The Keepsake

by Tess Gerritsen

  NINETEEN

  “The victim was a thirty-six-year-old white male named Jimmy Otto,” said Detective Crowe. “His body was discovered in San Diego, after a dog dug up a tasty little snack: a human finger. The dog’s owner saw what Fido brought home, freaked out, and called 911. Dog led the police back to the body, which was buried in a shallow grave in a neighbor’s backyard. The victim had been dead for a few days, and wildlife had gotten at the extremities so they couldn’t get any usable fingerprints. There was no wallet on the body, either, but whoever stripped his ID missed a hotel key card that was tucked in his jeans pocket. It was for a local Holiday Inn, where the guest was registered under the name James Otto.”

  “A hotel key card?” said Jane. “So this victim didn’t live in San Diego.”

  “No. His address was here, in Massachusetts, where he lived with his sister. Carrie Otto flew out to San Diego and ID’d her brother’s clothing. And what was left of him.”

  Jane tore open a packet of Advil, popped two tablets in her mouth, and washed them down with lukewarm coffee. Last night, she and Frost had not arrived home in Boston until two AM, and what little sleep she did get was repeatedly interrupted by one-year-old Regina, who demanded hugs and reassurance that Mommy really was home again. This morning, Jane had awakened with a monster headache. The twists and turns of the investigation were making that headache worse, and the glow of the fluorescent lights in the conference room made even her eyeballs hurt.

  “You both with me so far?” said Crowe, glancing up at Jane and Frost, who looked as exhausted as Jane felt.

  “Yeah,” she muttered. “So what did the autopsy show?”

  “Cause of death was a single gunshot wound to the back of the head. The weapon was never recovered.”

  “And whose backyard was he buried in?”

  “It was a rental house,” said Crowe. “The tenants were a single mother and her fourteen-year-old daughter, and they’d already packed up and vanished. The police sprayed the house with luminol, and the girl’s bedroom lit up like Vegas. Traces of blood were all over the floor and the baseboards. That’s where Jimmy Otto was killed. In the girl’s bedroom.”

  “And this was twelve years ago?”

  “Josephine would have been about fourteen,” said Frost.

  Crowe nodded. “Except her name wasn’t Josephine back then. It was Susan Cook.” He gave a laugh. “And guess what? The real Susan Cook died as an infant. In Syracuse, New York.”

  “It was another co-opted ID?” said Jane.

  “Ditto on the mother, who also had a fake name: Lydia Newhouse. According to the San Diego PD report, mother and daughter rented the house for three years, but they kept to themselves. At the time of the killing, the girl had just finished the eighth grade at William Howard Taft Middle School. Very bright, according to her teachers, work way above her grade level.”

  “And the mother?”

  “Lydia Newhouse—or whatever her real name is—worked at the Museum of Man in Balboa Park.”

  “Doing what?”

  “She was a salesclerk in the gift shop. She also volunteered as a docent. What impressed everyone at the museum was how much she seemed to know about the field of archaeology. Even though she claimed she had no formal training.”

  Jane frowned. “We’re back to archaeology again.”

  “Yeah. We keep returning to that theme, don’t we?” said Crowe. “Archaeology runs in the family. The mother. The daughter.”

  “Are we sure they’re even involved with Jimmy Otto’s murder?” said Frost.

  “Well, they sure behaved as if they did it. They left town in a hurry—only after they’d mopped the floor, washed down the walls, and buried the guy behind their house. That sounds pretty damn guilty to me. Their only mistake was not burying him deep enough, because the neighborhood dog sniffed him out pretty quick.”

  Tripp said, “I say, good for them. The guy got the ending he deserved.”

  “What do you mean?” Frost asked.

  “Because Jimmy Otto was one sick fuck.”

  Crowe opened his notebook. “Detective Potrero will be sending us the file, but here’s what I got from him over the phone. At age thirteen, Jimmy Otto broke into a woman’s bedroom, raided her lingerie drawers, and sliced up her underwear with a knife. A few months later, he was found in another girl’s house, standing over her bed with a knife as she slept.”

