The Keepsake (24 page)

She hadn’t expected a call from him. Steeling herself for an update on his marital woes, she asked gently: “How are you doing?”

“I just spoke to Dr. Welsh.”

She had no idea who Dr. Welsh was. “Is that the marriage counselor you were planning to visit? I think it’s a great idea. You and Alice talk this out and figure what you need to do.”

“No, we haven’t seen a counselor yet. I’m not calling about that.”

“Then who’s Dr. Welsh?”

“She’s that biologist from UMass, the one who told me all about bogs and fens. She called me back today, and I thought you’d want to hear this.”

Talking about bogs and fens was a big improvement, she thought. At least he wasn’t sobbing about Alice. She glanced at her watch, wondering how long it would take Dr. Hilzbrich to find Jimmy Otto’s file.

“…and it’s really rare. That’s why it took her days to identify it. She had to bring it to some botanist at Harvard, and he just confirmed it.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “What are you talking about?”

“Those bits of plant matter we picked out of Bog Lady’s hair. There were leaves and some kind of seedpod. Dr. Welsh said it’s from a plant called…” There was a pause, and Jane heard shuffling pages as he searched his notes. “
Carex oronensis.
That’s the scientific name. It’s also known as Orono sedge.”

“This plant grows in bogs?”

“And in fields. It also likes highly disturbed sites like clearings and roadsides. The specimen looked fresh, so she thinks it got picked up in the corpse’s hair when the body was moved. Orono sedge doesn’t produce seedpods until July.”

Jane was now paying full attention to what he was saying. “You said this plant is rare. How rare?”

“There’s only one area in the world where it grows. The Penobscot River Valley.”

“Where’s that?”

“Maine. Up around the Bangor area.”

She stared out the window at the dense curtain of trees surrounding Dr. Hilzbrich’s house.
Maine. Bradley Rose spent two years of his life here.

“Rizzoli,” said Frost. “I want to come back.”

“What?”

“I shouldn’t have bailed out on you. I want to be on the team again.”

“Are you sure you’re ready?”

“I need to do this. I need to help.”

“You already have,” she said. “Welcome back.”

As she hung up, Dr. Hilzbrich came into the room, carrying three thick folders. “Here are Jimmy’s files,” he said, handing them to her.

“I need to know one more thing, Doctor.”

“Yes?”

“You said the institute’s been shut down. What happened to the property?”

He shook his head. “It was on the market for years but it never sold. Too damn remote to interest any developers. I couldn’t keep up with the taxes, so now I’m about to lose it.”

“It’s currently unoccupied?”

“It’s been shuttered for years.”

Once again, she glanced at her watch, and considered how many hours of daylight she had. She looked up at Hilzbrich. “Tell me how to get there.”

THIRTY-ONE

Lying awake on the mildewed mattress, Josephine stared into the darkness of her prison and thought of the day, twelve years ago, when she and her mother had fled San Diego. It was the morning after Medea had mopped up the blood and washed the walls and disposed of the man who had invaded their home, forever changing their lives.

They had crossed the border into Mexico, and as their car barreled through the arid scrubland of Baja, Josephine was still shaking with fear. But Medea had been eerily calm and focused, her hands perfectly steady on the steering wheel. Josephine had not understood how her mother could be so composed. She had not understood so many things. That was the day she saw her mother for who she really was.

That was the day she learned she was the daughter of a lioness.

“Everything I’ve done has been for you,” Medea told her as their car hurtled along blacktop that shimmered with heat. “I did it to keep us together. We are a family, darling, and a family has to stick together.” She looked at her terrified daughter, who sat huddled beside her like an injured animal. “Do you remember what I told you about the nuclear family? How anthropologists define it?”

A man had just bled to death in their house. They had just disposed of his body and fled the country. And her mother was calmly lecturing her about anthropological theory?

Despite the incredulity in her daughter’s eyes, Medea had continued. “Anthropologists will tell you that a nuclear family is not mother, father, and child. No, it’s mother and child. Fathers come and go. They sail off to sea or they march off to war, and often they don’t come home. But mother and child are linked forever. Mother and child are the primordial unit.
We
are that unit, and I’ll do whatever it takes to protect it, to protect
us.
That’s why we have to run.”

And so they had run. They’d left a city they’d both loved, a city that had been home to them for three years—long enough for friendships to be made, for bonds to be forged.

