Last to Die

FOUR

AS JANE WALKED INTO LOUISBURG SQUARE, SHE SPOTTED THE FAMILIAR black Lexus parked among the knot of Boston PD vehicles and she knew that ME Maura Isles was already on the scene. Judging by all the news vans, every TV station in Boston was also here, and no wonder: Of all the desirable neighborhoods in the city, few could match this square with its jewel-like park and leafy trees. The Greek Revival mansions overlooking the park were home to both old wealth and new, to corporate moguls and Boston Brahmins and a former US senator. Even in this neighborhood, violence was no stranger. The rich get whacked, too, Detective Crowe had said, but when it happened to them, everyone paid attention. Beyond the perimeter of police tape, a crowd jostled for better views. Beacon Hill was a popular stop for tour groups, and today those tourists were certainly getting their money’s worth.

“Hey, look! It’s Detective Rizzoli.”

Jane spotted the female TV reporter and cameraman moving toward her, and she put up her hand to hold off any questions. Of course they ignored her and pursued her across the square.

“Detective, we hear there’s a witness!”

Jane pushed through the crowd, muttering: “Police. Let me through.”

“Is it true the security system was turned off? And nothing was stolen?”

The damn reporters knew more than she did. She ducked under the crime scene tape and gave her name and unit number to the patrolman on guard. It was merely a matter of protocol; he knew exactly who she was, and had already ticked off her name on his clipboard.

“Shoulda seen that gal chase Detective Frost,” the patrolman said with a laugh. “He looked like a scared rabbit.”

“Is Frost inside?”

“So is Lieutenant Marquette. The commissioner’s on his way in, and I half expect His Honor will be showing up, too.”

She looked up at the stunning four-story redbrick residence and murmured: “Wow.”

“I figure it’s worth fifteen, twenty million.”

But that was before the ghosts moved in, she thought, staring at the handsome bow windows and the elaborately carved pediment above the massive front door. Beyond that front door were horrors she had no stomach to confront. Three dead children. This was the curse of parenthood; every dead child wears the face of your own. As she pulled on gloves and shoe covers, she was donning emotional protection as well. Like the construction worker who puts on his hard hat, she donned her own armor and stepped inside.

She looked up at a stairwell that soared four stories to a glass-domed roof, through which sunlight streamed in a shower of gold. Many voices, most of them male, echoed down that stairwell from the upper floors. Although she craned her neck, she could not spot anyone from the foyer, could just hear those voices, like the rumblings of ghosts in a house that, over a century, would have sheltered many souls.

“A glimpse of how the other half lives,” said a male voice.

She turned to see Detective Crowe standing in a doorway. “And dies,” she said.

“We’ve parked the boy next door. The neighbor lady was kind enough to let him wait in her house. The kid knows her, and we thought he’d feel more comfortable being interviewed there.”

“First I need to know what happened in this house.”

“We’re still trying to figure that out.”

“What’s with all the brass showing up? I heard the commissioner’s on his way.”

“Just take a look at the place. Money talks, even when you’re dead.”

“Where did this family’s money come from?”

“Bernard Ackerman’s a retired investment banker. His family’s owned this house for two generations. Big-time philanthropists. You name the charity, they probably gave to it.”

“How did this go down?”

“Why don’t you just take the tour?” He waved her into the room from which he’d just emerged. “You tell me what you think.”

Not that her opinion mattered much to Darren Crowe. When she’d first joined the homicide unit, their clashes had been bitter, and his disdain all too apparent. She still detected hints of it in his laugh, his tone of voice. Whatever respect she’d earned in his eyes would always be probationary, and here was yet another opportunity to lose it.

She followed him through a parlor where the twenty-foot ceiling was ornately painted with cherubs and grapevines and gold-leaf rosettes. There was scarcely any chance to admire that ceiling or the oil paintings, because Crowe walked straight through into the library, where Jane saw Lieutenant Marquette and Dr. Maura Isles. On this warm June day, Maura was wearing a peach-colored blouse, an uncharacteristically cheerful color for someone who usually favored wintry blacks and grays. With her stylishly geometric haircut and her elegant features, Maura looked like a woman who might actually live in a mansion like this, surrounded by oil paintings and Persian carpets.

