Mary frowned. "Analyzing evidence?" she asked, as if struggling to imagine her sibling in such a setting. She still didn't have a clue how Gillian's news was going to impact her.
"No." Pause for effect. "I'm a field agent now." Mary grew very still as she processed the information.
Here it comes, Gillian thought.
"You shouldn't be involved in this case," Mary told her with authority. "You're going to have to turn it down for personal reasons."
She was so controlling. Blythe kept saying how much Mary had changed, but this was the same bossy sister Gillian knew from childhood. "Because of you?" she asked.
"Because of Gavin Hitchcock," Mary said, her voice rising.
"Gavin? What does Gavin have to do with it?" "Oh, come on. It must have crossed your mind. He gets out of prison and suddenly teenage girls are being killed."
"Is that why you took this assignment?" she said heatedly. "Because of Gavin Hitchcock?"
That hadn't taken long, Mary thought. So much for a meeting of mature adults. Gillian hadn't changed. She was equipped with sibling radar that directed her to the quickest way to get under Mary's skin.
"You've always been blind when it comes to Hitchcock," Mary said.
Gavin Hitchcock was sentenced to twenty years with the possibility of parole after nine. He should have gotten life. He should have been put to death, but unfortunately Minnesota didn't have the death penalty.
He'd been in prison six months when Gillian took it upon herself to write to him. That was bad enough, but then she began visiting Hitchcock. At a time when Mary needed the love and support of her sister, Gillian had chosen to bestow her sympathy on the man who had killed Fiona. On the heels of her death, it was a double blow from which Mary had never recovered. "He killed my best friend," she said. "I don't think Gavin did it."
"I can't believe you still take his side!" How in the hell could she be a cop if she blindly sympathized with every killer out there? "What about his fingerprints? His semen? Wake up, Gillian. For chrissake, he was found staggering down the street with Fiona's blood on his hands! He all but confessed!"
"He was young. Seventeen. If he did do it, it was an accident."
"Ed Kemper was fifteen when he shot and killed both his grandparents. He got out of prison at age twenty-one. After that, he went on to kill eight women before he finally turned himself in-not out of remorse or regret, but because he wasn't getting the publicity he thought his horrific murders deserved."
"Gavin's changed. The prison psychiatrist said he isn't a threat to anyone."
Mary could have cited more case blunders where killers had been released with the support and backing of social workers and psychiatrists. Why? Because the idealists wanted to believe that basically people were good, and that bad "habits" could be changed.
"You're giving Hitchcock qualities he doesn't possess. You feel sorry for him, but he doesn't deserve your sympathy or your time."
"Do you feel any sympathy for anyone anymore? I don't think so. I don't think you're capable of sympathy."
"I feel sympathy, but I'm more selective with it than you are," Mary said, her voice biting. "I happen to save it for the victim, not the son of a bitch committing the crime." The tension in her body was making her shoulder ache. It was bad enough when strangers and madmen stabbed you in the heart, but your own family? Your own sister?
"You betrayed me." There. It was out. Words she'd never spoken to Gillian.
"I'm sorry you see it that way, but I did what I had to do. I did what was right for me."
"What made you want to become a cop?" Mary really wanted to know. From where she stood, it made no sense at all. She knew the idea was ludicrous, but it almost seemed like another way for Gillian to get to her.
"I have my reasons," she said evasively.
Mary had had more than enough of their reunion. She felt ill. She needed to get out, get away. "I'm going for a walk." Without looking in Gillian's direction, she cut across the yard, slipped out the gate, and began striding rapidly down the sidewalk, hands in her pockets, the hem of her dark coat slapping against her knees.
She ran across the street, ducking under the shadows of an elm tree. She wanted to keep running, but after a couple of minutes she forced herself to slow to a brisk walk. She hadn't yet recovered enough from her injury to take up jogging again, and the repetitious jarring motion was making her shoulder ache even more. The pain was actually a comfort, something to concentrate on, something to take her mind off a different kind of pain.
Why had she come here? she wondered with fresh dismay. Why hadn't she simply refused the case?
She heard the sound of shifting gears; then a small red car rounded the corner, came roaring down the street and pulled up beside her. Gillian leaned across the passenger seat and swung the door open. "They just found another body."
The interior of the car was an isolated pod of stony silence as they rushed to the crime scene. Gillian seemed to be entirely focused on driving like a New York City cabdriver, while Mary tried to avoid looking at her. Even though traffic was heavy, they made it to the Lake Harriet Rose Garden in fifteen minutes.
Mary had been there a few times. It was near the lake, with a bird sanctuary, boardwalks that spanned marshes, and secluded trails winding through thick stands of trees.
Police cars, silent with lights flashing, were parked at odd angles, as if the drivers had rushed in and jumped from the vehicles before they'd stopped. Yellow crime-scene tape had been strung around light poles and trees. Several officers were dealing with crowd control. Others were interviewing bystanders and possible witnesses, getting what information they could. A large, frazzled-looking man in a dark suit was barking out orders.
Gillian approached him. "Detective Wakefield?"
He swung around. "Gillian? Can't talk now. Remember, you aren't here in an official capacity tonight, just an observer. Don't forget slippers and an escort."
"Thanks."
The body had been found inside the bird sanctuary, near a blacktop jogging and walking path, about a quarter of a mile from the parking lot and lake. After sliding paper slippers over their shoes, the sisters were escorted to the crime scene by a young female officer with a high-powered regulation flashlight. They followed a paved path lined with yellow marking flags to an area that was ankle deep in leaves.
Night crime scenes were surreal. Generators hummed and high-powered lights illuminated the area until it was bleached and shadowless. In contrast, just past the circle of intensity, a person could drop off the face of the earth into a pit of blackness. Just as surreal for Mary was being at a Minneapolis crime scene with her sister beside her. Was this Gillian's first homicide? Mary wondered. How would someone who used to get light-headed at the sight of blood react to violent death?
The body belonged to a woman. She was lying facedown, partially covered in leaves…
She'd found a body just like that before. The years evaporated, and Mary was once again staring at Fiona's lifeless body. "She's dead, Mrs. Portman! She's dead!"
Mary wasn't sure how long she stood there before realizing Gillian was talking and that she was being introduced to Agent Elliot Senatra, her local FBI contact. She hoped the confusion of the surroundings covered any strangeness in her reaction as she made the transition from past to present.
"I'd shake, but as you can see-" Agent Senatra held up a latexed hand. He was nice-looking, black, about thirty-five, with small wire glasses and a gold earring. He was dressed in an expensive suit, and Mary guessed he'd been pulled from a fancy dinner or an evening on the town.