The Silent Girl

FOUR

I HAD DINNER THERE JUST LAST SATURDAY,” SAID DETECTIVE BARRY Frost as they drove toward Chinatown. “I took Liz to see the ballet at the Wang Theater. She loves ballet, but man, I just don’t get it. I fell asleep halfway through. Afterward, we walked over to the Ocean City restaurant for dinner.”

It was two AM, way too early in the morning for anyone to be so damn chatty, but Detective Jane Rizzoli let her partner babble on about his latest date as she focused on driving. To her tired eyes, every streetlamp seemed too bright, every passing headlight an assault on her retinas. An hour ago, she’d been warmly cocooned in bed with her husband; now she was trying to shake herself awake as she navigated traffic that had inexplicably slowed to a stall and crawl at an hour when sane citizens should be home sleeping.

“You ever eat there?” Frost asked.

“What?”

“Ocean City restaurant. Liz ordered these great clams with garlic and black bean sauce. It’s making me hungry just thinking about it. I can’t wait to go back for more.”

“Who’s Liz?” said Jane.

“I told you about her last week. We met at the health club.”

“I thought you were seeing someone named Muffy.”

“Maggie.” He shrugged. “That didn’t work out.”

“Neither did the one before her. Whatever her name was.”

“Hey, I’m still trying to figure out what I want in a woman, you know? It’s been, like, forever since I was on the market. Man, I had no idea there were so many single girls around.”

“Women.”

He sighed. “Yeah, yeah. Alice used to pound that into my head. You’re supposed to say women now.”

Jane braked at a red light and glanced at him. “You and Alice talk very much these days?”

“What’s there to talk about?”

“Ten years of marriage, maybe?”

He looked out the window at nothing in particular. “There’s nothing else to say. She’s moved on.”

But Frost hasn’t, thought Jane. Eight months ago, his wife, Alice, had moved out of their home. Ever since, Jane had been subjected to a chronicle of Frost’s frantic but joyless adventures with women. There’d been the buxom blonde who told him she was wearing no underwear. The frighteningly athletic librarian with the well-thumbed copy of the Kama Sutra. The fresh-faced Quaker who drank him under the table. He related all these tales with a mingling of bewilderment and wonder, but it was sadness, more than anything else, that she saw in his eyes these days. By no means was he a bad catch. He was lean and fit and good-looking in a bland sort of way, so dating should be easier for him than it had been.

But he still misses Alice.

They turned onto Beach Street, driving into the heart of Chinatown, and were nearly blinded by the flashing rack lights of a Boston PD cruiser. She pulled up behind the cruiser and they stepped out, into the bone-chilling dampness of a spring night. Despite the ungodly hour, there were several onlookers gathered on the sidewalk, and Jane heard murmurs in both Chinese and English, everyone no doubt posing the universal question: Does anyone know what’s going on?

She and Frost walked down Knapp Street and ducked under the strand of police tape, where a patrolman stood guard. “Detectives Rizzoli and Frost, homicide,” she announced.

“It’s over there” was the cop’s terse response. He pointed down the alley at a dumpster, where another cop stood guard.

As Jane and Frost approached, she realized that it wasn’t the dumpster the cop was guarding, but something lying on the pavement. She halted, staring down at a severed right hand.

“Whoa,” said Frost.

The cop laughed. “That was my reaction exactly.”

“Who found it?”

“Folks on the Chinatown Ghost Tour. Some kid in the group picked it up thinking it was fake. It was fresh enough to still be dripping blood. Soon as he realized it was real, he dropped it right where it is now. Guess they never expected that on the tour.”

“Where are these tourists now?”

“They were pretty freaked out. They all insisted on going back to their hotels, but I got names and contact info. The tour guide’s some local Chinese kid, says he’s happy to talk to you whenever you want. No one saw anything except the hand. They called nine one one, and dispatch thought it was a practical joke. It took us a while to respond ’cause we got held up dealing with some rowdies over in Charlestown.”

Jane crouched down and shone her flashlight on the hand. It was a startlingly clean amputation, the severed end crusted over with dried blood. The hand appeared to be a woman’s, with pale and slender fingers and a disconcertingly elegant manicure. No ring, no watch. “It was just lying here on the ground?”

“Yeah. Fresh meat like that, rats’d be at it pretty quick.”

“No nibbles that I can see. Hasn’t been here long.”

“Oh, I spotted something else.” The cop aimed his flashlight and the beam landed on a dull gray object lying a few yards away.

Frost moved in for a closer inspection. “This is a Heckler and Koch. Expensive,” he said. He glanced at Jane. “It’s got a suppressor.”

“Did any of the tourists touch the gun?” asked Jane.

“No one touched the gun,” the cop said. “They never saw it.”

“So we’ve got a silenced automatic and a freshly severed right hand,” said Jane. “Who wants to bet they go together?”

“This is a really nice piece,” said Frost, still admiring the weapon. “Can’t imagine anyone tossing something like this.”

Jane rose to her feet and looked at the dumpster. “Have you checked in there for the rest of the body?”

“No, ma’am. I figured a severed hand was more than enough to call you folks straight in. Didn’t want to contaminate anything before you got here.”

