The Keepsake

by Tess Gerritsen

  “What crime did she commit?” asked Jane.

  “I don’t know the details. She said I was just a baby when it happened.”

  “Did she steal something? Kill someone?”

  “She wouldn’t talk about it. I didn’t even find out about it until that night in San Diego. When she told me why we couldn’t call the police.”

  “And you just packed up and left town with her because she told you to be a good little girl?”

  “What would you expect me to do?” Josephine’s head lifted, defiance in her eyes. “She was my mother and I loved her.”

  “Yet she told you she committed a crime.”

  “Some crimes are justified. Sometimes you have no choice. Whatever she did, she had a reason for it. My mother was a good person.”

  “Who was running from the law.”

  “Then the law is wrong.” She stared at Jane, refusing to concede an inch. Refusing to accept that her mother was capable of evil. Could a parent ask for a more loyal child? It might be misguided loyalty, blind loyalty, but there was something to admire here, something that Jane herself would want from her own daughter.

  “So your mother dragged you from town to town, from name to name,” said Jane. “And where was your father in all this?”

  “My father died in Egypt, before I was born.”

  “Egypt?” Jane arched forward, her attention riveted on the young woman. “Tell me more.”

  “He was from France. One of the archaeologists at the dig.” Josephine’s lips turned up in a wistful smile. “She said he was brilliant and funny. And most of all, kind. That’s what she liked most about him, his kindness. They planned to get married, but there was an awful accident. A fire.” She swallowed. “Gemma was burned as well.”

  “Gemma Hamerton was with her in Egypt?”

  “Yes.” At the mention of Gemma, Josephine blinked away a sudden flash of tears. “It’s my fault, isn’t it? My fault she’s dead.”

  Jane looked at Frost, who appeared just as startled by this information as she was. Though he had been silent so far through the interview, now he could not resist asking a question.

  “This excavation you mentioned, where your parents met. Where was it in Egypt?”

  “Near Siwa Oasis. It’s in the western desert.”

  “What were they looking for?”

  Josephine shrugged. “They never found it.”

  “It?”

  “The lost army of Cambyses.”

  In the silence that followed, Jane could almost hear the puzzle pieces click into place. Egypt. Cambyses. Bradley Rose. She turned to Frost. “Show her his photo.”

  Frost pulled the snapshot from the file folder that he’d brought into the room and handed it to Josephine. It was the image that Professor Quigley had lent them, the photo taken at Chaco Canyon of a young Bradley staring at the camera lens, his eyes pale as a wolf’s.

  “Do you recognize this man?” asked Frost. “It’s an old picture. He’d be about forty-five now.”

  Josephine shook her head. “Who is he?”

  “His name is Bradley Rose. Twenty-seven years ago he was in Egypt, too. At the same archaeological dig where your mother worked. She would have known him.”

  Josephine frowned at the photo, as though struggling to see something about that face that she could recognize. “I’ve never heard that name. She never mentioned him.”

  “Josephine,” said Frost, “we think this is the man who’s been stalking you. The man who attacked you two nights ago. And we have reason to believe this is the Archaeology Killer.”

  She looked up, startled. “He knew my mother?”

  “They were at the same excavation. They must have known each other. It could explain why he’s now fixated on you. Your photo appeared twice in The Boston Globe, remember? Back in March, soon after you were hired by the museum. And then a few weeks ago, just before the CT scan of Madam X. Maybe Bradley saw the resemblance. Maybe he looked at your photo and saw your mother’s face. Do you look like her?”

  Josephine nodded. “Gemma said I look exactly like my mother.”

  “What was your mother’s name?” asked Jane.

  For a moment, Josephine didn’t respond, as though that particular secret had been buried so long, she could not even remember it. When she finally did answer, it came out so softly that Jane had to lean forward to hear it.

  “Medea. Her name was Medea.”

  “The name on the cartouche,” said Frost.

  Josephine stared down at the photo. “Why didn’t she tell me about him? Why have I never heard his name?”

