The Keepsake

by Tess Gerritsen

  “This is the owner of the house?” asked Frost, pointing to the blond woman in the photos.

  Abbott nodded. “Gemma Hamerton. She taught archaeology at one of the local colleges.”

  “Archaeology?” Frost shot Jane a Now, that’s interesting look.

  “What else do you know about her?”

  “Law-abiding citizen as far as we know. Never married. Spent every summer abroad doing whatever it is that archaeologists do.”

  “So why isn’t she abroad now?”

  “I don’t know. She came home a week ago from Peru, where she was working at some excavation. If she’d stayed away, she’d still be alive.” Abbott looked up at the stairs, his face suddenly grim. “It’s time to show you the second floor.” He led the way, pausing to point out the bloody tread marks on the wood steps.

  “Athletic sole. Size nine or ten,” he said. “We know these are the killer’s, since Ms. Pulcillo was barefoot.”

  “Looks like he was moving fast,” added Jane, noting the smeared imprints.

  “Yeah. But she was faster.”

  Jane stared down at the descending tread marks. Though the blood was dry and sunlight slanted in through a stairwell window, the terror of that chase still lingered on these stairs. She shook off a chill and looked up toward the second floor, where far worse images awaited them. “It happened upstairs?”

  “In Ms. Hamerton’s bedroom,” said Abbott. He took his time climbing the final steps, as though reluctant to revisit what he’d seen two nights before. The marks were darker up here, left by shoes still wet with fresh blood. The prints emerged from the room at the far end of the hall. Abbott pointed into the first doorway they came to. Inside was an unmade bed. “This is the guest room, where Ms. Pulcillo was sleeping.”

  Jane frowned. “But it’s closer to the stairs.”

  “Yeah. I found that strange, too. The killer walks right past Ms. Pulcillo’s room and heads straight up the hall to Ms. Hamerton’s. Maybe he didn’t know there was a guest in the house.”

  “Or maybe this door was locked,” said Frost.

  “No, that’s not it. This door doesn’t have a lock. For some reason, he bypassed it and went to Ms. Hamerton’s room first.” Abbott took a breath and continued to the master bedroom. There he paused on the threshold, hesitant to step inside.

  When Jane looked past him, through the doorway, she understood why.

  Though the body of Gemma Hamerton had been removed, her last moments on earth were recorded in vivid splatters of red on the walls, the bedsheets, the furniture. Stepping into that room, Jane felt a cold breath whisper against her skin, as though a ghost had just brushed past. Violence leaves its imprint, she thought. Not just in bloodstains, but on the air itself.

  “Her body was found crumpled in that far corner,” said Abbott. “But you can see, from the blood splatters, that the initial wound was made somewhere near the bed. Arterial splashes there, on the headboard.” He pointed to the wall on the right. “And over there, I think those are cast-off drops.”

  Jane tore her gaze from the soaked mattress and stared at the arc of angular droplets thrown off by centrifugal force as the bloody knife had swung away from the body. “He’s right-handed,” she said.

  Abbott nodded. “Judging by the wound, the ME says there was no hesitation, no tentative slices. He did it with one clean stroke, severing major vessels in the neck. The ME estimates she had maybe a minute or two of consciousness. Long enough for her to grab the phone. Crawl to that corner over there. The receiver had her bloody fingerprints on it, so we know she was wounded when she dialed.”

  “So the killer hung up the phone?” asked Frost.

  “I assume so.”

  “But you said the operator tried calling back and got a busy signal.”

  Abbott paused, thinking about it. “I guess that is a little weird, isn’t it? First he hangs up, then he takes the receiver off the hook again. I wonder why he’d do that.”

  Jane said. “He didn’t want it to ring.”

  “The noise?” said Frost.

  Jane nodded. “It would also explain why he didn’t use his gun on this victim. Because he knew someone else was in the house, and he didn’t want to wake her.”

  “But she did wake up,” said Abbott. “Maybe she heard the body fall. Maybe Ms. Hamerton managed to cry out. Whatever the reason, something woke up Ms. Pulcillo, because she came into this room. She saw the intruder. And she ran.”

  Jane stared at the corner where Gemma Hamerton had died, curled up in a lake of her own blood.

  She walked out of the bedroom and headed back up the hall. At the doorway to Josephine’s room she stopped, gazing at the bed. The killer walked right past this room, she thought. A young woman is sleeping in there and her door is unlocked. Yet he bypassed her and continued to the master bedroom. Did he not know a guest was here? Did he not realize there was another woman in the house?

  No. No, he knew. That’s why he took the phone off the hook. That’s why he used a knife and not his gun. He wanted the first kill to be silent.

  Because he was planning to move to Josephine’s room next.

  She went down the stairs and stepped outside. The afternoon was sunny, the insects humming in the windless heat, but the chill of the house was still with her. She descended the porch steps.

  You pursued her here, down the stairs. On a moonlit night, she would have been easy to follow. Just a lone girl in her nightgown.

  She walked slowly up the driveway, following the route along which Josephine had fled, her bare feet cut by glass. The main road was ahead, beyond the trees, and all the fleeing girl had to do was reach a neighbor’s house. Scream and pound on a door.

