She went to the phone and dialed his home number. On the third ring, a voice answered: “Ballard.” Just that one name, spoken with crisp efficiency. This is a man who gets right down to business, she thought. He’s not going to welcome a call from a woman in emotional meltdown. In the background she could hear a TV commercial playing. He was at home, relaxing; the last thing he’d want was to be bothered.
“Hello?” he said, now with a note of impatience.
She cleared her throat. “I’m sorry to call you at home. Detective Rizzoli gave me your card. My name is Maura Isles, and I…” And I what? Want you to help me get through this night?
“I was expecting you to call, Dr. Isles,” he said.
“I know I should have waited till morning, but-”
“Not at all. You must have a lot of questions.”
“I’m having a really hard time with this. I never knew I had a sister. And suddenly-”
“Everything’s changed for you. Hasn’t it?” The voice that had sounded brusque only a moment before was now so quiet, so sympathetic, that she found herself blinking back tears.
“Yes,” she whispered.
“We should probably meet. I can see you any day next week. Or if you want to meet in the evening-”
“Could you see me tonight?”
“My daughter’s here. I can’t leave right now.”
Of course he has a family, she thought. She gave an embarrassed laugh. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking straight-”
“So why don’t you come here, to my house?”
She paused, her pulse hammering in her ear. “Where do you live?” she asked.
He lived in Newton, a comfortable suburb west of metropolitan Boston, scarcely four miles from her home in Brookline. His house was like all the other homes on that quiet street, undistinguished but well kept, yet another boxy home in a neighborhood where none of the houses were particularly remarkable. From the front porch, she saw the blue glow of a TV screen and heard the monotonous throb of pop music. MTV-not at all what she expected a cop to be watching.
She rang the bell. The door swung open and a blond girl appeared, dressed in ripped blue jeans and a navel-baring T-shirt. A provocative outfit for a girl who could not be much older than fourteen, judging by the slim hips and the barely-there breasts. The girl didn’t say a thing, just stared at Maura with sullen eyes, as though guarding the threshold from this new interloper.
“Hello,” said Maura. “I’m Maura Isles, here to see Detective Ballard.”
“Is my dad expecting you?”
“Yes, he is.”
A man’s voice called out: “Katie, it’s for me.”
“I thought it was Mom. She’s supposed to be here by now.”
Ballard appeared at the door, towering over his daughter. Maura found it hard to believe that this man, with his conservative haircut and pressed Oxford shirt, could be the father of a pubescent pop-tart. He held out his hand to shake hers in a firm grip. “Rick Ballard. Come in, Dr. Isles.”
As Maura stepped into the house, the girl turned and walked back to the living room, flopping down in front of the TV.
“Katie, at least say hello to our guest.”
“I’m missing my show.”
“You can take a moment to be polite, can’t you?”
Katie sighed loudly, and gave Maura a grudging nod. “Hi,” she said, and fixed her gaze back on the TV.
Ballard eyed his daughter for a moment, as though debating whether it was worth the effort to demand some courtesy. “Well, turn down the sound,” he said. “Dr. Isles and I need to talk.”
The girl grabbed the remote and aimed it like a weapon at the TV. The volume barely dropped.
Ballard looked at Maura. “Would you like some coffee? Tea?”
“No, thank you.”
He gave an understanding nod. “You just want to hear about Anna.”
“Yes.”
“I have a copy of her file in my office.”
If the office reflected the man, then Rick Ballard was as solid and reliable as the oak desk that dominated the room. He chose not to retreat behind that desk; instead he pointed her toward a sofa, and he sat in an armchair facing her. No barriers stood between them except a coffee table, on which a single folder rested. Through the closed door, they could still hear the manic thump of the TV.
“I have to apologize for my daughter’s rudeness,” he said. “Katie’s been going through a hard time, and I’m not quite sure how to deal with her these days. Felons, I can handle, but fourteen-year-old girls?” He gave a rueful laugh.
“I hope my visit isn’t making things worse.”
“This has nothing to do with you, believe me. Our family’s going through a tough transition right now. My wife and I separated last year, and Katie refuses to accept it. It’s led to a lot of fights, a lot of tension.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Divorce is never pleasant.”
“Mine certainly wasn’t.”
“But you did get past it.”
She thought of Victor, who had so recently intruded upon her life. And how, for a brief time, he had lured her into thoughts of reconciliation. “I’m not sure one ever gets past it,” she said. “Once you’ve been married to someone, they’re always part of your life, good or bad. The key is to remember the good parts.”
“Not so easy, sometimes.”
They were silent for a moment. The only sound was the TV’s irritating pulse of teen defiance. Then he straightened, squaring his broad shoulders, and looked at her. It was a gaze she could not easily turn away from, a gaze that told her she was the sole focus of his attention.
“Well. You came to hear about Anna.”
“Yes. Detective Rizzoli told me you knew her. That you tried to protect her.”
“I didn’t do a good enough job,” he said quietly. She saw a flash of pain in his eyes, and then his gaze dropped to the file on the coffee table. He picked up the folder and handed it to her. “It’s not pleasant to look at. But you have a right to see it.”
She opened the folder and stared at a photograph of Anna Leoni, posed against a stark white wall. She was wearing a paper hospital gown. One eye was swollen almost shut, and the cheek was bruised purple. Her intact eye gazed at the camera with a stunned expression.
“That’s the way she looked when I first met her,” he said. “That photo was taken in the ER last year, after the man she’d been living with struck her. She’d just moved out of his home in Marblehead, and was renting a house here, in Newton. He showed up at her front door one night and tried to talk her into coming back. She told him to leave. Well, you don’t tell Charles Cassell to do anything. That’s what happened.”
Maura heard the anger in his voice, and she looked up. Saw that his mouth had tightened. “I understand she pressed charges.”
“Hell, yes. I coached her through it every step of the way. A man who hits a woman understands only one thing: punishment. I was going to make damn sure he faced the consequences. I deal with domestic abuse all the time, and it makes me angry every time I see it. It’s like flipping a switch inside me; all I want to do is nail the guy. That’s what I tried to do to Charles Cassell.”
“And what happened?”
Ballard gave a disgusted shake of his head. “He ended up in jail for one lousy night. When you have money, you can buy yourself out of just about anything. I hoped that would be the end of it-that he’d stay away from her. But this is a man who’s not used to losing. He kept calling her, showing up on her doorstep. She moved twice, but each time he found her. She finally took out a restraining order, but it didn’t stop him from driving past her house. Then, around six months ago, it started to get deadly serious.”
“How?”
He nodded at the file. “It’s there. She found it wedged in her front door one morning.”
Maura turned to a photocopied sheet. On it were only two typed words centered on a blank sheet of paper.
You’re dead.
Fear whispered up Maura’s spine. She imagined waking up one morning. Opening her front door to pick up the newspaper, and seeing this single sheet of white paper flutter to the ground. Unfolding it to read those two words.