They stood surrounded by books, displayed in floor-to-ceiling mahogany shelves. Some of those volumes had tumbled onto the floor, where a silver-haired man lay facedown, one arm propped upright against the bookcase, as though reaching for a volume even in death. He was dressed in pajamas and slippers. The bullet had penetrated both his hand and his forehead, and on the shelf above the body a starburst of blood had splattered the leather-bound spines. The victim put up his hand to block the bullet, thought Jane. He saw it coming. He knew he was going to die.

“My time of death estimate is consistent with what the witness told you,” Maura said to Marquette.

“Early morning, then. Sometime after midnight.”

“Yes.”

Jane crouched down over the body and studied the entrance wound. “Nine millimeter?”

“Or possibly a three fifty-seven,” said Maura.

“You don’t know? We don’t have casings?”

“Not a single one in the whole house.”

Jane looked up in surprise. “Wow, he’s a tidy killer. Picks up after himself.”

“Tidy in a number of ways,” said Maura, thoughtfully regarding the deceased Bernard Ackerman. “This was a quick and efficient kill. A minimum of disorder. Just like upstairs.”

Upstairs, thought Jane. The children.

“The rest of the family,” said Jane, sounding more matter-of-fact than she felt, “did they die around the same time as Mr. Ackerman? Was there any delay?”

“My estimate is only approximate. To be more precise, we’ll need better information from the witness.”

“Which Detective Rizzoli here is going to get for us,” said Crowe.

“How do you know I’ll do any better with the boy?” said Jane. “I can’t work magic.”

“We’re counting on you, because we don’t have much to work with. Just a few fingerprints on the kitchen doorknob. No sign of forced entry. And the security system was switched off.”

“Off?” Jane looked down at the body. “It sounds like Mr. Ackerman admitted his own killer.”

“Or maybe he just forgot to turn it on. Then he heard a noise and came downstairs to check.”

“Robbery? Is anything missing?”

“Mrs. Ackerman’s jewelry box upstairs looks untouched,” said Crowe. “His wallet and her purse are still on the bedroom dresser.”

“Did the killer even go into their bedroom?”

“Oh yeah. He went into the bedroom. He went into all the bedrooms.” She heard the ominous note in Crowe’s voice. Knew that what waited upstairs was far worse than this blood-splattered library.

Maura said, quietly: “I can take you upstairs, Jane.”

Jane followed her back into the foyer, neither one of them speaking, as if this was an ordeal best borne in silence. As they ascended the grand staircase, Jane glimpsed treasures everywhere she looked. An antique clock. A painting of a woman in red. These details she automatically registered even as she braced herself for what waited on the upper floors. In the bedrooms.

At the top of the stairs, Maura turned right and walked to the room at the end of the hall. Through the open doorway, Jane glimpsed her partner Detective Barry Frost, his hands gloved in lurid purple latex. He stood with elbows hugging his sides, the position every cop instinctively assumes at a crime scene to avoid cross-contamination. He saw Jane and gave a sad shake of his head, a look that said: This is not where I want to be on this beautiful day, either.

Jane stepped into the room and was momentarily dazzled by the sunlight streaming in through floor-to-ceiling windows. This bedroom needed no curtains for privacy, as the windows looked out over a walled courtyard where a Japanese maple tree was leafed in brilliant burgundy, where blooming roses were in their full flush. But it was the woman’s body that demanded Jane’s attention. Cecilia Ackerman, clothed in a beige nightgown, lay on her back in bed, the covers pulled up to her shoulders. She appeared to be younger than her age of forty-eight, her hair artfully streaked with blond highlights. Her eyes were closed, and her face was eerily serene. The bullet had entered just above her left eyebrow, and the powder ring on her skin showed it was a contact wound, the barrel pressed to her forehead at the time the trigger was pulled. You were asleep when the killer pulled the trigger, thought Jane. You did not scream or resist, you posed no threat. Yet the invader walked into this room, crossed to the bed, and fired a bullet into your head.

