The Keepsake (19 page)

“Friends don’t try to kill you.” She turned and hobbled away, back through the canyon of crates.

“What are you talking about?” he called out.

She continued through the maze, intent only on reaching the exit. She could hear him following her, his cane tapping against the concrete.

“Josephine, the police are completely wrong about him!”

She rounded a bend in the maze and saw the door ahead, hanging ajar.
Didn’t we close it? I’m sure we closed it.

Simon’s cane tapped closer. “Now I’m sorry I told you,” he said. “But you really ought to know how generous Kimball has been to you.”

Kimball?

Josephine turned. “How does he even know about me?” she asked.

Just as the basement lights went black.

TWENTY-FOUR

Night had already fallen when Jane stepped out of her Subaru and dashed through the pounding rain to the Crispin Museum entrance. The front door was unlocked and she pushed into the building, letting in a whoosh of wet wind that sent museum brochures flying off the reception desk and scattering across the damp floor.

“Time to start building an ark yet?” asked the patrolman standing guard near the desk.

“Yeah, it’s wet out there.” Grimly, Jane shrugged out of her dripping slicker and hung it on a coat hook.

“Never seen so much rainfall in a single summer, and I’ve lived here all my life. I hear it’s all because of global warming.”

“Where is everyone?” Jane said, cutting off the conversation so brusquely that his face tightened. After what had happened tonight, she was in no mood to talk about the weather.

Taking her cue, he responded just as brusquely: “Detective Young’s down in the basement. His partner’s upstairs, talking to the curator.”

“I’ll start in the basement.”

She pulled on gloves and paper shoe covers and headed for the stairwell. With every step, she girded herself for what she was about to confront. When she reached the basement level, she saw a stark warning of what lay ahead. Bloody shoe prints, a man’s size nine or ten, had tracked across the hall from the storage area to the elevator. Alongside the shoe prints was an alarming smear left by something that had been dragged across that floor.

“Rizzoli?” said Detective Young. He had just emerged from the storage room.

“Did you find her?” asked Jane.

“I’m afraid she’s nowhere in this building.”

“Shit.” Jane looked down again, at the smear. “He took her.”

“I’d say it looks that way. Pulled her across this hall and brought her up in the elevator to the first floor.”

“And then what?”

“Took her out a rear door that leads to their loading dock. There’s an alley behind the building where he could have backed up his vehicle. No one would’ve seen a thing, especially tonight, with all the rain. He just had to load her in and drive away.”

“How the hell did he get into the building? Weren’t the doors locked?”

“The senior docent—her name’s Mrs. Willebrandt—said she left around five fifteen and she swears she locked the doors. But she looks like she’s about a thousand years old, so who knows what her memory’s like?”

“What about everyone else? Where was Dr. Robinson?”

“He and Ms. Duke drove out to Revere to ship a crate. He says he came back to the building around seven to catch up on some work and he didn’t see anyone here. He assumed Dr. Pulcillo had left for the day, so he wasn’t concerned at first. Until he glanced in her office and noticed her purse was still there. That’s when he called 911.”

“Detective Frost was supposed to drive her home today.”

Young nodded. “So he told us.”

“Then where is he?”

“He arrived just after we got here. He’s upstairs now.” Young paused, and said quietly: “Go easy on him, huh?”

“For screwing up?”

“I’ll let him tell you what happened. But first…” He turned toward the door. “I have to show you this.”

She followed him into the storage area.

The footprints were more vivid here, the killer’s soles so wet with blood that they left splash marks. Young moved into the maze of storage items and pointed down a narrow aisle. The object of his attention sat wedged between crates.

“There’s not much left of the face,” he said.

But there was still enough of it for Jane to recognize Simon Crispin. The blow had slammed into his left temple, shattering bone and cartilage, leaving a crater of gore. Blood had streamed from the wound into the aisle, where the lake had spread across the concrete and soaked into scattered wood shavings. For a short time after the blow, Simon had lived, long enough for his heart to keep beating and keep pumping blood that had spilled from the ruined head and streamed across this floor.

“Somehow this killer managed to time it just right,” said Young. “He must have been watching the building. He must have seen Mrs. Willebrandt leave, so he knew that only two people were still here. Dr. Pulcillo and an eighty-two-year-old man.” Young looked at Jane. “I hear her leg was in a cast, so she couldn’t have run away. And she wouldn’t be able to put up much of a fight.”

Jane looked down at the drag mark left by Josephine’s body.
We told her she’d be safe. That’s why she came back to Boston. She trusted us.

“There’s one more thing you need to see,” said Young.

She looked up. “What?”

“I’ll show you.” He led her back toward the exit. They emerged from the maze of crates. “That,” said Young, and he pointed at the closed door. At the two words that had been written in blood:

FIND ME

Jane climbed the stairs to the third floor. By now the medical examiner and the CSU team had arrived, carrying all their paraphernalia, and the building echoed with the voices and the creaking footsteps of an invading army, the sounds spiraling up the central stairwell. She paused at the top, suddenly weary and sick of blood and death and failure.

Most of all, failure.