  “Jesus,” said Jane. “Only thirteen? He got an early start as a creep.”

  “Age fourteen, he was expelled from his school in Connecticut. Detective Potrero couldn’t get the school to release all the details, but he gathered there was some sort of sexual assault involving a female classmate. And a broomstick. The girl ended up in the hospital.” Crowe looked up. “And those are just the things he got caught doing.”

  “He should have been thrown into juvenile detention after the second incident.”

  “Should have. But when your daddy’s rich, you have a few extra get-out-of-jail cards.”

  “Even after the broomstick thing?”

  “No, that was the wake-up call for his parents. They finally freaked out and realized their darling son needed therapy. Bad. Their high-priced lawyer got the charges reduced, but only on the condition that Jimmy go into specialized residential treatment.”

  “You mean a psych ward?” asked Frost.

  “Not exactly. It was a very expensive private school for boys with his, uh, impulses. A place out in the boonies with round-the-clock supervision. He stayed there for three years. His doting parents bought a house in the area, just so they could be near him. They were killed in a private plane crash flying up to see him. Jimmy and his sister ended up inheriting a fortune.”

  “Making Jimmy a very sick and very rich fuck,” said Tripp.

  Specialized residential treatment. A place out in the boonies.

  Jane suddenly thought about the conversation she’d had just the day before, with Kimball Rose. And she asked: “Did this private facility happen to be in Maine?”

  Crowe looked up in surprise. “How the hell did you guess that?”

  “Because we know about another rich sicko who ended up in a Maine treatment center. A place for boys with issues.”

  “Who are you talking about?”

  “Bradley Rose.”

  There was a long silence as Crowe and Tripp absorbed that startling news.

  “Holy shit,” said Tripp. “That cannot be a coincidence. If those two boys were there at the same time, they would have known each other.”

  “Tell us more about this school,” said Jane.

  Crowe nodded, his expression now grimly focused. “The Hilzbrich Institute was very exclusive, very pricey. And very specialized. It was essentially a locked unit out in the middle of the woods—probably a smart idea, considering what kind of patients they were treating.”

  “Psychopaths?”

  “Sexual predators. Everything from budding pedophiles to rapists. It just goes to show you that rich people have their own share of perverts. But they also have lawyers to keep these kids out of the justice system, and this facility was a rich man’s alternative. A place to enjoy fine dining while a team of therapists tries to convince you it’s not nice to torture little girls. The trouble was, it didn’t seem to work very well. Fifteen years ago, one of their so-called graduates kidnapped and mutilated two girls, and he did it just a few months after the institute declared him safe to return to society. There was a big lawsuit, and the school was forced to shut down. It’s been closed ever since.”

  “What about Jimmy Otto? What happened after he left?”

  “At eighteen, he walked out their doors a free man. But it didn’t take long for him to revert to form. Within a few years, he was arrested for stalking and threatening a woman in California. Then he was arrested and questioned right here in Brookline, about the disappearance of a young woman. Police didn’t have enough to hold him, so he was released. Ditto thirteen years ago, when he was picked up for
questioning after another Massachusetts woman disappeared. Before the police could build a case against him, he abruptly vanished. And no one knew where he was. Until a year later, when he turned up buried in that backyard in San Diego.”

  “You’re right, Tripp,” said Jane. “He got what he deserved. But what made this mother and daughter run? If they killed him, if they were just defending themselves, why did they pack up and leave town like criminals?”

  “Maybe because they are?” suggested Crowe. “They were living under assumed names even then. We don’t know who they really are—or what they might be running from.”

  Jane rested her head in her hands and began to rub her temples, trying to massage away the headache. “This is getting so damn complicated,” she muttered. “I can’t keep track of all the threads. We’ve got a murdered man in San Diego. We’ve got the Archaeology Killer here.”

  “And the link seems to be this young woman whose name we don’t even know.”

  Jane sighed. “Okay. What else do we know about Jimmy Otto? Any other arrests, any other links to our current investigation?”

