Tess Gerritsen - The Keepsake

Kimball led them out of the grand hall, and as they stepped into the next room, it was as if they’d passed from one millennium into another. A fountain trickled in a courtyard tiled with brilliant mosaics. Daylight shone down through a vast skylight, spilling onto marble statues of nymphs and satyrs at play near the fountain’s edge. Jane wanted to linger, to take a closer look at the mosaics, but Kimball was already moving on, into yet another room.

It was Kimball’s library, and as they stepped in, both Jane and Frost stared up in wonder. Everywhere they looked were books-thousands of them, shelved on three stories of open galleries. Tucked into niches were Egyptian funerary masks with enormous eyes staring from the shadows. On the domed ceiling was a painting of the night sky and its constellations, and arching across the heavens was a royal procession: an Egyptian sailing vessel followed by chariots and courtiers and women bearing platters of food. In a stone hearth, a real wood fire crackled, an extravagant waste of energy on this summer day. So this was why the house was kept so cold, to make a fire all the more cozy.

They sat down in massive leather chairs near the fireplace. Though July heat blazed outside, in this dark study it might be a winter day in December, the snow flying outside, with only the flames in the hearth to ward off the chill.

“The person we’d really like to speak to is Bradley, Mr. Rose,” said Jane. “But we can’t seem to locate him.”

“That boy’s never in one place for long,” said Kimball. “Right at this moment, I couldn’t tell you where he is.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“It’s been a while. I don’t remember.”

“That long?”

“We stay in touch by e-mail. Every so often, a letter. You know how it is these days with busy families. Last we heard from him, he was in London.”

“Do you know where in London, exactly?”

“No. That was a few months ago.” Kimball shifted in his chair.

“Let’s just cut to the chase, Detective. The reason you’re here. This is about that girl in Chaco Canyon.”

“Lorraine Edgerton.”

“Whatever her name was. Bradley had nothing to do with it.”

“You seem pretty sure of that.”

“’Cause he was here with us when it happened. Police didn’t even bother to talk to him-that’s how little they cared about seeing Bradley. Professor Quigley must’ve told you that?”

“Yes, he did.”

“Then why bother us about this now? It was twenty-five years ago.”

“You seem to remember the details well.”

“Because I took the trouble to find out about you, Detective Rizzoli. About that missing Edgerton girl, and why Boston PD’s mixed up in a case that happened in New Mexico.”

“You know that Lorraine Edgerton’s body recently turned up.”

He nodded. “In Boston, I hear.”

“Do you know where in Boston?”

“The Crispin Museum. I read the news.”

“Your son worked at the Crispin Museum that summer.”

“Yes. I fixed that up.”

“You got him the job?”

“The Crispin Museum’s always short of cash. Simon’s a lousy businessman and he’s run that place into the ground. I made a donation, and he gave my Bradley a job. I think they were lucky to get him.”

“Why did he leave Chaco Canyon?”

“He was unhappy, stuck out there with that bunch of amateurs. Bradley’s dead serious about his archaeology. He was wasted out there, working like some common laborer. Days and days of just scraping away at dirt.”

“I thought that’s what archaeology was all about.”

“That’s what I pay people to do. You think I spend my time digging? I write the checks and I come up with the vision. I guide the project and choose where to excavate. Bradley didn’t need to do grunt work in Chaco-he knows damn well how to handle a trowel. He spent time with me in Egypt, on a project with hundreds of diggers, and he had a knack for looking at the terrain and knowing where to excavate. I’m not just saying that because he’s my boy.”

“So he’s been to Egypt,” said Jane. Thinking about what had been engraved in that souvenir cartouche: I visited the pyramids, Cairo, Egypt.

“He loves it there,” said Kimball. “And I hope one of these days he’ll go back and find what I couldn’t.”

“What was that?”

“The lost army of Cambyses.”

Jane looked at Frost, and judging by his blank expression he had no idea what Kimball was talking about, either.

Kimball’s mouth curled into an unpleasantly superior smile. “I guess I need to explain it to you all,” he said. “Twenty-five hundred years ago, this Persian king named Cambyses sent an army into Egypt’s western desert, to take the oracle at Siwa Oasis. Fifty thousand men marched in and were never seen again. The sands just swallowed ’em up, and no knows what became of them.”

“Fifty thousand soldiers?” said Jane.

Kimball nodded. “It’s one of the big mysteries of archaeology. I spent two seasons hunting for the remains of that army. All I turned up were bits of metal and bone, but that was all. So little, in fact, that the Egyptian government didn’t even care enough to lay claim to any of it. That dig was one of my biggest disappointments. One of my few failures.” He stared at the fire. “Someday I’ll go back. I’m gonna find it.”

“In the meantime, how about helping us find your son?”

Kimball’s gaze returned to Jane, and it was not friendly. “How about we wrap up this conversation? I don’t think there’s anything more I can help you with.” He stood.

“We only want to speak to him. To ask him about Ms. Edgerton.”

“Ask him what? Did you kill her? That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? Trying to find someone to blame.”

“He knew the victim.”

“Lot of folks probably did.”

“Your son worked at the Crispin Museum that summer. The same place where her body has just turned up. That’s quite a coincidence.”

“I’ll ask you both to leave.” He turned toward the door, but Jane did not move from her chair. If Kimball was not going to cooperate, it was time to move to a different strategy, one that would almost certainly provoke him.

“Then there was that incident on the Stanford University campus,” she said. “An incident you know about, Mr. Rose. Since it was your attorney who arranged for your son’s release.”

He pivoted and strode toward her so quickly that Frost instinctively stood up to intervene. But Kimball halted just inches from Jane. “He was never convicted.”

“But he was arrested. Twice. After following a female student around campus. After breaking into her dorm room while she was sleeping. How many times did you have to bail him out of trouble? How many checks did you write to keep him out of jail?”

“It’s time for you all to go.”

“Where is your son now?”

Before Kimball could respond, a door opened. He froze as a soft voice called out: “Kimball? Are they here about Bradley?”

In an instant his expression transformed from rage to dismay. He turned to the woman and said, “Cynthia, you shouldn’t be out of bed. Please go back, darling.”

“Rosa told me two policemen came to the house. It’s about Bradley, isn’t it?” The woman shuffled into the room, and her sunken eyes focused on the two visitors. Though her face had been stretched taut by plastic surgery, her age still showed in the rounded back, the drooping shoulders. Most of all it showed in the wispy gray hair that feathered her nearly bald scalp. As wealthy as Kimball Rose might be, he had not traded in his wife for a younger model. All their money, all their privilege, could not change the obvious fact that Cynthia Rose was seriously ill.