“I’m good, thanks,” said Jane.
“Come on. Don’t make an old cop drink alone.”
She nodded to the bartender. “Sam Adams lager.”
“And a refill for me,” added Buckholz.
“You want to move to a table, Hank?” asked Jane.
“Naw, I like it right here. This is my stool. Always has been. Besides,” he added, glancing around at the nearly empty room, “who’s here to listen in? This is such an old case, no one’s paying attention anymore. Except for maybe the family.”
“And you.”
“Yeah, well, it’s hard to let go, you know? All these years later, the ones I never closed, they still keep me up at night. The Charlotte Dion case especially, because it ticked me off when her father hired a PI to follow up on it. Implication being I’m a lousy cop.” He grunted and took a gulp of scotch. “All that money he wasted, just to prove that I didn’t miss anything.”
“So the PI never got anywhere, either?”
“Nope. That girl just plain vanished. No witnesses, no evidence except her backpack, left in the alley. Nineteen years ago, we didn’t have nearly as many surveillance cameras around to catch anything. Whoever snatched her did it quick and clean. Had to be a spur-of-the-moment thing.”
“How do you figure that?”
“It was a school field trip. She went to this fancy boarding school, the Bolton Academy, out past Framingham. Thirty kids came into the city on a private bus to walk the Freedom Trail. Their stop at Faneuil Hall was a last-minute decision. Teacher told me the kids got hungry, so that’s where they went for lunch. I’m thinking the perp spotted Charlotte and just moved in.” He shook his head. “Talk about a high-profile snatch. Patrick Dion’s a venture capitalist and he was in London when it happened. Flew home on his own private jet. Considering who he was, and his net worth, I expected there’d be a ransom demand. But it never came. Charlotte just dropped off the face of the earth. No clues, no body. Nothing.”
“Her mother was killed in the Red Phoenix restaurant just a month before that.”
“Yeah, I know. Rotten luck in that family.” He sipped his scotch. “Money can’t stop the Grim Reaper.”
“You think that’s all it was? Rotten luck?”
“Lou Ingersoll and I talked and talked about it. We couldn’t see a way to tie the two events together, and we looked at it every which way. Custody fight over Charlotte? Nasty divorce? Money?”
“Nothing?”
Buckholz shook his head. “I’ve gone through a divorce myself, and I still hate the bitch. But Patrick Dion, he and his ex-wife stayed friends. He even got along with her new husband.”
“Even though Arthur ran off with Patrick’s wife?”
He laughed. “Yeah, can you figure? They started off two happy families. Patrick, Dina, and Charlotte. Arthur, Barbara, and their son, Mark. Both kids attended that snooty Bolton Academy, which is how the families met. They started having dinners together. Then Arthur hooks up with Patrick’s wife, and everyone gets divorced. Arthur marries Dina, Patrick gets custody of twelve-year-old Charlotte, and they all go on being friends. It’s unnatural, I tell ya.” He set down his glass. “The normal thing would’ve been to hate each other.”
“Are you sure they didn’t?”
“I guess it’s possible they hid it. It’s possible that five years after their divorce, Patrick Dion stalked his ex-wife and her husband to that restaurant and shot them in a fit of rage. But Mark Mallory swore to me that everyone was friendly. And he lost his own father in that shooting.”
“What about Mark’s mother? Was she hunky-dory about losing her husband to another woman?”
“I never got a chance to talk with Barbara Mallory. She had a stroke a year before the shooting. The day Charlotte vanished, Barbara was in a rehab hospital. She died a month later. Yet another bad-luck family.” He waved at the bartender. “Hey, I need another one here.”
“Um, did you drive, Hank?” asked Jane, frowning at his empty glass.
“It’s okay. I promise, this’ll be my last.”
