“But they weren’t.”
Simon shook his head. “We dug for two seasons, and all we found were bits of bone and metal. The remains of stragglers, no doubt. They were such meager spoils that neither Kimball nor the Egyptian government had any interest in keeping any of it. So it came to us.”
“I didn’t know that you worked with Kimball Rose. You never even mentioned that you knew him.”
“He’s a fine archaeologist. An exceedingly generous man.”
“And his son?” she asked quietly. “How well did you know Bradley?”
“Ah, Bradley.” He set the box back on the shelf. “Everyone wants to know about Bradley. The police. You. But the truth is, I scarcely remember the boy. I can’t believe that any son of Kimball’s would be a threat to you. This investigation has been quite unfair to his family.” He turned to her, and the sudden intensity of his gaze made her uneasy. “He has only your best interests in mind.”
“What do you mean?”
“Of all the applicants I could have hired, I chose you. Because he said I should. He’s been looking out for you.”
She backed away.
“You really had no idea?” he said, moving toward her. “All along, he’s been your secret friend. He asked me not to say a word, but I thought it was time you should know. It’s always good to know who our friends are, especially when they’re so generous.”
“Friends don’t try to kill you.” She turned and hobbled away, back through the canyon of crates.
“What are you talking about?” he called out.
She continued through the maze, intent only on reaching the exit. She could hear him following her, his cane tapping against the concrete.
“Josephine, the police are completely wrong about him!”
She rounded a bend in the maze and saw the door ahead, hanging ajar. Didn’t we close it? I’m sure we closed it.
Simon’s cane tapped closer. “Now I’m sorry I told you,” he said. “But you really ought to know how generous Kimball has been to you.”
Kimball?
Josephine turned. “How does he even know about me?” she asked.
Just as the basement lights went black.
TWENTY-FOUR
Night had already fallen when Jane stepped out of her Subaru and dashed through the pounding rain to the Crispin Museum entrance. The front door was unlocked and she pushed into the building, letting in a whoosh of wet wind that sent museum brochures flying off the reception desk and scattering across the damp floor.
“Time to start building an ark yet?” asked the patrolman standing guard near the desk.
“Yeah, it’s wet out there.” Grimly, Jane shrugged out of her dripping slicker and hung it on a coat hook.
“Never seen so much rainfall in a single summer, and I’ve lived here all my life. I hear it’s all because of global warming.”
“Where is everyone?” Jane said, cutting off the conversation so brusquely that his face tightened. After what had happened tonight, she was in no mood to talk about the weather.
Taking her cue, he responded just as brusquely: “Detective Young’s down in the basement. His partner’s upstairs, talking to the curator.”
“I’ll start in the basement.”
She pulled on gloves and paper shoe covers and headed for the stairwell. With every step, she girded herself for what she was about to confront. When she reached the basement level, she saw a stark warning of what lay ahead. Bloody shoe prints, a man’s size nine or ten, had tracked across the hall from the storage area to the elevator. Alongside the shoe prints was an alarming smear left by something that had been dragged across that floor.
“Rizzoli?” said Detective Young. He had just emerged from the storage room.
“Did you find her?” asked Jane.
“I’m afraid she’s nowhere in this building.”
“Shit.” Jane looked down again, at the smear. “He took her.”
“I’d say it looks that way. Pulled her across this hall and brought her up in the elevator to the first floor.”
“And then what?”
“Took her out a rear door that leads to their loading dock. There’s an alley behind the building where he could have backed up his vehicle. No one would’ve seen a thing, especially tonight, with all the rain. He just had to load her in and drive away.”
“How the hell did he get into the building? Weren’t the doors locked?”
“The senior docent-her name’s Mrs. Willebrandt-said she left around five fifteen and she swears she locked the doors. But she looks like she’s about a thousand years old, so who knows what her memory’s like?”
“What about everyone else? Where was Dr. Robinson?”
“He and Ms. Duke drove out to Revere to ship a crate. He says he came back to the building around seven to catch up on some work and he didn’t see anyone here. He assumed Dr. Pulcillo had left for the day, so he wasn’t concerned at first. Until he glanced in her office and noticed her purse was still there. That’s when he called 911.”
“Detective Frost was supposed to drive her home today.”
Young nodded. “So he told us.”
“Then where is he?”
“He arrived just after we got here. He’s upstairs now.” Young paused, and said quietly: “Go easy on him, huh?”
“For screwing up?”
“I’ll let him tell you what happened. But first…” He turned toward the door. “I have to show you this.”
She followed him into the storage area.
The footprints were more vivid here, the killer’s soles so wet with blood that they left splash marks. Young moved into the maze of storage items and pointed down a narrow aisle. The object of his attention sat wedged between crates.
“There’s not much left of the face,” he said.
But there was still enough of it for Jane to recognize Simon Crispin. The blow had slammed into his left temple, shattering bone and cartilage, leaving a crater of gore. Blood had streamed from the wound into the aisle, where the lake had spread across the concrete and soaked into scattered wood shavings. For a short time after the blow, Simon had lived, long enough for his heart to keep beating and keep pumping blood that had spilled from the ruined head and streamed across this floor.
“Somehow this killer managed to time it just right,” said Young. “He must have been watching the building. He must have seen Mrs. Willebrandt leave, so he knew that only two people were still here. Dr. Pulcillo and an eighty-two-year-old man.” Young looked at Jane. “I hear her leg was in a cast, so she couldn’t have run away. And she wouldn’t be able to put up much of a fight.”
Jane looked down at the drag mark left by Josephine’s body. We told her she’d be safe. That’s why she came back to Boston. She trusted us.
“There’s one more thing you need to see,” said Young.
She looked up. “What?”
“I’ll show you.” He led her back toward the exit. They emerged from the maze of crates. “That,” said Young, and he pointed at the closed door. At the two words that had been written in blood:
FIND ME
Jane climbed the stairs to the third floor. By now the medical examiner and the CSU team had arrived, carrying all their paraphernalia, and the building echoed with the voices and the creaking footsteps of an invading army, the sounds spiraling up the central stairwell. She paused at the top, suddenly weary and sick of blood and death and failure.
Most of all, failure.
The perfectly grilled steak that she had eaten at her mother’s house just hours before now felt like an undigested brick in her stomach. From one minute to the next, she thought; that’s how quickly a pleasant summer Sunday can turn into tragedy.
She walked through the gallery of human bones, past the skeletal mother cradling the fragments of her child, and headed up the hallway toward the administrative offices. Through an open doorway, she spotted Barry Frost sitting alone in one of the offices, his shoulders slumped, his head in his hands.