“The victim’s name was Howard Redfield, age fifty-one, a divorced white male from Cincinnati,” said Dean. “The cause of death was a single gunshot wound, fired through the left temporal bone. In addition, he had multiple fractures of both kneecaps, administered with a blunt weapon, possibly a hammer. There were also severe burns to both hands, which were bound with duct tape behind his back.”
“He was tortured,” said Rizzoli.
“Yes. At great length.”
Rizzoli swayed back in her chair, her face pale. Maura was the only person in the room who knew the reason for that pallor, and she watched her with concern. She saw the desperate battle play out on her face, saw her struggle against nausea.
“He was found dead in the trunk of his own car,” Dean continued. “The car was parked about two blocks from the bus station in Providence. That’s only about an hour, hour-and-a-half drive from here.”
“But a different jurisdiction,” said Crowe.
Dean nodded. “That’s why this death didn’t come to your attention. The killer could very well have driven that car down to Providence with the victim in his trunk, left it there, and caught a bus back to Boston.”
“Back to Boston? Why do you think this is where he started from?” asked Maura.
“It’s just a guess. We don’t know where the killing actually took place. We can’t even be sure of Mr. Redfield’s movements over the last few weeks. His home is in Cincinnati, but he turns up dead in New England. He left no credit card trail, no record of where he’s been staying. We do know he withdrew a large amount of cash from his account a month ago. And then he left home.”
“Sounds like someone who’s on the run and doesn’t want to be traced,” said Maura. “Or someone who’s scared.”
Dean looked at the photo. “Obviously, he was right to be.”
“Tell us more about this victim,” said Rizzoli. She was back in control now, and able to gaze, without flinching, at the photo.
“Mr. Redfield was formerly a senior VP of Octagon Chemicals, in charge of their overseas operations,” said Dean. “Two months ago, he resigned from the company, ostensibly for personal reasons.”
“Octagon?” said Maura. “They’ve been in the news. Aren’t they currently under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission?”
Dean nodded. “The SEC enforcement division has filed a civil action against Octagon, alleging multiple violations involving billions of dollars in illegal transactions.”
“Billions?” said Rizzoli. “Wow.”
“Octagon is a huge multinational, with annual sales of twenty billion dollars. We’re talking about a very big fish.”
Rizzoli looked at the death scene photo. “And this victim was swimming in that pond. He’d know the inside scoop. You think he was a problem for Octagon?”
“Three weeks ago,” said Dean, “Mr. Redfield made an appointment to speak with officials from the Justice Department.”
“Yep,” said Crowe with a laugh. “He was definitely a problem for them.”
“He asked that Justice officials meet him here, in Boston.”
“Why not Washington?” asked Rizzoli.
“He told them there were other parties who wished to make statements. That it had to be done here. What we don’t know is why he contacted the Justice Department, rather than go directly to the SEC, since we assume it had to do with the Octagon investigation.”
“But you don’t know that for certain?”
“No. Because he never kept the appointment. By then, he was dead.”
Crowe said, “Hey, if it looks like a paid hit and it smells like a paid hit . . .”
“What does any of this have to do with Rat Lady?” asked Rizzoli.
“I’m just getting to that,” said Dean. He looked at Maura. “You performed the autopsy. What was her cause of death?”
“A gunshot wound to the chest,” said Maura. “Bullet fragments penetrated her heart, and there was massive bleeding into the pericardial sac, preventing the heart from pumping. It’s called pericardial tamponade.”
“And what type of bullet was used?”
Maura remembered the X ray of Rat Lady’s chest. The spray of shell fragments, like a galaxy of stars scattered through both lungs. “It was a Glaser blue-tip,” she said. “A copper jacket containing metal pellets. It’s designed to fragment inside the body, with little chance of through and through penetration.” She paused, and added: “It’s a devastating projectile.”
Dean nodded at the photo of Howard Redfield, lying curled and bloody in the trunk of his car. “Mr. Redfield was killed with a Glaser blue-tip. A bullet fired from the same gun that killed your Jane Doe.”
For a moment, no one spoke.
Then Rizzoli said, in disbelief, “But you just laid the case for a contract killing. Octagon’s way of dealing with a whistle-blower. This other victim, Rat Lady—”
“Detective Rizzoli’s right,” said Maura. “Rat Lady is the most unlikely target of a corporate hit that I could imagine.”
“Nevertheless,” said Dean, “The bullet that killed her was fired by the same weapon that killed Howard Redfield.”
Crowe said, “That’s how Agent Dean came into the picture. I requested a DRUGFIRE search on that blue-tip copper jacket you took out of her chest.”
Similar to the FBI’s national AFIS database for fingerprints, DRUGFIRE was a centralized database for firearm-related evidence. Marks and striations found on bullets from crime scenes were stored as digitized data, which could then be searched for matches, linking all crimes committed by the same firearm.
“DRUGFIRE came up with the match,” said Dean.
Rizzoli shook her head in bewilderment. “Why these two victims? I don’t see the connection.”
“That’s what makes Jane Doe’s death so interesting,” said Dean.
Maura did not like his use of the word interesting. It implied that some deaths were not interesting, not worthy of special attention. Those victims would certainly not agree.