In one night, with a single gunshot, all those bonds were snapped forever.

“Look in the glove compartment,” Medea had said. “There’s an envelope.”

The daughter, still dazed, found the envelope and opened it. Inside were two birth certificates, two passports, and a driver’s license. “What is this?”

“Your new name.”

The girl opened the passport and saw her own photo—a photo that she vaguely remembered posing for months before, at her mother’s insistence. She had not realized it was for a passport.

“What do you think?” Medea asked.

The daughter stared at the name.
Josephine.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” said Medea. “It’s your new name.”

“Why do I need it? Why are we doing this again?” The girl’s voice rose to a hysterical shriek.
“Why?”

Medea pulled over to the side of the road and stopped the car. She grasped her daughter’s face in her hands and forced her to meet her gaze. “We’re doing this because we have no choice. If we don’t run, they’ll put me in jail. They’ll take you from me.”

“But you didn’t do anything! You’re not the one who killed him!
I did!
”

Medea grabbed her daughter’s shoulders and gave her a hard shake. “Don’t ever tell that to anyone, do you understand? Not
ever.
If we’re ever caught, if the police ever find us, you have to tell them that I shot him. Tell them I killed that man, not you.”

“Why do you want me to lie?”

“Because I love you and I don’t want you to suffer for what happened. You shot him to protect me. Now I’m protecting you. So promise me you’ll keep this secret.
Promise me.
”

And her daughter had promised, even though the events of that night were still vivid: Her mother sprawled on the bedroom floor, the man standing over her. The alien gleam of a gun on the nightstand. How heavy it had felt when she’d picked it up. How her hands had trembled when she’d pulled the trigger. She, and not her mother, had killed the intruder. That was the secret between them, the secret that they alone shared.

“No one ever has to know you killed him,” Medea had said.

“This is my problem, not yours. It will never be yours. You’re going to grow up and go on with your life. You’re going to be happy. And this will stay buried in the past.”

But it hasn’t stayed buried, thought Josephine as she lay in her prison.
What happened that night has come back to haunt me.

Cracks of light slowly brightened in the window boards as dawn progressed to midday. It was just enough light for her to barely see the outline of her own hand when she held it in front of her face. A few more days in this place, she thought, and I’ll be like a bat, able to navigate in the dark.

She sat up, shaking off the morning chill. She heard the chain rattling outside as the dog lapped up water. She followed suit and sipped from her water jug. Two nights ago, when her captor had cut off her hair, he’d also left behind a fresh bag of bread, and she was enraged to discover there were newly chewed holes in the plastic. The mice had been at it. Find your own damn food, she thought as she greedily wolfed down two slices. I need the energy; I need to find a way to get out of here.

I’ll do it for us, Mom. For the primordial unit. You taught me how to survive so I will. Because I am your daughter.

As the hours passed, she flexed her muscles, rehearsed her moves.
I am my mother’s daughter.
That was her mantra. Again and again, Josephine hobbled around the cell with her eyes closed, memorizing how many steps it took to travel between the mattress and the wall, the wall and the door. The darkness would be her friend, if she knew how to use it.

Outside, the dog began to bark.

She looked up, her heart suddenly banging hard, as footsteps creaked across the ceiling.

He’s back. This is it, this is my chance.

She dropped down onto the mattress and curled into a fetal position, assuming the universal pose of the scared and the defeated. He would see a woman who had given up, a woman who was prepared to die. A woman who would give him no trouble.

The bolt squealed. The door opened.

She saw the glow of his flashlight beaming from the doorway. He came into the room and set down a fresh jug of water, another bag of bread. She remained perfectly still.
Let him wonder if I’m dead.

His footsteps came closer, and she heard him breathing in the dark above her. “Time is running out, Josephine,” he said.

She did not move, even as he bent down and stroked her shorn scalp.

“Doesn’t she love you? Doesn’t she want to save you? Why doesn’t she come?”

Don’t say a word. Don’t move a muscle. Make him lean closer.

“All these years she’s managed to hide from me. Now if she doesn’t come out, then she’s a coward. Only a coward would let her daughter die.”

She felt the mattress sag as he knelt beside her.

“Where is she?” he asked. “Where is Medea?”

Her silence frustrated him. He grasped her wrist and said, “Maybe the hair wasn’t enough. Maybe it’s time to send them another souvenir. Do you think a finger would do?”

