The girl sets down her glass and frowns. For an instant I think I see a flash of recognition, but then it’s gone, and she shakes her head.
“It was a long time ago,” I say. “Twelve years.” An eternity for a girl so young. “You were small.”
She shrugs. “Then no wonder I don’t remember you.” She reaches in her jacket, pulls out a cigarette, and starts to light it.
“You’re polluting your body.”
“It’s my body,” she retorts.
“Not if you wish to train.” I reach across the table and snatch the cigarette from her lips. “If you want to learn, your attitude must change. You must show respect.”
She snorts. “You sound like my mother.”
“I knew your mother. In Boston.”
“Well, she’s dead.”
“I know. She wrote me last month. She told me she was ill and had very little time left. That’s why I’m here.”
I’m surprised to see tears glisten in the girl’s eyes, and she quickly turns away, as though ashamed to reveal weakness. But in that vulnerable instant, before she hides her eyes, she makes me think of my own daughter, who was younger than this girl’s age when I lost her. I feel my own eyes sting with tears, but I don’t try to hide them, because sorrow has made me who I am. It has been the refining fire that has honed my resolve and sharpened my purpose.
I need this girl. Clearly, she also needs me.
“It’s taken me weeks to find you,” I tell her.
“Foster home sucked. I’m better off on my own.”
“If your mother saw you now, her heart would break.”
“My mother never had time for me.”
“Maybe because she was working two jobs, trying to keep you fed? Because she couldn’t count on anyone but herself to do it?”
“She let the world walk all over her. Not once did I see her stand up for anything. Not even me.”
“She was afraid.”
“She was spineless.”
I lean forward, suddenly enraged by this ungrateful brat. “Your poor mother suffered in ways you can’t possibly imagine. Everything she did was for you.” In disgust, I toss her cigarette back at her. She is not the girl I’d hoped to find. She may be strong and fearless, but no sense of filial duty binds her to her dead mother and father, no sense of family honor. Without those ties to our ancestors, we are lonely specks of dust, adrift and floating, attached to nothing and no one.
I pay the bill for her meal and stand. “Someday, I hope you find the wisdom to understand what your mother sacrificed for you.”
“You’re already leaving?”
“There’s nothing I can teach you.”
“Why would you want to, anyway? Why did you even come looking for me?”
“I thought I would find someone different. Someone I could teach. Someone who would help me.”
“To do what?”
I don’t know how to answer her question, and for a moment the only sound is the tinny mariachi music spilling from the restaurant speakers.
“Do you remember your father?” I ask. “Do you remember what happened to him?”
She stares back at me. “That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? That’s why you came looking for me. Because my mother wrote you about him.”
“I knew your father, too. He was a good man. He loved you, and you dishonor him. You dishonor both of them.” I place a bundle of cash in front of her. “This is in their memory. Get off the street and go back to school. At least there, you won’t have to fight off strange men.” I turn and walk out of the restaurant.
In seconds she’s out the door and running after me. “Wait,” she calls. “Where are you going?”
“Back home to Boston.”
“I do remember you. I think I know what you want.”
I stop and face her. “It’s what you should want, too.”
“What do I have to do?”
I look her up and down. See scrawny shoulders and hips so narrow they barely hold up her blue jeans. “It’s not what you need to do,” I reply. “It’s what you need to be.”
Slowly I move toward her. Up till now she’s seen no reason to fear me, and why should she? I am just a woman, the same age as her mother was. But something she now sees in my eyes makes her take a step back. For the first time she understands that this could be the beginning of her worst nightmare.
“Are you afraid?” I ask her softly.
Her chin juts up, and she says with foolish bravado, “No. I’m not.”
“You should be.”
TWO
SEVEN YEARS LATER
MY NAME IS DR. MAURA ISLES, LAST NAME SPELLED I-S-L-E-S. I’m a forensic pathologist, employed by the medical examiner’s office in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.”
“Please describe for the court your education and background, Dr. Isles,” said the Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney, Carmela Aguilar.
Maura kept her gaze on the ADA as she answered the question. It was far easier to focus on Aguilar’s neutral face than to see the glares coming from the defendant and his supporters, at least two dozen of whom had gathered in the courtroom. Aguilar did not seem to notice or care that she was arguing her case before a hostile audience, but Maura was acutely aware of it; a large segment of that audience was law enforcement officers and their friends. They were not going to like what Maura had to say.
The defendant was Boston PD Officer Wayne Brian Graff, square-jawed and broad-shouldered, the vision of an all-American hero. The room’s sympathy was with Graff, not with the victim, a man who had ended up battered and broken on Maura’s autopsy table six months ago. A man who’d been buried unmourned and unclaimed. A man who had, two hours before his death, committed the fatal sin of shooting and killing a police officer.
Maura felt all those courtroom gazes burning into her face, hot as laser points, as she recited her curriculum vitae.
“I graduated from Stanford University with a BA in Anthropology,” she said. “I received my medical degree from the University of California in San Francisco, and went on to complete a five-year pathology residency at that same institution. I am certified in both anatomical and clinical pathology. I then completed a two-year fellowship in the subspecialty of forensic pathology, at the University of California, Los Angeles.”
“And are you board certified in your field?”
“Yes, Ma’am. In both general and forensic pathology.”
“And where have you worked prior to joining the M.E.’s office here in Boston?”
“For seven years, I was a pathologist with the M.E.’s office in San Francisco. I also served as a clinical professor of pathology at the University of California. I hold medical licenses in both the states of Massachusetts and California.” It was more information than had been asked of her, and she could see Aguilar frown, because Maura had tripped up her planned sequence of questions. Maura had recited this information so many times before in court that she knew exactly what would be asked, and her responses were equally automatic. Where she’d trained, what her job required, and whether she was qualified to testify on this particular case.
Formalities completed, Aguilar finally got down to specifics. “Did you perform an autopsy on an individual named Fabian Dixon last October?”
“I did,” answered Maura. A matter-of-fact response, yet she could feel the tension instantly ratchet up in the