  Crowe flipped through his notes. “Some minor stuff. Breaking and entering in Brookline, Massachusetts. DUI and speeding in San Diego. Another DUI and reckless speeding in Durango…” He paused, suddenly registering the significance of that last detail. “Durango, Colorado. Isn’t that close to New Mexico?”

  Jane lifted her head. “It’s right over the state line. Why?”

  “It happened in July. The same year that Lorraine Edgerton vanished.”

  Jane reeled back in her chair, stunned by this last piece of information. Both Jimmy and Bradley were near Chaco Canyon at the same time.

  “That’s it,” she said softly.

  “You think they were hunting partners?”

  “Until Jimmy got killed in San Diego.” She looked at Frost.

  “This is finally coming together now. We have a connection. Jimmy Otto and Bradley Rose.”

  He nodded. “And Josephine,” he said.

  TWENTY

  Josephine fought her way back to consciousness and came awake with a gasp, her nightgown soaked with sweat, her heart thudding. Thin curtains rippled in a ghostly film over the moonlit window, and in the woods outside Gemma’s house, tree branches rattled and fell still. She pushed off the damp bedcovers and stared up at the darkness as her heart slowed, as the sweat cooled on her skin. After only a week at Gemma’s place, her bad dream was back. A dream of gunfire and blood-splattered walls. Always pay attention to your dreams, her mother had taught her. They’re voices telling you what you already know, whispering advice you haven’t yet heeded. Josephine knew what this dream meant: It was time to move on. Time to run. She had lingered in Gemma’s house longer than she should have. She thought of the cell phone call she’d made from the mini-mart. She thought of the young patrolman who’d chatted with her in the parking lot that night, and the taxi driver who’d driven her to this road. There were so many ways she could be tracked here, so many little mistakes she might have made that she wasn’t even aware of.

  She remembered what her mother once said: If someone really wants to find you, he only needs to wait for you to make one mistake.

  And lately, she had made so many.

  The night had fallen strangely still.

  It took her a moment to register just how still it was. She had fallen asleep to the steady chirp of crickets, but now she heard nothing, only a silence so complete that it magnified the sound of her own breathing.

  She rose from bed and went to the window. Outside, moonlight silvered the trees and splashed its pale glow onto the garden. Staring out, she saw nothing to alarm her. But as she stood at that open window, she realized that the night was not entirely silent; through the thump of her own heartbeat she heard a faint electronic beeping. Did it come from outside, or from somewhere inside the house? Now that she was completely focused on the sound, it seemed to intensify, and with it her sense of uneasiness.

  Did Gemma hear it?

  She went to the door and peeked into the dark hallway. The sound was louder out here, more insistent.

  In darkness she navigated up the hallway, her bare feet silent on the wood floor. With every step the beeping grew louder. Reaching Gemma’s bedroom, she found the door ajar. She gave it a push and silently it swung open. In the moonlit room, she spotted the source of that sound: the fallen telephone receiver, a disconnect signal issuing from the earpiece. But it wasn’t the phone that caught her gaze; it was the dark pool, glistening like black oil on the floor. Nearby a figure crouched, and she thought at first it was Gemma. Until it straightened to its full height and stood silhouetted against the window.

  A man.

  Josephine’s startled intake of breath made his head snap around toward her. For an instant they faced each other, features hidden in the shadows, both of them suspended in that timeless moment before predator springs on prey.

  She moved first.

  She turned and sprinted for the stairs. Footsteps pounded behind her as she scrambled down the steps. She hit the first floor hard, with both feet. Ahead was the front door, gaping open. She ran for it and stumbled out onto the porch, where broken glass pierced her skin. She scarcely noticed its bite; her attention was focused only on the driveway ahead.

  And on the footsteps closing in behind her.

  She flew down the porch steps, her gown flapping like wings in the warm night air, and ran headlong up the driveway. Under the moonlight, on that exposed gravel, her nightgown was as visible as a white flag, but she did not veer into the woods, did not waste time seeking the cover of trees. Ahead lay the street, and other houses. If I pound on doors, if I scream, someone will help me. No longer could she hear her pursuer’s footsteps; she heard only the rush of her panicked breaths, the whoosh of the night air.