  Jane paused, her gaze on the bloodstained gravel.

  But here the bullet struck her leg, and she fell.

  Slowly she followed the trail of blood that Josephine had smeared along the road as she’d struggled forward on hands and knees. Every inch of the way she must have known he was moving toward her, closing in for the kill. The trail of blood seemed to stretch on and on, until it came to a halt, a dozen yards short of the road. It had been a long and desperate crawl to this spot—long enough for the killer to catch up with her. Certainly long enough for him to pull the trigger one last time and make his escape.

  Yet he didn’t fire the fatal shot.

  Jane halted, staring down at the spot where Josephine had been kneeling when the officers spotted her. When they’d arrived, they had seen no one else, only the injured woman. A woman who should have been dead.

  Only then did Jane understand. The killer wanted her alive.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Everybody lies, thought Jane. But few people managed to inhabit their lies as completely and successfully as had Josephine Pulcillo.

  As she and Frost drove to the hospital, she wondered what confabulations Josephine would tell them today, what new tales she’d invent to explain away the undeniable facts that they’d uncovered about her. She wondered if Frost would let himself be seduced once again by those lies.

  “I think that maybe you should let me do the talking when we get there,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “I’d just like to handle this myself.”

  He looked at her. “Any particular reason you feel the need to do it this way?”

  She took her time responding because she couldn’t truthfully answer the question without widening the breach between them, a breach caused by Josephine. “I just think I should deal with her. Since my instincts about her have been pretty spot-on.”

  “Instincts? Is that what you call it?”

  “You trusted her. I didn’t. I was right about her, wasn’t I?”

  He turned toward the window. “Or jealous of her.”

  “What?” She turned into the hospital parking lot and shut off the engine. “Is that what you think?”

  He sighed. “Never mind.”

  “No, tell me. What did you mean by that?”

  “No
thing.” He shoved open the car door. “Let’s go,” he said.

  She stepped out of the car and slammed her door shut, wondering if there was even a thin vein of truth in what Frost had just said. Wondering if the fact that she herself was not beautiful made her resentful of how easily attractive women navigated the world. Men worshiped pretty women, catered to them, and, most important, listened to them. While the rest of us plug on as best we can. But even if she were jealous, it didn’t change the essential fact that her instincts had been right.

  Josephine Pulcillo was a fraud.

  She and Frost were silent as they walked into the hospital, as they rode the elevator to the surgical wing. Never before had she felt such a gulf between them. Though they were side by side, there was now a continent separating them, and she didn’t even glance at him as they headed up the hall. Grimly, Jane pushed open the door to room 216 and stepped inside.

  The young woman they’d known as Josephine stared at them from the bed. In her flimsy hospital gown, she looked fetchingly vulnerable, a doe-eyed maiden in need of rescue. How the hell did she do it? Even with her unwashed hair and her leg in a clunky cast, she managed to look beautiful.

  Jane didn’t waste time. She crossed straight to the bed and said, “Do you want to tell us about San Diego?”

  At once, Josephine’s gaze dropped to the sheets, avoiding Jane’s. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You would’ve been about fourteen years old then. Old enough to remember what took place that night.”

  Josephine shook her head. “You must have me mistaken for someone else.”

  “Your name was Susan Cook at the time. You were a student at William Howard Taft Middle School and you lived with your mother, who called herself Lydia Newhouse. One morning, you both packed up and abruptly left town. That was the last time anyone heard of Susan and her mother.”

  “And I suppose that’s illegal, to suddenly leave town?” Josephine retorted, her gaze at last snapping up to meet Jane’s in an act of sheer nerve.

  “No. That isn’t.”

  “So why are you asking me about it?”

  “Because it’s very illegal to shoot a man in the back of the head.”

  Josephine’s expression went as smooth as glass. “What man?” she said calmly.

  “The man who died in your bedroom.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  The two women stared at each other for a moment. And Jane thought: Maybe Frost can’t see through you, but I sure as hell can.

  “Have you ever heard of a chemical called luminol?” Jane asked.

  Josephine shrugged. “Should I have?”

  “It reacts with the iron in old blood. When you spray it on a surface, any blood residue lights up in the dark like neon. No matter how hard you clean up after someone bleeds, you can’t wash away all the traces. Even after you and your mother wiped down the walls, mopped the floors, the blood was still there, hiding in the cracks. In the baseboards.”

  This time Josephine stayed silent.

  “When the San Diego police searched your old house, they sprayed luminol. One bedroom lit up like crazy. It was your bedroom. So don’t tell me you know nothing about it. You must have been there. You know exactly what happened.”

  Josephine had paled. “I was fourteen,” she said softly. “That was a long time ago.”

  “There’s no statute of limitations for murder.”

  “Murder? Is that what you think it was?”

  “What happened that night?”

  “It wasn’t murder.”

  “Then what was it?”

  “It was self-defense!”

  Jane nodded in satisfaction. They’d made progress. At last she’d admitted that a man had died in her bedroom. “How did it happen?” she asked.