The bartender set another scotch on the counter and Buckholz just stared at it, as though its mere presence was enough to satisfy him for the moment. “So that’s the story in a nutshell,” he said. “Charlotte Dion was seventeen, blond, and gorgeous. When she wasn’t attending that boarding school, she lived with her rich daddy. She had everything going for her, and then—poof. She’s snatched off a street. We just haven’t found her remains yet.” He picked up the scotch, his hand now steady. “Hell of a thing, life.”
“And death.”
He laughed and took a sip. “So true.”
“You have any thoughts about the other girl who vanished? Laura Fang?”
“That was Sedlak’s case, rest his soul. But I did review it, because of the Red Phoenix connection. Didn’t find anything to make me think the abductions were related. I think Charlotte was a spontaneous spot and snatch. Laura, she was a different case. It happened right after school got out and she was walking home. One of her schoolmates saw Laura voluntarily climb into someone’s car, like she knew the driver. But no one got a license plate and the girl was never seen again. So that’s another body that’s never been found.” He stared at the bottles lined up on the other side of the counter. “Makes you wonder just how many skeletons are piled up in the woods, in the landfills. Millions of people missing in this country. All those bones. I can accept the fact I’m gonna die someday, as long as there’s a nice marker to tell the world it’s me buried there. But to never be found? To end up hidden under some weeds? That’s like you never even existed.” He shuddered. “Anyway, that’s the Charlotte Dion case in a nutshell. Does that help any?”
“I don’t know. Right now, it’s just one piece of a very confusing puzzle.” Jane waved to the bartender. “Let me have the tab.”
“No way,” said Buckholz.
“You just did me a favor, telling me about Charlotte.”
“I’m here all the time anyway. This seat, this bar. You know where to find me.” He looked down at her ringing cell phone. “I see you’re a girl in demand. Lucky you.”
“Depends who’s calling.” She answered her phone. “Detective Rizzoli.”
“I’m sorry to have to make this call.” It was a man’s voice, and he did indeed sound reluctant to be talking to her. “I believe you’re Detective Tam’s supervisor?”
“Yes, we work together.”
“I’m calling on behalf of all the victims’ families. We’d prefer not to deal with Detective Tam anymore. He’s managed to upset everyone, especially poor Mary Gilmore. After all these years, why are we being subjected to these questions again?”
Jane massaged her head, dreading the talk she would need to have with her younger colleague. You are a public servant. Which means you must not piss off the public. “I’m sorry, sir,” she said. “I didn’t catch your name.”
“Patrick Dion.”
She straightened. Looked at Buckholz, who was following the conversation with keen interest. Once a cop, always a cop. “Dina Mallory was your ex-wife?” she said.
“Yes. And it’s painful, being reminded of how she died.”
“I understand it’s difficult for you, Mr. Dion. But Detective Tam needs to ask these questions.”
“Dina died nineteen years ago. There was never any doubt about who killed her. Why is this coming up again?”
“I can’t really discuss it. It’s—”
“Yes, I know. It’s part of a current investigation. That’s what Detective Tam said.”
“Because it’s true.”
“Mark Mallory is livid about this, and it’s got both Mary Gilmore and her daughter upset. First we get those notes in the mail, and then Detective Tam starts calling us. We’d all like to know why this is happening now.”
“Excuse me,” she cut in. “What’s this about getting notes?”
“It’s been going on for six, seven years. Every March thirtieth they show up in
our mailboxes, like some grim anniversary reminder.”
“What’s in these notes?”
“I always get a copy of Dina’s obituary. On the back, someone writes: Don’t you want to know the truth?”
“Do you still have those notes?”
“Yes, and Mary has hers. But Mark was so angry, he tossed his out.”
“Who’s sending these things? Do you know?”
“I have to assume they come from the same person who took out the ad in the Globe. That Iris Fang.”
“Why would Mrs. Fang be doing this?”
There was a long pause. “I hate to speak badly of Mrs. Fang. She lost her husband so I know she’s suffered, too. I feel sorry for her. But I think the issue is quite obvious.”
“What’s obvious?”
“The woman,” said Patrick, “is insane.”
