“Because all children seem clever, don’t they? Little Mei Mei was so quick, so curious …” My voice fades and I swallow hard. “When they left, it was like losing my own daughter all over again.”
“Where did they go?”
I shake my head. “There was a cousin in California, I think. Li Hua was only in her twenties, and so beautiful. She could have married again. She could have a different name.”
“You have no idea where she is now?”
I pause just long enough to raise a doubt in her mind. To make her wonder if my answer is truthful. The chess game between us continues, move followed by countermove.
“No,” I finally answer. “I don’t even know if she’s alive.”
There is a knock on the door, and Bella steps into the office. She is flushed from the exertions of teaching class, and her short black hair stands up, stiff with sweat. She dips her head in a bow.
“Sifu, the last class of the day has left. Will you need me?”
“Wait a moment. We are just finishing here.”
It is clear to the two detectives that I have nothing more to offer them, and they turn to leave. As they walk to the door, Rizzoli pauses and regards Bella. It is a long, speculative look, and I can almost see the thoughts whirring in her head. Mei Mei was five years old when she vanished. How old is this young woman? Could it be possible? But Rizzoli says nothing, merely nods goodbye and walks out of the studio.
After the door shuts, I say to Bella: “We are running out of time.”
“Do they know?”
“They’re closer to the truth.” I draw in a deep breath, and it worries me that I cannot cast off the new fatigue that now drags me down. I am fighting two battles at once, one of them against the enemy that smolders in my own bone marrow. I know that one of these enemies is certain to take my life.
The only question is, which one will kill me first?
NOW THERE WERE THREE MISSING GIRLS.
Jane sipped lukewarm coffee and ate a chicken salad sandwich as she reviewed her growing stack of folders. On her desk were files on Jane Doe, the Red Phoenix massacre, and the disappearances of Laura Fang and Charlotte Dion. She’d started a new file on yet another missing girl: Mei Mei, the cook’s daughter who had vanished along with her mother nineteen years ago. Mei Mei would be twenty-four years old now, perhaps married and living under a different name. They had no photos of her, no fingerprints, no idea what she looked like. She might not even reside in the country. Or she could be right under their noses, teaching martial arts in a Chinatown studio, Jane thought, and she pictured Iris’s stony-faced assistant, Bella Li, whose background they were already looking into.
Of the three girls, Mei Mei was the only one likely to be alive. The other two were almost certainly dead.
Jane turned her attention back to Laura Fang and Charlotte Dion. To the startling connection between them, despite the gulf that separated their lives. Charlotte was wealthy and white. Laura was the daughter of struggling Chinese immigrants. Charlotte grew up in a Brookline mansion, Laura in a cramped Chinatown apartment. Two such different girls, yet both had lost parents in the restaurant shooting, and now their files shared equal space on Jane’s desk in the homicide unit—not a place where anyone wanted to end up. Paging through their files, she heard the echo of Ingersoll’s last words to her: It’s all about what happened to those girls.
Were these the girls he’d meant?
PATRICK DION’S ESTATE looked no less impressive the second time she saw it.
Jane drove between the twin stone pillars onto the private road that took her past birch trees and lilacs and up the rolling lawn to the massive Colonial. As she pulled up under the porte cochere, Patrick emerged from the house to greet her.
“Thank you for seeing me again,” she said as they shook hands.
“Is there news about Charlotte?” he asked, and it was painful to see the hope in his eyes, to hear the tremor in his voice.
“I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear about the reason for my visit,” she said. “I’m afraid I don’t have anything new to report.”
“But you said on the phone that you wanted to talk about Charlotte.”
“This is in connection to our current investigation. The murder in Chinatown.”
“What does that have to do with my daughter?”
“I’m not sure, Mr. Dion. But there’ve been developments that make me think Charlotte’s disappearance is connected with another missing girl.”
“That was already explored years ago, by Detective Buckholz.”
“I’d like to look at it again. Even though it’s been nineteen years, I won’t let your daughter be forgotten. Charlotte deserves better than that.”
