The Silent Girl

by Tess Gerritsen

  He was not going to make this easy for her. “And where is she?”

  Before he could answer, she heard someone call out: “Dr. Isles?” A young Asian man in a suit and tie crossed the street toward her. “They’re waiting for you up on the roof.”

  “Which way up?”

  “Come with me. I’ll walk you up the stairs.”

  “Are you new to homicide? I don’t believe we’ve met.”

  “Sorry, I should have introduced myself. I’m Detective Johnny Tam, with District A-1. Rizzoli needed someone from the neighborhood to translate, and since I’m the generic Chinese guy, I got pulled onto her team.”

  “Your first time working with homicide?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Always been a dream of mine. I only made detective two months ago, so I’m really psyched.” Briskly ordering onlookers aside, he cleared a path for her through the crowd and opened a door to a building that smelled of garlic and incense.

  “I notice you speak Mandarin. Do you speak Cantonese, too?” she said.

  “You can hear the difference?”

  “I used to live in San Francisco. A number of my colleagues were Chinese.”

  “I wish I could speak Cantonese, but it’s like Greek to me,” he said as they climbed up the stairwell. “I’m afraid my Mandarin’s not very useful around here. Most of these old-timers speak Cantonese or the Toisan dialect. Half the time, I need an interpreter myself.”

  “So you aren’t from Boston.”

  “Born and raised in New York City. My parents came over from Fujian province.”

  They reached the rooftop door and stepped outside, into the glare of the early-morning sun. Squinting against the brightness, Maura saw crime scene unit personnel combing the rooftop and heard someone call out: “Found another bullet casing over here.”

  “What is that, five?”

  “Mark it and bag it.”

  Suddenly the voices went silent and Maura realized they’d noticed her arrival and were all looking at her. The traitor had arrived.

  “Hey, Doc,” called out Jane, crossing toward her, the wind scrambling her dark hair. “I see Tam finally found you.”

  “What’s this about bullet casings?” asked Maura. “On the phone, you said it was an amputation.”

  “It is. But we found a Heckler and Koch automatic down in the alley below. Looks like someone fired off a few rounds up here. At least five.”

  “Were there reports of gunshots? Do we have an approximate time?”

  “Gun had a suppressor, so no one heard a thing.” Jane turned. “Victim’s over here.”

  Maura pulled on shoe covers and gloves and followed Jane to the shrouded body lying near the roof’s edge. Bending down, she lifted the plastic sheet and stared, unable to speak for a moment.

  “Yeah. It kind of took our breath away, too,” said Jane.

  The woman was a Caucasian in her early thirties, slim and athletic, dressed all in black in a hoodie sweatshirt and leggings. The body was in full rigor mortis. She lay on her back, face staring up at the sky, as though she’d stretched out to admire the stars. Her hair, a rich auburn, was gathered at the nape of her neck in a simple ponytail. Her skin was pale and flawless and she had a model’s jutting cheekbones, faintly Slavic. But it was the wound that Maura focused on, a slash so deep that it divided skin and muscle and cartilage, severing the lumen of the trachea and exposing the pearly surface of the cervical spine. The arterial gush that had resulted was powerful enough to spray blood in a shockingly wide radius that left splatters across the curtain of sheets hanging on a nearby clothesline.

  “The amputated hand fell in the alley right below,” said Jane. “So did the Heckler and Koch. My guess is, her fingerprints are on the grip. And we’re gonna find gunshot residue on that hand.”

  Maura tore her gaze away from the neck and focused on the right wrist, which had been cleanly divided, and she tried to picture what sort of instrument could have so efficiently slashed through cartilage and bone. It had to be appallingly sharp, wielded without hesitation. She imagined the slash of the blade and the hand falling away, tumbling over the roof’s edge. Imagined that same blade slicing across that slender neck.

  Shuddering, she rose to her feet and stared down from the roof at the police officers standing at the far end of Knapp Street, holding back onlookers. The crowd looked twice as large as it had only moments before, and the day was still early. The curious, ever relentless, can always smell blood.

  “Are you sure you really want to be here, Maura?” Jane asked quietly.