By the time her doorbell rang, Maura had the dinner table set and a leg of lamb roasting in the oven. Teenage boys were notorious for their appetites, so she had brought home both a blueberry and an apple pie, had baked four potatoes and shucked half a dozen ears of corn. Did the boy eat salad? She didn’t know. During those desperately hungry days they’d spent together in the Wyoming wilderness, she and Rat had survived on whatever they could forage. She had watched him devour dog biscuits and tinned beans and tree bark. Surely he wouldn’t turn up his nose at lettuce, and he could probably use the vitamins. When she’d last seen him in January, he’d been pale and thin, and it was that undernourished boy she was cooking for tonight. No matter how the week goes, she thought, he will not leave my house hungry. It was the one detail she could prepare for, the one variable she could control.
Because everything else about his first visit to her house was fraught with unknowns.
She owed her life to Julian “Rat” Perkins, yet she scarcely knew him, and he scarcely knew her. Together they had fought to stay alive, and there was no more intimate bond two people could know than to stare death in the face together. Now they were about to find out if that bond could survive the acid test of a week in each other’s company, under civilized conditions.
At the sound of the doorbell, she dried her hands on a dish towel and hurried down the hall, aware that her heart was suddenly thumping hard. Relax, he’s only a boy, she thought as she opened the front door. And was almost knocked down when an enormous black dog reared up to greet her, its two front paws landing on her chest.
“Bear! Down, boy!” yelled Rat.
She laughed as the dog gave her a sloppily joyful lick on her face. Then it dropped to all fours, tail wagging, and barked. Maura smiled at the boy, who looked thoroughly appalled by his companion’s bad manners. “Well?” she said. “Aren’t you going to give me a hug, too?”
“Hello, ma’am,” he said and awkwardly wrapped long arms around her. She was startled by how much bigger he seemed, how much muscle he’d put on since she’d last seen him. Was it possible for a boy to grow so much in only a few months?
“I missed you, Rat,” she murmured. “I missed you both so much.”
Footsteps creaked on the porch stairs and the boy suddenly pulled away from her, as though embarrassed to be seen hugging her. Maura looked at the man now standing behind Rat. Anthony Sansone had always seemed a forbidding figure, physically imposing, his face impossible to read, but on this gloomy afternoon, he was smiling as he set down Rat’s backpack on the porch.
“There you go, Julian,” he said.
“Thank you for driving him all the way to Boston,” she said.
“It was a pleasure, Maura. It gave us a chance to talk.” He paused, his gaze searching her face, and as always he seemed to see too much. “It’s been a long time since we spoke. How are you?”
“I’m fine. Busy.” She forced a smile. “I never have any shortage of clients. Would you like to come in for a bit?”
He looked at the boy, who’d been glancing back and forth between them, following their conversation with great interest. “No, I should let you and Julian catch up. Are you two going to be fine for the week?”
“I have to go in to work Monday and Tuesday, but starting Wednesday I have some time off. We’ll take a tour of the city.”
“Then I’ll pick you up next Saturday, Julian,” said Sansone, extending his arm to him.
The man and boy shook hands. It was an oddly formal farewell, but between these two it seemed perfectly natural, and just what was expected. Rat waited until Sansone returned to his car and drove away. Only then did he look at Maura.
“We talked about you,” he said. “On the drive down.”
“All good things, I hope.”
“I think he likes you. A lot.” Rat picked up his backpack. “But he’s kind of strange.”
People could say the same about you, she thought, looking at the boy. About both of us. She draped an arm around him and felt him flinch at the unaccustomed affection. For too long, the boy had lived like a wild animal, foraging in the Wyoming mountains, and in his eyes she still saw traces of the abandoned child. The world had not been kind to Julian Perkins, and it would take time for him to trust another human being.
They walked into the house, and the boy glanced around the living room. “Where did Bear go?”
“I think he’s already made himself at home here. I bet he’s discovered all the goodies in the kitchen.”