  “Your mother seems to be the key to everything,” said Jane.

  “The key to what drives this man to kill. Even if you don’t know about him, he certainly knows about you, and he’s probably been in your life for some time, right on the periphery of your vision. Maybe he drove past your building every day. Or sat on the bus you rode to work. You just haven’t noticed him. When we get you back to Boston, we’re going to need a list of every place you frequent. Every café, every bookstore.”

  “But I’m not going back to Boston.”

  “You have to come back. We can’t protect you otherwise.”

  Josephine shook her head. “I’m better off somewhere else. Anywhere else.”

  “This man tracked you all the way here. You think he can’t repeat that trick?” Jane’s voice was quiet and relentless. “Let me tell you what Bradley Rose does to his victims. He cripples them first, so they can’t escape. The way he’s crippled you. The way he crippled Madam X. For a while, he kept her alive. He kept her someplace where no one could hear her. He held her captive for weeks, and God knows what he did to her during that time.” Jane’s voice was softer, almost intimate. “And even when she died, she remained his possession. He preserved her as a keepsake. She became part of his harem, Josephine, a harem of dead souls.” She added, softly: “You’re his next victim.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Josephine cried. “You think I’m not already scared enough?”

  “We can keep you safe,” said Frost. “Your locks have already been replaced, and every time you leave your building, we’ll arrange an escort. Someone will go with you, anywhere you need to go.”

  “I don’t know.” Josephine hugged herself, but it was not enough to still her shaking. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “We know who the killer is,” said Jane. “We know how he operates, so the advantage is all ours.”

  Josephine was silent as she considered her choices. Run or fight. There were no in-betweens, no half measures.

  “Come back to Boston,” said Jane. “Help us put an end to it.”

  “If you were me, is that really what you would do?” Josephine asked softly. She looked up.

  Jane stared straight back at her. “It’s exactly what I would do.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  A row of shiny new locks now decorated her apartment door.

  Josephine fastened the chain, turned the dead bolt, and slid the latch shut. Then, just for good measure, she wedged a chair beneath the knob—not much of a barrier, but at least it would serve as a warning device.

  Clumsy in her cast, she maneuvered on crutches to the window and looked down at the street. She saw Detective Frost emerge from her building and climb into his car. Once, he might have looked up and given her a smile, a friendly wave, but not anymore. He was all business with her now, as cool and detached as his colleague Rizzoli. This is the consequence of telling lies, she thought. I wasn’t honest, and now he doesn’t trust me. He’s right not to trust me.

  I haven’t told them the biggest secret of all.

  Frost had already checked her apartment when they’d arrived, but she now felt compelled to make her own inspection through her bedroom, her bathroom, and then into the kitchen. It was such a modest little kingdom, but at least it was hers. Everything was as she’d left it a week ago; everything comfortingly familiar. Everything once again back to normal.

&nb
sp; But later that evening, as she stood at the stove stirring onions and tomatoes into a simmering pot of chili, she suddenly thought about Gemma, who would never again enjoy a meal, never again smell spices or taste wine or feel the heat wafting up from a stove.

  When she finally sat down to eat, she could stomach only a few spoonfuls, and then her appetite vanished. She sat staring at the wall, at the only adornment she’d hung there: a calendar. It was a sign of how uncertain she’d been that she’d actually make a home in Boston. She’d never gotten around to properly decorating her apartment. But now I will, she thought. Detective Rizzoli was right: It’s time to take control and claim this city as my own. I’m going to stop running. I owe it to Gemma, who sacrificed everything for me, who died so that I could live. So now I will live. I’ll have a home, and I’ll make friends, and maybe I’ll even fall in love.

  It starts now.

  Outside, the afternoon faded to a warm summer dusk.

  With her leg in a cast, she could not take her usual evening walk, could not even pace the floor. Instead she opened a bottle of wine and carried it to the couch, where she sat surfing through TV channels, more channels than she ever knew existed, and all of them the same. Pretty faces. Men with guns. More pretty faces. Men with golf clubs.

