The Rizzoli & Isles Series 10-Book Bundle

by Tess Gerritsen

  Jane did not like coincidences. In the complex fabric of life they happened, of course, but she always felt compelled to examine what made the threads cross, whether it was truly random or if there was some grander design at work, a pattern that could only be seen when you traced those threads back to their origins. And so she sat at her desk trying to do exactly that, tracing five disparate threads that had tragically intersected in a Chinatown restaurant nineteen years ago.

  The Red Phoenix file was not a particularly thick one. For homicide detectives, a murder-suicide is a lucky catch, the kind of case that comes neatly wrapped up with a bow, justice conveniently dispensed by the perp himself in the form of a self-inflicted bullet. The police report by Staines and Ingersoll focused not on the who but the why of the shooting, and their analysis relied heavily on what Dr. Zucker had already told Jane and Frost about Wu Weimin.

  So she looked instead at the four victims.

  Victim number one was Joey Gilmore, age twenty-five, born and raised in South Boston. There was a great deal more information about Gilmore in the report, because he had a police record. Burglary, trespassing, assault and battery. That record, plus his employer’s name—Donohue Wholesale Meats—instantly caught Jane’s attention. Boston PD was all too familiar with the owner of the company, Kevin Donohue, because of his deep and enduring ties to local organized crime. Over the past four decades, Donohue had advanced through the ranks from a common street thug to one of the three most powerful names in the local Irish mafia. Law enforcement knew exactly who and what Donohue was; they just couldn’t prove it in court. Not yet.

  Jane pulled out the folder of crime scene photos and flipped to the image of Joey Gilmore’s body, lying on the floor amid scattered take-out cartons. He’d been felled with a single bullet to the back of his head. Dr. Zucker might call this a case of amok, but to Jane, it looked a hell of a lot like a gangland execution.

  Victim number two was James Fang, age thirty-seven, who worked as host, waiter, and cashier in the Red Phoenix restaurant. He and his wife, Iris, had immigrated from Taiwan sixteen years earlier, when he arrived in the United States as a graduate student in Asian literature. The restaurant was merely his evening job; during the day, he taught in the after-school enrichment program at the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center. He and Wu Weimin were described as good friends who had worked together in the Red Phoenix for five years. There were no known conflicts between them. Jane found no mention in the report of the Fangs’ daughter, Laura, who had gone missing two years before. Perhaps Staines and Ingersoll were not even aware of the earlier tragedy that had struck the Fang family.

  Victims three and four were a married couple, Arthur and Dina Mallory of Brookline, Massachusetts. Arthur was forty-eight, president and CEO of the Wellesley Group, an investment firm. No occupation was listed for Dina, age forty; judging by her husband’s job title, she did not need to work. For both Arthur and Dina, this was a second marriage, and a blending of two families. Arthur’s first wife was the former Barbara Hart, and they had a son, Mark, age twenty. Dina’s ex-husband was Patrick Dion, and they had a daughter, seventeen. The police report specifically addressed the issue that every good homicide investigator automatically explores: any and all conflicts that resulted from the victims’ divorces and remarriages.

  According to Arthur Mallory’s son, Mark Mallory, relations between the Mallory and Dion families were extremely cordial despite the fact Dina and Arthur left their first spouses for each other five years earlier. Even after the divorce and remarriage, Dina Mallory and her ex-husband, Patrick, remained on friendly terms, and the families often shared holiday dinners.

  How bizarrely civilized that was, thought Jane. Patrick’s wife leaves him for another man, and then they all spend Christmas together. It sounded too good to be true, but the information came straight from Arthur Mallory’s own son, Mark, who would know. It was the ideal reconstituted family, all smiles and no conflict. She supposed it was possible, but she certainly could not see it happening in her own family. She tried to imagine a Rizzoli reunion that included her father, her mother, her father’s bimbo, and her mother’s new boyfriend, Vince Korsak. Now, there was a massacre waiting to happen, and all bets were off as to who’d be left standing.

