I left the window open.
Slowly she moved up the hall, her palms slick, her heart hammering. Stepping into the kitchen, she saw that the window screen was intact, the room unviolated. Melted ice cubes had left a puddle of water glistening under the table. She went to the door and confirmed that it was secured. Of course it would be. Two years ago, an intruder had broken into her home, and ever since then, she’d been careful to lock her doors, to arm her security system. She closed and latched the kitchen window and took calming breaths as her pulse gradually slowed. It was just a piece of mail, she thought. A taunt delivered through the U.S. Postal Service. Turning, she looked at the envelope that the note had arrived in. Only then did she notice that it had no postmark, that the stamp was pristine.
He delivered it himself. He came to my street and slipped it in my mailbox.
What else did he leave for me?
Looking through the window, she wondered what secrets the darkness concealed. Her hands were clammy again as she crossed to the switch for the outside lamps. She was almost afraid of what the light might reveal, afraid that Bradley Rose himself would be standing right outside her window, staring back at her. But when she flipped the switch, the glare revealed no monsters. She saw the gas barbecue grill and the teak patio furniture that she’d bought only last month, but had yet to enjoy. And beyond the patio, at the periphery of the light, she could just make out the shadowy edge of her garden. Nothing alarming, nothing amiss.
Then a pale ripple caught her eye, a faint white fluttering in the darkness. She strained to make out what it was, but it refused to take shape, refused to reveal itself. She pulled the flashlight from her kitchen drawer and shone it into the night. The beam landed on the Japanese pear tree that she’d planted two summers ago at the far corner of the yard. Suspended from one of its branches was something white and pendulous, something that was now swaying languorously in the wind.
Her doorbell rang.
She spun around, lungs heaving in fright. Hurrying into the hallway, she saw the electric blue of a cruiser’s rack lights pulsing through her living room window. She opened the front door to see two Newton patrolmen.
“Everything okay, Dr. Isles?” one of the officers asked. “We got a report of a possible intruder at this address.”
“I’m fine.” She released a deep breath. “But I need you to come with me. To check something.”
“What?”
“It’s in my backyard.”
The patrolmen followed her up the hall and into her kitchen. There she paused, suddenly wondering if she was about to make herself look ridiculous. The hysterical single woman, imagining ghosts dangling from pear trees. Now that she had two cops standing beside her, her fear had faded and more practical concerns came to mind. If the killer really had left something in her backyard, she had to approach the object as a professional.
“Wait here just a minute,” she said, and ran back to the hall closet, where she kept the box of latex gloves.
“Do you mind telling us what’s going on?” the officer called out.
She returned to the kitchen carrying the box of gloves and handed gloves to both of them. “Just in case,” she said.
“What are these for?”
“Evidence.” She grabbed the flashlight and opened the kitchen door. Outside, the summer night was fragrant with the scent of pine bark mulch and damp grass. Slowly, she walked across the yard, her flashlight beam sweeping the patio, the vegetable plot, the lawn, searching for any other surprises she’d been meant to find. The only thing that did not belong was what now hung fluttering in the shadows ahead. She came to a halt in front of the pear tree and aimed her flashlight at the object dangling from the branch.
“This thing?” said the cop. “It’s just a grocery sack.”
With something inside it.She thought of all the horrors that might fit inside that plastic sack, all the gruesome keepsakes that a killer might harvest from a victim, and suddenly she did not want to look inside it. Leave it for Jane, she thought. Let someone else be the first to see it.
“Is that what’s bothering you?” the cop said.
“He left it here. He came into my yard and hung it on that tree.”
The cop pulled on the gloves. “Well geez, let’s just see what it is.”
“No. Wait-”
But he’d already pulled the sack off the branch. He shone his flashlight at the contents, and even in the darkness she saw him grimace.
“What?” she asked.
“Looks like some kind of animal.” He held the sack open for her to look inside.
At first glimpse, what she saw did indeed appear to be a mass of dark fur. But when she realized what it really was, her hands chilled to ice inside the latex gloves.
She looked up at the cop. “It’s hair,” she said softly. “I think it’s human.”
TWENTY-NINE
“It’s Josephine’s,” said Jane.
Maura sat at her kitchen table, staring down at the evidence bag containing a thick mass of black hair. “We don’t know that,” she said.
“It’s the right color. The right length.” Jane pointed to the envelope that had contained the note. “He practically tells us he’s the one who sent it.”
Through the kitchen window, Maura saw the flashlights of the CSU team that had spent the last hour combing her backyard. And on the street three police cruisers were parked, rack lights flashing, and her neighbors were probably peering out their windows at the spectacle. I’m the woman you don’t want in your neighborhood, she thought. My house is where police cruisers and crime scene units and news vans regularly turn up. Her privacy had been stripped away, her home exposed to those TV cameras, and she wanted to fling open the front door and scream at the reporters to get off her street and leave her alone. She imagined how that would play out on the late-night news, the enraged medical examiner shrieking like a madwoman.
The true object of her fury was not those cameras, however, but the man who had drawn them here. The man who had written the note and had left that souvenir hanging on her pear tree. She looked up at Jane. “Why the hell did he send this to me? I’m just a medical examiner. I’m peripheral to your investigation.”
“You’ve also been present at almost every death scene. In fact, you were the very first person on this case, starting with the CT scan of Madam X. Your face has been on the news.”
“So has yours, Jane. He could have mailed that souvenir to Boston PD. Why come to my house? Why leave it in my backyard?”
Jane sat down and faced her across the table. “If that hair had been mailed to Boston PD, we would have handled it internally and quietly. Instead cruisers were dispatched and now you’ve got criminalists tramping around your property. Our boy has turned this into a public spectacle.” She paused. “Which may be the point.”
“He likes the attention,” said Maura.
“And he’s certainly getting that attention.”
Outside, the CSU team had wrapped up their search. Maura heard the closing thud of van doors, the fading growl of departing vehicles.
“You asked a question earlier,” said Jane. “You asked, Why me? Why would the killer leave the souvenir at your house, instead of sending it to Boston PD?”
“We just agreed it’s because he wants attention.”
“You know, there’s another reason I can think of. And you’re not going to like this one.” Jane turned on the laptop computer that she’d brought in from her car, and navigated to the Boston Globe website. “You remember reading this story about Madam X?”
On the monitor was an archived Globe article:MYSTERY MUMMY’S SECRETS SOON TO BE REVEALED. Accompanying the article was a color photo of Nicholas Robinson and Josephine Pulcillo, flanking Madam X in her crate.
“Yes, I read it,” said Maura.
“This piece was picked up by the wire services. It ran in a lot of newspapers. If our killer spotted this story, then he’d know Lorraine Edgerton’s body had just been found. And that there’d be excitement to come after the CT scan. Now look at this.”