  Maura turned to her. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “I’m just wondering if it’s too soon for you to be back in rotation. I know it’s been a tough week for you, with the trial and all.” Jane paused. “It’s not looking too good for Graff right now.”

  “It shouldn’t look good. He killed a man.”

  “And that man killed a cop. A good cop, who had a wife and kids. I have to admit, I might’ve lost it, too.”

  “Please, Jane. Don’t tell me you’re defending Officer Graff.”

  “I worked with Graff, and you couldn’t ask for a better man to watch your back. You do know what happens to cops who end up in prison, don’t you?”

  “I shouldn’t have to defend myself on this. I’ve gotten enough hate mail about it. Don’t you join in the chorus.”

  “I’m just saying, it’s a sensitive time right now. We all respect Graff, and we can understand how he lost it that night. A cop killer’s dead, and maybe that’s a kind of justice all its own.”

  “It’s not my job to deliver justice. I just deliver the facts.”

  Jane’s laugh was biting. “Yeah, you’re all about the facts, aren’t you?”

  Maura turned and looked across the rooftop at the criminalists scouring the scene. Let it roll off and focus on your job. You’re here to speak for this dead woman, and no one else. “What was she doing on this roof?” she asked.

  Jane looked down at the body. “No idea.”

  “Do we know how she gained access?”

  “Could’ve been a fire escape or a stairwell. Once you’re on one roof, you can access all the roofs on this block, from Harrison Avenue to Knapp Street. She could have entered any of these buildings. Or been dropped from a helicopter, for that matter. No one we’ve spoken to remembers seeing her last night. And we know it happened last night. When we found her, rigor mortis was just starting to set in.”

  Maura focused on the victim again, and frowned at her clothes. “It’s strange, how she’s dressed all in black.”

  “Goes with everything, as they say.”

  “ID?”

  “No ID. All we found in her pockets was three hundred bucks and a Honda car key. We’re searching the area for the vehicle.” Jane shook her head. “Too bad she didn’t drive a Yugo. This is like looking for a needle in a whole damn haystack of Hondas.”

  Maura replaced the sheet, and the gaping wound vanished once more beneath plastic. “Where is the hand?”

  “It’s already bagged.”

  “Are you sure it belongs to this body?”

  Jane gave a startled laugh. “What are the odds it doesn’t?”

  “I never make assumptions. You know that.” She turned.

  “Maura?”

  Once again, she looked at Jane. They stood face-to-face in that blinding sunshine, where it felt as if all of Boston PD could see them, hear them.

  “About the trial. I do understand where you’re coming from,” said Jane. “You know that.”

  “And you don’t approve.”

  “But I understand. Just as I hope you understand that it’s guys like Graff who have to deal with the real world. They’re the ones on the front lines. Justice isn’t as clean as a science experiment. Sometimes it’s pretty damn messy and the facts just make things messier.”

  “So I should have lied instead?”

  “Just don’t forget who the real bad guys are.”

  “That’s not in my job d
escription,” said Maura. She left the rooftop and retreated into the stairwell, relieved to escape the sharp glare of the sun and the eyes of Boston PD personnel. But when she emerged on the ground floor, she came face-to-face once again with Detective Tam.

  “It’s pretty bloody up there, isn’t it?” he said.

  “Bloodier than most.”

  “So when’s the autopsy?”

  “I’ll do it tomorrow morning.”

  “May I observe?”

  “You’re welcome to be there, if you have the stomach for it.”

  “I watched a few while I was at the academy. Managed not to keel over.”

  She paused to regard him for a moment. Saw humorless dark eyes and sharply handsome features, but no hostility. On a morning when all of Boston PD seemed to regard her as the enemy, Detective Johnny Tam was the only cop who didn’t seem to stand in judgment of her.

  “Eight AM,” she said. “I’ll see you there.”