  Josephine glanced at Detective Frost, as though seeking his support. He had been standing near the door, his expression cool and unreadable, and clearly she could expect no favors from him, no sympathy.

  “It’s time to come clean,” said Jane. “Do it for Gemma Hamerton. She deserves justice, don’t you think? I’m assuming she was a friend?”

  At the mention of Gemma’s name, Josephine’s eyes glazed over with tears. “Yes,” she whispered. “More than a friend.”

  “You do know she’s dead?”

  “Detective Abbott told me. But I already knew,” Josephine whispered. “I saw her lying on the floor….”

  “I’m guessing these two events are connected. Ms. Hamerton’s death, and that shooting in San Diego. If you want justice for your friend, you’ll answer my questions, Josephine. Or maybe you’d rather be called Susan Cook? Since that was the name you went by in San Diego.”

  “My name is Josephine now.” She gave a weary sigh, all pretenses gone. “It’s the name I’ve had the longest. The one I’m used to now.”

  “How many names have there been?”

  “Four. No, five.” She shook her head. “I don’t even remember anymore. There was a new one every time we moved. I thought Josephine would be the last.”

  “What’s your real name?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yes, it does. What name were you born with? You might as well tell us the truth, because I promise you, we’ll find out eventually.”

  Josephine’s head drooped in surrender. “My last name was Sommer,” she said softly.

  “And your first name?”

  “Nefertari.”

  “That’s an unusual name.”

  Josephine gave a tired laugh. “My mother never made conventional choices.”

  “Wasn’t that the name of some Egyptian queen?”

  “Yes. The wife of Ramses the Great. Nefertari, for whom the sun doth shine.”

  “What?”

  “It’s something my mother used to say to me. She loved Egypt. All she talked about was going back.”

  “And where is your mother now?”

  “She’s dead,” Josephine said softly. “It was three years ago, in Mexico. She was hit by a car. When it happened, I was in graduate school in California, so I can’t tell you much more than that…”

  Jane pulled over a chair and sat down by the bed. “But you can tell us about San Diego. What happened that night?”

  Josephine sat with shoulders slumped. They had her cornered, and she knew it. “It was summertime,” she said. “A warm night. My mother always insisted we close the windows, but that night I left mine open. That’s how he broke into the house.”

  “Through your bedroom window?”

  “My mother heard a noise, and she came into my room. He attacked her, and she defended herself. She defended me.” She looked at Jane. “She had no choice.”

  “Did you see it happen?”

  “I was asleep. The gunshot woke me.”

  “Do you remember where your mother was standing when it happened?”

  “I didn’t see it. I told you, I was asleep.”

  “Then how do you know it was self-defense?”

  “He was in our house, in my room. That makes it justified, doesn’t it? When someone breaks into your house, don’t you have a right to shoot him?”

  “In the back of the head?”

  “He turned! He knocked her down and turned. And she shot him.”

  “I thought you didn’t see it.”

  “That’s what she told me.”

  Jane leaned back in her chair but her gaze remained fixed on the young woman. She let the minutes pass, let the silence have its effect. A silence that emphasized the fact Jane was examining every pore, every twitch in Josephine’s face.

  “So now you and your mother have a dead body in your bedroom,” said Jane. “What happened next?”

  Josephine took a breath. “My mother took care of everything.”

  “Meaning she cleaned up the blood?”

  “Yes.”

  “And buried the body?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did she call the police?�
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  Josephine’s hands tightened into knots. “No,” she whispered.

  “And the next morning, you left town.”

  “Yes.”

  “Now, that’s the part I don’t understand,” said Jane. “It seems to me your mother made a strange choice. You claim she killed that man in self-defense.”

  “He broke into our house. He was in my bedroom.”

  “Let’s think about that. If a man breaks into your house and attacks you, you have a right to use deadly force and defend yourself. A cop might even give you a pat on the back for it. But your mother didn’t call the police. Instead, she dragged the body out into the backyard and buried it. Cleaned up the blood, packed up her daughter, and left town. Does that make sense to you? Because it sure as hell doesn’t make any sense to me.” Jane leaned in close, an aggressive move meant to invade the young woman’s personal space. “She was your mother. She must have told you why she did it.”

  “I was scared. I didn’t ask questions.”

  “And she never gave you answers?”

  “We ran, that’s all. I know it doesn’t make sense now, but that’s what we did. We left town in a panic. And after you do that, you can’t go to the police. You look guilty just because you ran.”

  “You’re right, Josephine. Your mother does look pretty damn guilty. The man she killed was shot in the back of the head. It didn’t look like self-defense to the San Diego police. It looked like a cold-blooded murder.”

  “She did it to protect me.”

  “Then why didn’t she call the police? What was she running from?” Jane leaned in even closer, getting right into the woman’s face. “I want the truth, Josephine!”

  The breath seemed to whoosh out of Josephine’s lungs. Shoulders sagging, she hung her head in defeat. “Prison,” she whispered. “My mother was running from prison.”

  This was what they’d been waiting for. This was the explanation. Jane could see it in the young woman’s posture, could hear it in the conquered voice. Josephine knew the battle was lost, and she was finally handing over the spoils: the truth.