Vanish (11 page)

I wipe tears from my face. “I’m not as strong as you are.”

“It’s not strength, Mila. It’s hate. That’s what keeps you alive.” She bends close, and her long

hair is a waterfall of black silk. What I see in her eyes scares me. A fire burns there; she is not

quite sane. This is how Olena survives, on drugs and madness.

The door opens again, and we all shrink as the Mother glances around the room. She points to

one of the girls. “You, Katya. This one’s yours.”

Katya just stares back, unmoving.

With two paces, the Mother crosses toward her and slaps her across the ear. “Go,” she orders,

and Katya stumbles out of the room. The Mother locks the door.

“Remember, Mila,” Olena whispers. “Remember what keeps you alive.”

I look into her eyes and see it.
Hate.

TEN

“We can’t let this information get out,” said Gabriel. “It could kill her.”

Homicide detective Barry Frost reacted with a stunned gaze. They were standing in the parking

lot of the Sunrise Yacht Club. Not a breeze stirred, and out on Hingham Bay, sailboats drifted,

dead in the water. Under the glare of the afternoon sun, sweat pasted wispy strands of hair to

Frost’s pale forehead. In a room full of people, Barry Frost was the one you’d most likely

overlook, the man who’d quietly recede into a corner where he’d stand smiling and unnoticed.

His bland temperament had helped him weather his occasionally stormy partnership with Jane,

a partnership that, over the past two and a half years, had grown strong roots in trust. Now the

two men who cared about her, Jane’s husband and Jane’s partner, faced each other with shared

apprehension.

“No one told us she was in there,” murmured Frost. “We had no idea.”

“We can’t let the media find out.”

Frost huffed out a shocked breath. “That would be a disaster.”

“Tell me who Jane Doe is. Tell me everything you know.”

“Believe me, we’ll pull out all the stops on this. You have to trust us.”

“I can’t sit on the sidelines. I need to know everything.”

“You can’t be objective. She’s your wife.”

“Exactly. She’s my
wife.
” A note of panic had slipped into Gabriel’s voice. He paused to rein

in his agitation and said quietly: “What would you do? If it was Alice trapped in there?”

Frost regarded him for a moment. At last he nodded. “Come inside. We’re talking to the

commodore. He pulled her out of the water.”

They stepped from glaring sunshine into the cool gloom of the yacht club. Inside, it smelled

like every seaside bar that Gabriel had ever walked into, the scent of ocean air mingled with

citrus and booze. It was a rickety building, perched on a wooden pier overlooking Hingham

Bay. Two portable air-conditioning units rattled in the windows, muffling the clink of glasses

and the low hum of conversation. The floors creaked as they headed toward the lounge.

Gabriel recognized the two Boston PD detectives standing at the bar, talking with a bald man.

Both Darren Crowe and Thomas Moore were Jane’s colleagues from the homicide unit; both

of them greeted Gabriel with looks of surprise.

“Hey,” Crowe said. “I didn’t know the FBI was coming in on this.”

“FBI?” said the bald man. “Wow, this must be getting pretty serious.” He stuck out his hand to

Gabriel. “Skip Boynton. I’m the commodore, Sunrise Yacht Club.”

“Agent Gabriel Dean,” said Gabriel, shaking the man’s hand. Trying, as best he could, to play

it official. But he could feel Thomas Moore’s puzzled gaze. Moore could see that something

was not right here.

“Yeah, I was just telling these detectives how we found her. Quite a shock, lemme tell you,

seeing a body in the water.” He paused. “Say, you want a drink, Agent Dean? It’s on the club.”

“No, thank you.”

“Oh, right. On duty, huh?” Skip gave a sympathetic laugh. “You guys really play it by the

book, don’t you? No one’ll take a drink. Well, hell, I will.” He slipped behind the bar and

dropped ice cubes in a glass. Splashed vodka on top. Gabriel heard ice clinking in other

glasses, and he gazed around the room at the dozen club members sitting in the lounge, almost

all of them men. Did any of them actually sail boats? Gabriel wondered. Or did they just come

here to drink?

Skip slipped out from behind the counter, his vodka in hand. “It’s not the kind of thing that

happens every day,” he said. “I’m still kind of rattled about it.”