  But the Mallorys and Dions had somehow made it work. Perhaps it was for the sake of Charlotte, who would have been only twelve when her parents divorced. Like most children of divorce, she’d probably shuttled between two households, the poor little rich girl, bouncing between the homes of her mother, Dina, and her father, Patrick.

  Jane turned to the last page in the file and found a brief addendum to the report:

  Charlotte Dion, daughter of Dina Mallory, was reported missing April 24. Last seen in vicinity of Faneuil Hall while on school field trip. According to Detective Hank Buckholz, evidence points to likely abduction. Investigation continuing.

  That addendum, dated April 28, was signed by Detective Ingersoll.

  Two missing girls, Laura Fang and Charlotte Dion. Both of them were daughters of victims killed in the Red Phoenix, but nothing in this report indicated that this was anything more than a sad coincidence. It was just as Dr. Zucker had said. Sometimes there is no pattern, no plan, but merely the blind cruelty of fate, which keeps no running tally of who has suffered too much.

  “You know, Rizzoli, all you had to do was ask me.”

  She looked up to see Johnny Tam standing beside her desk. “Ask you what?”

  “About the Red Phoenix massacre. I just ran into Frost. He told me you two have been hunting down all the files. If you’d just talked to me, I could have told you all about the case.”

  “How would you know about it? You were like, what, eight years old when it happened?”

  “I’m assigned to Chinatown so I have to know what goes on there. The Chinese still talk about the Red Phoenix, you know. It’s like a wound that never healed. And never will, because it’s all tied up in shame.”

  “Shame? Why?”

  “The killer was one of our own. And by our own, I mean all Chinese.” He pointed to the folders on her desk. “I reviewed that case file two months ago. I spoke to Lou Ingersoll. I read the ME’s reports.” He tapped his head. “The info’s all right here.”

  “I didn’t know you were familiar with it.”

  “Did it occur to you to ask me? I thought I was part of the team.”

  She didn’t like the accusatory note in his voice. “Yes, you’re part of the team,” she acknowledged. “I’ll try to remember it. But things’ll go a lot easier for all of us if you got rid of that chip on your shoulder.”

  “I just want to be right in front of the hunt. Not treated like the geeky backup guy, which happens way too often around here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Boston PD’s supposed to be one big, happy melting pot, right?” He laughed. “Bullshit.”

  For a moment she studied him, trying to read his stony expression. Suddenly she recognized herself at his age, hungry to prove herself and resentful that, too often, she was ignored. “Sit down, Tam,” she said.

  Sighing, he pulled up the nearest chair and sat. “Yeah?”

  “You think I have no idea what it’s like to be a minority?”

  “I don’t know. Do you?”

  “Look around this place. How many female homicide detectives do you see? There’s one, and you’re talking to her. I know what it’s like having guys shut me out of the loop because I’m the girl and they think there’s no way I’m good enough to do the job. You just need to learn to deal with all the jerks and the bullshit, because there’s an endless supply of both.”

  “It doesn’t mean we stop calling them on it.”

  “For all the difference it makes.”

  “You must have made a difference. Because now they accept you.”

  She thought about whether that was true. Remembered what her life used to be like when she’d first joined the unit and had to put up with the snickers a
nd the tampon jokes and the deliberate snubs. Yes, things were better now, but the war had been hard-fought and had taken years.

  “It’s not complaining that makes the difference,” she said. “It’s all about doing the job better than anyone else.” She paused. “I hear you aced the exam for detective on your first try.”

  His nod was curt. “Top score, as a matter of fact.”

  “And you’re what? Twenty-five?”

  “Twenty-six.”

  “That’s working against you, you know.”

  “What, the fact I’m seen as just another Asian geek?”

  “No. The fact you’re still a kid.”

  “Great. Yet another reason not to be taken seriously.”

