The Keepsake (27 page)

“You haven’t changed,” he murmured in wonder. “All these years and you’re exactly the same.”

“So are you, Jimmy,” Medea answered without a note of irony.

“You were the only one he ever wanted. The one he couldn’t have.”

“But Bradley’s not here now. So why are you doing this?”

“This is for me. This is to make you pay.” He pressed his gun against Josephine’s temple, and for the first time Jane glimpsed terror in Medea’s face. If the woman felt any fear at all, it was not for herself but for her daughter. The key to destroying Medea had always been Josephine.

“You don’t want my daughter, Jimmy. You have me.” Medea was in control now, her fear disguised by a cool glaze of contempt.

“I’m the reason you took her, the reason you’ve been playing these games with the police. Well, here I am. Let her go and I’m all yours.”

“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 running from all these years, an ending she could not alter with pleading or seduction. If she had walked into this thinking she could control the monster, she now saw her mistake.

“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 johnny gown. He’d been transferred to Boston Medical Center two days earlier, and since then a steady stream of well-wishers, everyone from the police commissioner to the Boston PD cafeteria staff, had made the pilgrimage to his hospital room. That afternoon, when Jane arrived, she found three visitors still lingering amid the jungle of flower arrangements and Mylar
GET WELL
balloons. From kids to old ladies, everybody liked Frost, she thought as she watched from the doorway. And she understood why. He was the Boy Scout who’d cheerfully shovel your sidewalk and jump-start your car and climb a tree to rescue your cat.

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.”

“But instead he found her daughter.”

“He probably spotted Josephine’s photo in the newspaper. She’s the spitting image of Medea, and she’s the right age to be her daughter. She’s even in the same profession. It wouldn’t take much digging to learn that Josephine wasn’t who she claimed to be. So he watched her, waiting to see if her mother would turn up.”

Frost shook his head. “That was some crazy obsession he had with Medea. After all these years, you’d think he’d move on.”

“Remember Cleopatra? Helen of Troy? Men were obsessed with them, too.”

“Helen of Troy?” He laughed. “Man, this archaeology thing is rubbing off on you. You sound like Dr. Robinson.”

“The point is, men get obsessed. A guy will cling to a particular woman for years.” She added, quietly: “Even a woman who doesn’t love him.”

His face reddened and he looked away.

“Some people just can’t move on,” she said, “and they waste their lives waiting for someone they can’t have.” She thought of Maura Isles, another person who wanted someone she couldn’t have, who was trapped by her own desires, her own poor choice of a lover. On the night Maura had needed him, Father Daniel Brophy was not there for her. Instead, it was Anthony Sansone who had taken her into his house. It was Sansone who had called Jane to confirm it was safe to let Maura return home. Sometimes, thought Jane, the person who could make you happiest is the one you overlook, the one who waits patiently in the wings.

They heard a knock on the door, and Alice stepped in. Dressed in a sleek skirt suit, she looked blonder and more stunning than Jane remembered, but her beauty had no warmth. She held herself like marble, perfectly chiseled, meant only for looking but not touching. The women exchanged tense but polite greetings, like two rivals for the same man’s attention. For years they had shared Frost, Jane as his partner, Alice as his wife, yet Jane felt no connection with this woman.

She stood to leave, but as she reached the door, she couldn’t resist a parting remark. “Be nice to him. He’s a hero.”

Frost saved me, now I’m going to have to save him, Jane thought as she walked out of the hospital and climbed into her car. Alice was going to shatter his heart, the way you shatter flesh with liquid nitrogen and a sharp whack with a hammer. Jane had seen it in Alice’s eyes, the grim resolve of a wife who’s already left the marriage and was only there to wrap up the final details.

He’d need a friend tonight. She would come back later, to pick up the pieces.

She started her car and her cell phone rang. The number was unfamiliar.

So was the voice of the man who greeted her on the line. “I think you’ve made a big mistake, Detective,” he said.

“Excuse me? Who am I speaking to?”

“Detective Potrero, San Diego PD. I just got off the phone with Detective Crowe, and I heard how it all went down there. You claim you took out Jimmy Otto.”

“I didn’t. My partner did.”

“Yeah, well, whoever you shot, it wasn’t Jimmy Otto. Because he died here twelve years ago. I ran that investigation, so I know. And I need to question the woman who killed him. Is she in custody?”

“Medea Sommer isn’t going anywhere. She’ll be right here in Boston, anytime you want to come out and talk to her. I can assure you, the shooting in San Diego was absolutely justified. It was self-defense. And the man she shot wasn’t Jimmy Otto. It was a guy named Bradley Rose.”

“No, it wasn’t. Jimmy’s own sister ID’d him.”

“Carrie Otto lied to you. That wasn’t her brother.”

“We have DNA to prove it.”

Jane paused. “What DNA?”

“The report wasn’t included in that file we sent you, because the test was completed months after we closed our case. You see, Jimmy was a murder suspect in another jurisdiction. They contacted us because they wanted to be absolutely sure their suspect was dead. They asked Jimmy’s sister to provide a DNA sample.”

“Carrie’s DNA?”

Potrero gave an impatient sigh, as though speaking to a moron.

“Yes, Detective Rizzoli. Her DNA. They wanted to prove the dead man really was her brother. Carrie Otto mailed in a cheek swab, and we ran it against the victim’s. It was a family match.”

“That can’t be right.”

“Hey, you know what they say about DNA. It doesn’t lie. According to our lab, Carrie Otto was definitely a female relative of the man we dug up from that backyard. Either Carrie had
another
brother who got killed here in San Diego, or Medea Sommer lied to you. And she didn’t shoot the man she claims she shot.”

“Carrie Otto didn’t have another brother.”

“Exactly. Ergo, Medea Sommer lied to you. So is she in custody?”

Jane didn’t answer. A dozen frantic thoughts were fluttering in her head like moths and she couldn’t catch and hold a single one.

“Jesus,” said Detective Potrero. “Don’t tell me she’s free.”

“I’ll call you back,” said Jane, and disconnected. She sat in her car, staring out the windshield. She saw a pair of doctors walk out of the hospital, moving with princely strides, white coats flapping. Sure of themselves, that was the way they walked, like two men with no doubts while she herself was trapped in them. Jimmy Otto or Bradley Rose? Which man had Medea shot and killed in her home twelve years ago, and why would she lie about it?

Who did Frost really kill?

She thought of what she had witnessed in Maine that night. The death of Carrie Otto. The shooting of a man she’d assumed was Carrie’s brother. Medea had called him
Jimmy,
and he had answered to that name. So he
must
have been Jimmy Otto, just as Medea claimed.

But the DNA was the obstacle she kept banging into, the bulletproof piece of evidence that contradicted everything. According to the DNA, it wasn’t Bradley who’d died in San Diego. It was a male relative of Carrie Otto.

There was only one conclusion.
Medea lied to us.

And if they let Medea slip free, they were going to look like total incompetents. Hell, she thought, we
are
incompetents, and the proof is in the DNA. Because, as Detective Potrero had said, DNA doesn’t lie.

She punched in Crowe’s number on her cell phone, and suddenly went still.

Or does it?