“You were telling us how you spotted the body,” said Moore.

“Oh. Yeah. About eight A.M. I came in early to change out my spinnaker. We have a regatta

coming up in two weeks, and I’m gonna fly a new one. Got a logo on it. A green dragon, really

striking. So anyway, I’m walking out to the dock, carrying my new spinnaker, and I see what

looks like a mannequin floating out in the water, kinda snagged up on one of the rocks. I get in

my rowboat to take a closer look and hell, if it ain’t a woman. Damn nice-looking one, too. So I

yelled for some of the other guys, and three of us pulled her out. Then we called nine one one.”

He took a gulp of his vodka and drew a breath. “Never occurred to us she was still alive. I

mean, hell. That gal sure looked dead to us.”

“Must have looked dead to Fire and Rescue, too,” said Crowe.

Skip laughed. “And they’re supposed to be the professionals. If they can’t tell, who can?”

“Show us,” said Gabriel. “Where you found her.”

They all walked out the lounge door, onto the pier. The water magnified the sun’s glare, and

Gabriel had to squint against the brilliant reflection to see the rocks that Skip now pointed out.

“See that shoal over there? We have it marked off with buoys, ’cause it’s a navigation hazard.

At high tide, it’s only a few inches deep there, so you don’t even see it. Real easy to run

aground.”

“What time was high tide yesterday?” asked Gabriel.

“I don’t know. Ten A.M., I think.”

“Was that shoal exposed?”

“Yeah. If I hadn’t spotted her then, a few hours later, she might have drifted out to sea.”

The men stood in silence for a moment, squinting off over Hingham Bay. A motor cruiser

rumbled by, churning up a wake that made the boats rock on their moorings and set halyards

clanging on masts.

“Had you ever seen the woman before?” Moore asked.

“Nope.”

“You’re sure?”

“A gal who looks like that? I’d sure as hell remember.”

“And no one in the club recognized her?”

Skip laughed. “No one who’ll admit to it.”

Gabriel looked at him. “Why wouldn’t they?”

“Well, you know.”

“Why don’t you tell me?”

“These guys in the club . . .” Skip gave a nervous laugh. “I mean, you see all these boats

moored out here? Who do you think sails them? It’s not the wives. It’s the men who lust after

boats, not the women. And it’s the men who hang around here. A boat’s your home away from

home.” Skip paused. “In every respect.”

“You think she was someone’s girlfriend?” said Crowe.

“Hell, I don’t know. It’s just that the possibility occurred to me. You know, bring a chickie

here late at night. Fool around on your boat, get a little drunk, a little high. It’s easy to fall

overboard.”

“Or get pushed.”

“Now wait a minute.” Skip looked alarmed. “Don’t you go jumping to
that
conclusion. These

are good guys in the club. Good guys.”

Who might be banging chickies on their boats, thought Gabriel.

“I’m sorry I even mentioned the possibility,” said Skip. “It’s not like people don’t get drunk

and fall off boats all the time. Could’ve been any boat, not just one of ours.” He pointed out to

Hingham Bay, where a cabin cruiser was gliding across the blindingly bright water. “See all the

traffic out there? She could’ve tripped off some motorboat that night. Drifted in on the tide.”

“Nevertheless,” said Moore, “We’ll need a list of all your members.”

“Is that really necessary?”

“Yes, Mr. Boynton,” said Moore with quiet but unmistakable authority. “It is.”

Skip gulped down the rest of his vodka. The heat had flushed his scalp bright red, and he

swiped away sweat. “This is going to go over
real
well with the members. Here we do our

civic duty and pull a woman out of the water. Now we’re all suspects?”

Gabriel turned his gaze up the shoreline to the boat ramp, where a truck was now backing up to

launch a motorboat into the water. Three other vehicles towing boats were lined up in the

parking area, waiting their turns. “What’s your nighttime security like, Mr. Boynton?” he

asked.

“Security?” Skip shrugged. “We lock the club doors at midnight.”

“And the pier? The boats? There’s no security guard?”

“We haven’t had any break-ins. The boats are all locked. Plus, it’s quiet out here. If you get any

closer to the city, you’ll find people hanging around the waterfront all night. This is a special

little club. A place to get away from it all.”

