The Keepsake

He considered her request for a moment, then nodded and stood up. “I’ll have to find the file. It may take me a while.”

“You keep it here?”

“You think I can afford to pay for storage? All the institute’s files are here in my house. If you wait, I’ll get it,” he said, and walked out of the room.

The grotesque photos on the coffee table had served their purpose, and she couldn’t bear looking at them any longer. As she gathered them together, she had a disturbing image of a fourth victim, another dark-haired beauty salted down to jerky, and she wondered if at that very moment Josephine was being ushered into the afterworld.

Her cell phone rang. She dropped the photos to answer it.

“It’s me,” said Barry Frost.

She hadn’t expected a call from him. Steeling herself for an update on his marital woes, she asked gently: “How are you doing?”

“I just spoke to Dr. Welsh.”

She had no idea who Dr. Welsh was. “Is that the marriage counselor you were pla

“No, we haven’t seen a counselor yet. I’m not calling about that.”

“Then who’s Dr. Welsh?”

“She’s that biologist from UMass, the one who told me all about bogs and fens. She called me back today, and I thought you’d want to hear this.”

Talking about bogs and fens was a big improvement, she thought. At least he wasn’t sobbing about Alice. She glanced at her watch, wondering how long it would take Dr. Hilzbrich to find Jimmy Otto’s file.

“…and it’s really rare. That’s why it took her days to identify it. She had to bring it to some botanist at Harvard, and he just confirmed it.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “What are you talking about?”

“Those bits of plant matter we picked out of Bog Lady’s hair. There were leaves and some kind of seedpod. Dr. Welsh said it’s from a plant called…” There was a pause, and Jane heard shuffling pages as he searched his notes. “ Carex oronensis.That’s the scientific name. It’s also known as Orono sedge.”

“This plant grows in bogs?”

“And in fields. It also likes highly disturbed sites like clearings and roadsides. The specimen looked fresh, so she thinks it got picked up in the corpse’s hair when the body was moved. Orono sedge doesn’t produce seedpods until July.”

Jane was now paying full attention to what he was saying. “You said this plant is rare. How rare?”

“There’s only one area in the world where it grows. The Penobscot River Valley.”

“Where’s that?”

“Maine. Up around the Bangor area.”

She stared out the window at the dense curtain of trees surrounding Dr. Hilzbrich’s house. Maine. Bradley Rose spent two years of his life here.

“Rizzoli,” said Frost. “I want to come back.”

“What?”

“I shouldn’t have bailed out on you. I want to be on the team again.”

“Are you sure you’re ready?”

“I need to do this. I need to help.”

“You already have,” she said. “Welcome back.”

As she hung up, Dr. Hilzbrich came into the room, carrying three thick folders. “Here are Jimmy’s files,” he said, handing them to her.

“I need to know one more thing, Doctor.”

“Yes?”

“You said the institute’s been shut down. What happened to the property?”

He shook his head. “It was on the market for years but it never sold. Too damn remote to interest any developers. I couldn’t keep up with the taxes, so now I’m about to lose it.”

“It’s currently unoccupied?”

“It’s been shuttered for years.”

Once again, she glanced at her watch, and considered how many hours of daylight she had. She looked up at Hilzbrich. “Tell me how to get there.”

THIRTY-ONE

Lying awake on the mildewed mattress, Josephine stared into the darkness of her prison and thought of the day, twelve years ago, when she and her mother had fled San Diego. It was the morning after Medea had mopped up the blood and washed the walls and disposed of the man who had invaded their home, forever changing their lives.

They had crossed the border into Mexico, and as their car barreled through the arid scrubland of Baja, Josephine was still shaking with fear. But Medea had been eerily calm and focused, her hands perfectly steady on the steering wheel. Josephine had not understood how her mother could be so composed. She had not understood so many things. That was the day she saw her mother for who she really was.

That was the day she learned she was the daughter of a lioness.

“Everything I’ve done has been for you,” Medea told her as their car hurtled along blacktop that shimmered with heat. “I did it to keep us together. We are a family, darling, and a family has to stick together.” She looked at her terrified daughter, who sat huddled beside her like an injured animal. “Do you remember what I told you about the nuclear family? How anthropologists define it?”

A man had just bled to death in their house. They had just disposed of his body and fled the country. And her mother was calmly lecturing her about anthropological theory?

Despite the incredulity in her daughter’s eyes, Medea had continued. “Anthropologists will tell you that a nuclear family is not mother, father, and child. No, it’s mother and child. Fathers come and go. They sail off to sea or they march off to war, and often they don’t come home. But mother and child are linked forever. Mother and child are the primordial unit. We are that unit, and I’ll do whatever it takes to protect it, to protect us. That’s why we have to run.”

And so they had run. They’d left a city they’d both loved, a city that had been home to them for three years-long enough for friendships to be made, for bonds to be forged.

In one night, with a single gunshot, all those bonds were snapped forever.

“Look in the glove compartment,” Medea had said. “There’s an envelope.”

The daughter, still dazed, found the envelope and opened it. Inside were two birth certificates, two passports, and a driver’s license. “What is this?”

“Your new name.”

The girl opened the passport and saw her own photo-a photo that she vaguely remembered posing for months before, at her mother’s insistence. She had not realized it was for a passport.

“What do you think?” Medea asked.

The daughter stared at the name. Josephine.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” said Medea. “It’s your new name.”

“Why do I need it? Why are we doing this again?” The girl’s voice rose to a hysterical shriek. “Why?”

Medea pulled over to the side of the road and stopped the car. She grasped her daughter’s face in her hands and forced her to meet her gaze. “We’re doing this because we have no choice. If we don’t run, they’ll put me in jail. They’ll take you from me.”

“But you didn’t do anything! You’re not the one who killed him! I did! ”

Medea grabbed her daughter’s shoulders and gave her a hard shake. “Don’t ever tell that to anyone, do you understand? Not ever. If we’re ever caught, if the police ever find us, you have to tell them that I shot him. Tell them I killed that man, not you.”

“Why do you want me to lie?”

“Because I love you and I don’t want you to suffer for what happened. You shot him to protect me. Now I’m protecting you. So promise me you’ll keep this secret. Promise me. ”

And her daughter had promised, even though the events of that night were still vivid: Her mother sprawled on the bedroom floor, the man standing over her. The alien gleam of a gun on the nightstand. How heavy it had felt when she’d picked it up. How her hands had trembled when she’d pulled the trigger. She, and not her mother, had killed the intruder. That was the secret between them, the secret that they alone shared.

“No one ever has to know you killed him,” Medea had said.

“This is my problem, not yours. It will never be yours. You’re going to grow up and go on with your life. You’re going to be happy. And this will stay buried in the past.”