“It gets worse,” said Frost.

She looked at her partner, who appeared haggard in the harsh morning light. This was more than mere fatigue she saw in his eyes; whatever he’d seen had left him shaken.

“The children’s bedrooms are on the third floor,” Maura said, a statement so matter-of-fact that she might have been a Realtor describing the features of this grand house. Jane heard creaking overhead, the footsteps of other team members moving in the rooms above them, and she suddenly thought of the year she’d helped plan her high school’s Halloween house of horrors. They’d splashed around fake blood and staged garishly gruesome scenes, far more gruesome than what she saw in this bedroom with its serenely reposing victim. Real life required little gore to horrify.

Maura headed out of the room, indicating that they’d seen what was significant here and it was time to move on. Jane followed her back to the staircase. Golden light shone down through the skylight, as if they were climbing a stairway to heaven, but these steps led to quite a different destination. To a place Jane did not want to go. Maura’s uncharacteristically summery blouse seemed as glaringly incongruous as wearing hot pink to a funeral. It was a minor detail, yet it bothered Jane, even annoyed her, that of all days that Maura would choose to wear such cheerful colors, it would be on a morning when three children had died.

They reached the third floor and Maura made a graceful sidestep, maneuvering one paper-covered shoe over some obstacle on the landing. Only when Jane cleared the top step did she see the heartbreakingly small form, covered with a plastic sheet. Crouching down, Maura lifted a corner of the shroud.

The girl was lying on her side, curled up into a fetal position, as though trying to retreat to the dimly remembered safety of the womb. Her skin was coffee-colored, her black hair woven into cornrows decorated with bright beads. Unlike the Caucasian victims downstairs, this child appeared to be African American.

“Victim number three is Kimmie Ackerman, age eight,” said Maura, speaking in a flatly clinical voice, a voice that Jane found more and more grating as she stared down at the child on the landing. Just a baby. A baby who wore pink pajamas with little dancing ponies. On the floor near the body was the imprint of a slender bare foot. Someone had stepped in this child’s blood, had left that footprint while fleeing the house. It was too small to be a man’s footprint. Teddy’s.

“The bullet penetrated the girl’s occipital bone, but didn’t exit. The angle is consistent with a shooter who was taller and firing from behind the victim.”

“She was moving,” said Jane softly. “Trying to run away.”

“Judging by her position here, it appears she was fleeing toward one of these bedrooms on the third floor when she was shot.”

“In the back of the head.”

“Yes.”

“Who the fuck does something like that? Kills a baby?”

Maura replaced the sheet and stood up. “She may have witnessed something downstairs. Seen the killer’s face. That would be a motive.”

“Don’t go all logical on me. Whoever did this walked into the house prepared to kill a kid. To wipe out a whole family.”

“I can’t speak to motive.”

“Just the manner of death.”

“Which would be homicide.”

“You think?”

Maura frowned at her. “Why are you angry with me?”

“Why doesn’t this seem to bother you?”

“You think this doesn’t bother me? You think I can look at this child and not feel what you’re feeling?”

They stared at each other for a moment, the child’s body lying between them. It was yet another reminder of the gulf that had split their friendship since Maura’s recent damaging testimony against a Boston cop, testimony that had sent that cop to prison. Although betrayals of the thin blue line are not quickly forgotten, Jane had had every intention of healing the rift between them. But apologies were not easy, and too many weeks had passed, during which their rift had hardened to concrete.

“It’s just …” Jane sighed. “I hate it when it’s kids. It makes me want to strangle someone.”

“That makes two of us.” Though the words were said quietly, Jane saw the glint of steel in Maura’s eyes. Yes, the rage was there, but better masked and under tight control, the way Maura strove to control almost everything else in her life.

“Rizzoli,” called out Detective Thomas Moore from a doorway. Like Frost, he looked beaten down, as if this day’s toll had aged him a decade. “Have you talked to the boy yet?”