  “The point is, there’s a dozen different reasons to feel like you’re at a disadvantage. Some are real, some are in your head. Just deal with it and do the job.”

  “If you’ll try to remember that I’m part of the team. Let me do some of the legwork on the Red Phoenix, since I’m already up on it. I can make calls, talk to the victims’ families.”

  “Frost already plans to interview Mrs. Fang again.”

  “So I’ll talk to the other families.”

  She nodded. “Fine. Now tell me where you’ve gone with the case already.”

  “I first checked it out back in February, when I got assigned to District A-1 and I heard some of the Chinatown locals talking about it. I remembered the case from back when I was a kid in New York City.”

  “You heard about it in New York?”

  “If it’s big news and it involves someone Chinese anywhere in the country, trust me, the whole Chinese community gossips about it. Even in New York, we talked about the Red Phoenix. I remember my grandmother telling me how shameful it was that the killer was one of us. She said it reflected badly on everyone who was Chinese. It made us all look like criminals.”

  “Geez. Talk about collective guilt.”

  “Yeah, we’re really good at that. Grandma, she’d pitch a fit if I tried to leave the house wearing ripped jeans, because she didn’t want people to think all Chinese were slobs. I grew up with the burden of representing an entire race every time I stepped out the door. So, yeah. I already had an interest in the Red Phoenix. Then when that ad in The Boston Globe came out in March, I got even more interested. I read through the case file a second time.”

  “What ad?”

  “It came out on the thirtieth, the anniversary of the shooting. Took up about a quarter page in the local section.”

  “I didn’t see it. What did the ad say?”

  “It ran a photo of the cook, Wu Weimin, with the word innocent in bold letters.” He stared across the desks in the homicide unit. “When I saw that ad, I wanted it to be true. I wanted Wu Weimin to be innocent, just so we could erase that black mark against us.”

  “You don’t really think he was innocent, do you?”

  He looked at her. “I don’t know.”

  “Staines and Ingersoll never doubted he was the shooter. Neither does Dr. Zucker.”

  “But that ad got me thinking. It made me wonder if Boston PD got it wrong nineteen years ago.”

  “Just because Wu was Chinese?”

  “Because people in Chinatown never believed he did it.”

  “Who paid for the ad? Did you ever find out?”

  He nodded. “I called the Globe. It was paid for by Iris Fang.”

  Jane’s cell phone rang. Even as she reached for it, she was processing that last piece of information. Wondering why, nineteen years after the event, Iris would buy an ad in defense of the man who had murdered her husband. Glancing at her phone, she saw that the incoming call was from the crime lab and she answered: “Rizzoli.”

  “I’m looking at those hairs right now,” said criminalist Erin Volchko. “And I’ll be damned if I can identify what they are.”

  It took a moment for Jane to shift her focus to what Erin was talking about. “You mean those hairs from the victim’s clothing?”

  “Yes. The ME’s office sent over two strands yesterday. One was plucked off the dead woman’s sleeve, the other from her leggings. They have similar morphology and color, so they’re probably from the same source.”

  Jane felt Tam watching her as she asked: “Are these hairs real or synthetic?”

  “These aren’t manufactured. They’re definitely organic.”

  “So are they human?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  Jane squinted into the microscope’s eyepiece, trying to make out some distinguishing feature, but what she saw through the lens looked scarcely different from all the other hairs that she’d seen over the years. She moved aside to let Tam have a peek.

  “What you’re seeing on that slide is a guard hair,” said Erin. “Guard hairs function as an animal’s outer coat.”

  “And that’s different from fur?” asked Tam.

  “Yes, it is. Fur is from the inner coat, and it provides insulation. Humans don’t have fur.”

  “So if this is a hair, what does it come from?”

  “It might be easier,” said Erin, “to tell you what it doesn’t come from. The pigmentation is consistent throughout the shaft length, so we know it’s an animal whose hair has the same color from root to tip. There are no coronal scales, which eliminates rodents and bats.”

