Тесс Герритсен - I Know a Secret

“The kindness of strangers.” He looked at Jane. “There are a few people like that left in the world.”

“Do we have your permission to search, sir?” said Frost.

Stanek gave a defeated shrug. “It doesn’t matter what I say. You’ll search the place anyway.”

As far as Jane was concerned, that counted as a yes. She turned to Frost, who pulled out his cell phone to text the waiting CSRU team.

“Watch him,” Jane said to Frost. “I’ll start in the bedroom.”

Like the living room, the bedroom was a grim and claustrophobic space. The only source of daylight was a single window that looked out on the narrow alley between buildings. Brown stains mottled the carpet, and the air smelled like stale linens and mildew, but the bed was neatly made and not even a stray sock was in sight. She went first into the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet, hunting for a vial of anything that might be ketamine. She found only aspirin and a box of Band-Aids. In the under-sink cabinet, there was toilet paper but no duct tape, no rope, nothing from a killer’s toolbox.

She returned to the bedroom and looked under the bed, felt between the mattress and box spring. She turned to the lone nightstand and opened the drawer. Inside were a flashlight, a few loose buttons, and an envelope filled with photographs. She shuffled through the pictures, most of them taken decades earlier, when the Staneks were still together as a family. Before they were wrenched apart, never again to see one another. She paused at the last photo in the envelope. It was an image of two women in their sixties, both wearing orange prison garb. The first woman was Martin’s mother, Irena, her silver hair thinned to wisps, her face wasted to a ghost of her younger self. But it was the second face that shocked Jane, because it was a face she recognized.

She flipped over the photo and stared at the words written there in ink: Your mother told me everything.

Grimly, Jane returned to the living room and thrust the photo at Stanek. “Do you know who this woman is?” she asked him.

“That’s my mother. A few months before she died in Framingham.”

“No, the woman standing beside her.”

He hesitated. “Someone she met there. A friend.”

“What do you know about this friend ?”

“She looked out for my mother in prison. Kept her safe from the other inmates, that’s all.”

Jane turned over the photo and pointed to the words written on the reverse. “ Your mother told me everything. What does that mean? What did your mother tell her, Mr. Stanek?”

He said nothing.

“Maybe the truth about what happened at Apple Tree? Where Lizzie DiPalma’s buried? Or maybe what you planned to do to those kids after you got out of prison?”

“I got nothing more to say.” He shot so abruptly to his feet that Jane flinched away, startled.

“Maybe someone else does,” Jane said, and she pulled out her cell phone to call Maura.

The woman stared from the photo with a direct gaze that seemed to say: I see you . Her hair, half silver, half black, stood out like porcupine quills on her squarish head, but it was the eyes that gave Maura the deepest shock of recognition. It was like looking at herself in a future mirror.

“It’s her. It’s Amalthea,” said Maura. In astonishment, she glanced at Jane. “She knew Irena Stanek?”

Jane nodded. “That photo was taken four years ago, just before Irena died at MCI — Framingham. I spoke to the warden, who confirms that Irena and Amalthea were friends. They spent almost all their time together, at meals and in the common areas. Amalthea knows all about the Apple Tree and what the Staneks did to those children. No wonder she and Irena were a pair. Monsters who understood each other.”

Maura studied the face of Irena Stanek. Some might claim they could see evil shining in a person’s eyes, but the woman standing beside Amalthea in this photograph seemed neither evil nor dangerous, merely ill and exhausted. There was nothing in Irena’s eyes that would warn a victim: Stay away. Danger here .

“They look like two sweet old grannies, don’t they?” said Jane. “Seeing them, you’d have no idea who they really are or what they’ve done. After Irena died, Amalthea mailed that photo to Martin Stanek, and since his release from prison, she’s been writing him letters. Two killers communicating with each other, one on the outside, one on the inside.”

Amalthea’s words whispered from Maura’s memory, their meaning suddenly, chillingly significant: You’ll find another one soon.

“She knows what Stanek’s been doing,” said Maura.

Jane nodded. “It’s time to talk to her.”

Only a few weeks earlier, Maura had said her final goodbye to Amalthea Lank. Now here she was in the interview room at MCI — Framingham, waiting to confront the woman she had vowed never to see again. This time she would not have to face Amalthea alone. Jane would be watching from the other side of the one-way mirror, ready to step in if the conversation turned dangerous.

Jane spoke to her over the intercom. “Are you sure you’re okay about this?”

“We have to do it. We have to find out what she knows.”

“I hate putting you in this position, Maura. I wish there were some other way.”

“I’m the one person she’ll open up to. I’m the one with the connection.”

“Stop saying that.”

“But it’s true.” Maura took a deep breath. “Let’s see if I can use that connection.”

“All right, they’re about to bring her into the room. Ready?”

Maura gave a stiff nod. The door swung open, and the clank of steel manacles announced the entrance of Amalthea Lank. As the guard shackled the prisoner’s ankle to the table, Amalthea’s gaze stayed on Maura, her eyes as focused as lasers. Since her first round of chemotherapy, Amalthea had regained some weight, and her hair was beginning to grow back in short, wispy strands. But it was her eyes that revealed the extent of her recovery. The canny gleam was back, dark and dangerous.

The guard withdrew, leaving the two women to silently regard each other. Maura had to resist the temptation to look away, to turn to the one-way mirror for reassurance.

“You said you weren’t ever coming back to see me,” said Amalthea. “Why are you here?”

“That box of photos you sent me.”

“How do you know I’m the one who sent the box?”

“Because I recognized the faces in the photos. It’s your family.”

“ Your family too. Your father. Your brother.”

“A woman delivered that box to my house. Who was she?”

“No one important. Just someone who owed me a favor because I kept her safe in here.” Amalthea leaned back in the chair and gave Maura a knowing smile. “When it suits me, I watch out for people. I make sure that nothing happens to them, both inside these walls and outside.”

Delusions of grandeur, thought Maura. She’s a pathetic old woman dying in prison and she believes she still has the power to manipulate. Why did I think she could actually tell us anything?

Amalthea glanced at the one-way mirror. “Detective Rizzoli’s behind that window, isn’t she? Watching and listening to us. I see you both on the news all the time. They call you ‘Boston’s First Ladies of Crime.’” She turned to the window. “If you want to know about Irena Stanek, Detective, you should come in here and ask me yourself.”

“How did you know we’re here about Irena?” asked Maura.

Amalthea snorted. “Really, Maura. Do you give me so little credit? I know what’s happening out there. I know what you’re up against.”

“You were friends with Irena Stanek.”