The perfectly grilled steak that she had eaten at her mother’s house just hours before now felt like an undigested brick in her stomach. From one minute to the next, she thought; that’s how quickly a pleasant summer Sunday can turn into tragedy.

She walked through the gallery of human bones, past the skeletal mother cradling the fragments of her child, and headed up the hallway toward the administrative offices. Through an open doorway, she spotted Barry Frost sitting alone in one of the offices, his shoulders slumped, his head in his hands.

“Frost?” she said.

Reluctantly he straightened, and she was startled to see that his eyes were red-rimmed and swollen. He turned away, as though embarrassed that she’d glimpsed his anguish, and he quickly swiped a sleeve across his face.

“Jesus,” she said. “What happened to you?”

He shook his head. “I can’t do this. I need to be taken off the case.”

“You want to tell me what went wrong?”

“I fucked up. That’s what went wrong.”

Seldom did she hear him use profanity, and hearing that word from his lips surprised her even more than his confession. She entered the room and shut the door. Then she pulled over a chair and sat down facing him directly so that he would be forced to look at her.

“You were supposed to escort her home tonight. Weren’t you?”

He nodded. “It was my turn.”

“So why didn’t you get here?”

“It slipped my mind,” he said softly.

“You
forgot
?”

He released a tortured sigh. “Yes, I
forgot.
I should have been here at six, but I got sidetracked. That’s why I can’t work this case anymore. I need to take a leave of absence.”

“Okay, you screwed up. But we’ve got a missing woman here, and I need all hands on deck.”

“I’m worthless to you right now. I’ll just fuck up again.”

“What the hell is wrong with you? You’re falling apart right when I need you the most.”

“Alice wants a divorce,” he said.

She stared at him, unable to come up with an adequate response. If ever there were a time to give her partner a hug, this would be it. But she’d never hugged him before, and it felt fake to start doing it now. So she just said, “Oh man, I’m sorry.”

“She flew home this afternoon,” he said. “That’s why I didn’t make it to your barbecue. She came home to break the news in person. At least she was nice enough to say it to my face. And not over the phone.” Again, he wiped a sleeve across his face. “I knew something had to be wrong. I could feel it building, ever since she started law school. After that, nothing I did or said seemed to interest her anymore. It was like I’m just this dumb cop she happened to marry, and now she regrets it.”

“Did she actually say that to you?”

“She didn’t have to. I heard it in her voice.” He gave a bitter laugh. “Nine years we’re together, and suddenly I’m not good enough for her.”

Jane couldn’t help but ask the obvious question. “So who’s the other guy?”

“What difference does it make if there’s another guy? The point is, she doesn’t want to be married. Not to me, anyway.” His face crumpled and he shook from the effort not to cry. But the tears came anyway and he rocked forward, his head in his hands. Jane had never seen him so broken, so vulnerable, and it almost frightened her. She didn’t know how to comfort him. At that moment, she would rather have been anywhere else, even at the bloodiest of crime scenes, instead of trapped in this room with a sobbing man. It occurred to her that she should take his weapon. Guns and depressed men did not mix well. Would he be insulted if she did? Would he resist? All these practical considerations ran through her head as she patted him on the shoulder and murmured useless sounds of commiseration.
Screw Alice. I never liked her anyway. Now the bitch has gone and made my life miserable as well.

Frost suddenly rose from the chair and started toward the door. “I need to get out of here.”

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t know. Home.”

“Look, I’m going to call Gabriel. You come and stay with us tonight. You can sleep on the couch.”

He shook his head. “Forget it. I need to be by myself.”

“I think that’s a bad idea.”

“I don’t want to be with anyone, okay? Just leave me alone.”

She studied him, trying to gauge how hard she could push him on this point. And realized that if she were in his shoes, she, too, would want to crawl into a cave and talk to no one. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah.” He straightened, as though steeling himself for the walk out of the building, past colleagues who’d see his face and wonder what had happened.

“She’s not worth crying over,” said Jane. “That’s my opinion.”

“Maybe,” he said softly. “But I love her.” He walked out of the room.

She followed him to the stairwell and stood there on the third-floor landing, listening to his footsteps as he descended the stairs. And she wondered if she should have taken his gun.

TWENTY-FIVE

The relentless pings of dripping water were like hammer blows to her aching head. Josephine groaned and her voice seemed to echo back, as though she were in some vast cave that smelled of mold and dank earth. Opening her eyes, she saw a blackness so solid that when she reached out, she half expected to feel it. Though her hand was right in front of her face, she could not see even a hint of movement, not the faintest silhouette. Just the effort to focus in the darkness made her stomach rebel.

Fighting nausea, she closed her eyes and rolled onto her side, where she lay with her cheek pressed against damp fabric. She struggled to make sense of where she was. Little by little she registered the details. Dripping water. Cold. A mattress that smelled of mildew.

Why can’t I remember how I got here?

Her last memory was of Simon Crispin. The sound of his alarmed voice, his shouting in the darkness of the museum basement. But that was a different darkness, not this one.

