Tess Gerritsen - The Keepsake

Zucker glanced back and forth between the two partners, and his eyebrows lifted. “A difference of opinion.”

“Rizzoli’s reading too much into it,” said Frost.

“I just get weird signals from her, that’s all,” said Jane. “As if she’s more afraid of us than the perp.”

“Afraid of you, maybe,” said Frost.

Detective Crowe laughed. “Who isn’t?”

Zucker was silent for a moment, and Jane did not like the way he was studying her and Frost, as though probing the depths of the breach between them.

Jane said, “The woman’s a loner, that’s all I’m saying. She goes to work, she goes home. Her whole life seems to be inside that museum.”

“What about her colleagues?”

“The curator’s a guy named Nicholas Robinson. Forty years old, single, no criminal record.”

“Single?”

“Yeah, it raised a red flag for me, too, but I can’t find anything that gives me a tingle. Besides, he’s the one who found Madam X in the basement. The rest of the staff are all volunteers, and their average age is around a hundred years old. I can’t imagine one of those fossils dragging a body out of a bog.”

“So you’re left with no viable suspects.”

“And three victims who probably weren’t even killed in the state of Massachusetts, much less in our jurisdiction,” said Crowe.

“Well, they’re all in our jurisdiction now,” Frost pointed out.

“We’ve managed to search all the crates in the museum basement and we haven’t found any other victims. But you never know, there might be hidden spaces behind other walls.” He glanced down at his ringing cell phone and suddenly stood. “Excuse me, I gotta take this call.”

As Frost stepped out of the room, Zucker’s gaze turned back to Jane. “I’m curious about something you said earlier, regarding Ms. Pulcillo.”

“What about her?”

“You described her as a strange bird. Yet Detective Frost saw nothing of the kind.”

“Yeah. Well, we have a difference of opinion.”

“How deep a difference?”

Was she supposed to tell him what she really thought? That Frost’s judgment had gone haywire because his wife was out of town and he was lonely and Josephine Pulcillo had big brown eyes?

“Is there something about the woman that may bias you against her?”

“What?” Jane gave a laugh of disbelief. “You think I’m the one who-”

“Why does she make you uneasy?”

“She doesn’t. There’s just a caginess about her. Like she’s trying to stay one step ahead.”

“Of you? Or the killer? From what I heard, the young woman had every right to be afraid. A body was left in her car. It almost sounds like a gift from the killer-an offering, if you will. To his next companion.”

His next companion.That phrase raised gooseflesh on Jane’s arms.

“I take it she’s in a secure location?” said Zucker. When no one immediately answered him, he looked around the table. “I’m sure we all agree she could be in jeopardy. Where is she?”

“That’s an issue we’re trying to clear up right now,” admitted Jane.

“You don’t know where she is?”

“She told us she was going to stay with an aunt named Connie Pulcillo in Burlington, Vermont, but we can’t find any listing with that name. We’ve left messages on Josephine’s voice mail and she hasn’t responded.”

Zucker shook his head. “This is not good news. Have you checked her Boston residence?”

“She’s not there. A neighbor in her building saw her leave Friday morning with two suitcases.”

“Even if she’s left Boston, she may not be safe,” said Zucker.

“This unsub is clearly comfortable operating across state lines. He doesn’t seem to have geographic boundaries. He could have followed her.”

“If he knows where she is. Even we can’t find her.”

“But she’s his only focus. She may have been his only focus for some time. If he’s been watching her, following her, then he may know exactly where she is.” Zucker leaned back, clearly disturbed.

“Why hasn’t she answered her phone? Is it because she can’t?”

Before Jane could respond, the door opened and Frost came back into the room. She took one look at his face and knew instantly that something was wrong. “What is it?”

“Josephine Pulcillo is dead,” he said.

His stark announcement sent a jolt through the room as shocking as the voltage from a stun gun.

“Dead?”Jane shot straight up in her chair. “How? What the hell happened?”

“It was a car accident. But-”

“So it wasn’t our killer.”

“No. It was definitely not our perp,” said Frost.

Jane heard anger in his voice, and she saw it as well in his tight mouth, his narrowed eyes.

“She died in San Diego,” said Frost. “Twenty-four years ago.”

They’d been driving for half an hour before Jane finally brought up the painful subject, a subject they’d managed to avoid during the flight from Boston to Albuquerque.

“You had a thing for her. Didn’t you?” she asked.

Frost didn’t look at her. He stayed focused on his driving, his gaze fixed on the road where the blacktop shimmered, hot as a griddle under the New Mexico sun. In all the time they’d worked together, she’d never felt such a wall between them, an impenetrable barrier that she could not seem to chip through. This wasn’t the good-natured Barry Frost that she knew; this was his evil twin, and any minute now he was going to start speaking in tongues and his head would demonically spin around.

“We really need to talk about this, you know,” she insisted.

“Give it a rest, why can’t you?”

“You can’t keep kicking yourself over this. She’s a pretty girl and she pulled the wool over your eyes. It can happen to any guy.”

“But not to me. ” He looked at her at last, his anger so raw that it silenced her. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it,” he said and focused, once again, on the road. A moment passed, and the only noise was the air conditioner and the sound of their car slicing through the heat.

She had never traveled to New Mexico before. She’d never even seen the desert before. But she scarcely noticed the landscape flying past their windows; what mattered to her now was healing this rift between them, and the only way to do it was to talk it through, whether Frost was willing to or not.

“You aren’t the only one who’s surprised,” said Jane. “Dr. Robinson had no idea. You should have seen his face when I told him she’s a fraud. If she lied about something as basic as her own name, what else did she lie about? She took in a lot of people, including her college professors.”

“But not you. You saw through it.”

“I just got a funny feeling about her, that’s all.”

“Cop’s instinct.”

“Yeah. I guess.”

“So what the hell happened to mine?”

Jane gave a laugh. “A different instinct was operating. She’s pretty, she’s scared, and wham-o. The Boy Scout wanted to save her.”

“Whoever the hell she is.”

They still did not know the answer; what they did know was that she was not the real Josephine Pulcillo, who had died twenty-four years ago when she was only two years old. Yet years later, that dead girl managed to attend college and graduate school. She managed to open a bank account, get a driver’s license, and land a job in an obscure Boston museum. The child had been resurrected as a different woman, whose true origins remained a mystery.

“I can’t believe I was such a moron,” he said.

“You want my advice?”

“Not particularly.”

“Call Alice. Tell her to come home. That was part of the problem, you know. Your wife’s been gone and you got lonely. You got vulnerable. A pretty girl wanders onto the scene and suddenly you’re thinking with a different brain.”