  MAURA DID NOT SLEEP WELL THAT NIGHT. AFTER A HEAVY MEAL of lasagna, washed down with three glasses of wine, she climbed into bed exhausted. She awakened a few hours later, painfully aware of the empty space beside her. Reaching out, she touched cold sheets and wondered, as she had on so many other nights over these past four months, if Daniel Brophy was also lying awake, also lonely. If he, too, was desperate to pick up the telephone and break this silence between them. Or did he sleep soundly, without regrets, relieved their affair had finally ended? While she might be her own woman again, freedom came with a price. An empty bed, sleepless nights, and the unanswerable question: Am I better with him or without him?

  The next morning, she arrived at work groggy and nauseated from all the coffee she’d consumed to make herself alert. As she stood in the morgue anteroom donning mask and paper cap and shoe covers, she looked through the viewing window and saw that Jane was already standing by the table, waiting for her. Yesterday they had not parted on the most congenial of terms, and Maura still felt stung by Jane’s sarcastic retort: You’re all about the facts, aren’t you? Yes, facts mattered to her. They were immutable things that could not be denied, even when they threatened a friendship. The trial of Officer Graff had driven a wedge between her and Jane, reminding Maura how unlikely their friendship had been from the start. As she tied on her gown, it was not the corpse she dreaded confronting, but Jane.

  With a deep breath, she pushed through the door.

  Her assistant, Yoshima, had already transferred the body bag onto the table. On a tray beside it was the severed hand, covered by a drape. Acutely aware that Yoshima was listening to their conversation, Maura gave Jane a businesslike nod and said, “Isn’t Frost joining us?”

  “He’s going to miss this one, but Johnny Tam’s on his way here. In fact, I think he can’t wait to watch you start slicing.”

  “Detective Tam seems eager to prove himself.”

  “I think he’s got his eye on joining homicide. From what I’ve seen so far, he may have what it takes.” She glanced up. “Speak of the devil.”

  Through the viewing window, Maura saw that Tam had arrived and was tying on a surgical gown. A moment later he entered, jet-black hair hidden beneath a paper cap. He approached the table, his gaze calm and impassive as he focused on the draped body.

  “Before we start, Tam,” said Jane, “I just want to point out to you that the barf sink is right over there.”

  He shrugged. “I won’t need it.”

  “You say that now.”

  “We’ll start with the easy part,” said Maura, and she uncovered the tray with the severed hand. It looked plastic. No wonder the Chinatown tour group had mistaken it for a Halloween prop with fake blood. It had already been swabbed and found positive for gunshot residue. Fingerprints from this hand were found on the grip of the Heckler & Koch, leaving no doubt that the victim had fired the bullets, scattering five casings on the rooftop. Maura swung the magnifier over the hand and examined the severed wrist.

  “The cut sliced right between the distal radius and the lunate bone,” she said. “But I can see a good chunk of the triquetral here.”

  “And that would mean?” asked Jane.

  “Whatever made this cut divided a carpal bone. And these bones are very dense.”

  “So it had to be a sharp blade.”

  “Sharp enough to amputate with a single slice.” Maura looked up. “I don’t see any secondary cut marks.”

  “Just tell me this hand matches that body.”

  Maura turned to the table and unzipped the body bag. The plastic parted, releasing the stomach-turning smell of refrigerated meat and stale blood. The cadaver inside was still fully clothed, the head tipped backward, exposing the gaping wound in her neck. As Yoshima took photos, Maura’s gaze was drawn to the woman’s auburn hair, caked in blood. Beautiful hair, she thought, and a beautiful woman. A woman who was armed and shooting at someone on that rooftop.

  “Dr. Isles, we’ve got some hair and fiber evidence staring at us,” said Yoshima. He was bending over the corpse’s black sweatshirt, peering at a single pale strand that clung to the sleeve.

  With a pair of tweezers, Maura plucked up the hair and examined it under the light. It was about two inches long, silvery gray and slightly curved. She glanced at the cadaver. “This obviously is not her hair.”

  “Look, there’s another one,” said Jane, pointing to a second strand clinging to the victim’s black leggings.

  “Maybe animal hairs,” said Yoshima. “Could be a golden retriever.”

  “Or maybe she got whacked by a gray-haired grandpa.”

