Vanish (27 page)

were as familiar as a lullaby. As Boston roused itself to meet the day, Jane finally slept.

She awakened to the sound of singing. For a moment she wondered if this was yet another

dream, but a far happier one, knit from long-ago memories of her childhood. She opened her

eyes to see sunlight winking through the blinds. It was already two in the afternoon, and

Gabriel was gone.

She rolled out of bed and shuffled barefoot into the kitchen. There she stopped, blinking at the

unexpected sight of her mother, Angela, seated at the breakfast table, the baby in her arms.

Angela looked up at her befuddled daughter.

“Two bottles already. This one sure knows how to eat.”

“Mom. You’re here.”

“Did I wake you up? I’m sorry.”

“When did you get here?”

“A few hours ago. Gabriel said you needed to sleep in.”

Jane gave a bewildered laugh. “He called you?”

“Who else is he supposed to call? You have another mother somewhere?”

“No, I’m just . . .” Jane sank into a chair and rubbed her eyes. “I’m not quite awake yet. Where

is he?”

“He left a little while ago. Got a call from that Detective Moore and rushed off.”

“What was the call about?”

“I don’t know. Some police business. There’s fresh coffee there. And you should wash your

hair. You look like a cave woman. When did you eat last?”

“Dinner, I guess. Gabriel brought home Chinese.”

“Chinese? Well, that doesn’t last long. Make yourself breakfast, have some coffee. I’ve got

everything under control here.”

Yeah, Mom. You always did.

Jane didn’t rise from the chair, but just sat for a moment, watching Angela hold her wide-eyed

granddaughter. Saw the baby’s tiny hands reach up to explore Angela’s smiling face.

“How did you do it, Mom?” Jane asked.

“Just feed her. Sing to her. She likes attention is all.”

“No, I meant how did you raise three of us? I never realized how hard it must’ve been, having

three kids in five years.” She added, with a laugh: “Especially since one of us was Frankie.”

“Ha! Your brother wasn’t the hard one.
You
were.”

“Me?”

“Crying all the time. Woke up every three hours. With you, there was no such thing as
sleeping

like a baby.
Frankie was still crawling around in diapers, and I was up all night walking you

back and forth. Got no help from your father. You’re lucky, at least Gabriel, he tries to do his

part. But your dad?” Angela snorted. “Said the smell of diapers made him gag, so he wouldn’t

do it. Like I had a choice. He runs off to work every morning, and there I was with you two,

and Mikey on the way. Frankie with his little hands in everything. And you crying your head

off.”

“Why did I cry so much?”

“Some babies are born screamers. They refuse to be ignored.”

Well, that explains it, thought Jane, looking at her baby. I got what I deserved. I got myself for

a daughter.

“So how did you manage?” Jane asked again. “Because I’m having so much trouble with this. I

don’t know what I’m doing.”

“You should just do what I did when I thought I was going crazy. When I couldn’t stand

another hour, another minute trapped in that house.”

“What did you do?”

“I picked up the phone and called my mother.” Angela looked up at her. “You call me, Janie.

That’s what I’m here for. God put mothers on this earth for a reason. Now, I’m not saying it

takes a village to raise a kid.” She lowered her gaze back to the baby in her arms. “But it sure

does help to have a grandma.”

Jane watched Angela coo to the baby and thought: Oh Mom, I never realized how much I still

need you. Do we ever stop needing our mothers?

Blinking away tears, she abruptly rose from her chair and turned to the counter to pour herself

a cup of coffee. Stood there sipping it as she arched her back, stretching stiff muscles. For the

first time in three days she felt rested, almost back to her old self. Except that everything has

changed, she thought. Now I’m a mom.

“You’re just the prettiest thing, aren’t you, Regina?”

Jane glanced at her mother. “We haven’t really picked a name yet.”

“You have to call her something. Why not your grandmother’s name?”

“It has to hit me just right, you know? If she’s gonna get stuck with it for the rest of her life, I

want the name to suit her.”

“Regina is a beautiful name. It means
queenly,
you know.”

