The Keepsake

THIRTY-SIX

The label of hero did not sit comfortably on Barry Frost’s shoulders.

He looked embarrassed rather than heroic, sitting in his hospital bed, wearing only the flimsy johnny gown. He’d been transferred to Boston Medical Center two days earlier, and since then a steady stream of well-wishers, everyone from the police commissioner to the Boston PD cafeteria staff, had made the pilgrimage to his hospital room. That afternoon, when Jane arrived, she found three visitors still lingering amid the jungle of flower arrangements and MylarGET WELL balloons. From kids to old ladies, everybody liked Frost, she thought as she watched from the doorway. And she understood why. He was the Boy Scout who’d cheerfully shovel your sidewalk and jump-start your car and climb a tree to rescue your cat.

He’d even save your life.

She waited for the other visitors to leave before she finally stepped into his room. “Can you stand one more?” she asked.

He gave her a wan smile. “Hey. I was hoping you’d stick around.”

“This seems to be the happening place. I have to fight off all your groupies just to get in.” With her right arm now in a cast, Jane felt clumsy as she dragged a chair over to the bed and sat down. “Geez, will you look at us two,” she said. “What a pathetic pair of wounded war buddies.”

Frost started to laugh, but caught himself as the motion set off fresh pain from his laparotomy incision. He hunched forward, grimacing in discomfort.

“I’ll get the nurse,” she said.

“No.” Frost held up his hand. “I can handle this. I don’t want any more morphine.”

“Screw the macho stuff. I say take the drugs.”

“I don’t want to be doped up. Tonight I need to have my head clear.”

“What for?”

“Alice is coming to see me.”

It was painful to hear the hopeful note in his voice, and she looked away so he could not read the pity in her eyes. Alice didn’t deserve this man. He was one of the good guys, one of the decent guys, and that was why he was going to get his heart broken.

“Maybe I should leave,” she said.

“No. Not yet. Please.” Carefully he settled back against the pillows and released a cautious breath. Trying to look cheerful, he said: “Tell me the latest news.”

“It’s been confirmed. Debbie Duke was really Carrie Otto. According to Mrs. Willebrandt, Carrie showed up at the museum back in April and offered to help out as a volunteer.”

“April? That’s soon after Josephine was hired.”

Jane nodded. “It took only a few months for Carrie to become indispensable to the museum. She must have stolen Josephine’s keys. Maybe she was the one who left that bag of hair in Dr. Isles’s backyard. She gave Jimmy complete access to the building. In every way, brother and sister were a team.”

“Why would any sister go along with a brother like Jimmy?”

“We caught a glimpse of it that night. Inappropriate sibling attachment was what the therapist wrote in Jimmy’s psychiatric file. I spoke to Dr. Hilzbrich yesterday, and he said Carrie was every bit as pathological as her brother. She’d do anything for him, maybe even maintain his dungeon. The crime scene unit found multiple hairs and fibers in that Maine cellar. The mattress had bloodstains from more than one victim. Neighbors on the road said they’d sometimes see both Jimmy and Carrie in the area at the same time. They’d stay in the house for several weeks, then they’d disappear for months.”

“I’ve heard of husband-and-wife serial killer teams. But a brother and sister?”

“The same dynamic applies. A weak personality coupled with a powerful one. Jimmy was the dominator, so overwhelming that he could exert total control over people like his sister. And Bradley Rose. While Bradley was alive, he helped Jimmy in the hunt. He preserved the victims and found places to store their bodies.”

“So he was just Jimmy’s follower.”

“No, they both got something out of the relationship. That’s Dr. Hilzbrich’s theory. Jimmy fulfilled his teenage fantasies of collecting dead women while Bradley acted out his obsession with Medea Sommer. She was what they had in common, the one prey they both wanted, but could never catch. Even after Bradley died, Jimmy never stopped looking for her.”

“But instead he found her daughter.”

“He probably spotted Josephine’s photo in the newspaper. She’s the spitting image of Medea, and she’s the right age to be her daughter. She’s even in the same profession. It wouldn’t take much digging to learn that Josephine wasn’t who she claimed to be. So he watched her, waiting to see if her mother would turn up.”

Frost shook his head. “That was some crazy obsession he had with Medea. After all these years, you’d think he’d move on.”

“Remember Cleopatra? Helen of Troy? Men were obsessed with them, too.”

“Helen of Troy?” He laughed. “Man, this archaeology thing is rubbing off on you. You sound like Dr. Robinson.”

“The point is, men get obsessed. A guy will cling to a particular woman for years.” She added, quietly: “Even a woman who doesn’t love him.”

His face reddened and he looked away.