No. God, no.
Panic was screaming at her to wrench her hand away, to kick and shriek, anything to escape the ordeal to come. But she remained frozen, still playing the victim paralyzed by despair. He shone the flashlight directly in her face and, blinded by the light, she could not read his expression, could not see anything in the black hollows of his eyes. He was so focused on provoking a response from her that he did not notice what she held in her free hand. He did not notice her muscles snap as tense as a bowstring.

“Maybe if I start cutting,” he said, “you’ll start talking.” He pulled out a knife.

She thrust her hand upward and blindly drove the spike of the high-heeled shoe into his face. She heard the heel thud into flesh and he fell backward, shrieking.

She snatched up the flashlight and slammed it against the floor, smashing the bulb. The room went black.
Darkness is my friend.
She rolled away and scrambled to her feet. She could hear him a few feet away, groveling on the floor, but she could not see him, and he could not see her. They were equally blind.

Only I know how to find the door in the dark.

All the rehearsals, all the preparation, had seared the next moves into her brain. From the edge of the mattress, it was three paces to the wall. Follow the wall seven more steps and she’d reach the door. Though the cast on her leg slowed her down, she wasted no time navigating through the darkness. She paced out seven steps. Eight steps. Nine…

Where is the damn door?

She could hear him breathing hard, grunting in frustration as he struggled to get his bearings, to locate her in that pitch-black room.

Don’t make a sound. Don’t let him know where you are.

She backed up slowly, scarcely daring to breathe, each step placed with delicate care so she would not give away her position. Her hand slid across smooth concrete, then her fingers brushed across wood.

The door.

She turned the knob and pushed. The sudden squeal of hinges seemed deafening.

Move!

Already she heard him lunging toward her, noisy as a bull. She stumbled through and swung the door shut. Just as he slammed against it, she slid the bolt home.

“You can’t escape, Josephine!” he yelled.

She laughed and it sounded like a stranger’s, a wild and reckless bark of triumph. “Well I just did, asshole!” she shouted back.

“You’ll be sorry! We were going to let you live, but not now!
Not now!
”

He began screaming, battering the door in impotent fury as she slowly felt her way up a dark stairway. Her cast set off thuds on the wooden steps. She did not know where the stairs led, and it was almost as dark in here as it had been in her concrete bunker. But with each step she climbed, the stairway seemed to brighten. With each step, she repeated the mantra:
I am my mother’s daughter. I am my mother’s daughter.

Halfway up the stairs, she saw cracks of light shining around a closed door at the top of the steps. Only as she neared that door did she suddenly focus on what he’d said only a moment before.

We were going to let you live.

We.

The door ahead suddenly swung open and the glare of light was painful. She blinked as her eyes adjusted, as she tried to focus on the figure that loomed in the bright rectangle of the doorway.

A figure that she recognized.

THIRTY-TWO

Twenty years of neglect and hard winters and frost heaves had reduced the Hilzbrich Institute’s private road to broken blacktop rippling with invading tree roots. Jane paused at the
PROPERTY FOR SALE
sign, her Subaru idling as she debated whether to drive down that ruined road. No chain blocked the entrance; anyone could enter the property.

Anyone could be waiting there.

She pulled out her cell phone and saw that she still had reception. She considered calling for a little local backup, then decided it would be a humiliatingly bad idea. She didn’t want the town cops laughing about the big-city detective who needed an escort just to deal with the scary Maine woods.
Yeah, Detective, those skunks and porcupines can be deadly.

She started down the road.

Her Subaru slowly bumped along the fractured pavement, and encroaching shrubs clawed at her doors. Rolling down her window, she smelled the scent of decomposing leaves and damp earth. The road grew even rougher, and as she steered around potholes, she worried about broken axles and being stranded alone in the woods. That thought made her more uneasy than the far more dangerous prospect of walking down the street of any major city. The city she understood, and she could deal with its dangers.

The woods were alien territory.

At last the trees gave way to a clearing, and she pulled to a stop in an overgrown parking area. Jane stepped out of her car and stared at the abandoned Hilzbrich Institute, which loomed ahead. It looked exactly like the institutional facility it once was, made of stern concrete softened only by landscape shrubbery now surrendering to weedy invaders. She imagined the effect this fortress-like building would have on any family arriving here with a troublesome son. This looked like just the place where a boy would get straightened out once and for all, where there’d be no kid gloves, no half measures. This building promised tough love and firm limits. Desperate parents looking up at that unyielding façade would have seen hope.