A place where you could drive down to the boat ramp at night, thought Gabriel. You could

back right down to the water, and no one would see you open your trunk. No one would see

you pull out a body and toss it into Hingham Bay. If the tide was right, that body would drift

out past the islands just offshore, straight into Massachusetts Bay.

But not if the tide was coming in.

His cell phone rang. He moved away from the others and walked down the pier a few paces

before he answered the call.

It was Maura. “I think you might want to get back here,” she said. “We’re about to do the

autopsy.”

“Which autopsy?”

“On the hospital security guard.”

“The cause of death is clear, isn’t it?”

“Another question has come up.”

“What?”

“We don’t know who this man is.”

“Can’t someone at the hospital ID him? He was their employee.”

“That’s the problem,” said Maura. “He wasn’t.”

They had not yet undressed the corpse.

Gabriel was no stranger to the horrors of the autopsy room, and the sight of this victim, in the

scope of his experience, was not particularly shocking. He saw only a single entry wound that

tunneled into the left cheek; otherwise the features were intact. The man was in his thirties, with

neatly clipped dark hair and a muscular jaw. His brown eyes, exposed to air by partially open

lids, were already clouded. A name tag with PERRIN was clipped to the breast pocket of the

uniform. Staring at the table, what disturbed Gabriel most was not the gore or the sightless

eyes; it was the knowledge that the same weapon that had ended this man’s life was now

threatening Jane’s.

“We waited for you,” said Dr. Abe Bristol. “Maura thought you’d want to watch this from the

beginning.”

Gabriel looked at Maura, who was gowned and masked, but standing at the foot of the table,

and not at her usual place at the corpse’s right side. Every other time he’d entered this lab, she

had been the one in command, the one holding the knife. He was not accustomed to seeing her

cede control in the room where she usually reigned. “You’re not doing this postmortem?” he

asked.

“I can’t. I’m a witness to this man’s death,” said Maura. “Abe has to do this one.”

“And you still have no idea who he is?”

She shook her head. “There’s no hospital employee with the name Perrin. And the chief of

security came to view the body. He didn’t recognize this man.”

“Fingerprints?”

“We’ve sent his prints to AFIS. Nothing’s back on him so far. Or on the shooter’s

fingerprints, either.”

“So we’ve got a John Doe and a Jane Doe?” Gabriel stared at the corpse. “Who the hell are

these people?”

“Let’s get him undressed,” Abe said to Yoshima.

The two men removed the corpse’s shoes and socks, unbuckled the belt, and peeled off the

trousers, laying the items of clothing on a clean sheet. With gloved hands Abe searched the

pants pockets but found them empty. No comb, no wallet, no keys. “Not even any loose

change,” he noted.

“You’d think there’d be at least a spare dime or two,” said Yoshima.

“These pockets are clean.” Abe looked up. “Brand-new uniform?”

They turned their attention to the shirt. The fabric was now stiff with dried blood, and they had

to peel it away from the chest, revealing muscular pectorals and a thick mat of dark hair. And

scars. Thick as twisted rope, one scar slanted up beneath the right nipple; the other slashed

diagonally from abdomen to left hip bone.

“Those aren’t surgical scars,” said Maura, frowning from her position at the foot of the table.

“I’d say this guy’s been in a pretty nasty fight,” said Abe. “These look like old knife wounds.”

“You want to cut off these sleeves?” said Yoshima.

“No, we can work them off. Let’s just roll him.”

They tipped the corpse onto its left side to pull the sleeve free. Yoshima, facing the corpse’s

back, suddenly said: “Whoa. You should see this.”

The tattoo covered the entire left shoulder blade. Maura leaned over to take a look and seemed

to recoil from the image, as though it were alive, its venomous stinger poised to strike. The

carapace was a brilliant blue. Twin pincers stretched toward the man’s neck. Encircled by the

coiled tail was the number 13.

“A scorpion,” said Maura softly.

“That’s a pretty impressive meat tag,” Yoshima said.

Maura frowned at him. “What?”

“It’s what we called them in the army. I saw some real works of art when I was working in the