Тесс Герритсен - I Know a Secret

“Here’s the good news,” said Tam. “I found out her father has a permit to carry. Plus, Mr. Devine’s a Navy veteran. Maybe we can talk her into letting him move in with her. Nothing like a daddy with a gun to keep a girl safe.”

Jane snorted. “I’d shoot myself before I’d let my dad move in with me. No, Holly’s not someone we can order around. She’s got a mind of her own, and she’s... different. I’m still trying to figure her out.”

“Different in what way?” asked Dr. Zucker. It was exactly the type of question a forensic psychologist would ask, and Jane paused, trying to come up with an answer. To explain just what it was about Holly Devine that perplexed her.

“She seems weirdly cool and collected about the situation. She won’t listen to any advice we have. Won’t leave town, won’t leave her job. That gal’s in charge, and she doesn’t let us forget it.”

“You say that with a note of admiration, Detective Rizzoli.”

Jane met Zucker’s disturbingly reptilian gaze. Felt him studying her as he always did, a scientist probing for her deepest secrets. “Yes, I do admire her for that. I believe we should all be in control of our own lives.”

“Sure does make it hard to protect her, though,” said Tam.

“I’ve already warned her how the other victims were probably approached. How their drinks were spiked with ketamine. She knows what to watch out for, and that’s the best protection of all.” Jane paused. “And she might actually make our job easy. If she’s willing to stay out there, in full view.”

“We use her as bait?” said Crowe.

“Not use her, exactly. Just take advantage of the fact she’s so damn headstrong. Even though she knows Stanek’s after her, she won’t let it disrupt her life and she insists on sticking to her usual routine. If I were her, that’s exactly what I’d do. In fact, it’s what I did do, when I was in her situation a few years ago.”

“What situation are you talking about?” said Tam. He had only recently joined the homicide unit, so he wasn’t part of the investigation four years earlier, when Jane’s hunt for the killer known as the Surgeon had suddenly twisted on her, turning her into the predator’s target.

Frost said quietly, “She’s talking about Warren Hoyt.”

“When a perp forces you to change your life, then he’s already beaten you,” said Jane. “Holly refuses to surrender. Since she’s so damn stubborn, I say we work with that. We keep her monitored, install security cameras in her building and her workplace. We wait for Stanek to make his move.”

“You think she’d wear a bracelet monitor?” asked Tam. “It’d help us keep track of her.”

“ You try and get it on her.”

“Why is this young woman so resistant?” asked Zucker. “Do you have any insights, Detective Rizzoli?”

“I think it’s just her nature. Remember, Holly has a history of fighting back. She was the first child to step forward and accuse the Staneks of molesting her, and that took a lot of guts for a ten-year-old girl. Without Holly, there would have been no arrests, no trial. The abuse could have continued for years.”

“Yes, I read her interview with the psychologist,” said Zucker. “Holly was certainly the most precise and believable, while the other children’s statements were obviously contaminated.”

“What do you mean by that, Dr. Zucker?” asked Tam. “Contaminated?”

Zucker said, “The stories told by the younger ones were absurd. The five-year-old boy said tigers flew in the woods. One girl claimed that cats and babies were sacrificed to the devil and thrown into a cellar.”

Jane shrugged. “Children do embellish.”

“Or were they coached? Prodded into making statements by the prosecution? Remember, the Staneks’ trial happened during an odd time in criminal justice, when the public was convinced there were satanic cults all over the country. I attended a forensic-psychology conference in the early nineties, and I heard a so-called expert describe vast networks of these cults abusing children and even sacrificing babies. She claimed that a quarter of her patients were survivors of ritual abuse. All around the country there were criminal trials going on, just like the Apple Tree case. Unfortunately, many of those trials weren’t based on facts but on fear and superstition.”

“Why would kids come up with such weird stories if they weren’t at least partially true?” asked Tam.

“Let’s consider just one of those ritual-abuse trials, the one involving the McMartin Preschool in California. The investigation started after a schizophrenic mother claimed her child was sodomized by a teacher at the school. Police sent out letters to all the other parents, alerting them that their children might be victims too, and by the time the case got to trial, the accusations had multiplied and grown outlandish. There were charges of wild sex orgies, of children being flushed down toilets into secret rooms, of attackers flying through the air like magic. The result was that an innocent man was convicted and spent five years in prison.”

“You’re not saying Martin Stanek was innocent ?” said Jane.

“I merely question how the statements of these children at the Apple Tree were obtained. How much of it was fantasy? How much of it was coached?”

“Holly Devine had real physical injuries,” Jane pointed out. “The doctor who examined her described bruises on her head, multiple scratches on her arms and face.”

“The other children had no such injuries.”

“A psychologist for the prosecution said that the children she spoke to showed emotional symptoms of abuse. Fear of the dark, bed-wetting. Night terrors. I can read you exactly what the judge said about it. He called the damage to these children profound and truly horrifying.”

“Of course he said that. The whole country was swept up in the same moral panic.”

“ Moral panic didn’t make a child vanish into thin air,” said Jane. “Remember, a nine-year-old girl named Lizzie DiPalma did go missing. Her body’s never been found.”

“Martin Stanek wasn’t convicted of her murder.”

“Only because the jury refused to deliver a guilty verdict on that charge. But everyone knew he did it.”

“Do you normally trust the wisdom of the mob?” Dr. Zucker responded, his eyebrow arched. “As a forensic psychologist, it’s my role here to offer you different perspectives, to point out what you might miss. Human behavior isn’t as black and white as you might like to believe. People have complex motives, and justice is meted out by imperfect human beings. Surely something about the children’s statements must bother you.”

“The prosecutor believed them.”

“Your daughter’s about three years old, isn’t she? Imagine giving her the power to put a whole family in prison.”

“The children at Apple Tree were older than my daughter.”

“But not necessarily more accurate or truthful.”

Jane sighed. “Now you sound like Dr. Isles.”

“Ah, yes. The eternal skeptic.”

“You can be as skeptical as you want, Dr. Zucker. But the fact is, Lizzie DiPalma did go missing twenty years ago. Her hat was found on the Apple Tree school bus, which made Martin Stanek the prime suspect. Now the children who accused him of abuse are being murdered. Stanek’s looking pretty damn good as our killer.”

“Convince me. Find the evidence to tie him to these murders. Any evidence.”

“Every perp makes mistakes,” she said. “We’ll find his.”

Billy Sullivan’s mother now lived in a handsome Tudor-style home only a mile from the more modest Brookline neighborhood where Billy had grown up. This morning’s freezing rain had glazed the shrubbery with ice, and the brick walkway leading to Mrs. Sullivan’s porch looked slick enough to skate on. For a moment Frost and Jane remained in the car, watching the house and bracing themselves for the cold. And for the terrible conversation that lay ahead of them.