She pulled a pair of gloves out of her pocket. As she snapped them on, she felt her heart starting to thump hard, in anticipation of what she’d find. Together she and Frost lifted the lid, and the stench of rotting seafood rose up and smacked them in the face. Battling nausea, she stared down at crushed cardboard boxes and a bulging black garbage bag. She and Frost looked at each other.

“You wanna do the honors?” he asked.

She reached in, tugged on the bag, and immediately knew that it didn’t contain a corpse. It wasn’t heavy enough. Grimacing at the smell, she untied the bag and looked inside. Saw shrimp and crab shells.

They both backed away, and the dumpster lid swung shut with a thunderous clang.

“No one at home?” the cop asked.

“Not in there.” Jane looked down at the severed hand. “So where’s the rest of her?”

“Maybe someone’s scattering parts all over town,” said Frost.

The cop laughed. “Or maybe one of these Chinese restaurants cooked her up and served her in a nice stew.”

Jane looked at Frost. “Good thing you ordered the clams.”

“We did a walk-around already,” the patrolman said. “Didn’t find anything.”

“Still, I think we’ll take a stroll around the block ourselves,” said Jane.

Together, she and Frost moved slowly along Knapp Street, their flashlights cutting through the shadows. They saw shards from broken bottles, scraps of paper, cigarette butts. No body parts. The buildings rising on either side had dark windows, but she wondered if eyes were watching from those unlit rooms above, tracking their progress down the silent passage. They would have to make this same inspection again by daylight, but she did not want to miss any time-sensitive clues. So she and Frost inched their way up the alley to another strand of police tape blocking off access from Harrison Avenue. Here were sidewalks and streetlights and traffic. Yet Jane and Frost continued their painstaking circle around the block, from Harrison to Beach Street, gazes sweeping the ground. By the time they’d finished their circuit and were back at the dumpster, the crime scene unit had arrived.

“Guess you didn’t find the rest of her, either,” the cop said to Jane and Frost.

Jane watched as the weapon and severed hand were bagged, wondering why a killer would dump a body part in such an exposed place where someone was sure to spot it. Was it a rush job? Was it meant to be found, a message of some kind? Then her gaze lifted to a fire escape that snaked up the four-story building facing the alley.

“We need to check the roof,” she said.

The bottom rung of the ladder was rusted, and they couldn’t pull it down; they’d have to reach the roof the conventional way, up a stairwell. They left the alley and returned to Beach Street, where they could access the front entrances to that block of buildings. Businesses occupied the first levels: a Chinese restaurant, a bakery, and an Asian grocery store-all closed at that hour. Above the businesses were apartments. Peering up, Jane saw that the windows on the upper floors were all dark.

“We’re going to have to wake someone to let us in,” said Frost.

Jane approached a group of ancient Chinese men, who’d gathered on the sidewalk to watch the excitement. “Do any of you know the tenants in this building?” she asked. “We need to get inside.”

They stared at her blankly.

“This building,” she said again, pointing. “We need to go upstairs.”

“You know, talking louder doesn’t help,” said Frost. “I don’t think they understand English.”

Jane sighed. That’s Chinatown for you. “We need an interpreter.”

“District A-1’s got a new detective. I think he’s Chinese.”

“It’ll take too long to wait for him.” She climbed to the front entrance, scanned the tenant names, and pressed a button at random. Despite repeated buzzes, no one answered. She tried another button, and this time, a voice finally crackled over the intercom.

“Wei?” a woman said.

“It’s the police,” said Jane. “Can you let us into the building, please?”

“Wei?”

“Please open the door!”

A few minutes passed, then a child’s voice answered: “My grandma wants to know who you are.”

“Detective Jane Rizzoli, Boston PD,” said Jane. “We need to go up on the roof. Can you let us in the building?”

At last the lock buzzed open.

The building was at least a hundred years old, and the wooden steps groaned as Jane and Frost climbed the stairs. When they reached the second floor, a door swung open and Jane caught a glimpse into a cramped apartment, from which two girls stared out with curious eyes. The younger was about the same age as Jane’s daughter, Regina, and Jane paused to smile and murmur hello.

Instantly the smaller girl was snatched up into a woman’s arms and the door slammed shut.

“Guess we’re the big bad strangers,” said Frost.

They kept climbing. Past the fourth-floor landing and up a narrow set of steps to the roof. The exit was unlocked, but the door gave off a piercing squeal as they swung it open.

They stepped out into the predawn gloom, lit only by the diffuse glow of city lights. Shining her flashlight, Jane saw a plastic table and chairs, flowerpots of herbs. On a sagging clothesline, a full load of laundry danced like ghosts in the wind. Through the flapping sheets, she spotted something else, something that lay near the roof’s edge, beyond that curtain of linen.

Without saying a word, both she and Frost automatically took paper shoe covers from their pockets and bent down to pull them on. Only then did they duck under the hanging sheets and cross toward what they had glimpsed, their booties crackling over the tar-paper surface.

For a moment neither spoke. They stood together, flashlights trained on a congealed lake of blood. On what was lying in that lake.

“I guess we found the rest of her,” said Frost.