Тесс Герритсен - I Know a Secret

“What? When?”

“Two days ago. This missing man is the same age, so he could be the same Bill Sullivan.” He spun his laptop around for Jane to see.

Displayed on the screen was a brief article from The Boston Globe.

The vehicle owned by a missing Brookline man was found abandoned near the Putterham Meadow Golf Course early Tuesday morning. Thirty-one-year-old Bill Sullivan vanished Monday night and was reported missing by his mother, Susan, the next morning. He was last seen on surveillance camera leaving his office at Cornwell Investments. Bloodstains were found inside the vehicle, a late-model BMW, and police classify the disappearance as suspicious.

Mr. Sullivan, an investment adviser, is described as six foot one and approximately 170 pounds, with blond hair and blue eyes.

“Same name. Same age,” said Jane.

“And the mother’s name in the boy’s file is also Susan. It’s got to be the same kid.”

“But this isn’t a homicide; it’s a missing-persons case. That doesn’t fit the pattern.” She looked at Frost. “What’s the boy’s birthday?”

Frost glanced at Bill Sullivan’s file. “April twenty-eighth.”

She pulled up the liturgical calendar on her laptop. “On April twenty-eighth, they honor Saint Vitalis of Milan,” she said.

“Was he a martyr?”

Jane stared at the screen. “Yes. Saint Vitalis was buried alive.”

That’s why Bill Sullivan’s body hasn’t been found.

She jumped to her feet. Frost was right behind her as she walked out of the room and headed down the hall, straight to Dana Strout’s office. The attorney was on the phone and she swiveled around, startled, as Jane and Frost invaded her space.

“The Staneks,” said Jane. “Are they still in prison?”

“Do you mind if I finish this phone call first?”

“We need answers now .”

Dana said into the phone, “They’re standing in my office right this minute. I’ll call you back.” She hung up and looked at Jane. “What is this all about?”

“Where are the Staneks?”

“Really, I don’t understand the urgency.”

“The Staneks went to prison because the children at their daycare center accused them of abuse. Three of those children are now dead. One has just gone missing. I’ll ask you again. Where are the Staneks? ”

For a moment Dana tapped a pen against her desk. “Konrad Stanek died in prison soon after the trial,” she said. “His wife, Irena, passed away about four years ago, also while in prison.”

“And their son, Martin? Where is he?”

“I just got off the phone with Erica Shay, the prosecutor. She says Martin Stanek served out his sentence. He’s been released.”

“When?”

“Three months ago. October.”

Daddy is on the phone, his voice quiet and urgent.

“A woman’s been calling here, asking about you,” he says.

“Is it the same woman who called before?” I ask.

“No, this is a different woman. Claims she’s a detective with Boston PD. Says it’s urgent you get in touch with her because she’s worried about your safety.”

“Do you believe her?”

“I checked around. Found out Boston PD does have a Detective Rizzoli who works in homicide. But you never know. You can never be too careful, baby. I didn’t tell her a thing.”

“Thank you, Daddy. If she calls again, don’t talk to her.”

Over the phone I hear him coughing, the same stubborn cough he’s had for months. I used to tell him that the damn cigarettes would kill him someday, and to stop me from nagging about it, he finally quit smoking, but the cough hasn’t gone away. It’s settled into his chest, and I hear the rattle of wet mucus. It’s been far too long since I’ve visited. We both agreed I should stay away, because someone might be watching his house, but this cough worries me. He’s the only one I really trust, and I don’t know what I’ll do without him.

“Daddy?”

“I’m all right, kitten,” he wheezes. “I just want to keep my baby safe. Something has to be done about him.”

“There’s nothing I can do.”

“But I can,” he says quietly.

I pause, listening to my father’s noisy breathing, and I consider what it is he’s offering. My father does not make idle promises. He says exactly what he means.

“You know I’d do anything for you, Holly. Anything.”

“I know, Daddy. We just have to be careful, and everything will be fine.”

But everything is not fine, I think, as I hang up. Detective Rizzoli is looking for me, and I’m astonished by the speed with which she’s connected me to the others. But she can’t possibly know the whole story, and she never will.

Because I will never tell.

And neither will he.

It was the shabbiest apartment building on the street, a three-story walk-up in Revere that was just a few rotten boards short of being condemned. Most of the paint had long since flaked off, and as Jane and Frost climbed the outside staircase to the third-floor unit, she felt the handrail wobble and imagined the whole rickety structure peeling away from the building and collapsing like a Tinkertoy ladder.

Frost knocked on the door and they waited, shivering and exposed, for someone to answer. They knew he was inside; Jane could hear the TV, and through the frayed curtains she glimpsed movement. At last the door opened and Martin Stanek stood glowering at them.

The photos of Martin taken at the time of his arrest two decades earlier showed a bespectacled young man with wheat-colored hair and a face that was still round and cherubic at the age of twenty-two. If Jane had seen young Martin on the street, she would have dismissed him as harmless, a man too meek to look her straight in the eye. She’d expected to see an older version of that man in the photograph, perhaps balder and flabbier, so she was taken aback by the man who now stood in the doorway. Two decades in prison had transformed him into a muscular machine with a gladiator’s shoulders. His head was shaved, and there was no trace of softness left in that face, which now had the flattened nose of a boxer. A scar ran like an ugly railroad track above his left eyebrow, and his cheek was misshapen, as if the bone had been shattered and left to heal distorted.

“Martin Stanek?” said Jane.

“Who wants to know?”

“I’m Detective Rizzoli, Boston PD. This is my partner, Detective Frost. We need to ask you some questions.”

“Aren’t you about twenty years too late?”

“May we come in?”

“I served my time. I don’t need to answer any more questions.” He started to close the door in their faces.

Jane put out a hand to stop it. “You don’t want to do that, sir.”

“I’m within my rights.”

“We can talk here and now, or we can talk at Boston PD. Which would you prefer?”

For a moment he considered his options, which he realized amounted to no choice at all. Without a word, he left the door open and turned back in to his apartment.

Jane and Frost followed him inside and shut the door against the cold.

Scanning the apartment, she focused on a painting of the Madonna and child, framed in gilt and hanging in a prominent place on the wall. Displayed on a table beneath it were half a dozen family photos: A smiling man and woman posing with a young boy. The same couple, middle-aged now, arms around each other’s waists. The trio sitting around a campfire. All the photos were of the Staneks, before prison tore them apart.

Martin shut off the TV, and in the sudden silence they could hear the traffic through the thin walls, the rumble of the refrigerator in the kitchen. Although the stove and countertops were wiped clean and the dishes were washed and stacked on the drainboard, the apartment smelled like mold and rancid grease, an odor that probably came with the building itself, the legacy of tenants long gone.