  Maura slipped the strands into separate evidence envelopes and set them aside. “Okay, let’s undress her.”

  First they removed the only item of jewelry she was wearing, a black Swiss Hanowa watch, from her left wrist. Next came the shoes, black Reeboks, followed by the hoodie sweatshirt and a long-sleeved T-shirt, leggings, cotton panties, and an athletic bra. What emerged was a well-toned body, slim but muscular. Maura had once heard a pathology professor assert that in his many years of performing autopsies, he’d never come across an attractive corpse. This woman proved there could be exceptions to that rule. Despite the gaping wound and dependent mottling of her back and buttocks, despite the glassy eyes, she was still a stunningly beautiful woman.

  With the corpse now fully stripped of clothing, Maura and the two detectives stepped out of the room so that Yoshima could take X-rays. In the anteroom, they watched through the viewing window as he donned a lead apron and positioned the film cartridges.

  “A woman like that,” said Maura, “is going to be missed by someone.”

  “You saying that because she’s good-looking?” Jane said.

  “I’m saying it because she looks incredibly fit, she has perfect dentition, and those are Donna Karan leggings she was wearing.”

  “Question, please, from an ignorant man,” said Tam. “Does that mean they’re expensive?”

  Jane said, “I’ll bet Dr. Isles here can quote you the exact retail price.”

  “The point is,” said Maura, “she’s not some penniless stray off the street. She was carrying a lot of cash, and she was armed with a Heckler and Koch, which I understand is not your usual street gun.”

  “She also had no ID,” said Tam.

  “It could have been stolen.”

  “But the thief leaves behind three hundred bucks?” Tam shook his head. “That would be weird.”

  Through the viewing window, Maura saw Yoshima give a wave. “He’s done,” she said, and pushed through the door back into the lab.

  Maura examined the incised neck first. Like the cut that had amputated the hand, this wound appeared to be a single slice, delivered without hesitation. Inserting a ruler into the wound, Maura said: “It’s almost eight centimeters deep. Transects the trachea and penetrates all the way to the cervical spine.” She reoriented the ruler. “Wider than it is deep, around twelve centimeters side to side. Not a stab but a slash.” She paused, studying the exposed incisi
on. “Odd how smooth it is. There’s no bread-knifing, no secondary cuts. No bruising or crushing. It was done so quickly, the victim never had a chance to struggle.” She cradled the head and tilted it forward. “Can someone hold the cranium in position for me? I want to approximate the wound edges.”

  Without any hesitation, Detective Tam stepped forward and cradled the head in his gloved hands. While a human torso can be viewed as merely impersonal skin and bone and muscle, a corpse’s face reveals more than most cops want to see. Johnny Tam, though, did not shy away from the view. He stared straight into the dead woman’s eyes, as though hoping they might provide answers to his many questions.

  “That’s it, right there,” said Maura, sliding the magnifier over the skin. “I don’t see any serration marks. Nothing that would tell me what kind of knife …” She paused.

  “What?” asked Jane.

  “This angle is strange. It’s not your usual slashed throat.”

  “Yeah, those are so boring.”

  “Consider for a moment how you’d go about cutting a throat,” said Maura. “To penetrate this deep, all the way to vertebrae, you’d approach it from behind. You’d grab the victim’s hair, pull the head back, and slice across the front, from ear to ear.”

  “The commando method,” said Tam.

  “The rear approach gives you control of the victim and maximizes exposure of the throat. And it usually results in a curved incision when the wound’s later approximated. But this slash is angled slightly upward, right to left. It was delivered with the head in a neutral position, not tilted back.”

  “Maybe the killer was standing in front of her,” said Jane.

  “Then why didn’t she resist? There’s no bruising to indicate a struggle. Why would she just stand there while someone practically slices off her head?”

  Yoshima said: “I’ve put up the X-rays.”

  They all turned to the viewing box where the radiographs were now displayed, bones glowing white on the backlit screen. She focused first on the films of the right wrist stump and the severed hand, mentally comparing the angles of the transected triquetral bone. They were a match.

  “It’s definitely her hand,” Maura confirmed.