She focused on the photo, an ugly splash of gore lying on the conference table. “Our Jane Doe doesn’t belong in this picture,” she said.
“Dr. Isles?”
“There’s a logical reason why Howard Redfield was killed. He may be a whistle-blower in an SEC investigation. The evidence of torture tells us his death wasn’t just a case of robbery gone wrong. The killer wanted something from him. Retribution, maybe. Or information. But how does our Jane Doe—most likely an illegal immigrant—fit in? Why would anyone want her dead?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Dean looked at Rizzoli. “I understand you have a case which may tie into this as well.”
His gaze seemed to rattle her. She gave a nervous shake of the head. “It’s another one that seems completely unrelated.”
“Detective Crowe told me that two nuns were attacked in their convent,” said Dean. “In Jamaica Plain.”
“But that perp didn’t use a firearm. The nuns were bludgeoned, we think with a hammer. It looked like a rage attack. Some wacko who hates women.”
“Maybe that’s what he wanted you to think. To hide any connection to these other homicides.”
“Yeah, well, it worked. Until Dr. Isles came up with Jane Doe’s diagnosis of leprosy. It turns out one of the nuns who was attacked, Sister Ursula, used to work in a leper village, in India.”
“A village that no longer exists,” Maura said.
Dean looked at her. “What?”
“It may have been a religious massacre. Nearly a hundred people were slaughtered, and the village was burned to the ground.” She paused. “Sister Ursula is the only one from that village who survived.”
She had never seen Gabriel Dean look so taken aback. Usually, Dean was the one who held the secrets and doled out the revelations. This new information temporarily stunned him into silence.
She hit him with another one. “I believe our Jane Doe may have been from that same village in India.”
> “You told me earlier you thought she was Hispanic,” said Crowe.
“It was only a guess, based on her skin pigmentation.”
“So are you changing the guess to make it fit the circumstances?”
“No, I’m changing it because of what we found at autopsy. Remember that strand of yellow thread adhering to her wrist?”
“Yeah. Hair and Fiber said it was cotton. Probably just a piece of string.”
“Wearing a loop of string around your wrist is supposed to ward off the evil eye. It’s a Hindu custom.”
“India again,” said Dean.
Maura nodded. “It does keep going back to India.”
“A nun and an illegal immigrant with leprosy?” said Crowe. “How do we link them to a corporate hit?” He shook his head. “Professionals don’t get hired unless someone has a lot to gain.”
“Or a lot to lose,” said Maura.
“If these are all contract killings,” said Dean, “you can be sure of one thing. That the progress of your investigations will be tracked very carefully. You need to control any and all information about these cases. Because someone’s watching everything Boston P.D. is doing.”
Watching me too, thought Maura, chilled at the thought. And she was so visible. At crime scenes, on the TV news. Walking to her car. She was accustomed to being in the eye of the media, but now she considered the other eyes that might be watching her. Tracking her. And she remembered what she had felt in the darkness at Mama Cortina’s: the prey’s cold sense of dread when it suddenly realizes it is being stalked.
Dean said, “I need to see that other death scene. The convent, where the nuns were attacked.” He looked at Rizzoli. “Could you take me through it?”
For a moment, Rizzoli did not respond. She sat unmoving, her gaze fixed on the death photo of Howard Redfield, curled in the trunk of his car.
“Jane?”
She took a breath and sat up straight, as though she’d suddenly found some new well of courage. Of fortitude.
“Let’s go,” she said, and rose to her feet. She looked at Dean. “I guess we’re a team again.”
FIFTEEN
I CAN DEAL WITH THIS. I can deal with him.
Rizzoli drove to Jamaica Plain with her eyes on the road, but her mind on Gabriel Dean. Without warning, he had stepped back into her life, and she was still too stunned to make sense of what she was now feeling. Her stomach was knotted, her hands numb. Only a day ago, she had thought that she was over the worst of missing him, that with a little time and a lot of distraction she could put their affair behind her. Out of sight, out of mind.
Now he was back in her sight, and very much on her mind.
She was first to arrive at Graystones Abbey. She sat in her parked car and waited for him, every nerve humming, her anxiety turning to nausea.
Pull it together, goddamn it. Focus on the job.
She saw his rental car park behind her.
At once she stepped out and welcomed the punishing wind on her face. The more brutal the cold, the better, to slap some sense into her. She watched him emerge from his car and greeted him with the crisp nod of a fellow cop.
Then she turned and rang the gate bell. No pause for conversation, no fumbling for words. She went straight to business, because it was the only way she knew how to cope with this reunion. She was relieved when a nun soon emerged from the building and began shuffling through the snow, toward the gate.
“It’s Sister Isabel,” said Rizzoli. “Believe it or not, she’s one of the younger ones.”
Isabel squinted at them through the bars, her gaze on Rizzoli’s companion.
“This is Agent Gabriel Dean from the FBI,” said Rizzoli. “I’m just going to show him the chapel. We won’t disturb you.”
Isabel opened the gate to let them in. It gave an unforgiving clang as it swung shut behind them. The cold sound of finality. Of imprisonment. Sister Isabel immediately returned to the building, leaving the two visitors standing in the courtyard. Alone with each other.
