The Keepsake

THIRTY-THREE

It was dusk by the time the Maine State Police divers finished their search of the bog. The water had been only chest-deep; standing on the dry bank, Jane had watched the divers’ heads frequently popping up as they surfaced to get their bearings or to bring up some new object for closer inspection. The water was too murky for a visual search, so they had been forced to rake through the slime and decaying vegetation with their hands, a repulsive task that Jane was grateful she did not have to perform.

Especially when she saw what they finally dredged up.

The woman’s body now lay exposed on a plastic tarp, her moss-flecked hair dripping black water. So stained was her skin with tannins, it was impossible to distinguish her race or an obvious cause of death. What they did know was that her death was not accidental; her torso had been weighed down with a bag full of heavy stones. Jane stared at the tormented expression preserved in the woman’s blackened face and thought: I hope you were dead when he tied that bag of stones around your waist. When he rolled you over the bank and watched you sink into dark water.

“This is clearly not your missing woman,” said Dr. Daljeet Singh.

She looked up at the Maine medical examiner who stood beside her on the bank. Dr. Singh’s white Sikh headdress stood out in the fading light, making him easy to spot among the more conventionally garbed investigators gathered at the scene. When he’d arrived, she’d been startled to see the exotic figure step out of the truck, not at all what she expected to encounter in the North Woods. But judging by his well-worn L.L. Bean boots and the hiking gear he packed in the back of his truck, Dr. Singh was well acquainted with Maine’s rough terrain. Certainly he’d come better prepared than she had, in her city pantsuit.

“The young woman you’re looking for was abducted four days ago?” asked Dr. Singh.

“This isn’t her,” said Jane.

“No, this woman has been submerged for some time. So have those other specimens.” Dr. Singh pointed to the animal remains that had also been pulled up from the bog. There were two well-preserved cats and a dog, plus the skeletal remnants of unidentifiable creatures. The stone-filled sacks tied around all the bodies left no doubt that these unfortunate victims had not simply wandered into the mire and drowned.

“This killer has been experimenting with animals,” said Dr. Singh. He turned to the woman’s corpse. “And it appears he’s perfected his preservation technique.”

Jane shuddered and looked across the bog at the fading sunset. Frost had told her that bogs were magical places, home to a wondrous variety of orchids and mosses and dragonflies. She didn’t see the magic that evening as she stared across the undulating surface of waterlogged peat. What she saw was a cold stew of corpses.

“I’ll do the autopsy tomorrow,” said Dr. Singh. “If you’d like to observe, you’re certainly welcome.”

What she really wanted to do was drive home to Boston. Take a hot shower, kiss her daughter good night, and climb into bed with Gabriel. But her work here was not yet finished.

“The autopsy will be in Augusta?” she asked.

“Yes, around eight o’clock. Can I expect you?”

“I’ll be there.” She took a deep breath and straightened. “I guess I’d better find a place to stay for the night.”

“The Hawthorn Motel’s a few miles down the road. It serves a good breakfast. Not that awful continental stuff, but lovely omelets and pancakes.”

“Thanks for the tip,” she said. Only a pathologist could stand over a dripping corpse and talk so enthusiastically about pancakes.

She walked back up the trail by flashlight, the path now well marked by little flags of police tape. Emerging from the trees, she found that the parking lot was starting to empty out; only a few official vehicles remained. The state police had already searched the building, but all they’d found was trash and the putrefying remains of that raccoon she had spotted earlier. They had not found Josephine or Bradley Rose.

But he’s been here, she thought, gazing toward the woods. He parked near these trees. He walked the trail to the bog. There he tugged on a rope and hauled one of his keepsakes from the water, the way a fisherman hauls in his catch.

She climbed into her car and drove back along that crumbling road, her poor Subaru jouncing across potholes that seemed even more treacherous in the dark. Moments after she turned onto the main road, her cell phone rang.

“I’ve been trying to reach you for at least two hours,” said Frost.

“There was no reception at the bog. They finished searching and found only the one body. I’m wondering if he has another stash-”

“Where are you now?” Frost cut in.

“I’m staying here for the night. I want to watch the autopsy tomorrow.”

“I mean right now, where are you?”

“I’m going to check into a motel. Why?”

“What’s the name of the motel?”

“I think it’s called the Hawthorn. It’s around here somewhere.”

“Okay, I’ll see you there in a few hours.”

“You’re coming up to Maine?”

“I’m already on my way. And someone’s joining us.”

“Who?”

“We’ll talk about it when we get there.”

Jane stopped first at a local drugstore for new underwear and socks and then to pick up a take-out pepperoni pizza. While her hand-washed pants hung drying in the bathroom, she sat in her room at the Hawthorn Motel, eating pizza as she read Jimmy Otto’s file. There were three volumes, one for each year he had been a student at the Hilzbrich Institute. No, not a student-an inmate, she thought, remembering the ugly concrete building, the remote location. A place to securely segregate from society the sort of boys you didn’t want anywhere near your daughters.

Jimmy Otto, most of all.

She paused at the transcript of what Jimmy had said during a private therapy session. He’d been only sixteen years old.

When I was thirteen, I saw this picture in a history book. It was in a concentration camp where all these women were killed in the gas chambers. Their bodies were naked, lying in a row. I think about that picture a lot, about all those women. Dozens and dozens of them, just lying there like they’re waiting for me to do whatever I want with them. Fuck them in any hole. Poke sticks in their eyes. Slice off their nipples. I want there to be a bunch of women at one time, a whole row of them. Or it’s not a party, is it?

But how do you collect more than one at a time? Is there some way to keep a corpse from rotting, a way to keep it fresh? I’d like to find out, because it’s no fun if a woman just rots away and leaves me…

A knock on her motel room door made Jane snap straight. She dropped the half-eaten slice of pizza in the box and called out, in a none-too-steady voice: “Yes? Who is it?”

“It’s me,” Barry Frost answered.

“Just a second.” She went into the bathroom and pulled on her still-damp slacks. By the time she got to the door, her nerves were steady again, her heart no longer racing. She opened the door and found a surprise awaiting her.

Frost was not alone.

The woman standing beside him was in her forties, dark-haired and strikingly beautiful. She wore faded blue jeans and a black pullover, but on her lean, athletic frame even that casual garb looked elegant. She said not a word to Jane but slipped right past her into the room and ordered: “Lock the door.”

Even after Frost had turned the dead bolt, the woman did not relax. She crossed immediately to the window and yanked the drapes more tightly shut, as though the narrowest chink might admit the gaze of unfriendly eyes.

“Who are you?” Jane asked.

The woman turned to face her. And in that instant, even before Jane heard the answer, she saw it in the woman’s face, in the arched brows, the chiseled cheekbones. A face you’d see painted on a Greek urn, she thought. Or on the wall of an Egyptian tomb.

“My name is Medea Sommer,” the woman said. “I’m Josephine’s mother.”