  And then, a sharp crack.

  The bullet’s impact was like a brutal kick to the back of her leg. It sent her sprawling to the ground, palms scraping across the gravel. She struggled to stand, warm blood streaming down her calf, but her leg gave out beneath her. With a sob of pain, she collapsed to her knees.

  The street. The street is so near.

  Her breaths reduced to sobs, she began to crawl. A neighbor’s porch light glowed ahead, beyond the trees, and that was what she focused on. Not the crunch of footsteps moving closer, not the gravel biting into her palms. Survival had come down to that lone beacon winking through the branches and she kept crawling toward it, dragging her useless leg as blood left its slick trail behind her.

  A shadow moved in front of her and blotted out the light.

  Slowly, she lifted her gaze. He stood before her, blocking the way. His face was a black oval, his eyes unfathomable. As he leaned toward her, she closed her eyes, waiting for the crack of the gun, the punch of the bullet. Never had she been more aware of her own beating heart, of the air rushing in and out of her lungs, than in the stillness of this last moment. A moment that seemed to stretch on endlessly, as though he wanted to savor his victory and prolong the torment.

  Through her closed eyelids, she saw a light flicker.

  She opened her eyes. Beyond the trees, a blue light pulsed. A pair of headlights suddenly veered toward her, and she was trapped in the glare, kneeling in her pitifully thin nightgown. Tires skidded to a halt, spitting gravel. A car door swung open and she heard the crackle of a police radio.

  “Miss? Are you okay, miss?”

  She blinked, trying to make out who was speaking to her. But the voice faded and the headlights dimmed, and the last thing she registered was the slap of the gravel against her cheek as she slumped to the ground.

  Frost and Jane stood in Gemma Hamerton’s driveway, staring down at the trail of dried blood that Josephine had left behind in her desperate crawl toward the street. Birds chirped overhead and the summer sun shone down through dappling leaves, but a chill seemed to have settled in this shady patch of driveway.

  Jane turned and looked at th
e residence, which she and Frost had not yet set foot in. It was an unremarkable house with white clapboards and a covered porch, like so many others that she’d seen on this rural road. But even from where she stood in the drive way, she could see the jagged reflection of a broken porch window, and that bright shard of light warned: Something terrible happened here. Something you have yet to see.

  “Here’s where she first fell,” said Detective Mike Abbott. He pointed to the start of the bloody trail. “She made it pretty far up the driveway when she was shot. Landed here and started crawling. It took a hell of a lot of determination to move as far as she did, but she managed to get all the way to that point.” Abbott indicated the end of the bloody trail. “That’s where the patrol car spotted her.”

  “How did that miracle happen?” asked Jane.

  “They came in response to a 911 call.”

  “From Josephine?” asked Frost.

  “No, we think it came from the owner of the house, Gemma Hamerton. The phone was in her bedroom. Whoever made the call never got the chance to speak, though, because the receiver was hung up immediately afterward. When the emergency operator tried to call back, the phone had been taken off the hook again. She dispatched a patrol car, and it got here within three minutes.”

  Frost gazed down at the stained driveway. “There’s a lot of blood here.”

  Abbott nodded. “The young woman spent three hours in emergency surgery. She’s now laid up in a cast, which turns out to be lucky for us. Because we didn’t find out till last night that Boston PD had put out a bulletin on her. Otherwise, she might have managed to skip town.” He turned toward the house. “If you want to see more blood, follow me.”

  He led the way to the front porch, which was littered with broken glass. There they paused to pull on shoe covers. Abbott’s ominous statement warned of horrors to come, and Jane was prepared for the worst.

  But when she stepped in the front door, she saw nothing alarming. The living room looked undisturbed. On the walls hung dozens of framed photos, many of them featuring the same woman with cropped blond hair, posing with a variety of companions. A massive bookcase was filled with volumes on history and art, ancient languages and ethnology.