“Not yet. I wanted to see what we’re dealing with first.”

“I spent an hour with him. He hardly said a word to me. Mrs. Lyman, the next-door neighbor, said that when he showed up at her house around eight this morning, he was almost catatonic.”

“It sounds like what he really needs is a shrink.”

“We have a call in to Dr. Zucker, and the social worker’s on her way. But I thought maybe Teddy might talk to you. Someone who’s a mother.”

“What did the boy see? Do you know?”

Moore shook his head. “I just hope he didn’t see what’s in this room.”

That warning was enough to make Jane’s fingers feel chilled inside the latex gloves. Moore was a tall man, and his shoulders blocked her view into the bedroom, as if he was trying to protect her from the sight that awaited her. In silence, he stepped aside to let her pass.

Two crime scene techs were crouched in a corner, and they looked up as Jane walked in. Both were young women, part of the new wave of female criminalists who now dominated the field. Neither one looked old enough to have children, to know what it was like to press worried kisses to a feverish cheek or to panic at the sight of an open window, an empty crib. With motherhood came a whole host of nightmares. In this room, one of those nightmares had come true.

“We believe these victims are the Ackermans’ daughters Cassandra, age ten, and Sarah, age nine. Both adopted,” said Maura. “Since they’re out of their beds, something must have awakened them.”

“Gunshots?” said Jane softly.

“There were no reports of gunfire heard in the neighborhood,” said Moore. “A suppressor must have been used.”

“But something alarmed these girls,” said Maura. “Something that made them climb out of bed.”

Jane had not moved from her spot near the door. For a moment no one spoke, and she realized that they were all waiting for her to approach the bodies, to do her cop thing. Exactly what she had no wish to do. She forced herself to move toward the huddled bodies and knelt down. They died holding each other.

“Judging by their positions,” said Maura, “it appears that Cassandra tried to shield her younger sister. Two of the bullets passed through Cassandra’s body first, before they penetrated Sarah’s. Single coup de grâce shots were fired into the heads of each girl. Their clothing doesn’t appear disturbed, so I see no obvious evidence of sexual assault, but I’ll need to confirm that at autopsy. That will be later this afternoon, if you’d like to observe, Jane.”

“No. I would not like to observe. I’m not even supposed to be here today.” Abruptly she turned and walked out of the room, paper shoes crackling as she fled the sight of the two girls coiled together in death. But as she moved toward the stairwell, she again saw the body of the youngest child. Kimmie, eight years old. Everywhere I look in this house, she thought, there’s heartbreak.

“Jane, are you all right?” said Maura.

“Aside from wanting to rip this bastard limb from limb?”

“I feel exactly the same way.”

Then you do a better job of hiding it. Jane stared down at the draped body. “I look at this kid,” she said softly, “and I can’t help seeing my own.”

“You’re a mom, so it’s only natural. Look, Crowe and Moore will attend the autopsy. There’s no need for you to be there.” She glanced at her watch. “It’s going to be a long day. And I haven’t even packed yet.”

“Is this the week you’re visiting Julian’s school?”

“Come hell or high water, tomorrow I leave for Maine. Two weeks with a teenage boy and his dog. I have no idea what to expect.”

Maura had no children of her own, so how could she possibly know? She and sixteen-year-old Julian Perkins had nothing in common beyond their shared ordeal last winter, fighting to survive in the Wyoming wilderness. She owed her life to the boy, and now she was determined to be the mother he had lost.

“Let’s see, what can I tell you about teenage boys?” said Jane, trying to be helpful. “My brothers had stinky shoes. They slept till noon. And they ate about twelve times a day.”

“Male pubertal metabolism. They can’t help it.”

“Wow. You’ve really turned into a mom.”

Maura smiled. “It’s a good feeling, actually.”

But motherhood comes with nightmares, Jane reminded herself as she turned away from Kimmie’s body. She was glad to retreat down the staircase, glad to escape this house of horrors. When at last she stepped outside again, she breathed in deeply, as though to wash the scent of death from her lungs. The media horde had grown even thicker, TV cameras lined up like battering rams around the crime scene perimeter. Crowe stood front and center, Detective Hollywood playing to his audience. No one noticed Jane as she slipped past and walked to the house next door.