“Like I want to give the kid ideas?”

“Well, what
are
you going to call her?”

Jane spotted the
Name Your Baby
book on the countertop. She refreshed her cup of coffee and

sipped it as she flipped through pages, feeling a little desperate now. If I don’t choose soon,

she thought, it’s going to be Regina by default.

Yolanthe. Yseult. Zerlena.

Oh, man. Regina was sounding better and better. The queen baby.

She set the book down. Frowned at it for a moment, then picked it up again and flipped to the

M’s. To the name that had caught her eye last night.

Mila.

Again she felt that cold breath whisper up her spine. I know I have heard this name before, she

thought. Why does it give me such a chill? I need to remember. It’s important that I

remember . . .

The phone rang, startling her. She dropped the book, and it slapped onto the floor.

Angela frowned at her. “You gonna answer that?”

Jane took a breath and picked up the receiver. It was Gabriel.

“I hope I didn’t wake you.”

“No, I’m just having coffee with Mom.”

“Is it okay that I called her?”

She glanced at Angela, who was carrying the baby into the other room to change diapers.

“You’re a genius. Did I tell you that?”

“I think I should call Mama Rizzoli more often.”

“I slept for eight hours straight. I can’t believe what a difference that makes. My brain’s

actually functioning again.”

“Then maybe you’re ready to deal with this.”

“What?”

“Moore called me a little while ago.”

“Yeah, I heard.”

“We’re here now, at Shroeder Plaza. Jane, they got back a match on IBIS. A cartridge case

with identical firing pin impressions. It was in the ATF database.”

“Which cartridge case are we talking about?”

“From Olena’s hospital room. After she shot that security guard, a single cartridge case was

recovered from the scene.”

“He was killed with his own weapon.”

“And we’ve just found out that weapon has been used before.”

“Where? When?”

“January third. A multiple shooting in Ashburn, Virginia.”

She stood clutching the receiver, pressing it so hard against her ear that she could hear the

pounding of her own heartbeat.
Ashburn. Joe wanted to tell us about Ashburn.

Angela came back into the kitchen carrying the baby, whose black hair was now fluffed up like

a crown of curls. Regina, the queen baby. The name suddenly seemed to fit.

“What do we know about that multiple shooting?” Jane asked.

“Moore has the file right here.”

She looked at Angela. “Mom, I need to leave for a while. Is that okay?”

“You go ahead. We’re happy right where we are. Aren’t we, Regina?” Angela bent forward

and rubbed noses with the baby. “And in a little while, we’re going to take a nice little bath.”

Jane said to Gabriel: “Give me twenty minutes. I’ll be there.”

“No. Let’s meet somewhere else.”

“Why?”

“We don’t want to talk about it here.”

“Gabriel, what the hell is going on?”

There was a pause, and she could hear Moore’s voice speaking softly in the background. Then

Gabriel came back on the line.

“JP Doyle’s. We’ll meet you there.”

TWENTY-FOUR

She did not take the time to shower, but simply got dressed in the first clothes she pulled out of

her closet—baggy maternity slacks and the T-shirt her fellow detectives had given her at the

baby shower with the words MOM COP embroidered over the belly. In the car she ate two

slices of buttered toast as she drove toward the neighborhood of Jamaica Plain. That last

conversation with Gabriel had put her on edge, and she found herself glancing in the rearview

mirror as she waited at stoplights, taking note of the cars behind her. Had she seen that green

Taurus four blocks earlier? And was that the same white van she’d noticed parked across the

street from her apartment?

JP Doyle’s was a favorite Boston PD haunt, and on any evening, the bar was usually packed

with off-duty cops. But at three P.M., only a lone woman was perched at the counter, sipping a

glass of white wine as ESPN flickered on the overhead TV. Jane walked straight through the

bar and headed into the adjoining dining area, where memorabilia of Boston’s Irish heritage

adorned the walls. Newspaper clippings about the Kennedys and Tip O’Neill and Boston’s

finest had hung here so long that they were now brittle with age, and the Irish flag displayed

above one booth had acquired the dirty tinge of nicotine yellow. In this lull between lunch and

dinner, only two booths were occupied. In one sat a middle-aged couple, clearly tourists,

judging by the Boston map spread out between them. Jane walked past the couple and

continued to the corner booth, where Moore and Gabriel were sitting.

