there because of something I told them.”

“You?”

Susan took a deep breath, as if collecting the strength to continue. “It was the scheduled weekend for my visit with Mom and Arthur. I’d just gotten my license, and I drove myself to their house for the very first time. I took my father’s car. That’s when I found the pendant. It had fallen between the seat and the console, where nobody noticed it for two years. It was gold, in the shape of a dragon, and it had a name engraved on the back. Laura Fang.”

“Did you recognize the name?”

“Yes. The story was in the newspapers when she disappeared. I remembered the name because she was my age, and she played the violin. At Bolton, some of the students talked about her because they knew her from the summer orchestra workshop.”

“Mark attended that workshop.”

Susan nodded. “He knew her. But I couldn’t understand the connection with my father. How did Laura’s pendant end up in my father’s car? Then I started thinking about all the nights that he’d come into my bedroom, and what he’d done to me. If he’d abused me, maybe he’d done it to other girls. Maybe that’s what happened to Laura. Why she disappeared.”

“And then you told your mother?”

“That weekend, when I visited her, it all came out. I told her and Arthur everything. What my dad had done to me years earlier. What I’d found in his car. At first, Mom couldn’t believe it. Then, in her usual self-centered way, she started worrying about the bad publicity and how her name would get dragged into the newspapers. That she’d be known as the clueless wife who had no idea what was going on in her own house. But Arthur-Arthur took it seriously. He believed me. And I’ll always respect him for that.”

“Why didn’t they go straight to the police?”

“My mom wanted to be certain of the facts first. She didn’t want to attract any attention until they knew this wasn’t some weird coincidence. Maybe there was another Laura Fang, she said. So they were going to show the pendant to Laura’s family. Confirm that it belonged to the same Laura who’d disappeared two years earlier.” Susan’s head drooped, and her next words were almost inaudible. “That’s the last time I saw them alive. When they left to meet with Laura’s father, at the restaurant.”

This was the final piece of the puzzle: the reason why Arthur and Dina had gone to Chinatown that night. Not to eat a meal, but to speak with James Fang about his missing daughter. Gunfire ended the conversation, a bloody massacre that was blamed on a hapless immigrant.

“The police insisted it was a murder-suicide,” said Susan. “They said my mom and Arthur were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. The pendant was never found, so I had no evidence. I had no one else to turn to. I kept wondering if it was connected. Laura and the shooting. And then there was Mark. He was home with us that weekend, so he knew what was going on.”

“He called Patrick. Told him your mother and Arthur were going to Chinatown.”

“I’m sure he did. But it was only at the funeral that I finally put it all together. My father and Mark, working together. Without the pendant, I couldn’t prove anything. My dad held all the power, and I knew how easy it would be for him to make me disappear.”