Tess Gerritsen - The Keepsake

“So why isn’t she abroad now?”

“I don’t know. She came home a week ago from Peru, where she was working at some excavation. If she’d stayed away, she’d still be alive.” Abbott looked up at the stairs, his face suddenly grim. “It’s time to show you the second floor.” He led the way, pausing to point out the bloody tread marks on the wood steps.

“Athletic sole. Size nine or ten,” he said. “We know these are the killer’s, since Ms. Pulcillo was barefoot.”

“Looks like he was moving fast,” added Jane, noting the smeared imprints.

“Yeah. But she was faster.”

Jane stared down at the descending tread marks. Though the blood was dry and sunlight slanted in through a stairwell window, the terror of that chase still lingered on these stairs. She shook off a chill and looked up toward the second floor, where far worse images awaited them. “It happened upstairs?”

“In Ms. Hamerton’s bedroom,” said Abbott. He took his time climbing the final steps, as though reluctant to revisit what he’d seen two nights before. The marks were darker up here, left by shoes still wet with fresh blood. The prints emerged from the room at the far end of the hall. Abbott pointed into the first doorway they came to. Inside was an unmade bed. “This is the guest room, where Ms. Pulcillo was sleeping.”

Jane frowned. “But it’s closer to the stairs.”

“Yeah. I found that strange, too. The killer walks right past Ms. Pulcillo’s room and heads straight up the hall to Ms. Hamerton’s. Maybe he didn’t know there was a guest in the house.”

“Or maybe this door was locked,” said Frost.

“No, that’s not it. This door doesn’t have a lock. For some reason, he bypassed it and went to Ms. Hamerton’s room first.” Abbott took a breath and continued to the master bedroom. There he paused on the threshold, hesitant to step inside.

When Jane looked past him, through the doorway, she understood why.

Though the body of Gemma Hamerton had been removed, her last moments on earth were recorded in vivid splatters of red on the walls, the bedsheets, the furniture. Stepping into that room, Jane felt a cold breath whisper against her skin, as though a ghost had just brushed past. Violence leaves its imprint, she thought. Not just in bloodstains, but on the air itself.

“Her body was found crumpled in that far corner,” said Abbott. “But you can see, from the blood splatters, that the initial wound was made somewhere near the bed. Arterial splashes there, on the headboard.” He pointed to the wall on the right. “And over there, I think those are cast-off drops.”

Jane tore her gaze from the soaked mattress and stared at the arc of angular droplets thrown off by centrifugal force as the bloody knife had swung away from the body. “He’s right-handed,” she said.

Abbott nodded. “Judging by the wound, the ME says there was no hesitation, no tentative slices. He did it with one clean stroke, severing major vessels in the neck. The ME estimates she had maybe a minute or two of consciousness. Long enough for her to grab the phone. Crawl to that corner over there. The receiver had her bloody fingerprints on it, so we know she was wounded when she dialed.”

“So the killer hung up the phone?” asked Frost.

“I assume so.”

“But you said the operator tried calling back and got a busy signal.”

Abbott paused, thinking about it. “I guess that is a little weird, isn’t it? First he hangs up, then he takes the receiver off the hook again. I wonder why he’d do that.”

Jane said. “He didn’t want it to ring.”

“The noise?” said Frost.

Jane nodded. “It would also explain why he didn’t use his gun on this victim. Because he knew someone else was in the house, and he didn’t want to wake her.”

“But she did wake up,” said Abbott. “Maybe she heard the body fall. Maybe Ms. Hamerton managed to cry out. Whatever the reason, something woke up Ms. Pulcillo, because she came into this room. She saw the intruder. And she ran.”

Jane stared at the corner where Gemma Hamerton had died, curled up in a lake of her own blood.

She walked out of the bedroom and headed back up the hall. At the doorway to Josephine’s room she stopped, gazing at the bed. The killer walked right past this room, she thought. A young woman is sleeping in there and her door is unlocked. Yet he bypassed her and continued to the master bedroom. Did he not know a guest was here? Did he not realize there was another woman in the house?

No. No, he knew. That’s why he took the phone off the hook. That’s why he used a knife and not his gun. He wanted the first kill to be silent.

Because he was planning to move to Josephine’s room next.

She went down the stairs and stepped outside. The afternoon was sunny, the insects humming in the windless heat, but the chill of the house was still with her. She descended the porch steps.

You pursued her here, down the stairs. On a moonlit night, she would have been easy to follow. Just a lone girl in her nightgown.

She walked slowly up the driveway, following the route along which Josephine had fled, her bare feet cut by glass. The main road was ahead, beyond the trees, and all the fleeing girl had to do was reach a neighbor’s house. Scream and pound on a door.

Jane paused, her gaze on the bloodstained gravel.

But here the bullet struck her leg, and she fell.

Slowly she followed the trail of blood that Josephine had smeared along the road as she’d struggled forward on hands and knees. Every inch of the way she must have known he was moving toward her, closing in for the kill. The trail of blood seemed to stretch on and on, until it came to a halt, a dozen yards short of the road. It had been a long and desperate crawl to this spot-long enough for the killer to catch up with her. Certainly long enough for him to pull the trigger one last time and make his escape.

Yet he didn’t fire the fatal shot.

Jane halted, staring down at the spot where Josephine had been kneeling when the officers spotted her. When they’d arrived, they had seen no one else, only the injured woman. A woman who should have been dead.

Only then did Jane understand. The killer wanted her alive.

Everybody lies, thought Jane. But few people managed to inhabit their lies as completely and successfully as had Josephine Pulcillo.

As she and Frost drove to the hospital, she wondered what confabulations Josephine would tell them today, what new tales she’d invent to explain away the undeniable facts that they’d uncovered about her. She wondered if Frost would let himself be seduced once again by those lies.

“I think that maybe you should let me do the talking when we get there,” she said.

“Why?”

“I’d just like to handle this myself.”

He looked at her. “Any particular reason you feel the need to do it this way?”

She took her time responding because she couldn’t truthfully answer the question without widening the breach between them, a breach caused by Josephine. “I just think I should deal with her. Since my instincts about her have been pretty spot-on.”

“Instincts? Is that what you call it?”

“You trusted her. I didn’t. I was right about her, wasn’t I?”

He turned toward the window. “Or jealous of her.”

“What?” She turned into the hospital parking lot and shut off the engine. “Is that what you think?”

He sighed. “Never mind.”

“No, tell me. What did you mean by that?”

“Nothing.” He shoved open the car door. “Let’s go,” he said.

She stepped out of the car and slammed her door shut, wondering if there was even a thin vein of truth in what Frost had just said. Wondering if the fact that she herself was not beautiful made her resentful of how easily attractive women navigated the world. Men worshiped pretty women, catered to them, and, most important, listened to them. While the rest of us plug on as best we can. But even if she were jealous, it didn’t change the essential fact that her instincts had been right.