Tess Gerritsen - The Keepsake

“And the mother?”

“Lydia Newhouse-or whatever her real name is-worked at the Museum of Man in Balboa Park.”

“Doing what?”

“She was a salesclerk in the gift shop. She also volunteered as a docent. What impressed everyone at the museum was how much she seemed to know about the field of archaeology. Even though she claimed she had no formal training.”

Jane frowned. “We’re back to archaeology again.”

“Yeah. We keep returning to that theme, don’t we?” said Crowe. “Archaeology runs in the family. The mother. The daughter.”

“Are we sure they’re even involved with Jimmy Otto’s murder?” said Frost.

“Well, they sure behaved as if they did it. They left town in a hurry-only after they’d mopped the floor, washed down the walls, and buried the guy behind their house. That sounds pretty damn guilty to me. Their only mistake was not burying him deep enough, because the neighborhood dog sniffed him out pretty quick.”

Tripp said, “I say, good for them. The guy got the ending he deserved.”

“What do you mean?” Frost asked.

“Because Jimmy Otto was one sick fuck.”

Crowe opened his notebook. “Detective Potrero will be sending us the file, but here’s what I got from him over the phone. At age thirteen, Jimmy Otto broke into a woman’s bedroom, raided her lingerie drawers, and sliced up her underwear with a knife. A few months later, he was found in another girl’s house, standing over her bed with a knife as she slept.”

“Jesus,” said Jane. “Only thirteen? He got an early start as a creep.”

“Age fourteen, he was expelled from his school in Connecticut. Detective Potrero couldn’t get the school to release all the details, but he gathered there was some sort of sexual assault involving a female classmate. And a broomstick. The girl ended up in the hospital.” Crowe looked up. “And those are just the things he got caught doing.”

“He should have been thrown into juvenile detention after the second incident.”

“Should have. But when your daddy’s rich, you have a few extra get-out-of-jail cards.”

“Even after the broomstick thing?”

“No, that was the wake-up call for his parents. They finally freaked out and realized their darling son needed therapy. Bad. Their high-priced lawyer got the charges reduced, but only on the condition that Jimmy go into specialized residential treatment.”

“You mean a psych ward?” asked Frost.

“Not exactly. It was a very expensive private school for boys with his, uh, impulses. A place out in the boonies with round-the-clock supervision. He stayed there for three years. His doting parents bought a house in the area, just so they could be near him. They were killed in a private plane crash flying up to see him. Jimmy and his sister ended up inheriting a fortune.”

“Making Jimmy a very sick and very rich fuck,” said Tripp.

Specialized residential treatment. A place out in the boonies.

Jane suddenly thought about the conversation she’d had just the day before, with Kimball Rose. And she asked: “Did this private facility happen to be in Maine?”

Crowe looked up in surprise. “How the hell did you guess that?”

“Because we know about another rich sicko who ended up in a Maine treatment center. A place for boys with issues. ”

“Who are you talking about?”

“Bradley Rose.”

There was a long silence as Crowe and Tripp absorbed that startling news.

“Holy shit,” said Tripp. “That cannot be a coincidence. If those two boys were there at the same time, they would have known each other.”

“Tell us more about this school,” said Jane.

Crowe nodded, his expression now grimly focused. “The Hilzbrich Institute was very exclusive, very pricey. And very specialized. It was essentially a locked unit out in the middle of the woods-probably a smart idea, considering what kind of patients they were treating.”

“Psychopaths?”

“Sexual predators. Everything from budding pedophiles to rapists. It just goes to show you that rich people have their own share of perverts. But they also have lawyers to keep these kids out of the justice system, and this facility was a rich man’s alternative. A place to enjoy fine dining while a team of therapists tries to convince you it’s not nice to torture little girls. The trouble was, it didn’t seem to work very well. Fifteen years ago, one of their so-called graduates kidnapped and mutilated two girls, and he did it just a few months after the institute declared him safe to return to society. There was a big lawsuit, and the school was forced to shut down. It’s been closed ever since.”

“What about Jimmy Otto? What happened after he left?”

“At eighteen, he walked out their doors a free man. But it didn’t take long for him to revert to form. Within a few years, he was arrested for stalking and threatening a woman in California. Then he was arrested and questioned right here in Brookline, about the disappearance of a young woman. Police didn’t have enough to hold him, so he was released. Ditto thirteen years ago, when he was picked up for questioning after another Massachusetts woman disappeared. Before the police could build a case against him, he abruptly vanished. And no one knew where he was. Until a year later, when he turned up buried in that backyard in San Diego.”

“You’re right, Tripp,” said Jane. “He got what he deserved. But what made this mother and daughter run? If they killed him, if they were just defending themselves, why did they pack up and leave town like criminals?”

“Maybe because they are?” suggested Crowe. “They were living under assumed names even then. We don’t know who they really are-or what they might be running from.”

Jane rested her head in her hands and began to rub her temples, trying to massage away the headache. “This is getting so damn complicated,” she muttered. “I can’t keep track of all the threads. We’ve got a murdered man in San Diego. We’ve got the Archaeology Killer here.”

“And the link seems to be this young woman whose name we don’t even know.”

Jane sighed. “Okay. What else do we know about Jimmy Otto? Any other arrests, any other links to our current investigation?”

Crowe flipped through his notes. “Some minor stuff. Breaking and entering in Brookline, Massachusetts. DUI and speeding in San Diego. Another DUI and reckless speeding in Durango…” He paused, suddenly registering the significance of that last detail. “Durango, Colorado. Isn’t that close to New Mexico?”

Jane lifted her head. “It’s right over the state line. Why?”

“It happened in July. The same year that Lorraine Edgerton vanished.”

Jane reeled back in her chair, stunned by this last piece of information. Both Jimmy and Bradley were near Chaco Canyon at the same time.

“That’s it,” she said softly.

“You think they were hunting partners?”

“Until Jimmy got killed in San Diego.” She looked at Frost.

“This is finally coming together now. We have a connection. Jimmy Otto and Bradley Rose.”

He nodded. “And Josephine,” he said.

Josephine fought her way back to consciousness and came awake with a gasp, her nightgown soaked with sweat, her heart thudding. Thin curtains rippled in a ghostly film over the moonlit window, and in the woods outside Gemma’s house, tree branches rattled and fell still. She pushed off the damp bedcovers and stared up at the darkness as her heart slowed, as the sweat cooled on her skin. After only a week at Gemma’s place, her bad dream was back. A dream of gunfire and blood-splattered walls. Always pay attention to your dreams, her mother had taught her. They’re voices telling you what you already know, whispering advice you haven’t yet heeded. Josephine knew what this dream meant: It was time to move on. Time to run. She had lingered in Gemma’s house longer than she should have. She thought of the cell phone call she’d made from the mini-mart. She thought of the young patrolman who’d chatted with her in the parking lot that night, and the taxi driver who’d driven her to this road. There were so many ways she could be tracked here, so many little mistakes she might have made that she wasn’t even aware of.