At once Rizzoli took control of the silence and launched into a case review. “We still can’t be sure of the point of entry,” she said. “Snowfall covered up any footprints, and we didn’t find any broken ivy to indicate he climbed the wall. That front gate’s kept locked at all times, so if the perp came that way, someone inside the abbey had to let him in. That’s a violation of convent rules. It would have to be done at night, when no one would see it.”
“You have no witnesses?”
“None. We thought, at first, that it was the younger nun, Camille, who might have opened the gate.”
“Why Camille?”
“Because of what we found on autopsy.” Rizzoli turned her gaze to the wall, avoiding his eyes, as she said: “She’d recently been pregnant. We found the dead infant in a pond behind the abbey.”
“And the father?”
“Obviously a prime suspect, whoever he is. We haven’t identified him yet. DNA tests are still pending. But now, after what you’ve just told us, it seems we may have been barking up the wrong tree entirely.”
She stared at the walls that encircled them, at the gate that barred the world from entry, and an alternate sequence of events suddenly began to play out before her eyes, a sequence far different from the one she had imagined when she first set foot on this crime scene.
If it wasn’t Camille who opened the gate . . .
“So who let the killer into the abbey?” said Dean, eerily reading her thoughts.
She frowned at the gate, thinking of snow blowing across the cobblestones. She said, “Ursula was wearing a coat and boots . . .”
She turned and looked at the building. Pictured it in those black hours before dawn, the windows dark, the nuns asleep in their chambers. The courtyard silent, except for the wind.
“It was already snowing when she came outside,” she said. “She was dressed for the weather. She walked across this courtyard, to the gate, where someone was waiting for her.”
“Someone she must have known would be out here,” said Dean. “Someone she must have expected.”
Rizzoli nodded. Now she turned toward the chapel and began to walk, her boots punching holes in the snow. Dean was right behind her, but she was no longer focused on him; she was walking in the footsteps of a doomed woman.
A night swirling with the season’s first snow. The stones are slippery beneath your boots. You move in silence because you don’t want the other sisters to know you are meeting someone. Someone for whom you are willing to break the rules.
But it’s dark, and there are no lamps to light the gate. So you can’t see his face. You can’t be sure this is the visitor you’re expecting tonight. . . .
At the fountain, she abruptly halted and looked up at the row of windows over the courtyard.
“What is it?” said Dean.
“Camille’s room,” she said, pointing. “It’s right up there.”
He gazed up at the room. The stinging wind had made his face ruddy, and ruffled his hair. It was a mistake to stare at him, because she suddenly felt such hunger for his touch, she had to turn away, had to press her fist against her abdomen, to counter the emptiness she felt there.
“She might have seen something, from that room,” said Dean.
“The light in the chapel. It was on when the bodies were found.” Rizzoli looked up at Camille’s window, and remembered the bloodstained sheet.
She awakens with her sanitary pad soaked. She climbs from bed, to use the bathroom and change her pad. And when she comes back to her room, she notices the light, glowing through the stained-glass windows. A light that should not be on.
Rizzoli turned toward the chapel, drawn by the ghostly image she now saw, of young Camille, stepping out of the main building. Shivering as she moved beneath the covered walkway, perhaps regretting that she had not pulled on a coat for this short walk between buildings.
Rizzoli followed that ghost, into the chapel.
There she stood in the gloom.
The lights were off, and the pews were nothing more than horizontal slats of shadow. Dean was silent beside her, like a ghost himself, as she watched the final scene play out.
Camille, stepping through the door, just a slip of a girl, her face pale as milk.
She looks down in horror. Sister Ursula lies at her feet, and the stones are splattered with blood.
Perhaps Camille did not immediately understand what had happened, and thought at first glance that Ursula had merely slipped and hit her head. Or perhaps she already knew, from that first glimpse of blood, that evil had breached their walls. That it now stood behind her, near the door. Watching her.
That it was moving toward her.
The first blow sends her staggering. Stunned as she is, she still struggles to escape. Moves in the only direction open to her: Up the aisle. Toward the altar, where she stumbles. Where she drops to her knees, awaiting the final blow.
And when it’s done, and young Camille lies dead, the killer turns back, toward the first victim. Toward Ursula.
But he doesn’t finish the job. He leaves her alive. Why?
She looked down at the stones, where Ursula had fallen. She imagined the attacker, reaching down to confirm the kill.
She went very still, suddenly remembering what Dr. Isles had told her.
“The killer didn’t feel a pulse,” she said.
“What?”
“Sister Ursula is missing a carotid pulse on the right side of her neck.” She looked at Dean. “He thought she was dead.”
They walked up the aisle, past rows of pews, following in Camille’s last footsteps. They came to the spot near the altar where she had fallen. They stood in silence, their gazes on the floor. Though they could not see it in the gloom, traces of blood surely lingered in the cracks between stones.
Shivering, Rizzoli looked up and saw that Dean was watching her.
“That’s all there is to see here,” she said. “Unless you want to talk to the sisters.”
“I want to talk to you.”
“I’m right here.”
The Sinner Page 20