  Tam looked up from the microscope. “What are coronal scales?”

  “Scales are structures that make up the cuticle—the outside of the hair, like the scales of a fish. The patterns in which the scales line up are characteristic of certain animal families.”

  “And you said that coronal scales are on rodents.”

  She nodded. “This hair lacks spinous scales as well, which tells us it didn’t come from a cat, a mink, or a seal.”

  “Are we going down the whole list of animal species?” asked Jane.

  “To some extent, this is a process of elimination.”

  “And so far you’ve eliminated rats, bats, and cats.”

  “Correct.”

  “Great,” muttered Jane. “We can cross Batman and Catwoman off our list of suspects.”

  Sighing, Erin pulled off her glasses and massaged the bridge of her nose. “Detective Rizzoli, I’m just explaining how difficult it is to identify an animal hair using only light microscopy. These morphologic clues help me eliminate some animal groups, but this specimen isn’t like anything I’ve encountered in this lab.”

  “What else can you eliminate?” asked Tam.

  “If it were deer or caribou, the root would be wineglass-shaped, and the hair would be coarser. So it’s not in the deer family. The color argues against raccoon or beaver, and it’s too coarse for rabbit or chinchilla. If I were to go by the shape of the root, the diameter, and the scale pattern, I’d say it’s most similar to human hair.”

  “Then why couldn’t it be human?” asked Jane.

  “Take another look in the microscope.”

  Jane bent down to peer into the eyepiece. “What am I supposed to focus on?”

  “Notice how it’s fairly straight, not kinked like a sexual hair from the pubic or underarm regions.”

  “Making this a head hair?”

  “That’s what I thought at first. That this was a human head hair. Now focus on the medulla, the central core of the strand. It’s like a channel running down the length of the hair. There’s something very strange about this specimen.”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “The medullary index. It’s the ratio between the diameter of the medulla and the diameter of the hair. I’ve looked at countless human specimens and I’ve never seen a medulla this wide in a head hair. In humans, the normal index is less than a third. This is more than half the diameter of the strand. It’s not just a channel, it’s a huge, honking pipe.”

  Jane straightened and looked at Erin. “Could it be some kind of medical condition? A genetic abnormality?”

  “None that I know of.”

  “Then what is this hair?�
�� asked Tam.

  Erin took a deep breath, as though trying to find the right words. “In almost every other way, this looks human. But it’s not.”

  Jane’s startled laugh cut through the silence. “What are we talking about here? Sasquatch?”

  “I’m guessing it’s some sort of nonhuman primate. A species I can’t identify with microscopy. There are no epithelial cells attached, so the only DNA we can look at would be mitochondrial.”

  “It would take forever to get those results,” said Tam.

  “So there’s one more test I’m thinking about,” said Erin. “I found a scientific article out of India, about electrophoretic analysis of hair keratin. They have a huge problem with the illegal fur trade, and they use this test to identify the furs of exotic species.”

  “Which labs can run that test?”

  “There are several wildlife labs in the US I can contact. It may turn out to be the quickest way to identify the species.” Erin looked at the microscope. “One way or another, I’m going to find out what this hairy creature is.”

  Retired detective Hank Buckholz looked like a man who’d fought a long, hard war with devil alcohol and had finally surrendered to the inevitable. Jane found him in his usual spot, sitting at the bar in J. P. Doyle’s, staring into a glass of scotch. It wasn’t even five PM yet, but by the looks of him Buckholz had already gotten a good head start for the evening, and when he stood up to greet her, she noticed his unsteady handshake and watery eyes. But eight years of retirement could not break old habits, and he still dressed like a detective, in a blazer and oxford shirt, even if that shirt was frayed around the collar.

  It was still early for the usual crowd at Doyle’s, a favorite hangout for Boston PD cops. With one wave, Buckholz was able to catch the bartender’s attention. “Her drink’s on me,” he announced, pointing to Jane. “What would you like, Detective?”