Last to Die

me, or anything about me.”

The boys, stunned by that outburst, stared at her in astonishment. Perhaps even admiration.

“I’m sorry,” said Maura. “You’re absolutely right, Claire, I don’t know.” She looked at Will and Teddy. “Just like I don’t know what your lives have been like, not really. I cut open bodies and see what’s inside, but that’s all I can do. You three, well, you’ll just have to tell me what the files can’t. About your lives and who you are.”

“Like Claire says, we’re the weirdos,” said Will, and Teddy gave a sad nod of agreement. “We’re the ones no one wants to be around. It’s like everyone can sense we’re bad luck, and they don’t want anything to do with us, in case it rubs off.” Will’s head drooped. “And they end up dead, like Dr. Welliver.”

“There’s no proof that Dr. Welliver’s death was anything but a suicide.”

“Maybe,” said Will, “but our files were on her desk the day she died. It’s like she opened them and got cursed.”

“Maura,” said Julian, “we want to help the investigation. We have information.”

“The Jackals are a fine group, Julian. But there are professionals at work investigating everything that’s happened.”

“This one’s only for pros, is that it?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact.”

“What if we found something the professionals didn’t?” He looked at Claire. “Show them.”

Only then did Maura notice that Claire was holding a book. “This is my family album,” said Claire, handing the volume to Maura.

Maura opened the book to a photograph of a young man and woman standing before the Roman Colosseum, both blond, both stunningly attractive. “Your parents?” she asked.

“Yeah. My dad worked at the embassy. He was a political officer.”

“They were a handsome couple, Claire.”

“But that’s not what I wanted to show you.” Claire flipped the album to the last page of photos. “It’s this picture, the cocktail party. That’s my dad there, talking to that guy. And you see this woman standing off to the side here, in the green dress? Do you know who she is?”

“Who?”

“That’s my mother,” said Will.

Maura turned to him in surprise. “Are you sure? It could be someone who looks like her.”

“It is my mother. I recognize the dress. She always wore it to parties. It was green, with a gold belt, and she told me it was the most expensive dress she’d ever bought, but that quality always pays for itself. That was her motto, what she used to say to me all the time.” Will’s voice faded and his shoulders slumped as he said softly: “That’s my mom.”

Maura looked at the caption: JULY 4. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, USA! “There’s no year. We don’t know when this picture was taken.”

“The point is,” said Julian, “They were together, at the same party. And you know who else was there?”

“Him,” said Claire. She pointed to the blond man photographed in conversation with Erskine Ward. Captured in profile, he was taller than Ward, broad-shouldered and powerfully built. In a room filled with people drinking wine, he was the only one holding a can of beer.

“It’s my father,” said Teddy.

“There’s the connection,” said Julian. “It still doesn’t tell us why they were killed, or why someone wants to hurt their children all these years later. But this is the evidence you were looking for. Claire’s dad. Teddy’s dad. Will’s mom. They knew each other.”

THE SCANNED IMAGE GLOWED on Frost’s computer screen, a photo of guests dressed in party clothes, some seated, some standing, most with a drink in hand. The central figures in the tableau were Erskine Ward and Nicholas Clock, who stood facing each other, but with their faces partly turned to the camera, as though someone had just called out: “Smile, gentlemen!” Will’s mother, Olivia, stood in the periphery beside another woman, but her gaze was turned toward Erskine Ward. Jane scanned the other faces, searching for the spouses of these three, but did not spot them amid the well-heeled and clearly well-lubricated gathering.

“That,” said Frost, pointing to Olivia, “is the expression of a woman who has the hots for Ward.”

“That’s what you see in her face?”

“Not that anyone ever looks at me like that.”

“It could be just the look of an old friend. Someone who knows him well.”

“Then it’s funny we can’t find anything else to tie Olivia and Erskine together. If they knew each other that well.”

Jane leaned back in her chair and stretched the kinks from her neck. It was nearly midnight, and everyone else in the homicide unit had left the building for the night. So should we, she thought, but these scanned photos, which Maura emailed to Boston PD, had kept Jane and Frost at their desks for the last hour. Maura had sent eight photos from the Ward family album, images of barbecues and blacktie parties, of gatherings indoors and outdoors. In none of the other photos had Jane spotted either Olivia Yablonski or Nicholas Clock; this was the only image where the two appeared along with Erskine Ward. A Fourth of July party, year unspecified, in a room with at least a dozen other people visible in the shot.

Where and when had this photo been taken?

Frost clicked through the other seven images and stopped at a photo of the Ward family, seated on a white sofa. Claire looked about eight years old. They were dressed in their best, Erskine in a gray suit, Isabel in a well-cut dress and blazer. Behind them was an elaborately decorated Christmas tree.

“This is the same room as the cocktail party,” said Frost. “See the hearth there, on the right? It’s in the other photo as well. And here …” He zoomed in on a corner of the room. “Does that look like the same crown molding?”

“Yeah, it does,” said Jane. She squinted to read the handwritten caption from the album: OUR LAST CHRISTMAS IN GEORGETOWN. LONDON, HERE WE COME! She looked at Frost. “This was taken in DC.”

“So that’s where the cocktail party was. The question is, why did Nicholas Clock and Olivia Yablonski get invited to a diplomat’s party? Nicholas was in finance. Olivia was a medical equipment sales rep. How and where did these three people meet?”

“Go back to the other photo,” she said.

Frost pulled up the image of the cocktail party, which they now knew was in Washington.

“They look younger here,” said Jane. She swiveled around to grab the Ward family’s file from her desk and flipped it open to Erskine Ward’s curriculum vitae. “Foreign service officer, served in Rome for fourteen years, Washington for five. Then stationed in London, where he was killed a year later.”

“So this cocktail party was held sometime during the Wards’ five-year stay in DC.”

“Right.” She closed the file. “How did these three meet? It must have been in Washington. Or …” She looked at Frost just as the same thought seemed to spring into his head.

“Rome,” said Frost, and he sat up straight in excitement. “Remember what that guy at NASA told us? Neil and Olivia were looking forward to their trip to Rome—where they first met each other.”

Jane swiveled around to grab her file on the Yablonskis. “All this time, we’ve focused on Neil and his job. Kept chasing that stupid NASA and aliens shit, when it was Olivia we should have been looking at.” Bland Olivia with the boring job, who stood around looking lost at her husband’s NASA gatherings. Olivia, who regularly traveled overseas to sell medical equipment. What were you really selling, Olivia?

Jane found the page she was searching for. “Here it is. Date of marriage, Olivia and Neil Yablonski. Fifteen years ago. She met her future husband in Rome, which would place her there during the same time Erskine Ward was working at the embassy.”

“What about this guy?” Frost pointed at Teddy’s father, Nicholas Clock, who cut a striking and athletic figure, a man confident enough in his own skin to drink beer when everyone else was sipping wine, to sport Dockers and a golf shirt among a jacket-and-tie crowd. “Can we place Nicholas Clock in Rome around that same time? Were all three of them there?”

Jane flipped through the file. “We don’t know enough about Clock. Most of what we’ve got is what the Saint