She saw him blink away tears, and she knew that for him the loss was still raw, the pain still alive. Parents never forget.
With a weary nod, he said: “Come inside. I’ve brought her things down from the attic, as you requested. Please take as long as you need to look through them.”
She followed him into the foyer and was once again impressed by gleaming hardwood floors, by oil portraits that appeared to be at least two centuries old. She could not help comparing this house with Kevin Donohue’s residence, with its pedestrian furniture and shopping mall art. Old money versus new money. Patrick led her into the formal dining room, where Palladian windows looked out over a lily pond. On the rosewood dining table, large enough to seat a dozen guests, was a collection of cardboard boxes.
“This is what I saved,” he said sadly. “Most of her clothes, I finally gave away to charity. Charlotte would have approved, I think. She cared about that sort of thing, feeding the poor, housing the needy.” He looked around at the room and gave an ironic laugh. “You probably think it sounds hypocritical, don’t you? Saying that while I live in this house, on this property. But my daughter really did have a good heart. A generous heart.” He reached into one of the boxes and lifted out a pair of frayed blue jeans. Stared at it, as if he could still see them clinging to his daughter’s slim hips. “Funny, how I never could bring myself to give these away. Blue jeans never go out of style. If she ever comes back, I know she’ll want them.” Gently he set them back in the box and breathed out a long sigh.
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Dion. About bringing all this pain back to you. Would it be easier for you if I looked through these boxes on my own?”
“No, I’ll need to explain things. You won’t know what some of it means.” He reached into a different box and pulled out a photo album. Clutched it for a moment, as if reluctant to release it. When he held it out to Jane it was with both hands, a precious offering that she took with equal reverence. “This is what you probably want to see.”
She opened the cover. On the first page was a photo of a young blond woman holding a red-faced newborn, the baby swaddled like a tiny mummy in a white blanket. OUR CHARLOTTE, EIGHT HOURS OLD was written beneath it with the extravagant loops and flourishes of a woman’s hand. So this was Dina when she was still Patrick’s fresh-faced bride. Before Arthur Mallory stepped into their lives and fractured their marriage.
“Charlotte was your only child?” Jane asked.
“Dina insisted that we have only one. At the time, I was fine with it. But now …”
Now he regrets it, she thought. Regrets pouring all his love and hopes into a child he would one day lose. She turned the pages and studied other photos of Charlotte as a blue-eyed, golden-haired toddler. Occasionally Dina appeared, but Patrick was in none of the photos, except as an elusive shadow cast at the edge of the frame while he held the camera. Jane turned to the final page in the album, the year Charlotte turned four years old.
Patrick handed her the next volume.
The years seemed to accelerate in this second album, the girl growing, changing every few pages. After the flurry of attention devoted to a child’s first years, after the novelty of new parenthood wears off, taking photos becomes an afterthought, the camera brought out only when the special occasion calls
for it. A fifth-birthday party. A first ballet recital. A visit to New York City. Suddenly that cherubic toddler transformed into a glum-faced adolescent, posing in her school uniform at the front gate of the Bolton Academy.
“She was twelve years old in this photo,” said Patrick. “I remember she hated that uniform. Said that plaid makes a girl look fat, and that was why the school made them wear it. To make the girls look so ugly, they wouldn’t get into trouble with any of the boys.”
“Did she not want to go to Bolton?”
“Oh, she certainly did want to go. But I admit, I wasn’t happy about seeing her leave. I had such a hard time losing my little girl to boarding school. Dina insisted because it was the school that she graduated from, a place where a girl could meet all the right people. That was how Dina put it.” He paused. “God, that probably sounds so superficial, but Dina was completely focused on things like that. On Charlotte making the right friends and marrying the right man.” He paused and added, ironically, “As it turned out, it was Dina who met a husband at Bolton.”
“That must have been hard for you when Dina left.”
