The Keepsake

“Are you?” He gave Josephine a shove, and she stumbled away to safety. He turned his gun instead on Medea. Even with that barrel pointed at her, she managed to look utterly calm. She cast a glance at Jane, a look that said: I have his attention. The rest is up to you. She took a step toward Jimmy, toward the gun aimed at her chest. Her voice turned silky, even seductive. “You wanted me just as much as Bradley did. Didn’t you? The first time I met you, I saw it in your eyes. What you wanted to do to me. The same thing you did to all those other women. Did you fuck them while they were still alive, Jimmy? Or did you wait until they were dead? Because that’s how you like them, isn’t it? Cold. Dead. Yours for eternity.”

He said nothing, just kept staring as she moved closer. As she enticed him with the possibilities. For years he and Bradley had pursued her, and here she finally was, within his reach. His and his alone.

Jane’s weapon lay on the ground only a few feet away. She inched toward it, mentally rehearsing her moves. Drop to the ground, snatch up the gun. Fire. She’d have to do all this with only the use of her left hand. She might be able to get off one shot, two at the most, before Jimmy returned fire. No matter how fast I am, she thought, I won’t be able to bring him down in time. Either Medea or I could die tonight.

Medea kept moving toward Jimmy. “All these years, you’ve been hunting me,” said Medea softly. “Now here I am and you don’t really want to end it right here and now, do you? You don’t really want the hunt to be over.”

“But it is over.” He raised the gun and Medea went stock-still. This was the ending she’d been ru

“This isn’t about what I want,” said Jimmy. “I was told to finish it. And that’s what I’m going to do.” The muscles in his forearms snapped taut as he prepared to fire.

Jane lunged for her weapon. But as her left hand closed around the grip, there was a blast of gunfire. She pivoted and the night swirled by in slow motion, a dozen details assaulting her senses at once. She saw Medea drop to her knees, arms crossed protectively over her head. She felt the crackling heat from the flames and the strange heaviness of the weapon in her left hand as she brought it up and her fingers tightened into a firing grip.

But even as Jane squeezed off the first round, she realized that Jimmy Otto had already staggered back, that her bullet was punching into a target that was already bloodied by an earlier gunshot.

Silhouetted by the flames behind him, he tumbled backward like a doomed Icarus, his arms flung out at his sides, his torso in free fall. He slumped back across the hood of the burning car and his hair caught fire, wreathing his head in flames. With a shriek he lurched away from the car. His shirt ignited. He staggered around the yard in an agonized death dance and collapsed.

“No!”Carrie Otto’s anguished moan was not a human sound at all, but the guttural cry of a dying animal. She crawled slowly, painfully toward her brother, trailing a black smear of blood across the gravel.

“Don’t leave me, baby. Don’t leave me.”

She rolled on top of his body, heedless of the flames, desperate to smother the fire.

“Jimmy. Jimmy! ”

Even as her hair and clothes ignited, even as the fire seared her skin, she clung to her brother in an agonized embrace. They remained locked together, their flesh melding into one, and the flames consumed them.

Medea rose unhurt to her feet. But her gaze was not focused on the burning bodies of Jimmy and Carrie Otto; she stared instead toward the woods.

Toward Barry Frost, who had sagged backward against a tree, his weapon still clutched in his hands.

THIRTY-SIX

The label of hero did not sit comfortably on Barry Frost’s shoulders.

He looked embarrassed rather than heroic, sitting in his hospital bed, wearing only the flimsy joh

He’d even save your life.

She waited for the other visitors to leave before she finally stepped into his room. “Can you stand one more?” she asked.

He gave her a wan smile. “Hey. I was hoping you’d stick around.”

“This seems to be the happening place. I have to fight off all your groupies just to get in.” With her right arm now in a cast, Jane felt clumsy as she dragged a chair over to the bed and sat down. “Geez, will you look at us two,” she said. “What a pathetic pair of wounded war buddies.”

Frost started to laugh, but caught himself as the motion set off fresh pain from his laparotomy incision. He hunched forward, grimacing in discomfort.

“I’ll get the nurse,” she said.

“No.” Frost held up his hand. “I can handle this. I don’t want any more morphine.”

“Screw the macho stuff. I say take the drugs.”

“I don’t want to be doped up. Tonight I need to have my head clear.”

“What for?”

“Alice is coming to see me.”

It was painful to hear the hopeful note in his voice, and she looked away so he could not read the pity in her eyes. Alice didn’t deserve this man. He was one of the good guys, one of the decent guys, and that was why he was going to get his heart broken.

“Maybe I should leave,” she said.

“No. Not yet. Please.” Carefully he settled back against the pillows and released a cautious breath. Trying to look cheerful, he said: “Tell me the latest news.”

“It’s been confirmed. Debbie Duke was really Carrie Otto. According to Mrs. Willebrandt, Carrie showed up at the museum back in April and offered to help out as a volunteer.”

“April? That’s soon after Josephine was hired.”

Jane nodded. “It took only a few months for Carrie to become indispensable to the museum. She must have stolen Josephine’s keys. Maybe she was the one who left that bag of hair in Dr. Isles’s backyard. She gave Jimmy complete access to the building. In every way, brother and sister were a team.”

“Why would any sister go along with a brother like Jimmy?”

“We caught a glimpse of it that night. Inappropriate sibling attachment was what the therapist wrote in Jimmy’s psychiatric file. I spoke to Dr. Hilzbrich yesterday, and he said Carrie was every bit as pathological as her brother. She’d do anything for him, maybe even maintain his dungeon. The crime scene unit found multiple hairs and fibers in that Maine cellar. The mattress had bloodstains from more than one victim. Neighbors on the road said they’d sometimes see both Jimmy and Carrie in the area at the same time. They’d stay in the house for several weeks, then they’d disappear for months.”

“I’ve heard of husband-and-wife serial killer teams. But a brother and sister?”

“The same dynamic applies. A weak personality coupled with a powerful one. Jimmy was the dominator, so overwhelming that he could exert total control over people like his sister. And Bradley Rose. While Bradley was alive, he helped Jimmy in the hunt. He preserved the victims and found places to store their bodies.”

“So he was just Jimmy’s follower.”

“No, they both got something out of the relationship. That’s Dr. Hilzbrich’s theory. Jimmy fulfilled his teenage fantasies of collecting dead women while Bradley acted out his obsession with Medea Sommer. She was what they had in common, the one prey they both wanted, but could never catch. Even after Bradley died, Jimmy never stopped looking for her.”