Tess Gerritsen - Last to Die

She thrust the time line back at Will. “Yeah. The dates are okay.”

He pointed to the photo albums. “Did you find anything?”

“Just pictures.”

“Can I see?”

She didn’t want to reveal any more embarrassing photos of herself, so she set aside the more recent album and opened her parents’ album instead. On the first page, she saw her father, Erskine, tall and handsome, wearing a suit and tie. “That’s my dad,” she said.

“That’s the Washington Monument behind him! I’ve been there. My dad took me to the Air and Space Museum when I was eight. It’s such a cool place.”

“Whoop-de-do.”

He looked at her. “Why do you do that, Claire?”

“Do what?”

“Put me down all the time?”

A denial reflexively bubbled to her lips; then she saw his face and realized what he’d said was true. She did put him down all the time. She sighed. “I don’t really mean to.”

“So it’s not because you think I deserve it? Like I’m disgusting or something?”

“No. It’s because I’m not thinking at all. It’s a stupid habit.”

He nodded. “I have stupid habits, too. Like how I’m always using the word like .”

“Just stop it, then.”

“Let’s agree we’ll both stop it. Okay?”

“Sure. Whatever.” She turned more pages in the album, saw more photos of her handsome dad posing in different settings. At a picnic with friends under the trees. Wearing a swimsuit on a beach with palm trees. She came to a photo of both her mom and dad, their arms entwined, standing in front of the Roman Colosseum.

“Look. That’s my mom,” she said softly, stroking a finger across the image. Suddenly the scent of the perfume on that scarf cut through the fog of lost memories, and she could smell her mother’s hair, feel her mother’s hands on her face.

“She looks like you,” said Will in wonder. “She’s really beautiful.”

They were both beautiful, thought Claire, gazing hungrily at her mother and father. They must have thought the whole world was at their feet when this picture was taken. They had striking good looks and a lifetime ahead of them. And they were living in Rome. Did they ever stop to think, did they ever imagine, how prematurely their future would end?

“This was taken nineteen years ago,” said Will, noting the date that Claire’s mom had written in the album.

“They were just married then. My dad worked at the embassy. He was a political secretary.”

“In Rome? Cool. Is that where you were born?”

“My birth certificate says I was born in Virginia. I guess my mom came home to have me.”

They turned more pages, saw more images of the same handsome couple smiling at a dinner, holding up champagne glasses at a cocktail party, waving from a motorboat. Living la dolce vita , her mother used to say. The sweet life. And that’s what Claire saw in these photos, a record of what seemed to be a never-ending string of good times with colleagues and friends. But that’s what photo albums were meant to show, the best moments in life. The moments you wanted to remember, not the ones you wanted to forget.

“Look. That’s gotta be you,” said Will.

It was a photo of Claire’s mother, smiling from her hospital bed as she cradled an infant. She saw the handwritten date and said, “Yeah, that’s the day I was born. My mom said it happened really fast. She said I was in a hurry to get out and she almost didn’t make it to the hospital in time.”

Will laughed. “You’re still in a hurry to get out.”

She turned the pages, past more boring baby photos. In a stroller. In a high chair. Clutching a bottle. None of this helped her remember anything because these were all taken before her memories had been laid down. It could just as well be another child’s album.

She reached the last page. In the final two photos, Claire did not appear. These featured yet another cocktail party, another set of smiling strangers holding wineglasses. That was the burden of the diplomat’s wife, her mom used to joke. Always smiling, always pouring . Claire was about to shut the album when Will’s hand suddenly closed over hers.

“Wait,” he said. “That picture.”

“What about it?”

He took the album from her and leaned in close to study one of the party photos. It showed Claire’s dad, cocktail glass in hand, caught in midlaugh with another man. The handwritten caption said, 4TH OF JULY. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, USA!

“This woman,” murmured Will. He pointed to a slim brunette standing to the right of Erskine Ward. She was wearing a low-cut green dress with a gold belt, and her gaze was fixed on Claire’s father. It was a look of unabashed admiration. “Do you know who she is?” Will asked.

“Should I?”

“ Look at her. Try to remember if you’ve ever seen her.”

The harder she stared, the more familiar the woman seemed, but it was just a wisp of a memory, one she couldn’t be sure of. One that might not even exist, except through a trick of effort. “I don’t know,” she said. “Why?”

“Because I do know her.”

She frowned at him. “How could you? This is my family album.”

“And that,” he said, pointing to the woman in the photo, “is my mother.”

TWENTY-SIX

ANTHONY SANSONE ARRIVED AT EVENSONG UNDER COVER OF DARKNESS, as he had before.

From her window, Maura saw the Mercedes park in the courtyard below. A familiar figure climbed out, tall and cloaked in black. As he swept past, beneath the courtyard lantern, he briefly cast a long, sinister shadow across the cobblestones and then disappeared.

She left her room and headed downstairs to intercept him. At the second-floor landing she paused and looked down into the shadowy entrance hall, where Sansone and Gottfried were speaking in hushed voices.

“… still unclear why she did it,” said Gottfried. “Our contacts are deeply troubled. There’s too much we didn’t know about her, things we should have been told.”

“You believe it was a suicide?”

“If not suicide, how do we explain …” Gottfried froze at the creak of a step. Both men turned to see Maura standing above them, on the stairs.

“Dr. Isles,” said Gottfried, instantly forcing a smile. “Having a touch of insomnia?”

“I want to hear the truth,” she said. “About Anna Welliver.”

“We’re as baffled about her death as you are.”

“This isn’t about her death. It’s about her life. You said you had no answers for me, Gottfried.” She looked at Sansone. “Maybe Anthony does.”

Sansone sighed. “I suppose it is time to be honest with you. I owe you that much, Maura. Come, let’s talk in the library.”

“Then I’ll say good night to you both,” said Gottfried, and he turned to the stairs. There he paused and looked back at Sansone. “Anna’s gone, but that doesn’t break our promise to her. Remember that, Anthony.” He climbed the steps, disappearing into shadow.

“What does that mean?” Maura asked.

“It means there are some things I cannot tell you,” he said as they entered the gloomy passage leading to the library.

“What’s the point of all the secrecy?”

“The point is trust. Anna revealed things to us under the strictest confidence. Details we’re unable to share.” He paused at the end of the passageway. “But now we wonder if even we knew the truth about her.”

During the day, sunlight flooded the library’s Palladian windows and gleamed on polished wood tables. But now shadows cloaked the room, transforming alcoves into dark little caves. Anthony switched on a single desk lamp, and in intimate gloom they sat facing each other across a table. All around them loomed rows and rows of bookcases in scholarly formation, two millennia’s worth of knowledge. But it was this man she now struggled to read, a man as unknowable as a closed book.