Patrick gave a resigned shrug. “I accepted it. What else could I do? And oddly enough, I rather liked Arthur Mallory. Liked the whole Mallory family, in fact—Barbara, their son. Mark. All of them were decent people. But hormones are an irresistible force. I think I lost my wife to Arthur the very first time they laid eyes on each other. All I could do was stand by and watch my marriage fall apart.”
Jane turned to the last page and studied the final image in the album. It was a wedding photo, and standing at the center were the new bride and groom, Dina and Arthur Mallory, both dressed in formal attire. Flanking them were their respective children, Mark standing at his father’s side, Charlotte at her mother’s. While bride and groom were beaming, Charlotte looked dazed, as if she did not know how she’d come to be standing with these people.
“How old is Charlotte in this photo?” Jane asked.
“She would have been thirteen there.”
“She looks a little lost.”
“It happened so fast, I think we were all stunned. We’d met the Mallorys only a year before, when Charlotte and Mark both performed at the Bolton Academy Christmas pageant. A year later, all of us once again attended the Bolton Christmas pageant, but by then Dina had left me for Arthur. And I was just another single father, raising a daughter on my own.”
“Charlotte stayed with you after the divorce?”
“Dina and I discussed it, and we both felt it was best if I had custody so that Charlotte could stay in the house where she’d grown up. Every few months, Charlotte was supposed to spend a weekend with Dina and Arthur, but they traveled so much they were seldom home.”
“And there was no legal battle, no tug-of-war over your daughter?”
“Just because two people get divorced doesn’t mean they don’t care about each other. We did care. And we were now all part of an extended family. Arthur’s ex-wife, Barbara, had some difficulty accepting the divorce, I’m afraid, and she remained bitter to the end. But I saw no point in hanging on to resentments. It’s called being civilized.”
That was what Ingersoll had written in his report, that Patrick Dion and his ex-wife had stayed cordial even after the divorce. Now, hearing it from Patrick himself, she could believe it.
“They even spent their last Christmas here, with me,” he said. “Arthur and Dina and Mark. We had dinner together, in this room. Opened gifts.” He looked around the table, as if seeing their ghosts still seated there. “I remember Charlotte was there, at that end of the table, asking Mark about Harvard and whether he liked it there. Dina gave her a pearl necklace. We had pumpkin pie for dessert. And afterward, I took Mark downstairs to my woodshop, because he loves working with his hands. The Harvard kid who’d rather be building fine furniture.” Patrick blinked and looked at her, as if suddenly remembering she was there. “Now they’re gone. And there’s only Mark and me left.”
“You two seem close.”
“Oh, he’s a fine young man.” Patrick paused and suddenly smiled. “Mark’s already thirty-nine, but at my age, anyone under forty still seems like a young man.”
Jane pulled another book out of the box—not a family album this time, but a Bolton Academy yearbook with the school’s seal embossed in gold on the maroon leather.
“She was a sophomore that year,” said Patrick, looking at the cover. “That was the year before she …” He paused, his face darkening. “I thought about suing the school for negligence. They took my daughter on a field trip without adequate supervision. There they were, in a public place. Faneuil Hall! They should have known some of the kids might wander off, or some stranger might approach them. But the teachers, they didn’t pay attention, and suddenly my girl was gone. I was an ocean away, where I couldn’t do a damn thing to save her.”
“I understand you were in London.”
He nodded. “Meeting with some potential investors, adding to my goddamn fortune. I’d throw this all away, if only I could …” Suddenly he stood up. “I think I could use a stiff drink right now. Can I pour you one?”
“Thank you, but no. I’m driving.”
“Ah. The responsible policewoman. If you’ll excuse me,” he said, and walked out.
Jane opened the Bolton yearbook to the sophomore section and spotted Charlotte in the bottom row of photos. Her blond hair hung loose to her shoulders, and her lips were barely curved in a wistful smile. She was a beautiful girl, but tragedy already seemed stamped into her features, as if she knew that the future held only heartbreak for her. Printed beneath her photo was a list of her interests and activities. DRAMA CLUB. ART. ORCHESTRA. TENNIS TEAM.
