I Know a Secret

Twenty-six

The woman stared from the photo with a direct gaze that seemed to say: I see you. Her hair, half silver, half black, stood out like porcupine quills on her squarish head, but it was the eyes that gave Maura the deepest shock of recognition. It was like looking at herself in a future mirror.

“It’s her. It’s Amalthea,” said Maura. In astonishment, she glanced at Jane. “She knew Irena Stanek?”

Jane nodded. “That photo was taken four years ago, just before Irena died at MCI — Framingham. I spoke to the warden, who confirms that Irena and Amalthea were friends. They spent almost all their time together, at meals and in the common areas. Amalthea knows all about the Apple Tree and what the Staneks did to those children. No wonder she and Irena were a pair. Monsters who understood each other.”

Maura studied the face of Irena Stanek. Some might claim they could see evil shining in a person’s eyes, but the woman standing beside Amalthea in this photograph seemed neither evil nor dangerous, merely ill and exhausted. There was nothing in Irena’s eyes that would warn a victim: Stay away. Danger here.

“They look like two sweet old grannies, don’t they?” said Jane. “Seeing them, you’d have no idea who they really are or what they’ve done. After Irena died, Amalthea mailed that photo to Martin Stanek, and since his release from prison, she’s been writing him letters. Two killers communicating with each other, one on the outside, one on the inside.”

Amalthea’s words whispered from Maura’s memory, their meaning suddenly, chillingly significant: You’ll find another one soon.

“She knows what Stanek’s been doing,” said Maura.

Jane nodded. “It’s time to talk to her.”

Only a few weeks earlier, Maura had said her final goodbye to Amalthea Lank. Now here she was in the interview room at MCI — Framingham, waiting to confront the woman she had vowed never to see again. This time she would not have to face Amalthea alone. Jane would be watching from the other side of the one-way mirror, ready to step in if the conversation turned dangerous.

Jane spoke to her over the intercom. “Are you sure you’re okay about this?”

“We have to do it. We have to find out what she knows.”

“I hate putting you in this position, Maura. I wish there were some other way.”

“I’m the one person she’ll open up to. I’m the one with the connection.”

“Stop saying that.”

“But it’s true.” Maura took a deep breath. “Let’s see if I can use that connection.”

“All right, they’re about to bring her into the room. Ready?”

Maura gave a stiff nod. The door swung open, and the clank of steel manacles announced the entrance of Amalthea Lank. As the guard shackled the prisoner’s ankle to the table, Amalthea’s gaze stayed on Maura, her eyes as focused as lasers. Since her first round of chemotherapy, Amalthea had regained some weight, and her hair was beginning to grow back in short, wispy strands. But it was her eyes that revealed the extent of her recovery. The canny gleam was back, dark and dangerous.

The guard withdrew, leaving the two women to silently regard each other. Maura had to resist the temptation to look away, to turn to the one-way mirror for reassurance.

“You said you weren’t ever coming back to see me,” said Amalthea. “Why are you here?”

“That box of photos you sent me.”

“How do you know I’m the one who sent the box?”

“Because I recognized the faces in the photos. It’s your family.”

“Your family too. Your father. Your brother.”

“A woman delivered that box to my house. Who was she?”

“No one important. Just someone who owed me a favor because I kept her safe in here.” Amalthea leaned back in the chair and gave Maura a knowing smile. “When it suits me, I watch out for people. I make sure that nothing happens to them, both inside these walls and outside.”

Delusions of grandeur, thought Maura. She’s a pathetic old woman dying in prison and she believes she still has the power to manipulate. Why did I think she could actually tell us anything?

Amalthea glanced at the one-way mirror. “Detective Rizzoli’s behind that window, isn’t she? Watching and listening to us. I see you both on the news all the time. They call you ‘Boston’s First Ladies of Crime.’” She turned to the window. “If you want to know about Irena Stanek, Detective, you should come in here and ask me yourself.”

“How did you know we’re here about Irena?” asked Maura.

Amalthea snorted. “Really, Maura. Do you give me so little credit? I know what’s happening out there. I know what you’re up against.”

“You were friends with Irena Stanek.”

“She was just another lost soul I met in here. I looked out for her, kept her safe. Too bad she died before she could return any favors.”

“Is that why you’ve been writing to Martin Stanek? Because he owes you?”