That was indeed where they found him, gobbling up the lamb trimmings that she’d placed in the ceramic dog bowl. She had never owned a dog, and the bowl was brand-new, as was the extra-large dog bed and the leash and the flea powder and the cans of Alpo stacked in the closet. Where the boy went, so did Bear, which meant that this week she was sharing her house with two alien creatures, a dog and a teenager. In the oven, drippings from the roasting lamb sizzled and she saw the boy lift his nose, like a beast scenting his supper.
“Dinner should be ready in an hour. Let me show you your room,” she said and frowned at his backpack. “Where’s your suitcase?”
“This is all I brought.”
“Then it looks like you and I need to go shopping for clothes.”
“No, I don’t really need anything,” he said as they walked up the hall. “We all wear uniforms at the school.”
“This room’s yours.”
Bear trotted in first, but the boy hesitated in the doorway, as if wondering whether a mistake had been made. It suddenly struck Maura what an absurdly feminine room this was for a boy and a dog. Reluctantly Rat stepped into the room and surveyed the white duvet, the vase of freshly cut flowers on the dresser, and the pale green Turkish rug. He touched nothing, as if these were all museum pieces and he was afraid to break something. Carefully he set his backpack in a corner.
“How is school?” she asked.
“It’s okay.” He knelt down to unzip the backpack. Out came two shirts, a sweater, a pair of trousers, all neatly rolled up.
“So you like being at Evensong? You’re happy there?”
“It’s different from my old school. People are nice to me.” It was a matter-of-fact statement, said without self-pity, and it revealed how painful his life must once have been. She had read his files from Wyoming, so she knew about his fistfights in the school yard, the taunts he’d endured about his ragged clothes and his fractured family. So many people, from his social worker to his psychologist, had warned her that the boy was too troubled, that taking him into her life could lead to consequences she’d regret. Now she watched that troubled boy calmly unpack his clothes and hang them neatly in the closet, and she thought: Thank God I never listened to them. To any of them.
“Have you made friends at school?” she asked. “Do you like the other students?”
“They’re a lot like me,” he said. He opened a dresser drawer and placed socks and underwear inside.
She smiled. “You mean they’re special.”
“They don’t have parents, either.”
This was news to her. When Sansone had told her he was offering the boy a scholarship to the
Evensong School, he had emphasized the institution’s academic strengths and rural campus, its international faculty and superb library. He had said nothing about it being a school for orphans.
“Are you sure about that?” she asked. “There must be some parents who come to visit.”
“Sometimes I see someone’s aunt or an uncle. But I’ve never met anyone’s mom or dad. He says we’re each other’s family now.”
“He?”
“Mr. Sansone.” Rat closed the dresser drawer and looked at her. “He asks about you all the time.”
Maura felt her face redden and she focused on Bear, who was turning around and around in the dog bed, getting a feel for this new luxury. “What sort of things does he ask?”
“If you’ve written me any letters lately. If you’re ever coming to visit the school. Whether you’d like to teach a class there.”
“At Evensong?” She shook her head. “I’m not sure a class in forensic pathology is appropriate for high school students.”
“But we’re learning a lot of cool stuff. Last month, Ms. Saul showed us how to build a Roman catapult. And they let me teach a class on animal tracks, because I know so much about it. We even dissected a horse.”
“Really?”
“He broke his leg, and they had to put him down. We cut him open and studied his organs.”
“Didn’t you find that upsetting?”
“I’ve dressed deer. I know what dead things look like.”
Yes, you do, she thought. In Wyoming, he had watched a man bleed to death. She wondered whether he sometimes startled awake at night, as she did, haunted by the memories of what had happened to them both in the mountains. He seemed so calm and controlled as he set his schoolbooks on the dresser, as he took his toothbrush into the bathroom, all his emotions shuttered up tight. He is more like me than I care to admit.
In the kitchen, her cell phone was ringing.
“Can I go outside and see the yard?” he asked.
“Go ahead. Let me get this call.”
She walked into the kitchen and pulled the cell phone out of her purse. “Dr. Isles,” she answered.
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