Orchestra. She remembered that Charlotte had played the viola. She also remembered that Laura Fang had played the violin. The girls might have grown up in different universes, but they had music in common.
She paged through the book until she found the activities section, where she once again spotted Charlotte, posing with two dozen other music students. The girl was seated in the second row of string players, her instrument propped in her lap. The caption read: CANDACE FORSYTH, MUSICAL DIRECTOR, AND THE BOLTON ACADEMY ORCHESTRA.
She heard Patrick return to the dining room, carrying a drink that tinkled with ice cubes. “Did your daughter know a girl named Laura Fang?” Jane asked him.
“Detective Buckholz asked me that same question, after Charlotte disappeared. I told him I hadn’t heard the name before. I only found out later that Laura Fang was a girl who vanished two years before Charlotte. That’s when I understood why he asked me about her.”
“You can’t think of any link between the girls? Charlotte never mentioned Laura’s name?”
He looked at the photo of the Bolton orchestra. “Your child comes home from school and talks about this girl or that boy. How can any parent possibly remember all the names?”
He was right; it was an impossible thing to expect of a parent.
Jane flipped to the back of the book, to the section of senior students, and scanned the photos of clean-cut boys dressed in their Bolton uniforms of blue blazers and red neckties. There was Mark Mallory, his face a bit thinner, his hair longer and curlier. Already he was a handsome young man, bound for Harvard. Beneath his photo, his interests were listed: LACROSSE, ORCHESTRA, CHESS, FENCING, DRAMA.
Orchestra again. That was, after all, how the Dions and Mallorys had met—through their musical children at the Christmas pageant.
“I’m not quite sure how any of this is going to help you,” said Patrick. “Detective Buckholz asked me all these questions nineteen years ago.”
She looked up at him. “Maybe the answers have changed.”
AS JANE LEFT BROOKLINE and drove west on the Massachusetts Turnpike, the afternoon sun was in her eyes. She made good time to Worcester, but the drive north from that point was slow, on secondary roads where traffic funneled into a single lane because of repaving work. By the time she reached
the Bolton Academy, it was nearly five PM. She drove through the front gate, onto a curving drive shaded by ancient oak trees. At the main hall, three girls sat chatting on the stone steps. They did not even bother to look up as Jane parked and climbed out of her car. They appeared to be fifteen or sixteen, all of them slim and pretty, perfectly designed by Mother Nature to fulfill their biological purpose on earth and attract young men.
“Excuse me. I’m looking for Mrs. Forsyth, the music director,” said Jane.
The three goddesses responded with passive stares. Even in their plaid skirts and white cotton blouses, they managed to make Jane feel hopelessly unfashionable.
“She’s in Bennett Hall,” one of the girls finally said.
“Where’s that?”
The girl extended a graceful arm to point at the stately building across the lawn. “There.”
“Thanks.” As Jane walked across the lawn, she felt their eyes following her, the alien specimen from the world of merely ordinary people. So this was what boarding school was like, not a fun place like Hogwarts at all. More like sorority hell. She came to the steps of Bennett Hall and gazed up at the white columns, the elaborately carved pediment. It’s like scaling Mount Olympus, she thought as she climbed the stairs into the central hall.
The sound of a scratchy violin drifted from the corridor to her left. She followed it to a classroom where a teenage girl sat bowing with fierce concentration while a silver-haired woman frowned at her.
“For heaven’s sake, Amanda, your vibrato sounds like a high-tension wire! It makes me nervous just listening to it. And you’re practically strangling the neck. Relax your wrist.” The woman tugged at the girl’s left hand and gave it a hard shake. “Come on, loosen up!”
The student suddenly noticed Jane and froze. The woman turned and said: “Yes?”
“Mrs. Forsyth? I called earlier. I’m Detective Rizzoli.”
“We’re just finishing up here.” The teacher turned to her student and sighed. “You’re all tensed up today, so there’s no point continuing the lesson. Go back to the dorm and practice shaking your wrists. Both hands. Above all, a violinist must have flexible wrists.”
The Silent Girl: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel Page 19