But now the building revealed just how hollow those hopes had been. Boards covered most of the windows. Piles of dead leaves had drifted up against the front entrance, and brown stains streaked the walls where rusty water had dripped from clogged roof gutters. It was no wonder that Dr. Hilzbrich had been unable to sell this property: The building was a monstrosity.

Standing in the parking lot, she listened to the wind in the trees, the hum of insects. She heard nothing out of the ordinary, just the sounds of a summer afternoon in the woods. She took out the keys that Dr. Hilzbrich had lent her and walked to the front entrance. But when she saw the door, she abruptly halted.

The lock was broken.

She reached for her weapon and gave the door a gentle nudge with her foot. It swung open, admitting a wedge of light into the darkness beyond. Aiming the beam of her pocket Maglite into the room, she saw empty beer cans and cigarette butts littering the floor. Flies buzzed in the darkness. Her pulse kicked into a fast gallop and her hands were suddenly chilled. She smelled the ripe stench of something dead, something already decaying.

Let it not be Josephine.

She stepped into the building and her shoes crunched across broken glass. Slowly she swept her flashlight around the room and glimpsed graffiti scrawled on the walls.
GREG AND ME
4
EVAH! KARI SUCKS COCK!
It was just typical high school crap, and she moved past it, turning her flashlight toward the far corner. There, her beam froze.

Something dark lay huddled on the floor.

As she crossed toward it, the stench of decaying flesh became overpowering. Staring down at the dead raccoon, she saw maggots wriggling, and she thought of rabies. Wondered if bats lurked in the building.

Gagging on the smell, she fled back outside to the parking lot and desperately washed out her lungs with deep breaths of air. Only then, as she stood facing the trees, did she notice the tire tracks. They led from the paved parking lot into the woods, where twin ruts cut across the soft forest floor. Crushed twigs and broken branches told her the damage to the vegetation was recent.

Following the ruts, she walked a short distance into the woods, where the tracks stopped at the beginning of a hiking path that was too narrow for any car. The trailhead sign was still posted, nailed to a tree.

THE CIRCLE TRAIL

It was one of the institute’s old hiking paths. Bradley loved the outdoors, Dr. Hilzbrich had told her. Years ago, the boy had probably walked this trail. The prospect of walking into those woods made her pulse quicken. She glanced down at the tire tracks. Whoever had been here was now gone, but he could return at any time. She could feel the weight of the gun on her hip, but she patted the holster anyway, a reflexive check to reassure herself that her weapon was there.

She started down the path, which was so overgrown in spots that occasionally she found she’d veered off and had to backtrack to find the trail again. The canopy of trees thickened, cutting off the sunlight. She glanced at her cell phone and was dismayed to find that she’d lost the signal. Glancing back, she found that the trees had closed in behind her. But ahead, the woods seemed to open up, and she saw sunlight streaming in.

She started toward the clearing, past trees that were dying or already dead, their trunks reduced to hollow stumps. Suddenly the ground gave way and she sank ankle-deep into muck. Pulling her foot out, she almost lost her shoe. In disgust she looked down at her muddied pant cuffs and thought: I hate the woods. I hate the outdoors. I’m a cop, not a forest ranger.

Then she spotted the shoe print: a man’s, size nine or ten.

Every rustle, every whine of a bug, seemed magnified. She saw other prints leading away from the trail, and she followed them, past a clump of cattails. No longer did it matter that her shoes were soaked, her pant legs soiled with mud. All she focused on were those footprints, leading her deeper into the bog. By now she’d completely lost track of where she’d left the main trail. Overhead, the sun told her it was now well past noon, and the woods had gone strangely silent. No birdsong, no wind, only the buzz of mosquitoes around her face.

The footprints turned and veered up the bank, toward dry land.

She paused, bewildered by the change in direction, until she noticed the tree. Encircling its trunk was a loop of nylon rope. The other end of the rope trailed into the bog and vanished beneath the surface of the tea-colored water.

She tested the rope and felt resistance as she tugged. Slowly the length began to emerge from the muck. She was pulling hard now, leaning back with all her weight as more and more rope emerged, tangled with vegetation. Abruptly something broke the surface, something that made her scream and stumble backward in shock. She caught a glimpse of a hollow-eyed face peering at her like a grotesque water nymph.

Then it slowly sank back into the bog.