“I looked out for his mother. Why wouldn’t he do me a few favors?”

“Like what?”

“Buy me magazines, newspapers. My favorite chocolate bars.”

“He also told you things. Things he was planning to do.”

“Did he?”

“When I visited you in the hospital, you said, You’ll find another one soon. You meant we’d find another one of Martin Stanek’s victims, didn’t you?”

“Did I say that?” Amalthea shrugged and pointed to her head. “You know, chemo brain. It fogs the memory.”

“Did Stanek tell you what he planned to do to the children who exposed him?”

“Why do you think he was planning anything?”

This was a chess game, Amalthea playing coy, bargaining for information. Giving away nothing for free.

“Answer me, Amalthea. There are lives at stake,” said Maura.

“And this should matter to me?”

“If there’s any trace of humanity in you, it should matter.”

“Whose lives are we talking about?”

“Twenty years ago, five children helped send the Staneks to prison. Now three of those children are dead and one has gone missing. But you already know this, don’t you?”

“What if those victims weren’t so innocent? What if you have it all turned around and the Staneks were the real victims?”

“Up is down, black is white?”

“You didn’t know Irena. I did. I took one look at her and I knew she didn’t belong in here. People like to talk about stamping out evil, but most of you can’t recognize it when you see it.”

“I assume you can?”

Amalthea smiled. “I know my own kind. Do you?”

“I judge people by their actions, and I know what Martin Stanek did to those children.”

“Then you don’t know anything.”

“What am I supposed to know?”

“That sometimes up really is down.”

“You told me we’d find another victim soon. How did you know that?”

“You didn’t seem to care at the time.”

“Did Martin Stanek tell you? Did he share his plans for revenge?”

Amalthea sighed. “You’re asking all the wrong questions.”

“What’s the right question?”

Amalthea turned to the one-way mirror and smiled at Jane, who was standing on the other side of the glass. “Which victim haven’t you found?”

“It’s all bullshit. She talks in riddles just to string you along. Make sure you come back and visit her.” Jane slapped the steering wheel. “Damn it, I should have talked to the bitch myself. I shouldn’t have put you through that. I’m sorry.”

“We both agreed it had to be me,” said Maura. “I’m the one she trusts.”

“You’re the one she can manipulate.” Jane scowled at the afternoon traffic, which had slowed their progress back to Boston. A line of cars stretched out before them, as far as they could see. “We got nothing useful out of her.”

“She mentioned a victim you haven’t found yet.”

“She probably means Bill Sullivan, the young man who vanished in Brookline. If he was buried alive like Saint Vitalis, we may never find him. I just hope the poor guy was unconscious when Stanek started shoveling in the dirt.”

“What if she was talking about a different victim, Jane? You still haven’t found Holly Devine. Do you know if she’s alive?”

“I keep calling her father, and he keeps refusing to talk to me. Maybe that’s a good thing. If we can’t find her, the killer can’t find her either.”

Maura looked at Jane. “You’re so certain Martin Stanek is the killer. Why don’t you arrest him?”

Jane’s silence was revealing. For a moment she simply stared in silence at the traffic ahead. “I can’t prove it,” she finally admitted.

“You searched his apartment. You didn’t find any evidence?”

“No ketamine, no duct tape, no scalpels, nothing. He doesn’t have a car, so how did he move Tim McDougal’s body to that pier? Plus, he has an ironclad alibi for Christmas Eve. He was eating dinner at the church soup kitchen. The nuns remember him.”

“Maybe he’s not your perp.”

“Or he’s working with a partner. Someone who’s doing the killing for him. Stanek spent twenty years in prison, and who knows who he met in there? Someone has to be helping him.”

“You’re already monitoring his phone. Who does he talk to?”

“Just people you’d expect. His lawyer, the local pizza joint. Some journalist who’s writing a book. The realtor who’s selling his parents’ house.”

“Anyone with a criminal record?”

“No. They all check out squeaky clean.” Jane glared at the road ahead. “He’s got to be working with someone he met in prison.”

A minute passed. “What if Stanek is innocent?” Maura asked quietly.

“He’s the only one with a motive. Who else would it be?”

“I just worry that we’ve settled on him too soon.”

Jane looked at her. “Okay, tell me what’s bugging you.”

