Last to Die

Upstairs, thought Jane. The children.

“The rest of the family,” said Jane, sounding more matter-of-fact than she felt, “did they die around the same time as Mr. Ackerman? Was there any delay?”

“My estimate is only approximate. To be more precise, we’ll need better information from the witness.”

“Which Detective Rizzoli here is going to get for us,” said Crowe.

“How do you know I’ll do any better with the boy?” said Jane. “I can’t work magic.”

“We’re counting on you, because we don’t have much to work with. Just a few fingerprints on the kitchen doorknob. No sign of forced entry. And the security system was switched off.”

“Off?” Jane looked down at the body. “It sounds like Mr. Ackerman admitted his own killer.”

“Or maybe he just forgot to turn it on. Then he heard a noise and came downstairs to check.”

“Robbery? Is anything missing?”

“Mrs. Ackerman’s jewelry box upstairs looks untouched,” said Crowe. “His wallet and her purse are still on the bedroom dresser.”

“Did the killer even go into their bedroom?”

“Oh yeah. He went into the bedroom. He went into all the bedrooms.” She heard the ominous note in Crowe’s voice. Knew that what waited upstairs was far worse than this blood-splattered library.

Maura said, quietly: “I can take you upstairs, Jane.”

Jane followed her back into the foyer, neither one of them speaking, as if this was an ordeal best borne in silence. As they ascended the grand staircase, Jane glimpsed treasures everywhere she looked. An antique clock. A painting of a woman in red. These details she automatically registered even as she braced herself for what waited on the upper floors. In the bedrooms.

At the top of the stairs, Maura turned right and walked to the room at the end of the hall. Through the open doorway, Jane glimpsed her partner Detective Barry Frost, his hands gloved in lurid purple latex. He stood with elbows hugging his sides, the position every cop instinctively assumes at a crime scene to avoid cross- contamination. He saw Jane and gave a sad shake of his head, a look that said: This is not where I want to be on this beautiful day, either.

Jane stepped into the room and was momentarily dazzled by the sunlight streaming in through floor-to-ceiling windows. This bedroom needed no curtains for privacy, as the windows looked out over a walled courtyard where a Japanese maple tree was leafed in brilliant burgundy, where blooming roses were in their full flush. But it was the woman’s body that demanded Jane’s attention. Cecilia Ackerman, clothed in a beige nightgown, lay on her back in bed, the covers pulled up to her shoulders. She appeared to be younger than her age of forty-eight, her hair artfully streaked with blond highlights. Her eyes were closed, and her face was eerily serene. The bullet had entered just above her left eyebrow, and the powder ring on her skin showed it was a contact wound, the barrel pressed to her forehead at the time the trigger was pulled. You were asleep when the killer pulled the trigger, thought Jane. You did not scream or resist, you posed no threat. Yet the invader walked into this room, crossed to the bed, and fired a bullet into your head.

“It gets worse,” said Frost.

She looked at her partner, who appeared haggard in the harsh morning light. This was more than mere fatigue she saw in his eyes; whatever he’d seen had left him shaken.

“The children’s bedrooms are on the third floor,” Maura said, a statement so matter-of-fact that she might have been a Realtor describing the features of this grand house. Jane heard creaking overhead, the footsteps of other team members moving in the rooms above them, and she suddenly thought of the year she’d helped plan her high school’s Halloween house of horrors. They’d splashed around fake blood and staged garishly gruesome scenes, far more gruesome than what she saw in this bedroom with its serenely reposing victim. Real life required little gore to horrify.

Maura headed out of the room, indicating that they’d seen what was significant here and it was time to move on. Jane followed her back to the staircase. Golden light shone down through the skylight, as if they were climbing a stairway to heaven, but these steps led to quite a different destination. To a place Jane did not want to go. Maura’s uncharacteristically summery blouse seemed as glaringly incongruous as wearing hot pink to a funeral. It was a minor detail, yet it bothered Jane, even annoyed her, that of all days that Maura would choose to wear such cheerful colors, it would be on a morning when three children had died.

They reached the third floor and Maura made a graceful sidestep, maneuvering one paper-covered shoe over some obstacle on the landing. Only when Jane cleared the top step did she see the heartbreakingly small form, covered with a plastic sheet. Crouching down, Maura lifted a corner of the shroud.

The girl was lying on her side, curled up into a fetal position, as though trying to retreat to the dimly remembered safety of the womb. Her skin was coffee-colored, her black hair woven into cornrows decorated with bright beads. Unlike the Caucasian victims downstairs, this child appeared to be African American.

“Victim number three is Kimmie Ackerman, age eight,” said Maura, speaking in a flatly clinical voice, a voice that Jane found more and more grating as she stared down at the child on the landing. Just a baby. A baby who wore pink pajamas with little dancing ponies. On the floor near the body was the imprint of a slender bare foot. Someone had stepped in this child’s blood, had left that footprint while fleeing the house. It was too small to be a man’s footprint. Teddy’s.

“The bullet penetrated the girl’s occipital bone, but didn’t exit. The angle is consistent with a shooter who was taller and firing from behind the victim.”

“She was moving,” said Jane softly. “Trying to run away.”

“Judging by her position here, it appears she was fleeing toward one of these bedrooms on the third floor when she was shot.”

“In the back of the head.”

“Yes.”

“Who the fuck does something like that? Kills a baby?”

Maura replaced the sheet and stood up. “She may have witnessed something downstairs. Seen the killer’s face. That would be a motive.”

“Don’t go all logical on me. Whoever did this walked into the house prepared to kill a kid. To wipe out a whole family.”

“I can’t speak to motive.”

“Just the manner of death.”

“Which would be homicide.”

“You think?”

Maura frowned at her. “Why are you angry with me?”

“Why doesn’t this seem to bother you?”

“You think this doesn’t bother me? You think I can look at this child and not feel what you’re feeling?”

They stared at each other for a moment, the child’s body lying between them. It was yet another reminder of the gulf that had split their friendship since Maura’s recent damaging testimony against a Boston cop, testimony that had sent that cop to prison. Although betrayals of the thin blue line are not quickly forgotten, Jane had had every intention of healing the rift between them. But apologies were not easy, and too many weeks had passed, during which their rift had hardened to concrete.

“It’s just …” Jane sighed. “I hate it when it’s kids. It makes me want to strangle someone.”

“That makes two of us.” Though the words were said quietly, Jane saw the glint of steel in Maura’s eyes. Yes, the rage was there, but better masked and under tight control, the way Maura strove to control almost everything else in her life.

“Rizzoli,” called out Detective Thomas Moore from a doorway. Like Frost, he looked beaten down, as if this day’s toll had aged him a decade. “Have you talked to the boy yet?”

“Not yet. I wanted to see what we’re dealing with first.”

“I spent an hour with him. He hardly said a word to me. Mrs. Lyman, the next-door neighbor, said that when he showed up at her house around eight this morning, he was almost catatonic.”

“It sounds like what he really needs is a shrink.”

“We have a call in to Dr. Zucker, and the social worker’s on her way. But I thought maybe Teddy might talk to you. Someone who’s a mother.”