Tess Gerritsen - The Keepsake

He merely stood over her, saying nothing. The concrete chamber magnified every sound, and she heard his breathing, slow and steady, as he examined his captive.

“Let me go,” she whispered. “Please.”

He did not say a word, and it was his silence that frightened her the most. Until she saw what he held in his hand, and she knew that there was far worse in store for her than mere silence.

It was a knife.

“You still have time to find her,” said forensic psychologist Dr. Zucker. “Assuming this killer repeats his past practices, he will do to her what he did to Lorraine Edgerton and to the bog victim. He’s already crippled her, so she can’t easily escape or fight back. The chances are he’ll keep her alive for days, perhaps weeks. Long enough to satisfy whatever rituals he requires, before he moves on to the next phase.”

“The next phase?” said Detective Tripp.

“Preservation.” Zucker pointed to the victims’ photos displayed on the conference table. “I think she’s meant for his collection. As his newest keepsake. The only question is…” He looked up at Jane. “Which method will he use on Ms. Pulcillo?”

Jane looked at the images of the three victims and considered the gruesome options. To be gutted, salted, and wrapped in bandages like Lorraine Edgerton? To be beheaded, your face and scalp peeled from your skull, your features shrunken to the size of a doll’s? Or to be steeped in the black water of a bog, your death agonies preserved for all time in the leathery mask of your face?

Or did the killer have a special plan reserved for Josephine, some new technique that they hadn’t yet encountered?

The conference room had fallen quiet, and as Jane looked around the table at the team of detectives, she saw grim expressions, everyone silently acknowledging the unsettling truth: that this victim’s time was quickly running out. Where Barry Frost usually sat, there was only an empty chair. Without him, the team felt incomplete, and she couldn’t help glancing at the door, hoping that he’d suddenly walk in and take his usual seat at the table.

“Finding her may come down to one thing: how deeply we can get into the mind of her abductor,” said Zucker. “We need more information on Bradley Rose.”

Jane nodded. “We’re tracking it down. Trying to find out where he’s worked, where he’s lived, who his friends are. Hell, if he has a pimple on his butt, we’d like to know about it.”

“His parents would be the best source of information.”

“We’ve had no luck with them. The mother’s too sick to talk to us. And as for the father, he’s been stonewalling.”

“Even with a woman’s life in danger? He won’t cooperate?”

“Kimball Rose isn’t your ordinary guy. To start off with, he’s as rich as Midas and he’s protected by an army of lawyers. The rules don’t apply to him. Or to his creep of a son.”

“He needs to be pressed harder.”

“Crowe and Tripp just got back from Texas,” said Jane. “I sent them out there thinking that a little macho intimidation might work.” She glanced at Crowe, who had the bulky shoulders of the college linebacker he’d once been. If anyone could pull off a macho act, it would have been Crowe.

“We couldn’t even get close to him,” said Crowe. “We were stopped at the gate by some asshole attorney and five security guards. Never even got in the door. The Roses have circled the wagons around their son, and we’re not going to get a thing out of them.”

“Well, what do we know about Bradley’s whereabouts?”

Tripp said, “He’s managed to stay under the radar for quite some time. We can’t locate any recent credit card charges, and nothing’s been deposited in his Social Security account for years, so he hasn’t been employed. At least, not a legitimate job.”

“In how long?” asked Zucker.

“Thirteen years. Not that he needs to work when he’s got Daddy Warbucks as a father.”

Zucker thought about this for a moment. “How do you know the man’s even alive?”

“Because his parents told me they get letters and e-mails from him,” Jane said. “According to the father, Bradley’s been living abroad. Which may explain why we’re having so much trouble tracking his movements.”

Zucker frowned. “Would any father go this far? Protecting and financially supporting a dangerously sociopathic son?”

“I think he’s protecting himself, Dr. Zucker. His own name, his own reputation. He doesn’t want the world to know his son is a monster.”

“I still find it hard to believe that any parent would go to such lengths for a child.”

“You never know,” said Tripp. “Maybe he actually loves the creep.”

“I think Kimball is protecting his wife as well,” said Jane. “He told me she has leukemia, and she did look seriously ill. She doesn’t seem to think her son is anything but a sweet little boy.”

Zucker shook his head in disbelief. “This is a deeply pathological family.”

I don’t have a fancy psychology degree, but I could’ve told you that.

“The cash flow may be the key here,” said Zucker. “How is Kimball getting money to his son?”

“Tracking that presents a problem,” said Tripp. “The family has multiple accounts, some of them offshore. And he has all those lawyers protecting him. Even with a friendly judge on our side, it will take us time to sort through it.”

“We’re focused only on New England,” said Jane. “Whether there’ve been financial transactions in the Boston area.”

“And friends? Contacts?”

“We know that twenty-five years ago, Bradley worked at the Crispin Museum. Mrs. Willebrandt, one of the docents, recalls that he chose to spend most of his time working after hours, when the museum was closed. So no one remembers much about him. He left no impressions, made no lasting friends. He was like a ghost.” And he’s still a ghost, she thought. A killer who slips into locked buildings, whose face eludes security cameras. Who stalks his victims without ever being noticed.

“There is one rich source of information,” said Zucker. “It would give us the most in-depth psychological profile you could hope for. If the Hilzbrich Institute will release his records.”

Crowe gave a disgusted laugh. “Oh yeah. That school for perverts.”

“I’ve called the former director three times,” said Jane. “Dr. Hilzbrich refuses to release the records because of patient confidentiality.”

“There’s a woman’s life at stake. He can’t refuse.”

“But he has refused. I’m driving up to Maine tomorrow to put the squeeze on. And see if I can get something else out of him.”

“That would be?”

“Jimmy Otto’s file. He was a student there, too. Since Jimmy’s dead, maybe the doctor will hand over that record.”

“How will that help us?”

“It seems pretty clear to us now that Jimmy and Bradley were longtime hunting partners. They were both in the Chaco Canyon area. They were both in Palo Alto at the same time. And they seemed to share a fixation with the same woman, Medea Sommer.”

“Whose daughter is now missing.”

Jane nodded. “Maybe that’s why Bradley chose her. For revenge. Because her mother killed Jimmy.”

Zucker leaned back in his chair, his face troubled. “You know, that particular detail really bothers me.”

“Which detail?”

“The coincidence, Detective Rizzoli. Don’t you find it remarkable? Twelve years ago, Medea Sommer shot and killed Jimmy Otto in San Diego. Then Medea’s daughter, Josephine, ends up working at the Crispin Museum-the same place where Bradley Rose once worked. The same place where the bodies of two of his victims were stashed. How did that happen?”