  Suddenly a new image appeared on the TV, one that made her hand freeze on the remote. It was the evening news, and on the screen was a photo of a young woman, dark-haired and pretty.

  “…the woman whose mummified body was found in the Crispin Museum has been identified. Lorraine Edgerton vanished from a remote New Mexico park twenty-five years ago…”

  It was Madam X. She looks like my mother. She looks like me.

  She shut off the TV. The apartment seemed more like a cage than a home, and she was a bird beating itself insane against the bars. I want my life back.

  After three glasses of wine, she finally fell asleep.

  It was barely light when she woke up. Sitting at the window, she watched the sun rise and wondered how many days she’d be trapped within these walls. This, too, was a kind of death, waiting for the next attack, the next threatening note. She had told Rizzoli and Frost about the mailings addressed to Josephine Sommer—evidence that, unfortunately, she had ripped up and flushed down the toilet. Now the police were monitoring both her apartment and her mail.

  The next move was Bradley Rose’s.

  Outside, the morning brightened. Buses rumbled past and joggers began their circuit around the block and people headed off to work. She watched as the day progressed and saw the playground fill with children and the afternoon traffic began to build.

  By evening, she could stand it no longer. Everyone is getting on with their lives, she thought. Everyone except me.

  She picked up the phone and called Nick Robinson. “I want to come back to work,” she said.

  Jane was looking at the face of Victim Zero, the woman who got away.

  The photo of Medea Sommer was from the yearbook of Stanford University, where Medea had been a student twenty-seven years earlier. She’d been a dark-haired, dark-eyed beauty with finely sculpted cheekbones and a haunting resemblance to her daughter, Josephine. You were the one Bradley Rose really wanted, thought Jane. The woman he and his partner Jimmy Otto could never catch. So they collected substitutes, women who looked like Medea. But none of their victims was Medea; none could match the original. They kept hunting, kept searching, but Medea and her daughter managed to stay one step ahead of them.

  Until San Diego.

  A warm hand settled onto her shoulder, and she snapped straight in her chair.

  “Wow.” Her husband, Gabriel, laughed. “A good thing you aren’t armed, or you might have just shot me.” He set Regina down on the kitchen floor, and she toddled off to play with her favorite pot lids.

  “I didn’t hear you come in,” said Jane. “That was a short trip to the playground.”

  “The weather doesn’t look so good out there. It’s going to start raining any minute.” He leaned over her shoulder and saw the photo of Medea. “That’s her? The mother?”

  “I tell you, this woman is a real Madam X. There’s not much I can dig up on her except her college records.”

  Gabriel sat down and scanned the few documents that Boston PD had been able to gather so far about Medea, and they provided only the barest sketch of a young woman who seemed more shadow than substance. Gabriel slipped on his glasses and sat back to read Medea’s Stanford University records. His horn-rimmed spectacles were new, and they made him look more like a banker than an FBI agent who knew his way around a gun. Even after a year and a half of marriage, Jane had not grown tired of watching him—and admiring him, the way she did now. Despite the thunder rumbling outside, despite the racket in the kitchen where Regina banged pot lids, he focused like a laser on the pages.

  Jane went into the kitchen and scooped up Regina, who squirmed, impatient to escape. Won’t you ever be content just to rest quietly in my arms? Jane wondered as she hugged her wriggling daughter, as she breathed in the scents of shampoo and warm baby skin, the sweetest smells in the world. Every day, Jane saw more of herself in Regina, in the girl’s dark eyes and exuberantly curly hair, and in her fierce independence as well. Her daughter was a fighter, and there would be battles between them to come. But as she looked into Regina’s eyes, Jane also knew that theirs was a bond that could never be broken. To keep her daughter safe, Jane would risk anything, endure anything.

  Just as Josephine did for her mother.

  “This is a puzzling life story,” said Gabriel.

  Jane set her daughter down on the floor and looked up at her husband. “Medea’s, you mean?”

