I Know a Secret

Forty-one

Lizzie Dipalma emerged from the soil in bits and pieces. A finger bone here, an ankle bone there. Twenty years in a shallow grave had rotted the flesh from the skeleton, but once the skull was unearthed, Maura had little doubt of the body’s identity. Cupping the cranium in one hand, she brushed away soil from the upper jaw and looked at Jane.

“This is a child’s skull. Based on the partially erupted lateral incisors, I estimate the decedent’s age to be eight or nine years old.”

“Lizzie was nine,” said Jane.

Gently, Maura set the skull on the tarp and clapped dirt from her gloved hands. “I think you’ve found her.”

For a moment they stood in silence, looking down at the excavated grave. The burial was less than a foot deep, which was why the cadaver dog was able to catch the scent, even twenty years later. Two children could certainly dig a grave this shallow, and at eleven years old, Billy Sullivan had been large enough, strong enough, to wield a shovel.

Strong enough to kill a nine-year-old girl.

Maura brushed away more dirt, revealing a depressed fracture of the left temporal bone. This had been caused by more than merely a glancing blow; this blow had been delivered with full force on the side of her head, most likely as she was lying on the ground. She imagined the sequence of events: The girl shoved to the dirt. The boy lifting the rock, slamming it down on the girl’s head. It was the oldest of weapons, as old as the dawn of murder. As old as Cain and Abel.

“Holly helped him do it. I know she did,” said Jane.

“But how do you prove it?”

“That’s what drives me crazy. I can’t prove it. If we call Everett Prescott to testify against her, the defense will call it hearsay. Worse than that, it’s hearsay while under the influence of ketamine. When we had him wired to record her, she didn’t admit to a thing. She’s too damn smart to slip up, so we have nothing to tie her to this murder.”

“She was only ten years old when it happened. Can she really be held responsible?”

“She helped kill this girl. Okay, maybe it was twenty years ago and she was just a kid herself, but you know what? I don’t think people change. Whatever she was then, she still is. A snake doesn’t grow up to be a bunny rabbit. She’s still a snake, and she’s going to keep striking. Until somebody finally stops her.”

“It won’t be this time.”

“No, this time she gets to walk away. But at least we’ve given Martin Stanek some measure of justice, even if it’s too late for him. Bonnie Sandridge is gonna make damn sure the whole world knows he was innocent.” Jane looked through the trees toward Earl Devine’s house. “Jesus, do you ever feel like we’re surrounded by them? Monsters like Holly Devine and Billy Sullivan? If they think they can get away with it, they’ll slit your throat without a second thought.”

“And that’s where you come in, Jane. You keep the rest of us safe.”

“The trouble is, there are way too many Holly Devines in this world and not enough of me to go around.”

“At least you accomplished this,” said Maura, looking down at the skull of Lizzie DiPalma. “You found her.”

“And now she can finally go home to her mother.”

It would be a sad reunion but a reunion nonetheless, one of several that had happened during this investigation. Arlene DiPalma would soon reclaim her lost daughter. Angela Rizzoli was now back together with Vince Korsak. Barry Frost had reunited — for better or worse — with his ex-wife, Alice.

And Daniel has come back to me.

In truth, he had never really left her. She had been the one who’d sent him away, who’d believed that true happiness could only come from rooting out the imperfect, the way one cuts off a diseased limb. But nothing in life is perfect, certainly not love.

And she had never doubted that Daniel loved her. Once, he had been ready to die for her; could she ask for any better proof?

It was after dark when Maura arrived home from the crime scene that evening. Inside her house the lights were on, the windows bright and welcoming. Daniel’s car was parked in her driveway, once again out in the open where the world could see it. This was how far they’d come together, to a place beyond caring what anyone else thought about their union. She had tried to live without him, had believed she’d moved on and that love was optional. She had thought that being resigned was the same as being happy, but in truth she’d briefly forgotten what happiness felt like.

Seeing the lights in her house, his car in her driveway, she remembered.

I’m ready to be happy again. With you.

She stepped out of her car, and with a smile on her lips she walked from the darkness, into the light.