The Silent Girl (21 page)

“Who is the Monkey King?” asked Jane.

“In China, his name is Sun Wukong. He’s born from a sacred rock and he starts off as just a stone monkey. Then he transforms to flesh and blood and gets crowned king of the monkeys. He becomes a warrior and travels to heaven to learn the wisdom of the gods. But up there, he gets into all sorts of trouble.”

“So he’s a bad character?” asked Frost.

“No, not evil. Just impulsive and mischievous, like a real monkey. There’s a whole book of stories about him. How he eats all the
peaches in the heavenly orchard. Drinks too much and steals a magic elixir. Gets into brawls with the Immortals, who don’t know how to deal with him. So they kick him out of heaven and temporarily lock him up inside a mountain prison.”

Frost laughed. “He sounds like a few guys I went to high school with.”

“So then what happens to him?” asked Jane.

“Sun Wukong has a whole series of adventures on earth. Sometimes he causes trouble. Sometimes, he performs good deeds. I can’t remember all the stories, but I know there was a lot of magical fighting and river monsters and talking animals. Just your typical fairy tales.”

“Fairy tales don’t spring to life,” said Jane. “They don’t shed real hair on real victims.”

“I’m just telling you what the legends say about him. He’s a complex creature, sometimes helpful, sometimes destructive. But when faced with a choice between good and evil, the Monkey King almost always chooses to do the right thing.”

Jane stared at the photo on Erin’s computer screen. At a face that, only a moment ago, had so chilled her. “So he’s not evil at all,” she said.

“No,” said Tam. “Despite his flaws, despite the chaos he sometimes causes, the Monkey King stands on the side of justice.”

T
HE SAVORY SCENT OF ROASTING CHICKEN AND ROSEMARY DRIFTED
from Angela Rizzoli’s kitchen, and in the dining room silver and chinaware clattered as retired detective Vince Korsak set the table. Outside in the yard, Jane’s daughter, Regina, was laughing and squealing as Gabriel pushed her on a swing set. But Jane was oblivious to it all as she sat reading on her mother’s sofa, half a dozen borrowed library books spread out before her on the coffee table. Books about Asian primates and gray langurs. And books about Sun Wukong, the Monkey King. She discovered that Sun Wukong’s adventures showed up not only in books, but also in movies and Chinese operas, dances, and even a children’s television show.

In a collection of Chinese folktales, Jane found an introduction to the legend. Though the stories were written sometime during the 1500s by a Chinese author named Wu Cheng’en, the tales themselves were ancient and were said to date back to an era of ghosts and magic, a time when gods and monsters battled in both heaven and earth.

Jane turned the page and confronted an image of Sun Wukong, clutching a long fighting staff. Though it was just an illustration, that glimpse of the Monkey King made the hair on her arms stand straight up. She stared at sharp teeth jutting in a black mouth, at a crown of silver hair, and could not look away.

She remembered an afternoon at the zoo when she’d been six years old, and her father had held her up to see the spider monkeys. They took one look at her and the cage erupted in terrifying chaos, the monkeys shrieking and vaulting among the branches, as if they had just glimpsed the face of Satan himself. A zoo employee came running and ordered everyone,
Back away, back away! I don’t know what’s scaring them!
But as Jane’s father carried her from that cage
of screaming monkeys, Jane knew that she was the one who’d set them off. She was the one they were terrified of. What did they see but a six-year-old girl with dark curls? she wondered. Or was there something else that they’d recognized even then? Something about who and what she’d one day become?

“So how’s it going with the monkey books?”

Korsak’s voice made her glance up with a start. He was dressed in his Sunday best—at least, the best that he was capable of pulling together for dinner at Angela Rizzoli’s. At least there were no ketchup stains on his white golf shirt and khaki Dockers. After a heart attack a few years earlier, he’d lost thirty pounds on a heart-healthy diet, but his weight was starting to creep back up again, and despite a newly punched hole in his belt it was straining against an ever-expanding belly.

“It’s for a case,” said Jane. She closed the book she’d been reading, relieved to blot out the image of Sun Wukong.

“Yeah, I heard all about it. Got yourself another weird one. Started off with that dead lady on the roof, didn’t it? Makes me wish I was back in the saddle.”

Jane looked at his belly and thought: God help any horse that you climb on.

Korsak flopped down in the armchair—the same armchair that her father used to sit in. It was weird to see him lounging in Frank Rizzoli’s old perch, but her dad had forfeited all rights to that chair the day he walked out on Angela and moved in with the Bimbo. That’s what they all called her now, though they knew her name well enough. Sandie Huffington, Sandie-with-an-e. Jane knew all about the Bimbo, including how many traffic tickets she’d racked up in the past ten years. Three. Because of the Bimbo, Vince Korsak was sitting in this armchair, fat and happy on Angela’s cooking.

Jane didn’t want to think about all the other ways that Angela made him happy.

“Chinatown,” Korsak grunted. “Strange place. Good food.”

He would, of course, mention food. “What do you remember about the Red Phoenix shooting?” she asked. “You must’ve heard the gossip back then.”

“That one was a wicked shocker. Why would a guy with a cute little girl shoot four people and blow out his own brains? Never made sense to me.” He shook his head. “Such a sweet kid, too. Real daddy’s girl.”

That surprised her. “You knew the cook’s family?”