“Some people just can’t move on,” she said, “and they waste their lives waiting for someone they can’t have.” She thought of Maura Isles, another person who wanted someone she couldn’t have, who was trapped by her own desires, her own poor choice of a lover. On the night Maura had needed him, Father Daniel Brophy was not there for her. Instead, it was Anthony Sansone who had taken her into his house. It was Sansone who had called Jane to confirm it was safe to let Maura return home. Sometimes, thought Jane, the person who could make you happiest is the one you overlook, the one who waits patiently in the wings.

They heard a knock on the door, and Alice stepped in. Dressed in a sleek skirt suit, she looked blonder and more stunning than Jane remembered, but her beauty had no warmth. She held herself like marble, perfectly chiseled, meant only for looking but not touching. The women exchanged tense but polite greetings, like two rivals for the same man’s attention. For years they had shared Frost, Jane as his partner, Alice as his wife, yet Jane felt no connection with this woman.

She stood to leave, but as she reached the door, she couldn’t resist a parting remark. “Be nice to him. He’s a hero.”

Frost saved me, now I’m going to have to save him, Jane thought as she walked out of the hospital and climbed into her car. Alice was going to shatter his heart, the way you shatter flesh with liquid nitrogen and a sharp whack with a hammer. Jane had seen it in Alice’s eyes, the grim resolve of a wife who’s already left the marriage and was only there to wrap up the final details.

He’d need a friend tonight. She would come back later, to pick up the pieces.

She started her car and her cell phone rang. The number was unfamiliar.

So was the voice of the man who greeted her on the line. “I think you’ve made a big mistake, Detective,” he said.

“Excuse me? Who am I speaking to?”

“Detective Potrero, San Diego PD. I just got off the phone with Detective Crowe, and I heard how it all went down there. You claim you took out Jimmy Otto.”

“I didn’t. My partner did.”

“Yeah, well, whoever you shot, it wasn’t Jimmy Otto. Because he died here twelve years ago. I ran that investigation, so I know. And I need to question the woman who killed him. Is she in custody?”

“Medea Sommer isn’t going anywhere. She’ll be right here in Boston, anytime you want to come out and talk to her. I can assure you, the shooting in San Diego was absolutely justified. It was self-defense. And the man she shot wasn’t Jimmy Otto. It was a guy named Bradley Rose.”

“No, it wasn’t. Jimmy’s own sister ID’d him.”

“Carrie Otto lied to you. That wasn’t her brother.”

“We have DNA to prove it.”

Jane paused. “What DNA?”

“The report wasn’t included in that file we sent you, because the test was completed months after we closed our case. You see, Jimmy was a murder suspect in another jurisdiction. They contacted us because they wanted to be absolutely sure their suspect was dead. They asked Jimmy’s sister to provide a DNA sample.”

“Carrie’s DNA?”

Potrero gave an impatient sigh, as though speaking to a moron.

“Yes, Detective Rizzoli. Her DNA. They wanted to prove the dead man really was her brother. Carrie Otto mailed in a cheek swab, and we ran it against the victim’s. It was a family match.”

“That can’t be right.”

“Hey, you know what they say about DNA. It doesn’t lie. According to our lab, Carrie Otto was definitely a female relative of the man we dug up from that backyard. Either Carrie had another brother who got killed here in San Diego, or Medea Sommer lied to you. And she didn’t shoot the man she claims she shot.”

“Carrie Otto didn’t have another brother.”

“Exactly. Ergo, Medea Sommer lied to you. So is she in custody?”

Jane didn’t answer. A dozen frantic thoughts were fluttering in her head like moths and she couldn’t catch and hold a single one.

“Jesus,” said Detective Potrero. “Don’t tell me she’s free.”

“I’ll call you back,” said Jane, and disconnected. She sat in her car, staring out the windshield. She saw a pair of doctors walk out of the hospital, moving with princely strides, white coats flapping. Sure of themselves, that was the way they walked, like two men with no doubts while she herself was trapped in them. Jimmy Otto or Bradley Rose? Which man had Medea shot and killed in her home twelve years ago, and why would she lie about it?

Who did Frost really kill?

She thought of what she had witnessed in Maine that night. The death of Carrie Otto. The shooting of a man she’d assumed was Carrie’s brother. Medea had called him Jimmy, and he had answered to that name. So he must have been Jimmy Otto, just as Medea claimed.

But the DNA was the obstacle she kept banging into, the bulletproof piece of evidence that contradicted everything. According to the DNA, it wasn’t Bradley who’d died in San Diego. It was a male relative of Carrie Otto.

There was only one conclusion. Medea lied to us.

And if they let Medea slip free, they were going to look like total incompetents. Hell, she thought, we are incompetents, and the proof is in the DNA. Because, as Detective Potrero had said, DNA doesn’t lie.

She punched in Crowe’s number on her cell phone, and suddenly went still.

Or does it?