She slipped in beside her husband and looked down at the file folder lying on the table. “What

do you have to show me?”

Moore didn’t answer, but glanced up with an automatic smile as the waitress approached.

“Hey, Detective Rizzoli. You’re all skinny again,” the waitress said.

“Not as skinny as I’d like to be.”

“I heard you had a baby girl.”

“She’s keeping us up all night. This may be my only chance to eat in peace.”

The waitress laughed as she took out her order pad. “Then let’s feed you.”

“Actually, I’d just like some coffee and your apple crisp.”

“Good choice.” The waitress glanced at the men. “How ‘bout you fellas?”

“More coffee, that’s all,” said Moore. “We’re just going to sit here and watch her eat.”

They maintained their silence while their cups were refilled. Only after the waitress had

delivered the apple crisp and walked away did Moore finally slide the folder across to Jane.

Inside was a sheet of digital photos. She immediately recognized them as micrographs of a

spent cartridge case, showing the patterns left by the firing pin hitting the primer, and by the

backward thrust of the cartridge against the breechblock.

“This is from the hospital shooting?”she asked.

Moore nodded. “That cartridge came from the weapon that John Doe carried into Olena’s

room. The weapon she used to kill him. Ballistics ran it through the IBIS database, and they got

back a hit, from ATF. A multiple shooting in Ashburn, Virginia.”

She turned to the next set of photos. It was another series of cartridge micrographs. “They’re a

match?”

“Identical firing pin impressions. Two different cartridges found at two different death scenes.

They were both ejected from the same weapon.”

“And now we have that weapon.”

“Actually, we don’t.”

She looked at Moore. “It should have been found with Olena’s body. She was the last one to

have it.”

“It wasn’t at the takedown scene.”

“But we processed that room, didn’t we?”

“There were no weapons at all left at the scene. The federal takedown team confiscated all

ballistics evidence when they left. The took the weapons, Joe’s knapsack, even the cartridges.

By the time Boston PD got in there, it was all gone.”

“They cleaned up a death scene? What’s Boston PD going to do about this?”

“Apparently,” said Moore, “there’s not a thing we can do. The feds are calling it a matter of

national security, and they don’t want information leaks.”

“They don’t trust Boston PD?”

“No one trusts anybody. We’re not the only ones being shut out. Agent Barsanti wanted that

ballistics evidence as well, and he was none too happy when he found out the special ops team

took it. This has turned into federal agency versus federal agency. Boston PD’s just a mouse

watching two elephants battle it out.”

Jane’s gaze returned to the photomicrographs. “You said this matching cartridge came from a

crime scene in Ashburn. Just before the takedown, Joseph Roke tried to tell us about

something that happened in Ashburn.”

“Mr. Roke may very well have been talking about this.” Moore reached into his briefcase and

pulled out another folder, which he set on the table. “I received it this morning, from Leesburg

PD. Ashburn’s just a small town. It was Leesburg who worked the case.”

“It’s not pleasant viewing, Jane,” said Gabriel.

His warning was unexpected. Together they had witnessed the worst the autopsy room could

offer, and she’d never seen him flinch. If this case has horrified even Gabriel, she thought, do I

really want to see it? She gave herself no time to consider, but simply opened the folder and

confronted the first crime scene photograph. This isn’t so bad, she thought. She had seen far

worse. A slender brown-haired woman lay facedown on a stairway, as though she had dived

from the top step. A river of her blood had streamed down, collecting in a pool at the bottom of

the stairs.

“That’s Jane Doe number one,” said Moore.

“You don’t have ID on her?”

“We don’t have ID on any of the victims in that house.”

She turned to the next photograph. It was a young blonde this time, lying on a cot, the blanket