“Not really, but I used to eat there a lot. Those Chinese, they don’t know how to take a day off, so the place was always open, all hours of the night. You could get off a late shift and still have dinner. I was there once at ten on a Sunday night, and that little girl brought out my fortune cookies. It’s like child labor. But she looked like she was happy to be hanging out with Daddy.”

“You sure it was the cook’s daughter? She would’ve been pretty young.”

“She looked pretty young. Maybe five? Cute as a button.” He gave a sad sigh. “Can’t believe a father would do that, leave a wife and kid behind. Not to mention all the other families he screwed up. A few weeks later, daughter of one of the victims got kidnapped.”

“Charlotte Dion.”

“Was that her name? I just remember it was like a Greek tragedy. Bad luck piled on top of bad luck.”

“You know the really weird part?” said Jane. “Two years earlier, the daughter of one of the other victims was snatched as well. The waiter’s kid. She disappeared on her way home from school.”

“No shit? I didn’t know that.” Korsak thought about this for a moment. “That’s freaky. Really makes you wonder if it’s more than just a coincidence.”

“One of the last things Detective Ingersoll said to me on the phone was something about girls.
What happened to those girls
. Those were his words.”

“Those two girls? Or other girls?”

“I don’t know.”

He shook his head. “All these years later, and here we are still thinking about them. Weird to realize they’re probably nothing but skeletons now.” He paused. “But that’s not what I want to be thinking about tonight. Let’s pour some wine.”

“I thought you were a beer man.”

“Your ma’s converted me. Wine’s better for the old ticker anyway, you know.” He heaved himself out of the armchair. “Time to talk about happy things, okay?”

Not about dead people, thought Jane. Not about mass shootings and kidnapped girls. But when Gabriel came into the house holding Regina by her tiny hand, Jane couldn’t help thinking about Charlotte Dion and Laura Fang. She helped her mother carry platters to the table, a steady succession of ever-more-impressive dishes. Crisp roast potatoes. Green beans drizzled with olive oil. And finally two sumptuous roast chickens, fragrant with rosemary. But even as they sat down to eat, as she tied the bib around Regina and cut her meat into child-sized morsels, Jane was thinking about missing girls and devastated parents. How could a mother go on? She wondered if Iris Fang had ever considered ending her own misery. A leap off a rooftop, a handful of sleeping pills. How much easier than living with grief, day in and day out, pining for loved ones whom you’ll never see again.

“Something wrong with your meal, Janie?” said Angela.

Jane looked up at her mother, who had the uncanny knack of knowing exactly what had gone into the mouths of every guest seated at her dining table. “It’s great, Ma. You outdid yourself tonight.”

“Then why aren’t you eating?”

“I am.”

“You took one bite of chicken, then you started moving things around on your plate. I hope you’re not on a diet, because you don’t need to lose any weight, sweetie.”

“I’m not on a diet.”

“All these girls, they’re always on diets. Starving on salads, and for what?”

“Sure ain’t doing it for men,” mumbled Korsak around a mouthful
of potatoes. “Guys like a little meat on a girl.” He winked at Angela. “Take your ma. Built like a woman’s supposed to be built.”

Jane couldn’t see what was happening under the table, but her mother suddenly bolted straight in her chair, laughing. “Vincent! Behave.”

Please behave. Because I can’t watch any more of this
.

“You know,” said Korsak, slicing into his chicken. “This is a good time to bring up you know what.”

Never had three words sounded so ominous. Jane’s chin snapped up, and she looked at her mother. “What’s
you know what
?”

“It’s something we’ve been talking about for a while,” said Angela. “Vince and me.”

Jane glanced at her husband, but as usual Gabriel wore his FBI face, giving away nothing, even though he’d probably guessed where this conversation was going.

“Well, you know that Vince and I have been seeing each other for quite a while,” said Angela.

“Quite a while? It’s been only, what? A year and a half?”

“That’s plenty of time to get to know someone, Janie. To see that he has a good heart.” Angela beamed at Korsak, and they leaned in for a noisy, lip-smacking kiss.

“You dated Dad for three whole years,” Jane pointed out. “Look where that ended up.”

“I was fifteen when I met your father. He was only my second boyfriend.”

“You were fifteen and you’d already had a boyfriend?”

“The point is, I was just a kid, and I didn’t know what the world had to offer. I married too young, had kids too young. Only now do I know what I want.”

Jane looked at Korsak and thought: You cannot seriously be talking about
him
.

“That’s why we wanted you to come to dinner tonight, sweetie. You and Gabriel are going to be the first to know. I haven’t told Frankie or Mike yet because, well, you know how they are. Still attached to
their dad and all, despite the fact he’s sleeping with the Bimbo.” Angela paused to take a calming breath. Just mentioning the Bimbo made her voice rise half an octave. “Your brothers, they just won’t understand. But you’re my daughter, so you know what we women have to put up with in this world. You know how unfair things are.”

“Ma, there’s no need to rush into anything.”

“Oh, we’re not going to rush. We’re going to have a nice long engagement and do it the old-fashioned way. Order real invitations from a printer. Rent a big reception hall and a caterer. And we can go shopping for dresses together, Janie! That’d be something, just you and me! I’m thinking peach or lavender, since I’m not—well, you know.”

Jane glanced at Korsak to see how he was reacting to this feminine checklist, but he just grinned like a happy sailor.

“This time, I’m going to go slow and enjoy every minute of my wedding,” said Angela. “And it’ll give your brothers a chance to adjust to it all.”