“Something that Amalthea told me. She said I’m too sure of myself and it makes me blind. Unable to see the truth.”

“She was messing with your head again.”

“What if we’re all blind, Jane? What if Martin Stanek isn’t guilty of anything?”

Jane gave a groan of frustration and abruptly turned the car onto the next exit ramp.

“What are you doing?”

“We’re going to Brookline. I’m going to show you the old Apple Tree Daycare Center.”

“It’s still there?”

“It was in a wing of the Staneks’ house. Frost and I walked the property yesterday. The place has been on the market for years, but there’ve been no offers. I guess no one wants a house with satanic vibes.”

“Why are you taking me there?”

“Because Amalthea put that bug in your ear and now you’re doubting everything I tell you. I want to show you why I think Martin Stanek is guilty as hell.”

By the time they arrived at the Stanek property, the sun was already setting, and the trees cast spindly shadows across the snow-covered front yard. The signpost still stood near the gate, but the shingle for Apple Tree Daycare was long gone, and the only evidence that children had once played in this yard was a dilapidated swing set. Maura lingered in the warm car for a moment, reluctant to trudge through the cold to that sagging front porch. The house was a traditional New England Cape with wooden shutters and double-hung windows, the clapboards now feathered with peeling flakes of paint. Disintegrating roof shingles littered the snow with flecks of asphalt.

“What exactly am I supposed to see in there?” said Maura.

“Come on in.” Jane shoved open her car door. “I’ll show you.”

A path to the front porch had already been trampled through the ankle-deep snow during Jane and Frost’s visit the day before, and they followed the same iced-over footprints to the porch.

“The stairs are coming apart, so be careful,” Jane warned.

“Is the rest of the house in such bad shape?”

“The place is basically a teardown.” Jane lifted a rock near the doorstep and retrieved a key. “I don’t know why the Realtor even bothers to lock the door. She should invite vandals to torch the place and take care of the problem.” Jane pushed the front door, and it gave a haunted-house creak as it swung open. “Welcome to Satan’s Daycare.”

It felt even colder inside the house, as if a chill had been permanently trapped within these walls. Maura stood in the shadowy foyer and surveyed peeling wallpaper printed with dainty pink roses, a floral print that probably graced the homes of countless grandmothers. A cracked mirror hung in the hallway, and the wide-plank pine floor was littered with dead leaves and other detritus that had been tracked inside or blown in by the wind whenever a visitor stepped through the front door.

“The stairs lead up to three bedrooms, where the Staneks lived,” said Jane. “There’s nothing to see up there, just empty rooms. Their furniture was auctioned off years ago, to pay for the family’s legal bills.”

“Martin Stanek still has title to the place?”

“Yes, but he can’t live here because he’s a registered sex offender. And he couldn’t keep up with the property taxes, so he was forced to put the house on the market.” Jane gestured down the hallway. “They operated the daycare center at that end of the house. That’s what I want you to see.”

Maura followed Jane past a bathroom with missing floor tiles and a toilet stained with rust and stepped into what had once been the Apple Tree playroom. Wide windows faced a backyard where saplings had sprung up, the woods marching ever closer to the house. Water had seeped through the roof, and the carpet stank of mold.

“Take a look at the wall,” said Jane.

Maura turned and stared at the gallery of portraits, the faces now familiar to her.

“You recognize her, don’t you?” said Jane, pointing to an image of a serene-faced woman holding two eyeballs in her hand. “Our old friend Saint Lucy. And, look, there’s Saint Sebastian, skewered by arrows. Saint Vitalis. Saint Joan, burned at the stake. Irena Stanek taught catechism classes at her church, and she made sure the kids here learned all the saints’ days. She even had them write their names under the saints who were honored on their birthdays. Look who wrote her name under Saint Lucy.”

Maura frowned at the block letters, written in a childish hand. Cassandra Coyle.

“And there’s Timmy McDougal’s name, under Saint Sebastian. And Billy Sullivan’s under Saint Vitalis. It’s like these kids signed their own death warrants twenty years ago.”

“You can find pictures of saints in any Catholic school classroom. This doesn’t prove anything, Jane.”