  “Born and raised in Indio, California. Stellar grades at Stanford University. Then she abruptly drops out in her senior year to have a baby.”

  “And soon afterward, they both vanish from the record.”

  “And become other people.”

  “Repeatedly,” said Jane. She sat down at the table again. “Five name changes, as far as Josephine remembers.”

  He pointed to a police report. “This is interesting. In Indio, she filed complaints against both Bradley Rose and Jimmy Otto. They were already engaged in cooperative stalking. Like a wolf pack, moving in on their kill.”

  “What’s even more interesting is that Medea abruptly dropped all charges against Bradley Rose and left Indio. And since she didn’t stay to testify against Jimmy Otto, the charges against him never went anywhere.”

  “Why would she drop the charges against Bradley?” he asked.

  “We’ll never know.”

  Gabriel set down the report. “Being the target of stalkers could explain why she’d run and hide. It would make her keep changing her name, just to stay safe.”

  “But her own daughter doesn’t remember it that way. Josephine claims Medea was running from the law.” Jane sighed.

  “And that leads to another mystery.”

  “What?”

  “There are no outstanding warrants for Medea Sommer. If she committed any crime, no one seems to know about it.”

  The annual neighborhood cookout at the Rizzoli house was a tradition going back nearly twenty years, and neither black clouds nor approaching thunderstorms could derail the event. Every summer, Jane’s father, Frank, would proudly fire up his outdoor grill, slap on steaks and chicken, and assume the role of chef for a day—the only day all year that he wielded a cooking utensil of any kind.

  Today, though, it wasn’t Frank but retired detective Vince Korsak who’d assumed the role of barbecue chef, in carnivore nirvana as he flipped steaks, splashing grease on the extra-large apron draped over his generous belly. This was the first time Jane had seen any man but her father in charge of the backyard grill, a reminder that nothing lasted forever, not even her parents’ marriage. A month after Frank Rizzoli had walked out on his wife, Vince Korsak had waltzed in. By the way he assumed control of the grill, he was making it clear to the neighborhood that he was the new ma
n in Angela Rizzoli’s life.

  And the new master of the barbecue tongs was not about to abandon his post.

  As thunder rumbled and clouds darkened overhead, guests scrambled to bring all the dishes inside before an imminent lightning strike. But Korsak stayed by the grill.

  “No way am I gonna let nice little filets like these get ruined,” he said.

  Jane looked up as the first raindrops began to fall. “Everyone’s going inside. We could finish those steaks under the broiler.”

  “Are you kidding? When you go to all the trouble of buying aged beef and wrapping it in bacon, you gotta cook it right.”

  “Even if it means getting hit by lightning?”

  “Like I’m scared of lightning?” He laughed. “Hey, I already died once. Another jolt to the chest can’t hurt the ol’ ticker.”

  “But that bacon sure will,” she said, watching the grease drip onto the flames. Two years ago, a heart attack had forced Korsak into retirement, but it hadn’t scared him off his butter and beef. And Mom hasn’t helped matters any, thought Jane, glancing at the patio picnic table, where Angela was retrieving the mayonnaise-cloaked potato salad.

  Korsak waved as Angela headed inside through the screen door. “Your ma changed my life, you know,” he said. “I was starving to death on that stupid fish-and-salad diet. Then she taught me just to go for the gusto in life.”

  “Isn’t that a beer commercial?”

  “She’s a real firecracker. Man, ever since we started going out, I can’t believe the things she talks me into! Last night, she got me to try octopus for the first time. Then there was that night we went skinny-dipping—”

  “Hold on. I don’t need to hear this.”

  “It’s like I’ve been born again. I never thought I’d meet a woman like your ma.” He picked up a steak and flipped it over. Fragrant smoke sizzled up from the grill, and she remembered all the earlier summer meals her father had cooked on that same barbecue. But now it was Korsak who’d proudly carry in the platter of steaks, who’d be uncorking the wine bottles. This is what you gave up, Dad. Is the new girlfriend worth it? Or do you wake up every morning and wonder why the hell you left Mom?