Her eyes shot open again, and this time it wasn’t nausea but fear that gripped her stomach. Fighting dizziness, she sat up. She heard her own heartbeat and the whoosh of blood in her ears. Reaching beyond the edge of the mattress, she felt a frigid concrete floor. Her hands swept the perimeter and she discovered, within reach, a jug of water. A waste bucket. And something soft, covered in crackling plastic. She squeezed it and smelled the yeasty fragrance of bread.

Farther and farther she explored, her dark universe expanding as she gradually ventured off the safe island of the mattress. On hands and knees she crawled, her leg cast scraping across the floor. Leaving the mattress behind in the dark, she suddenly panicked that she would not be able to find it again, that she’d be eternally wandering on the cold floor in search of that pitiful bit of comfort. But the wilderness was not such a large place after all; after only a short crawl, she came up against a rough concrete wall.

Propping herself against it, she rose to her feet. The effort left her unsteady and she leaned back, eyes closed, waiting for her head to clear. She became aware of other sounds now. The chirping of insects. The skittering of some unseen creature moving across the floor. And through it all, that relentless dripping of water.

She limped alongside the wall, tracing the boundaries of her prison. A few paces took her to the first corner, and she found it oddly comforting to discover that this blackness was not infinite, that her blind wanderings would not lead her to drop off the edge of the universe. She hobbled on, her hand tracing the next wall. A dozen paces took her to a second corner.

The features of her prison were slowly taking shape in her head.

She moved along the third wall until she reached another corner. Twelve paces by eight paces, she thought. Twenty-four feet by thirty-six feet. Concrete walls and a floor.
A basement.

She started along the next wall, and her foot bumped up against something that clattered away. Reaching down, her fingers closed around the object. She felt curved leather, the bumpy surface of rhinestones. A spike heel.

A woman’s shoe.

Another prisoner has been in this place, she thought. Another woman has slept on that mattress and gulped from that water jug. She cradled the shoe, her fingers exploring every curve, hungrily seeking clues to its owner.
My sister in despair.
It was a small shoe, size five or six, and with the rhinestones, surely it had been a party shoe, meant to be worn with a pretty dress and earrings, for an evening out with a special man.

Or the wrong man.

Suddenly she was shaking from both cold and despair. She hugged the shoe to her chest. The shoe of a dead woman; of this she had no doubt. How many others had been kept here? How many would come after her? She took in a shaky breath and imagined she could smell their scents, the fear and despair of every woman who had trembled in this darkness, a darkness that had sharpened all her other senses.

She heard blood pumping through her arteries and felt cool air swirl into her lungs. And she smelled the damp leather of the shoe she was cradling. When you lose your eyes, she thought, you notice all the invisible details you once would have missed, the way you really only notice the moon after the sun finally sets.

Clutching the shoe like a talisman, she forced herself to continue the survey of her prison, wondering if the darkness hid other clues to past inmates. She imagined a floor littered with the scattered possessions of dead women. A watch here, a lipstick there. And what will they someday find of mine? she wondered. Will there be any trace of me left, or will I be just another vanished woman, whose last hours will never be known?

The concrete wall abruptly dipped and changed to wood. She halted.

I found the door.

Though the knob turned easily, she could not budge the door itself; it was bolted shut on the other side. She screamed and banged on it with her fists, but it was solid wood and her puny efforts succeeded only in bruising her hands. Exhausted, she slumped back against the door and through the thumping of her own heart, she heard a new sound, one that made her snap taut in fear.

The growl was low-pitched and menacing, and in the darkness she could not locate it. She pictured sharp teeth and claws, imagined the creature advancing toward her even now, poised to spring on her. Then she heard a chain rattle and a scratching sound that came from somewhere overhead.

She looked up. For the first time, she spied a crack of light, so faint that at first she didn’t trust her own eyes. But as she watched, the crack slowly brightened. It was the first light of dawn, shining through a tiny boarded-up ventilation window.

Claws scraped at the boards as the dog outside tried to tear its way in. It was a large animal by the sound of its growl. I know he’s out there, and he knows I’m in here, she thought. He smells my fear and he wants a taste of it as well. She’d never owned a dog, and had imagined one day having a beagle or perhaps a Shetland sheepdog, some sweet and gentle breed. Not the beast that now stood guard outside that window. A beast that, judging by the sound of it, could rip out her throat.

The dog barked. She heard car tires and the sound of an engine shutting off.

She went rigid, her heart slamming against her chest, as the barking grew frenzied. Her gaze shot upward to the ceiling as footsteps creaked overhead.

Dropping the shoe, she retreated as far as she could from the door, until her back pressed up against the concrete wall. She heard a bolt slide. The door squealed open. A flashlight shone in, and as the man approached, she turned away, as blinded as though it were the sun itself burning her retinas.

He merely stood over her, saying nothing. The concrete chamber magnified every sound, and she heard his breathing, slow and steady, as he examined his captive.

“Let me go,” she whispered. “Please.”

He did not say a word, and it was his silence that frightened her the most. Until she saw what he held in his hand, and she knew that there was far worse in store for her than mere silence.

It was a knife.