“This is the house where Martin Stanek grew up. Every day, he saw this wall of saints. He knew which kid’s birthday was Saint Lucy’s day or Saint Joan’s day. And see how Irena marked the martyrs with gold stars? Hooray for you, your saint died a gruesome death! Stoning, crucifixion, flaying alive. The church’s greatest hits are right here, and Martin lived with them. Maybe he was inspired by them.”

Maura focused on the image of paired martyrs, one holding a sword. It was the same pair of martyrs she had seen in the stained-glass window in Our Lady of Divine Light. Saint Fusca and Saint Maura. Beheaded.

“And here’s the name of our fifth child witness. The one we can’t locate,” said Jane. She pointed to the name Holly Devine, printed neatly beneath the image of a man with blood streaming from his gaping mouth.

“Saint Livinus,” said Maura.

“If we don’t find Holly soon, that’s how she’s going to end up. Like poor old Saint Livinus, who had his tongue ripped out of his mouth to keep him from preaching.”

Shivering, Maura turned away from the wall of horrors. In the deepening gloom, the house had grown even colder, and she felt the chill sink deep into her bones. She went to the windows and looked at the overgrown backyard, which was now receding into shadow.

“I keep thinking about Regina,” said Jane. “What if I’d been one of the parents who sent a kid here? You do everything you can to keep your kid safe and protect her from monsters, but then you have to pay the bills and go to work. You have to trust someone with your kid.”

“You’re lucky you have your mom to watch her.”

“Yeah, but what if my mom couldn’t do it? What if I didn’t have a mom? I’m sure some of these parents didn’t have a choice, but couldn’t they sense that something was wrong about this place?”

“You say that only because you know what happened here.”

“Don’t you feel the vibes?”

“I don’t believe in vibes.”

“Only because you can’t measure them with one of your fancy scientific instruments.”

“What I can measure is temperature, and I’m cold. If there’s nothing else to see here, I’d like to—” Suddenly Maura paused, staring at the trees. “Someone’s out there.”

Jane looked out the window. “I don’t see anyone.”

“He was standing right at the edge of the woods. Facing this way.”

“I’ll take a look.”

“Wait. Don’t you think you should call for backup?”

But Jane was already running out the back door.

Maura stepped outside and saw Jane dart into a thicket of evergreens, where she was quickly swallowed up in the shadows. Maura could hear her moving through the underbrush, twigs snapping under her boots like sharp explosions.

Then silence.

“Jane?”

Heart thumping hard, Maura followed Jane’s path across the yard and plunged into the gloom of the woods. The snow hid roots and fallen branches, and she was as noisy as a buffalo as she stumbled and crashed her way among the trees. She imagined Jane sprawled in the snow, imagined a killer standing over her, about to deliver a fatal blow.

Call for backup.

She pulled the cell phone out of her pocket and with chilled fingers tapped in the code to unlock it. Then she heard a shouted command:

“Freeze! Police!”

Maura followed the sound of Jane’s voice and stumbled into a clearing, where Jane stood with her weapon drawn. Yards away stood a figure with arms raised to the sky, face hidden by the shadow of a jacket hood.

“Do you want me to call for assistance?” Maura said.

“First let’s see who we have here,” said Jane, and she barked at the figure, “State your name!”

“Can I lower my arms first?” came the calm reply. A woman.

“All right. Slowly,” said Jane.

The woman lowered her arms and pushed back the hood of her jacket. Despite the fact that a gun was pointed at her, she appeared strangely unruffled as she regarded Jane and Maura. “What’s this all about? Did I break some law just by walking around the neighborhood?”

Jane lowered her weapon and said in surprise, “It’s you.”

“I’m sorry. Have we met?”

“You were at Cassandra Coyle’s memorial service. And Timothy McDougal’s. What are you doing on this property?”

“I was looking for my dad’s dog.”

“You live around here?”

“My dad does.” The young woman pointed at the faint glow of houselights beyond the trees. “His dog got out and I’ve been searching for him. I saw your car, and I wondered if someone was trying to break into the old daycare.”

“You’re Holly Devine, aren’t you?” said Jane.

For a moment the woman didn’t answer. When she finally did, her words were barely a murmur. “I haven’t been called that name in years.”

“We’ve been trying to find you, Holly. I kept calling your father, but he refused to tell me where you were.”

“Because he doesn’t trust anyone.”

“Well, you’re going to have to trust me. Your life may depend on it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Let’s go someplace warm and I’ll tell you.”