Tess Gerritsen - Last to Die

In the distance, thunder rumbled, and the sky had turned ominously dark. Jane looked down at her own arm and saw that the hairs had lifted, as if a cool wind had just blown across her skin.

Welliver placed Claire’s folder in front of Jane. “It happened as the family was walking to their car after dining in a restaurant. Claire’s father was Erskine Ward, a foreign service officer who’d worked in London, Rome, and Washington. Her mother, Isabel, was a homemaker. Because of Erskine’s job at the US embassy, there was concern that this might have been a terrorist attack, but in the end the police concluded it was a robbery gone wrong. Claire couldn’t help the investigation because she couldn’t remember the attack. The first thing she does remember is waking up in the hospital, after surgery.”

“For a girl who was shot in the head, she seems amazingly normal now,” said Jane.

“At first glance, she does look perfectly normal.” Welliver looked at Maura. “Even you didn’t immediately spot her deficits, did you, Dr. Isles?”

“No,” Maura admitted. “They’re subtle.”

“When the bullet was fired into her head,” said Welliver, “it resulted in what’s called diaschisis. It’s Greek for ‘shocked thought.’ At the age of eleven, her brain was still relatively plastic, so she’s been able to recover almost all function. Her language and motor skills are virtually normal, as is her memory. Except for that night in London. Prior to the attack, she was an excellent student, even gifted. But I’m afraid she’ll never be an academic star now.”

“But she can still live a normal life?” said Jane.

“Not entirely. Like many head-injury patients, she’s impulsive. She takes risks. She says things without much thought about the consequences.”

“Sounds like a typical teenager.”

Dr. Welliver gave a knowing laugh. “True. Teenage brain is a diagnosis in and of itself. But I don’t think Claire’s ever going to grow out of this. Impulse control will always be an issue for her. She loses her temper, blurts out what she thinks. It’s already caused problems. She has a feud going on with another girl here. It started with some name calling, nasty notes. Accelerated to tripping, shoving. Clothes vandalized, earthworms in the bed.”

“Sounds like me and my brothers,” said Jane.

“Except you, hopefully, grew out of it. But Claire’s always going to leap before she looks. And that’s especially dangerous, given her other neurologic issue.”

“Which is?”

“Her sleep–wake cycle has been completely disrupted. That happens to many head-injured patients, but most of them suffer from excessive drowsiness. They sleep more than normal. Claire, for some reason, had a paradoxical result. She’s restless, especially at night, when she seems to be hyperacute. She seems to need only four hours of sleep a day.”

“The night I arrived,” said Maura, “I saw her down in the garden. It was well after midnight.”

Welliver nodded. “That’s when she’s most active. She’s like a nocturnal creature. We call her our midnight rambler.”

“And you allow her to just wander around in the dark?” said Jane.

“When she was living in Ithaca, there was nothing her foster family could do to stop it. They tried medications, locked doors, threats of punishment. This is going to be Claire’s baseline behavior for the rest of her life, and she needs to learn to deal with it. She’s not a prisoner here, so we decided not to treat her as one.”

“By allowing her to run wild at night?”

“Fortunately there aren’t many things that can hurt you in the Maine woods. We have no poisonous snakes, no large predators, and our black bears are more terrified of us than we are of them. The biggest danger is that she’ll step on a porcupine, or sprain an ankle stumbling into some animal burrow. This is simply Claire’s nature, and it’s a condition she’ll have to live with. Frankly, it’s far safer for her to wander here in the woods than in any big city.”

Jane could not argue with that statement; she knew only too well where the most dangerous predators were found. “And after she graduates from Evensong? What happens to her then?”

“When that time comes, she’ll have to make her own choices. Meanwhile, we’re giving her the skills to survive. That’s our purpose here, Detective. It’s the reason this school exists, so these children can find their places in the world. A world that hasn’t been kind to them.” Welliver pointed toward the filing cabinet. “We have dozens of students like Claire, some so traumatized when they arrived that they could barely talk. Or they’d wake up every night screaming. But children are resilient. With guidance, they can bounce back.”

Jane opened Claire’s file. Like Will’s, it included an initial psychological evaluation by Dr. Welliver. She turned to a summary of the Ithaca PD investigation. “How did Claire end up living with this particular couple, the Buckleys?”

“Bob and Barbara Buckley were friends of Claire’s parents, and her designated guardians in their will. They had no children of their own. When they took in Claire, they certainly got a handful.”

Jane stared at the police report summing up the Buckleys’ deaths and looked up at Maura. “Someone plowed into their car. Shot them both in the head.”

“It certainly looked like a targeted killing,” said Dr. Welliver. “But the Buckleys had no known enemies. Which raised the possibility that Claire was the target, because she was in the car, too.”

“Then why is the girl still alive?” said Jane.

Dr. Welliver shrugged. “Divine intervention.”

“Excuse me?”

“Ask Claire, and she’ll tell you that’s exactly what happened. She was trapped inside the car. Heard the gunshots. Actually saw the killer standing right there . And then someone else showed up on the scene. An angel is how Claire described her. A woman who helped her out of the vehicle and stayed with her.”

“Did the police interview this woman? Did she see the killer?”

“Unfortunately, the woman vanished just as the police arrived. No one but Claire ever saw her.”

“Maybe she didn’t exist,” suggested Maura. “Maybe Claire imagined her.”

Dr. Welliver nodded. “The police did have doubts about this mysterious woman. But they certainly had no doubt that this was an execution. Which is why Claire was brought to Evensong.”

Jane closed the file and looked at the psychologist. “That raises another question. How, exactly, did that happen?”

“She was referred to us.”

“I’m sure the state of New York can look after its own kids. Why send her to Evensong? And how did Will Yablonski end up here, from New Hampshire?”

Dr. Welliver didn’t look at Jane; instead she focused on one of the crystals that dangled in the window. On a sunny day, that bit of quartz would scatter rainbows around the room, but on this gray morning, it hung inert, offering no light-bending magic. “Evensong has a reputation,” she said. “For many of these children, we offer tuition, room and board, at no cost to the states. Law enforcement agencies all around the country know about the work we do here.”

“Because the Mephisto Society is everywhere,” said Jane. “And so are your spies.”

Welliver’s eyes met Jane’s. “You and I are on the same side, Detective,” she said quietly. “Never doubt that.”

“It’s the conspiracy theories that bother me.”

“Can we agree, at least, that the innocent need protection? That victims need to be healed? At Evensong, we do both. Yes, we track crimes around the world. Like any scientists, we search for patterns. Because we’re victims, too, and we’ve chosen to fight back.”