Tess Gerritsen - Vanish

Yeah, Mom. You always did.

Jane didn’t rise from the chair, but just sat for a moment, watching Angela hold her wide-eyed granddaughter. Saw the baby’s tiny hands reach up to explore Angela’s smiling face.

“How did you do it, Mom?” Jane asked.

“Just feed her. Sing to her. She likes attention is all.”

“No, I meant how did you raise three of us? I never realized how hard it must’ve been, having three kids in five years.” She added, with a laugh: “Especially since one of us was Frankie.”

“Ha! Your brother wasn’t the hard one. You were.”

“Me?”

“Crying all the time. Woke up every three hours. With you, there was no such thing as sleeping like a baby. Frankie was still crawling around in diapers, and I was up all night walking you back and forth. Got no help from your father. You’re lucky, at least Gabriel, he tries to do his part. But your dad?” Angela snorted. “Said the smell of diapers made him gag, so he wouldn’t do it. Like I had a choice. He runs off to work every morning, and there I was with you two, and Mikey on the way. Frankie with his little hands in everything. And you crying your head off.”

“Why did I cry so much?”

“Some babies are born screamers. They refuse to be ignored.”

Well, that explains it, thought Jane, looking at her baby. I got what I deserved. I got myself for a daughter.

“So how did you manage?” Jane asked again. “Because I’m having so much trouble with this. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“You should just do what I did when I thought I was going crazy. When I couldn’t stand another hour, another minute trapped in that house.”

“What did you do?”

“I picked up the phone and called my mother.” Angela looked up at her. “You call me, Janie. That’s what I’m here for. God put mothers on this earth for a reason. Now, I’m not saying it takes a village to raise a kid.” She lowered her gaze back to the baby in her arms. “But it sure does help to have a grandma.”

Jane watched Angela coo to the baby and thought: Oh Mom, I never realized how much I still need you. Do we ever stop needing our mothers?

Blinking away tears, she abruptly rose from her chair and turned to the counter to pour herself a cup of coffee. Stood there sipping it as she arched her back, stretching stiff muscles. For the first time in three days she felt rested, almost back to her old self. Except that everything has changed, she thought. Now I’m a mom.

“You’re just the prettiest thing, aren’t you, Regina?”

Jane glanced at her mother. “We haven’t really picked a name yet.”

“You have to call her something. Why not your grandmother’s name?”

“It has to hit me just right, you know? If she’s gonna get stuck with it for the rest of her life, I want the name to suit her.”

“ Regina is a beautiful name. It means queenly, you know.”

“Like I want to give the kid ideas?”

“Well, what are you going to call her?”

Jane spotted the Name Your Baby book on the countertop. She refreshed her cup of coffee and sipped it as she flipped through pages, feeling a little desperate now. If I don’t choose soon, she thought, it’s going to be Regina by default.

Yolanthe. Yseult. Zerlena.

Oh, man. Regina was sounding better and better. The queen baby.

She set the book down. Frowned at it for a moment, then picked it up again and flipped to the M’s. To the name that had caught her eye last night.

Mila.

Again she felt that cold breath whisper up her spine. I know I have heard this name before, she thought. Why does it give me such a chill? I need to remember. It’s important that I remember…

The phone rang, startling her. She dropped the book, and it slapped onto the floor.

Angela frowned at her. “You gonna answer that?”

Jane took a breath and picked up the receiver. It was Gabriel.

“I hope I didn’t wake you.”

“No, I’m just having coffee with Mom.”

“Is it okay that I called her?”

She glanced at Angela, who was carrying the baby into the other room to change diapers. “You’re a genius. Did I tell you that?”

“I think I should call Mama Rizzoli more often.”

“I slept for eight hours straight. I can’t believe what a difference that makes. My brain’s actually functioning again.”

“Then maybe you’re ready to deal with this.”

“What?”

“ Moore called me a little while ago.”

“Yeah, I heard.”

“We’re here now, at Shroeder Plaza. Jane, they got back a match on IBIS. A cartridge case with identical firing pin impressions. It was in the ATF database.”

“Which cartridge case are we talking about?”

“From Olena’s hospital room. After she shot that security guard, a single cartridge case was recovered from the scene.”

“He was killed with his own weapon.”

“And we’ve just found out that weapon has been used before.”

“Where? When?”

“January third. A multiple shooting in Ashburn, Virginia.”

She stood clutching the receiver, pressing it so hard against her ear that she could hear the pounding of her own heartbeat. Ashburn. Joe wanted to tell us about Ashburn.

Angela came back into the kitchen carrying the baby, whose black hair was now fluffed up like a crown of curls. Regina, the queen baby. The name suddenly seemed to fit.

“What do we know about that multiple shooting?” Jane asked.

“ Moore has the file right here.”

She looked at Angela. “Mom, I need to leave for a while. Is that okay?”

“You go ahead. We’re happy right where we are. Aren’t we, Regina?” Angela bent forward and rubbed noses with the baby. “And in a little while, we’re going to take a nice little bath.”

Jane said to Gabriel: “Give me twenty minutes. I’ll be there.”

“No. Let’s meet somewhere else.”

“Why?”

“We don’t want to talk about it here.”

“Gabriel, what the hell is going on?”

There was a pause, and she could hear Moore ’s voice speaking softly in the background. Then Gabriel came back on the line.

“JP Doyle’s. We’ll meet you there.”

She did not take the time to shower, but simply got dressed in the first clothes she pulled out of her closet-baggy maternity slacks and the T-shirt her fellow detectives had given her at the baby shower with the words MOM COP embroidered over the belly. In the car she ate two slices of buttered toast as she drove toward the neighborhood of Jamaica Plain. That last conversation with Gabriel had put her on edge, and she found herself glancing in the rearview mirror as she waited at stoplights, taking note of the cars behind her. Had she seen that green Taurus four blocks earlier? And was that the same white van she’d noticed parked across the street from her apartment?

JP Doyle’s was a favorite Boston PD haunt, and on any evening, the bar was usually packed with off-duty cops. But at three P.M., only a lone woman was perched at the counter, sipping a glass of white wine as ESPN flickered on the overhead TV. Jane walked straight through the bar and headed into the adjoining dining area, where memorabilia of Boston ’s Irish heritage adorned the walls. Newspaper clippings about the Kennedys and Tip O’Neill and Boston ’s finest had hung here so long that they were now brittle with age, and the Irish flag displayed above one booth had acquired the dirty tinge of nicotine yellow. In this lull between lunch and dinner, only two booths were occupied. In one sat a middle-aged couple, clearly tourists, judging by the Boston map spread out between them. Jane walked past the couple and continued to the corner booth, where Moore and Gabriel were sitting.