A patrolman stood guard on the front porch, grinning as he watched Crowe perform for the cameras. “So who do you think’s gonna play him in the movie?” he asked. “Is Brad Pitt pretty enough?”

“No one’s pretty enough to play Crowe,” she snorted. “I need to talk to the boy. He’s inside?”

“With Officer Vasquez.”

“We’re waiting for the shrink, too. So if Dr. Zucker shows up, send him in.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Jane suddenly realized she was still wearing gloves and shoe covers from the crime scene. She peeled them off, stuffed them into her pocket, and rang the bell. A moment later a handsome silver-haired woman appeared at the door.

“Mrs. Lyman?” said Jane. “I’m Detective Rizzoli.”

The woman nodded and waved her inside. “Hurry. I don’t want those awful TV cameras to see us. It’s such an invasion of privacy.”

Jane stepped into the house, and the woman quickly closed the door.

“They told me to expect you. Although I’m not sure how you’ll be able to do much better with Teddy. That nice Detective Moore was so patient with him.”

“Where is Teddy?”

“He’s in the garden conservatory. Poor boy’s hardly said a word to me. Just showed up at my front door this morning still wearing his PJs. I took one look at him and knew something awful had happened.” She turned. “It’s this way.”

Jane followed Mrs. Lyman into the entrance hall and looked up at a staircase that was the mirror image of the Ackermans’ residence. And like the Ackermans’, this house featured exquisite—and expensive-looking—artwork.

“What did he say to you?” asked Jane.

“He said, ‘They’re dead. They’re all dead.’ And that was about all he could get out. I saw blood on his bare feet, and I immediately called the police.” She stopped outside the door to the conservatory. “They were good people, Cecilia and Bernard. And she was so happy because she finally had what she wanted, a house full of children. They were already in the process of adopting Teddy. Now he’s all alone again.” She paused. “You know, I don’t mind keeping him here. He’s familiar with me, and he knows this house. It’s what Cecilia would have wanted.”

“That’s a generous offer, Mrs. Lyman. But Social Services has foster families who are specially trained to deal with traumatized children.”

“Oh. Well, it was just a thought. Since I already know him.”

“Then you can tell me more about him. Is there anything that might help me connect with Teddy? What are his interests?”

“He’s very quiet. Loves his books. Whenever I visited next door, Teddy was always in Bernard’s library, surrounded by books about Roman history. You might try breaking the ice by talking about that subject.”

Roman history. Yeah, my specialty. “What else is he interested in?”

“Horticulture. He loves the exotic plants in my conservatory.”

“What about sports? Could we talk about the Bruins? The Patriots?”

“Oh, he has no interest in that. He’s too refined.”

Which would make me a troglodyte.

Mrs. Lyman was about to open the conservatory door when Jane said, “What about his birth family? How did he end up with the Ackermans?”

Mrs. Lyman turned back to Jane. “You don’t know about that?”

“I’m told he’s an orphan, with no living relatives.”

“That’s why this is such a shock, especially for Teddy. Cecilia wanted so badly to give him a fresh start, with a real chance at happiness. I don’t think there’ll ever be a chance. Now that it’s happened again.”

“Again?”

“Two years ago, Teddy and his family were anchored aboard their sailboat, off Saint Thomas. In the night, while the family was sleeping, someone came aboard. Teddy’s parents and his sisters were murdered. Shot to death.”

In the pause that followed, Jane suddenly realized how quiet the house was. So quiet that she asked her next question in a hushed voice. “And Teddy? How did he survive?”

“Cecilia told me he was found in the water, floating in his life jacket. And he didn’t remember how he got there.” Mrs. Lyman looked at the closed door to the conservatory. “Now you understand why this is so devastating for him. It’s awful enough to lose your family once. But to have it happen again?” She shook her head. “It’s more than any child should have to endure.”